Diandra Interviews Chaz Cardigan: Free To Be Real
In an industry that can toss around words like, “thoughtful” and “vulnerable,” it is not always easy to see who is actually being these qualities, especially if you, yourself, feel a little jaded. Chaz Cardigan’s responses felt like a breathe of “fresh authenticity” and intrigue. As a person and artist, his interview felt like a “how-to” on existing as a creative while trying to live as a person.
Diandra: What about gummy bears, as a candy, did you feel made them perfect to show that, sometimes, you are “not okay”?” Which gummy flavor do you think most represents your personality and why?
Chaz: What’s crazy is that, in my original treatment, I wanted to use Sour Patch Kids. I thought there was something really interesting in the idea of duality there, and that anxiety can kind of be a blessing or a curse depending on how you integrate it and manage it. Honestly, I went with gummy bears because they’re a bit more generic and I was way less likely to get sued. It’s really funny how far people read into the gummy bears!
That said, I do think there’s something powerful about how totemic they are. For me, it actually serves the song better. These simple, innocuous candies that everybody knows can either really enhance your life or wreck your blood sugar: depending totally on you consume them. How we handle our anxieties, how we respect our brokenness — that’s what matters, because everyone is anxious and everyone is broken.
Personally I think I’m a strawberry guy. I try to wear my seeds on the outside; keep the intentions and motivations out in the open.
Me: RIVETED BY THIS ANSWER! (Also, I would be an orange gummy bear because I am citrusy woman)
Diandra: You’ve talked about being an awkward kid and how your isolation bred your creativity. Do you feel isolation or being able to be alone is vital to be reflective and creative?
Chaz Cardigan: This is such a good question. I think that creativity is innate in everybody if they nurture it, but reflection is different. Social society and the way we socialize kids doesn’t really breed a lot of self-reflection, at least in America. There’s more emphasis on performing an identity and maintaining the performance, so a lot of people don’t really get to know themselves until they’re in their 40’s or 50’s and find themselves without a tight-knit friend group; when they don’t have an audience to perform the identity to anymore. I think being alone and learning to be comfortable in your own silence is the only way you ever really get to know yourself. Who you are when no one is around for you to perform to?
As I’ll Ever Be (From The Netflix Film “To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You” / Lyric…
I would say, sure, that breeds creativity; in so much as isolation opens you to listen to what you haven’t expressed and need to articulate. The more you’re alone, the easier it gets to listen to yourself, honestly.
Diandra: You have discussed being in therapy. How has your own music, as therapy, helped you see your growth and what is one change you have noted within yourself through it?
Chaz: Back to that idea of being alone allowing you to listen to yourself honestly: music is automatic for me. My body just does it. A lot of my work is learning to just let go of what’s happening and be present enough to let my brain spit out ideas and not overthink them. So, in the unlearning of overthinking, I sometimes don’t really appreciate what I’m saying in a lyric until I’ve lived with a song for months at a time. Hindsight’s 20/20; I look back and sort of chart “Oh, I was there when I wrote that, and now I’m here now as I perform it”.
I definitely beat myself up much less. I listen back to my first album and I hear a kid who’s in a lot of pain and thinking way too much about it. I was drunk and stoned all the time; chasing these really temporary relationships that always had built-in self-destruct features.I hear myself sort of reveling in the sadness, on that record, but then deconstructing it over the course of the singles I put out in 2018 and then learning to cut myself a break on the EP.
What I’m writing now, for what’s next, it all feels much more secure. I’m still anxious, but I know it’s usually just in my head and I can let it go much quicker and with less drama.
Diandra: Do you feel music frees people emotionally, and what are some of the feelings you hope to free from listeners?
Chaz: hope so, it does for me anyway. I’d like to think I’m giving people something to feel a little lighter. We go to all this work of trying to be put-together or seem like we know what we’re doing and not one of us has a single idea. I’m pretty awkward even still; twitchy, I smile weird, blah blah blah. Hopefully, me being comfortable in those things and just being naked about not having a clue what I’m actually doing helps people feel like they can drop the act. Jesus it’s exhausting to keep up.
Chaz Cardigan – Being Human (Audio)
Diandra: have worked for a decade to get signed. What do you feel about who you are, as a person and artist, right now, attracted a label versus a decade ago?
Chaz: I think it’s just being more at home in who I am and what I’m saying. I’m never totally going to be “at home” with who I am, but I think the work I’ve put into unlearning the act of being someone more socially acceptable is pretty valuable. That influences everything — the songs have felt better, the shows have felt better, and things have sort of just come easier as a result of just being who I actually am.
And! I’d add to that: being who I am, but not making too much of a fuss about it. That’s the real secret: no one actually cares. No one really cares about my religion or my politics or my sexuality; I just live those things and don’t really feel the need to do more than that.
Diandra: You have remarked that Bohemian Rhapsody was a massive inspiration to you musically. What is your favorite part of that song and why?
Chaz: he switch from the first movement into the operatic section is a drug. Play that song for any child for the first time and their reaction is a sugar high. I had just never heard anything like that, and it’s still so effective and so jarring. We’re all still trying to replicate it. Travis Scott tries it 3 times in “Sicko Mode”.
Chaz Cardigan – Passinthru (Audio)
Diandra: As someone who promotes vulnerability through music, how would you define being vulnerable and what emotions do you feel leave you more bare: joy or sadness? Why?
Chaz: What a question, wow. I’d iterate again on what I’ve said and call vulnerability the act of living radically unafraid of how you’re perceived…or trying. What I don’t mean by that is this toxic, Alpha bullshit where you’re never wrong, or you’ve got this “you-don’t-know-me-man” thing going on, y’know? Being unafraid of how you’re perceived doesn’t mean walking into a room and thinking everyone’s an idiot; it’s walking into a room and knowing everyone around you will die and so will you — I can’t stress this enough: my whole philosophy is that you and I have to die and there is no time to waste being inauthentic. We throw away so much of our intimacy and our potential performing versions of ourselves that aren’t real to an audience that doesn’t care one way or another. Live fluidly and honestly in the understanding that everyone around you has to die, and it’s usually not pleasant. It’s pretty radical to just drop the act. That’s vulnerability, for me.
Chaz Cardigan – Tightrope (Audio)
That said, I’m generally a pretty upbeat guy. At least for the last few years, adopting this whole outlook, I find life way more enjoyable. When I’m sad, though, or when I’m having a panic attack or something, I do have this moment in the crest of it where I think “Oh, this is why life is a gift: I get to feel this.” So sadness is important to me. When I come down from crying I always feel pretty bare. I think it’s important to be uncomfortable.
I love him….. For More Information on Chaz Cardigan and to catch his Baby’s All Right show on March 31 Click Here.
