l
e
a
h
c
i
M
continued from page 6
date, in stark tracks like “Keys,” “Visions,”
and “Weird Ways.” Discussing the change
of heart, the artist himself sounds touched,
and remarkably grateful he didn’t throw it
all away on a passing whim. whim.
where you’re born, but you [do] choose
where you live and how you live. And
there’s this passage of time where you
realize this, and it’s bittersweet; to truly
understand where you come from. But
then you have to deal with the fact that
you can never recreate, even if it’s a clear
memory.
IE: Fidelity is important as the year's pass
– to an artist staying true to their craft,
and even a journalist staying true to said
visionary artist as their work progresses.
TS: That’s my favorite thing. People have
these questions sometimes, like, “Do you
like doing these interviews and purging
your soul?” And I’m like, “Yeah! Because
I’m kind of fundamentally lonely. And
obviously, if you look at my career, I’m not
05•2019
ILLINOIS ENTERTAINER: Were you not
happy with Hard Love?
TIMOTHY SHOWALTER: I like all my
albums — that’s why I do this. When I
look at the careers of other artists that I
admire, I like the arc, where you can look
back and see everything. And if I had
made HEAL 2, I never would have pushed
the envelope with Hard Love. And now
that’s not even my newest record to dis-
cuss – I’ve got Eraserland. So with all of it,
and how you move as an artist, I never am
sure what’s gonna happen. But one of the
nicest things that happened over the past
couple of years was, I really learned to
love my home. Because you don’t choose
8 illinoisentertainer.com may 2019
Timothy Showalter
in this for the pop star game. I’m in this to
connect and somehow release whatever
things are inside my head and make a doc-
ument of it, almost like a message in a bot-
tle. And whoever finds it typically are peo-
ple I would want to connect with anyway.
That’s what’s so cool about playing con-
certs and looking out at your fans. I think
maybe the reason I do this is to be some
kind of antenna that shoots out this signal
to other like-minded people, and you
gather your own tribes. And it definitely
helps, because a lot of times this isn’t easy
music to play, on an emotional level. And
we’re feeling a lot right now, things that
aren’t necessarily good – what consump-
Photo: Alysse Gafkajen
tion means, what branding means, what’s
the true spirit of why people do this. Chris
Cornell had the same birthday, and I
always felt such a connection with him.
And I wrote that song “Moon Landing”
about him, and I bookended it with
Malcolm Young because, in their own way,
they were perfect. They both will never be
emulated ever again. And once we don’t
have them anymore, there’s that void that
you have to deal with. But that’s a lot of
what’s in this record, and the problem
with Eraserland is, it isn’t an easy one to
describe. It’s not like HEAL, which was
primarily linear - it was more like, “I’m at
the beach, the water’s coming in – and I
don't care if there’s a nuclear bomb going
off. The universe just does not care. So
Eraserland is neither positive nor negative.
It’s about going through and understand-
ing the process of being alive, and all the
things that come with it. That’s somehow
where I landed with the record.
IE: But you actually toyed with quitting?
TS: I tied so much of myself into what the
band is. I mean, I had my own identity for
31 years of my life, of hobbies and interests