An Intimate Conversation with Michael Collins of Drugdealer

Conversation Led by Sarah Morrison

Ahead of their show at The Dome, Tufnell Park, we sat down with Michael Collins of the art collective Drugdealer. For what was meant to be an interview then took a turn and became an intimate conversation with Collins regarding his childhood, his entrance and pathway through the world of art, collaborating with other artists, and his vision for the future ahead.

Sarah: You started off writing under different names. Why did you decide to change and stick with 'Drug Dealer' and what about these songs made you think you needed to rebrand yourself?

Michael: When I started making music, I always thought I needed rebranding. This was due to the fact I was in such a constant state of flux within my life. My mental state and lifestyle were so transient for so long that every time I tried to make a series of music or an album before I was even done with it, I'd be onto another project. At some point, I just realized I hadn't done enough for quite a while and felt differently all the time. I just realized I was in a different place. At that time within the early period, I was transient and hitch-hiking and hopping on trains a lot, and when that period of my life stopped, I unnoticeably went through this flux state and got sort of tired of changing my name all the time. At the same time, I didn't take things too seriously. Change is something I felt comfortable in. I don't think I knew how to be myself. I was continually stepping into modes of travel and or artworks, etc. I started to settle into this area of songwriting, and I finally felt like I had realized what I wanted to do. At that point, I decided that's when I would change the name one last time, and this will be the final project I ever do until I stop making music. When I started writing music ten years ago, I had never touched music or thought about it at all. I just decided to start writing songs. When I got to the point where I began writing music for the first album, that when they started finally sounding like real songs to me.

Sarah: Was this all while living in Boston, or were you living out of hostels?

Michael: I moved out of Boston when I had just turned eighteen; then I moved to Baltimore, where I went to art school.

Sarah: Is that something you knowingly wanted to study?

Michael: Art school was just an escape from doing the existing normality. I was one out of hundreds of kids at that school that never really wanted to make fine art but did not want to follow the path their superiors told them would be the smartest. I was one of those contrarian people that wanted to challenge myself in some type of way. I had made art, sure, but I didn't understand myself to be an artist at all. While I was there, all the 'cool' kids that were there had dropped out and started making music. While I was there, I began to make music but not in a traditional sense; I started to collect sounds from the internet and fuck them all together. As soon as I had anything that sounded like anything, I released it; it was less than a year from when I started.

Music is a path now, but it's not my ultimate path. My whole life, all I have wanted to do is make movies. When I went to art school, it wasn't really for that. I never thought going to school for filmmaking was the way to go.

Being a musician, creating music projects, and creating albums, it's sort of a school for filmmaking, I think. If you're a motivated enough person that will actually go and make a feature film, I think making an album and casting the 'actors' and going through the whole tour [for two months], is like making a feature.

Sarah: Do you get a real chance to film if you’re busy with this musical project and touring?

Michael: We're filming all the time; different stuff, all types of material.

Anyone can film; I think anyone can do anything. Music takes a certain type of ear. The thing about me was I didn't know that I had that type of ear at all. I was just such a regular type of kid; music was just apart of my life but wasn't a big part of my life. I didn't buy CD's until I was almost eighteen. My parents never listened to music; they rarely, occasionally did. Everything I know now, I made on myself.

Sarah: If music wasn’t immediately part of your life, what was growing up in your home like?

Michael: There were two albums my parents listened to a lot; Rumors by Fleetwood Mac and Jackson Brown's Greatest Hits. We would only play those two tapes when we'd go on family trips; ninety-five percent of the time there was no music in my house, it was strictly talk radio and NPR. My parents like what they like; a few albums. They were post-psych hippies; they weren't art people; they met through being research scientists. Music people would take mushrooms, listen to records and paint, but science people would take mushrooms, touch each other's faces, and talk about cellular mitosis; it's much cooler actually.

I think it's been a blessing to me as a musician; when I started out making music, I thought 'Oh this is cool! I like this.' Other people are just so jaded. They wanted to be perfect immediately; they don't know what is good. When you're not planning anything, everything is good.

Music, for me, has been a really deep dive into an uncomfortable zone. If you watch me play live; everyone in our band is just so good at playing, and that's why they're there with me. They're a great collaboration of musicians and incredible philosoraptors of what you're thinking. I'd like to keep it that way. I do just enough to get my ideas across, and I let them handle the rest.

The newest song that we're playing tonight, I don't actually play on. I play a chord on the vibraphone just to help them within a particular moment. But the rest of the band sing and play it. I focus more on the content of the songwriting; it sounds better when I don't play. It's not because I'm bad, it's because I'm a director; someone who doesn't want to see themselves in the shining. I much rather be watching it, knowing that I thought of it. It can be fun and play too, but if you listen to my album, there are a lot of cuts with such beautiful singers, I can listen to them and think of them as classic old songs.

I don't care about getting the rewards or attention for it. I care more about people. If somebody said, 'Oh, I don't like that guy,' but they also covered one of my songs, That would make me really happy. All I want is to contribute to the songwriting and get a credit in that form; that's much more valid to me.

I love these guys; they truly are my best friends; if I can make them the star, then that's going to help them a lot more than it will help me.

All the filming I want to do is non-fiction, and I'm doing it now. I can't say most of the name I've worked with, but there was something I did recently where a Beatles tribute band opened for me recently in Los Angeles. These guys are very serious about their roles as The Beatles. They usually play indoor parks, Orange County, weddings, but we made them the headliner of my release show. I used that show as a way to get an in-depth interview with them and film their whole set; I barely had time to do my entire set as I was directing three different people. That, to me, is much more fulfilling than anything.

People always say 'I really like your songs,' and it keeps me writing them. They're practicing a new song I wrote outside right now, and it's really good but nowhere near as good as going out and telling the world about someone's life story.

Sarah: That's very humble.

Michael: I mean that's just the way it is. I'm not humble at all.

Sarah: Are you not? Everything you said comes across very humble and simplistic to me.

Michael: I'm not at all. I'm just trying to make the best work that I can. The best work you can make is the work you don't put yourself into. So I'm not humble at all, I'm the only one that can do it. Real life is much more interesting than fantasy. We can all be humble in different ways. At the end of the day, I can fucking snap at people if I'm trying to get something made.

Sarah: Really?

Michael: My vision is complete, and I will fight my way until it's done. But in the end usually the collaborators that I'm with, they'll see it finally, and then everyone is happy. I become the sweetest person ever. I'm very tenacious for the real thing. If you write songs about your own life, you try to make it non-fiction. You're trying to tell a real story; like a documentary is. But the pursuit of that is tough; to write a song that you're actively going through to the point where it's just cold facts, the pursuit of that makes people very intense and it takes a lot to get out of people.

I haven't had a lot of time for easy things recently as I've been trying to do that back-to-back for so long. But that's just what I chose, I guess. I don't even know what I'm doing in the next five minutes!

Sarah: Tell me about your co-writes with Weyes Blood. Is that a mutual bond of collaboration?

Michael: That's a circumstantial thing. I've known Natalie for over ten years, and when I showed her a song, she started to sing it, and it became the song 'Suddenly.' I immediately fell in love with the collaboration. But I've always been a big fan of hers. When I started writing songs, they were terrible for a long time. But I'm very perseverant; I don't quit. She's been so good for so long; she has since been writing songs since she was a kid. When I first met her, she was one of the main influences that made me want to try hard. When I finally felt like I had created something good, I showed her something. That's when she sang it, and it became that song. I was honored, really, and asked her to make more songs from there. At that point, that song had done really well, and it made her excited as well.

It's the same with anyone else I co-write with really. Ariel Pink; his music is amazing. When we met, I thought 'I'll never collaborate with this guy, cause I'll never try.' I just wanted to be respectful, and we met because we had mutual friends. I ended up becoming very heartbroken after a big break-up, and for whatever reason, he saw me on avenue fifty-six in Los Angeles, and he scooped me up and when I had tears in my eyes and said, 'Whatever you're crying about, it's not real. And it's just consumed your expectations. Let's go eat Italian food.' After we sat down I kept crying, and he said 'Well you better write a song about this if you claim to be a musician.' We ended up going back to his house, and I started writing a song, and he liked it.

Every time I collaborate with someone; it stems from me being a fan of theirs and inviting them over because they expect less. That's just the way it goes. They're great, and I'm not.

I'm very easily critical of songwriters. A lot of songwriters today; it's just them trying to be cool or them trying to snog somebody; it's not about wanting to be much more. But if successful bands do that and become successful than fair enough. I've got no qualms seeing that. But I don't want to be as good as 'the best album of 2017,' I'm trying to get on the level of musicians from way long ago. I live in the past.

Ariel is someone special because he lives in the past as well. He really knows how to reinvent it for every period of time; it's timeless stuff.

All I'm saying is, I get dower on a lot of things that come out today; but not all of it! He has a quality of his songwriting that it makes me realize, everybody should do a little better.

Sarah: I enjoy the fact our whole conversation is about other people and how you find ways to help benefit others.

Michael: Well, I mean, I'm obsessed with other people.

Sarah: Just before you head off to play your show, I’d just like to circle back to the new record. I read that with the first album, you had a minimal set-up to record with. Was that the case with this last one?

Michael: No, it was the opposite. I didn't record any of this album. Every album I've made up until this point, I made in a little box; at home or someone else's home. Sasha made a bunch of it with me. It was made all over the place! I wrote some of it on a train, I made some of it in a hotel, I made some of it at my parents house, I made some of it at multiple girlfriends houses [over the course of five years], outside the airport as planes are going by, Sasha's parents house, Ariel's house, but then mixed properly by Shag's. I also didn't have a band; I just had a few main collaboratives like Sasha. Then all of these people, who were already in my life, just assembled and said 'Let us be in your band.' After that, we thought, 'Why don't we see what it would be like recorded in a studio?' I don't know which is better yet. I'll let other people decide. I think both of them are good for different reasons; it's hard to say.