Music: An interview with Takénobu

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA Rods, Lines and Flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Today we have Nick Takenobu Ogawa. A lot of our listeners and all of those of you who have watched our videos on YouTube, for example, probably are familiar with the sounds that he creates. Really interesting music. You might recognize the cello and violin and some of the notes in there.

1:01There's a great story behind how I discovered Nick's music, and I think Nick is going to have some good information to share here about his story and his music as well throughout the episode. So welcome to the Tenkara Cast, Nick. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me. I've wanted to talk to you for a long time, just kind of discover a little bit more about you, and I'm very excited to have you here on the show. But first of all, thank you so very much for being very generous and letting me use your music throughout all the videos that I've been creating over, I think it's been almost two years that I've kind of started using your music and you've allowed me to do that. I know you're an independent artist, you create your own music, you manage yourself, it seems like, and so it gives you the flexibility to do that. but I'm definitely not taking for granted that you created something and you're allowing me to use. So thank you so very much for that. Yeah, so somebody said that they had heard my music on, well, told my parents that they had heard my music on a Tenkara video.

2:06Oh, that's great. That's awesome. Yeah, I actually heard from a few different customers that they just really appreciated the introduction to your music and they played on their drives to their favorite fishing spot. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of people that have been equally inspired by your music. Oh, that's great. But also, I've been meaning to ask you for a long time, you know, so should I call you Nick or Takenobu? How do people usually call you? Takenobu is really like my stage performance name, I guess you would call it. So, yeah, just in person, Nick is fine. Perfect. And Nick, where does Takenobu come from? Where does the name come from? It's my middle name, and it's a combination of the kanji, the Japanese characters in my dad and grandfather's names. So the two combined make the name Takenobu, which kind of loosely translated means Iron Will.

3:12So I thought that's a pretty good band name. Yeah, totally. I was wondering about that because one, take in Japanese can also mean bamboo. So there's a lot of different meanings that you can have. When you listen to the word, it's a little bit like tenkara. It can mean from heaven, but it can also mean some other stuff too. Yeah. I always like to share the story of how I discovered your music. first of all because I just find that it's one of those instances where the universe kind of just seemed to have pointed me to somebody or something and it was really interesting. I think it was two and a half, three years ago, maybe a little longer than that now. I was writing a draft for my book about the Tenkara and this is a project that I've been having for years now but there I writing about this Japanese method of fly fishing and of course I got some music in the background I'm listening to Pandora and you know it's just something that for the most part I just have in the background I'm not paying attention to it but there I am writing and all of a sudden this song comes up and within a few seconds it really caught my attention because I swear like I'm not a musician I really don't know that much about music but there was something Japanese about it and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second but something reminded me of Japan.

4:41So I stopped and I get out of my desk and I go look up the name of the song. And first thing I see, the name of the song is Fishing. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And then I look a little bit more and it's like the guy has a Japanese name to it. Nick Ogawa or Takenobu Ogawa. And I was like, that's just too much. And I stopped everything. I stopped writing my book and I immediately had to write you an email and just kind of share the story. Got no idea how that came to be, but that's how I discovered her music. That's awesome. But tell me, what did I hear that, in that song that you called Fishing? Do you think there's a Japanese influence to that song? It's hard to say, I guess. I mean, I wrote that song when I was living in Vancouver, Canada. after I had lived in Japan for a little while. And I think that the Japanese sound is kind of, I mean, I don't want to get too technical with the musical stuff, but there's sort of a similar scale between the blues and the Japanese music scales, pentatonic scales.

6:00So I guess just sort of a crossover there. I don't know if I was intentionally trying to make it sound Japanese or bluesy or what, but I just liked that kind of contemplative feeling that that song had. And it just reminded me of fishing, so that's why I called it that. That's great. That's something that I've wondered for years. Because I've got no music background whatsoever. I can appreciate good music. I've got very, very little to none. introduction to music theory and that kind of thing. So it kind of struck me, you know, just like, where is the Japanese sound coming from? So that's really helpful to know. I think also I use that sort of like wispy bow sound, which I think, I don't know, I think Japanese music and some other kinds of Asian music have that sort of wispy sound to it.

7:02that, I don't know, it's kind of, it's almost dreamy in a way. And which instrument did you use for that song? What was the, what are the instruments that we hear in that song? It's all cello. So I layer different tracks of myself playing cello over top of each other. And there's the plucked rhythmic part, and then this lightly bowed melodic part on top of it, the two sounds. I mean, it's all cello, but they have very different textures. So the two of them mixed together kind of create that flowing kind of sound. Nice. That's great. And where did the name Fishing, where'd you get that name? I think I just, you know, when I was listening back to it, I was just like, hey, this just kind of reminds me of you know being out out in the out in the water just just enjoying nature and taking it slow and that's exactly kind of how I felt I think like you know it's like yes I can feel it you know it's it's really kind of a cool experience to hear that song and learn about your music and and if you don't mind I'm gonna play the music for our listeners here it's a two minute song I think they'll appreciate seeing what we're talking about ¶¶ guitar solo Thank you.

10:21That's how I found your music, just through that song. And we'll see if our listeners also feel like they're out fishing right now when they just listen to that song. Yeah. But yeah, tell me a little bit more about your story. I mean, you've got a really interesting bio. You know, it looks like you grew up in Vermont and then you went to Japan. I mean, where have you kind of picked up all of your music influences over the years? So I started when I was really young. My parents had me on the violin when I was like three or something like that. I mean, I was, you know, just a little kid playing a plastic violin, so I wasn't any good or anything like that. But I was taking lessons in the Suzuki method, which is all ear training.

11:25And then we moved when I was six to Vermont, and there was no Suzuki violin teachers. But there was a cello teacher at Middlebury College. So my parents wanted me to keep on playing a string instrument. So they took me to the teacher there. Her name was Juca. She was this wonderful Dutch woman. And I don't remember what my mom said, but, you know, I was really quiet while she was playing the cello to show me what it was. I didn't say anything. And then after we left, I said to my mom, oh, please, can I play the cello? So that was the initial introduction to the cello. And then, you know, as any little kid does, I kind of didn't really ever want to practice or anything, but my parents made me. And then that took lessons until I was 18, and there was a transition from, you know, having been forced to play it more or less to me really loving it and making it my own thing.

12:34So I stopped taking lessons when I was 18 when I went to college, and then took a little break. But then my dad was living in Japan at the time I was 20, and I decided to take a year off and go and live with him and just focus on music. So I would just practice five or six hours a day and just really try to make it my own thing and then really focusing on learning how to write and how to adapt the instrument to what I wanted it to be. Bounced around after that. I mean, I finished college and then I lived in Vancouver and New York and then now Atlanta. And all the while just writing and sort of naturally adapting to what I'm listening to, what I'm interested in and just sort of growing as a, I guess, you know, when I'm writing stuff, I'm kind of doing it hand-in-hand with recording it.

13:42So it's a combination of writing and production, I would say, when I'm writing new music. Yeah, and I think I've seen, like, you're a very prolific creator too. I really appreciate the fact that you've already put out four different albums, and we'll talk about your specific albums in a second, too. But where do you live now, Nick? I live in Atlanta, Georgia right now. I've been here, I just was thinking about the other day, I've been here for seven years. I didn't really think I would stay here for that long, but here I am. That happens to all of us. There's some good fishing a little bit north of you into the mountains a little bit. Did you ever get a chance to fish where you grew up in Vermont? In Vermont, no. I mean, when I was really little, but I haven't gotten a chance to go back and fish there. There's some fishing. I went on the Otter Creek when I was little, but I haven't been back since I've grown up.

14:46Yeah, there's some terrific fishing. I was just there a couple months ago, actually. And your family still lives in Vermont, or where are they right now? They, yeah, my dad was back in Japan again last year, but yeah, they're for the most part. My parents and Vermont, my sister's in New York. Okay, cool. And so let's talk a little bit about Tenkara. I know now you have a couple of Tenkara rods. We exchange, I guess, your music for a couple of rods. Have you had a chance to get out at all with it? Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I'm good per se, but I just love being out. It's just a great excuse to get outside and enjoy nature. Have you gone out fishing with your dad yet? I have not, unfortunately. That's something I do really want to do, though. Yeah, well, hopefully you guys will get a chance to get out together sometime soon. But I was curious, too, if you're driving into the mountains and you, let's say, go fishing, What do you listen to on your drive there usually?

15:53You know, it's always different. I mean, I listen to a lot of podcasts and sometimes I just, it's funny, sometimes I just like to drive in silence and just, you know, think about stuff. But it always varies, I guess. I don't have a specific answer. Yeah, and the driving in silence, I think that's something I've been trying to pay more attention to. I listen to some podcasts, definitely listen to your music and other music too. But I think especially like you as a creator, I was reading something recently about how so many times nowadays we're trying to fill our brains with noise. let's say, you know, noise might not be the best word, but like music. And, you know, if it's not music, we're there on our cell phones looking at Facebook and we're like reading something all the time. And all of a sudden it starts really kind of hampering our creative process or our creativity.

16:54And somebody was saying that like one of the best things in terms of creativity, and it's almost dangerous what's happening nowadays, is just to fill every single moment with some kind of noise or some type of little activity. So I think because you're driving in silence, sometimes you're probably able to come up with some great music. I think that's probably a good thing. Yeah, it's really true. It's just sometimes it's just nice to turn off the devices and the distractions. And, you know, I mean, I'm not necessarily I mean, personally, I'm not necessarily like you know composing things in my head or anything but it's just it's good to have that sort of you know that meditative uh space to to clear things out of all the all the chunks that can accumulate nowadays oh yeah it's crazy and i'm uh i'm getting more and more disheartened with you know fishing still kind of is in like one of those spaces where i can get into and not really think too much about stuff and I never listen to music while I'm fishing uh but I'm still right yeah and I'm starting to get a little disheartened that you know it's getting harder and harder to find spaces where my cell phone does not connect so yeah sometimes you're out fishing and then like there's some distraction that comes up or once you once I notice that there is some you know data on my cell phone I might pull some Facebook stuff and it's absolutely I think it actually really does hamper the creativity process.

18:32It does. It kind of defeats the purpose. So, yeah, I mean, I walk a lot just to kind of take a break. And I always get mad at myself if I find myself, you know, looking at my phone. It's like, no, this is the point is to get away. Oh, man. Yeah, I take out my dog for walks sometimes. And, yeah, it's really maddening when I find myself checking emails. and very consciously have to tune off sometimes. Let's talk a little bit more about your music. So first of all, you have four different albums, and all of your albums are available for people to listen to at takenobumusic.com. And I'm going to have the link to your website on our website, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast, so people can find you pretty easily. but Takenobu Music T-A-K-E-N-O-B-U music but tell me about the four albums that you have, they all kind of have their differences and they're all kind of the style was there but how would you describe the four albums that you've created in terms of differences that's a good question I guess the first one I was sort of still figuring out you know what I was doing.

19:56And the first one is the Introduction album, right? Introduction, yeah. So it has two instrumental songs and ten songs with vocals. And I think it's sort of a personal journey. Exposition is kind of a continuation of that with a little bit more advanced production, I guess, as I, you know, kind of got better at that. And then the third one, Momotaro, was completely instrumental. And that was an imagined soundtrack, I guess you would call it, to the story, the Japanese story of Momotaro, which is a Japanese children's story about a boy who's born out of a peach that is found in a river and who grows up to defend his village.

21:00So that one was really fun to do because it wasn't necessarily creating the story. It was more accompanying it with what I imagined the sound would be to the story happening. So that was fun. And it's all cello, but just with lots of different multi-tracking techniques. Wow, that's impressive. So you laid out all of your cello techniques into each song. Yeah, yeah. And it was fun to write because it was just sort of this nonstop progression. When I write other stuff, it sort of comes and fits and starts, and it's writing about different ideas. But this was one continuous piece of music that was really fun to play out like that. Yeah, and in Momotaro, too, when you go from one song to the other, if you just play one song, it looks like a... I don't know if it's with all the songs, but at least most of the songs, it seems like there's a cutoff.

22:05You know, it's not like this little taper off and kind of ending because, like, it really joins well together with the next songs, right? Yeah. I found a couple of times playing the, you know, with the shuffle function on my iPhone, and I was like, oh, you know, I kind of remember it being different, but when you listen to, you know, song one through the end, through I think it was like 12, 13 songs, it really flows together beautifully it's a really nice album yeah I mean the reason I did it was I mean each track is basically supposed to be a different part of the story but it really is meant to just be listened to from beginning to end because all the songs do flow together and what about I think the last album that you released was the Climatica is that am I pronouncing that right yeah so the last one was sort of an experiment in a bigger sound with drums, um, and also, uh, the violinist I play with Brian Harper. Um, and it's kind of, I guess it was more what I was listening to at the time. It's more in the indie vein of, um, I don't know what you would even call it, you know, rock or pop, but still with classical instrumentation. Um, and I think I've, that It was a fun thing to do.

23:30We were trying to play at venues where people didn't just have to sit down. That was kind of the idea. But I think that since doing that, I've sort of gone back more to the acoustic sound. So I'm just finishing up an album now. I've kind of been going crazy this week, mixing it down before having it mastered next week. Well, thanks for making the time to chat with me. I can't wait to hear that. When do you think that's going to come out? The target release date right now is November. So hopefully early November. And on the Momotaro album, it's one that I've actually used quite a few songs from it because, you know, and there's something about it that I'm not sure how that works. But it's I think the stories that are within that album, they just seem to have like at one point or another kind of fit into things that happen in my life.

24:34so I was doing and it's funny because I was doing this series of videos for a little while called the Tenkara Diaries and also actually in search of Tenkara and then Tenkara Diaries and what I'll do in those videos it's like I'll just go out for pretty much a day or maybe a weekend and I'll just capture videos and I'll come home with this dump of you know footage and I'll really start listening to your music and just kind of finding something that for some reason or another clicked with me. And one of the very first videos that I did was the first In Search of Ten Cariders 3 in a series. So I get home and I started listening to your songs and, you know, just kind of thinking about what I'm going to do with this video. And I like to edit like the day I got home because everything was fresh in my mind. And then I'm playing it and this one song caught my ear. And I'm going to play the song in a quick second here.

25:35But the song, once I started laying it out with the videos, this was a day when I took my dog out on a fishing trip close to home. And I started laying all these tracks to the song, and it's like, oh, my gosh. All of a sudden, I look at the name and the title of the song, and it's called The Dog. And I just have no idea how it happened. And it's like I pretty much never really take my dog fishing because it's a little bit of a hassle. But that day I just decided to take the dog out. And I get home and I start doing this video work. Yeah, and it was called The Dog. And I've got a lot of footage of my dog with me. And right at the end she actually comes running down this snowy bank. And she joins me and she's like there wiggling her tail. It's a great song. So I'm going to play that for a minute and a half song or so. Okay, great. Thank you.

26:58¶¶ Thank you.

27:58Yeah, so it's, you know, it's interesting. And then there's other examples too, like another one that was really kind of similar. You know, it was one day of fishing, and I think I just called it Tenkara Diaries. and on that particular day I actually saw four rams, like huge mountain rams with the big horns, the big horn ones. And they were just on the side of the road on a shoulder and they were like actually fighting. So these two big rams, the two bigger ones, they would actually kind of hop, you know, get on their hind legs and come and just hit each other. And when I started looking at the footage, another song from the same album called The Battle came up. And I kid you not, I mean, it's like the first few seconds of the song, there's this like, and I'm going to play that here.

29:03And they just completely fit with the rhythm of the rams hitting each other. It's like, it was absolutely great. Cool. And I'll put that video of the rams battling each other on our website, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast so you can see them. And there's a few other examples, too, of different songs of yours that just really kind of seem to fit in with some Think Out of Stories. Quite amazing. Where do you get the inspiration for those sounds? I mean, it's quite amazing, you know, the battle, just having this really nice kind of vibrant punching sound to it. Yeah, that's accomplished with just, you know, really aggressively strumming the cello to get that rhythmic sound.

30:09And do you, like, kind of imagine in your head, like what the sound is going to be like, or are you really going to experiment a lot with the strings? I definitely, yeah, for that one, I definitely had an idea. You know, I wanted it to sound combative and, you know, like have a percussive sound to simulate, you know, hitting and all kinds of violent sounds. So, yeah, I did. And it was also supposed to be a combination of the kind of three different themes. In the story, there's three animals that are helping Momotaro. There's the dog, the pheasant, and the monkey. And so it's supposed to be a combination of their three themes all coming together as like an attack on the oni or the demons who they're fighting with. Interesting story. Yeah, that's... Now I was curious, and we might have already answered this one, I had this on my notebook.

31:14You know, if you were... So Tenkara, you know, it's this simple Japanese method of fly fishing. It uses only a rod, line, and fly. The name Tenkara, you know, most of us think he means from heaven, like ten is heaven, kara is from. What do you think that would sound like if you were to put that in a song? That's a good question. I find that, you know, a lot of... The time that I'm writing, I'm thinking, I don't know, it just ends up kind of sounding like running water. So I think that, and just the sound of water is just so hard to disassociate from it. So it'd be something like that, you know, flowing with that, you know, babbling sound of a, you know, of a brook or stream or a river. so you know I think I would draw from that kind of imagery or feeling if I was going to write a song about it specifically yeah maybe one day we'll see a song by Takenobu called Tenkara from Hammond yeah maybe and another one that I like quite a bit it's I think I've actually it's the song that we that I laid out to introduce the podcast you know you've kindly allowed us to use your music for the podcasts and I think it was Deeper Than a Vine is the song that I used in the beginning I believe guitar solo The midnight man is drunk downstairs.

33:42He's sitting in the dark drinking whiskey on the rocks. And he just don't want to be nobody no more. He just don't want to be nobody no more. He just don't want to. He just don't want to. He just don't want to. You just don't want to be That's one of the first songs I ever wrote on the cello. Is it really? No, it's a great song. I love it. Thanks. Yeah, I was listening to a lot of blues at the time, so I drew from that sort of bluesy influence to make that riff. What are some of your favorite songs? in your, I mean, I get asked that question about our rods, for example. What is your favorite rod? And it's always a little bit like choosing a favorite child kind of thing, I'm sure, for you to answer this question.

34:45But do you have any favorite songs in your albums, like songs that you're particularly proud of? I'm not sure if that's an appropriate question. I guess I can say which ones are the most fun to play, because I don't, you know, I don't really sit around listening to my own music. Yeah, that's a good way to put it too. Yeah, what are your favorite songs to play? Exposition is a really fun one because it's, well, it's instrumental, but I feel like it's kind of, it has a life of its own. So I think that, I mean, I think the recorded version is great, but it's also, it's really fun one to perform because there's enough in it that it's sort of different every time because there's pre-planned parts that are written and I always play, but then there's a fair amount of room for improvisation and trying out new things.

35:49And there's just sort of these different shifts in energy in it too that make it just, I don't know, I think that the dynamics of it make it a fun performance piece. And I don't know. I guess Dark in the City is one that I really love. That's off of the fourth album, Climactica. So I'd say Exhibition and Dark in the City are sort of the most fun to play. But I only play the ones that are fun to play anyway. So they're all fun to play. In talking about playing and fun to play, where can people find you if they want to watch you live? Unfortunately, I don't tour very much at the moment. I'd love to tour more, but I've been focused so much on getting this album out finally that I haven't planned anything yet. But yeah, I don't have a good answer for that at the moment, but hopefully somewhere soon.

36:53Totally understand that the traveling and trying to create, I mean, it's got to be super hard. But I'm super excited about your new album coming out in a couple months and can't wait to listen to it. But just a reminder to our listeners, Nick Takenobu Agawa is an independent artist. He composes and writes his own music and records it and he communicates with me. And, you know, if you get a minute, please visit his website, takenobumusic.com. I'll put the link on our website for this podcast. And purchase his music, too. They're not expensive albums at all. You can listen to all of his songs for free on his website. But please buy his albums, put it on your phone so he can carry it with you and, you know, share it with other people. It's a great way to support his work and again, he's being super kind to let us use some of his work for our own artwork here.

37:54So buy his music and listen to it at home or on your drive to your next fishing trip. Nick, if we were to let our listeners listen to one more song as we maybe wrap up our conversation here, what do you think you'd like to play for them? I think Exposition would be a great note to end on. Perfect. So let's listen to Exposition. But Nick, I want to thank you so very much again for taking time from your very busy schedule creating a new album and again for letting us use your music. I hope, I know a lot of our customers have been very inspired by your music. They just really kind of, I think there's a really interesting connection here between Tenkara and the music that you're creating. So thanks again for that partnership and creating good songs for us. Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. So let's listen to Exposition by Nick Takenobu Ogawa, or also known as Takenobu.

39:11Thank you. guitar solo Thank you.

40:41guitar solo Thank you.

41:41Thank you. ¶¶ guitar solo Thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast.

43:38I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu. Check out his music at takenobumusic.com. We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music, on our website, www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. And until next time on the Tenkara Cast. Thank you.