How tcr! Finds Peace by Descending Into the Past
Punk Head: The phrase “Yesterday blurs but it’s not dismissed” carries both poetic and psychological weight. How does that idea shape the way you approach songwriting and emotional honesty in your music?
tcr!: It’s the driving force. Processing emotional baggage and damage are always central themes of all my songs, probably central themes of my whole life. Sometimes I write lyrics or songs and put them on the shelf for years. Then I’ll pull them out later and think, I want to do a proper song for this, like right now. That’s how I song write. I couldn’t write about politics because they’re not personal to me.
Being honest with my emotions is how I detachment from the horror show. At some point I learned that feelings don’t go away when we deny them. They go deep.
Punk Head: You handle every part of your creative process yourself—writing, playing, recording, mixing. How does that total control impact the vulnerability you’re expressing?
tcr!: Oh, I love it. I get to be free to write whatever I want. I never hold back. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I’ve written lyrics where what I was writing about was a little too obvious and cuts a little too deep. So I censor myself a little because I don’t want someone to hear something and say, “Hey, that’s about me!” It’s happened before.
Anyways, total creative control is a blessing and I’d never give it up. Being vulnerable is how we bond with each other. Maybe, just maybe, someone connects with a lyric or a line and for that moment they don’t feel utterly alone.
Punk Head: Your songs explore psychological fragmentation and emotional self-preservation. How do you navigate that in your personal life versus in your art?
tcr!: After I got divorced from my second wife, I made a pact with myself that I’d never write about someone if I was in a relationship with them. Then I can explore drama and trauma from yesterday without it affecting what’s going in my current personal life. Granted, sometimes I dig into something really toxic and I rage for a few hours so it’s kinda nice that I live by myself. Other times, though, it can really bring closure to events that I haven’t let completely go of. That’s the best.
Punk Head: Chicago suburbs don’t exactly scream ‘alternative music hub’—how has your environment shaped your sound?
tcr!: It doesn’t scream it at all! 😊 But I lived in Chicago proper and all over the US so those environments have really seeped into who I am. I’m a smidge introverted so I just pull the curtains closed, put on my headphones, and forget all about living in the suburbs with picket fences and the neighbors having cookie parties or mowing their lawns.
Punk Head: Looking at your music from a temporal lens, how do you think the act of revisiting past feelings through song changes your relationship with them over time?
tcr!: I touched one this a little in #3 but to go a little deeper, my goal is always peace. Descending into the agony and outrage is generally how I get there. That’s melodramatic but whatever.
A while back I was scrolling through my camera photo looking for something or another and I ended up in like at 10 picture block of a weekend getaway with an ex-girlfriend. It brought up all kinds of memories, like we were really happy in those pictures. Then when I came out of the daydream and back to reality I was filled was sadness. That’s where the line Your pictures are killing me comes from.
Anyways, I’m making this answer longer than I intended, but I’m at peace with those 10 pictures now. I’ve felt what I needed to.
