J: Hey man, so let’s get right into it. We’ll probably get to know each other more as we go. Let’s start off with your name, where you’re from, and some other basic information.

JP: My name is Jon Paul Arciniega. I’m from South Pasadena - right on the border of Alhambra. I’ve always had an infinity for not only South Pasadena but for the entire San Gabriel Valley. And I went to school at CalArts.

J: So, Bora Kyung Min Lee (Los Angeles based Producer and mutual friend) and I were hanging out with some other friends who went to CalArts and I found a lot of the conversations about the school interesting. I actually got into CalArts summer program when I was in high school.

JP: Oh yeah, it’s called CSSSA and it’s a great program. I used to work closely with the director of CSSSA. There is also another great program at CalArts called CAP (Community Arts Partnership). It’s where I found my calling as a teacher. It provides free art classes to LAUSD and neighboring art centers for youths K-12.

J: That’s actually super rad! I was one of the first three students at my high school to get into CSSSA. Jesus, also known as Rebel Kolors (Los Angeles based tattoo artist), was one of those three as well. So even though I didn’t end up going, it’s cool looking back at that moment. Jesus also did a mural when he was at the program. I wonder if that’s still up on the walls. It was like a big greek statue head.

JP: That’s amazing. I’m sure it’s still there. I was gonna say they don’t censor work but they have some pretty fucked up politics. But it’s still a place where you can express yourself. The mural might be in the sublevel. It’s like a basement which is loaded with great artwork on the walls from students over the years. Are you familiar with Ariel Pink? He went to CalArts. Kind of a scumbag but anyway he painted a mural of the art faculty having a orgy. They weren’t very happy about it.

J: Another thing I found so interesting is hearing students from CalArts talking about the classes sucking but the classes seemed so involved to me and the equipment they were talking about seemed good! Maybe it’s because I went to an engineering school to study art but I thought their classes sounded rad as fuck! My school did not have good resources and you really had to provide for yourself. We barely had a functional print lab.

JP: I think tuition plays a role there. Cal Arts has a huge reputation and the cost is a large amount so I think a lot of students just expect more and deservingly too. Students are paying up to 50K. I will say that one of the biggest pros of Cal Arts is their resources and equipment. Now that I’m out of CalArts, I’ve realized how hard it is to shoot a short film. We don’t even know how we’ll get our hands on a camera sometimes.

J: What were you studying at CalArts?

JP: I went to the Herb Alpert School of Music. I was in a program called the Musical Arts. It focused on performing and composing with an emphasis on songwriting. The nice thing about the music school is that you’re not confined to your major and are encouraged to take classes from other schools like film or theater.

J: I love that! I think that’s amazing! I was originally an Art History major but part of the program makes you take drawing classes. If I had never taken those drawing classes, I think I would have dropped out of school because I hated writing essays! It’s so good to broaden your horizons with art. I think all art students should be required to learn about other mediums. Understanding another artist’s process helps you to creatively direct and lead.

JP: Hahah, that’s hilarious. So what major did you switch to? You’re totally right though. It helps so you’re not boxed into one medium. Branch yourself out and you also get to work and meet other people outside of your program.

J: I switched to Graphic Design. I just wanted to be an artist but the university only offered graphic design which was the evil of what I wanted. Graphic Design is art that sells a product. It gets you paid but it boxes you into commercial work. Not a lot of room for expression.

JP: Of Course and that’s the trend in most creative disciplines.

J: I think that’s why burnout is so common now. Anyways, tell me how you transitioned from music to ethnic studies?

JP: I would say that it was a combination of taking an interest in the humanities and teaching music and writing with the CAP Program. I had a lot of frustration with the music program. I wasn’t feeling inspired. I didn’t like a lot of the music people were making. I found a lot of it to be trite. My program in particular, a lot of the students didn’t know how to critique in a holistic way. There was never any real analysis. So when I wasn’t in the music program, I was reading a lot of books. And after reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, it really radically changed my perspective. I kept devouring history and reading books about US history and policies, Latin history, social movements and civil movement in the developing world. I love learning about Chicano history, its development throughout Los Angeles and its culture. That’s all very important to me and fascinating.

J: There is an architecture professor at Cal Poly Pomona that has a class in which he takes students around Los Angeles and tells them about the architecture history and development of buildings throughout the city. Really going into the politics of architecture and it’s just rad.

JP: That’s amazing! It reminds me of a class I took by a professor named Harry Gamboa Jr. Someone who I admired a lot.

J: Oh, I think Bora told me about him. I think she mentioned that he was one of your mentors?

JP: Yeah, he was sort of unofficially one of my mentors. He was one of the organizers during the East LA walkouts when he was a teenager at Garfield High school. He later started a famous art collective in the ‘70s called ASCO.

J: Yes! Bora gave me a magazine that talks all about ASCO. It’s pretty incredible. I had never heard of them before so it was nice reading about them.

JP: Yeah, so, he teaches a class called LA Urbanscape. It’s kind of like how you described. You meet him at a specific place in LA and he tells you a lot about the historical sights of the city and their cultural impacts. I didn’t meet him until probably my third year and that’s when I really wanted to get into teaching.

CAP has an education philosophy called Critical Pedagogy. It was a philosophy influenced by a Brazilian educator named Paulo Freire. It essentially values teaching by breaking down the hierarchy in education. In most oppressive school settings, kids learn through the banking model of education. Where the teacher gets up on a blackboard and recites facts that you’re supposed to remember for tests. So it’s about throwing that away and creating a student teacher relationship that’s grounded in dialogue and creates a liberation between both parties. Meaning that teachers will learn just as much as their students will learn from them.

J: Oh, well, I’ve actually had professors who taught this way. Mostly in my humanities classes. They would also sit among us in a circle rather than the traditional method of the teacher standing up in front of the class. They also wouldn’t test us. It was all about critical thinking and putting your thoughts on paper.

JP: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And we’re seeing it more in higher education and public schools.

J: So are you going to undergrad or graduate school?

JP: I’ll be receiving my master of education and teaching credential in social science. I’ll be able to teach any social science but I would like to teach US history or ethnic studies or a combination of both.

J: So, like you, I was also really into ethnic studies. My sister was a sociology major at SFSU who read a lot of books on social issues, civil rights movements, and rebellions. I used to have a lot of discussions with her about the race issues I was noticing in my field of work. So I started interviewing students in my art department to try to get an understanding of their experiences and why we have no sense of history for our creative backgrounds. And I put together a book called Diversity in Design filled with interviews of students of different ethnic backgrounds and races.

JP: The establishment doesn’t take too kindly to people of color learning about their history. Because when you learn about your history, you get empowered.

J: Another issue is how our history is treated as second class. It’s not mandatory learning, it’s instead an elective course that’s offered once a year, once a semester.

JP: Yeah…Yeah…if you get to it, you get to it.

J: Do you feel like your ethnic studies has influenced your music?

JP: That’s a tough one. Our band, on its surface there isn’t anything political about it. But if we can reflect for one sec. My band makes rock music. I think Rock n Roll music has been deformed and mutated to the point that it’s unrecognizable. You have really mediocre miserable white musicians who have made it a grotesque thing to listen to. I think people have lost sight of the fact that rock and roll is music of black resistance. I think being Chicano we’re always mindful of how much we owe black artists because of how closely aligned our communities are throughout history.

J: Of course! The Latin community owes a lot to the Black community for laying down the framework in the arts but also for social and civil movements.

JP: Exactly. And something I would think about in school was the intersection of politics and music is that just being Mexican American and playing the guitar is radical. If I think about someone like Chuck Berry or Ritchie Valens who couldn’t even drink from the same water fountain as white people and then plugging in an odd device (mind you is only a few years old while they were alive) that can be loud and offensive and raucous. That is such a powerful act that I’m always mindful of when I’m playing music.

J: I love that perspective. Come to think of it, besides Ritchie Valens and Sunny & the Sunliners, I don’t know too many Latin rock stars from the early years of it.

JP: There is a book that I really love called Chicano Soul by Ruben Molina. It’s all about these fantastic chicano groups making music in the 50s and 60s from the San Gabriel valley or Northeast Los Angeles. Unfortunately, so many were exploited by the record companies or the companies would record them and then have a white band sing their songs.

J: And that’s something that’s been going on for decades and probably still continues. Led Zeppelin was stealing from Black artists their entire careers. Anytime there is an evolution in music, it will always stem from Black artists.

JP: Yeah so, I think that’s something that you can’t separate when you listen to rock. It’s always present in my mind when I play. And I also always want to pay respect to those Black artists because we don’t get this expression without them creating it.

J: I’ve been listening to your albums nonstop since I began working on the painting for your upcoming album. I think so far ‘The Real Moments’ is my favorite. It’s the album I can listen to from top to bottom without any skips. I really think that album is special.

JP: Hahah oh, that’s very flattering! Thank you!

J: What’s the plan once you hear back from a school?

JP: The program I’m getting into is all about becoming a teacher. So I’m hoping to become a history teacher in LAUSD. The UCLA program places you in LAUSD and the Berkeley program will place me in Oakland which has a very rich history. It’s a tough choice but I’m leaning towards UCLA for the practicality.

J: What other schools did you get accepted into?

JP: I got accepted to all of them but Harvard. So, I’m five for six. Not bad.

J: That’s crazy! Congratulations but you got into Claremont Mckenna College which is basically the west coast Harvard! And James Turrell went to school there and I love his work.

JP: Thanks dude! Claremont is a fantastic school and campus. And I had no idea James Turrell went there but that’s cool. I remember his installation at LACMA.

J: So let’s start getting into your music background. When did you start playing instruments and what influenced you?

P: My dad is a fantastic musician and he’s a gifted jazz and salsa trumpet player. My brother and I have had instruments in our hands since the day we were born. My brother, by the way, is my drummer for the band. I started taking piano lessons when I was 6 and I started playing the guitar seriously by the time I was 8 or 9. My brother is the same.

We were influenced by my mom as well. She is from South Gate so we were very much listening to oldies from the 50s and 60s and lowrider oldies. We also grew up with K-Earth 101 on the radio when they played The Temptations and Motown. My dad had us listening to jazz music such as Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Brown, and all the great trumpet players. I also was into classical music and I played classical piano such as Mozart and Chopin.

Obviously I was also influenced by The Beatles, Velvet Underground, Lou Reed…

J: That Velvet Underground documentary was AMAZING! Just made me think why most documentaries don’t feel as artful. The film makes some really amazing editing choices.

JP: I love the documentary. Todd Haynes is fantastic. He has such great sensibilities.

J: I find it really interesting that you started at such a young age because a lot of my Latino peers and people I’ve interviewed throughout my years have mostly told me that they didn’t start their creative careers until much later in their lives. And so it makes me really happy to know that you have a foundation that helped grow and nurture your creativity. I hope that becomes more of a norm for our communities.

JP: Latinos have always done art making on their own terms. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a family that migrated over here from Mexico with talented musicians in the family. As you know with the Juan Arciniega EP, my family wrote and played their own songs. My dad went to school during the days before Ronald Regan when you can have a strong public education and art education. He had a good education that taught him about band and instruments. But unfortunately, the arts are not valued anymore in public institutions. Low income kids today are losing some of that arts education.

J: We also grew up during the Arnold Schwarzenegger era, so I’m sometimes surprised that anyone of our generation grew up taking any art class at all.

JP: Yeah, it’s really amazing that we’re doing anything since they prefer to keep Latino kids in cages.

J: So where did your dad and his family get their interest in music from?

JP: My dad started playing trumpet in concert band and marching band all throughout his childhood. He was a diehard trumpet player and geek. He got into UCLA for music but he switched his major to psychology. He was all set up to be a full time musician but he made the career change because he was tired of being poor. He remembers seeing trumpets players who were 100 times better than him struggling. It’s tough to be a road dog. It’s like being a stand up comedian. Comics are always depressed and want to kill themselves because they are always on the road 200 nights of the year in the middle of nowhere.

J: Did your dad ever play with some big names?

JP: Two of his best friends are some of the biggest names in music when it comes to producing and arranging. They are the people behind the artist. So that’s also how I get a lot of my musicians, I contact a lot of them from his network. Nolan Shaheed, who is the engineer for the album, is my dad’s best friend and they’ve been playing music together for over 30 years. He’s a trumpet player and he’s worked with some of the biggest names such as Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, etc. He was also Marvin Gaye’s musical director for his last tour. Oh, and he’s also a recording engineer and records all of our records.

J: So we named dropped Bora earlier but I just wanted to say God bless her for introducing us and partnering us up for your project.

JP: I’m so glad she set us up and that it all came together so nicely.

J: With that said, let’s get into your new EP, Juan y Yo. You brought me on to work on the album art which Bora recommended me to you. I remember being kind of scared because Bora was like “I think you should meet Jon Paul. The two of you would get along.” And I thought to myself that’s seems insane. Ahahah, but she told me about the project and it was something I knew I wanted to be a part of. It felt very connected to my own personal work with my own family. So then I had to do those two extra panels for the album because I knew it would tie up nicely with the album and the story of your family.

JP: I have to say that really was…you’re truly a class act! It was a really generous offer and every time you sent me a piece of work, my jaw just dropped! You’re immensely talented.

J: Ahaha, even funnier is that you were telling me you were in shock but I didn’t take it seriously. But I was hanging out with Bora, they told me you were super excited and showing off the album art to everyone. And I thought, “Oh, wow!”.

JP: Dude, I was showing everyone. I have it ready in my camera roll ready to show it off to just about everybody that I meet.

J: I’m glad you’re that happy with it. And again, I really feel like this album cover is an extension of my work and it felt like a project we came up with together. Seeing the family photographs and hearing about the origins of the music, it all felt important. And that’s what made working on it so fun and special. It’s rare to work on something like that.

JP: Yeah, so I really want to make sure I gas you up on your own zine. Ahaha You deserve it, man.

J: You recorded the album in Pasadena, right?

JP: Yes, we record at my dad’s best friend’s studio. I mentioned him earlier, his name is Nolan Shaheed and he’s like our uncle. He lets us use his home studio to work on the recordings. It’s called No Sound Studio located in Pasadena.

J: How did you come up with the concept of the album?

JP: I think I was trying to tap into the nostalgia of family. You and I talked about this during the making of the album cover but I really found interest in this kind of warped American dream nostalgia.

J: And that’s exactly why I connected with it so much because my paintings are about nostalgia for my family and their youth. However, they are not true depictions of reality but instead a fantasy of the world they lived in with some truth in them.

JP: Yes, a fantasy! Because when you think about it, it’s actually so perverse. Its so dark underneath because i fucking hate the american dream and I hate whenever people tell me to be grateful to live in this god foresaken country. The only reason we moved here is because the United States destroyed our country.

J: Of the three panels I painted for the album, which one do you like the most?

JP: Hmm, I love them all but I really liked the way you painted my brother and I into the vintage television. We look like characters from the Jackson Five cartoon or the old Beatles cartoon.

J: I really wanted it to feel like you were a band of that era and it was ‘My Boyfriend’ that your family was watching on the tv. Again, getting into that fantasy realm. That’s why I did a version where the television was in black and white but we ended up going with the colored version.

JP: Yeah, just fantastic!

I have a very deep reverence for my family. I always have pictures of them around me because I never want to lose sight of them and where I come from. Losing your culture would be the most devastating thing. This was a passion project to honor my family. I’ve done 3 EPs but I’ve only ever worked with my own music so I really wanted to see how I could work with another person’s music but not just any other person - A family member’s music.

J: These songs were made by your dad’s cousin, right?

JP: Yes. Juan Arciniega, he passed away sometime in the 80s. I’m not sure how he died. He was much older than my dad. Remember that picture I sent you of the man holding the baby? Well, that’s him holding my dad. Juan’s brother, who gave me the music, died of covid a year after I met him. So the album is a testament to him, his brother, and his family. And it’s nice to share the artwork you made of them and hearing their excitement of seeing themselves in a piece of art.

J: That’s what it’s all about, right. It’s about creating iconography for those who have felt unseen or unheard. I remember when I first started painting my dad, he was always absolutely astonished and in awe. Because for the first time, my family is looking at themselves as the subjects, the main focus. I’m telling their stories through visuals. Not everyone will read it the same but my family will. It’s the little details, like what they are wearing or who they are with that brings them back and makes them feel connected. So I really hope that’s something to help uplift his family.

JP: Yeah, you’re almost like mythologizing them. And again, you’re so good with the details of things and adding in those things that maybe others might not notice. Like, taking the two poses of my family members sitting outside and transforming it into a moment in which they are sitting on top of this vintage corvette. It’s incredible.

J: How did you find the singer for the album?

JP: Nolan recommended the singer. I only work with professional musicians. I’m a little spoiled, I know.

I don’t like rehearsing or jamming. I’m very particular about music so working with professional musicians gets me straight to my point. I have an industry standard that I try to meet. And that’s why my music sounds so good. I don’t mean my voice because that’s the weakest part but the instrumentals have a quality to them that you don’t hear in other music.

J: I actually really like your voice but I think it’s because you don’t really have a singer’s voice. It’s a lot like Conor Oberst or Bob Dylan. It has its own personality.

JP: Yeah, I got my own thing going. My songs are usually personal and I don’t really want someone else to sing them. And, I think I add something to it that makes it mine. But yeah, I’m the weakest link. I don’t play on any of my recordings. I just sing and write the music and the reason it sounds so good is because I bring in talented musicians.

I tend to send the musicians the sheet music and they usually go for like three takes max. Because studio time is expensive so you wanna have someone who can get the notes down fast. It’s always a disaster when you work with someone unprepared.

J: So what’s it like working with your brother? Is he always on point?

JP: No, and we’ve had our share of difficulties. There have been times when I wanted to bring in a studio musician for the drums but I always make an exception for him. For ‘The Vegetable Loser’ EP, I had to bring in someone else for some of the songs because the tunes required someone really advanced. And he was angry with me for a bit but he got over it.

But, I always make an exception for him like I said before. He has a 50% stake in the project and he’s a wizard when it comes to pop music. A huge pop music aficionado - he knows every song from the 50s and 60s. So I send him music and ask him if this sounds like anything and he’ll let me know if I’m ripping someone off.

J: Which band do you gravitate towards more, The Beatles or The Beach Boys?

JP: I would have to say The Beach Boys. Brian Wilson is a huge inspiration as a producer and an arranger. Brian Wilson started writing more complex music which his brothers couldn’t really play so he started bringing in other musicians. Those musicians were known as The Wrecking Crew which was a collective of Los Angeles session musicians who had a hand in a lot of hits throughout the 60s and 70s. So that’s also one of the reasons why I started using studio musicians. I’m not afraid to say I’m not a great musician but I’m a great songwriter, producer, and arranger. I can’t play my own music but that’s not uncommon. There were piano players in the Romantic era that couldn’t play their own music.

J: So are you singing in this new EP?

JP: No. So, this will be the first album that I won’t have any vocals. I have only sat behind the mixing board for this EP. On my first LP, I played a little bit of guitar and piano. But I could never be a professional studio musician. It requires a skill level that I just don’t have. I really found my niche in writing. I know the fundamentals of music theory and the architecture of pop music so well that I can sit at the piano and figure out what I’m gonna write.

J: Wait, so you actually know how to write music and not just lyrics? That’s like knowing another language.

JP: Yeah. I majored in music (laughing). It is a language and it’s a beautiful language. I started reading music at a very young age. My dad always made it a priority for my brother and I to know how to read music. You cannot be a successful musician without knowing the language. Well, actually, a working musician because you can be a recording musician and get by. The Beatles didn’t know how to read music. But, to be a working musician you must know how to read music.

J: You’re the equivalent of what a creative director basically is, right? You’re hand picking other artists for specific parts of a project that they specialize in to create the grand project.

JP: Yeah. A creative director would be a good term. I’m good at assembling musicians together to get the best reading of my music. One of my favorite albums is Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way. In the right hand corner of the album cover, it says “Directions in music by Miles Davis”. I just love that!

J: What’s your process when writing your lyrics?

JP: I usually will try to find a quip. So, for the song ‘When You’re In Love With Her’, I remember talking to someone and just saying that this is the type of girl you don’t act rational when you’re in love with her. I thought it was hilarious and I wrote it down. It always starts that way. The songs are always self-deprecating lines I’ve said or heard in my life. I have a line that reads, “You had it bad for me”, and again I just find that so funny. My work is satirical and some of it is autobiographical but other times it’s not. The songs are dark and comical. They kind of have a crying and pathetic loser quality to the lyrics.

J: My favorite line is “When I woke up, I tried to meditate but I opted out and decided to masturbate”.

JP: Oh yeah! Hahaha That one is great! Again, it’s creating a character who is constantly teetering between thinking he’s the worst person in the world and that he is God. For a brief moment, this loser or slacker who can’t stop masturbating thinks he’s God for having these musicians playing with him and making rock music. The character is completely outside of themself and I think it’s funny. It’s a part that I play and not meant to be completely serious.

J: Your albums are nice and short, is there a reason for that?

JP: Yeah, well I really like even numbers in tens. A lot of tv shows have ten episodes a season so if I could make ten songs a year that’s good enough for me.

J: Gimme a journey to the making of your three albums.

JP: Where do I begin? Well, I wanna say that I’m proud of all three LPs and I view them as a trilogy. Every LP has ten songs and will probably always have only 10 songs. Each one has been released the year after each other. The Clusterfox we began working on in 2015 and that album I had been writing songs for since I was in high school. When I was in high school, I was in a band with my brother and my friends called Scouts Honor. So we played a lot of gigs in the LA area and we were trying to get signed by a label. We were in the middle of the LA DYI scene and we really hated it. We felt pretty ostracized from the scene and it probably didn’t help that we were all Mexicans who didn’t make surf punk.

My band played at my dad’s birthday party one year and at the party was H. B. Barnum, a famous producer and arranger who worked with Capitol Records and the Wrecking Crew. A real legend in the LA recording scene. He saw us perform, liked our style, and he wanted to produce our LP. He began coming to our rehearsals and he helped me pick the 10 songs for The Clusterfox. He was also the one who suggested to me to not have anyone play the instruments which caused a rift in the band and Scouts Honor ended. So, then I was on my own and I continued recording the LP. It was the best experience I got and H. B. was an amazing mentor who I have a deep reverence for. He taught me how to produce a pop album and to keep it simple. I finished the album in 2016 but I just sat on it for a few years. I had a lot of self-doubt about it for 2 years. Once I started CalArts and met my collaborator, Bora, it really helped me to release that album. Bora helped to get the artwork for the album, package the CDs, and it all just boosted my confidence in the project.

J: How did you come up with ‘My Boyfriend’ for the name of the band?

JP: I was with a friend one night in Chinatown and asked him about the name. We initially thought ‘The Boyfriend’ but that’s a rock band in the Philippines. Then it was gonna be Your Boyfriend but decided that My Boyfriend was funnier. It’s kinda catchy and reminiscent of the desperate ethos in our music. The love sickness and the delusions of grandeur. It was just perfect. By the way, I’m a terrible promoter.

J: You know, I’m pretty bad at promoting my work too. I don’t know if you feel this way but I always start to feel like a sell out when I try to get people to buy or support my work. I just think, “Ew, why am I trying to get my friends to buy into this”. But this is America, you gotta sell some parts of yourself to survive or you gotta put your soul for rent.

JP: Yeah, and I just don’t have that hustler mentality. For me, it’s just a couple of announcements. I’m not trying to blow up anybody’s phone. Whoever listens to it, listens. I know I’m not going to make any money off this. But it’s fun and it exists in the world and I’m proud of them. 30 years from now some kid can find my music on spotify randomly, and that’s cool to me.

J: Let’s continue with the other albums.

JP: Yeah, so the next album was ‘The Real Moments’ and at the time of making it I was having a hard time writing. Just the writer’s block and I was having some mental health problems. Just to let you know, I have 5 and a half years of sobriety. Clean and sober from drugs and alcohol in a twelve step program. So I was really at the end of my drinking and using during my first year at CalArts. When I got sober, I started writing these new songs about drinking, drugs, love, desire, and frustration. I started to feel more creative and confident in my writing. So I had this idea that I wanted to make a movie. I thought it would be funny to write it as a sitcom tv show like Seinfield. I recorded the album and it was the first time I produced an album. Thanks to H. B. for teaching me everything I needed to know. My brother played the drums on all ten of the tracks and he really played well on that album. He really sounds terrific! Then I wrote the script based on the five songs that I wrote for ‘The Real Moments’.

J: You made the film? I need to see this!

JP: Yeah, the whole thing is done! It was just never released. I wrote the film and shared it with Bora who was my closest collaborator at the time. She produced the film with me and she was the production designer. We came up with the idea that the film will be shot on set at CalArts in the theater school with a laugh track. I would be playing myself and it’s a simple love story with five songs in it. The music is the better part of it. The story is just a way for the songs to come out. We shot, edited, and completed the film.

J: And you’re just sitting on it? Haha

JP: Well, we tried to submit it to film festivals but the pandemic changed our plans. Breaking out in film is kind of harder than music. Part of me wants to put it on Youtube or Vimeo.

J: I think that’s the best route because what if you get the right eyes to see it and they want to help make a bigger budget version or they want to pick you up to do another film. At this point, there is nothing to lose. You’re not gaining anything by storing it away.

JP: Yeah, and I think it was a very daring and bold project we did. I have a link for you I can send to you to watch the film. But, Bora was absolutely incredible and was truly the director of this project. She made the vision come to life and we faced resistance from everyone we came into contact with at CalArts. It was very difficult to get off the ground but we made this project work. We had about a dozen actors and a production crew with about a dozen people. I love that it exists and that we got it done! We screened it at CalArts and it was an impactful moment for some people. Then I dropped the album a little later after the screening and performed some gigs and we gained some traction with this album.

J: Is ‘The Real Moments’ your most personal album? It seems like the album where you found your voice.

JP: It’s probably my favorite album. It’s my best writing and I think every lyric to that album is honest and true to how I was feeling during that time.

J: So, next up is ‘The Vegetable Loser’.

JP: I started my next year at CalArts and boom I had ten songs ready. I came up with the title because someone in my dream said that phrase. (laughing) I thought it was funny. I’m really into exercise and health food. I try to keep my mind and body healthy. There is an old Jonathan Richman (Modern Lovers) song that he talks about how much he resents his ex-girlfriend for doing drugs all the time and he just wants to eat healthy food. So yeah, that’s what kind of inspired the album. Half the album was finished before covid but we had to stall the album. Our guitarist lost a family member from covid so he didn’t would only record remotely. Which is understandable but also Nolan wasn’t operating his studio. But then we picked back up later in 2020 around December because Nolan opened up his studio again. Our guitarist recorded his stuff at home. Got all the pieces going and Nolan added in some horns which came out wonderful. We were able to release this album during Christmas and shot an amazing music video. Bora directed the music video for the track, ‘I Hate To See You Cry’. We shot it inside my grandpa’s home in South Gate before he passed away. He had been living there since the 40s. Bora did a fantastic job and we were inspired by old James Taylor videos. She wanted to keep it minimalistic. It’s a nice relic to have of the home.

Back in 2020, all the sales of our CDs went straight to the Reclaim & Rebuild Our Community Gofundme to help with El Sereno families facing housing instability. Anybody who buys The Vegetable Loser now, all the proceeds will still go to their Gofundme until they meet their $100K mark. Maybe we can get a nice little push for them going. If you’d like to email us about the project, or anything else you can reach us at myboyfriendmakesmusic@gmail.com.