the corporate world – and I always wanted to, in the back of head, just Runaway and fuck this and I don’t really want to deal with all this crap that has nothing to do with what I want to do in this world – and the song is all about that – this whole concept that we’re just working our lives away wishing we could be this person or wishing that we could do these things – but we don’t actually do them. So, it was kind of entertaining the idea of actually doing it. That’s why at the end it’s “Runaway, break the system…” And I hope that people can connect with it to hopefully follow their dreams and do their own thing too. Because life’s short! And tell me a little about the song Ghost. That’s funny people think it’s about Covid – like “I left my apartment for the first time in two weeks” – but there was a time before Covid where I didn’t leave my apartment for a long time. I was like super depressed. And I was really stuck in a little bit of a loop. “Days turned to nights – night turned to days.” At the time, I was living in a shack in West Hollywood with no windows – there was just a door – no bathroom, no nothing – just living a shack with another dude who had a wall next to me – and there was a house and the house had seven people in it. It was a rough time in my life. I was still trying to figure out my shit and yeah. Ghost is just a dark song about my life and just feeling like “What’s the point? Is it already hopeless? Am I just a ghost that wants to just keep on living?” Maybe in my head a realization of trying to be a musician and then trying to do all these things – maybe it’s already too late. It’s kind of interesting – a lot of my songs have this tendency – I talk about my career and things that are happening in the music industry – at least within my story of things. And I’ve seen a lot of people quit or move on – go on hiatus – get day jobs – move on with their lives. I see it left and right – it happens all the time – especially when Covid happened. So, for me, when I wrote that song – it was way before Covid – but I saw that already happening and I’m like “Am I next?” It’s a little bit more cryptic – it’s kind of hard to feel in the song, but at least that’s what the song is about to an extent. The album is very powerful. People will listen and hear all these great and catchy pop punk melodies. But when people start exploring the lyrics – it’s a lot darker and personal. It’s a compelling album. Yeah, it’s dark. It’s a lot darker than I expected it to be. I just tell it as it is. I’ve had a weird life – a really dark life – and it kind of just bleeds from pen to paper. So, we’re not going to see Anson – The Happy Album next? (Laughs) Maybe. I’ve been trying to write some happier stuff. I think the thing is, when I’m happy I don’t have a reason to write. For me, this is like a self-expression – it’s almost like therapy for me. I take all of these emotions that I’m bottling up – all the worst things that have happened to me and throw them into music as a way to deal with them. When I’m happy, it’s very hard to grab on to that emotion and be like “Yeah, I’m gonna write about it!” I’m very much a person that tells it as it is and focuses on the things that I feel are real and that people can understand because they also need a place to vent. There’s me who writes to vent and then there’s the people who listen to vent. It’s a cohesive ecosystem of all of us sharing the same misery at the same time. 58
Which is dark – but at the same time, we’re all not alone in it. The reason why we listen to it is “Okay, so I’m not the only person who’s feeling this.” And I think there’s a light in that. We all might be feeling this way, but that’s okay. And it’s better to normalize that than to hide it away in the shadows. At the very least, we’re all in this together and we’re all trying to make a better world. What has it been like to write and release new music in the middle of a pandemic and all the social unrest in the world? It’s been interesting – because how do you cut through all that noise? No one’s really cutting through all the noise. The world is blowing up. You have the apocalypse with Covid happening. You have cyber hackers hacking the Internet and doing crazy shit. You have wars happening. You have unemployment happening. We’re living in a very momentous time in America where whatever happens now is going to determine a lot of what happens in the future. Even how we handled Covid has already impacted our economy and just the way that we think about things. And we have things that are starting to bleed in that are social issues – it’s actually been like for that for a while – Asian Hate, Black Lives Matter – you have all of these things that are happening at the same time. So, to release an album while this is happening – I feel that maybe some of it got lost in the shuffle – but at the same time, I’m really happy that I released it when I did, because everyone’s home. Every has the internet right now and everyone’s looking for new music – they’re looking for some form of entertainment to escape what’s going on outside of their homes. I think it’s very magical also, because I keep getting messages for people saying “I really needed this album. I’m so glad it came out. I really connected with it, and it’s helping me get through these hard times.” Anytime is the right time to release new music, and I’m glad that people are starting to listen to it and latch on to it – and it’s just a matter of time for more people to latch on to it as time goes on. It’s been really exciting. (Info: ansonofficial.com) June/July 2021
HIGHWIRE DAZE
