It’s been a minute since we let go of the songs that make up “Thank You” and segued to mixing with MixedByAli. It surprised us in the best way how his disciplined mix structure complimented our at times chaotic and noisy sessions. Then I had this concept in my head, instead of just releasing music, let’s release a track, play a few shows. Release another one, go to a different city, play some shows. Hit repeat. My management and agency folks rightly thought I was pretty naïve, playing shows of mostly unreleased music. I also cared about pairing the music with the right visuals. I had first seen the work of Can Can and Thad Higa as they both happened to be tabling at the L.A. Printed Matter Art Book Fair while we were still working on the record. Thad’s work especially appeared to be the visual equivalent of my music. But what proved to be more challenging was playing songs born from free improvised happy accidents later arranged, edited, and massaged into songs as a BAND. What was I thinking? Enter the 5D. I knew from working on the record with Will that I wanted him playing guitar in my touring band. I was at first thinking of some kind of hybrid of DJ and live band. It still bothers me how we live in this polarized world of expectations. DJ gigs are treated one way. Band shows another. It is all music. What ever the instrumentation. Let’s dance! As we started trying to play at our Pool House studio, we quickly realized we wanted the sonics and freedom and boom! of sequenced drum machines and pads. Thank goodness Skyler Diamond is our own in house programming genius. From collaborating with Eddie Ruscha on record I knew I wanted him to be part of what we do live. But I didn’t know if he would share my enthusiasm or have the time. But once we started, we all became like really excited kids in a candy store. The sounds, the possibilities, other songs we would then reference, the jams that would take place immediately afterwards. We were all in. Eddie’s son, Milo, had been playing in Davis and Skyler’s band, Very Nice Person. We could not have a done a better job genetic engineering the multi instrumentalist needed to complete our band. Milo brings technique and tight playing to Eddie’s at times wild creativity. None of this would be possible with out the touches of our Musical Director and CFO Davis Diamond, who with his own unique style makes sure that all is right in the 5D world. It has been a very gratifying and def at times tiring mission growing together as a band as we travel and play shows. I now realize there is a certain joy we get to feel when we are playing shows together and now we get to share that with all of you. So please stay tuned and join us if you feel so inspired as we head off on this adventure of ours.

New album ‘Thank You’ out now. Tickets to see Mike D 5D live at miked5d.com

OK, OK, I know it would probably be more dignified and graceful and maybe even respectful if I just quietly went about a life of leisure. Lived in a bubble and didn’t engage. Maybe dabble with a bit of philanthropy to keep up appearances. Imagine a cross between the opening sequence of the Sex Pistols’ Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle movie when they’re on a beach in Brazil meets The Graduate’s Mrs. Robinson. Make a cordial in the afternoon, stir, consume. Hit repeat. OK. Reality is actually pretty far from fiction. In this case: I got to a point where making music is the only option. It’s the only outlet of expression I have that not only quiets my own mind but also seems to make my whole world align infusing it with joy and laughter and all of that. Of course, like all things in life, timing is a different story. All things that seem like they are overnight sensation take many years. Let me explain:

After Adam Yauch died I would occasionally turn on the computer and open up Ableton or Pro Tools and maybe just try to mess with some beats or listen to files of something that I’d started before. And every time a very small amount of time would pass and then I would just get too sad and my eyes would kind of glaze over and I would put the computer to sleep and move on. Feelings avoided. Case closed.

There was more grieving and illness, but conveniently I was able to just focus primarily on being a dad which is very gratifying in its own way. There’s nothing more rewarding than dedicating time and attention to loving your own kids. I would busy myself with all kinds of different things that would broaden my horizons but didn’t require me to deal with my own feelings. But then my kids grew up. And big surprise: They are passionate and fully immersed in making music as well.

During the pandemic, without much to do (like the rest of world), our home studio became our own safe haven. Over time, my sons, Davis and Skyler, would confiscate and experiment with some of my vintage instruments and processing gear, using it for their own purposes and their band, Very Nice Person—and I started to join in a bit. Over the next bunch of months I started to become inspired by many of the different musicians, collaborators, and producers that would spend hours at our studio, making stuff. It wasn’t about any one individual, it was about the spark that happens between people collaborating, and something that happens sometimes fairly quickly that’s beyond what anybody in the room thought was possible. Happy accidents coming to life. The sum being greater then the parts.

Eventually, the world opened back up, and I started working a bit, producing on other artist’s records. But then I reached a point where I realized: ‘What am I doing? I’m projecting my ideas on to other artists. They should be making their own ideas, and I should be making my own.’

I didn’t exactly plan on making my own record, but then a couple who are 2 of our closest friends had a baby and had breaks from their respective careers as a music producer and a composer, so Davis, Skyler, and myself got together with them and just started experimenting. The start was recording to 4-track cassette, which was the first medium we recorded to as a band when we got a teeny bit of money in the mid eighties (I bought a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder).

In this version of 4-track home recording, we each started on an instrument that we weren’t too familiar with, and we just started making some instrumentals with a small amount of freestyled vocals with lots of delay on them. We all kind of fell in love with the sound, but I still wasn’t writing words yet and I wasn’t conceiving of what we were doing as a record or project or anything to release into the world.

We did a little road trip up to Big Sur where Davis and Skyler were performing with their band, Very Nice Person. We had the good fortune of being able to camp out at a friend’s home that also had a studio. It was Indian summer. Warm, sunny fall days. Very dreamy. We would surf in the morning and get coffee and pastries at the bakery, but then have all day. So the instrumentals were just kind of sitting there staring at me, so I thought, Why not try to do some vocals on a couple of them? Thankfully Davis and Skyler generously engineered, And that was the start. I still wasn’t confident at all in what I was doing, and I didn’t have my process down for writing, but that magical, lush Big Sur ridge inspired me and us to just start the process. It kind of feels like it’s in the soil up there.

Still, sessions and tapes sat around for a number of months. Then in the spring I was in Biarritz, France. Summer had gotten off to an early start. It was warm, the water was clear and dreamy, and luckily we scored a few days of fun waves. Driving around with my friend, musician, surfer, and wave guide extraordinaire Lee-Ann Curren, we were listening to the somewhat recently released solo album by Gina Birch of Raincoats fame. I kind of feel that music is like wine. We can’t really separate what we are hearing from where we are when we first hear it. It just felt right. It was the connective tissue between the sun and the ocean and driving around with no pressures. It occurred to me: Gina Birch has got to be close to 70. If she released a solo record, so can I. Simple as that.

I rang up Davis and Skyler and messaged a few close musician friends that I would be back in a couple of weeks or two and wanted to book out our own studio for two focused weeks to really start recording. So during some warm sunny summer southern California days with all of the doors open to our pool house studio, we started making music together, and I started to do some vocals. I was pretty unsure of myself at first. It took me a minute to get the muscle back, or start to feel more confident, but eventually that started to come into place. I think a big help with that was the boys running my vocals through this very old synthesizer we have, creating this crazy distorted vocal chain. That was just what I needed to feel free in expressing myself. Day after day we would experiment running my vocal mic through different toys. “Bouncing balls up in the air.”

I realized something big: for so many years in Beastie Boys we would work on music, and work on it for so many hours and days, and then struggle in our minds over what we write about or what we were going to talk about. It wasn’t a full writer’s block, but this feeling of being overwhelmed and not knowing where or how to start. Eventually after many hours of banging our heads against the proverbial wall, something would give, obviously songs and records were finished. But with this project somehow, many decades into the game, something got unlocked. Words—or at least the sounds of words, the flow of words—could come to me while we were making the music. As a band, it was an incredible gift to have my bandmates and lifelong best friends serve as in-house editors, but that came with pressure. We always wanted to impress each other. To top one another. That made for quality assurance, but also was less free. So I was too intimidated to record a vocal that I had not written and re-written.

But now, left to my own devices, I was free to intuitively follow whatever sounds or directions emerged as we started playing music in the studio. So I wasn’t having to struggle and start from scratch after the fact. I became free to be part of these moments of inspiration. Of course, a huge amount of writing is refinement and that is work. Necessary and meaningful work. With the influence of my partner, Nadia, we were going on Buddhist meditation retreats. I mention this not to get some kind of gold star—I’m just a imperfect human trying to figure things out—but because this gave me the space to realize: I don’t have to compartmentalize these different parts of my life. Everything can kind of feed each other. After my morning meditations, if words came to me, I would start to write. If not, I wouldn’t. Don’t force it. A lot of starts to things came from that.

I also want to point out here that this is all sounding really fucking serious and sometimes my lyrics are not and that is just fine. My hope is to make things that are authentic to me and not full of shit. It’s been so much fun making this music with people I love and I have grown to really appreciate in our collaboration. And I just hope it’s fun for other others and not overly serious, because let’s be real, I’m releasing this music into a very strange and dark and power-fixated world that really devalues art and feelings and compassion and empathy and equality. OK, I’m getting a bit all over the place, but you get the point.

After many months of recording on and off, I felt we had enough material to have a very focused couple of weeks in the studio with everybody everywhere all at once. Haha. What I imagined in my head was being able to finish vocals in one room while Carter and Ty could be finishing up songs in another room. But I didn’t want to let go of starting new ideas, so we set a whole bunch of instruments up in the living room of Shangri-La. “Switch Up” came from one of those sessions. We even used the bus recording studio there that once belonged to Bob Dylan for recording Aaron Paris’ strings, CJ Camerieri’s horns, and other random ideas. This got us a lot closer. So then, after another bunch of months and many more days spent in our pool house studio making many different revised versions of many different songs, tracking and re-tracking vocals and other ideas and still allowing ourselves to start new ideas, we finally felt done enough to start mixing with our esteemed colleague: Derek “MixedByAli”.

So big shout out and special thanks to all who worked on this and made it possible. Love, love, love to you all: Davis and Skyler, Jason Lader, Dylan Neustadter, Benji #1 Pacheckinator, Carter Lang, Ty Mana, Eddie Ruscha, Adam Ging, Aska Matsumiya, Jared Solomon, Will Graefe, Chris Stracey, Benny Bock, Mama Gia, Shangri staff, Nadia Narain, John and Pete and the people at SAM.

My new album ‘Thank You’ is out August 28th.