[MUSIC]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. January is National Mental Wellness month. On All Of It, we'll be focusing on mental health on Mondays. We just heard about generational trauma, and now we turn to a guest who navigates issues around mental health in his work. Here's a song from drummer, producer, and rapper, Kassa Overall, titled So Happy.

[MUSIC - Kassa Overall: So Happy]

I don't wanna go to school

I don't wanna go home

You don't know what it feels

To really be all alone

You so cool, ain't you?

You so cool, ain't you?

You so cool cool cool cool

I don't wanna be alive

I don't wanna be dead

Why my nigga Cosmo

He put one in his head?

He was so happy

He was so happy

He was so so so so

What if you were Moses

What if you wasn't chosen

Would you find your dream in a dream

Alison Stewart: That's So Happy from one time New Yorker, Kassa Overall. It comes off his latest album, Animals, which explores a host of feelings beyond happiness, including pressure and anxiety of being a working musician. Animals is Overall's third album as a band leader and solo artist. He's on tour with it now, and you can catch Kassa Overall at the Blue Note next Monday night. Overall joined us to talk about making the album, blending jazz and hip-hop, and how music has helped him deal with a history of manic episodes, anxiety, and other mental health challenges. I started by asking him about what was going on in his life when he released his debut solo album back in 2019 when he was about 35 years old.

Kassa Overall: I moved to New York in 2006, and from 2007 until basically 2019, I stayed on the road playing with other musicians. I played with a lot of jazz legends, as well as some pop acts and things. During that whole process or that period, I was always making my own music, but I didn't really have the follow-through to say let me finish a project and put it out. Actually, one thing that comes to mind, in the fall of 2018, I was getting ready to put the record out, and I was getting list of tour dates for the next year. My girlfriend and also co-producer of the new album, Animals, Lauren Du Graf, she was like, "Yo, you put all this time and energy into this album, and you're going to run around playing in everybody else's band all year. If you're going to do this, you have to commit to it and say no and be broke and just start from scratch." That was a big turning point, and I think it was a good decision.

Alison Stewart: Your second album came out February 2020, and then insert pandemic here, and then we're here. How much did the pandemic have to do with the album coming three years after your last, or did it just take that much time for you to get what you wanted?

Kassa Overall: It just took that much time. I think that the interesting thing for me was February 28th, 2020, I Think I'm Good came out, and we were getting a response like we'd never gotten before. Selling out of merch at every show, and just getting a lot of good feedback. I was like, "Finally, we're in a place where this can work. This small business can make sense." With the pandemic happening, it really hit me in a hard way because I was like, "This is my moment," and right as that happen, it was like, "Nuh-uh, shut down." I was planning on putting another album out the next year and it's just how long it takes. If you try to make something good, you try to make something that's better than your last thing, it's just it's done when it's done and you have to honor that process.

Alison Stewart: Some of the initial ideas for some of these songs date back to 2019 or earlier. When you have those ideas that are hanging around or they're living in your brain, they're just in their little space at one time, when can you tell it's time to bring a song forward? When do you know, yes, that idea I had in 2017, now's the time?

Kassa Overall: One thing about it is when you're making an album, you have to pick the songs that fit together. You might have a batch of new songs, but the new songs fit with that song from 2017. There were songs that I had before the last album that didn't fit on there, you know what I mean? I have songs for the next album as well, so there's that. Then the other thing, I don't know if this answers your question or if I'm veering away, but when I'm listening to the music and I'm almost finished with it and it makes me emotional to listen to it, that's how I know it's time. You know what I mean? Sometimes that emotional feeling actually has to do with the amount of work that I put into it. You have the topics, but you also just have that you gave it your effort, that you gave it your all and you're just like you know that you don't have nothing left and you just, "Well, if they like it, they do."

Alison Stewart: That's a good place to be when you get to the point of I don't really care, but it's okay if someone doesn't like it because I'm good with it and I did my best.

Kassa Overall: Yes. Yes, this is true, and I've read some things that made me definitely go, "Wow. I guess they're entitled to their own opinion, but maybe they also didn't listen that closely."

Alison Stewart: My guest is Kassa Overall. The name of the album is Animals. There's a 30-second track skit called It's Animals. It's got this piano line, some animal sounds, sounds like a pilot talking to a disruptive passenger. What is this?

Kassa Overall: It's a soundscape, and the meaning of it is like a metaphorical meaning. It's not like this is an exact thing that happened, but it represents something for me. You have this skit of a pilot, and somebody's freaking out on the plane, and he wants to land, but at the end of the dialogue he says, "Yes, we're going to land the plane and we'll need law enforcement," obviously. The point for that was for me, being somebody who's dealt with mental health stuff in the past and had manic episodes in high school and those kind of things, but also the the overlap between that and we'll need law enforcement obviously. The overlap between people having mental conditions, but also being treated just as normal people. You can't necessarily judge everybody's actions in terms of what a sane person would do. You know what I mean? For me, it was just a perfect way to point at that overlap between mental health and also a carceral system or however you want to put it.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to It's Animals from Kassa Overall.

[MUSIC - Kassa Overall: It's Animals]

Delta 579

Go head

Yes, we have a emergency with

A disruptive passenger

That would like to go back to [trumpet] Delta 579 copy that and

You can fly it in 260 fly it in 260 for now and 8 10 8 that's 260 on the heading

And we'll need law enforcement obviously

Alison Stewart: I want to follow up on the themes around mental health. In your last album, I think I'm Good, you are navigating experiences of living with bipolar disorder, and this album on the song Make My Way Back Home featuring vocalist Nick Hakim. He raps, "Now the music is my therapist. We talk it out every night in the booth." How is music therapeutic for you?

Kassa Overall: I've found music early on. My parent's living room was a jam session space basically, all the instruments were there. Learning how to express myself on the drums, that came early.

As well as writing little songs and DVDs, and just having fun with music. It came early. I had some experiences as a young person that makes you believe in a higher power or makes you believe in something that's unseen, because you have these feelings of being connected to the whole, all of existence in a moment. You know what I mean? Those kinds of moments in the music. That's why I decided to be a musician, because those moments affirmed my existence and my journey and my path. I use music as a means to wash off the world, whether that's practicing drums. Definitely, practicing without intention of getting something done, but just to practice. That is a way for me to cleanse out whatever I'm going through.

My teacher, Billy Hart, I would always go to him and ask him-- I'd be dealing with whatever I'd be dealing with, and I would call him, and oftentimes he'll say, "Well, go practice. Go play the drums and then make a decision." That's my space to get into a focused mental place.

Alison Stewart: That's a good advice. Let's hear Make My Way Back Home from Kassa Overall.

[MUSIC - Kassa Overall: Make My Way Back Home]

Sink

I can't complain

What your life like?

At a loss for words, I can't complain

I sowed the seeds and prayed for rain

I filled prescriptions to block out visions

Still feel the tremble of a victim

Swallow my arrogance

Do the math of a missed marriage

Plus a couple miscarriages

Dreams never came true

Family that I never knew

Who are you?

Plus a couple niggas hatin' too

Now the music is my therapist

We talk it out every night in the booth

Tryna repair this shit

We all tryna break free like a bird in the wind

'Cause we all goin' home in the end

You could cry to your mama

But she don't want no drama

Alison Stewart: That's Make My Way Back Home from the album, Animals. My guest this hour is Kassa Overall. His new album is called Animals. So many great folks join you on this record, Vijay Iyer, Theo Croker, Nick Hakim. Some are first-time collaborator, some are folks you've worked with before, like Vijay. What's the balance? How do you find that balance between the folks you've worked with for a long time versus newcomers?

Kassa Overall: I would say, I don't really think about it too much. It's more of a intuitive kind of flow, and obviously, being a person that I can be in the front with the mic, I can play drums, I can produce the whole thing, so, I can play these different positions. I think of these different artists as different colors. Even though I can do it all in terms of I can play a lot of positions, I can't do it all emotionally. It's a different vibe that a different person is going to bring. A lot of it is just really, I'm thinking about making the best song I can make, and I'm thinking about what can make this a little bit better, or who can say something on this that I can't do.

The process is very intuitive, and also there's a lot of trial and error, because I might have somebody play something on a piece, and then we're trying to use that, and then maybe that's not working, and then I'll try something else. There are a lot of lyrics that I wrote to some of these songs that are on the album that didn't make make it on that album. Because I just wasn't happy with it. When you get somebody like Ishmael Butler to lace the song, it's like, he just changed the whole meaning of the song and changed the whole field. It's just an honor really. It's just an honor to have artists like these artists that are some of the best people that I look up to, to validate what I'm doing.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned Ishmael Butler, who people might know from Digable Planets. He's on a track, I believe it's with Lil B and with Francis and the Lights. That's quite a list of people on one track. How did it come together? Was this one of those, where you're able to work together as a whole, or did people send in pieces, and then you worked and made a collage out of it?

Kassa Overall: It was both. That was a track I've been working on for quite a long time, and I broke a hard drive, and all I had was the-- How do I explain this to the audience? I didn't have the full session, all I had was the two track. I took that, and I worked on it for literally years. I had a big writer's block around what the chorus was, and what the actual lyrical part was. Then I linked up with Francis and the Lights. I was driving from LA to Seattle, and I literally just drove to his house and was like, "Hey, I need help with this."

He's extremely talented at writing hooks and melodies and things, and we got in the studio, and truly co wrote it. I brought a line, he brought a line, and we were gitty like little kids about it, once we really found it. Little B sent his version, Ishmael Butler sent his version. It was really like one of those songs that I know this is a strong song, I know this is worth it, but I can't figure out lyrically what to do, and so that's I got the help.

Alison Stewart: How did you break the hard drive, man?

Kassa Overall: I dropped it down flight of stairs.

Alison Stewart: No.

Kassa Overall: Yes, and I spent months trying to get it back. This guy took it to somebody that, they do governmental data recovery, and they just couldn't do it, but that's okay. I figured out. I liked the final product. We figured it out.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you wouldn't have the song if that didn't happen.

Kassa Overall: Yes. It's just a super unique process to get to the finish line.

Alison Stewart: All right. Let's hear Going Up.

[MUSIC - Kassa Overall: Going Up]

Hold on, wait a minute

Hold on, wait a minute

Elevators, elevators, elevators, elevators

Goin' up

Please, 'fore I let you go

Take this little piece of me

I know it isn't anything

But you can't have it all

Life is very long

Very long

I could have gave you everything

It's ya boy Lil B

But you can't have it all

I could have gave ya

Woulda coulda shoulda

You my suga duga

In my Cameron voice

Girl what's ya choice

It's all about choices

Alison Stewart: The song that came back from the dead. That's called Going Up from Kassa Overall. The album is Animals. I saw this in every article I read-- not everyone, a lot of the articles I read described you as a backpack producer. If you can see me, I'm putting on a backpack. What does that mean to be a backpack producer?

Kassa Overall: It's actually a play on the bedroom producer. Over the past, however many years, it became popular, the term bedroom producer, which is like, you don't go to the studio. You have your little setup at the house, and you can do everything you need to do at home. What I started doing in New York, I had a bike, and sometimes I took the train, but I would put all my gear in a backpack, laptop, interface, microphone, headphones. That's the basic setup. I put it in my backpack and I go to people's houses. I go to Stephan Crump's house, the basis or Morgan Guerin or Sullivan Fortner, all these different musicians who have their instruments and have a setup at home.

I would latch on to their setup and record at their houses because there's something about being in person that you can't really recreate. There's something about that process. I have some great memories of Sullivan Fortner. His apartment was basically a room with a Steinway in it, you know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Kassa Overall: It was like a little couch, a little kitchen, but the whole apartment was basically just this Steinway. I come through with my mic and have him play on different sessions I'm working on. We would get something really organic, really raw. Yes, anyways, that's the backpack producer.

Alison Stewart: I want to hear another song on your album No It Ain't. Is there a chord progression that's a little bit like You're All I Need to get by?

Kassa Overall: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Intentional yes. It's a great song.

Kassa Overall: Yes, absolutely, that's a straight--

Alison Stewart: Tip of the hat.

Kassa Overall: Yes, for sure. A big shout out to Andrae Murchison, the trombonist who did the trombone parts. He's a trombone player that I went to Oberlin with. I've known him for many years. He's been working on these concepts where he stacks a bunch of trombones on top of each other, and so that's kind of the basis of this one. You'll also hear it goes from You're All I Need into Jericho, the church melody, I don't know, the Gospel Melody. I don't know the exact name of the song, but it's a Jericho reference as well, but yes.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear No It Ain't.

[MUSIC - Kassa Overall: No It Ain't]

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with Kassa Overall. His latest album is titled Animals. You can see him at the Blue Note next Monday night.

The sound of the subway these days is less showtime and more blow time, cold strep throats, and COVID, oh my. Yes, respiratory viruses seem to be everywhere, and the aftereffects seem to be dragging on. We'll talk about how to deal with a lingering cough with Rachel Sklar of New York Magazine and Dr. Mark Horowitz. That's right after the news.

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