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Bouncing to the funky indie catchiness of “Baked Alaska," it’s hard to correlate exactly where Carter Vail, “the talented musician,” ends and Carter, “the surrealist internet meme sensation” begins. Witty, lyrically curious, and willing to explore in a space where bands previously excelled but few do currently, we needed to the direct scoop on pop surrealism, the man behind the meme, and where we can check out his impressive live show:

OnesToWatch: Let’s just jump into it. So, I’m always curious why someone does what they do, generally. But specifically, I think being an artist, musician, content creator, lifestyle generator–whatever you want to call modern musicians – is arguably one of the toughest occupations. But I also understand it's sort of a calling that most people can't seem to shut away or put away inside themselves: they just just have to do it. Is that true of you? Why are you an artist?

Carter Vail: That’s a good question. I's kind of just something I've always done. I don't think I really expected it to be a job until until it became my full time job. and then I was like, shit, this is working out. But, yeah, writing songs has just been something I've always done. Writing comedy stuff, too, I've been doing since I was a little kid. I've been writing that stuff since before I knew how to play guitar. And I kind of feel like it's just because no one ever stopped me from doing it? I think if someone at one point someone was like, “you're bad at this, you got to quit it,” there’s no way I would have continued. I've been lucky enough to be around very supportive people my whole life. Or maybe they did say that and I'm just very not observant, which is I think a superpower in its own right. I've just kind of always done it and loved doing it. So I haven't stopped. Now I find myself doing it professionally and it seems a little ridiculous most of the time but I'm very thankful to be in the position I am.

Yes, and congrats to all your recent success. It's quite obviously difficult to fathom something going viral the way you have. I feel like every artist asks for that to happen, but how does it feel to have been viral in such a way?

I honestly think that with that sort of a thing, like with Dirtman, because it's such a strange kind of one-off, you know, I make a lot of those kinds of things and some of them do very well, some of them don't. But the lifespan of a lot of that, the longevity in that memorability is pretty short. I was just at the mall picking up some equipment for this tour and someone came up to me and was like, are you the guy that made Dirtman? And I think that's hilarious. I try not to like get too in my head about the virality of that kind of stuff, because then you start chasing that and you end up making worse stuff. I'm super glad that that did well and that some of my stuff does well. I'm just out there trying to make as much stuff that makes me laugh or makes me feel something as possible.

I could just be getting old and imagining this to be the case, but I feel like there was a lot more appreciation of comedic involvement in music than there is currently. Am I wrong about that? What's your take on combining humor and music?

I think it's out there still. It's probably up to everyone's independent algorithm as to whether they're seeing it. Because of the life I lead, I end up seeing a lot of that kind of stuff. And like there's a bunch of people on social media doing comedy music that I think is amazing. I mean, you have people like Tom Cardy, who's this Australian guy that I really look up to in how he makes his stuff. There's this guy Max Boonch, who's making really strange surrealist, beautifully edited videos. There's a lot of people out there that I think are doing really cool stuff. It's just like on a smaller scale. Yeah, I don't think you have like a weird Al Jankovic anymore of someone that's like massively popular that's doing comedy music. But I think you have a lot of people that do music and then sometimes we'll just put out something that's a little bit funnyand it's just like the lowering of the barrier for people to make stuff. And so anyone can make a song that's kind of funny. The other day someone came up on my Instagram feed that was just them singing with no music behind them into their iPhone camera. And it's like, they're singing a kind of funny story. And it was hilarious. Like threading the line of if it was actually music or not. I think that's awesome. People are so creative and just making a bunch of stuff.

I love that. I guess this is a composition question: when you’re writing a song, are you writing music first, or a 3D-visual-sonic joke? How do you sort of approach your craft?

I definitely consider myself a musician first. I mean, the thing that I do most often is write serious music. That's the main thing. In regards to the comedy thing, I don't even think I’m particularly funny. I think I just like writing about strange things. A lot of the time there's not really even a joke in there. It's more of just that people aren't used to hearing a song about, you know, fish or whatever the fuck.

I think I really use the the strange lyrics as just a reason to make music. But my primary love is making songs, playing them live, doing the real artist thing.

Right, you said you've been writing a long time, since, did you say 11?

I've been writing songs for my whole life, taking it very seriously since I was probably 16, 17.

Okay. So when you go about writing a song, what is your origin? Do you have an idea, a concept? Are you just emotionally dumping, letting things out, and this is catharsis? What's your process?

If I'm writing alone, if I feel compelled to write alone, I'm just trying to capture a certain emotion. So it feels more like taking a cathartic dump. But, a lot of the time I'm writing with friends and I think often it'll be like drawing from those moments of like capturing an emotion. Like if I'm in a car, I'll often write down little tidbits or like sing a little melody. And then later on I'll usually be with either my friend Reed Gaines or Noah Tauscher and we'll get together and we'll write something off of that. And when we do that, that feels a little bit more like putting together a puzzle. You know, we'll have a couple different pieces and it's a little bit more analytical, a little more like there's an actual structure and we're trying to think of like, okay, what'll make a good hook here? But it always starts from an emotion that I want to convey in this piece, and this is a lyric that felt particularly noteworthy in my random notes app that I fill with nonsense.

I was gonna ask, are you a notes app guy? It sounds like you just answered the question.

Yeah, I got some dumb shit in my notes app. My most recent note just says future vaginas. Don't know what that means…

Wow, that's promising. One thing I like about comedians is they'll often revisit concepts and jokes and repurpose them. That seems to happen less so in music. When you write a song, when is it finished for you? Are you done with it the minute it completes itself based on the process you just described, or do you revisit it for a time?

I try not to revisit much. If an idea is older than a few weeks old for me, I typically don't finish it. I feel like when a song is really done, it just becomes apparent. Like you listen to it the last time and go, shit, that's it. That's the whole song. It's finished. And if it takes 30 mix revisions, there's probably something more wrong with the DNA of it than with the mix. So I try to move pretty quickly. I do subscribe to the lightning in a bottle feeling, where the things that happen quickly typically are the things that are the best, the most evocative. I sometimes will rehash my lyrics and try to finagle words around to make it make more sense. But I don't feel any particular call to make my songs make sense. I feel like if they make me feel something, hopefully it'll make someone feel something. And a lot of times people will come up to me later and be like, I love this song. I can't believe it's about this thing. And I go, it's not, that’s awesome that someone thinks that though.

Right. And I love that you brought up Surrealism earlier, because I think I have a great appreciation for your visuals. Your lyrics as well definitely lean into deliberate surrealism. Is that an intentional obscurity, or just a stylistic quirk?

I don’t intentionally obscure anything. A lot of the time it's just what feels the most natural coming out. I like the idea of being surrealist, but every time I purposefully lean into like – “and this is gonna be me doing fucking dadaism" and some shit like that – it just feels way too on the nose and it's like obvious I'm going for something high brow. Honestly, the stuff I make feels like just the only thing I can make. If it comes out a certain way, then that's fantastic. I don't really feel like can push it one way or the other.

You have a big tour coming up, how do you pair yourself with other artists? 

Yeah, well, I haven't done that much touring. This Young Gravy one was kind of the first serious one I've done. And with him, I had no idea what his audience was gonna think about us being this random indie rock band opening for this rapper. I was more a fan of his music when I got the call saying that he was inviting us out there. I was like, hell yeah, we get to see Young Gravy shows. And then we got really lucky in that his audience is like, the most open to just having a good time of any audience I've seen. They didn't know any of our music, but we got out there and they just wanted us to do so well because they were all drunk and having a great time. So that was a very kind audience to us. But yeah, it's mostly about like who seems like a good hang musician I'm excited to play with. We have this band, Sego, coming out on some of the headline shows. I remember someone sent them their music to me and I wasn't familiar with them and then I listened to them and they sounded amazing. So I was like, hell yeah, let's bring them on. It's kind of just like, I want to see that show and getting to see it for two weeks every night is gonna be great.

That might be the best way to describe why you're on tour with someone. You're just like, I just want to see that show, you know? 

What's your well of inspiration like? How do you combat writer’s block?

I think that I'm pretty lucky in that the music I write is pretty varied. So I'll like, I'll work on my main artist project music. And if I get hung up on that, I'll switch to working on some fucking silly nonsense for TikTok. The silly stuff is pretty easy to write because it's pretty much any idea you have is probably gonna work. Or if it doesn't work, it takes not that long, it’s fun to make, who cares? And then also I write a bunch of music for brands.

You do commercial work too?

Yeah, I just did one for Crocs, I did a video for them. It's a lot of fun. It's also fun to find kind of funny, convincing ways to write a song about like, know, Manscape razors or Crocs. So it’s like, I have a lot of different avenues to make music in. So I don't find that I get writers block too often.

I love that. What do you do to chill out? If you want to put that whole creative brain to the side, if that's even possible, what do you do to relax?

I do a lot of jujitsu. I love doing jujitsu.

Yeah, of course. The most relaxing of sports.

Well, I mean, you can't think about music while you're doing jujitsu.

No, you're busy not choking usually.

Yeah. I like to go to the gym a lot. I hang out with a bunch of other friends who are mostly other musicians and shockingly we don't really talk about music very much. Most of it's like kind of physical stuff, going on hikes, hanging out with my girlfriend, spending time outside.

How'd you get into Jiu Jitsu?

I've been doing it for the past couple of years. It's so much fun. I started it because I was just trying to find anything else to do with my day because I was truly just working on music all day. Found a gym and it's been one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. It's so much fun. Great people. Super exciting. It's a fun thing to be really bad at at first, which is cool. Get choked out by a bunch of sweaty guys. Pretty cool.

I understand the zen-ness of like, you're literally under attack and so that thinking part of your brain just shuts off. When did you move from Connecticut to LA or did you move right from Connecticut to LA?

No, I lived in Miami for a while. I went to school in Miami, Florida, and then I lived in Nashville for a while, tried to run a studio, did that for three years, didn't really work out so well, and then moved to Los Angeles. So I've been there for two or three years now.

Awesome. Do you find your environment changes you as a person, how you write, how you go about being a creative?

Yeah, I find that being around other creative people is the best recipe for making stuff. Making good stuff. And LA is just so full of people that are being creative. I thought the first thing that I thought when I went to LA was that it was so strange that you go out on like a Wednesday at like 11am and people are just like ambling around going to brunch and you're like, what the fuck does everyone do? And I was one of them. But yeah, I just loved that everyone is doing a thing there. I'm really lucky to have a really great music community out in LA. And they're all working on really exciting, strange projects and they're all really passionate about it. Being around that is really good for me. ‘Cause every time I talk to like my neighbors, my neighbor is a producer, he tells me about what he's doing and it really excites me to go back and make some more stuff. So yeah, think being in different places dramatically changes everything.

Yeah, I totally feel that. What's the one thing you must take on tour or it just doesn't work, doesn't happen? It could be personal, could be equipment, it could be anything.

That's a great question. The thing that's been super helpful in terms of just keeping sane has been the Kindle I got last leg of tour and that's been like, thank God I have this. Because it’s fucking boring. You know, Sprinter van all the time. A lot of time in the bus. I'm a book lover.

I'm old school so I still do the hardcover thing. I don't know why, tactile, maybe.

I was so sold on hard covers for a long time and then on tour I was like fuck I should probably just do this because I don't want to carry around 30 pounds of books.

I’m about to finish Demon Copperhead and it’s really good, if you need a rec. If you want a deep dive into rural Appalachia, poverty, opiate addiction, but in a sort of lust for life, fun, adventurous kind of way. It's not all depressing, although like it's, you know, there’s a little bit.

Last question, at OnesToWatch, obviously we just love when artists turn us on to other artists. Is there anyone out there that you think just hasn't been getting enough love or shine? Is there anyone that like you listen to and you're just like, I wish I could be them?

Damn, that's a good question. The artist I’d say, every time I see them do something, I'm like, damn, I really kind of wish that was me. Or every time they put out a song, I'm like, fuck, I really wish I wrote that song. It's Medium Build, but he's like, blown up right now. I just fucking love his music so much.

We have a podcast called Chef's Choice, Medium Build was on it. Fucking hilarious. So if you're ever bored on the Sprinter, can listen to our podcast as well. A lot of deep dives with musicians such as yourself.

Well, that's it for me, man. That's great context. And yeah, I hope we can cross paths in LA at some point, and continue your success. Really appreciate you making time.

Thanks so much for having me. Have a good one.