Hi, everyone! Last week, I had the ultimate pleasure to chat with Robert Tilden. He is the brainchild of the LA bedroom pop project BOYO. Though he's now 22, Tilden has been involved with his own small garage bands since his high school years. After he decided to start his own solo career as BOYO back in 2016, he has released a variety of LPs, EPs and singles at a rapid pace. The amount of music in his catalog so early on is astonishing. While he's been very active in the studio, he's been as popular on the road. Many bands have chosen to make Tilden their opener. He's gotten to travel with many bands, including Girlpool, Surf Curse, and past bazzreviews interviewee Hala. I've been a fan of a lot of the music Tilden has made, and I was very eager to reach out to him!
bazzreviews: Which artists or albums inspired you to start a music career in the first place?
Rob Tilden: My dad was an older father, and he was from the generation that saw the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. I got exposed to his is love for them at a very young age, and that definitely influenced me. I remember being about eight or nine, and my brother gave me a copy of Is This It by the Strokes. That made me want to really start carving out my own path for making music. I also recall getting my first computer and using Limewire for the first time. I would always find little nuggets of inspiration around there, too.
br: You had a few of your own bands in the past, but what made you want to go solo?
R.T.: It’s been an inevitable thing for a while now. For recording in middle school and high school, I was in bands with friends. We would perform live, but I was always the principal songwriter. I would go home and record incessantly and it was difficult to corral everyone to do that with you. I ended up having to learn all the other instruments like bass or drums, mostly by faking it on keyboards or drum machines. It sort of became, by default, a one-man band. People weren’t really as interested in recording stuff, they were in it more for the live performances. I then decided that I shouldn’t invest in a band if I can do all of this on my own.
br: I’ve heard you’re known from some pretty cool live shows yourself, would you say that you thrive off of that environment more than recording in the studio?
R.T.: They’re both equally exciting. I used to be more isolated and focused more on the recording process. However, translating it live is just as interesting. I’ll always try and get a good group of people together to help me perform. There’s been many different iterations of BOYO in the past, usually with three people or five people. I’ll sometimes sing, play guitar and bass, or it might just be me singing and have four guys behind me. Going back to translating songs live, I feel like some bands just don’t do it well. One of my greatest fears is that we might not do that, and I don’t want to be that band.
br: I was speaking with Ian from Hala last week, and he wanted me to ask you how you see so well on stage without your glasses on. Do you have any comment?
R.T.: Ah, Ian, he’s a great buddy of mine! I actually don’t see very well on stage. I can see my pedals if I’m playing guitar, but I don’t see much else. I feel like if I wore glasses on stage, I’d be pretty intimidated by the crowd. I’m not saying that we’re playing big rooms, but I can still see everyone and everything in that room. It makes me kind of terrified. When I’m not wearing my glasses, they’re all just blobs of nothing. I’m almost playing into the void.
br: What’s the significance behind the name BOYO?
R.T.: There’s two different reasons. I like the simplicity of it, but there’s another meaning behind it. A friend of mine’s mom is really spiritual. She’s really an amazing woman. I was on a tour with Girlpool, and I was in a pretty dark, bleak place. They could tell, so they did some sort of spiritual reading on me. This mom realized kept seeing that I was a little boy with innocence. It was really powerful and impacful, and it realized that I was going to lose my innocence somehow. I guess “BOYO” also has to do with my Irish relatives always calling me “boyo” and stuff. So yeah, there are a lot of meanings behind it.
br: Can you describe your process for making songs?
R.T.: It definitely depends. Sometimes, I’ll be sleeping and a riff will come in my head. It will be bugging me so much that I’ll have to “Michael Jackson” it. What that means is that because he didn’t play any instruments, he’d just put it on a recorder with his voice. I’ll just be lying in bed and just put it down in my voice memos. I kind of try to make music like a job by recording something each day. I might have an idea, or I’ll start with a blank state. I’ll write stuff over a myriad of instruments. If one instrument isn’t working, I’ll go to another one. Maybe I’ll go with a guitar riff or a drum beat. I’m not really constrained to any genre rules, which is a nice benefit to have.
br: What’s more important to you- lyricism, or production value and instrumentation?
R.T.: I think immediately, I would say it’s production value and instrumentation. It’s the visceral thing that hits you, and it informs the way the vocals and lyrics coalesce.
br: I understand that you’ve battled with anxiety and depression in the past, and your lyrics seem to have that tone to them. Would you say that they are a reflection of your own life?
R.T.: Yeah, totally. I think even if I’m not writing about myself, I’ll inject my own lens or viewpoint on the matter. I write songs from a very specific viewpoint like isolation or lost love. That’s what makes the music very “BOYO”. I’ve learned a lot from talking to certain songwriters, and they say to keep your lyrics intentionally vague. That way, people relate it to their own life. I don’t want my lyrics to be super direct and paint a vivid image of my own life. I’d rather see people paint their own picture or formulate themselves into the songs.
br: Do you have any upcoming projects in the work at the moments?
R.T.: Yeah, I’m always recording stuff. I currently have enough that could make two full records or so. I’m just working on those songs constantly, eliminating the bad ones and fixing up the good ones. When I’m not touring, I’m in writing mode. I’ll just sit in my basement, watching movies and smoking weed. I’d say there is a tentative record, though. It’s becoming an album, but it’s not quite there yet. I just remastered this album that I put out last year under the moniker Friendly Ghost. I put it out under that name because people had been getting a lot of stuff from BOYO, and I didn’t want people to feel overloaded with all my stuff. I changed the tracklisting and a few other things, so be on the lookout for it!
br: Can you tell me a little bit more about what this new record has in store?
R.T.: The new record will probably be dancier and more upbeat, definitely less sad.
br: What music goals would you say you have for the future?
R.T.: I would say that I just want to keep progressing as an artist. I want to get better at writing and recording, and I’d love to have more opportunities to tour with bands that I love.
Thanks so much again to Robert for giving me his time to interview. All of my West Coast friends, be sure to catch him on tour this July with Vansire! His music is really cool, and I think a lot of you will agree with me! Thanks again to all of you guys as well. As bazzreviews is approaching six months of existence, I cannot say how grateful I am for you guys being there to support me along the way. Keep your eyes peeled for some more great content coming soon!
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