THIS INTERVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT MOSTLYHARMLESSPODCAST.COM. I’m moving away from Denver with the love of my life Claire and her Dick, the tabby cat. I am quitting a job that I thought was going to be my dream job. I am on a healthy medication and meditation routine. I am creating more than I have ever before. What does this have to do with Hutch Harris or The Thermals? You’ll see. I almost made a very stupid decision to stay here in Denver and run this little restaurant, while the love of my life moved away without me. Claire wanted to move away and explore her passions, but I wanted to stay here in Denver and explore where this path had taken me. I wanted to BUILD SOMETHING. I feel like I have been on a path to this place for so long. This path brought me to the front doors of the little restaurant that I help run. I thought this was the end of the path and the place I had always been working toward. I thought this was it. I thought I had made it. And it was there on that path that I found myself night after night cleaning out the grease traps on our industrial fried chicken fryers. Cleaning out those fryers, I would often sing to myself and that’s when when the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, “Here’s Your Future,” from The Thermals popped into my head. “god reached his hand down from the sky, he flooded the land, then he set it a fire, he said, “fear me again. know i’m your father. remember that no one can breathe underwater.” so bend your knees and bow your heads, save your babies, here’s your future, yeah here’s your future!” That night, Claire was out of town and I knew I’d be going home to a quiet and lonely apartment. I had nothing to really look forward, and soon this was going to be my future if I let Claire move away. Those lyrics staying in my head for weeks… “Here’s Your Future…” I’m not the smartest cookie, but elbow deep in old fryer grease, I realized I had already been building something with this woman I love. I was a dope! I had building a pretty GREAT life! I didn’t want her to go without me. I wanted to be with her, no matter where. I can find another job. I can run another restaurant, but I can never find another woman like her. So I sat and thought about what I really wanted to build. I thought about the things that really bring me joy. Cuddles with Claire and the kitty, writing about art, Interviewing people and just living a simple life. I just want a happy, creative, easy life and I wasn’t going to get that if I stayed here in Denver, cleaning out the fryers. Later than very night, I was sitting here enjoying one too many beers and a few too many tokes off the peace pipe and a Facebook ad scrolled across my screen from THE THERMALS page, announcing that Hutch Harris had just put out a new solo record, SUCK UP ALL THE OXYGEN. A manic idea took hold that I could maybe, just maybe, interview Hutch Harris! We could talk about quitting things and compare our creative processes, but really I just wanted to tell him how much that damned song meant to me in these moments of my life! How this song helped me decide that the path that lead me here to this place, was also leading me away from this place! So I fired off a rambling message to Hutch and to my surprise, he said YES! He would be on the show. That morning I was nervous for a whole lot of reasons. Right before we had our chat, I fired off an email to my bosses at the restaurant and let them know my last day would be January 15th and I would be moving to parts unknown with the love of my life. It felt like some kind of destiny taking over and taking me along for an adventure. The chat went well, I was a rambling mess. My diarrhea of mouth is worse than ever, but as I listened and edited this interview together… I could hear that under the rambling looney nonsense I was spouting off and calling questions, I could see that I do actually have a talent for this kind of stuff. I just need to calm down, relax and maybe drink a lot less coffee. It’s all part of the creative process. For those who may not know, do you mind catching us up on what happened to The Thermals? It’s been three or four years, I think. The last record we did was in 2016 and then we toured, but not as much as we usually did for the other records. We toured most of that year, I think. And then a year or so later, I was like, “I think that’s good enough for me.” I wanted to leave.. it. I wanted to stop doing it because I felt if I didn’t stop doing it, it was just going to be the same for the next 30 years, or until we stop doing it. And I thought about that, my life and my creative life. They were just going to be kind of a flat line for the rest of my life, If I didn’t stop doing the band and do something different. So I just told the band that. They weren’t thrilled but they understood, I felt like it had a good run and I just kind of needed to do something else at the end. How scary was it ending this project, that had been such a big part of your life? It was fine. I knew what it was going to be like. I just knew I