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The Partially Examined Life

PEL Presents NEM#240: Jonathan Rundman, Multi-Branded

81 min episode · 2 min read
·
Jonathan Rundman

Episode

81 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Relationships

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Collaborative songwriting process: Rundman co-wrote "Diner by the Train" with Walter Salas-Humara through email volleys over months in 2016, starting with Walter's character names and plot outline. The breakthrough came when Walter insisted "somebody needs to die" to raise emotional stakes, leading to the fourth verse that transformed the song's impact.
  • Analog recording approach: The Waves album was recorded live to two-inch reel-to-reel tape in Nashville with no click track, featuring four musicians playing simultaneously. Rundman then overdubbed keyboard parts in Minneapolis on vintage instruments, creating a hybrid production method that balanced spontaneity with layered arrangements for a more organic sound than digital recording.
  • Multi-brand career strategy: Rundman maintains three distinct musical careers under one name rather than creating separate artist identities: rock songwriter, Lutheran church musician, and Finnish folk performer. This approach mirrors jazz and bluegrass artists like Bela Fleck who refuse genre boundaries, though it creates audience confusion when his most-streamed track is a 1600s German chorale arrangement.
  • Narrative songwriting technique: Writing "Diner by the Train" taught Rundman to raise emotional stakes and embrace vulnerability in storytelling. The song's power comes from focusing on mundane details like small business ownership and stay-at-home fatherhood rather than dramatic events, creating pathos through ordinary American life and the weight of inheriting a family business across generations.
  • Finnish folk music structure: Traditional Finnish instrumental folk music uses simple A-B section melodies repeated in four loops, with different instruments taking the lead on each repetition. Rundman applied this structure to "Home Unknown," writing it as a hymn with mathematically rigid meter on staff paper before adding lyrics, creating a timeless quality that transcends typical rock song construction.

What It Covers

Jonathan Rundman discusses his 30-year DIY recording career spanning rock songwriting, Lutheran church music, and Finnish folk traditions, detailing his collaborative process with Walter Salas-Humara and analog recording techniques for his 2024 album Waves.

Key Questions Answered

  • Collaborative songwriting process: Rundman co-wrote "Diner by the Train" with Walter Salas-Humara through email volleys over months in 2016, starting with Walter's character names and plot outline. The breakthrough came when Walter insisted "somebody needs to die" to raise emotional stakes, leading to the fourth verse that transformed the song's impact.
  • Analog recording approach: The Waves album was recorded live to two-inch reel-to-reel tape in Nashville with no click track, featuring four musicians playing simultaneously. Rundman then overdubbed keyboard parts in Minneapolis on vintage instruments, creating a hybrid production method that balanced spontaneity with layered arrangements for a more organic sound than digital recording.
  • Multi-brand career strategy: Rundman maintains three distinct musical careers under one name rather than creating separate artist identities: rock songwriter, Lutheran church musician, and Finnish folk performer. This approach mirrors jazz and bluegrass artists like Bela Fleck who refuse genre boundaries, though it creates audience confusion when his most-streamed track is a 1600s German chorale arrangement.
  • Narrative songwriting technique: Writing "Diner by the Train" taught Rundman to raise emotional stakes and embrace vulnerability in storytelling. The song's power comes from focusing on mundane details like small business ownership and stay-at-home fatherhood rather than dramatic events, creating pathos through ordinary American life and the weight of inheriting a family business across generations.
  • Finnish folk music structure: Traditional Finnish instrumental folk music uses simple A-B section melodies repeated in four loops, with different instruments taking the lead on each repetition. Rundman applied this structure to "Home Unknown," writing it as a hymn with mathematically rigid meter on staff paper before adding lyrics, creating a timeless quality that transcends typical rock song construction.

Notable Moment

Rundman reveals his 2000 album Sound Theology contained 52 songs, one for each week of the liturgical calendar, released as a double CD concept album. He expected this ambitious church-focused project to end his career, but it instead quintupled his audience and generated his best press by filling an underserved niche.

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Episode Transcript

AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik.com. That's rubrik.com. Picture this. You're on a date, and then bad breath happens. Confidence, gone. Here's the truth. Most gums and mints are just bad breath band aids, but not Zelleman's minty mouth. The functional breath freshener you swallow, tiny dual action capsules with mint on the outside, parsley seed oil inside, clinically tested to fight the toughest offenders, even garlic and onions. It's only available online. Go to zellman's.com, zelmins. Zellman's.com, code fresh for 15% off. You're listening to Nakedly Examined Music, a podcast about songs and songwriters. My name is Mark Vinsenmeier. My guest for episode 240 is Jonathan Rudman. Jonathan has released at least 10 solo albums since 1992. You're right. You know, hearing, when I get bored from his first album, eleven years and twenty eight days in the yellow room. In the second half of the nineties, he was briefly in a group called the Muckrakers. He has played in a Finnish folk ensemble called Kai Vama, and he's played on multiple solo albums by the silos front man, Walter Salas Humara, a relationship that continued as the Silos have come back together in recent years. And he wrote with Walter the first song that we'll be talking about today, Diner by the Train as released on his new album, Waves. And we'll look back to Home Unknown from Jonathan's last solo album, February Look Up. Then we'll look back to one of his early albums, nineteen ninety seven's Recital, and discuss the song, Tape. As a little bonus, we're gonna throw in a short song called a failing rock star attempt from his Sound Theology album from the year 2000, and we'll conclude by listening to another song from the new album, waves, called evidence. For more information, please see jonathanrundman.com. For more about this podcast, see nakedlyexaminedmusic.com, or support the effort and get your episodes ad free at patreon.com/nakedlyexaminedmusic. I will play it a little bit of When I Get Bored from eleven years and twenty eight days in the yellow room. Your first album to kick things off. We're gonna get pretty quickly to the new stuff, but do you wanna give the fast version of the journey from there starting out? I made this album right after I turned 21, and I recorded it on a Tascam cassette four track machine. And, the drums are a Roland five zero five drum machine, and I'm playing everything else. On the new album, we're gonna hear you record in a very different way that you had a live band. It seems like you play everything except drums in general on your albums. I play some …

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Books

  • by Jonathan Rundman

    Rundman reveals his 2000 album Sound Theology contained 52 songs, one for each week of the liturgical calendar, released as a double CD concept album
  • WavesBy guest

    by Jonathan Rundman

    detailing his collaborative process with Walter Salas-Humara and analog recording techniques for his 2024 album Waves

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