Hi! If you’re new here, I’m Arielle Gordon, a music journalist and (very) amateur runner. Running Up That Hill is a newsletter in which I try to connect those two things by interviewing runners in the broader music world about their habits, tips, and tricks. Read past issues here.
On the run with Jason Lytle
Jason Lytle might be most closely associated with the hunched over sounds of keyboard bleeps and romanticized tales of worn down computers, but in his day to day life, the Grandaddy frontman vastly prefers the outdoors. On his latest album, Blu Wav, you can practically hear the great American West in the palatial synths that background his lyrics, which are both remarkably bleak and cautiously optimistic about our techno-dystopian future.
Venture far enough down the Google search results for Lytle’s name and you’ll find another career entirely for the prolific musician: He’s also an accomplished ultrarunner who seeks the thrill of a race he doesn’t know if he can finish. In our conversation, he discusses how cross country running turns on his “dog brain,” the ways being in nature helps him work through the nuances of songwriting, and the meditative power of an endless run.
I loved your new album Blu Wav. As I was researching the album for my review, I found so many interviews where you brought up biking and trail running that I knew I had to talk to you for the newsletter.
It's actually to the point where I feel like I have to hold back sometimes. I just dip in and out of the music thing, and that helps me appreciate it more. Then when I go on tour and it's just everything—band dudes and venues—I feel so smothered by the music thing. And then every now and then somebody comes up and says, “Hey, I see that you climb and you run,” and I would just single those people out. All I want to talk about is that stuff. I don't want to talk about synthesizers, and guitars and amps. I'd rather just talk about normal shit, and I consider that normal shit.
Are you biking, hiking, or running more these days?
Right now I'm doing more cycling than anything else. I love running for the simplicity of it, because there's so much gear involved with all the other stuff that I do. But at the top of the list right now is cycling. And then next down would be trail running. And then it's hiking and then the occasional downhill skiing. And then I actually still skateboard as well.
So I know that you grew up skateboarding, but when did you start running?
I was trying a few things out in junior high. I realized early on that there was something a little less enjoyable or a little off with team sports. There was something appealing to me about tennis. But then there was also this sort of socioeconomic thing with tennis, and running was just like, anyone could do it. Then I got into cross country in high school, because I realized that I wasn't fast. I liked where my head went with cross country. I realized what I liked about it was that it would send me in deeper, it would send me inward, and I would be able to get some thinking done. I clued into that really early on.
I liked that cross country wasn't so much about being fast, it was just about just keeping on, just running and running and that's all you're doing is running. What I like about running is this thing that I refer to as dog brain. I may have read that in a book somewhere, but it's what dogs do. They’re so in the present. All they are thinking is just, “I'm running and I love this and this is the best, all I'm doing is running and I have no thoughts in my head.” Running is very meditative in a way that it has the ability to clear your mind, and you're just doing that at that moment. Something about the physical element of it, too—I think there's probably some release of chemicals happening. There’s a lot of things going on. I appreciate all of them.
I totally relate to that meditative state. You primarily make music solo as well, is that just a mode that's more comfortable for you creatively?
I think it just takes me a while to figure things out. And then once I figure them out, they stick pretty well. Sometimes it's just sitting there staring off into the distance, finding a nice overlook, and just kind of thinking about stuff, whether they be your problems, or just something that's eating away at you, or realistic stuff in life, where you need to make a choice about things. There's just something about that pace. I think when there's too much going on around me, too much stimulation, I just get too easily kind of thrown off and distracted, and I can't make clearer decisions. I'm able to achieve that a lot more when I'm working on music by myself and I'm in this state of solitude in headphones, listening and focusing on the music. Same thing if I'm out running or doing a long bike ride: it takes a little while, and then all of a sudden, everything starts to fall by the wayside. There's this weird thing that often happens, where you start losing sense of time and space, and then you're just in that moment. I found that that's achieved after a certain amount of time, and I like getting to that point. Cycling gets me there. With running, once I started getting into the longer distances, things would start getting really interesting.
I was just looking at your UltraRunning stats, and some of them were quite long distances, like 50 miles.
Yeah, a 50-miler in Wyoming, in the Bighorn Mountains. That was a tough one. That was my longest distance to date. I've done a number of 50Ks and they're all mountainous, that’s the thing that appealed to me, too. I read a lot about these races somewhere in a city and they're running around a few blocks, or just a track at a school as that's that. That's a whole other thing. And I'm sure you can get to these other levels of enlightenment, but I really like incorporating the outdoor element and the wild, rugged terrain. It's just way more interesting to me.
Can you describe your running schedule in a typical week?
It's varied a lot. My distances have gotten a lot shorter. Unfortunately, a little bit of that has to do with age. I grew up skateboarding and my body got pretty beat up. I have loads of skateboarder friends who are heavily into it, and they can barely walk these days. So I have like a really good diet, I take tons of supplements—collagen, creatine, and all kinds of super green powders and stuff. I eat primarily anti-inflammation foods and I pay a lot of attention to my diet, because I love doing this stuff as much as I do.
Most of my running takes place in the morning. I have a loop that's close to my house. It's about 800 feet of climbing, and it's about four miles. That's my go-to. But then I start getting a little bored of the sameiness of it. I live not too far from a national forest, so I have all kinds of different routes that I pieced together. I feel like anything under three miles is kind of a waste. It will range anywhere from three to ten miles. At the end of a 10 mile run these days, my lower back and my knees are barking. I do a lot of cross training, and the next day I won't run but then I'll get out on the bike. But for me, it's very important to do something active daily. I start getting pretty grumpy if that ends up not being the case.
Do you listen to anything when you're running or biking?
As a matter of fact, I had a pretty solid strategy for a while when I would do these events of all terrain, where if I know something's coming up, I'll start doing more event-specific training, and I won't listen to music. Because I have had some pretty unbelievable emotional experiences listening to music, so I'll save it. I'll do the event, and for the last quarter of it, when I need to dig in and get into that extra gear, then I'll bring the music out. I'll pop it in and I'm fucking unstoppable. Whatever pain I might be in at the time just disappears. It really helps me get across the finish line. That’s more for events where it’s like, “Can I even finish this thing?” I've never been a big speed guy. I like picking an event that I'm not even sure that I can finish and then get super stoked when—or if—I finish it.
When I'm training though, mostly it's podcasts. Or I won’t listen to anything. A lot of times I'll have all these little mini epiphanies when I'm out running or writing and I'm like, “Man, if I was listening to something, I would have not had come up with this.” Sometimes I'll very purposefully not listen to anything just to see what pops into my head.
I'm curious what music specifically gives you that boost.
I got into a weird one for a while back when I still had an iPod. I had like this five hour long mix that I made and it was specific to running. I started getting fascinated with the BPM, so I realized that my optimum BPM was somewhere between 155 and 165, that was my pace. So I do a number of those. I was always on shuffle. It was a lot of dreamy, floaty stuff, like Blonde Redhead, and stuff with elevating choruses. I would surprise myself.
I realized though that I was limited to newer recordings because for some reason, if the song was mastered too quiet, it was kind of a buzzkill. So I needed newer-sounding recordings for everything to kind of maintain this level, and then because it was on shuffle, I started to realize what songs would fire me up. It wasn't always like, Lover Boy’s “Working for the Weekend” or “Eye of The Tiger,” sometimes it would be this really ethereal, dreamy shit. When it hits me at the right point and I'm looking at the right scenery, I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I'm like, this is the best ever. The drugs, they're probably pumping just the right amount in me at the time.
Yeah, some of my best runs, I’ve listened to Heaven or Las Vegas over and over, and that was the whole run. And in that moment, that’s more invigorating than “Eye of the Tiger.”
I don't know if you've ever done any of those structured running events where you pay the entry fee and you get a free shirt. They always play like the worst fucking music at those things to fire everyone up. I'm just like, “Oh, God.”
Do you listen to your own masters while you're running? Does that give you a different feel for the music that you've just made? Or are you like, “I don't want to listen to my own music.”
I mean, that's just like going out knowing that you're gonna have a crappy run. Never the twain… I do solve a lot of production problems, it serves a very worthy purpose. For me, I hit a lot of roadblocks when I'm working on music. There's no better way through it than just getting away from the computer, getting away from your little work zone. You convince yourself that you're at a standstill, and then you change your environment. There's something about the chaos of being outside that makes you think about things differently. All of a sudden, these answers start appearing that you could not find when you're sitting in the same chair and staring at the same screen and looking at the same waveforms. And it's just like, “Alright, that's all I needed was to get the hell outside and move around a little bit.” I just see it differently. After a while, when you're working on something, neurologically, these little grooves get cut in, and you just gotta get outside. I can usually guarantee that I start thinking a little bit differently about 30 or 40 minutes into some kind of outdoor endeavor.
Do you find yourself writing lyrics or hearing melodies while you're running?
Yes. There's no real controlling when that's gonna come. That is interesting, because there's something about the autopilot that you operate on with running. It's actually different from the autopilot that exists with driving, cruise control, open highway. I tend to get more ideas like that. It's like there's two separate modes of autopilot. That's weird. I don't know what it is about running. Maybe because at this point I'm just struggling too much. I'll surprise myself too. I’ll just stop and sing things into the phone, and then I just carry on. You just never know a lot of times.
Do you run on tour?
Yeah, that's actually become something I really look forward to. I would be doing research before we even got into each city. I'd look at what place was next on the schedule, and then I look up that place on my phone, check out the map, typically looking for the biggest nearby park or river trail. That's usually a good place to start. If you're lucky, there's something that kind of ends up, going into a nature area or some wild space. That's a rare find when you're playing shows typically in cities, but it does exist. That just became a sanity maintainer, getting that run in, even if it was just two or three miles. You just hope that you're not coming back to the venue in your little running shorts, and you're all sweaty and there's like people standing in line for the show.
Is that based on a true tour story? Or just a fear of yours?
No, I’ve actually moved away from talking about my outdoor exploits. I realized that I'll do these big rides I'm really proud of and I’ll post pictures of my bike on this mountain, or whatever, but then nobody really gives a shit. And then I'll post a picture of a record player, or some nerdy music thing, and people love that shit. And I get it, I understand.
When I was a little kid, I was always curious about what the musicians that I liked did on their off time. I had this weird curiosity about that. I wanted to know, Do they go grocery shopping? Do they garden? Do they have hobbies? Are they into woodworking? I was very curious about that, so for some reason, I thought maybe that would be a cool thing, to regularly let people know that I do this other cool outdoor stuff. So I'm “keeping it real,” you know? But I realized over the years that only a small handful of people are fascinated by that. The rest of them don't give a shit. They're just like, “Make another record.”
I was a big Queen fan and one of my favorite guitarists is Brian May. And he goes through these phases where he records himself in the gym on his Instagram. And that's cool. But he's always got these really tight, short shorts. And I'm just like, I don't want to know what Brian’s white-ass British legs look like when he's in the gym, but he feels compelled to continue posting these. I just think it's hilarious, but it's also put things into perspective. I think that allowed me to kind of back off a little bit. It's like, people don't need to know the stuff that I do.
So we're not going to see you in a singlet on Instagram anytime soon.
No.
Is there any musician dead or alive that you would want to go on a run with?
John Lennon. He seems like he’d be down for a jog.
You know who's an amazing runner? Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie. He’s a super badass ultrarunner. I did a run with him once. He found out that I ran and we were kind of friends already. I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, and he's from Seattle. So we decided to meet up, him and another guy, and do this overnight. It's actually something referred to as fastpacking. It's overnight, and you're backpacking, but you're running. It was in the Olympic National Forest in Washington State, and it was 54 miles. The first day we did 27 miles, and then we camped, and then it was like 27 back to the trailhead. We had done multiple creek crossings on the first day. We saw bears and moose. It was a wild experience.
The next morning, I was crossing a creek within the first couple of miles, and I slipped and my finger got caught between two rocks and broke right at the base with a pinky goes into the hand, and immediately swells up to like a grapefruit. And we have 17 miles to go to get back, we're out in the middle of nowhere. And so I'm like, “All right, this already painful run just got a little shittier.” I ended up tying my hand up into my running pack, and we just did the whole run like that. After a while it was so numb that it didn't matter.
We get back to the trailhead. I say bye to everybody. I had to drive all the way back to Portland, which is like three hours, and by that time my hand is just fucked. So I go to the ER and got a big cast. The next day, I had scheduled a show with my friend in downtown Portland. Eventually I got surgery done on my hand, but it was just in a cast at the time, and I couldn't play obviously. When you get an album mastered, you master all the instrumentals just for possible licensing. So I brought a laptop with me and I had all these instrumentals, and normally you don't do anything with them. But I was like, This is perfect. I just set up my laptop with my big old cast, eating pain pills, and then I just did karaoke to my own songs. It was the funnest. I was just like, I need to do this more often.
When was that?
This was probably eight or nine years ago.
Have you and Ben run since that event? That feels like a very dramatic experience.
No. Actually, he kind of made light of it too, which I was laughing about. I was like, “I just broke my pinky.” And he was just focused. He's a badass. It was all I could do to attempt to keep up with him.
Gearspace Corner: Do you have any running gear that you're super into?
I will mention the shoes that I discovered. It’s funny though, because I've always had a really cringey relationship with trying to get endorsements or whoring myself out to companies for swag. I don't like being like that. But a couple weeks ago, coincidentally enough, I contacted this running shoe company that I've been wearing for the last couple of years, Topo Athletics. I sent them an email. I was apologetic. I was like, “Listen, I don't know why we do this stuff. But as soon as I found your guys' shoes, I was sold. And I'll keep wearing them, regardless of what your answer is. But I'm a sort of, kind of known musician who also might have a demographic that you guys don't get to tap into on a regular basis. Somebody did get back to me and said “We'll send this to our PR people,” and fucking nobody's gotten back to me. So now I don't even want to mention them.
Just kidding. They're great shoes. They have a wider toe box, kind of like Altras, but Altras have kind of gone the way of Skechers, I think, or Hokas. Once you start getting that big, quality control kind of starts getting a little iffy from shoe to shoe. And then they start continually trying to update to the next model, and they're not necessarily improvements. They're just changing things for the sake of changing things. And I do think runners like consistency, because it's not like your feet are continually changing. And we don't always benefit from the fact that they've come out with a new model. Topo is making really good shoes and specifically the trail running shoes that they offer have been pretty outstanding. They're not as big as Nike, Brooks, Saucony, they're still a little under the radar. But they happen to be making awesome shoes.
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