The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Daniel Story Rice of Westing, Brim, Sun Umbra & Fuzz Family Booking

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Composing lyrics along with vocal melodies and harmonies are my largest contributions to the music of Slow Season/Westing, Brim, and Sun Umbra, but I do write songs or just instrumental parts for guitar and keys as well. As far the lyrical side goes, I think that I am trying to find a way to express feelings and ideas that I find difficult to express in a strictly verbal sense. Music is very therapeutic for me in that way.

I came to do this work by very intentionally practicing songwriting in my early twenties. I would perform an exercise where I would open a newspaper with my eyes closed and put my finger on a column at random. Whether it be a classified add or murder mystery, I would set about writing a song using the details of that randomly selected newspaper content as a creative exercise.

After toiling on bedroom recording projects for awhile, I finally got the gumption to emerge and collaborate. I joined my first band when I was 23 because I felt confident enough in my singing abilities to provide a second harmony part to some three-part harmonies a friend had. I brought my lap steel along because I could fake proficiency at that instrument with enough reverb and a volume pedal. Soon enough I had started to play keys and harmonica in that band and began to gain confidence from the repetition of performance after performance. Cody Tarbell joined that band as our third drummer and we soon broke away and started to do what would become Slow Season in late 2011.

Describe your first musical memory.

I remember choking on a coin while the congregation sang a hymn at the church my parents and grandparents attended in Porterville, CA. I think I was two years old. I remember singing mixed with hushed panic as one of my parents hung me upside down and hit my rear end until the coin dislodged. I have no idea if there is an extended metaphor there or not. The second memory I have is attempting to harmonize to Beach Boys songs with my mom while we drove in the car. She sang either the alto or tenor parts in a church where instruments weren’t allowed and four-part shape note hymnals honed my musical ear.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I started crying a teeny bit when King Crimson played “Epitaph” and just generally killed it at the Fox in Oakland in late 2019. It was an incredible show and helped me to process what had been yet another difficult year in my life.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Outside of personal spiritual matters, I’d say a music-related belief I once held was that analog recording was superior to digital because the limitations of the medium became a component of the art’s aura itself. Now that I’ve done a record with Cody that incorporated some digital aspects into the latter parts of the production I can decisively say that that’s not really true. What’s more, recording digitally enabled us to work remotely with Ben [McLeod] since he wasn’t able to finish every single thing he needed to in the four days we had to record the new Westing record.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Hopefully to a better understanding of self, others, and life in general. Inevitably it will probably lead you away from fans of your early work as you grow and change as an artist and as person. Sometimes that means more financial “success” and sometimes that means less “success” but in the end at least you did what you had to do. I def don’t begrudge some of my favorite older artists their later output because the music they make now isn’t for me – it’s for the old fart I’m gonna become and the people that became old farts alongside the artists from their own generation.

How do you define success?

In broad terms I think it means reaching your deathbed without having compromised your core values. In musical terms, to me it means sharing my thoughts and feelings in a way that I can feel honest and uncompromised by economic interests. Financial success in music to the point that it paid my bills would probably destroy the pleasure and therapy of it for me.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Most of the films that I’ve viewed in the last few years. I used to like movies but the vast bulk of productions in the last decade or so have gotten so dumb/redundant. I hate walking away from a screen feeling robbed of time and attention with nothing to show for it.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I’d like to either score a film or write and direct a serialized music video series. Either way, I want to be a part of combining visual narrative forms with music that will help audiences to interpret the visual art and immerse themselves more fully into the experience.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Yikes. I’d say it mostly has to do with mediating our own confusing lived reality with our own imagined reality of the ideal. We are finite creatures who shit and stink and die and yet can also comprehend truth and beauty and the infinite. That’s a lot of therapeutic ground to cover, and I’m guessing music in addition to visual arts and narrative forms help with this in psychological, spiritual, and even concrete physical ways. I’ve gotten into to the ideas of Ernest Becker, Otto Rank, and Norman O. Brown in the past and that has helped me to make some sense of cultural functions like the arts.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Harvest time in my garden and the creation of a community garden next year at the non-profit I volunteer with. The focus is on organic, sustainable practices that address the realities of the seemingly permanent California drought. We are going to break ground in August on a community modeled after the Community First! Village in Austin which provides housing, relationships, services, and dignified income opportunities to people who are chronically homeless.

https://www.facebook.com/slowseasonmusic/
http://instagram.com/slowseasonmusic
http://slowseasonmusic.com/

https://www.facebook.com/sunumbraband
https://www.instagram.com/sunumbra/

http://facebook.com/bandbrim/
https://www.instagram.com/brimband/
https://brimband.bandcamp.com/releases

https://www.instagram.com/fuzzfamily/
https://www.facebook.com/fuzzfamily/
https://visaliahomestead.weeblysite.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ridingeasyrecords/
https://www.instagram.com/easyriderrecord/
http://www.ridingeasyrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/royaloakie/
http://instagram.com/royaloakie
https://royaloakie.bandcamp.com/
https://www.royaloakierecords.com/

Brim, California Gold (2022)

Slow Season, Westing (2016)