Summary

Eric Terino returns to share how much has shifted since his last appearance nearly two years ago. The American singer-songwriter opens up about recent breakthroughs in managing his agoraphobia, the political climate's impact on queer safety, and his evolution from punk minimalism to avant-garde folk electronica.

His latest release, Indelible Sundries, represents a bold artistic statement—a live album recorded remotely during isolating times, featuring hand-curated audience applause and single-take performances. Eric discusses the profound loss of his best friend, the healing power of authentic representation, and why he refuses to conform to stereotypical LGBTQ+ musical imagery.

Timestamped Takeaways

[00:29] Welcome Back: Eric discusses the strange experience of hearing his previous episode after a two-year delay

[04:33] Personal Evolution: How Eric has changed from his hopeful pandemic-era self to navigating current challenges

[09:15] Agoraphobia Breakthroughs: Recent progress in traveling beyond his comfort zone for the first time since the pandemic

[10:54] Political Climate Impact: How America's hostile environment toward minorities affects mental health and personal safety

[12:39] Musical Genre Evolution: The journey from minimalist punk to avant-garde folk electronica

[17:45] Grief as Creative Catalyst: Processing the loss of a lifelong friend and its impact on artistic depth

[21:02] Authentic LGBTQ+ Representation: Refusing to conform to stereotypical gay musician imagery

[23:11] Queercore Influences: Discussion of punk's inherently queer nature and the UK's 1990s Queercore movement

[26:21] Live Album Vulnerability: The courage required to create Indelible Sundries as a remote live recording

[28:01] Creative Process Innovation: How individual applause recordings and single takes created authentic live atmosphere

[34:22] Sandy Denny Cover Choice: Why "No More Sad Refrains" perfectly captured overcoming winter into spring

Guest Bio

Eric Terino is an American singer-songwriter and multimedia artist creating authentic folk electronica from his unique perspective. His latest album Indelible Sundries showcases innovative remote live recording techniques while exploring themes of resilience, authenticity, and queer representation beyond stereotypes. Visit ericterino.com.

Links

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• See producer and presenter Dan Hall's other work HERE (subtitled version HERE).
• Find composer Paul Leonidou HERE.
• Listen to other episodes at here.
• Visit the guest's homepage HERE.

Things in this country are certainly not going well for minorities. I guess that's as simplified as I can make it. And you know, that includes people of colour and the LGBTQ community and the trans community specifically. But all of us are under siege to some degree, and it's definitely not the world that it was.

Hello there. And welcome to In the Key of Q, the podcast that explores the lives, music and experiences of queer musicians from around the world. I'm Dan Hall. Today I'm chatting with Eric Terino, an American singer, songwriter and multimedia artist. Since he was last on the show, he's navigated profound personal challenges to release the innovative and deeply moving live album Indelible Sundries. If you're a queer musician and interested in featuring on the show, please do drop me an email at inthekeyofq@gmail.com. And before we start properly, please do support the podcast by recommending it this week to just one other person. And let's grow our community across the world. So grab yourself a brew. Settle in, perhaps with a comfy blanket, because we're going to be diving in deep today and enjoy In the Key of Q, a show that's about finding the extraordinary in the authentic.

Very much like my guest today, my guest who is of course, Eric Terino coming back. Eric, welcome.

Thanks for having me again. It's good to be back.

I will confess your last episode only had, I think, three months ago. But of course, we recorded it long before then, didn't we? Yeah, because of admin and release schedule issues. It took two years to come out.

Something like that. Yeah.

Good grief. And how we've aged in that time.

I know hearing it back was a sort of a weird experience because I still felt sort of connected to that moment, but also like, who is this person? You know, because it was so long ago and it was from sort of pandemic times. And now we're here. So much has changed.

So who was the Eric that was on the episode that you did first?

I think I was in a place of kind of that new glow of feeling, I guess just a different level of hope. For the first time, I'd come out of a long period of feeling despondency in some way or another, and making my previous studio record was such a fulfilling artistic endeavour. I mean, on a personal level, it also connected me with a lot of new people and gave me some really life affirming experiences.

Being in the situation that I am and dealing with my specific mental health issues and my agoraphobia and all of that, I think it's really easy for someone in that position to feel unworthy and to feel like their life isn't, you know, meeting the standards of what a life is supposed to be. So it took me a long time to find my way through that and around it, and to say to myself, just because your life isn't like the lives that you're seeing in your friends and family and out in the media and all that stuff, doesn't mean that your life is any less valuable.

I find it curious hearing you say that, because obviously I record many of these episodes and I create a lot of content, either on TV or here on these podcasts. And one of the really lovely things about making these is sometimes one sits and edits something that has a little bit more resonance than other things, and you and I can almost act as my own therapist sometimes in the content that I make.

And I find that editing your episode was a real joy because I felt really seen when I was cutting it, and it felt like, I vividly remember listening to a rough cut of it. I tend to go for walks, and I listen to rough cuts because I like to hear the sound levels in real life environments. And I just remember I had to listen to it twice because very quickly listening to it, I stopped acting, I stopped sort of active listening to it as a producer, and just got completely sucked in to what you were saying. And I felt really seen by it. And I hope that other people were. And I'm only telling you that because I think maybe you're underestimating quite how people have resonated with what you talk about and how there is incredible worth in what you were saying.

Well, that's beautiful to hear. And yeah. And I think it is, it is tough for me to understand that I am in such an isolated position that I don't have regular contact with people in that way. You know, where I'm seeing active feedback on what I'm doing and you know, what I'm creating and all of that.

But yeah, it's interesting. I feel there is some level of artifice that comes with this process, the process of promoting things that I try not to engage in. I try to be as honest with myself and with you, you know, and with the people I'm speaking with as I can be. But I think in general it's difficult to do. And I think people are wanting to kind of put up this facade of like, everything is always amazing, you know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. And you're completely right. You can tell yourself a million times, oh, but that is an edited highlights reel. But it never quite sinks in as much as we need it to.

Right.

Now, when you were last on the show, you spoke really openly about your agoraphobia and how much that was affecting your life. How is that looking for you at the moment?

I will say, actually, in the past week, I have had some big breakthroughs in my own personal, sort of, trajectory of my dealing with my agoraphobia. Yeah. For the first time, actually, since the pandemic started, I was able to travel, what I think a normal person would consider a very small, a short distance. But what for me is a very far distance.

And we're living in this post-Covid world. But in America, at least, things are not good. I don't know if you're aware. And so just the general vibe out there is not conducive to feeling encouraged, you know, to go out into the world and feel healthy and safe. I'm trying to push against it, but the political stuff that's happening over here makes me feel like I can't trust the people, the system. All of it makes it more difficult for me to feel safe going out into the world.

When you talk about the political system, what do you mean?

Things in this country are certainly not going well for minorities. I guess that's as simplified as I can make it. and, you know, that includes people of colour and the LGBTQ community and the trans community specifically. But all of us are under siege to some degree, and it's definitely not the world that it was.

It feels different. It feels scarier.

Now, one of the few silver linings of political situations becoming less stable or less favourable for certain groups. And this is not me being an annoying Pollyanna and finding a positive. I genuinely think this is out of difficult situations. Can grow fantastic music. And I think musicians such as yourself really help to guide people through difficult times.

I appreciate that might, in my mind, not make it easier for the musicians themselves to navigate them. But music is a great way of working through difficult times. And I was curious to see that you've gone from describing your own music from sort of minimalist punk sound to being avant garde folk electronica. Where did that development come from?

It was born of this moment of fury and frustration and trying to make something from a place of being untrained, which I think is what punk is really all about. You know, musicians who are not aiming to make something that's particularly beautiful or particularly perfect, but just expressing something in a pure, unfiltered way. So there was an evolution from that record until this latest record, which shifted.

And when I made my second album, I turned that around and I still, it was still punk in spirit in the sense that it was coming from this place of wanting to create something pure and true to the emotion that I was feeling at the time. But instead of it wanting to be kind of ugly, which was really my intention with my first record, I wanted it to be as pretty as possible, and I wanted to see these things, these difficult, painful, raw things.

But adorn them in a way where you might not notice that it was something dark being said, because it was presented in such a pretty package. And following that record, I sort of took it a step even further. And that was when I brought in all of the real organic instrumentation and started working with other musicians.

And that was when things got folkier. And I started to realise that all of the songs that I had been writing for the first two records kind of were folk songs in their structure. At their core, they were folk songs. I was just presenting them in the way that they were arranged to sound, sort of like they were veering into different genres, but getting to a folky place was natural.

It wasn't really a conscious decision. I've always loved folk music, be it traditional folk music or contemporary stuff. And I think it just naturally comes out in my songwriting, that sort of storytelling aspect that is associated with folk music.

You spoke in the last episode about the loss of your lifelong best friend, and how this was a profound catalyst for you and your creativity. And this sense of cathartic pain in your work that some of the music being healing in itself. Can you talk to me about how you feel traumas such as that have actually helped to inform your music and inform what I think is this incredible sense of depth and authenticity?

Yeah. Losing my friend was hugely impactful on my life. It's hard for me to even really explain how big a part of my life she was. She was in my life daily for all of it. I was going to say all of my adult life, but that's not even true. She was in my pre adult life, you know, when I was literally a child and we had gone through so many shifts and phases together and it never occurred to me that there would be a period of my life where I would be alone without her.

And so for that to happen, when we were 24, which, you know, is pretty young, to have a big shift like that happened, it really rearranged what I knew life to be. And it made me have to, it made me need to re-examine how I wanted to live my life and how I was going to structure it and what was important to me.

And also, if I'm being honest, at the time, I felt like there was a very real possibility that I might not be around forever. And might not be around for much longer. And so I wanted to make that record to at least have done something so that I could say to myself that I've done something that I'm proud of and that exists in the real world.

And why did you feel that you wouldn't be around for long?

I was just in such a bad place. I mean, losing her was traumatic unto itself. But I wasn't in a good place prior to her passing because I didn't just lose her. When you lose someone important in your life like that, you tend to find out, as they say, who your real friends are and like, who really cares about you?

And a lot of people just couldn't handle that level of despair and deal with the grieving process. And a lot of people who I thought were my friends were nowhere to be found.

In our previous conversation, you mentioned not fitting in with a stereotypical image of an LGBTQ plus musician. You know, you're not taking your top off. You're not covering your six pack in glitter. You don't, none of that stuff. You're continuing to explore what I think are quite nuanced themes, such as ageing and having or not having children. How do you feel that your approach has evolved since we last spoke?

Because I think it's fantastic that you don't fit into those stereotypical spaces. And I'm curious, do you ever feel a pressure to.

I don't, I yeah, I just do what feels right to me, to myself in terms of the music I want to create and the art that I want to put out into the world. I understand that it may mean that there's more of a limited platform to have it lean on, and it may not be as easily discovered, but I just don't think that I would be doing anyone any sort of service by trying to remould what I do to make it more palatable for the typical gay audience, which is another reason why I feel like it's important for me to be my authentic self and to speak my voice in the

way that is true to it, and natural. That there is more representation in this kind of alternative folk art rock world for voices like ours. I mean, it's music that when I was growing up, I wish existed, but it just didn't.

Yeah. I think the thing that a lot of people don't realise is gay people are now, and gay people are all interested in all of those things. You know, there's not, it's not that we are only interested in dancing and glitter balls and that kind of stuff. There are lots of gay people who like punk music or who like what are seen as stereotypically straight things.

You know, for me, I always feel like punk music is kind of inherently queer unto itself.

I'm waiting for that moment to come back. It seems possible.

Make it happen. Make a punk album. Next one full of fury.

I genuinely have considered it a lot, actually, since making my first record. Ever since then, every time before I make a new record, I say to myself, I'm going to make this punk record, like a truly punk record. And I've also just toyed with this idea of what it would be like for me specifically to make a folk punk record, which is not what I, it's hard to describe because I don't think it exists.

And punk is kind of in his DNA, and you can feel it in his music, and I think that you'd find it really, really interesting and hopefully quite inspiring.

I'll definitely check it out. And oddly, I'm pretty sure that that's a name that I've never heard before. But in just the last couple days, for some reason, I have heard of Frank Turner.

It's a sign, Eric. It's a sign. Grab it.

I do love a sign.

So let's come on to your latest album, Indelible Sundries, which was released back in October. And it feels listening to it like a culmination of many of the things that we were talking about in the first episode. How did the album come about, and why did you choose to do a live album? Which is quite brave, I think, as opposed to a studio album where you can hide behind take after take after take and a little bit of mixing here and a little bit of mixing there. It seems by doing a live album, it's quite a vulnerable thing to do as an artist.

It definitely is, and that's something that I was aware of when I entered into this project. It was scary. I was afraid to do it, but that's part of the reason why I wanted to do it. I wanted to know that I could. Well, I guess because I can't physically tour, it felt like a rite of passage in a way.

I wanted to know that I could perform and how it would come off. I felt like it's something that I wanted to have in my canon, in my discography, and I treated it like that. I treated it like it was a real show. Like all of the recordings were done in single takes, even though they were done remotely.

None of these musicians were in the same room.

I was about to say so to make it super, super clear, it wasn't like you were all in a room or you went to a local music venue near where you live. It was like a deluxe, hyper deluxe version of a zoom call.

Yes, with a little bit more complexity, I would imagine.

Yeah, it was almost like making a movie, but purely with sound. I was piecing these things together, but I was doing it in a way that was true to the concept. So it would begin with I would record my part, which would be on a piano or a guitar or just vocal or whatever. I would do my one live take and then I would send that to one musician and they would do their live take and follow along with me, and then the next musician would get those two layered takes and do their live take and so on and so forth. So everyone was doing their bit live and in a single take. We were using our imaginations. I mean, that's what it breaks down to.

We were trying to have this conceptual moment come to life and make it feel as authentic to a live setting as possible, which even extended to the audience. So all of the applause that you hear throughout the record is not canned. It's not a sound effect. I individually went to, I don't know how many people, a lot of people, and had them send recordings of just them applauding.

And then I, you know, spliced all that together and mixed it in between the recordings that we'd done of these songs.

I do like the album format, and it is an album that works better listened to as an album. I think that the live design of it makes it feel like it demands event listening. You know, you put the phone down, you put the headphones on and you give it a proper listen.

Yeah. And that's something that I think all of my records sort of request of the listener. I'm always surprised whenever anyone says to me like, oh, you have such a beautiful voice. I mean, that's lovely to hear. But I always think it's more kind of broken and jarring. Like I was saying, not background music.

It's not flowing and easy. I always think that it asks your attention, and that's what I try to do. I'm trying to say in whatever song it is or whatever record it is, I'm always trying to say something.

Now, normally, Eric, to wind up the show, I ask people, what would your 15 year old self think of you now? But we already know that answer. So drum roll. For the first time ever, I'm going to ask you, what do you think the Eric of episode one would think of the Eric of episode two?

What would he think of me now? Honestly, I think he would just be pleased that things have continued to go well. I think he would be really proud to see that this live record happened. It's something that I've always wanted to do and that I wasn't sure I would be able to do. And also just to be able to go back and revisit a bunch of those songs with a full band and hear them in that context.

I think he would be pleased with that, but more so, I think he would just be proud that I'm still here, still thriving in my way, and still making work that I'm proud of. That's no small feat, and that's something that I think I have to remind myself of often, is that I'm really achieving things that I've dreamed of doing, and that's something to be proud of.

And I think he would be proud.

Now then, Eric, you sent me a number of songs. You sent me It's Not for Me Anymore. Not a Whole. No More Sad Refrains. Can you tell me which song you'd like us to play out with and why you've chosen this one?

So this is No More Sad Refrains, which is a cover of a Sandy Denny song that I think is fairly obscure. It's definitely not one, I mean, it's not Who Knows Where the Time Goes or, you know, one of those ones that are covered many times. As far as I can tell, it's never been covered before. But I was working actually on a reissue of Sandy Denny's Gold Dust album, which is a concert live at the Royalty, I think it was, which was her last concert, and I did the artwork for that. And when I was working on that project, my friend Huw Patti did the reissue, you know, he was the manager behind all of that. It reintroduced me to that song in a new way. And I had just finished making my previous album, which was all about overcoming obstacles and making it through the night into a new day, and specifically the line in No More Sad Refrains about, when these winter days are over, I'll find myself on my feet.

It was making me think about how perfect it was for me in that moment, and I wanted to record this and say these words that she was saying. And I've never done any covers before or since. It's actually the only song I've ever covered. And it spoke to me that deeply that I wanted it to be a part of my catalogue.

Eric, where can people find you online?

You can find me online at ericterino.com or social media? Instagram is Eric Terino. Google Eric Terino. Eric Terino on all the streaming platforms. It's yeah, it's a name actually, that somehow no one else has. And so you will find me if you search for it.

And that's Eric Terino, spelt T-E-R-I-N-O. Not Torino. Eric, I don't think I know of any Eric Torinos. So that was a good shot.

[laughs]

And of course I'll put links to all of those in the show notes. Eric, it's genuinely been lovely to have you back on the show. And as you said, it's great to hear that you're thriving in your own way. And I really look forward to having you back when you have some more material to share with us.

Thank you so much for having me again. As always, yeah, an absolute pleasure.

And thanks to all of you for listening out there. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to In the Key of Q on your podcast platform of choice and leave a rating or a review. It really helps other listeners to discover the show and do remember. Please recommend it to one other person this week and let's really grow this community.

If you'd like to guest on the show or you've got any thoughts about what Eric said or what any other guests have said, please email me using the address inthekeyofq@gmail.com. And don't forget you can listen to previous episodes at inthekeyofq.com, where you'll also find the blog where I take deeper dives into our queer lives.

A massive thank you to Paul Leonidou at unstoppablemonsters.com for our theme tune, and to Moray Laing for his continued support. Join me next week for another conversation with a queer musician who's making waves. Thank you for listening and keep paddling your gay agenda. I'll see you next Quesday.