Winner of a coveted Gold Funkbeard on Only the Host’s Indie Music Hunt, Prime Birds is the creation of Jim Baron, a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from Toronto. The project’s eclectic sound ranges from hard and heavy to chill and melodic. Their latest track, “Until Everything Is Gone,” is on the chill and melodic side of the spectrum with lyrics that Baron describes as “brooding and emotionally fraught ballad with a glimmer of perverse optimism.” In other words, it’s my kind of song!

Congratulations on the Gold Funkbeard! Which song did it for you? What’s the story behind that one?

It was “The WHMIS Monster” which is a marriage between a frankly huge riff that I didn’t totally come up with myself (more on that later) and some chiptune melodies that give it a spooky, video game feel. Kind of like a boss fight. I dunno if it fits the “funk” bill but if Uncle likes it, who am I to argue?

As for the riff – the notes that comprise that riff are the answers to a multiple choice quiz that I had to mark, over and over again, as part of my job and eventually memorized. One day I wondered what they’d sound like if I substituted the multiple choice letters for their corresponding notes, spiced up the rhythm a bit, and there you have it. It’s called the “WHMIS” Monster because the quiz I had to mark was a “Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System” quiz.

It’s funny, when I first saw “Prime Birds” on Twitter (or X), I thought you were an account dedicated to sharing Amazon Prime deals through tweets, which I was definitely down for. What does the name “Prime Birds” mean to you?

It means I finally thought of a name I didn’t think sounded super dumb! Not that I think it’s the coolest thing either, but thinking up names is hard. It’s not highly meaningful; I’m a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays, Philadelphia Eagles, and Detroit Red Wings. A blue bird, a green bird, and a red bird. Those are prime colours – on TV screens, anyway. I know they taught us in school that yellow was a primary colour, but I couldn’t bring myself to root for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Anyway, good to know that if I ever tire of releasing music I can pivot into an online shopping account.

Your latest song is called “Until Everything Is Gone.” You’ve mentioned that it’s emotionally fraught with a glimmer of perverse optimism. What makes the optimism perverse?

I don’t want to pin this down too exactly, but it’s definitely drawing from the growing social and political divide in North America and how angry and helpless it makes us feel sometimes. I look around at the far-right extremists, the fascists and their sympathizers, the unrelenting capitalists, the bigots and white supremacists, and then I consider the oppression and poverty and sickness and death that is wrought by those ways of thinking and I mean, it gets you down sometimes, right? I don’t always feel apocalyptic about it; there are people a lot smarter than me who have ideas on how to get out of this mess peacefully.

But sometimes it just feels like things are gonna get worse before they get better. As for “perverse optimism”…those are my words but I’m not even 100% sure if they’re accurate. But if I pretend they are for a moment: the verses could be genuinely felt by either side of this divide, and if these feelings of helplessness can drive people to commit terrible atrocities, then, maybe those of us who strive for peace and equal rights and, yknow, food and shelter for everyone, ought to be driven to action by these feelings too. And maybe what “action” looks like needs to change in order to be more effective. But I don’t know what “more effective” looks like, and maybe what it looks like is something that isn’t easy to reckon with. That’s the kind of insecurity that drove the lyrics here.

The production on that one is great—and so is the arrangement! The track builds really well, with new sounds coming in every few seconds. What’s your approach to arranging and recording?

Normally I’m not one to experiment with a lot of different sounds. I usually like to come up with a cool part and then get that cool part out there with immediacy. I don’t enjoy the process of playing around with effects and layers.  But I knew it’d have to be different with Until Everything Is Gone because the song clocks in at over 6 minutes and the vast majority of it is the same 3 chords. It needed other elements in order to keep it interesting. I threw a bunch of stuff at the wall – piano, synths, guitar solos, percussion, even some whistling – and then figured out how to pace it and layer it in such a way that it didn’t get boring, but also didn’t get overly busy. I wanted to do it justice and I’m happy with the way it came out. Also, big tip of the cap to my pal Richard Davey (@mixrpd) for mastering this track and really elevating it.

You mention in your press materials that the instrumental parts of the song sat dormant for many years before you added lyrics and recorded it. How many years did it languish? What inspired the lyrics that brought it back to life?

Probably somewhere between 2005 – 2007 or maybe 2008. This would have been ages 18-21 for me. I have a lot of songs from that time that I think are still good, and I’m committed to recording and releasing them (although not everything I’ve released or will release is that old). The lyrics for the chorus are from that time as well. I really liked them and thought they were powerful – to the extent that it highlighted how bad the original verses were. So I scrapped the verses and bridge and waited for inspiration to strike in a way that lined up with the music and the chorus lyrics. I’m not a prolific lyricist (though I’m getting better) so it took a while. I don’t think I was directly spurred on by this, but I know I had the massacre in Uvalde, Texas in my mind when I wrote them, so it had to be spring/summer of 2022.

I love the cover art. It’s by John Serrano, right? How did you two meet? What was working with him like? How did the cover come about?

I’ve gotten to know John a little bit through the Only The Host community. I have no abilities when it comes to visual art, so I put out a call for some help in that area, and I was lucky enough to have John reach out. I gave him a pretty good idea of what I wanted the content of that cover to be, but in terms of art style, that was 100% him and I was so pleased with what he sent back to me on the first draft. We barely made any changes before I committed to it. Such a multi-talented individual, that John.

That’s one of the cool things about our online community: People from around the world can work together on projects, and we really benefit from each other’s talents and passion. Have you had any other similar interactions with artists online?

So many! More than I ever would have anticipated, to be honest. I have another release on the horizon called “What Was Said” for which Moss Cottage has contributed some artwork and I got Ty from the band Thresher to do a scream for me, and I’ve also done some work with Kian Dray that will be released at some point in the future. I’m also doing some stuff with a bunch of other people that I won’t try to list for fear of forgetting anyone, but it’s been really fun to get to work with people who are really passionate about making great stuff. Like you said, our talents and passions lie in different areas and we’re a pretty inclusive bunch, so you’re bound to link up with someone who has what you need and needs what you have.

What about artists in your own area? Have you had a chance to meet or work with anyone local to Toronto?

Not so much, unfortunately. I have yet to play live as Prime Birds so I haven’t met anyone that way yet. Most of my connections have been through Twitter and as luck would have it, I don’t know if I’ve come across too many fellow Torontonians. But I sure would be glad to. Hit me up if you’re from Turrona.

What’s the music scene like there? Do you have any plans to play live?

There are lots of places to play, though less than a few years ago. Places are closing and being turned into condos. But the scene is still really vibrant – at least, I believe it is. To be honest I’m not very connected with it, for a few reasons. One of them being that as a solo artist that plays full-band music, I haven’t figured out a way to represent the breadth of what I do on stage in an engaging way. I’m sure I can do it, but it hasn’t been a priority. Also, I’m a mid-thirties guy with a 9-5 job and a family that I adore, so I don’t have a ton of time for attending shows, let alone playing them. Not to say I won’t play in the future though. It would be great.

What’s on the horizon?

Prime Birds has another release that’s really close to getting a formal release date; the aforementioned “What Was Said”. Then I’ve got some other stuff in the works that I may or may not release as singles before setting my sights on my first LP. I have almost all the material I need for it and a somewhat cohesive theme, but I’ll need to do a bit of writing and a lot of re-mixing, and some re-recording, so I don’t have a timeline for that yet. But in the meantime, I have lots of other projects I’m contributing to. I’ll be on an upcoming Jimmy Eat World cover album, at least one (and maybe more) Nirvana covers with other Only The Host folks, and I’m hoping I can get a Christmas song in before the deadline. There’s new stuff popping up every day. I’m actually having a bit of a hard time keeping track of it all myself, which is an exciting and fun problem to have.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me!

Any time Marc, thanks for letting me ramble about myself to your readers!