92. The making of Toomi's sweet melodies
"It's work – but it's towards something that matters to me, which is sharing something that's important to me."
I’ve known Tom Trieu since college, when we took the class “Asian-American Literature since 2000” in my last semester. We had many conversations about literature, metaphors, art, and other themes I like to explore on this Substack. Since then, it’s been a joy to follow Tom from grad school, to moving to New York, to developing his singer-songwriter persona as Toomi! I wanted to ask Tom all about how Toomi came to be.
Normally I ask these conversation guests to fill in a Google doc, but this time, a video interview felt right. We discuss Tom’s longtime hobbies in poetry and songwriting; the connecting thread behind his inspirations, from the Beach Boys to Vietnamese classic Paris by Night; and the reason why we share art at all.
You can watch or read below:
Here is our video interview transcript, edited for concision and clarity.
Rachel: Welcome, Tom. How are you?
Tom: I'm great. Thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation.
R: Yeah. Of course. So I gave you the questions ahead of time, and we'll just see where things end up. So, what got you into making music, since you started in the working world after college?
T: I guess my story starts similar to a lot of people. I was writing songs, you know, just for fun in high school, and that's why I first got my first MacBook. And I was playing with GarageBand. And it was kind of a dormant hobby of mine for a while. I think I was kind of like, shy or I felt maybe a little embarrassed to do stuff in high school.
But then after I graduated college, a close friend of mine, Alex Togashii, he goes by Alex Togashii, his artist name. And, I was just at his house one day, and he was kind of doing some music stuff, and he showed me how he was producing songs. And I was just curious, like, how does that work?
And he kind of took me into his little home studio, and I started to get a peek into how he does stuff, and we were just messing around. I was playing with the guitar, and then he's like, hey, you should record that. And so we recorded like a little chord loop. And basically one thing led to another thing and all of a sudden he's producing the song for me.
So we spent maybe ten hours, just writing. And he let me lead the writing, but he was doing all the things around it, like playing the bass, or he would put the drum loop on and he just kind of let me do what I didn't know I really enjoyed doing, which is just listening to a rhythm or a chord progression and then writing a melody.
And we produced this little demo at the end of it, and I was really excited about that, and I listened to it over and over again. It felt super empowering, like, oh, I can't believe I can just make something and it can just be recorded. And I could just have this file on my computer, and it's my voice and some of my ideas.
So that's kind of how it started. And then, we had that demo. I shared it with people. It ended up getting reworked and put onto my first EP. What is the first EP called, Water Wings? Like a few years back now, I think during Covid. And then from there I just started to learn the software … I think my songwriting got a lot better because I was just playing with it, and it was a really playful little side hobby that has now kind of grown into a project that's called Toomi.
At the time, I didn't even have the name Toomi or anything. I just had this little demo and I was like, it's a fun memory. It was pure playfulness. Which, you know, a lot of creatives talk about being really key.
R: Oh that's awesome. That sounds very organic and natural. And what was that first song called?
T: It was called “Fragments.” Yeah, I feel like I hadn't done a lot of creative stuff. I was pursuing a sociology PhD at the time, and so there's an element of creativeness there and the writing, but not exactly like in college, for example. You know, I did a poetry seminar, and I had this side blog with poems that I used to write and publish to nobody. But, you know, it's part of my work or the things that I like doing. And I felt like it was a lot of latent energy and even ideas that I had been sitting on, that came out in that song. And then, you know, to this day … there’s nothing I would change about it. I think I've grown as a songwriter and my taste has developed. But I still think there's … a lot of stuff that's pretty core to how I feel about how I like to express myself, and especially in the lyrics I thought was a good avenue for me.
R: I didn't know you wrote poetry as well! For anyone watching who doesn't know how we're connected, we both went to Pomona College at the same time, and we took … at least for me, it was in my fourth year that we took Asian/American Literature Since 2000. Yeah, that did have some poetry in it as well.
T: Yeah. There was like a little side blog thing that I had at the time with another classmate of mine from Pomona, and we still post in it from time to time. That was part of my college around that time too. Yeah.
R: That’s interesting. So then that's one of my questions. I'm always curious about songwriters because I don't know which comes first for people: the lyrics or the melody. For you, is it always one or the other, or does it change?
T: So for me, I'll mess around on the guitar usually. Maybe on the computer, just putting a beat together, and then I would say it's the melody. I have some melody in my head from what I'm playing on the guitar. And then I will take that and I'll just put filler words because I want to get something going, and usually success hinges on: do those filler words that just come out in that moment, do they feel right or are they good? And that's usually what helps me feel good about continuing to develop the song. Like, okay, I have one phrase or one something that's worth kind of picking up, and it makes me feel good enough about the project to keep pushing it forward.
So it's some sort of combination. I feel like the melody comes first, but if the lyrics aren't something that I feel even mildly excited about, it's hard for the song to live on. So it's almost like they both need to be born at the same time. But you know, there's always exceptions to that.
R: That's cool. I noticed a lot of your songs have some central metaphor or concept, like most recently the “Paperclips” song. It has some fun imagery in it. Or like before I heard one about eczema. The love object that you can't seem to get rid of.
T: Yeah, that one was something Alex and I shared or we picked up together. He was big on doing that too. And I thought that was just like a fun way, a fun device. I personally just love the corniest love or sad songs ever. Like from the 60s. And that's my personal taste. And I feel like it's hard to write lyrics that direct and blunt, like “I'll love you forever,” today.
So I just shrouded behind some sort of metaphor that makes it a little less on the nose. But at the end of the day, I think that's what I really want to say: a very pure feeling of happiness, or whatever it is. I'll also say for “Paperclips,” for example, actually, this most recent project that I've been doing … It's interesting you asked a question about the lyrics versus the melody. I was … just feeling very playful and excited to write, but I was feeling like if I just … come up with something off the top of my head, I write similar things, or the lyrics might be kind of generic and not specific.
And I feel like the songs are successful for me when I feel like there's something, some specific angle that helps me to push through it. So I had also just moved to New York at the time. It was two years ago now. And I was meeting tons of people, and it was an icebreaker I was doing, first with friends. I was just like, hey, if you give me a topic to write a song about, I'll write that song. And that helped me feel free in a lot of ways. You know, I think freedom is a big part of the creativity process. And it just made me feel like, okay, I'm just going to write this song.
“Paperclips” was one of the suggestions that actually came from Alex, and I'm just gonna write it: if it's good, that's great. If it's bad, it doesn't matter. It's just like a thing that I'm trying. And most of the songs came from one of those prompts. There's a song “Little Godzilla” that came out last year that also was one of the prompts that I talked to a friend about at her birthday party or something like that. So, that was like a little fun route into some of those metaphors or images that I feature in the songs.
R: Oh, I love that because yeah, sometimes when you're faced with a blank canvas and you can do anything ever, then it makes it so much more difficult.
T: Right … the limitation is freedom. So it was fun. It felt it lowered the stakes too. I think like when I have a melody I really like, I can get precious with it. It was like, okay, this one needs to be the song because I love it and I need people to love it as much as I do. And then it's hard to write even a single lyric when you're that precious about the thing. So there are some songs in there that have a great beat, great rhythms, and melody ideas that just didn't make it.
I think just being okay with that is part of the process … I've been trying to access abundance mindsets, like that's okay. Like, you'll write another song and it'll be another song that will have another melody that you like – it doesn't have to be this one – that just helped me unlock something.
R: I can imagine because I might make a lot of sketches, but only some of them end up as finished pieces. So I guess it's kind of the same when you're writing music. How much do you think, of all the music you make, how many tracks become finished? Is there a certain ratio, would you say?
T: I was just clearing out my phone from voice memos, and not all of them are solid ideas, but, you know, there's something like 300 random voice memos. Again, it's not 300 ideas, but maybe there's 100 ideas in there and some of them make it. Some of them I forgot, you know, so who knows. It's a small percentage ish. But, yeah, I think it all kind of works out the end.
R: Oh, totally. And going back to your idea about pure emotion and putting that into the song. Yeah, I do feel like sometimes modern music or just modern culture can feel like, too cool for school, you know? People kind of play down emotion. So is that one of the reasons you like the nostalgic music? Did you grow up with it, or what kind of artists would you model?
T: Yeah, I think I did grow up with it. I really liked the Beach Boys as a big influence and like, that sort of summer… When you hear them, I feel like there's some complexity to it. But the songs that I like are just very summery and sweet and melodic, maybe a little wistful, like all of the things that I can't help but put into my own music.
I had this huge Beatles phase in high school, but, you know, people talk about the the Beatles as really experimental and all that. They have this sort of experimental phase in the second half of their discography. But what I find myself gravitating towards [are] those really simple pop, sweet melodies. Maybe it's something that's held on.
I think growing up I liked a lot of singer-songwriter stuff. And then I thought the indie scene growing up was cool. They were using different types of sounds and vibes. But I think at the end of the day, I always just liked a melody. Just a nice melody that's sweet and catchy and maybe has a taste of sadness, but like a sweet sadness, you know, that's always appealed to me.
I think another factor is … my parents were born in Vietnam and they didn't have it on too much, but there's this feature or entertainment production called Paris by Night that every Vietnamese household has a few discs of. This era of Vietnamese music, I think it's like around the 70s, maybe 60s, the 80s, I don't exactly know. It's a very longing type of sound. It uses some of these, like, Western influences, like ballads, but it's just over-the-top longing, over-the-top love or “I can't be without you” … I think those melodies seeped into the subconscious at some point and have influenced everything from there.
R: Oh, that's so fun. And I can imagine that kind of music is the hardest to write in a way, because it's so simple. Like you say, if it's all about the melody, then you can't hide behind any fancy instrumentation or effects.
T: Yeah. At the end of the day it's, is there a song there? And, yeah, I tell that to people all the time: I just like songs. And what I mean is melodies – harmonies to some extent, but just like a nice [melody]. That's what makes a song a song to me. Not the production of it, though I'm not free of using production as a supplement. I try not to use it as a mask for the fact that there's no song underneath it. But that's kind of my goal when I write.
R: Totally. And I'm curious, how did your style change since you moved away from California? Because like you said, the Beach Boys and that style, it is very California coded.
T: That's an interesting question … I think it's starting to evolve a little, like slowly I feel, the songs that are being released right now, I wrote … most of them are written like one and a half or two years ago. So I think they were still fresh … I just moved away from California. But there's something I think that started to take a little bit more.
I have a song coming out that I'm pretty excited about, that's much more stripped, and it's acoustic and a very pure thing. It's just like this straight up breakup song. And I wrote it in this pretty raw emotional state and I'm proud that there's a little metaphorical stuff in there, but I didn't hide too much, you know? And it's almost folky or I don't know what it is, but it’s not beachy. And I'm excited to share that part of myself with other people, when that song comes out. So I think maybe a little bit, but, there's some things that will be with me forever I think, in terms of that sound.
R: Oh, nice. And have you performed much live?
T: Yeah. The live performance was interesting because I released my first album or EP in Covid. So there were not too many opportunities there. And we actually did a few live streams with people who are just living in my house. And that was exciting. But it didn't feel like quite like live.
I did one show before I left California, and that was a really exciting thing to put together. But then when I got to New York, I made a more dedicated push to perform live. So since I've gotten here, I think I've done maybe six shows … So it's been a much more regular thing and the first one was really exciting. It had its ups and downs, like some shows go well, some shows I feel like don't go as well. So it's been a lot more like performing live in a new city as well. It's been it's own little adventure, like the live performance piece of it.
R: Yeah that's good. Good for you putting yourself out there!
T: Thank you!
R: Are there regular musicians that you work with, mainly your friend Alex or?
T: Yeah, Alex is still probably my closest collaborator. He does a lot of the post-processing of the music. So he's mixing, and he does some production work, and he'll master it as well before it goes out. There's my band here, which is a few close friends, some folks that I found that I've met over the course of my stay here. So we'll collaborate. Most of them with the live stuff. I think a lot of the stuff that's recorded has been baked. So we'll see what happens moving forward.
But there is some collaboration. My friend Ryan who lives here, we've been close. He moved from California as well. He plays bass, he plays violin. And he has a lot of ideas, especially that we bounce off of each other, that I bounce off of him, every now and then. The collaboration has gone and come and gone in that way. But I definitely am excited about potentially making more direct music connections and maybe co-writing things I've always been interested in. Like, I personally love songs with female vocalist, and when I write, I feel limited by my own ice. I like my voice, but there's certain types of sounds that I think are really beautiful when there's a female vocalist. And so it's it's something I wanted to experiment with, but I haven't had the time to figure out.
R: Yeah, I can imagine you could expand your sound to have male female harmonies and stuff.
T: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that'll be fun.
R: Yeah. What you mentioned, like the parts you enjoy about collaborating. Is there anything that's more difficult about it?
T: Yeah. I mean. Even accessing the creative part of yourself is hard enough alone. And so to actually sit with another person is like, sometimes I feel like I'm pulling my own teeth till I allow myself to feel free. I use that word a lot, but just feel safe and comfortable to say something. And then when someone else is in the room, it's definitely scary to be like, oh, this is my idea. And trust that they're not going to judge that idea, and trust that they're going to try something new. And then maybe it's hard for both sides to like, feel. It takes a lot of trust.
Even when I'm working alone, I hit or miss if I'm going to have a good day or a bad day. And so it's sometimes hard when you work with someone else, you kind of have to accept the types of day that both of you are going to have, and see what’s possible from there. So that's been one of the challenges.
I think that's probably why I've done a lot of stuff, more solo in the past. But, it's definitely an area I would want to grow.
R: I can imagine. And how is it finding time to make art and music with a full time job?
T: So yeah, that's been a struggle for sure. Especially with this release stuff. I decided I was going to commit to really giving the release a chance to breathe, and a lot of the work these days, it's not just making the stuff, but letting people know that it exists. There's a lot of channels with which you can do that. And I sometimes oscillate between how much I enjoy that part of the work. It's work – but it's towards something that matters to me, which is sharing something that's important to me. So that's been a lot of the time, I think.
I enjoy making video content. There’s a release schedule or there's trying to submit things to playlists – all that stuff is part of the modern music industry. So I feel like it's been hard to carve out time to create. I haven’t been able to just pick up the guitar and mess around. But having formal writing time … I haven't figured out the balance of working that into the marketing piece, and the live performance piece can be its own ting. You have to rehearse and it's a different type of creative mode. And then there’s the full time job and the other things in life that I want to do. And that's just the challenge of living, I guess.
R: Totally. I can relate a bit because for my art and craft fairs, marketing the craft fairs and as you say, making sure everyone knows about what you do is a different kind of creativity from actually making the thing. And they’re taxing in their own way. And finding time just for yourself too, on top of that.
T: Yeah. [Music making] is a very sacred time. You know, it has to be uninterrupted … I find it hard to just schedule it. You know, I can't just be like, okay, I have 30 minutes to write. Sometimes that works. But not really. I like having days, and days are harder to come by nowadays. So I don't know how that will work. It’s something I'll have to think about.
R: Yeah. I mean, I wrote my whole Pomona thesis about inspiration and … the theme of it was that it's still capricious. [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge had all these metaphors for inspiration, like whether it's the wind through the lyre or the lightning strike or whatever. It hits in different ways in different times. But like you say, the time is one thing, but also, letting yourself feel safe and then trusting that it'll come back … it's like you said, that the “why” is so crucial.
T: Yeah. And it's not something that's the same every day, or that I feel as strongly day to day. Some days I feel really strongly, like I need to pause everything. I need to go write this down or I need to go do this. And some days it's more like, oh yeah, this is like a fun thing that I do. It's hard to balance.
The poetry seminar I took in Claremont, while we were in the semester, the professor was like, hey, for this semester, you are a poet. So what do poets do? They write every day. It doesn't matter. Like they don't just wait for inspiration to strike. I think about that sometimes. And I'm not necessarily living up to that. It's always my goal. Like, can we just write a little bit or do a little creative thing every day? It's much easier to say than to do.
R: They say it's like a muscle or something.
T: 100%, yeah.
R: What else did I want to ask? Yeah, I guess more about the music industry like you mentioned, trying to get onto playlists. I haven't heard much about how that happens behind the scenes. Is there anything about distributing your music that might surprise people?
T: Yeah. It’s interesting. They say that it's gotten a lot more horizontal with streaming services. Anyone can just release anything. I think before it used to be a lot more about connections. I still haven't mastered the industry. We're working at figuring it out, but yeah, there's an interesting little life cycle.
I think people say it's important to not just release but get the most out of the release. And there's a lot of different things you can do to ensure that, one of them being submitting the playlist. So there’s these paid platforms … and you can submit to curators and they'll listen to your song, give you feedback, and decide if they want to add it to their playlists or not. It's fun sometimes just to, like, be on a playlist. You get to see what other other artists are doing. And, so that's one work stream, and then the other has been … I think a big part of the game now is running ads and trying to get the word out there. So I've been trying to make video content and make things that are ad friendly, and running some of those and seeing how that goes. And so far it's been – I don't know, it's hard to measure success, but people are listening to it.
I think the consistency of the releasing, not just once a year but multiple times throughout the year. And right now I'm on this schedule of every three weeks or every four weeks. They say consistency and putting it out there and these ads and playlist channels, that's what they tell me at least. Who knows? I think there's an element of mystery to this, which can be daunting but also just not under my control.
R: Well, you have a naturally good sense of humor, so I feel like you would make some funny videos.
T: Yeah, I hope so. Thank you. I appreciate that.
R: Yeah, I think that's all the questions I had. Was there anything you wanted to add about your process? Music, anything you want to plug?
T: I guess I'll add … I’ll be curious your perspective on this, too. One thing that I've really struggled with before I decided to do this release cycle was, what exactly is … Essentially, like it's an existential question around, what is the point? Okay, I know what the point of music is, or what the point of art is, that I'll always know. Art is just this really cool thing we can do, we can express ourselves, and it's a beautiful thing – it’s human, it's beautiful. All those things are understood throughout the eons. I think what I haven't always found a great answer to is just, what's the point of sharing it? And I've asked all my friends, I feel like I have all these songs, I like them. I think people around me like them, but why should I share them? What exactly do we get out of that?
And I've been trying to find an answer that resonates with me. And I think there's something human, there's something social about art … It means that I'm using it as a means of connecting with another person. I think it can be hard with music when you're releasing it on a platform. People are streaming it. You don't know if they listened to it, if they liked it … you may only get a very low signal, right? It's not like other types of social connection where I get immediate feedback, like a conversation, for example.
So it's been kind of hard, but I think there's some answer around, it brings it to life. It proves that it exists. It's a core part of being human, that it's shared and that it exists outside of your own head, or outside of your own hard drive. It's been something that's been tricky. But I think there's something interesting at the other side of the question, so that's been part of the process as well. I'd be curious if you have any take on that. I know you have your own work that you bring and you present at fairs and stuff like that. And how you think about that, if you do.
R: That's very deep. I guess in the context of music, I think it's pretty neat that you get to record something that'll be experienced. Well, not experienced in the same way, but people can play it back many times. And so it's existing as a part of their life. Like, it's in their lifespan. And it could be in many people's timelines simultaneously … And then the fact you may not have physical recordings out, but say, imagine if you put it on vinyl or a CD or something, like someone could pick that up decades down the road, the same way you listen to the Beach Boys and Beatles recordings.
T: Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, it's like a different type of, in a way I'm sort of connecting with them. I guess that's the same with writing a book or whatever. You're connecting with someone in an abstracted way. It's like part of myself in the form of this file or this physical CD or vinyl or whatever.
And the other person on the other side is a human. Yeah, it's been interesting … people have been very kind, yourself included, just going like, hey, the song is great. And, I read those messages and it does make me happy, but it also feels like something's lost. And just like the message, like, I wish we could listen to it together or we could experience it together somehow. And I guess that's what the shows are. But even the shows are tough because I'm up there and I'm just doing my thing. It’s dark and hard to see sometimes. But anyways, I think … there's something there about connection in general, it's a theme I'm exploring in my life outside of music as well, just trying to figure out connection and getting the most out of the fact that we all live here together.
R: Totally. Yeah, that's really neat. You're right. I guess it is a connection in a conversation in a way. Maybe more one sided or unequal compared to how we're talking just now. But yeah, I think it's also really cool about art that, you make something perhaps with a specific intention in mind or a certain style, and then people can receive it differently and then have their own interpretations, and hearing those can be fun too.
Sometimes people will tell me my art feels very calm, like my landscapes, the colours I choose. And that's not something I necessarily intended going into it. But I guess maybe something about my calm mood as I'm creating is transmitted into the piece.
T: Yeah. It's like our consciousness as the creator is only – it’s limited, and what we convey in the thing is… I have my intentions, but there's a lot of decisions I made that were not necessarily like I made every detail. I mean, you strive for that, but once it's out there, who knows what was sent out and what's received.
R: Yeah. And like you said, you keep making new things and your style keeps evolving. Anything else?
T: I'm sure I could talk for hours and hours about this process and and all of that, but thank you so much for the really thoughtful questions. I feel like you touched on a lot of the things that I forget sometimes, but I do think about a lot … uncovering parts of my journey that maybe I take for granted sometimes. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to voice it and to share.
R: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for your time and for your honest reflections too. It's been really neat seeing your Toomi brand grow on Instagram for the last few years. I'm really excited for you and and happy to see what's next.
Where can the people find you?
T: They can find me on Instagram, @toomiiiii__. And then Toomi on all the streaming services as well (Spotify, Bandcamp, TikTok, and more). So, that's probably the two most prominent places you can find me.
R: Fantastic. I'll put the links in the Substack post as well!