Sonic Journeying with Nick Paraggio / Captain Vampire
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.
Beatnik:But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.
AP Strange:Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show. I'm your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and today's show is brought to you by Transylvanian Cruise Lines. Enjoy the quietude and peace of mind being out at sea on, Transylvania Cruise Lines.
AP Strange:You you may find that the other attendants on the boat with you will become less and less intrusive or just less and less there at all as you continue your journey. And, yeah, certainly no no shady doings on these trips, and and nobody's dying, and nothing is bad. So, sign up for Transylvania Cruise Lines today. So today today on the show, I have a very appropriate guest, the one and only Captain Vampire, Nick Paraggio. He's a Boston musician and a songwriter and really interesting subject matter in the songs.
AP Strange:The song lyrics are really cool. I had the great pleasure of just stumbling upon Nick and Captain Vampire performance in Western Massachusetts, and I was really kind of blown away by it because it's like not often that I hear lyrics where I go, wait, I know what he's talking about. I know what those words are. Like, know what the song's about. So yeah.
AP Strange:And and currently working on and ready to perform an exciting project, is related to our sponsor today. So welcome to the show, Nick. Thanks for coming on.
Nick Paraggio:AP, it's great to it's great to be here. Thank you very much for the invite.
AP Strange:Yeah. Of course. Yeah. As I was saying before we were recording, I was you were kind of on a short list of people I did wanna invite because I'm always looking for, you know, kind of really unique guests to have on and and just based on seeing you play live and then also listening to your Bandcamp and all the songs that were on there and then following along and keeping up with it the past, I don't know, I guess it's now a year or two, two years. Probably about two years.
AP Strange:Right, that I saw you. Just endlessly interesting, especially the types of subjects you cover. So I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit about the evolution of the Captain Vampire project because it seems like it's gone through a few steps with each each recording project.
Nick Paraggio:Absolutely. That is that is an understatement. Right. So speaking of that show in Worcester, I still have your Wheel of Fortune pin on my guitar strap. Oh.
Nick Paraggio:It's my it's my bottom pin. Cool. You you said it was lucky, so I I take it at every show. You you made an impression. I just want you to know that.
AP Strange:Oh, awesome.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. So I started I started making music and calling it Captain Vampire in 2019. And the first record I put together was really kind of the sound of me learning how to make a record. Mhmm. I was living in Central New York, like, forty minutes outside of Albany into the Northern Catskills or so, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff I had been listening to as a teenager, a lot of my chemical romance.
Nick Paraggio:I was getting more into power metal. I discovered Visigoth. We're a a Salt Lake City power metal band who is just super fun. And I was also, you know, getting better at digital digital sound stuff, and I was just kinda throwing a bunch of shit at the wall. And, the first record was a concept album about accidentally summoning summoning a demon.
Nick Paraggio:So the the the lines of occultism have always been there, just presented in a in a way that's musically very different. I moved to Boston in, fall twenty twenty one, and clubs were starting to open back up. House venues were starting to open back up after the pandemic. And I I kind of accidentally became a folk punk musician because it turns out that when you, go to shows I didn't have a band yet. I was just me.
Nick Paraggio:I was playing acoustic guitar at these shows because I, I wanted to fill out the sound a little bit more.
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:So the the acoustic was kind of a natural choice because it's, just kinda richer and it's more percussive also, so you can get away with more without a drummer. And it turns out that when you play, like, punk and post hardcore and emo songs with an acoustic guitar, people tell you that you're a folk punk
AP Strange:artist. Right. Kinda by default, usually.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of got this, like, accidental reputation as a folk punk musician. And I was like, alright. This is this is what we're doing.
Nick Paraggio:So I was, I was getting more interested in history. I wrote an EP all about history that, has your friend and mine, Alistair Crowley, featured prominently on one of the songs
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:On the receiving end of WB Yates's foot. Yeah. And after that, I that was the big history project. I still write a little bit about history. There's some Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:Recent history songs too. But I did an EP about pigeons. I wanted to do some pigeon things, so I put out four tracks on pigeons exclusively. I think that was 2023.
AP Strange:Okay. Pretty sure. Yep. That one today. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:I I think it holds up. I think the birds songs hold up.
AP Strange:They're really nice. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And then I kinda got this, like, little bug in my head, in maybe late twenty twenty two, maybe middle of twenty twenty two. I I came late to Bram Stoker's, Dracula. I you know, everybody knows it by reputation, but I hadn't actually read the book Mhmm. Until, I think, the end of twenty twenty one, beginning of twenty twenty two. And I just kinda had it in my head.
Nick Paraggio:And the there there's this brief aside in the book where it's the ship's log of the boat that's taking Dracula's coffin from the Bulgarian port of Varna because you can't get to Transylvania to from Transylvania to England overland because you have to go over the mountains and it sucks. So you go to Bulgaria and then around the Black Sea through the Mediterranean and up the coast by, like, Spain and France. That's how that's how Bram Stoker wrote the journey. I don't know what people actually would have done, but there were there were shipping routes and stuff, so he probably looked at that or or maybe he didn't.
Beatnik:But Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:That's the that's the part of the book that really stuck with me because it's it's just so abruptly different from the rest of the thing.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:And I I kinda I couldn't get it out of my head, and I wrote a couple songs, kind of in the style that I was writing the songs about history and pigeons and stuff Mhmm. About about being on a small ship with Dracula. Nice. And that kept sticking in my head for another three two and a half, three years until I couldn't take it anymore, and I put Captain Vampire on hiatus. I learned to write in the third person, and I spent eight months writing a, a forty minute third person epic poem thing, about this, very brief part of Dracula.
Nick Paraggio:So that's kinda been that's kinda been what I've been up to Right. For the last year or so.
AP Strange:So this is the ship, The Demeter from
Beatnik:Yes.
AP Strange:The Demeter. And and they made a movie about that a few years ago too. How did you feel about that when the movie came out? Because it's like you're you're kind of obsessing in making this epic poem, but then now there's the Voyage of Demeter movie, which I I haven't got around to watching yet, but I heard it was okay.
Nick Paraggio:I also heard it was okay. By that time, I had already written three songs
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:About it, and I was like, no way am I watching this movie. I can't like, I can't have that be what's in my head.
AP Strange:Right. You don't wanna contaminate process. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even know I was gonna turn it into anything and I was still like, no. I'm not doing that.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, it's crazy, the timing, you know, or where you're sometimes I feel like things are just in the air and different people are picking up on it at the same time, you know. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And it's weird how, like, certain ideas will persist over long periods of time. Right? Because there are there are so many ideas that I have, and I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. I should write some music about it. And then I wake up the next morning, and it's vanished from my life.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. But I think, something with sticking power, it, it encourages me to believe in it because part of me is clearly already believing in it if I'm still thinking about it.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Well, you know, with with hindsight for your stuff that I've done in the past, I can say confidently that those things sometimes will take years to come back. You know, it can be like ten years and then you're like, hey, I remember having this idea once. Why don't I do that finally?
AP Strange:Know? Yeah. Yeah. They never really go away, you know? The good ones don't anyway.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. And I I I really believe in egging people on when they're when they're on a tear like that. My spouse has had this idea. I think it's such a great idea, and I'm gonna hype it up to you even though this project doesn't exist yet because it's such a good
Beatnik:idea
Nick Paraggio:and I love to hype. Right. Of a an an EP that's from the perspective of horror movie Final Girls, and each song is a different character.
AP Strange:Alright. I'm already sold. But Yeah.
Beatnik:It's a good idea. This is what I'm saying.
Nick Paraggio:Like, I'm gonna send her this this podcast when we're done recording. And, man, I I feel
AP Strange:like already sold on that idea. People would eat that up. Yes. The horror cons and things. You know?
Nick Paraggio:Exactly. Exactly. There's a community that's you know?
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:It's the thing.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Well, I'm take my weird Dracula thing around.
AP Strange:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I find it interesting personally here that the name Captain Vampire preceded this idea or this project. Oh, like Or your interest in Dracula.
AP Strange:Right? Yeah. Like fully. Yeah. So where did you come up with the name Captain Vampire?
Nick Paraggio:Not a lot of people know this. I'm named after a book.
AP Strange:Oh, okay.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Captain Vampire by Marie Nazaire. It is a, also kind of a foundational gothic horror text. The Captain Vampire in the book is like a evil bastard military officer. And he's not, like, made super, like, explicitly supernatural, but there's, like, vibes going on.
Nick Paraggio:But there's, like, there's deniability there. So I'd hesitate to, like, really call it a proper vampire novel because you don't you don't see the action.
AP Strange:But it has the word in it in the title.
Nick Paraggio:It has the word in it, and it's such a good title. It's such a good name, and it's in the public domain.
AP Strange:Okay. Well, yeah, that's that's crucial when you're gonna use it. Yeah. But when was it written?
Nick Paraggio:Oh, jeez. It was written in the the eighteen eighties or nineties. Okay.
AP Strange:So maybe even before Dracula.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. It predated Dracula.
AP Strange:Okay. Yeah. Wow. Very interesting.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. And Marina's Day was, like, '17. Very cool story.
AP Strange:Wow. Well, I mean, Mary Shelley wasn't very old when she wrote Frankenstein, and that also has the ship in it, you know, the the the ship's log. So
Nick Paraggio:People people yearn for boat time.
AP Strange:I know. Well, I do it too. When I when I'm thinking of metaphors, I always go to the ocean for some reason. Right. Yeah.
AP Strange:Well, that's part of it. I'm a New Englander. I've always lived here. So Me too.
Nick Paraggio:Except for that brief period, lived in New York.
AP Strange:Oh, okay. Alright. So you grew up in in New England?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I'm from Nashua. I'm from Nashua, New Hampshire.
AP Strange:Oh, alright. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:I've always been in the Greater Boston area. I moved to New York. I went to college in New York and then I worked in New York for a couple years and then moved back.
AP Strange:Cool. Yeah. Alright. So where did well, there's a lot of places I can go with this, but where where did where did the interest in history come from? And specifically, like, weird history because there's there are the occult themes.
AP Strange:Are you are you a practicing magician, or is it more of an interest in that, or is it more historical?
Nick Paraggio:Well, I think the answer to that question is gonna depend a lot on the time of my life that I'm that I'm describing. I was a I was I was totally a witchcraft kid. Okay. Like, I I had a pretty managed media diet as a child. Like, my parents were very, very not like I wouldn't say they were oppressively censorship, sort of thing, but there was definitely a lid on like, I wasn't reading really crazy stuff as a kid, but I always had an interest.
Nick Paraggio:I remember, like, as a as a middle schooler, like, trying to invent my own secret codes and languages and, like, doing weird rituals to see if I could, like, tap into anything. And, you know, I was a child. And then I I fell out of it. And then I had a mystical experience in in college. And that kinda threw me.
Nick Paraggio:I've, it was a a profound moment of reflection in my life.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:And that kind of reignited my interest in spirituality, non Christian spirituality, especially in occultism, and in the history of religion also. Yeah. I'm in graduate school right now after a long absence from from learning Yeah. For historical musicology. So I love me a tome.
Nick Paraggio:Love I love to get my dirty hands on a tome and and plummets depths. So it's it's an inclination that's been with me for a long time. But a lot of the a lot of the history stuff specifically, whether it's the occult history or the history of religion stuff, and there's history of religion stuff that's, like, buried in some of the things that's, like, not necessarily obvious that I can Okay. I can discuss. But a lot of it I'm also, like, a recreational Wikipedia diver.
AP Strange:Right. So
Nick Paraggio:that that scratches a lot of the day to day itch for me. Like, that's my that's my my scrolling fix is Wikipedia link jumping.
AP Strange:Yeah. That's a lot of fun. And then also finding the citations and, like, tracking those down, especially if the PDF's online and then looking at it and reading the original sources, I love that.
Beatnik:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah.
AP Strange:I have a lot of tomes around here that came from something like that where I followed a trail of citations, and then I'm like, alright. This book exists. I can find it, and I'll find it somewhere in the world and end up with it in my collection. You know?
Nick Paraggio:I've had that exact experience. I was on the trail of this really specific, seventeenth century, lute music manuscript
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:For eight or nine months because it has some really specific things in it that are that were at the time very interesting to me because of their implications for how particular styles of music are played today. And I was on the trail of this manuscript, and it was published in this, like, dead Belgian publisher in the seventies and then never published again. And then somebody that I knew, I I was over at at her house, my my lute teacher. I'm I'm a lute player.
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:And she was getting rid of a bunch of stuff. And she was like, you wanna look in the boxes and see if you want anything? And I was like, of course, I wanna in the boxes. I I love boxes. And she had it.
AP Strange:That's yeah.
Nick Paraggio:All this time. She had a spare copy of this obscure facsimile of this seventeenth century loot manuscript. I was like, why?
AP Strange:That's fantastic. Yeah. It's Those, like, serendipitous moments, and then you're so excited about it, and it's hard to explain to people. You know?
Nick Paraggio:Yes. Yes. Because, like, it would take a long digression to explain, like, why this thing has, like, been on my mind for months and months and months and months, but then it just pops into your life and,
AP Strange:woah. Right.
Nick Paraggio:Brussels Codex seven zero four in my life.
AP Strange:Yeah, that's fantastic, and also, yeah, I meant to mention it in your introduction that you're a lute player, and I did wanna get into that. So where did that come from? How you come to learn the lute, And and are there a lot of people doing that these days?
Nick Paraggio:You know, there are more than anybody expects.
Beatnik:Okay. Not a lot.
AP Strange:Right.
Beatnik:Not a lot.
Nick Paraggio:But more than anyone expects. So when I was in college, I studied, I studied music. I was a music education major. I was a public school music teacher Mhmm. For a couple of years.
Nick Paraggio:That's what I was doing in New York in New York State. So I was introduced to lute music as a listener in one of my music history courses as an impressionable 18 year old or something. Mhmm. And I just thought it sounded nice. I thought it was cool.
Nick Paraggio:I had a very stressful work life. I was the sole vocal music teacher in a small rural school district Mhmm. Teaching pre k through 12, my first year of teaching.
AP Strange:Wow. So that's a lot of kids. Right?
Nick Paraggio:It's a lot of kids, and it's a lot of it's a lot of different needs. Yeah. So lute music kind of became my relax, everything's gonna be okay, there are no children yelling at you right now music. Okay. And I made up my mind, like, gradually that I wanted to pay off my student loans and then buy a loot
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:And, and learn the loot. And so I I, you know, worked for a couple of years. We were living in the middle of nowhere, and rent was, like, $400 a month.
AP Strange:Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Can't find that in Boston. No.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. It was $800 for the Top Floor of this walk up, and I was splitting it two ways. So I was living real cheap.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And, yeah. And I I did it. I I saved up over a while. Loots are terrifyingly expensive.
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. And
AP Strange:And I imagine not not super easy to find. Right?
Nick Paraggio:No. No. You have to usually get them from an old man or something.
AP Strange:Or or have repaired if something goes wrong. I imagine that's difficult too. Have you had to learn how to do, like, minor repairs yourself or
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. So, fortunately, there's a guy in Lowell who is a very, very good Oud builder. Uh-huh. And Lutes are kind of like Ouds in that they have a bull back and a spruce top. So the skills for fixing them are pretty transferable.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. So I've worked with him a little bit. He one of the ways that I afforded a loot was I got, like, a pretty shitty loot
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:That had not been really cared for very well. So I took it to him, he was very helpful. And then over the last couple of years, I've been getting more comfortable doing repairs and stuff. I now have a whole herd, that I've been tinkering on, and I'm actually building one right now.
AP Strange:Oh, excellent. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I've got piles of wood just underneath my, my instrument stands over to over there. Yeah. Which will hopefully, over the course of several months, turn into a playable instrument.
AP Strange:Awesome. Yeah. Well, that's gonna be a difficult thing to do if you're, know, you're in the city. Do you have, a workspace that you can can build something where you are?
Nick Paraggio:Or Well, are a couple, like, makerspaces that have, you know, bandsaws and planers and Cool. Things like that that'll speed my life up a little bit. But people back in the day weren't making they weren't making instruments with power tools. You know? Lutes started getting built in Europe in, like, the December.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Probably earlier, honestly. But that's when we have the first pictures of them in
AP Strange:Yeah. And I guess I'm thinking more about, like, the polyurethane process and finishing where you might need, like, a ventilated ventilated area to let it dry and stuff. Yeah. The curing process there. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:The nice thing about being in, like, historical instrument land is people tend to go for less caustic sorts of things like that. Like Mhmm. People use traditional hide glue and, like, less less toxic varnishes and stuff. Okay. I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go crazy.
Nick Paraggio:There dudes who spend years and years and years on their varnish recipe with, like, boiling turpentine and dirt together and stuff. And it makes a beautiful looking instrument, but I'm just gonna do shellac probably.
AP Strange:But right.
Nick Paraggio:Because you can just dump that in some Everclear and you're good.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's much safer, but I guess I didn't consider that. I mean, I don't know that I've ever actually seen a lute person, so it's just it's a it's a mystery to me. I I played guitar for years, and I and my sense of it is that it's very, very different from playing guitar.
AP Strange:Do you find it confusing going from one to the other?
Nick Paraggio:Initially, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Because the left hand is very similar. Like, a lot of the the chord shapes aren't the same, but they're close enough that you can just be like, okay.
Nick Paraggio:We're in a weird alternate tuning. But the thing that rocked me, like, totally destabilized my my whole life was the right hand is totally different. Like, even from, like, fingerstyle guitar playing, the right hand is totally different because the strings are doubled. So you have to pluck in a way that gets you a good sound from both strings without clattering and clanging and making all sorts of ruckus.
AP Strange:Yeah. That's tough. So do you have to mute strings with your palm like you would on a guitar, or are you just trying to avoid hitting them accidentally?
Nick Paraggio:You just try to avoid hitting them accidentally most of the time. It's it's definitely more of a plucker than a strummer.
AP Strange:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because I I I watched some of the videos on your Instagram of of you playing, and I guess this is something you do regularly. Do you have a regular gig playing lute in Boston?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I'm I'm probably I'm I'm gonna qualify this heavily by saying, as far as I know, I'm probably one of the more regularly, more consistently employed lute players in Boston. I don't have the good gigs, but I have the very steady gigs, which is, you know, kind of winning by attrition.
AP Strange:Right. No. No. Like, I got the impression I I should have looked at this beforehand just now, but I got the impression these are kinda like board game nights that you're playing at, like cafes where they they do or not board games, but like tabletop gaming and stuff. Am I far off?
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:So there's a this this specific place have a I have a biweekly residency at a board game cafe in Brookline. Cool. So it's tabletop gaming. It's board gaming. It's people who want to be, like, drinking coffee around weird people.
Nick Paraggio:Mhmm. And I'm happy to oblige. And I just cold emailed them, like, a year ago, and I was like, hey, gang. You thought about having a lute player? And they were like, no.
Nick Paraggio:We haven't thought about having a lute player. That sounds so sick.
AP Strange:Right. But now we can't stop thinking about it. So
Beatnik:Yeah. Yeah. And you just gotta put
Nick Paraggio:that little bug in their head and let them go wild. You know?
AP Strange:Right. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And now I have a job.
AP Strange:Yeah. That's great. Sometimes you have to make the space for yourself, you know? Yeah. If it doesn't exist, make it, you know?
Nick Paraggio:People don't imagine that they they like the lute until you got a lute player in front of you and you're like, woah, this is sick.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. That's well, okay. So how many instruments do you play? Because we covered guitar and lute, but I feel like I've seen either pictures or video of you playing other instruments too, and I think in the notes for your recordings, so how many total?
AP Strange:Because I'm always fascinated by multi instrumentalists, especially ones that can also sing really well.
Nick Paraggio:Well, thank you. I compensate for being a good singer by not being very good at most of the instruments I play.
AP Strange:Alright. So
Nick Paraggio:the things that I actively gig with, I play mandolin, harmonium, and trumpet in Connor Storms and his Bouquet, which is a cool little folk rock sort of band. Mhmm. So I'm pretty good on those. I play a little bit of piano, enough to, like, hack through extra keyboard arrangements, or I can read piano music very slowly. I'm just like, I read music very well, but I'm very bad at reading music with both with both hands at the same time.
Nick Paraggio:That throws me off so bad. I'm a pretty good bass player. I was the I was in my high school marching band, but I didn't really like playing the trumpet, which was my main instrument, and I didn't really like marching. So I talked them into having me play the electric bass in the marching band. And you might be thinking there's no electric bass in a marching band, and there wasn't until there was.
AP Strange:I'm sensing a theme here.
Nick Paraggio:You just gotta make me pitch. You know? Right. There's a lot of pitches that I've made that people have not wanted to go with, but some of them they do.
AP Strange:Right. It's worth a try. It's always worth a try.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I also play percussion a little bit. And what else? I think those are the big ones.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, it's funny. I I played trumpet in high school, and they you know, I was made to march because there weren't very many trumpet players, so they needed everyone they could get.
Nick Paraggio:We had, 20 trumpet players.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, there was, three or four. I I went to a very small high school, so but I can say confidently that marching with a trumpet kind of sucks because it's hard to see where you're going. Really have
Beatnik:to be
AP Strange:following the person in front of you. Because there's a little clip on music stand in front of you blocking your whole vision. And I used to march in the town I grew up in and every year I would somehow be lined up with the pothole in the street and I'd step in it. While it was marching, could almost fall down.
Nick Paraggio:Oh, that's brutal. See, my thing
AP Strange:I banged the mouthpiece against my tooth because I tripped a little and I'm like, damn, that hurts.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. That was my thing. I had braces in high school and they would just be like pow pow pow pow pow pow. And I was like, enough of this. Enough of this.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's fine if you're sitting still, but moving, that's that's tough. Yeah. Well, they well, you could get get you to play taps anyway. They would do that for me.
AP Strange:I would do the taps response and I love that because we'd be at the cemetery and I'd have to just go hide. Be off in the woods somewhere, play the response.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. The echo. See, Yeah. Was I was also the taps kid.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Cool. Well, we got that in common anyway. But oh man, so much to talk about.
AP Strange:So yeah, I mean the trumpet on the recordings that's you as well on your albums.
Nick Paraggio:Oh yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. Okay. Because So it sounds great. Some of the more recent ones, the the way you work the trumpet in, I I think do you do all the vocals too or do you have other people because some of them have like a like a background vocal going on. Is that just you layering your own voice or is it other people as well?
Nick Paraggio:Early on, was just me or like jeez. I don't even remember which which one. I had, like, a couple friends come in. But the the more recent stuff I've been trying, I've been trying to be more collaborative. Normally, when I write a song, I know exactly how I want it to sound.
Nick Paraggio:Mhmm. Like, that's part of the process of writing it. Like, writing the lyrics as I'm writing the lyrics. I'm also kind of writing in my head the arrangement. Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:And it just makes it a lot faster to just be like, I know exactly what I want out of this. Let's just, like, have one awful day. Yeah. And just get it all done. But especially as I have gotten more into the scene in Boston and been making more friends, playing on other people's records, and I am I'm really starting to appreciate more and more and more just the feeling of making something with other people.
Nick Paraggio:Mhmm. And so I've been trying deliberately to, you know, not assume that the fastest way is always the best way.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Because on my on the last EP I put out, which was last fall, I just, like, had a bunch of people over to my apartment, and we just made an EP in two days. And that was such an incredible experience. It was like it feels really good to be making music in community with other people. So more recently, yeah, you're gonna hear more more other people on the backing vocals especially and, on harmonies and stuff.
Nick Paraggio:My friend Jonah from the band Poster Colors is, is on harmonies for one of the songs. My spouse, Maggie, is doing harmonies on A Sailor's Grave, which we're doing in August. And I'm just trying to I'm I'm deliberately trying to open the sound up a little bit because, you know, I can I can just keep multitracking, but that's always gonna sound like me multitracking?
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's an evolution of the sound, and and I think it's going in a great direction. It just keeps getting better. That's awesome. It was nice, like in the last couple days I was kinda going through each EP and listening and relistening to be prepared for this conversation.
AP Strange:Know, going back to the early ones then going forward and hearing that arc. And it's all good and it's all very different. I mean, sometimes you get to I was really surprised by the song Electric Heels. Have to ask what that was because that was seemed like you really had fun with that. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:So that one that one was very collaborative. That's got, my friend Finneas from the band Tall Travis playing the ukulele. He is a phenomenal ukulele player. Like, a lot of people, I think, underestimate the ukulele because it's so easy to get the absolute basics. Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:But, like, a really good ukulele player just will blow me away any day. Yeah. And then, my friend Justin also is, doing banjo on that. Right. And it was just it was just so fun.
Nick Paraggio:We had already tracked the whole rest of the EP. It was the last thing that we did, and we were just like, alright. Let's go.
AP Strange:Yeah. I wasn't expecting banjo, and I was I was like, oh, do they play banjo too? How many instruments does a person play?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. That was Justin. That wasn't me.
AP Strange:Okay. Alright. Well, I had a good laugh because listening to that this morning because I didn't see it coming, was kind of blindsided by the electric heels.
Nick Paraggio:That's how they get you.
AP Strange:Right, absolutely. It's a good cap on the EP. I think it was the last song on that one. Right? Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Because the rest of it's like a little bit heavy. It's very, like, emotional. Like, it's a little gentler than some of the other stuff I put out, and then it's kinda nice to just end with with a with having fun.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit silly. Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:As for the subject matter with your earlier songs, and for listeners, it's first time I saw Nick play. This I I guess you kinda had to explain some of the songs and to people and give a little bit of the background and what inspired it. And I had walked into the room and heard you say that you were gonna just wrap up the set, you didn't have time to explain this one, but you hope people enjoyed it. And it was, I'm gonna kick you down the stairs, and I'm like, I know exactly what this song is about. So I had to talk to you after, because I'm like, no way.
AP Strange:Somebody wrote a song about Alistair Crowley getting kicked down the stairs by W. B. Yates. So I mean, I had to buy the music, and it seems like you cover a lot of, or at the time you were covering a lot of historical stuff, and you kept doing it. One of the more recent ones was a song for Hildegard von Bingen, And I'm like I'm like, well, that's a deep cut.
AP Strange:So how do you arrive at at these inspirations historically? Like, what like, what catches your attention for for for these these particulars?
Nick Paraggio:Well, Hildegard's an easy one because she was a an incredibly prolific composer
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:As well as being a mystic and a botanist and inventing a conlang and all all the other crazy stuff that she did with her life.
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:So I I learned about her just through studying historical music. Okay. But the other ones, it's very diverse. I'm particularly attracted to, like, the history of, like, collectivism and labor rights organization and queer history and the these areas where my modern lens gives me an interpretive and, like, an interpretive way to write really about my life and, like, about contemporary life through historical situations.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Like, that's that's the thing that really that really attracts me to a particular moment or a particular historical person or the song Crushed by the Sky on on my record All Will Be Free is it's not, like, obviously about history Mhmm. Because it's really about being a queer person in a world that feels very unstable. But it's based on this ancient Celtic belief. And we think of the Celts as, like, people living in Ireland and the British Isles. But the Celts were incredibly widespread.
Nick Paraggio:Like, they they reached all the way to, like, the Balkans
AP Strange:Yeah. Yep.
Nick Paraggio:Before eventually contracting. And they had this widespread belief that at some point in the future, the sky would fall on top of them and squish everybody. And there's this anecdote from Alexander the Great that a delegation of Celts came to Alexander the Great for, like, peace talks, basically. And Alexander the Great's like, tell me what you fear the most. And Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:He's, like, fishing for them to say, we're so afraid of you, Alexander the Great. But what they actually allegedly said was, well, we're all very afraid of the day when the sky is going to fall down and crush us on our heads. And I it's it's a very disarmingly honest answer.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:But it also got me thinking, okay. I also kind of feel like someday the sky is going to fall down and crush me on the head, just in a different and more metaphorical way.
AP Strange:Yeah. So
Nick Paraggio:that had me researching, like, Bronze Age Celtic deities. And, like, unfortunately, the details of the Celtic religions practiced in the Balkans in the classical antiquity is, like, not a lot of information.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. But What we do have was written down by monks and stuff, and it was their interpretation of it. Right?
Beatnik:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:There's there's like a there's a big literacy gap too, like, between societies. Like, some societies just didn't write stuff down as much. Right. And we're lucky that the Greeks wrote a lot of stuff down, but the Greeks also wrote a lot of stuff down because they were writing a lot of propaganda. So, like Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:You kinda have to understand that the person writing the thing was not necessarily trying to write history.
AP Strange:Mhmm. Yeah. It was often, it's like a historiography to to say that their place of origin is the best. Right? Like
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. Or people just like making stuff up. Like, Geoffrey Obama, the great chronicler, just invented a bunch of stuff. The So a lot of
AP Strange:Arthurian lore and stuff like that, right?
Beatnik:Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. And that's considered the legitimate source for a lot of people through history where they refer to it, right, but it's not necessarily, it's not from like the Navinogion or something. Yeah,
Beatnik:Yeah. Yeah,
Nick Paraggio:And it's the more time I spend doing history, like, as a as an independent enthusiast, interpreter, like, artistically, but also in, like, historical scholarship research that I'm doing as an academic, the more I'm I'm coming to appreciate that history is an argument Yeah. More than it is, like, any fixed real past. It's
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:It's a process of arguing.
AP Strange:It is. Yeah. It's a and it's also a process of people making shit up.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah, yeah, because sometimes a really good argument requires you to make shit up.
AP Strange:Right, yeah. It's so interesting, especially when my forte, and I'm not an academic, but I I do my own independent studies.
Nick Paraggio:Which is as valuable.
AP Strange:Right, I like to think so. There's definitely room for the autodidacts of the world who aren't pinned down to one specialty. But I mean, look at something like the Atlantis myth or something, and it's like, yeah, I mean, this was all made up all along the way by a bunch of different people, but it means a lot to a lot of different people throughout history and was used for a bunch of different types of things, right? So I don't know, I always feel like the history of wacky ideas especially and really weird stuff is illuminating in that it shows you how all history is kind of up for interpretation.
Nick Paraggio:Absolutely. Absolutely. And then the the history becomes a kind of technology.
AP Strange:Like Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:That we're we have a need and sometimes we need Atlantis.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Donovan did when he wrote The Sun. Yeah, and then that's why I also tend to be really forgiving to people that are like unabashed hoaxers or hucksters or just storytellers or when people talk about something simply being fiction, I'm like, it's never really simply fiction. It has it's always tangential to something that something that's going on at the time or the way somebody feels, you know?
AP Strange:Then fictions inform people's actual actions later, you know. So yeah, it's it's a wild give and take throughout history.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I really I really don't approach my my songwriting as any attempt to write history.
AP Strange:Like Right.
Nick Paraggio:I really focus on the story. I focus on, like, what do I need and what is this making me think of and how can this help me connect my ideas and my life and these other ideas from these dead people. You know? Yeah. Like, it's that it's that process that's really interesting to me.
Nick Paraggio:And that's what draws me to, like, to weird history also. Mhmm. Like, I there are a lot of things I really dislike about academia. And I think there are important times to think empirically and think about what is provably true. But I think also that things that are not provably true are tremendously valuable for shaping how we move about our world.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely agree with that. Yeah, so it seems like based on, you know, what I'm understanding here is that a lot of you find ways to see yourself in a lot of these historical figures and relate to to like an idea and then kind of well, I guess it's kind of a fusion of your own experiences through the lens of of these historical figures.
AP Strange:And given what you said about fear of being crushed, I had to bring up the song More Wait. Was that a similar kind of feeling with that? Because I mean that listening to it, I'm like, well, that's Giles Corey. That's gotta be what that's about.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. So That one's pretty literal.
AP Strange:That one's pretty literal. Okay. So that's that's more straight history.
Nick Paraggio:That's more straight history.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:He was he was in a field for like two and a half days under a pile of rocks.
AP Strange:And they just kept putting moron. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Fun fact about Joss Quarry. He once beat a man to death for stealing apples.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Not necessarily like a super great guy. But
AP Strange:Tough as nails though. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Tough as nails and a great story.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. So for context for listeners, this has to do with the Salem witch trials. Right? Mhmm.
AP Strange:So so he was he was one of the men that was killed because it wasn't all women, but it was something like seven men were killed during the trials. Or so most of them were
Nick Paraggio:right to me. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. Most of them were hanged, and he was he was just they just kept pouring more rocks on him, trying to get him to confess.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Because he refused to enter a plea.
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:If you entered a plea, if he had pled guilty, he would have been excommunicated, but he wouldn't have been killed. Yeah. The only people that they killed were people who pled not guilty and the court found guilty, and the punishment was death. Mhmm. And that also, opened up the, like, civil asset forfeiture process.
AP Strange:By taking their land?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And by refusing to enter a plea, that civil asset forfeiture couldn't happen.
AP Strange:Oh, wow. So really sticking it to him.
Nick Paraggio:Really sticking it to him.
AP Strange:Yeah. Oh, I mean, it's a crazy story. I was very, you know, at least at least a little bit familiar with it. And then when I saw the words more weight, I'm like, well, that's gotta be what that's about. Listen to it.
AP Strange:And that's it. It's one of the heavier songs too. I mean, it's it's pretty intense.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. You know, sometimes you I don't think he would have been super happy about that situation. I wouldn't be super happy about that situation.
Beatnik:So Right.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, angry is the right tone for that. Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:I think so.
AP Strange:Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I mean, I guess that one was a little bit more on the nose, but going back to Hildegard for a second.
Nick Paraggio:Mhmm.
AP Strange:As far as the the mystical experiences and because I mean, she had visions and stuff like that. Is is that at all related? Or do you see any part of that in in what you referred to as your mystical experience in in college? Or you feel like a kinship on that level? Or A little bit.
Nick Paraggio:Hildegard had visions. She said she she didn't start writing them down until she was well into adulthood, but she said that she'd been having visions ever since she was a child. And the things that she describes, like splitting headaches and like visual aberrations, sound a lot like she could have had epilepsy. Or she could have been just having some visions. You know?
AP Strange:Right.
Nick Paraggio:People have some visions for all sorts of reasons, but they were certainly a consistent experience for her. In Skevias, the book of her visions, there are lots.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And the the song that you're referring to is based specifically on the last vision in Skevias, which she eventually turned into kind of like a like a proto opera almost. Yeah. Like a musical morality play. But for me, my mystical experience was a lot less painful. Okay.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I was I was just in a very rough time in my life, and I just had this sudden and overwhelming feeling of connection to the world. And I I had a I felt as though within the world were great strings that were vibrating to the pulse of all life. And for a moment, I felt that and totally rocked my shit. It was crazy.
Nick Paraggio:But it was, it was very, very moving. It was very comforting in a time when I badly needed comfort, and it was very interesting.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I could see that putting you on course as it were inspiring what came after. I mean, it's and and you're you're still young, so I mean, you got a whole a whole road ahead of you with this stuff.
Beatnik:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Nick Paraggio:I've I've learned that it's, healthiest and safest for me to not, not push into that anymore. Yeah. And let it come if it comes, when it comes.
AP Strange:Right. And I mean, there'll always be time for that. Mean, I think sometimes the most profound things, and a spiritual science especially, sort of don't need the explanation or interrogation and sitting with it and knowing it is because let's face it some of these things are just ineffable anyway you can't really yeah they're beyond language and maybe within the grasp of art, know, sometimes you can sing something that you'd never be able to say. But it's, yeah, I mean, think that's wise. I think it's a wise course of action to poke it too much and just because you can remember it.
AP Strange:I feel like you remember it better if you're not always analyzing it, to trying to relay it to people.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. So what is your do you have like a personal connection to mysticism or to
AP Strange:Oh, yeah.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. I feel like that's mostly been my my path in life because I feel like I've I've made sort of a name for myself in the past decade just talking about paranormal stuff and UFOs, but I always sneak in mysticism and occultism in there, and that's just because that's basically what it's basically what I've always been. So dabbled in a little bit of everything and I just kinda have my own kind of idiosyncratic personal ideas about the way the universe works that I can sympathize with your description of of the strings and the oneness and all that because it seems that sounds right to me it's yeah I mean I had a I had a weird experience when I was too young to really remember how old I would have been but probably between two and four. I had kind of a strange encounter with a pair of luminous entities at the end of my bed that always kind of that kind of opened my eyes to the idea that there's more beyond what people will tell you is going on in the world and I know I at least have that and you know over the course of the time it's funny you were talking about about witchcraft and going through a witchcraft phase and I definitely did that.
AP Strange:I definitely dug into world religions. Had I got stuck with school I probably would have pursued that more. They got into a lot of Eastern stuff. I've sat with various types of Buddhism and Buddhist teachers and yeah, I mean I'm more or less obsessed with with the old occult tomes. I love reading those.
AP Strange:But I I always have a hard time attaching myself to anything specific except discordianism because I can at least joke around and have fun with that. And I feel like humor is important to the whole equation as well because I feel like everything is kind of inherently absurd. So yeah, it's a long winded way of saying yes, I feel like mysticism is infused through everything I think and it makes me sympathetic to anybody with mystical or kind of spooky or magical beliefs. You know?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Yeah. And, like, I experienced what I experienced, but I think I also experienced it in the way that was easiest for me to understand. Mhmm. You know?
Nick Paraggio:There's there's so much beyond me, and I think that my brain is gonna interpret it in the way that makes it most comprehensible to me. And you're gonna interpret it in the way that is most comprehensible to you when you come into into contact with something that is strange. Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it comes up a lot on my show where whatever strange incidents people have, high strangeness is is a common term for it. Yeah. But also you know visionary or mystical experiences, they're highly personalized, right? And you know, I I'm about whether the brain even has anything to do with it, you know?
AP Strange:Because I don't necessarily think consciousness resides there, you know? And so I think of it as being consciousness is a big shared thing but that has a million different little lenses. But we could get horribly deep in the weeds, all of that, and not be able to. But yeah, no, it's certainly interesting. Yeah, I wasn't prepared to answer a question tonight.
AP Strange:I was just going to ask him so that now it's got me thinking.
Nick Paraggio:Well, it's interesting, you know, like people come to this stuff from all sorts of different ways. People, just think it's, like, fun or interesting, and, some people come to it because their, their life bends in that direction.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Nick Paraggio:Unbidden. Yeah.
AP Strange:Well, I mean, whatever the case, I do think the connections are important in making connections with other people. Absolutely. And in a variety of ways, and I tend to think that art is one of the best ways to do that, art and music and any kind of self expression. So that's why I make it a point to try to really include a lot of art and music on on this show, you you know. So I think I I to think it's all part of a greater picture.
AP Strange:So Yeah. It's kinda like
Nick Paraggio:a pet obsession for me. Like, I I feel like if I can give if I can give somebody an artistic experience that is one fourth as effective and immersing as as as some of the things that I've I've felt and experienced, and I think that is the the ultimate culmination of of artistic performance for me. It's like because that's something you can share in the same room with people. You know? It's not you in your bed with with your your visitors in the night.
Nick Paraggio:Right. Because because then you get to have a fraction of that in a room with 50 people.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And that's that's a a particular kind of a particular kind of magic.
AP Strange:Yeah, like to think so. When I used to play music, my favorite thing was lead guitar, I always felt like there were some things on in a guitar solo that you could say that it doesn't translate in words, and sometimes you could really if the whole crowd gets there with you on that right series of notes when you play, it's magical. And it's magical being in the crowd too for some of these things. So, you know, I have a really loose definition of magic, but I think it's appropriate.
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. I can get behind that.
AP Strange:Right. Well, I did want to, before we close out, I did want to get back to A Sailor's Grave because I feel like maybe we didn't underline how much of a project this is, and the fact that you're going to be performing it live soon in Boston. If I have listeners Yes. Yeah, listeners that might be local, I think I probably have a few at least. Let's talk about that a little bit.
AP Strange:How is that performance going to come together and the details and where it is?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah, well, it's been a long labor, and it's very exciting for me that it's finally about to come to fruition. It is August 7 at seven p. M. And August 8 at four p. M.
Nick Paraggio:At the Black Box Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts on Tremont Street. So it's really the the most I can possibly make a concert experience into the feeling of being told a bedtime story by, the fireside, except it's an evil bedtime story about Dracula eating all of your colleagues. So
AP Strange:the nightmare inducing kind of or maybe not, if you're into that kind of thing. Know, it might not
Beatnik:be Hey. Yeah. Yeah. Takes all kinds. Takes all kinds.
Nick Paraggio:So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a bigger musical ensemble than I've worked with before. Mhmm. There's, like, a whole string section and nontraditional percussion and, also me playing the lute, and there's harmonium and, all sorts of cool stuff. And the the big thing that's been absorbing all of my time for the last, like, two weeks is I'm working with a theatrical lighting designer for the first time. And my, a friend of mine who's a visual artist is designing projections.
Nick Paraggio:And we're gonna incorporate some shadow puppetry also with the projections and to try to make this bigger than bigger in visual scope to complement this, like, wider musical scope also.
AP Strange:Yeah. It sounds excellent. Alright. I'm gonna definitely after we're done talking, get tickets, and, my wife and I will go. Because I I was mentioning it to her beforehand, and and we're we're looking it up, and I'm like, I think we have something going on on the eighth, but we can definitely do the seventh.
AP Strange:So Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Now for people that aren't anywhere near Boston, there was a Kickstarter for for this as well, and is this going to be like an album that or that they can get their hands on eventually?
AP Strange:Or, you know, for people that aren't aren't aren't close enough to go to the Black Box Theater, is there a way they're gonna be able to enjoy it in the future?
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Absolutely. This entire project is going to be made into a live album, which will hopefully be released this this fall. I'm aiming for, like, a soft October release.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Nick Paraggio:And it's this process has just been so rewarding and intense, and I really want the recorded product of this to reflect as closely as possible being in the room when when this all goes down. So it was it was important for me to make this like a live album rather than a more studio produced thing. Yeah. Because the like like we talked about a little earlier with, you know, working in more collaboration on this last EP and just having people in the room. I feel like the energy in the room does make it onto the record.
Nick Paraggio:You know? It does. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to see what the energy in the room does for the record that this becomes.
AP Strange:Yeah. See, that would concern me, though. That that's almost like that's like the high wire active live performance in music is is is hoping to get catch it because then I feel like you have to put it out of your mind completely. You get up there and just hope that that recorder is gonna catch up. Forget it's there because I'm not worried about you.
AP Strange:I'd be worried about me if it were me because I feel like I'd I'd jinx it or something. You know? But it's a little bit nerve wracking knowing that, you know, this is gonna be it. But
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. Well, hey. We got more than one show. So if one's a race, yeah.
Beatnik:Just record that. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. No. Yeah. So I'm excited about it. I did I did kick in some money for the Kickstarter.
AP Strange:There still time for people to do that, or do you did you meet your goal on that?
Nick Paraggio:Well, we did meet the goal. But
AP Strange:Oh, okay. That's great.
Nick Paraggio:There are still late pledges available if you want to preorder the album. That is that's still available through the Kickstarter page. If you search for Captain Vampire or A Sailor's Grave Kickstarter or or just through the Kickstarter search function, you should turn it up. No problem. And right now, that's the only way to, to reserve a copy of the record before it comes out.
Nick Paraggio:But it will just be available for purchase since, just like all all the other stuff on Bandcamp and on various streaming platforms.
AP Strange:Cool. Cool. Great. Well, that's that's good to know, and people highly encourage people to check it out, and I'll be I'll be sharing stuff on social media when it's when it's available too. Alright.
AP Strange:Well, so if if my listeners do wanna come find you, you mentioned Bandcamp, so that should be easy enough Captain Vampire on Bandcamp. What what about what about social media? Right? The
Nick Paraggio:the most consistently updated social media is my Instagram, which is at c a p t vampire, but I'm also updating my website, captvampire.com with, show details. And all the liner notes for all of my work are also up on my website, because not everybody gets the CDs. You know? A lot of people are listening digitally, and I wanna make sure that all of the weird all of the weird history is properly annotated somewhere.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Because you're not right there to explain it people every time, but Yeah.
AP Strange:Exactly. Not everybody's like freak like me that will recognize it. So
Nick Paraggio:Yeah. And I can't show up in your house every time you play the song and be like, this one is about
AP Strange:whatever whatever whatever. Not yet anyway.
Nick Paraggio:No. No. That'll require a new level of mystical ascension that we'll see. We'll see if I get there.
AP Strange:Alright. Excellent. This well, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I had a lot of fun picking your brain about your music and history and all kinds of weirdness.
Nick Paraggio:This has been so sick. AP, thank you so much for having me on.