Tilman Reitzle is soft-spoken, but also animated. Conversation ran vast and lyrical during our Zoom chat. He was recommended by acoustic powerhouse Tina Ross – he’d designed her debut CD package. She told me Tilman is also a songwriter, so I knocked on his skull. He let me in.

me: We have gathered here together to talk about how creating music and creating art are similar, and how they’re different. Which one did you get into first?

TR: Definitely art. I was drawing long before I had any inkling I wanted to make a sound. But I was given an instrument when I was very young; it was a small zither, a traditional alpine instrument. I still have it. You know, it’s got like 20-30 strings on it, and I was intrigued by the sound of it, but it felt very abstract. I didn’t think of whatever I was doing as anything having to do with music. All I would do is pluck a string, and hear a sound, and kind of be intrigued. It made no sense, in many ways.

Drawing was something that I did from the get-go. I drew what I saw on TV: cowboys, Indians, Flipper. I would say I spent ten years drawing before I even entertained the idea of playing music.

me: How old were you when somebody gave you a zither?

TR: I was four…

me: What person did that to your parents?

TR: it was my grandfather. And then when I was nine, my dad gave me a very small guitar – the size of a ukulele but it had six strings – and it was so absurdly small that I didn’t know what to do with that, either. But as a gesture…and then a couple of years after that, my mom gave me a student guitar. Still kind of smallish, but a full-size neck, and it seemed too big for me, actually, when I was 11. So there were all these steps where my grandfather, my dad, and my mom gave me stringed instruments.

me: Did they encourage art at the same time?

TR: They didn’t have to. I just drew all the time; I used watercolor. In school, I did okay in the art classes. I did horrible in the music classes, because they were all theory-based and I couldn’t wrap my head around music theory at all. It made no sense; it drove me to tears, actually. I just didn’t know where to begin to take music apart. So it was beyond me, and I nearly failed music class. It was the art classes that always came easy.

Ultimately, I went to college for art, all the while thinking, “That’ll be a way to get into New York City, and once I’m in NYC I’ll probably find a band, and then I can make music the way I was thinking I’d like to make music – just to play in edgy bands while I’m going to art school. I kept messing around with music, but it was never very formal. I was given a scholarship to an art school, so that settled that.

The whole time I was thinking, “You know, if the right band comes along, I’ll drop out of art school…” because my heroes seem to all have done that, you know Pink Floyd, Keith Richards, and Jeff Beck or Charlie Watts – they were all art students. So I thought there was something to it, art school and bands, it all seemed to make sense. The Talking Heads came from art school. It seemed like art school was a good back door into the music world. And it was; I just found myself working, really working, as a graphic designer and doing music on the side, but I never considered it a hobby.

me: and that’s in New York?

TR: I was in New York City for close to 15 years, just about on a daily basis. And I was lucky to graduate high school at age 18 when the drinking age was still 18, which means I could go to all the clubs. I had these three years or so in NYC where I went to shows night after night and got to see really brilliant, memorable things in the bowels of New York. In the club scene, not going to Madison Square Garden but going to the Mudd Club or CBGB, places where you could see the edgy underground stuff. To me, that was like being a kid in the candy store.

Tilman’s music reflects that time, but more. There’s an inherent balance to the electronic excitement that doesn’t sound like it came from a kid who almost failed music class. I think there’s an argument here for art school.

TR: I think that one of the reasons I find myself constantly moving between the world of art and music is that, after a while, either camp would get a little too self-centered? Self-congratulatory? I don’t want to talk about music all the time. But I had the same thing in the art world. Not concretely, but New York was such a cliquish kind of place. It was artists hanging out together, musicians hanging out together, lawyers, or whatever. I really enjoyed moving between the worlds. If I was around just musicians all the time, I would just yearn to go to a museum to see some paintings, just something to not feel trapped.

me: I like the word you used: self-congratulatory. You don’t learn any more beyond that point. Everything is about the journey to me, and I don’t feel like I’m having a journey unless I can go from one world to the next and the next.

TR: Yeah. I’ve seen how that can really undermine you, too, if you don’t have that drive to find your niche and then just to go all out. I was always kind of horrified at any kind of prospect where I felt, “I know what the next 30 years of my life are gonna be like.” That hit me really hard in my first job out of school, in which I was doing layouts and paste-up for a magazine. It was a decent starting salary for somebody just out of school, but within a year I found myself looking around me from one cubicle to the next, looking at the people there, thinking, “No. If I just keep doing what I’m doing I might never leave here.” I did go freelance because I never wanted to lose the opportunity to have the door open to musical projects. And to be able to travel, or find ways I could make music while I was doing freelance design projects. And that is the way I’ve moved through the world for the last four decades, almost, and I kind of marvel at how I’ve gotten to do a lot with both, yet at the same time I think, “well, maybe if I’d specialized…really just hustled to make an impact in one world,” whether I would have had more financial rewards.

But for me it wasn’t just that I didn’t want to work a full-time design job so I could make music. I immediately had a music business on the side. I would do small soundtrack projects, mostly for independent films nobody’s ever seen, but it was really exciting to do something with music. For five years I had listed my music business as a full business alongside the design, even though I really made the money with the design. I did make a small amount on the side, and I wound up investing in music equipment – I spent so much more money on music equipment than art supplies. It was also before the computer, so the most expensive art supply I bought was probably an airbrush compressor.

me: Oh yeah…(aside: I once completed a piece using a truck tire as air source when my compressor broke down. Toward the end I was jumping up and down on the tire to push just a little more air…)

TR: but I would spend thousands on guitars and synthesizers! And computer software – that was just coming up – but I want to backtrack.

When I did go freelance, that was in 1986, and I can’t underestimate how much of an impact two historical events had on me. The first one was the Challenger disaster, which was in January of ’86; the second one was Chernobyl, which was in April of 1986.

Those two events really undermined my faith in “the steady job route,” having the 401K and in 30 years you’ll retire, and this and this and this…I had a real existential crisis that year, and I thought There Is No Tomorrow. Chernobyl blows, and you know…if I’m gonna stay active and keep various irons in the fire, music or art, I have to do it now. It was probably my first midlife crisis, even though I was only 23.

I realized that music, for me…I was not a designer because I was a frustrated painter; I actually did not want to pursue fine art. I really love mass-produced art. Part of what drew me to art was album covers. I thought, “That is the ultimate vehicle! That is the best canvas!” Albums were really the thing that made me feel like both of these worlds were equally exciting to me.

Art and design are really two different things – I just had that conversation recently with a photographer friend of mine in Manhattan. There used to be this idea that as a fine artist, you’re pure on some level, or that designers have sold out. I never really had that problem, because I thought, “If I get to do album covers, then that’s better to me than having a painting in a gallery. I liked mass-produced things and I liked that – I don’t know if it’s the right word, egalitarian? – the idea that no matter whether you’re rich or poor, you can have the latest album by this artist or that artist. The greatest albums of my generation were like $6.99 when they were coming out. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a Socialist, but I always like the idea that popular art could be good and accessible and…important. Like a role in society. Like when a Pink Floyd album came out, this was a big deal. It was a cultural event. Music seemed really, really important.

I think to me music felt like the more important social mover, having cultural significance. I love beautiful design – a great album cover is still a great album cover – but it was still a package for the music. The music still carried more weight. I just wanted to be involved with either one of those, or preferably both.

So there I am.

Author’s Note: I am a science nerd. I’m including these textbook illustrations by Tilman Reitzle because it’s my story and I can.

me: so there’s a sense of community you associate with music…

TR: very much, yes.

me: …and art tends to feel more personal, more solitary. Actually I think you could say that both as a consumer and as a producer: you want and need more people involved in a musical project, and a group art project is not as common.

TR: It’s interesting in that music has been the only team activity that I’ve consistently done. I stopped playing competitive soccer after high school. Even when I played on the soccer team, I was a bit of an outsider. I played in a band, and so I didn’t really have that many jock friends. Whereas in a band, that was a gang. It was us against the world.

A high school soccer team was you against that other high school soccer team. In a band there’s this sense that we’re gonna have our little thing and we’re gonna show them.

And even though I’m not what you’d call a team player, in music I really took to it.

COVID shut down so much of the musical activity. At this time I’m finding myself in more musical projects than in a long time. I was missing the immediacy of music and working with real human beings. Whereas I never did art projects as a team—I was always kind of a lone wolf. Now it’s easier to do music by yourself than ever, and in fact I spent the entire pandemic working on a single musical project that I just finished in the spring. I worked with a computer, really like a novelist would, or a painter, where it’s very solitary and you’re just in your own little world, concocting kind of a fantasy out of your head because you’re not really making live music.

me: Immediacy became kind of a fantasy at that point (during pandemic.) You didn’t know when you were going to interact with other people, and which other people they would be. COVID changed everything about my life. It’s where I started collaborating as a songwriter; thanks to COVID I accidentally wrote a song with Steve Gillette* (he was bored, I figure) and I’m still going. This is how I met Tina Ross, through Zoom conferences.

TR: She’s a wonderful find. I designed her CD.

Me: You did a really good job!

TR: Thank you very much! I mean, it’s professional. I am a trained professional. Card-carrying!

…and then my favorite thing happened: The conversation took a turn, and Tilman was interviewing me. 

TR: I have a question for you: In terms of art and music, what role are they for you? In terms of your identity?

me: I don’t know. I think I’m still looking for it. Art is something I just do; I can’t stop. And writing is something I have to do; I can’t stop. Making it into a musical format is like a new world for me—this is fun, and I’m not gonna let it go away, because you have the interaction. Especially for me, because I refuse to learn an instrument.

TR: OH.

me: There are maybe two or three songs in which I’m responsible for the melody, but still somebody else has to put it together. So, yeah, the interaction is priceless. That I can’t let go of. But I want them all together—art, music—like you, I want album covers.

In music, when it comes easily I don’t question it so much but in art…I felt that if it came too easily I couldn’t quite trust it. “Did I suffer enough with it? Was there torture?”

TR: In music, when it comes easily I don’t question it so much but in art…I mean, there’s a difference between doing a recording project and playing live, but there’s something about art I felt that if it came too easily I couldn’t quite trust it. And the thing is that I don’t know how much of that is true or real. Because if something comes easily, if you consider everything that came before it for this thing to come easily, it doesn’t even matter if it’s music or art. Just some kind of creative act suddenly comes out like water flowing down a river, totally natural, and you go: “Did I suffer enough with it? Was there torture?”

me: Two ways that can happen. One of them is that you didn’t work hard enough and you’re not done yet. But the other one is like it’s born whole, and to me that feels like I didn’t create it but I found it. I had to transport it into this world so that you can see it, too. I don’t feel like it’s mine but its own entity. You step back and you’re as surprised as anybody. But music does that, too, right?

TR: Yeah, especially when you’re playing with other musicians and improvising. Things just happen that couldn’t happen…

me: other people draw things out of you that you wouldn’t have done by yourself.

TR: yeah, there’s certain sounds that wouldn’t come out in a different setting, with different people, or especially if you’re composing. I wound up in a band writing three or four songs in one sitting for a gig that we had to play a week later. It was an absolute thrill because we just did it. There’s this feeling like you’re kinda-sorta doing a Judo move on the whole thing. It was so fun to have that completely unattached kind of feeling like you can work with this bass player who just started playing their instrument 3 months ago, and here’s a singer because we made up the songs.

When you’re making up your own music, you can work around everyone’s strength and weakness. You don’t have to worry; you try not to do the thing you’re bad at. You do the three things you can sort of do. With those limits, you come up with something really creative. You have to, because if it’s not creative, it’s gonna be not interesting.

To do that in a group setting, you know…I’ve always enjoyed that with music. I’m not sure whether I’d function the same if I were with two other designers or painters and we had to whip out a mural in a weekend.

me: I think it would, because what you’re talking about is making the best use of your limitations. What I’ve said about Folk Music, and not just music but Folk Art: Folk is born of whatever people had on hand. Make your own instruments, make toys for your children; you have to have curtains so make’em pretty.

TR: The thing that took me a long time to come around to is the idea that no matter what you’re doing, especially in music because it happens in real-time, it’s one moment after another, and the previous moment is gone, so you’re just inside the music, moving along – realizing the key to the whole thing is storytelling. If there’s no storytelling, it’s almost pointless. Even when the music doesn’t have lyrics or a singer, you’re still telling some kind of story.

I have such an admiration for the real singer-songwriter folk music. It’s not even a genre I’ve naturally been drawn to. Anyone who can get on a stage with an acoustic guitar and tell me a story, or sing it, and play, capture my attention, to me that feels miraculous. It was part of what I enjoyed about working with Tina (Ross) on her CD. These are solid songs. She’s really worked at this thing of hers. I didn’t know Tina until we did her CD together and I was so surprised that it was her first release. I didn’t ask, “What took you so long?”

me: I have a feeling people do ask her that.

TR: I’m sure the pandemic was a kick in the butt for her, too. (he reaches for his CD and presents it to the camera) The CD that I worked on during the pandemic. I think if it weren’t for the pandemic I would have felt less urgency to complete this project and to really give it form. I just got the letter back confirming that it’s registered with the Library of Congress.

me: Isn’t that great?!

TR: This opens up a whole other conversation, but that place of being able to detach yourself from your own creative output, from “I really want this to work” to being able to take constructive criticism and being able to allow someone to pick this stuff apart, that takes a lot of courage. But then being able to feel that this really got better because of the collaboration…it was brutally difficult for me because I worked on this CD alone for well over 3 years, pretty much all of the pandemic. At some point you can’t really see the forest for the trees, but you don’t want feedback that might undermine your entire sense of purpose.

me:…and that’s why it matters who you work with, because some people – my writing collaborator, Melinda, understands my flavor and appreciates it. I don’t understand hers, which works well for me.

TR: Sometimes it can be a relief to know there’s another way you can approach it—you get out of your own stuck place—and other times it can feel really threatening. You have this vision of what you’re after and you don’t want to allow a n y t h i n g to mess with that. You don’t want anyone to undermine your own conviction about your vision, because somebody else will derail it if you let them hear it too soon, or see it too soon. It definitely took me longer than other people who are better team players – but if it doesn’t hold up, if one criticism and the whole thing crumbles, you just have to build it stronger. Or have your own conviction be stronger. If your conviction is stronger, you will also build a stronger structure.

me: I think part of it is having enough faith in yourself to understand that this is not the only thing you’re gonna make. You are a creative; you are an inventor. If this fell apart when somebody poked it a little, it wasn’t ready yet anyway. I can build another one. I think some potentially great projects got scrapped because somebody poked it at the wrong time, but it doesn’t matter. I still struggle with it, even though I’m preaching it.

TR: It feels like you can’t actually separate that from the creative process. There’s always that place where you have to trust yourself or trust somebody else and you have to just let it go. If it comes back, then it’s yours to keep!

me: and I just had this thought run through my head that maybe I trust art and I trust music more than I trust people.

TR: My daughter would include horses with that.

me: Yeah, horses won’t lie to you.

TR: Art and music have been my sanctuaries. As soon as one becomes too much unpleasant work, or too many compromises enter into it because you need to make a living, then I try to keep the other one as uncompromising as possible. I think I’ve always looked at music and art as if I’m too deep in one, then the other one’s the lifeboat and I can get off and survive. I also admire musicians and artists who latch onto something and it works and it goes all the way. Some of them make it, and some of them don’t make it and pay a huge price anyway. It just comes down to decisions and enjoining the process.

Learn more about Tilman Reitzle’s design work on his website: Tilman Reitzle Design and check out his original urban pandemic-based music on Bandcamp.

Learn more about Tina Ross on her website, here.

*Steve Gillette has a very fine blog, which is really a set of free songwriting lessons if you think about it. Check out About The Song.

debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer review for Consilience Science-Based Poetry Journal, and book design at Igneus Press. Find her art and word everywhere, including Jerry Jazz Musician, Shot Glass Journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cholla Needles, and Dodging the Rain. Follow her on “X” and Instagram @DebsValidation, and into seedy pool halls but probably not dark alleys.