Inside Brandon Boyd's Creative Mind of Visual Works

'So the Echo'

Brandon Boyd releases a third print effort, So the Echo, and a new Sons of the Sea album in the same month -- the result of a very “creatively abundant year,” he tells THR, but not one without trials including writer’s block and a sequence of physical maladies. The book offers a peek inside the Incubus frontman's creative mind.

"All Stands Revealed"

Boyd -- who counts Aubrey Beardsley and Egan Schiele as visual influences and Henry David Thoreau and Henry Miller as philosophical inspirations -- fills his third print effort with ethereal watercolor paintings and never-before-seen line drawings (a technique he showcased on collaborations with Hurley, TOMS Shoes and Codhill Press) along with eloquent journal entries about New York City and photographs taken over the past five years.

"Two Muses"

Rorschach Sketches

"At first glance, I don’t think there is necessarily a correlation between my decision to do the book and the reevaluation of our career, but there’s an interesting timing there," Boyd says of beginning the book project around the time of Incubus' hiatus announcement. "It opened a window of opportunity to really concentrate on the book, then these songs started flooding in. It was a creatively abundant year at home -- productive and fun."

Waves of Inspiration

"I’m always drawing and writing -- not where I sit down every single day and draw a picture or write something, but I go through certain waves of inspiration," he says. "There’s times when it seems more forced and then there’s times when you can’t not write."

Into the Ether

When asked if he experienced a creative illness in producing these projects, Boyd responds: "I had a physical malady take place, a sequence of them. It was during a period before I decided to jump into the book and to really jump into the record, and I was experiencing a great deal of fear around actualizing these -- I didn’t know what they were ... the muse was showing up and I was trying to hold onto my way of expressing, that I had grown accustomed to. ... I quite literally made myself very, very, sick, to the point where I was scared for a minute. I was like, ‘What the hell is going on in my body?’"

Illustrating Before Incubus

"I figured I would be an illustrator or a fine artist or something, and I actually applied to art school after high school," says Boyd of pursuing art as a formal career. "My family had experienced a drawn-out period of hard times, you could say, where we didn’t have any money, so college got thrown out of the window. Around that time, we started a band, and after a couple of years, things started going well. So I just naturally said, ‘I’m gonna do this and see what happens.’ You see what happens long enough, and some really wonderful things can happen, as with Incubus."

Round of Applause

"The visual part of my creative self is just as important, and it needs a voice as much as the musician in me does. What I’ve realized, very wholeheartedly after birthing the book and this album, is that I’ve got to do it all. If I’m allowing my full self to come through, I need to!" Boyd laughs. "I don’t know if it will do ‘well’ in a commercial sense, but I don’t know if that necessarily matters. It would be wonderful if it does, but I know at this point in my life, at 37, I need to take part ... and give this weird process room."

"May I Borrow Your Phone"

"With Incubus, the core ideas usually start between Michael Einziger and myself," says Boyd of writing with the band. "After a basic musical progression, I’ll write lyrics and melodies to that. Then we start jamming with the rest of the guys, and it becomes this committee of how best to build this house together, while helping each other’s parts sound better. We hold each other up until there’s a cool song as a result."

Creating Solo Material

"One of the main differences here is my writing partner changed: Brendan O’Brien, who has produced the past three Incubus records, brought out something different in me. It brought out new registers in my voice, different ideas, different emotional sentiments that weren’t there before. I guess it’s a little bit like dating somebody else. We have the through lines in the way we interact with our friends and lovers, but the core of what we bring will change, sometimes drastically, depending on who we’re dating, because everybody brings out something in everybody else."

"Curious Old Lady"

"I played all the drums and some of the keyboard parts, and Brendan did all the keyboard parts, guitar and bass," says Boyd of recording Sons of the Sea. "I started to get anxious if my drumming was good enough. The songs sounded cool but I thought, ‘God, what would happen if we had a professional drummer playing these parts?’ And that’s when we let in Josh Freese."

"Snark"

When asked if he was nervous about sharing Sons of the Sea with the world, Boyd answers, "The short answer is yes. There’s always going to be nerves and vulnerability attached, especially when you’re stepping out of your comfort zone. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it."

"Vitamin Sea"

"I know there’s going to be a contingent of the Incubus fan base that will be disappointed in this album, because it’s not what they were expecting or what they thought that they wanted," says Boyd of his new solo material, which features bright, Beach Boys-esque harmonies, danceable pop beats and plenty of pianos, strings and synths, instead of a wall of electric guitars.

Following the Compass

Of teasing Incubus fans with the EP entitled Compass, Boyd says, "[It] has been out for a couple of months now, and the hardest of hardcore listeners seem to enjoy it because it is different but also has through-lines -- it’s the same guy singing, writing the lyrics and doing the things that I’ve been doing."

"Worm Hair Girl"

"I think it’s different enough that it gives them something new, and hopefully it will also remind them of how unique Incubus is," says Boyd of the Sons of the Sea album. "I truly hope for that."