East Forest
Appearances
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And so it takes time for it to gestate and seep into people's lives. And I recognize that. And it has a more organic process in which it then is being used perhaps in certain modalities. And that takes time too. So I often have to have patience as well.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
You know, it's a combination. Like I'm coming to Nashville for the first time actually on November 15th, 2024. Yeah, so that's an example of like we met up with some deep tropics promoters, great promoters, and they had this idea of playing in, I think it's an old Masonic
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
building or like it's a really cool venue it's a live concert and I'm really looking forward to exploring like I like playing in spaces like that often inspires me like that particular space to me looks really inspiring and sometimes it's festivals or it's a lot of invitations to play at different places and of course we're doing this film right now music for mushrooms so the film itself is playing theatrically and
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
With the East Force Project, it started because I was feeling a lot of anxiety and depression initially. I have my whole life. I was living in New York as in my twenties, you know, things were falling apart. I think when things fall apart, there's often some kind of doors opening too, or maybe it's clearing the rubble or I don't know, it burns the fields, however you want to look at it. Sure.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
and that takes me around. So it's a total combination of variety.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
The film, in a nutshell, is about mental health.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
So it's about music and mushrooms, psychedelic therapy, ceremony, and music, and are these things relevant today amidst everything going on? But I think the answer, in essence, or what the film's really exploring is how do we live more authentically today? or recognizing that what's happening in our society is the spiritual emergency.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Like at our core, we all have wounds and traumas and we're reacting from them. And that causes things like polarization and the loneliness, the epidemics of depression. So by sourcing within and sort of recognizing that our inner work, our work on ourselves, it really matters because we need to spring out from there to make change in the world. That's the primary message of the film.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
All of it. Yeah. So the movie is a hybrid. It's a narrative documentary. So there's what we call verite scenes, meaning like they're just real scenes as opposed to talking heads, which you might see in some documentaries. But actually we have conversations in there as well. And there's a lot of music. There's music sequences that are like live on screen and
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
also sort of montage-y and the music goes from the foreground to the background. It's been really strong reactions, very emotional reactions from people. Like while we're talking today, I'm in Encinitas, California. We have a screening tomorrow. It's sold out. And we just came from LA where it's playing right now on October 10th. We're doing screenings all over the country.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It's World Mental Health Day. And we're specifically doing it on 1010 because of that to say like, hey, if we all come together and feel together and witness together in a theater, that means something. Like we're amplifying that experience of being like, oh, I'm not alone.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It's 82 minutes. So it's a feature length, but it's a nice and tight.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I think as any artist, you're never quite satiated in your expression. And I think that's what drives us forward. And there's still a lot of things I want to do artistically that I either haven't had the opportunity to do or I'm developing towards it as an artist. And that horizon keeps me driving forward.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Again, going back to that sense of service, like I want to reach as many people as possible. And I still think there's so many people yet to touch and to be in dialogue with energetically. That's what I'm excited to find creative ways to do.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I mean, with the film, I've been talking to a lot of people because we do panels when I'm at the events and I hear a lot of stories one-on-one. I also do a Patreon where it's more of a, I call it the council. And so we have more of a community there, but, and then people engage on social media and, you know, you hear stories and that's important too. So you're not just like working in a vacuum.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I think we all can understand that. I started making music for me to actually journey to, and my interest was, or I had some experiences with psilocybin mushrooms, magic mushrooms, that were really emotionally powerful for me, but I didn't understand them. I kind of wanted to return to that place. It was really a place of solace, a place of peace.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, I'll be in Nashville, as I said. That's a music concert happening in November. And I'll be in Seattle, I believe, also in November. And we have an event at a conference called Eudaimonia at the beginning of November. And here at the end of October, there's a festival happening. I think I'm playing something in Mexico also. It's a Wanderlust event. Back's full circle.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
So there's a variety of things happening. But the film's all over the place. And the film is doing a lot of screenings. And some of those I'll be at. And some of those are just happening without me, of course. And that's at musicformushrooms.com.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I'm at eastforest.org in the digital space or on social media, of course. But I think the website's great because it just points you wherever you want to go or gets you the information you need to know. Music, tickets, Patreon, my own podcast, whatever it is.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
similar we talk a lot essentially about mental health but also sometimes about nature technology I mean the glue that holds it together is it's about like how do we live authentically how do we make sense of you know this so it could be information it could be tools it could be creative music of course right sure we talk with a variety of people and sometimes I put on meditations too that I put music behind and create and that gets offered as well
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Yeah, I've heard those stories. But to be honest, maybe they're projecting a bit that, you know, the role I played in it, I think they maybe had powerful moments. with the music and it was at a particular point in their life where it helped them catalyze something important, some decisions or processes or catharsis.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I hear that a lot, actually. Yeah.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Sure. At the end of the day, placebo's effect is the same thing, right? It's still real. So however it happens, it's okay.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Yeah, we're all doing our work. All choices are valid.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It's fun. Like I said, if something helps someone else, it's helping me too. You know, it's kind of the golden rule.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
So I was trying to write music that would help me go to those places. And that really was the initial impetus, was soothing my own... You know, pain internally, very personal.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I'd love to just see the work reach so many more people. It really grows and that it gives me the creative opportunities to do things I've always dreamed of. You know, I have a lot of creative things I want to make so I can share those with people that are much grander expressions and frankly more beautiful. And so I'm looking forward to having the resources to do that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, it would definitely make the world a better place if we all had that sort of attitude.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Eastforest.org, musicformushrooms.org. I think the film will be interesting to people whether they know anything about these worlds or not. It's a good film in that regard, so check it out.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, there's a soundtrack to the documentary that just came out a couple days ago. Yeah, the official documentary soundtrack. It's got 10 new songs, including two reworks, the live renditions I did of Ram Dass songs. Also the artist Peter Brodrick and I have a song on there. And then seven other songs that are from those live ceremonies we were talking about. So really beautiful music.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I think it's 59 minutes of music.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Yeah. Thanks, Tony. It was fun.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Yeah, yeah.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, it was really through the magic of serving other people because I had a friend that I had met who got really into that music that I made, the very first record. And he started organizing like these meditative shamanic circles for me to play music to. And that wasn't something that I thought I was going to do.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And so by offering this to others and seeing the benefit for them, they were working through their own stuff. It just kept propelling me to do more and more of it because you just feel like, well, it's helping this person or these other people. Therefore, if I were to stop, I'm no longer helping them. But that's mutually beneficial, of course, because the more I play it, the better I feel. So...
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
That's a good question. Like how did the evolution of the music happen because of the service to others? A lot of the music I was improvising and playing in those spaces, like guiding people. And so it very much is purpose-driven music in that way. In that moment, it has a very specific use.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
By doing that for many, many years, it starts to get its own language, like a musical language of how you do that or why you do that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And so in that way, I think it absolutely shaped the sound and the instruments and the fact that it was like long form or if I'm bringing in field recordings because that brought a particular quality, you know, and that just became the language of the music I was making.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It's always been a lot of piano or keyboard based as the primary, you know, glue or instrument, melodic instrument. I was using a lot of electronic elements too because, you know, you're by yourself and that's one way to make rhythm and beats. You can do it like on a computer. But I also started using a lot of percussion, shakers, and I wanted to bring a diversity of sounds.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And I could play woodwinds a little bit. So I brought flutes in, brought harmonicas in, melodicas. I also brought in non-melodic instruments like Tibetan bowls or gongs.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Part of that was wanting to just have a variety of sound. And it was also seeing like what other sounds can I play that are also going to be conducive to an inner journey to that sort of calming of the nervous system.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I started bringing more of my voice back into it. I started singing more, but finding I like doing a kind of like glossolalia, like singing without specific words. It's sort of like toning or words that sound like another language maybe, but more like vowels and so forth. And
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
That developed over the years because in the ceremonies, I didn't want to like, I don't know if like if you say words, they're very specific in a sense, like it has a meaning to people and the tones could have any meaning. It was just emotion. And so that became more of something that I do to this day. Now it's just second nature, but it came from that space.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It's the personal stories you would hear afterwards. Like someone might tell you that they had a relationship with their father that was very difficult. You know, it's negative in their mind. It's a story that they're carrying, a lot of pain.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
In the experience that we would have together with the music, they might have said, you know, I had this vision of my father and eventually I got to this place where I was able to say, I love you, dad. They would say, I've never been able to say that. So I would recognize it like, wow, okay, that is your internal process. It's your world. I didn't tell you anything.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I'm not telling you what to say to your dad. I don't even know what's going on. I'm just serving and creating a kind of world that's conducive for that person to be able to do their work. That unlocked a kind of door.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It did. And the first community that was making those invitations was the yoga community back in like 2015. I don't know if you remember, like in that time, there was this whole thing kind of emerging like yoga became a bigger thing. And also there were these festivals like Wanderlust Festivals where they were merging big music concerts and yoga classes during the day.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Moby played and they had these big names. So I got hired to play a lot of those festivals. And I think the yoga world was recognizing something in the music that was conducive to mental health and inner journey. And they were the first ones to help me kind of get out there and build an audience.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I think part of it's a symptom of the way the world is, you know, the world's getting harder and crazier. Like the pandemic, for instance, like more and more people are looking for their own authentic paths and tools, frankly, to heal or to like get by. So music is a very accessible one. And I've noticed more of an international audience.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And I've also noticed more of a diversity of both backgrounds, but ages that are into this. So a lot of non-yogis, of course. Just people and hearing the way people are using the music or have been introduced to it in all sorts of different ways. Of course, from psychedelic therapy, which is becoming much and much more mainstream in our cultural conversation.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
But maybe it was in like a bodywork session or actually in like kids art classes. or people using it with the passing of a family member. I mean, really powerful moments in people's lives. It seems to be helpful to sort of amplify or help them walk through emotional spaces.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I mean, you know, I could say it was a part of a plan, but as part of half plan, half it just unfolds. I would record in two ways. One was in these medicine ceremonies, plant medicine ceremonies where I'm improvising. So that's a very unique situation because things are just coming out and you're just recording what's happening. And then some of that turns into records.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Then I also will make studio records that are more traditional in the sense that, you know, I can work on it over months and other people can come and play on it. And I like doing both. Those can be more intentional because you might have a concept. Like it could be anything. Like I want to work with strings a lot on this record or I want this one to be more of like rhythm and lyrics. Yeah.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Karen. It's like the stack of rocks you see when you're hiking on mountains. Yeah.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, you know, that one was actually a collaborative record with Keith Sweaty, who's a producer.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
That was very like 50-50 us just making a joint record. That one actually is somewhat of an outlier from my catalog in that it's more electronic and has a lot of lyrics. That's just sort of what emerged through that collaboration. You never know what's going to happen.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I have a record I collaborated with an artist named Peter Broadbrook a couple years ago, and it's an album called Burn, where a very different result came out. We went to Ireland together. where he lives and recorded for one week and 12 songs came out of that week and all 12 were on the record in the order they were written, which has never happened to me before.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And it's very like a lot of contemporary classical experimental sounds, really beautiful, very acoustic, all acoustic.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, what I've seen is the similarities of the processes going on with people across countries. Like we're all actually, there's very similar things happening. And there's an emergence everywhere. I mean, China, Australia, Ireland, Iceland, South Africa. Really, it's amazing. And I'm like, oh, there's such common ground here emotionally.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Specifically to autism, actually recently, two people came up to me after shows. Both had autism. And they just told me they wanted me to know of how the music spoke to them and has been helpful for them. And specifically with them holding autism in their life, that's something like this is relevant to me. That was relatively, actually two people recently told me that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
It's a really wide range. I mean, here's a great story. A firefighter, He's a paramedic with firefighters, right? He's got the mustache, the whole thing. And he said, you know, his buddies, they had a call. And it was a guy who maybe on paper, whoever called is like, this person's freaking out. They're having a psychotic break or I don't know. So they called the cops essentially.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
But the firefighter paramedics show up. They kind of quickly figured out this might have been drug related. And they all know that this guy, they're like, well, you know about that world. Why don't you go just talk to him first? So already that was a somewhat smart thing as opposed to like everyone just comes in in their firefighter outfits.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
So he walks in there and says to all of his buddies, like, why don't you hang outside? Don't come in. And the guys in there in his place, of course, he's freaked out now. The authorities have arrived. And he instantly realizes the guy's taken mushrooms and taken more than he anticipated. He also recognizes that there's no immediate threat right now. that the guy's just really anxious.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
He's really bugging out. And he asks him, hey, on this TV here, do you have YouTube or Spotify through there? And the guy's like, yeah. He's like, can I get in there? And he gets on there, and he pulled up my Music for Mushrooms album. It's a five-hour album to guide a journey. And he got it going, got the volume right, and he sat with him for 10 minutes.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
And eventually, the guy started calming down a lot. That's good. And then eventually, he said, are you OK? The guy's like, yeah, I'm OK. I'm OK now. And they left. Wow, that's good. Imagine how that could have gone. Oh yeah, it could have gone bad. He could have got arrested, been in a hospital, tear at one of the worst days of his life. Could have been.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
I'd have to say the album Ram Dass that I did in collaboration with Ram Dass.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Ram Dass, for those who don't know, was a spiritual teacher who passed away 21, I believe. He brought a lot of Eastern ideas to the West and was just a beautiful man. He's a really wonderful speaker and teacher. So we did this record where he spoke and I wrote music to it. And that has reached a lot of people. And a lot of people found it to be very, very calming. Nice.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
They're like micro teachings that are very universal. When you put it to music, it's like a little movie. It's it's scores it. It brings it amplifies the emotion and. That one has done the rounds for sure.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Well, there's a lot to listen to these days and boys, our attention pulled in every direction. So I'm grateful to anyone who is paying attention and they're listening. I think my music too is a little bit more of a slow burn in that if I drop something, it's not like usually there's this big explosion of... Some of it takes a while to listen to. It's long.