On the heels of releasing his 3rd solo album, the Rev. Collin Estes is on a roll right now. He is always creating and looking forward to his next chess move. Collin is an immensely talented multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer. The folks at Anonymous Collective are overjoyed to have Collin on our current roster. We give you the Reverend........
1. Where does the title OUR FAVORITE PRODIGAL SON come from?
You know, that title is adapted from a line in the song “The Sword of Grief,” but now I can’t remember whether I had that title first or if I grabbed it from the song! Either way, it had a nice ring to it and seemed to really sum up the overall message of the album nicely.
When I was first planning to record a new album, it had a different title and was much, much darker overall. I’ve had some rough experiences in the past few years, and obviously there’s no shortage of upsetting things when you look around at the world. But as I was writing and selecting ideas for what would become the record, I thought, “C’mon, what am I really accomplishing here?” Whenever I make new music, I have to assume that the audience is just going to be my friends (well . . . maybe they’ll listen to it, heh). So, did I really want to just depress my friends more? As if they don’t have enough to worry about? You can’t ignore the evils and traumas of the world, but that doesn’t mean you should actively energize them, either.
I made a concerted effort to bring things up out of the pit and try to write something that was more positive and uplifting, and I think, the result is vastly better than what it could have been. As that happened, the prodigal son reference shifted from being somewhat ironic to being more sincere. That Bible story is, I think, a totally universal one; we all have our experiences where we “leave home” and fall into sorrow, but the good news is that you can always turn it around. Love and mercy exist independently from time, and, therefore, the kinetic cycles of cause and effect. If I had to pick one single story to explain the human experience, the parable of the prodigal son would be it.
2. What are some of the themes of this record?
Both this album and my previous one, A Ceremony of Carols, actually started just by my wanting to finally get decent arrangements/recordings of a couple older songs that had fallen by the wayside. (In this case, “Three Hands High,” “Be Here Now,” and “Scrying Mirror,” the seeds of which date back to 2007 or so.) Then, in spite of myself, I started getting drawn into the process and found myself exploring more and more ideas, and before you knew it, I had an album on my hands. “Hey, what happened here? I thought I was going to record one song and I’d be done!”
This one was especially strange in the sense that many of the songs seemed to take on a little bit of agency of their own, and the themes of the record started revealing themselves as the recording process went on. Music has always held a sacred place for me, and on this one, I suppose the process got a little more explicitly “mystical,” too. There are a lot of ideas and images adapted from dreams I’ve had, some esoteric ideas from the likes of Rudolf Steiner and Daskalos definitely sneaked themselves in there, some vaguely apocalyptic moments, and, hopefully, it’s all grounded in the kind of light that will rescue you before you get in the deep water over your head.
3. You take a lot of care with your lyrics, do you revise a lot?
Thank you very much; that’s very kind of you to say. I used to be downright neurotic with lyrics . . . I was so scared to sound dumb or clichéd, and wanted to express things as poetically and elegantly as possible. You hear lyrics from writers like Nick Cave or the Triffids’ David McComb, and their economy of phrase is just so polished. (Of course, they follow the Leonard Cohen school of writing, so to speak, so I’m sure they were sitting down for hours and hours each day, like they were working on the line at the word factory, I guess.)
So, I was really daunted by lyrics for a long time, and, of course, I never felt satisfied with anything I wrote. Lately, though, I’ve relaxed a bit and have been more inclined to stay with my first ideas and give them a chance before I go overthinking them too much. Most of the lyrics for this album were pretty off-the-cuff, which was a refreshing way to work. More a question of arranging thought-fragments than thinking “ooooh, now I’ve got to have the perfect couplet here.”
If you have a dream, the experiences you have in the dream can be really moving and powerful, and even if it follows an unusual logic, you often intuitively understand it on a very intimate level. When you wake up and try to explain it to someone else, it loses that power by your trying to contain it and make it more objective. I think that’s how revision can be, at times—it can definitely be good to hone something down after a first draft, especially in prose, but there can be something really magical about that initial impulse. There’s a great idea presented by Owen Barfield that all communication exists in a state of perpetual tension between the objective mechanics (i.e. the language itself and its grammatical structures) and the subjective experience (your own personal experiences you’re trying to describe). I think it’s generally a good—and subversive!—idea to lean more towards the latter.
4. Talk about a great experience you had while recording the album.
Everything really came together on the track “The Sword of Grief.” That was a turning point for programming and unifying the album, thematically. The idea for that song came to me when I was driving the delivery van at my day job, and the image of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the rock randomly popped into my head. It occurred to me that, throughout your life, sometimes you’re Perseus, and sometimes you’re Andromeda. And, often, you’re definitely the sea monster. I pulled the van over and started jotting down lyrical and musical ideas.
But probably the wildest moments surround the song “The Devil’s Page.” Recording the guitar tracks on that song was really enjoyable; Erin and I had recently moved into our new house, and I believe that was both one of the first bits of recording I did there. Also probably the moment I realized I had something worth pursuing in this set of songs. But moreover, that song actually came to me in a dream, almost fully-formed. I dreamt I was a teenager, playing in a garage band with Greno, Erin, and some of my high school friends, and we were playing that very song. I woke up, ran to the closest guitar and recorded as much of the chord progression and lyrics that I could remember. It was really fun to then “orchestrate” the song around those initial ideas, fun enough that I could overlook how vaguely spooky the whole thing was. . . .
5. How does your partner Erin influence your craft?
She has immeasurable influence on everything I do. She’s so humble, I don’t think enough people realize how brilliant of a mind and immensely creative of an artist she is. Just having proximity to someone like that creates a wonderful, positive feedback loop of energy and thoughts; an atmosphere that lends itself to creativity and refining yourself to become a better person, in general. I’m extraordinarily blessed to have her in my life.
6. Do you prefer playing all the instruments on tracks?
That’s actually a very good question. I feel most comfortable on guitar and keyboards, but I started messing around with drums and bass as a teenager. I was very keen to have a band at that point, but I never really found the right time or serious opportunities. Since I was always a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, I thought, “Okay, I guess I can try to be like Trent Reznor and do everything myself.”
It was just a matter of necessity for the kinds of arrangements I wanted to do, not so much that I wanted an iron grip on the process. Working collaboratively can be one of the best, most transcendent feelings in the world, but it can also be satisfying to build something from the ground up and execute an arrangement just so. On this album, I had Greno play drums on “Dressing Well in 1987,” Owen Kinslow plays beautiful, atmospheric guitar on “The Blizzard,” and Erin sings on several tracks. No one else could have possibly executed those parts better. I did try to take particular care on the bass and drum parts I did play on this album; I wanted to make sure they had a clear intent behind them and not just, “eh, good enough.” That was a valuable and rewarding exercise.
At this point, I’m not sure I necessarily get any inherent pleasure by just “playing notes” on any given instrument; the real fun, for me, is to hear everything come together into a cohesive whole. (Although I do suppose drums are kind of inherently fun, because it’s fun to whack things with sticks.)
7. What have you been listening to lately?
I’m really into Olivier Messiaen’s organ works; they are just otherworldly pieces of music. One of the only musicians I could believe actually had synesthesia. Since I drive a lot for my job, I almost always have something playing—Elliott Smith has seen a lot of rotation lately, Full of Hell, Operators, Boris, The Format, Guided By Voices, Prefab Sprout, Local Flight, OMD, John Maus, Every Time I Die, Ulver. . . . David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time is in my car CD player right now, and it’s surprisingly great driving music.
8. Any bands that particularly influenced the sound of OFPS?
Bowie’s influence came back in a big way for this album, and not even just his “cool” stuff. I remember getting really hung up on “Loving the Alien” and that song “As the World Falls Down” from the Labyrinth soundtrack while I was writing this album. Both of which are tremendous songs, I think—he still made very artful decisions during his most commercial phases. Low and Outside are always huge, perennial influences for me; those moments where he clearly inspired NIN and then took some influence back from them. Wolf Parade was also definitely a big presence, particularly in the way I approached the keyboard parts.
9. You seem to have an affinity for lots of 1980's music. Break it down for the people!
Oh, most definitely. First of all, ‘80s production simply makes your brain feel good. A nice balance of guitars and synthesizers is cool, gated drums are cool, slathering reverb on everything is extremely cool. I think that production style is really deeply ingrained in me; many of my earliest memories of music are some of my parents’ records that were produced by Jeff Lynne or T Bone Burnett. It’s a wonderful production style, very comforting to me, if not necessarily timeless. As a teenager, I got very heavily into that whole postpunk/goth/shoegaze vein, and I’ve pretty much been living out some version of that ever since.
There is sort of a conundrum to soaking in the ‘80s stuff for me, though. The title of the song “Dressing Well in 1987” comes indirectly from filmmaker Adam Curtis. While he was looking through various archival footage for his documentary Bitter Lake, he found footage of Margaret Thatcher talking about fashion in ’87 and a video journalist lamenting that he missed some act of death and violence on camera—“I hate it when I miss all the action!” We’ve now seen multiple ‘80s revival movements in rock music, and most of contemporary pop culture runs on nostalgic impulses. It only seems obvious that the era’s market-driven fascism and naked violence would also come back into acceptable style, not because politics exists downstream from culture, but because what generally passes for culture tends to bolster and affirm the extant power structures. Plus, nostalgia inherently limits the imagination; it’s hard to visualize a better future when you’re caught up in mourning the lost futures of your childhood. You end up with a parasite/host kind of symbiosis if you stay anywhere in the past too long. But, hey, “remember that vampires are not real!”
10. Best live venue you have played?
I really, really miss the DIY space the Flux Capacitor. That place was just special and seemed to bring the best out of people. The Zodiac often felt like a musical home base for me, too; their staff was just the best. I had great experiences at the Moonlight Lounge in Albuquerque. It’s funny; in the past, I’ve been fortunate enough to play a couple huge arena shows, state fairs, that kind of thing. But none of them were anywhere nearly as euphoric or memorable as those more intimate nights in smaller spaces with a bunch of your pals.
11. Are you planning to play this record or portions of it live?
I’d certainly hoped to! I had a set list made up for an album release show and mixed in a couple unexpected covers that I was pretty excited about. The Zodiac closing and the pandemic situation have obviously put a big damper on all that activity. I might try to do some livestream shows if I can find a way to present the songs with adequate instrumentation. Presenting the album by just having people watching me on a screen, by myself, fumbling around on an acoustic guitar, would likely be unsatisfactory for everyone involved.
12. What's your go-to brew right now?
Well, there’s nothing quite like a Bushington’s Best or a nice Moon Town Lager. Crisp and refreshing, “It’s the beer drinker’s light beer.”
13. Best record of 1976?
Oh, gee, thanks for giving me a really easy and simple year, ha! Objectively, it’s got to be Songs in the Key of Life, right? But my personal favorite is probably Station to Station—it’s right up there with my favorite Bowie records. I’ve also got to give an honorable mention to Mort Garson’s Plantasia, a weird, very charming early synth record that was apparently designed to help your houseplants grow and be happy.
14. Where's the best Mexican food in Colorado Springs?
El Taco Rey just might be my favorite restaurant in Colorado Springs, regardless of “genre,” as Erin and I call it. One 5-C for me, please.
15. Who is the real Phillip Jeffries?
Ah, yes, the long-lost Phillip Jeffries. Well, he was certainly more pure of heart than the real-life Humphrey Gilbert, though I can’t help but fear their investigations led them to similar fates, for similar reasons. Be careful out there!
16. What is your favorite rock movie and why?
A Hard Day’s Night holds up exceptionally well. It’s still pretty laugh-out-loud funny in a way many movies from the early ‘60s are not. I mean, I adore The Beatles, but I’m probably not going to be able to sit through Help. I also really like 24 Hour Party People; I’m a big fan of Steve Coogan, anyway, and that’s an almost unparalleled era of music, Manchester from about ’76 to ’92. The film is just self-aware enough and bends the truth just as much as it needs . . . very, very entertaining.
17. Any future music plans?
Of course; I’ve generally got to keep busy or I start feeling antsy. I’ve got a bunch of upcoming collaborations with Greno and a couple planned releases from The Glass Parade, my project with Erin, which is a little more psychedelic/power pop influenced. I’m playing keyboards in Owen’s new band Mountains in Reverse, I’ve got some ideas for a weird fake cartoon soundtrack inspired by Earthbound with my friend Drew Sherman, I’m slowly doing some treatments on an unfinished record from 2016. Eventually, there’s another possible solo LP in the works which would be sort of a sister release to Our Favorite Prodigal Son.
18. If you could meet any musician, who would it be?
Oh boy. In all honesty, I usually feel too nervous and shy to really want to meet any of my heroes. So maybe Mizutani from Les Rallizes Dénudés, if he’s still out there. I don’t speak Japanese, so we could just nod at each other warmly and I wouldn’t feel embarrassed about anything.
You can buy Collin's music at
