🎙 The Song-A-Day Man | Jonathan Mann (Layer Zero)

is is welcome to layer zero layer zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the ethereum community crypto is built by code but it's composed by people and each individual

member of the crypto community has their own story to tell cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it and layer zero focuses on the people behind the code because ethereum is people all the way down and it always has been today i'm speaking with jonathan mann who might be known as the song a day man jonathan mann has been creating and singing and producing one song a day for a really really really long time something like over four years now uh and so we talk about uh and i also

discovered him for the first time in 2019 at east denver uh where he was kind of just a an mc of sorts uh and where he gave his talk about his journey of creating one song a day uh and there's a number of these a day people that have gravitated in towards into into crypto a people being being one of them but there's another there's others as well another previous podcast guest of lair zero justin aversano also took a birth a picture of somebody's uh of someone on their birthday every single day for a year

and there's a conversation to be had about the relationship between creative output hard just work provably hard work because if you do something one time a day for years you know you're putting in the work and also the power of assets crypto assets uh so we unpack that a little bit and we also go into what um jonathan has been up to with his uh dao the the song a day dao and so that'll be in the second half of the show so let's go ahead and get right into it uh i bring you

jonathan mann right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible if you're going bankless you need metamask this is your tool to unlock the world of defy without giving up custody over your private keys metamask is both a secure in-browser wallet and also a secure bridge for your hardware wallet you can now trade tokens on any decks or aggregator metamatic swap gathers real-time pricing information across all the d5 exchanges allowing you to select your best price while getting all the metamask benefits of self-custody lower gas costs and increased transaction success rates

metamask also has a fantastic mobile wallet that i use when i'm out and about which i use to collect poaps nfts and do all my defy things while i'm away from home if you haven't downloaded metamask you gotta try it out web3 wouldn't be the same without it download menomas for desktop and mobile at metamask.io and load up your trezor ledger lattice or keystone hardware wallets so that they too can get into the world of web3 living a bankless life requires taking control of your own private keys not your keys not your crypto that's why so many in the bank list nation already have their ledger hardware wallet but

the ledger ecosystem is much more than just a secure hardware wallet ledger is the combination of the alleged hardware wallet the ledger live app and soon the cl cryptolife card powered by ledger the cl card powered by ledger is a crypto debit card with powerful features like an instant exchange to fiat where crypto assets are only sold at the moment that you swipe your card and also credit from crypto collateral where you can collateralize your crypto assets in order to get a higher credit limit you'll be able to manage your cl card powered by ledger inside the ledger live app right next to all the d5 apps and

services that you're already used to using making the ledger live app your one-stop shop for all of your financial needs go to ledger.com grab a ledger and download ledger live to get all of your defy applications all in one place so you've got some money and you want to spend you me shopping now bro when you should be saving you'll never buy a house at this rate but what if you could spend and save at the same time for the enlightened kind with inquiring minds

a new world awaits set yourself free with completely flexible self-repaying loan technology supported on desktop and mobile sees the power of alchemics allowing you to spend and save at the same time leverage your wealth without the risk of liquidation take out a loan that repays itself what was once inconceivable is now

within your grasp are you winning some hey jonathan what's up hey good uh how are you doing good really good um the first time i ever discovered you was that east denver 2019 yeah 2019 is that when you were like the the mc of sorts i was the mc for like one minute so so

what happened was um they were trying to do like the judging of the uh hackathon and all the judges were taking too long and so john pallar of of denver was like jonathan like go up on stage do something stall them and it just happened that i have i like had my computer ready and like i had this talk that i used to give all the time like ready to go so i was like i'm on there and so yeah so that's probably where that's probably where you saw me

if you saw me there at that time right right you gave the talk about your story of making one one song a day which that story i don't think has stopped at all ever since then no that yeah it's sagaday is nuts in that way and that it's just kind of relentless and you know that's like that's literally a thousand songs ago that's how i think about it that's a thousand songs ago three years is a thousand songs so that's like that's pretty intense so most of these later zero episodes i

start with somebody's backstory and then try and lead it into crypto but with you i actually kind of want to do the inverse because of just the nature of who you are so sure let's start with crypto how did you find crypto yeah that's fine um well from listening to the podcast i know that you came in around 2017 also that's like that's my that's my entry point i was at a conference in um in ontario in like at a summer camp and i saw a talk by ethan buckman who

um does uh cosmos and uh he's just he was just great and i had never been interested in it before it seemed like it wasn't really for me it seemed like a finance bro kind of thing it didn't really seem like it vibed with with just didn't really see how it related to me but something about his talk and i can tell you exactly what it was it was like he explained proof of work in a way where i i kind of got it for the first time and i started and then he also sang a song which helped like he had a little like ukulele who was singing it was

great and i started i had this really dumb thought like looking back on it it's kind of dumb but also it makes sense which is like oh yeah proof of work like i have that like like i've been doing a song a day since january 1st of 2009 like that's my proof of work like and then i was like oh like is there some connection between like blockchain and my song today project and like what could that be and i talked to ethan about it and he was like really supportive and then i got home and i tweeted when you could find the tweet

and i said like hey like does anyone know anything about the blockchain like i have this crazy idea for a project and my friend boris reached out sent me some eth said go play that was literally his words and um and about a week later he showed me crypto punks and that was the moment that was like that was the real lightning bulb lightning strike light bulb moment for me was seeing crypto punks at that time which was you know like um

maybe six months five months after they had launched uh and it just blew my mind wide open okay so let's let's put a put a pin in that part of the store now let's do song a day how did you start doing song a day and also what is song a day yeah song a day is an ongoing project where i write write and record and make a video for a song every single day and i've been doing that since january 1st of 2009 i started really just trying to go for a month it was literally just 31 days that i was aiming for

um within that 31 days of january of 2009 um i had a couple songs go kind of mini viral and like it just was going well and i was unemployed i was like 26 living in berkeley i had nothing else going on and so i decided to try for a year and then at the end of 2009 i just kind of i just kind of decided to keep going and not stop um and that's how that's how i'm here you know 4 76

songs in to the project but why yeah yeah uh well that that answer has changed so much over the years if you asked me back then and people did and i this is the answer that i would give back then it's basically like um it basically like talked about how as a creative person who i've been writing songs since i was 12 and like well i've always been somewhat

prolific there was a piece of me that would often run up against some kind of form of writer's block where the problem with writer's block is like you you feel like you want to make something you have like the urge to create but nothing comes out and that's very frustrating um i found i sort of stumbled into song a day as like a uh just a a a a writer's block proof method

of creating um and that's like one that's one reason that i used to give and then another reason was you know to get attention is like in this in this day and age you need to have a hook and like that's my shtick like hey i'm up here doing a song a day like that's just like a good shtick to have that's another reason um but as time goes on you know it's it becomes it's become something quite different in a lot of ways it's become

almost like i don't want to say spiritual but it's become like it's become just a practice you know it's it's just become something that like there's there's a there's a weight to like sitting down and just doing something every single day and doing it and there's something there's just like i just find so many benefits that come out of it that that it just be has become part of my life it's like part of the firmament of my existence now what are the what what are some of those benefits

so the only way to get good at something right is to is to is to fail a lot is to make let's do is like to [ __ ] up a bunch um and song of day is a really great um framework for [ __ ] up and for like making a lot of [ __ ] and a lot of crap that's bad you know and and even for me like doing that in public for all these years you know they all live on youtube there's like there's something about that that is

um humbling i guess but also also is teaches teaches me a different thing which is that like no one really cares whether you suck you know what i mean no one real like like there's haters and there's trolls and stuff but like in the grand scheme of thing like no one's really paying attention to you most of the time and and so like what's wrong with making something shitty on the way to making something good and to not be afraid of that so that's

so that's like a lesson that i learn over and over and over again and then just in like a pure kind of practice way i've just gotten better i've just gotten better at things as a musician as a producer as a singer i've just gotten better from literally doing it for 13 years like every day um yeah do you feel like it takes a similar um role in your life as perhaps like meditation or journaling does for other

people yeah i think that's definitely the case i would say you know i i again like back in the day i wouldn't have i wouldn't have said that you know i wouldn't have like it's that's not something that i set out to do but looking back on it especially now you know if you go on the song and they dot world and like you just like like shuffle through the songs you know you get a real sense of like of my life in a lot of ways like it it

is literally a record um of my life you know there's people you know gazali just went uh viral for taking a picture of himself every day for five years and my friend noah kalina has done that for like 21 years now um you know there's something about like documenting yourself documenting what's going on in your life every single day that's kind of that's really intense and then um what was the other what was the other part i don't remember what you just said

there's there's yeah i just asked if it feels the same niche as somebody who like meditates or journaling oh yeah for sure the meditation part uh absolutely in fact um like the one time that i feel uh um free from anxiety the one time that i'm like not anxious well it's two times one of the times is when i'm sitting down writing my song like when i'm really lost in creating a song

um and like in that state of flow if you're if you're familiar with that idea the idea of flow is where you the the task that you're trying to do is right at the edge of what you're capable of doing and you know you're you're pushing right up against that edge that's when you get into that flow state and i find myself in that all the time when i'm doing a song it's never boring that's not true it's just boring a lot of times but when i get into that zone it's like it's and and and

and i get and almost every day i can get there even if it's just for a few minutes if i don't have a lot of time to work on my song but when i'm actually in it it's the only thing i'm thinking about you know what i mean whereas every all the other times of the day i'm like and anxious as [ __ ] about everything uh but when i'm like actually in it doing my song um i'm so present like with the song so in in that way i don't know if it you know i don't know if it um in the meditation sense i i

haven't gotten as good at like taking the benefits of that you know taking that kind of uh hereness that i feel when i'm doing a song and applying it to other places that's the sort of key of meditation is like you learn not only to do it when you're sitting there but also you're just like standing there doing the dishes and you sort of notice yourself like whoa here i am um that is a that's i think it's a different muscle than than this one but but for the purposes of like an everyday moment when i am just here with myself

uh sagaday i would say fills that for sure i'm sure there's gotta be like days where i don't know it's in the last part of the day and you're like damn i haven't done my song today god damn it i just have to bang this song out how how often are how do you get through those days yeah yeah so um by giving myself a lot of leeway basically i call those phoning it in phoning it in days where where um sort of to what i was saying before is like

no one [ __ ] cares no one cares if you're gonna phone it in one day who who the [ __ ] who gives a [ __ ] and so and so ultimately i give myself a lot of latitude to just suck if i need to suck on at a particular time that's cool that's right uh and so i'll phone it in i'll just i'll literally just like improvise the song on the spot i will there's days when i put like as little effort as possible into it um the other thing that i've learned about that though what's wild is

another term i have for is like these songs that i just sort of poop out like the songs that i just sort of poop out in those times when i'm like i don't feel inspired whatsoever and i'm like like you said end of the day i'm exhausted you know especially my kids are you know four and seven but when they were infants forget it i mean that's like when you have an infant in the house but uh what i found is like oftentimes those songs they still resonate with somebody somebody somebody still hears it and says wow i really like that one or like wow that

one really like that one really hit me at the right moment or whatever so so who the [ __ ] knows like i i'm not you know you we're like not the best judges of what we're what we make um and it's easy it's so easy to get in your head about like is this good is this bad when the when the fact of the matter is is what you think about it kind of doesn't matter because somebody else is going to think something completely different about it there was a a podcast that ryan and i did a monday podcast like one of the big

ones and i won't name the guests just because of the nature of the story but both as soon as we got off of the podcast him and i were both like oh god that podcast was awful like do we even release that like that was so bad and yeah we just didn't have enough time to like scrounge up another podcast in time so we released it and it turned into being a number three most downloaded podcast in that spot for a really really long time and we got so much positive feedback about it and we

just learned a lot about ourselves like sometimes like what we think is good and what the enjoyment that we got out of it is just not at all what like everyone all the listeners get out of it i can't tell you how many times that's happened to me where where like songs that i think are great and i'm like really excited by do nothing and then songs that i literally put no effort into people were like this is the best i love this one like you know there's a famous story about how like tom petty wrote free falling

where it was like he was just trying to make everybody laugh like he was singing this song he's like he's just like making up the lyrics and he's like she's a good girl crazy about elvis and everyone's like just cracking up about it and it turns into like literally his biggest song ever yeah you know uh there's something about um two about about like uh you know a lot of people will say like oh you gotta like to make good art you have to like be all emotional you have to put your emotions into it it has to be like this deep

thing that's [ __ ] like you know what if you sit down to try to be emotional you know if you sit down and you're like i'm gonna write an emotional song you know and i'm gonna make it all come out you put a lot of pressure on yourself to like to live up to that whereas if you just sit down you're like i'm just gonna write something let's see what comes out you know you're not putting any pressure on you and that's when that's when you can just like open up and let something come you know that's that's how i see it i don't think

you can you can actually like go go for emotion right like that's not something that you can optimize for no right you can't you can't just decide that you're gonna be emotional today exactly and and sometimes you feel emotional and sometimes you're able to like to channel your emotions but on days when you don't to try to do that you know is fruitless i think but also on days when you don't there's a lot of power in just sitting down and showing up do do you have any of uh

like your your favorite songs that you've written either out judged by the output of the songs that you created or the process of you making them um like a lot of my a lot of the stuff i'm most proud of making are on like albums and things that i've done like a big part of what i do with song days i go back and kind of mine the songs for things that i think could could stand to be polished you know because because a lot of times what comes out of song today sort of is is

you know ultimately like a demo in a lot of ways um so i put out an album like 2019 that i'm really proud of and um i did this narrative fiction podcast called songanats and the music for that i'm super super proud of as well so those would be i'd say like the the ones that i'm like most because i put so much work into them uh to talk about like the process like i really you know i really honed and and try to

get to the heart of like what each song was and so yeah that that's that's like that's definitely what i'm most proud of i'd say are the ones i like the most so picking up the crypto thread uh crypto is a very interesting industry do you think that like you've used crypto just as like inspiration to like yo crypto has so much content inside of it uh like i can just get a lot of inspiration from my songs crypto's gonna make writing about songs so much easier are these some of the thoughts that went through your head no

but but i in my life you know because song a day is just part of my life like i said the firmament of just what i do anything that i get into i end up uh folding into song a day right so you can you can look and like on i think it's september 17th of 2017 i wrote a song about crypto punks because i was just so into crypto punks and that's just sort of naturally what i

do you know i wrote a song about dada like dada um the dada art people i wrote a song about and i did a song about what's another one i did i did several cryptokitty songs back then because i was just so excited about nfts they weren't called nfts back then but like that's what i was excited about uh and and so that sort of that sort of continues now where now i'm like really deep in the space and so yeah there's just like there's just so much so many different things to write about i'm working on today i asked

twitter what to write about and and some people said uh and i also put i said i said what should my song be about no shilling was the and then like because i didn't want people to come in and be like all right song about this project my project this project write a song about my bags yes exactly and so several people were like no shilling that's a great song that's a great and i was like oh yeah you're right that is that is a great song that's a fun one so so so yeah so so that ended up being that end up being a song and and that's you know oftentimes like there's so many

projects in the space that i that i just love you know that i'm like really aligned with philosophically and just that i'm such a fan of and i'm going to write a song about all of them eventually you know um and that and that's just sort of like got a lot of songs to write so so why not write them about things that i enjoy one of the more recent songs in your trajectory that you've written is uh but the ennis dao one uh yeah that was super catchy by

the way uh i posted that into a couple of my discords like yo guys like uh this look at this look at what the energy of ens dow created like we have you know singer songwriters writing songs about it but also listen to how catchy it is uh and also i think a little bit of what's going on here is uh you're becoming a bit of a storyteller or you you have been right you're like so much of the story of ens got baked into that song yeah maybe it's me reaching for something when i kind of say like the the vibe of the song is also part of the

vibe of ens like the the melody and the tune is it very very ens like but also just straight up the lyrics were illustrating two people about what it was uh and the fact that like somebody would write a song about ens it's not like you wrote about like uh like coinbase or insert your equity company here or or you know like showmybags.com you wrote about ian s dao a community project uh and so that is also part of the story do you see yourself as a little bit of a storyteller in like these short little

snippets of songs um that was my job pretty pandemic that was literally my job uh um the reason i had you know when you saw me at eath denver the reason i had this talk all ready to go is because i would go around to conferences give that talk and then watch all the other talks at the conference and get up at the end of the day and recap everything that everyone said and that was literally that's what i was doing like i was doing like maybe like 15 of those a year and like that was my that was uh my main job

uh right up until the pandemic um so yeah that's a huge part and and um i stories are compelling and i find obviously and i that's sort of a dumb sentence stories are compelling yeah uh but like the stories that are within the stories and lore of this culture i'm sure the i'm sure like every culture has has amazing stories and lore um and so because i'm so steeped uh in this one right now

i can't help but just be attracted to the different uh um narratives that are popping up um you know for a long time it was all about crypto punks for me and like the different kinds of like like i wrote a song about uh snowfro you know who who made our art blocks uh his his burned zombie punk like he he accidentally burned a zombie punk which i love like there's a great story about like how that happened and even the story of how he made art blocks where he sold a bunch of his really valuable punks to fund art

blocks and then art blocks becomes this amazing like that's just a great story you know there's all these amazing stories in the space and so ens dao is just one of those stories you know it's just like uh what an amazing project and what an amazing kind of like coming to fruition of something um in the space and so it was a no-brainer for something like that to write a song whereas like you know not to [ __ ] on this or anything i absolutely do not mean to do that but like everyone's like when are you gonna do a song about irene dao and i'm like i'm

not sure what the story is there necessarily if there's a story there that pops up then i'll be compelled um um whereas with gozali did you see gosali this kid who took a picture of himself every day so there's this kid from indonesia took himself took a picture of himself every day for five years and made a pfp project basically by accident like up he like upload and it's it's just it's it's great and like so that to me it's the guilelessness of him that like makes it compelling

and he became like an instant meme overnight uh and that to me was like so compelling and i was like he has this long history of like all these other people who've done picture a days things and like that to me is an interesting story so that's something that i'm going to write about there's just a lot there's just so much in the space to do there's i feel like there's enough people at this point in the world doing one thing a day yeah that could turn into a doubt like oh yeah yeah yeah oh is that a thing no it should be yeah right so for all

the people that do one thing a day and have been doing so for a while like we should get all those people in the same discord just i've always had a fantasy of doing a conference that was just a conference where all the speakers were people who who do things a day you know because there's a ton there really are like you you know uh um i feel like i'm i feel like even you know uh i find out about new ones all the time like like people show me folks who are doing it i'm like i didn't

know this person existed yeah are is there is there like a thing a day community out there just like all the people that know no there isn't i mean you know when we find each other i think we feel some kind of kinship i know so noah kalina entered the space recently and he's gone viral many times for his um a picture of himself a day thing and i knew him i knew of those and i'd been following the project um but we were able to connect over crypto because he started messaging me asking about song a

day and nfts um and it's great you know it's just great to connect with people who do because they sort of understand things on a on a really specific level so there's another layer zero that i did uh with uh justin aversano who took a photo of somebody's birthday every single day for a year so like you you have the challenge of you need to put output like a couple minutes of creative output every single day his challenge was that he kind of go find somebody whose birthday it was every single day for a year which is a

very different challenge yeah um and uh there's just something about doing something a day that was fine people find really compelling and like the cool thing about justin's story was that you couldn't i don't think you could have taken any single one of his photographs and created the value that he got out of the whole entire thing right like right the his photographs are great but like it's not one photograph isn't gonna do it it's the fact that he did something every single day for a year which was challenging that

created the story that created the total like valuation of his combined work like why do you think humanity could and one of the things that i think is cool about humanity and crypto assets is that like we actually find ways to put market value upon the things that we value and all of a sudden there are these people out there that are doing these a day things and they're fi they're gravitating towards crypto to be able to find a price tag for these things evaluation for these things but before we get to the crypto part like why do you think humans value the a days the the people that do things