Interview by Camille Germain
Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult has been crafting something special in a tiny cabin nestled in the Wisconsin woods. The band's recent album Alchemy Creek, emerged from two years of isolation and deep creative communion with nature. Known for their philosophical indie-chamber-rock sound and unwavering commitment to environmental consciousness, Cloud Cult has long carved their own path in the music industry.
In this intimate conversation, Minowa opens up about the transformative process of creating Alchemy Creek, the delicate balance between artistry and anxiety, and the profound connection between songwriting and personal growth. His approach to music-making remains deeply rooted in presence and authenticity, from washing his face in the creek each morning to channeling songs that feel like visiting spirits. The interview reveals an artist who has found peace in stepping away from industry pressures to focus on what matters most: the healing power of music and its ability to facilitate change.
Minowa reflects on his evolution as both an artist and a human being as he shares insights into the band's unique creative process and their continued dedication to environmental stewardship through their independent label, Earthology Records.
Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult working on 'Alchemy Creek' provided by Cloud Cult
CAMILLE: How have you changed since the start of making Alchemy Creek to now that it’s officially released?
CRAIG: I think I breathe a lot deeper. I'm a lot better at catching myself when I go down a mental habit that's not gonna be good for me.
I think I'm in the present moment better. I'm still not as good as I want to be, but I'm getting there. I'm catching myself more often when I'm caught up in the future or caught up in the past and not existing right now.
CAMILLE: Where do you feel you gained that from the most in the two years that you were working on this release?
CRAIG: For me, music is very intimately tied to the personal growth process. If I stop making music, I stagnate on my personal growth. There's something that happens with the songwriting process that really facilitates my ability to take the next step forward in my personal development. A lot of that is… listening for advice in the lyrics that I can then sing to myself over and over so I can get a reminder of how to do it better. You know, I think that all the advice that we need is already out there. I mean, we've heard it all, and there's so many little bits of advice that, you know, you run into in your childhood or online or whatever that just kind of come and go. And it's not until you're ready in life to receive that and take it in and actually make something of it that helps facilitate that personal development process. So for me, the songwriting is sort of like taking all those years of advice given to you and distilling it down to the things that are actually gonna help me right now, because I need a lot of help and a lot of medicine. And I am a work in progress, just like everybody.
CAMILLE: Then, being able to know what source of advice is reliable is a challenge in itself.
CRAIG: For sure. I mean, just the earlier discussion of being present, I mean, how many times have we heard that and you kind of think, well, no, duh, I'll be as present as I can. But, you know, it actually takes a lot of work. It's not easy, but the payoff is huge.
Touring is coming up and, like, I am a really introverted, quiet kind of person. I will always choose to have a quiet night with a couple of friends over going out into a bustling crowd. And so when a tour is coming up, I have historically gotten really anxious. And...
I can have weeks before a tour, while my present moment is eaten up by the anxiety I have over this impending tour. So I have all these songs about being present, and the irony is that I have this anxiety about the future singing these songs about being in the present moment.
This is the first tour where I've had enough inner discipline that I'm using the fire extinguisher to puff out those little bursts of anxiety and witness it fast enough to not let it take me over…. so far.
CAMILLE: That mindfulness, right?
CRAIG: Yeah, it's witnessing yourself and saying like, oh, you're doing that now. Oh, that's interesting. What do we want to do here? Sometimes I think we can blindly go through our day without really watching ourselves. We're watching everybody else around us, but not seeing what our role is in it.
CAMILLE: Yeah, well, and you know building that toolkit and learning the language that will facilitate you correcting yourself or adjusting to a better pattern.
CRAIG: Totally. Yeah. Toolkit's a good word for it because everybody's toolkit's going to have different words in it, different ideas, and different relationships in it that will ultimately work for them. But not everybody has had help in developing that toolkit.
CAMILLE: Exactly.
Which track would you say was the most difficult to write and why? Which one would you say was the easiest and why?
CRAIG: I think ultimately the most difficult track would be “Different Kind of Day.”
It closes out the album. The album was written with a really close and active Patreon community.
So I would be in the Alchemy Creek studio and write a song idea and then I would share it that same week and the Patreon community would give feedback and say what they liked. You could tell what resonated and what wasn't necessarily catching as many ears.
When I put “Different Kind of Day” out there, the response was clear. It was like, “okay, this one’s gonna make it on the album.” Like with all the songs that I shared on Patreon, that one was…
So you're listening for the feedback to see how much you might have to change a song or if it was gonna make it onto the album or not. Also just kind of getting a feel for where it might land on the album.
We like to have an album that follows an emotional curve and a storyline. You know, you go to the movie theater, you've got an hour and 15 minutes where you're following a deep storyline, and ultimately you come out the other side a little bit changed. That's the best kind of movie. One where it changes you for the better. You can bring a person through quite a cathartic journey over that amount of time. I think the album format offers that same sort of opportunity for the listeners who have long enough of an attention span to sit down and want to listen to something front and back. That's not how everyone listens, but for those that are interested in it that's always been our approach. How do you put the elements together in a way that's going to have an overall emotional arc that brings you into hard places and then comes out and hopefully sends you out into the world wanting to shoot for positive change in yourself or in the world. Just feeling a little bit charged up after you deal with some shadows in yourself. So "Different Kind of Day" it was pretty clear after it went to the Patreon was going to be the last song. And you know that the last song on the album is the one where you send everybody off.
It can't be too cheesy. It's gotta have enough energy, but it can't be, you know, candy. There's a lot of pressure on the last song because you're saying goodbye to your listeners for two, three years and also you're closing up your story.
So that song had a lot of different approaches to it, especially the last 20 seconds of the song. There was a lot of analytical thought put into how to make sure it offered the right kind of closure. In contrast, the easiest song was the first song. There was no analytical thought at all. Like the song just made itself. I've never had a song that forced itself out like that one did.
Artists, authors, and athletes talk about being in the zone, where you have something kind of working through you or you kind of let go of yourself. That's always the goal as an artist, to step aside enough that something else can work through you. Or maybe it's just this unconscious takes over. However you want to describe that process.
That first song was like, me, Craig, disappearing for the whole period of recording it and the spirit of whatever that song was just being there.
I couldn't even think about keys. Just going instrument to instrument was like a blur to me. It was like I was watching myself do this thing but I wasn't really there. It's super weird.
And I don't do drugs, so it's not like that. It was just a very out-of-body and those kinds of songwriting experiences tend to be the easiest because you're not thinking about it, you're just waiting for it to finish its job.
CAMILLE: Yeah, I mean, that's powerful. You felt very connected to the music and you were present in that moment as well. You’re present in the music itself.
CRAIG: That is exactly right. I mean, that's the tie-in. And I think that's why the songwriting process has such a draw for you. You think about Buddhist meditating and all these different types of techniques that you can use to become fully present. And that is exactly right. But that process where you're so far gone into the songwriting that you're not thinking about the past or the future or not even thinking about food or drinking or going to the bathroom. It's sort of, really, you're just, you are so in the moment that there's nothing else. There's something really powerful about that.
CAMILLE: Absolutely. Instead of being competitive or comparing your work to other people and breaking down all the pressures that you have in order to sell an album, to tour, to be signed, or to have management, all those things just faded away in that moment, I'm sure.
CRAIG: Yeah, that's totally true. I think that was one of the blessings of this album as a whole too, is that we've been doing this long enough that the music industry has changed so much that I can't even...
To imagine trying to compete with any new artists coming out or new labels coming out because there's all these new magic tricks that you do in social media and things like that but I don't even want to learn. I don't care. It pulls people so far away from their original art form of songwriting where they have to learn how you're going to build an algorithm to get enough views of something.
I slipped into that rabbit hole a little bit here and there and realized like that's a totally different craft and I don't want to do that.
The best way that I'll continue to be successful in this profession is to be an authentic songwriter and to hope for the best. I'm all the stuff that I don't want to care about, like what the algorithms are going to think of it, or what, you know, college radio is going to think of it, or you know, whatever.
I just don't want to care about that.
CAMILLE: That's why you hire out, right? Hire this freelancer to do this for a bit and then we'll just focus on the music.
CRAIG: Yeah, somebody who knows what they're doing. We've always been a true independent band, like our own record label, so we always put it out ourselves, but we hire a good team.
CAMILLE: What does your creative process look like and where does your inspiration come from?
CRAIG: I have four kids, so I have the constraints of not being in a spot where I can just, like, drop everything on a whim and say, "I'm inspired right now so that needs to happen." It's like "No, my hours are from 8:30 until 4 - when the kids are done with school. You know, and then I can do some after they go to bed at night. It's like a day job, or well… it is a day job. So, I'll drop the kids at school and then Alchemy Creek is out in the middle of nowhere. I go there and then I wash my face in the creek there.
For me, I'm trying to wash myself off. Like my identity, my ego, or my self-consciousness. Any sort of idea about what I should be or what I should be creating that day or what the industry expects from me or what the world expects. Like just wash yourself off and you suddenly become part of everything. And I scrub hard.
Then I go for a walk in the woods and I listen. And I spent a lot of time being a literal tree hugger back there and listening and feeling and trying to put my antenna on and there's just so much information out there, wonderful, wonderful guidance and advice.
And I get back to the studio and I have everything in that tiny footprint of a studio. There's my electric guitar, my acoustic guitar, and a drum set and all my microphones and keyboard, everything that I need.
I hopefully let go of myself and write and record for the day. I'd like to imagine it being like some traveling spirit wanders down the creek from who knows where. It could be anywhere. It could be from anytime. And the spirit knocks on my cabin door and I'm there with a pencil and some paper and I'm interviewing them just like you're interviewing me right now. I'm listening and I'm writing down and I'm giving them some tea and entertaining them and trying to make sure that they feel welcome and heard and then I send them on their way and hopefully what they've left behind is a song. That's my kind of analogy for how I feel like the songs come. Just coming down the creek there, stories from somewhere else.
I think it's in the human DNA. For thousands of generations, we've lived and sought information from the land and the sky and the stars. For thousands of generations, music has been this tool to connect to something bigger than us. [Those deep, rich ecological systems] go hand in hand really well with songwriting.
CAMILLE: How would you describe the dynamics of the band in both recording and playing live shows?
CRAIG: It's definitely very family-like. We've been together long enough and we've been through enough ups and downs together. It feels a lot like family feels in the sense that no matter what happens you're going to figure out how to work it out, you know?
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