Longtime readers will remember one of my first interviews, “Investigating the Partners Behind Sound Investments.” Two of the musicians responsible for that amazing album are Andy and Nick Jackson, better known as everyone’s favorite comedic duo, Cosmic Bos. I talked with them recently about their creative process, their favorite songs, and their lighthearted longform podcast showcasing original indie music from around the world, the Monthly Music Challenge.
Uncle Funkbeard: Explain the name Cosmic Bos. Where did it come from? What does it mean?
Andy Jackson: The name Cosmic Bos means cosmic forest because Bos is Dutch for forest, but it also sounds like boss so the double meaning thing we like so much is in our name. My wife and I came up with the name. The word “cosmic” is taken from a trilogy of books by Robert Anton Wilson called Cosmic Trigger and my favorite Florence and the Machine song, “Cosmic Love.” I have a deep love for Amsterdam, it is my spiritual home and the first place I ever did street performances, and Amsterdam forest is particularly special to my spiritual musical journey.
UF: How long have you been making music together?
Nick Jackson: Well, we're brothers so basically since I was 14, Andy would have been 20. I was learning guitar and writing my own songs and we started messing about, making up songs together.
AJ: Nick and I have worked together as Cosmic Bos since 2019, but we have always made music together, helped each other out with all our different musical endeavors.
NJ: Andy would be working on his projects and me on mine. We always loved improv though, so whenever we were together we would be making stuff up to try and make each other laugh. We used to make a podcast about 15 years ago called Products of Monkey Love where we would improvise a bunch of songs. Andy then joined my band Meta-Cassette in which he played synth and sang and through that Bos was born and the band kind of fizzled out.
AJ: In 2016 I was working on a solo project which Chris Mace from Meta-Cassette produced, and that became Cosmic Bos’ first album, 7 Billion.
NJ: So basically about 22 years but constantly together for the last seven.
UF: I saw a video of you creating a song start to finish in what looked like a single day. As much music as you produce, is that about how long it normally takes you?
AJ: The video you are referring to is “Grand Theft Autotune,” which we made in a couple of hours for the Monthly Music Challenge.
NJ: We did make an album in a month in 2022 (2 A.M, it's Mission Time) and also in 2023 as a collaboration with Andrew Hartshorn and A Sea Warren (Sound Investments).
AJ: It was a personal challenge of mine to take part in the Music Weeklies challenge on Twitter for a whole year, and it produced some of the best songs I’ve ever written.
NJ: We do make music quite quickly and Andy is a lyrical machine so writing has been a fast process for us. We like to challenge ourselves and try new angles, the writing of the song in a day was a test and it worked but more often than not we take a little more time on it.
UF: What’s your creative process like?
AJ: Experimental and exciting. We go where the flow takes us.
NJ: It's fun, we're always pushing each other and trying to make each other laugh so the creative process is hilarious most of the time. We also run with ideas, even if we're not sure to begin with because there might be gold at the end.
UF: What strengths do you bring to the partnership?
AJ: I bring the lyrics and the singing, and the cake. We both do everything really, my main instrument is the acoustic guitar, but I play a bit of piano, finger piano, Steel drum, vocal trumpet etc. Both Nick and I are singer songwriters and have been since teenagehood.
NJ: I write, play guitar mainly as well as lots of other instruments and I produce Cosmic Bos. We're a very good team, Andy and I, as we use our strengths so we bring the whole thing together, him doing what he needs to and I do the same.
UF: In what areas is your brother stronger than you?
NJ: Not many. Certainly in the vocal and lyrical zone, he does all the social media and he is the optimist of Cosmic Bos. Andy is aways pushing to be bigger and better, I admire his drive.
AJ: Nick is more grounded than me, I tend to go deep down the creative rabbit hole and Nick helps shape the raw musical materials into Cosmic Gold. Nick is the sensible one who wrangles my creative flights of fancy.
UF: Which brother is the overall better musician?
NJ: Me, obviously.
AJ: Sounds arrogant but it’s me. I’ve got 6 years’ experience over Nick though, and better is such an arbitrary term.
NJ: We both have very different strengths so we're very on par. But if someone edged it, it would be me... obviously.
AJ: We are a team and we have always made something special by combining our skills. But yeah, I’m the best.
UF: Which brother is more successful with the ladies?
NJ: We're both married so I'd say we're both extremely successful.
AJ: Fellas, best advice in this arena: learn to sing and play guitar, there is no faster way to a woman’s heart.
UF: Which of your songs has had the most commercial success?
NJ: I'm not entirely sure, we've had a few songs that have been added to playlists and stuff but we don't have just one song that has taken off.
AJ: We haven’t yet really achieved the commercial success but we are very close.
NJ: “Happiness is a Battenberg named David” done pretty well and a song called “Take it Easier” got played a lot.
AJ: “Happiness is a Battenberg named David” has had a bigger impact than most and that’s all down to David Battenberg cake. We are musicians’ musicians so mainstream appeal is a bit missing, but that’s okay, we make music for ourselves first.
UF: Which song is your personal favorite?
NJ: There are so many to choose, I have many favorites for different reasons.
AJ: “Isle of Avalon” is my favorite to play, it makes my soul tingle.
NJ: I love “Ride Another Wave” from our first EP Virtual Normality because it's about my wife going through labor for the first time.
AJ: “Future Anniversaries” is my favorite to sing, it makes my soul smile.
NJ: I love “Catch a Clue” from 2 A.M, it's Mission Time because it's a hard-hitting banger.
AJ: “Super Spectacular” is my favorite to listen to because it’s epic in a way we hadn’t been till then.
NJ: I love “Morning Coffee” from the EP Virtual Normality 2 for its catchy hooks and awesome vocals from Andy.
AJ: And “Tribute to Tribute” is my favorite to perform live because I get to show off.
UF: The video you made for that track is a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the original by Tenacious D.
NJ: It was an awesome video to edit.
UF: You’ve made a number of YouTube videos, some of which, like “Tribute to Tribute” and “Barbenheimer” seem like they took an inordinate amount of effort. Which one is your favorite?
AJ: Oh this is tough, our music videos are the most fun thing we do, also the most challenging.
NJ: We love making videos, we've been making music videos for almost as long as we've been making music. I don't have a favorite, I think fondly of so many for different reasons. “Space Babies” was fun as it was using my first son Theo in his first video.
AJ: “Aim” with Anya Louisa is one of my faves and we will definitely do another computer game style vid in the future.
NJ: “Pinch Me I'm Dreaming” was great as it was basically an all-night shoot of Andy running up and down his hallway in different clothes,
AJ: “Who Invited You?” is one of our best, Nick’s Lego stop motion is so epic. We have too many and I could easily list them all with a reason why they are my favorite.
UF: Let’s talk about your podcast. I know you had one for several years before starting the Monthly Music Challenge.
AJ: Back in 2010 I launched my first one, Products of Monkey Love. Once we’d made 7 Billion we turned the Cosmic Bos project into an improv music podcast. For two years we made Improv-revisation.
NJ: The first two years Cosmic Bos had a third member, the wonderful Chris Mace and we used to spend a day recording an album’s worth of music, then spend a chunk of time cutting and mixing that music to release an album along with our monthly podcast, we called this improv-revisation. Macey then left and Andy and I had to change our approach and basically learn a bunch of skills super quickly, so we went back to what we knew, improv.
AJ: We made 4 full length improvised albums with Joe Philogene, the Improvisation season of our show. In 2022 we turned our podcast into Making of an Album because we intended to finish an album we’ve been trying to make for the last couple of years. This swiftly changed in April with the announcement of the Album in a Month challenge by Lights and Lines.
NJ: We made improv squared which was us recording us improvising something and then we would improvise over that improvisation, then again and again, adding lyrics later and this became how we made 2 A.M, it’s Mission Time.
AJ: In the summer of that year, I discovered the music weekly challenge on Twitter and embarked on a yearlong quest to make a song a week. By October 2022 Nick and I decided that we would launch the Monthly Music Challenge as a midpoint between these two challenges we had discovered.
NJ: We wanted something in the middle, a monthly challenge to make a song seemed a great idea and we've run with it in podcast form since. It's now in its second season and continues to grow monthly.
AJ: The fact so many people have joined the MMC community proves to us that our approach has something to offer.
UF: What’s your favorite story from the first year?
AJ: The birth of David Battenberg Cake. I’ve been doing impressions with David Attenborough for a long time, as most British people have, and who would’ve thought that the slip of a tongue and saying Battenberg instead of Attenborough would lead to what it did.
UF: This is now the second year – have you learned anything from the first one?
NJ: Yeah definitely, our podcast and music is always developing, it's a fun journey that we basically document along the way. The first year was great but changed a lot across the year, we're constantly learning things and coming up with ideas to make it even better. The podcast is getting a lot of music sent to it from round the world and it's a great community to be a part of.
UF: So far, the challenges this year have been “First Impressions,” “Happiness, “Intergalactic” and “Animals.” What’s the next one, and how am I involved?
NJ: Year one we done a jazz themed month so we thought this year we should do another genre, however we don't have a fixed theme yet I think... Andy? Andy might have other ideas.
AJ: We can’t say more about that until the theme release date. In fact, spoiler alert! Maybe don’t put this bit in, or make it cryptic.
Follow Cosmic Bos and learn more about the Monthly Music Challenge at https://cosmicbos.libsyn.com/. The theme for May will be announced when the next MMC episode drops on May 5.