Lynn had more to say about the music business, and his decision to leave it, a couple of weeks ago. What follows is more of our interview that didn’t make the page, including the realizations that have hit “30-year-old Logan, not 5-year-old Logan, who needs to have everybody clap for him,” he explained. “I would rather have people hug me when I look sad than be like, ‘You better look happier, we’re all clapping for you.’”

Logan Lynn: That’s really what it has been so hard to deal with is that… [reconciling] my little boy self perspective of like, “You’re a huge success, buddy, good job, you got out of Nebraska,” but comparing it to my 2007 perspective of [being] freshly signed [to the Beat the World label] and “What’s gonna happen? The world is my oyster.” There’s been a lot of reality since then and it also just happened to be a recession right when I was starting and so anybody that might’ve been buying music kinda stopped.

Just Out: It could be considered a luxury, definitely.

Lynn: It really is, and I love making songs. I’ll probably still do it in some context. … And I may make videos. I mean, my relationship with Logo is still great. I have really good relationships … I think that’s what so weird, my relationships with people and the press, whoever that I work with, it’s all good. I feel like I can step back and feel good about where things are at right now.

JO: So this marks a positive point to leave it at.

JO: It sounds like most of your frustration stems from the business aspect of music.

Lynn: I’ve gotten my head up my ass with the business. And it’s so far up my ass that I can’t pull it out without quitting, you know?

JO: It sounds like the live, touring aspect factored prominently in your decision, too.

Lynn: Yeah. I mean, it’d be great if I could go and do a couple of shows but to understand now fully what it means to have to go on tour in order to make it happen, it’s a lot of being gone and I’m already lonely. So to just seal the deal on that seems really irresponsible for my emotional state.

But then at the same time, the flip side of that is, okay, well you take my friends … Whoever’s in my life, you put ‘em all on a board — I actually did this. And you divide it into columns. I lost some people when I quit the drugs. … So get rid of those people first. Those people are out. Then I started telling the truth, let’s get rid of those people, they don’t wanna hear the truth. I get divorced so I lose all of his people. I lose my money, so I lose my money friends. And then I’m left with the core group of people and all these people that like me cause they think they’re gonna get something from me with this music thing. So why not get rid of this music thing, be left with the people that like me, that love me, and then kinda build it from there?

JO: You really did that?

Lynn: [nodding] I have a giant dry erase board. I just put everybody that’s up there. I have a lot of people around me, I do. But I have a very few people that I call and very few people that have called me this week to see how I’m doing. That’s always interesting. …

I actually feel better just having the bullshit off, just to finally be over it, like ahhhhgggg I hate it, I hate what’s happening. Instead of being like “Everything’s so fucking great, look at the crowd.” You can’t tell that they’re 20 feet away from the stage. I’m just sick of cropping my life where it looks how I want it to instead …. because everybody who’s around me in my real life knows how it really is. I am really actually not that stoked, so to continue to crop out my frown seems silly.

JO: Hearing the new songs on I Killed Tomorrow… then, looking back on them, there certainly would appear to be telltale signs.

Lynn: It’s all about being unhappy and wanting to leave. And getting, like, that “Velocity” song is, I mean, this has been in the works for a while. I’ve just not known how to do it. … I have been mental forever. When I was little I was like, “If I could just get out of Nebraska and get to San Francisco, I’ll be happy, and I get there and I’m totally unhappy. In fact, worse. I ruin my life even, come back here and I’m like, “Well maybe I’ll go for the real dream, I’ll be successful and I’ll be able to be like, ‘Ha ha, high school kids. I told you! I’m so fucking famous, I’m on your TV.’ I mean, [the video for] ‘Feed me to the Wolves’ was On Demand in York, Nebraska and my Aunt Judy called my mom and there’s been these magical, cool moments but that still weren’t… I’m still feeling very much the same after they happened. I mean it’s great, I’m appreciative, [but] they didn’t fix the problem so that’s been the case in my career too, ever since I realized this is not going how I want it to, or it is and I’m not going how it wants me to.

I’ve had these little moments like, “Oh my god, well I’ll just get signed and then I’ll be happy,” and then I get signed and obviously I’m not happy and then I’m like, “Oh my god, my record will come out and then I’ll be happy, I’ll be in stores, I’ll see it in stores,” no. I go on tour, “tour’s gonna make me happy,” no, and so I’ve just hit a point where all those little things are gone. And I’ve gotta get happy myself, I’ve gotta figure it out because I think it’s not a smart move to try and be miserable forever, even if you can write songs about it. It’s not conducive to long-term success and the path I’m trying to go on.

JO: You think if you get happy you’ll write songs about it?

Lynn: Oh my god, wouldn’t that be neat? I did have a dream that I came [back], that I went away. In my dream I had no beard, but it seemed like I was older. But I came back with like a folk record, I spent a few years living in the mountains. I’m trying to listen to that voice like, “You gotta go, go far.” But come back with like a Holcombe Waller folk record or something… no beats… like “Ha, ha, sorry Holcombe, I stole your style.” [laughing]

I do like the idea of doing different stuff. That’s why I did this thing with the Gentry ‘cause I was so bored… [thinking to myself] “Maybe if I change this sound I’ll be happy.”

JO: So what’s next, aside from plans at Q Center and in the community?

Lynn: I’m 30. I don’t wanna look at the next 10 years like I am looking back at these last 10 years — which is almost as if they didn’t happen, where I’m like, “I don’t have much to show for it that means a lot to me aside from this music thing.” I was able to do this and fulfill my idea of what I wanted but I do not have the love in my life that I’m wanting, I do not have the free time that I’m needing and I have way more stress than I want. … I need to be feeling good about getting up and doing stuff and feeling like where I go and put my time, I’m not gonna be judged for my pants or whatever.

JO: [laughing] There’s gotta be more to life than pants.

Lynn: I’ve gotten glimpses of that. I think that what’s funny is that my music isn’t really about fluffy stuff, so to be immersed in this fluffy world is just so silly. It’s like, “Sorry we wear black and I scream. We left our boas at home, I have no idea what to tell you. I can put a wig on if you want.”

Logan Lynn just wants a new hoodie. Sitting outside a North Portland cafe, blue hood yanked over a navy baseball hat, he points to a missing zipper pull—and later, more tellingly, to letters on the hoodie’s front, “F-R-E-D.”

“It just needs to say ‘not what I thought it was gonna be,’” he says, half joking.

It’s been that kind of decade for the Portland musician, who took to his website Thursday, July 29 to announce his self-proclaimed “career suicide,” an indefinite hiatus from the music business. With characteristic candor, Lynn wrote: “As I near the 10-year-anniversary of my debut record,… I have come to some conclusions not only about the journey I’ve been on since then musically and in my personal life, but also the journey I intend to be on moving forward with both.

One thing that is painfully clear to me and everyone who knows me in real life is that I AM MISERABLE. I have been for some time. I’m sick of being broke, mismanaged, overworked, screwed over by the folks who are supposed to be looking out for me … you know, all the hits.”

A few days later over iced coffee, Lynn pulls even fewer punches, with himself and others. “The more time I have to think it over, the more comfortable I am with the whole idea,” he says, in what begins a conversation about demons, downloads and the decision to withdraw from what he admits is an enviable, even courted spotlight—at least from the outside.

“I’m sure there’s at least a thousand bands in this town that I know that would be like, ‘Dude, you’re super blowing it. I have no idea what you’re talking about,’” concedes Lynn, fresh off a West Coast Pride tour with his band The Gentry, and fresh out of a single-album contract with the Dandy Warhols’ Beat the World label. “And I feel that way too. I get that.”

What he hasn’t gotten, however, has been time to deal with issues a decade in the making, from the end of a long-term relationship to the “slimy” clingers-on to his well-publicized battle with substance abuse. “I just really don’t see myself being in a good place a year from now if I keep on this path,” Lynn shares. “This might be me being a fucking dramatic Libra, but I do have a tendency to be all or nothing about stuff. I feel like the only way to stop it at this point is to just break it. Break everything, stop doing the whole thing, kinda come clean.”

Lynn has been clean of cocaine and alcohol since 2007, about the time he signed with Beat the World and began production on his third full-length solo record, From Pillar to Post, a polished electro-pop confessional. The disc debuted to critical acclaim—the video for his single “Feed Me to the Wolves” landed among the Logo Network’s “Top 10 of 2008”—and by Lynn’s online tallies, 18,000 downloads. “For a while, I was able to see that as dollar signs,” he says. “If Billboard cared about that, if my label cared about that, then I’m a huge success. But that’s not how the industry is set up. … It’s still very much record sales. Something’s going to have to change there eventually or else everybody’s going to quit doing it, professionally at least.”

Life on the road didn’t help the financial, or psychological, bottom line. Lynn says the tipping point came earlier this year “when I was selling my furniture to pay for the van to go on tour.” Reaction to his louder, aggressive Gentry-fied sound was mixed (“There’s some video out there of this summer that’s not pretty,” he says), especially as a gay artist on the Pride circuit and in contrast with his solo, more upbeat fare. “Everybody’s dancing and they don’t necessarily want me to get up there and be sad,” he says. “And I don’t like do Shakira covers!”

Lynn considers his time with the Gentry, with whom he joined forces in December 2009, among the highlights of his career. Still, he adds, they’re not his “babysitters,” and he’s all-too-aware of the temptations—“torture,” he calls it—the road presents. “I am going to have a relapse,” he says. “Unless I can get myself to a place where it’s safe for me to be in bars and hotel rooms and away from everyone that knows me, I can’t be doing that.”

In retrospect, Lynn admits he may not have done himself any favors by being so forthcoming with his personal struggles. “I don’t think people start out by going, ‘I just got out of rehab, I’m a huge junkie, you would not believe what happened.’ That in and of itself wasn’t me intentionally poking holes in the boat, but I do think it did poke holes in it,” he says. “It is my history, and I own it.”

Nor does he want to sound ungrateful. For Lynn, his retreat from the music business is more a “mental health” decision than anything. “The good part about it is that I really have made a connection with people and I do have the feeling that I’m not really alone, which I have had that for forever. … I’ll still have that connection with people but I’ve gotta figure out a way to do that in my life where there’s not this other oppressive side. I think right now my plan, my loose plan, is to help the queers—not to sing for the queers.”

Lynn says the desire to “do something that matters”—“some good for the world”—is leading him directly to volunteer work at Q Center. (“My heart belongs to queer Portland full-time at the center,” he emails later.) “I’ve gotta stop talking about my feelings all the time, stop having everything and everyone around me revolving around me,” he laughs. “I know that people everywhere are probably like, ‘Yeah, right,’ ‘cause I’m notoriously attention-seeking, but the motivation for that has changed.”

That’s not to say music doesn’t matter anymore to Lynn. “I’m just going to turn it into a hobby. … I was happier when it was a hobby,” he says, adding that, short of plans for the proverbial day job, the only plans he has in place are what he’s choosing not to do. “I’ve never lived a normal life without being a junkie, so I’m kind of excited for that.

“I’ve gotta step back for a minute and assess how weird it is and how weird I am and whether I can deal with the weirdness,” shrugs Lynn, fiddling with that pull-less zipper. “Is that weird?”

DIRTY: WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

LOGAN LYNN: The Midwest, but we moved around a lot: Nebraska, Michigan, Kansas, Tennessee, Texas. I moved to Portland when I was 16 and, aside from a few failed attempts in larger cities, have basically stayed put.

D: ASIDE FROM SINGING, DO YOU PLAY ANY INSTRUMENTS?

LL: If you put quotation marks around the word “play”, then yes. I took just enough piano and guitar lessons as a child to know my way around the basics in both, but I write lyrics and make vocal melodies, mostly. That’s my instrument.

D: HOW PRESENT WAS SINGING IN YOUR CHILDHOOD?

LL: Singing was always very present. I was raised in an A cappella church and my parents were both choir singers. My Dad was a preacher and I was not allowed to listen to secular music. I watched a lot of “Kids, Incorporated” though (so I was heard 80’s pop music), and “The Mickey Mouse Club”. Every now and then CCM Magazine, a Christian music magazine that I subscribed to, would review a record by a secular band. In 1989 they reviewed the self-titled first release of “The Innocence Mission”, because there was an old Catholic song tagged to the end of it. This changed my life for sure. I got really into them and began following their career. I had a real connection with Karen Peris’s lyrics and they would, in time, be what got me through much of the solitude I was faced with growing up, as well as the rehab-laced, drug-fueled solitude of my 20’s. I still listen to her songs still now; they have the same effect on me that they used to.

D: WHAT IS THE FIRST SONG YOU CAN REMEMBER FALLING IN LOVE WITH? HOW OLD WERE YOU?

LL: Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” was the recital song for my tap and jazz dance class when I was eight. It was the first record I destroyed by playing over and over. It was love for sure.

D: HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU WROTE YOUR FIRST SONG? WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?

LL: I was pretty young when I started making up my own lyrics and melodies. Basically, as soon as I could speak I started to sing. There are cassette tapes of me singing original material dating back to when I was two or three. The first proper song that I wrote, recorded, and performed was when I was 12. I had just gotten heavily into drugs and wrote a song about Windowpane [LSD] that I recorded in my cousin’s studio and then performed at a Christian talent show. Needless to say, I didn’t win.

D: WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR MUSICAL INFLUENCES?

LL: The Innocence Mission, Styrofoam, The Breeders, Simian, Of Montreal, The Sundays, The Cardigans – and a bunch of bad pop and techno from the 80’s and 90’s.

D: WHEN DID YOU JOIN YOUR FIRST BAND? WHAT WAS IT CALLED?

LL: I’d always either been a DJ or a solo artist until 2006, when I started forming bands to perform with me. When I was a kid my brother and I performed after dinner for my parents and whoever else was around. I guess that was kinda like a band.

D: YOUR LATEST ALBUM IS TITLED “FROM PILLAR TO POST”. WHAT IS THE ALBUM ABOUT FOR YOU?

LL: It’s about my life turning from bad to worse; my journey away from a 16-year cocaine addiction; and a six-year relationship with my former partner coming to an end. It’s a snapshot of my life from 2007 to 2008. It journeys through some dark stuff, but out the other end into the light again.

D: DO YOU FIND THE DARKNESS HAS HELPED YOU GROW?

LL: Definitely. The record I’ve been working on for the past few months has taken shape in the light and is turning out to be about what I’m doing to put the pieces back together in my life. I have a much clearer perspective on the subjects addressed in “From Pillar To Post” and feel like I’ve grown a lot. I’m not so heartbroken and confused these days – just a little roughed up from the journey.

D: ANY UPCOMING TOURDATES FOR LOGAN LYNN?

LL: I’m playing some regional shows on the West Coast this summer, then we are planning to add cities in the rest of the country this fall. We are still ironing out the details with tour stuff, but one thing is for sure: The next show is on May 27th at Doug Fir in Portland. (NOTE: THIS ANSWER IS OUT OF DATE. THE INTERVIEW HAPPENED WHEN WE WERE FIRST BOOKING THE TOUR WE ARE CURRENTLY ON ALL SUMMER THROUGH AUGUST!!!)

D: WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?

LL: Mainstream pop or Indie pop that sounds mainstream. I’m going through a phase: All La Roux, all the time.

D: YOU’RE GOING ON A LONG TRIP AND YOU CAN ONLY BRING A PLAYLIST OF 10 SONGS WITH YOU. WHAT WOULD THEY BE?

LL:
1. The Vaselines: “You Think You’re A Man”
2. Kings of Convenience: “I’d Rather Dance With You”
3. Simian: “LA Breeze”
4. Jaguar Love: “Up All Night”
5. The Sounds: “Painted By Numbers”
6. Styrofoam: “The Long Wait”
7. The Dandy Warhols: “Mis Amigos”
8. Console: “14 Zero Zero”
9. Liz Phair: “Headache”
10.The Innocence Mission: “July”

D: BEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME?

LL: Rickie Lee Jones: “Ghostyhead”

D: IS THERE ANYONE YOU HOPE TO MEET SOMEDAY? WHO & WHY?

LL: For fun, Joy Behar. I wanna be on “The View” in the biggest way.

D: DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE VISUAL ARTIST?

LL: Charlie White. I want my world to look like his photographs.

D: IS THERE A DECADE IN WORLD HISTORY YOU WISH YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ALIVE TO EXPERIENCE?

LL: I’m fascinated by the 1920’s, but I’m into being alive now. It feels right.

D: WHAT IS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE FILMS EVER?

LL: “The Garbage Pail Kids”, a live-action movie from the 80’s. Oh, and “Showgirls”. That was two. Sorry: I’m historically bad with limitations.

D: WHAT’S SOMETHING THAT NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT YOU.