And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 143: Jeremiah Fraites (The Lumineers)

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Today’s guest is the co-founder, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist for the American folk rock band, The Lumineers. On January 22nd of 2021, our guest released his highly anticipated solo debut album, Piano Piano. Releasing through Dualtone Records in the U.S. and Canada and Mercury KX for the rest of the world, Piano Piano is a collection of gorgeous, intimate piano-centric instrumental songs that Fraites has been working on for the better part of a decade. The profoundly revealing and emotionally direct songs capture Fraites’ reflective moments from his Denver home. His songwriting reaches into deeply personal spaces with moving grace and stark elegance, retaining the folk-inspired melodicism so familiar from his work in The Lumineers, transported into a more classically sophisticated setting. In addition to piano, Fraites plays nearly every instrument on the album, including guitar, drums, synths, and programming. And The Writer Is… Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers!Artwork: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and Mega House Music Management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear. Go to our website www. And The Writer is.com. Welcome to And The Update is.

I'm your host, Paige MacDonald, and this is your weekly music industry update. Warner Music Group has announced the promotion of Sarah Ismail to managing director of Warner Music Philippines. Ismael will begin her new role on October 1st with a remit to oversee Warner Music operations throughout the Philippines. Marie Ann Robert has been appointed to MD of Sony Music France. Soidi has signed with Brandon Creed of Full Stop Management. Warner Music Group is now generating over $270 million annually from TikTok, Facebook, Peloton, and other alternative platforms.

Twitch has reached a long-awaited pact with music, but it's not a licensing deal. Universal Music Publishing Group, UK and Jin Sync, a publishing imprint created by artists and songwriter Jin Jin, have announced that producer, songwriter and DJ Jody Harsh has been signed to an exclusive global publishing deal. Warner Chapel has renewed their deal with the Smashing Pumpkin star William Patrick Corrigan. Universal Music Publishing Group has promoted Natasha Baldwin to EVP of classics and screen. Jennifer Smith has been promoted to head of urban tour marketing and strategy at Live Nation.

She will lead Live Nation's urban tour marketing team supporting all marketing efforts for its roster of R&B and hip-hop tours within the concert division. Mandolin, a music industry digital fan engagement platform and concert live streamer, has acquired Noon Chorus. Since its founding in 2020, Noon Chorus has hosted over 650 virtual shows for artists such as Angel Olson, guided by voices and Japanese breakfast, and it has also generated $4 million in artist's revenue. Capital Music's SVP Global Creative Amber Grimes is leaving the company, and there's no word yet as to where she's headed. Dustin Lynch has signed with Warner Chapel. The weekend has been accused of plagiarizing his 2018 hit song, Call Out My Name. Producer Sunil Fox and Henry Strange have filed a lawsuit claiming that the weekend lifted elements from their 2015 track,

Vib King. Tomorrowland is looking to expand to three weekends to recover from pandemic losses. Universal Music Group is officially a publicly traded company. 60% of the world's biggest music company has officially hit the stock market. A big thank you to Haley Evans of Megahouse for gathering today's news. Now stay tuned for this week's episode of End The Writer Is. Welcome to End The Writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan.

Today's guest is partly responsible for the massive, Americana resurgence over the past decade. This man is not only an unlikely rock star. He's a composer in the classic sense. He's not only a songwriter. He's a storyteller in the truest sense. And he's not only a multi-instrumentalist. He's a troubadour in the traveler sense. He turned tragedy into melodies and co-founded the platinum-selling indie folk trio The Lumineers. He recently released his instrumental solo debut album Piano Piano, which in Italian means step by step. Although recorded entirely from the comfort of his Denver, Colorado home,

this man usually resides and is currently residing and doing this interview from his beautiful home in Torino, Italy, where he is at this moment. And the writer is, Hohe, Jeremiah Freights. Thank you so much, Ross for having me. Yeah, thank you. So, uh, okay, everyone. knows your band. I listened to

the solo album. Congratulations on releasing an instrumental album. Why did you do an instrumental album? So I think for me an instrumental album was sort of a it was a long time coming. I you know me and Wes the singer of the Lumineers we started the band about 15 years ago and we've written over hundreds of songs together and it's been so fun and so rewarding. But when I first started learning the piano, really back in high school, probably when I

was like 16, 17, I really sort of fell in love with the piano. And over the last, probably better part of a decade, every time I had a song idea that I would write that didn't, you know, it was like pretty clear would not become a Luminear song. I would just put into a Dropbox folder. And, you know, I knew sooner or later that I wanted to record this album. My plan was actually to record it probably at the end of 2021, if not early, 2022, which would have been likely the time our Lumineers tour would have been wrapping up. But obviously the pandemic struck. And, you know, out of that it afforded me, like a lot of other musicians,

afforded us a lot of, you know, free time besides trying to stay safe and isolated and do all the, you know, that stuff, gave us a lot of free time. And it was a bummer to, like, lose, you know, months and months of touring. But I was in my house in Denver, and my wife actually, she was like, you know, you should record, you should record that album now. She's from Italy originally. And I think that very early on in the pandemic, she saw how hard her country was being hit. And, you know, it was sort of like, I think, you know, you guys are going to be home for months. It's not just going to be a couple weeks.

and, you know, sure enough, that's what happened. So, yeah, I recorded the album. And like I said, it's been a long time coming. I mean, some of the songs off the album, I think the oldest one, believe it or not, I think it's called Nearsighted, and it's about 14 years old. I recorded the guitar stem,

so I recorded the guitar part. Back when I was living in London, part of a study abroad program. And, like, So that's the oldest one by far. And then some of the ones were like maybe seven or eight years old. One or two I wrote actually wrote last year while working on the album. And then kind of everything in between.

So yeah, it's been sort of a long time coming. This album. A little bit. See. Yeah, a little bit. It's really difficult, though, because coming from English to a Latin language, the pronunciation, I'm not like, I'm not old, but I'm not like a teenager where I can just like pick it up with the way my brain has developed

over the years of having only spoken English for so many years in my life. But living here certainly helps. I mean, particularly in Torino where I live with my family, most people only speak Italian. If you ask, do you speak English? If you ask that in Italian, in my experience, more times than not, people will say no and then you're like, all right, giddy up, let's go, you know, and then I'll just try to, I'll say some stuff, and you can get by. I mean, the biggest thing is just fear. Like, I just feel like an idiot when I'm speaking Italian because I'm so, like, self-conscious of it. And your personality goes out the window because you're just trying to struggle for, like, the most basic, you know, nouns and adjectives.

And the way their sentences are formed are like is the complete opposite of English. not complete opposite but little differences like you know we say red wine they say vino roso so wine red they kind of reverse the color and the adjective with the with the noun and all that so but it's been fun i mean it's been challenging my brain and uh you know it's difficult at times but it's also really fun trying to learn and trying to speak it so why did you record the album in denver i know that's where you're from but why why were you in denver and not in italy so Originally, I'm from a small town, Ramsey, New Jersey. I lived there for about 24 years.

Then I moved to Denver, Colorado. I lived there for probably about 10 or 11 years. I just recently moved to Italy in August of last year. But I was in Denver, yeah, for probably a little bit more than a decade. So that was like my second home for a while. And, you know, we had our house there. I had my grand piano upstairs, and then downstairs was sort of like a makeshift studio where I had an upright piano, had the computer and all the instruments and stuff down there.

And, you know, actually early on during the pandemic and the isolation, I actually called, I think a couple different studios in the Denver area. And I was just seeing like what their vibe was and what they could accommodate. And it became clear pretty quickly that it was not going to be safe. and I was like, I'm not willing to potentially get COVID-19 to record this album. So, you know, I'm just going to do it myself in my house. And it was, you know, really difficult and really frustrating because what normally took, you know, a day or two in a real studio took like seven or nine days at the time

because Amazon in terms of deliveries was really backed up. And so if I had to order like a new microphone or a new stand for that microphone, and everything just was a little bit delayed. And, you know, relative to what people were experiencing, that's nothing. I'm not trying to say, like, woe was made because I couldn't record this album. But, you know, strictly from a musician perspective,

yeah, it was a trip, the idea of trying to, starting on a journey to record a full-length LP in my house by myself. I worked with a co-producer and a co-engineer remotely. This guy named David Barron, he's fantastic. He lives in New York State, and he would help me you know, we'd FaceTime microphone setups for the grand piano, because I'd never mic'd up a

grand piano. I can do the upright pretty easily and I know how to do that to a degree, but, you know, it took at least a few days to get the grand piano just right. Our son... Just old school recording. Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, our son was two years old at the time, so it's a two-year-old in the house,

making a lot of noise, obviously. Our dog, spaghetti, who's an energetic gold retriever. He was in the house too. And there was also literally a house being built next door. Not even joking. I felt like it was the day that I started to record. They were like, all right, let's build this house and the hammers. Did any of that make the album?

Are there any tracks that it was just a really good performance and you can hear your son or you can hear the, Doug? So there was, I think on track two, at the very, very top of it, it almost gets cut off a little bit. I think you can hear an airplane, which is like, that's just an airplane sound, but I think that's kind of cool because it reminds, I can kind of remember like, I hear that airplane, but I'm going to go for the take. I think that made it to chili.

I know for a fact that my son made it to the second course of a song called Arrival, which I think is the final track in the first. album. It's pretty hard to hear. It's pretty buried. But I was recording my upright piano, which was in the basement. My son was upstairs with my wife. He was playing, and he must have screamed in some sort of joyous moment of playing, you know, a game or something. And it's a quick like, yeah, like just a little Yelp or something. I can hear it because I know exactly where it is. It's on the second chorus of the song called Arrival. And that's cool, though. Like at first, you're like, when you're starting to master it, you're like, oh, shit. Like, I hear the

thing. And then you're like, that's cool, though. It was kind of, you know, when those things happen, it's also kind of a, it's like a philosophical question. You're like, just because you keep it in doesn't make the song cooler, but, you know, but then sometimes it's like it happened naturally. I wasn't trying to record my son and didn't take away from the song. And I think now it's sort of this cool like memento or keepsake or something where, up until, up until one now where you don't run out of tape. All the classic recordings for 80 years had

artifacts like that. And all the great musicians, all those Thelonious Monk where you hear him mumbling while he's playing. You know what I mean? It's like those things are priceless in recordings. I think that

I'm always trying to tell artists that it's just a moment recording a song. So I think those things are good. Plus, you probably could get him some union now that his voice is on something. So if the song gets licensed, your son's going to get a bunch of sag after. Yeah, right? That's true. So you mentioned Ramsey, New Jersey. Let's start from the beginning a little bit. Usually I start from the beginning, but I just listened to piano piano this morning, so I wanted to

start with it. But, all right, so we're in Ramsey, New Jersey. Are your parents musicians? Yeah, so my musical journey really did start in Ramsey, New Jersey. My dad, Joel, was born and raised in Ramsey, New Jersey, officially. He moved to Denver with my mom. My parents moved to Denver probably like time flies. I don't know if it was five years ago or seven years ago, but I mean, he lived in Ramsey for a long time just to give you some, you know, that gauge of time.

So he was there. My mom was actually born in Florida. And, you know, they met in, I think, Wayne, New Jersey, which is about 30 minutes from my hometown. got married and then raised, you know, me and my brother in Ramsey, New Jersey. Now, my mom, she was a nursery school teacher, and she did play music for her little, the kids every day. She had an acoustic guitar, and she'd probably play, you know, kid songs and whatnot. But she also loved music. I mean, she's, you know, she's, she still is cool. I was going

to say she was cool. She's still alive. Both my parents are, but she was, you know, listening to like the moody blues and pink florid and stuff like that so um pretty cool and then my dad taught i think my dad taught music um to high school at one point and you know he sang it sang in the choir at church and uh yeah i kind of grew up um in a musical household there wasn't a lot of there was not a lot of instruments though hanging around um but i think the most probably the most crucial moment for my musical career growing up in that house was I remember we got an organ it was like a really like old time

organ with a bunch of buttons and colors and I don't think it was like a B3 but it was kind of akin to like that cool type of organ and as a kid you're like wow it's just cool pushing the buttons and slamming keys and whatnot and then eventually my mom she worked at this nursery school and for some reason they had this old upright piano

and they gave it to us us. I guess they were going to throw it out. I don't know. And then they gave it to us. We've got it in our house in our dining room. And that's where I really fell in love with the piano. It was probably always there since from a relatively young age. And my mom said that, you know, whereas most kids go up to the piano and like slam it with both their hands, I was sort of going up to it and like tinkering, you know, and like, you know, playing, performing it softly, which was kind of strange. and yeah I remember my first my first musical memory was probably my mom

she bought I think two CDs one for me and one for my brother my older brother Josh he got a CD of Mozart and I got a CD of Beethoven and I remember we would like argue who was sicker Beethoven or Mozart and then like I loved Beethoven

and I remember just hearing you know the strings and Beethoven's music coming out of the speakers and I just was like, I don't know how young I was, but I just remember being like, whoa, this is like, this is so beautiful, you know. Do you still think Beethoven is better than Mozart?

Yeah, I really do love Beethoven. I don't dislike Mozart. He's great too. But in terms of, I don't know, maybe it's just like that first, it hit me the first out of very young age, so maybe it's hard to like, you know, for any artist to ever beat that.

but my favorite part of Beethoven, the symphony stuff, you know, when everyone plays the strings, it's beautiful, but I really love the piano stuff that, you know, the sonatas, and that was actually my first cassette tape I ever got. It was this thing from a low-level failing department store called Bradley's, which was in the New Jersey area.

And my mom got me this, it was Beethoven sonatas with nature sounds. So it was like, only piano, And like I remember Ode to Joy, which is Symphony number nine, I think. Yeah. Had like the beach and like ocean and seagulls. And then there was like the moonlight sonata with like frogs and like, you know, crickets and stuff. And I mean, I ran that tape probably clear.

Like I played, you know, I'd play side one and usually I'd fall asleep. And then the next night would be side B or side two, whatever. And then and so on. And sometimes if I was really feeling the music, I would like get up out of bed, flip over the tape and, you know, keep it going, keep rocking before I fell asleep. But, yeah, that was like my first really big musical influence, Beethoven. When did you start crafting music yourself? Were you playing, did you learn any of those Beethoven piano pieces, or did you start interpolating

them? I mean, at that point, I feel like for me when I was learning those, when I was learning all the classics, I had no patience. So it'd be the first thing I would do is play a chord and be, oh, well, what if I go and I'd play this? And then I just naturally just, you know, started playing the wrong things because that's where I wanted to go

and not necessarily. I didn't have it in me to play. I had it in me to, I just wanted to write stuff. Do you know what I mean? Well, no, it's a great question. I think that, so I turned 35 in January, and I've been really playing the piano, I mean, since high school, maybe even earlier, but we could say the better part of 20 years.

I feel like in the last six months to a year, I've just started to delve into and start to appreciate learning other people's music. I never really tried to learn. I never just, it wasn't an ego thing, and it wasn't necessarily like I tried and got really frustrated. I just never really had a bone in my body with like trying to learn other people's songs. Now, with that said, when I was in probably middle school, like I was learning on the piano, I would learn like jingle bells, and then I'd like try to make it like different. Or I learned Ode to Joy, just the, like, you know, the classic whatever,

the lead melody of that song. But I never was too like, oh, I want to learn, you know, Claire DeLoon and I want to learn the full piece of Moonlight Sonata. I think I just appreciated them. And then I just started trying to try and write my own stuff but in a very like i didn't know i was trying to do that if that makes sense i just was really enamored with like i would stumble across a d minor chord and maybe in like a cool like inversion and then i'd go to a g major and be like i love the way these specific voicings and the way

the shapes of my hands are being made right now and i just would play that a lot a lot a lot you know obsessively probably and that's kind of how i learned how to play the piano and and then my ear, I would still say arguably my ear is pretty bad, like in terms of, like, if you played me something, I probably wouldn't be able to play it back for you. Nowhere near, I don't even have relative pitch perfect. I'm like nowhere near any of that stuff. But I think through repetition, even when it comes to my solo stuff or with Lumineer stuff, I really do have to practice a lot. I have to remember what the hell I'm doing. and what I get really obsessed with inversions like you know what's the top note the bottom note and all that and I really love that's a huge high for me I love coming up with the inversions and the shapes that my hands are making and all that but um

you know in terms of trying to remember my own music I have a makeshift way to do it on I usually use like yellow legal pad and I'll just like write out the notes and um it's it's my own like hieroglyphics that I can understand essentially But besides that, I just live and die by like voice memos on my phone and then repetition, just playing it a lot. What made you, what's the first time you actually wrote something though? Did you write in high school? So I actually remember it very vividly. The first really like strong inclination to write something was,

I forget how old I was, if it was eighth grade or maybe freshman, year at high school. I remember there was a kid in town who was friends with my older brother. I remember Patrick Sullivan and I remember that his mom died of cancer and

it was a tragedy. You know, she was still a young mom. I think of at least two boys. She died of cancer and I remember feeling this overwhelming sense of I want to try to take these feelings that I'm feeling

and, you know, what's going on inside of me and try and write a song. And I remember writing a song. It was called Fade Away. It was very, like, somber and, you know, or I tried to write some lyrics about, I guess, what it's like to lose somebody or try to think about that. I don't know. It was not a great song. But, yeah, it was, I guess, like, realizing that tragedy is going to occur

and sadness, part of this human journey. and it was i don't know i was interesting i guess it was like my first real desire to be like i want to write right right about this what i'm feeling and what i'm thinking about and uh yeah yeah it's you know beethoven is such an emotional kind of writer and when you grow up around that kind of music i'm sure that that inspires it versus if you grew up around cool in the gang you probably would be you know not thinking i'm going to write something that i feel in that way you'd be thinking, well, I should just, you know, write some sort of party records, not necessarily. No, that's a good point. Yeah, I never thought of it that way.

You know, you mentioned tragedy, and obviously there's, you, you had, you know, I want you to talk a little bit about your brother passing and how that changed your trajectory as a human and as a musician. I mean, I think for me, it goes without saying when I lost my older brother, Josh. He was 19. He died of a heroin drug overdose. Goes without saying, is the worst thing. And I pray it remains that way. The worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life.

I think I was 14 at the time. And, you know, it was really just awful. It was the worst thing that's ever happened. And, you know, for the whole family, it was my parents' first-born son. He was my only sibling. my older brother. I looked up to him, like a normal, you know, a normal sibling relationship in that way. And I don't know. I guess I've had a lot of time to reflect. I think he died in 2001. So I guess it's been 20 years. It'll be 20 years this May, May 27th was the day he died back then. And I think I

kind of grew up overnight in some regards. You know, I remember being, I think I was a freshman in high school. I think I was 14. It's still a kind of a coming of age, age, you know, in someone's life. And for that to happen, I think I kind of grew up overnight. I think it's sort of, I don't know, I think for better, for worse, probably for worse, I mean, it taught me this lesson that, like, life can be really shitty sometimes and really hard and really brutal. And I think that stuck around with me for a long time.

I think that I was, I think it threw up. me into some sort of depression or this idea that, yeah, like the sadness was just so deep and the grief was so deep and I think that really affected me. I mean, it really made me completely not care about

school at all anymore. It really threw me into like the drums. Like I just fell, I got obsessed with the drums. I had just gotten a drum set a year or two prior to that happening. I really didn't care about school. I remember like getting called into the office one day and there was

the principal and the vice principal, my parents, and my gym teacher for some reason, I don't know why she was there. And they were like, you know, you're going to have to repeat a freshman year of high school if you don't, you know, get your grades, you know, going. And I just didn't, I didn't really care about anything. And I loved escaping through music,

started to smoke weed with my friends, you know, freshman, sophomore year of high school and really just go into that musical kind of, kind of cliche, you know, vibe. but it was sort of like solace too for what I was going through. It was a really great way to escape, obviously. And I think it informed a lot of what I was doing musically and what I liked out of music.

I think I thought, you know, you have to be a tortured artist to be a great artist. You should be sad when writing. You should be depressed. Otherwise, you won't have street cred. You know, I don't know if those are specific things I thought, but, you know, you're 16, 17 at that point. Yeah, I think that kind of seeped into my DNA and my bloodstream and the way I was thinking about life.

I was, you know, to be a tortured artist, that's like the right path and that feels good and that is good. And that's what other artists have laid down before you. And, you know, I would honestly say that maybe only in the last four or five years, six years, I've discovered that I'm so much more creative. and I think a better musician not feeling so depressed and not feeling so heavy and actually feeling joyous and joyful and, you know,

being a father and all these things, all these positive changes that have happened in my life in the last five years. Yeah, I was going to ask that, the way, you know, the Lumineers music has so many,

has, you know, different phases. So it's, you know, it's not, there are clearly parts that are really introspective and dark and you know and tell stories that are

hard to hear in a good way you know they're they're deep and they you tap into some emotions a lot of people don't go to but there's such a joy and you know something like

a hey ho or at least you know so it's really interesting that coming out of the struggle that, you know, from 14, 15 years old to when Hey-ho comes out, I guess that'd probably be about 11 years later, you know, that like, that feels like such like a bright light at the end of a tunnel. Yeah, and I think that it was interesting because when Wes and I started writing music, Wes was actually friends with my older brother Josh years prior.

And then, you know, they had lost touch. And my brother lost touch with a lot of people, I think, through his addictions. And, you know, it tends to happen. You kind of close off certain friend circles and you embrace the ones that you use with or do drugs with or whatever, you know. So when Wes graduated from university down in Virginia, he actually came back to our hometown, Ramsey, was looking to start a band with this other guy named Justin

and that was a mutual friend of ours and Justin was like, yeah, let's do it but he actually said not without Jair because me and, believe it or not, at the time, me and Justin, we were making like rap and hip-hop beats. I was really enamored with, I was 19 at the time.

I was really enamored with like making rap and hip-hop beats. I really loved a lot of what producers were doing and I love all kinds of music, but I really loved like trying to make rap and hip-hop beats. I love like Timberlin. I think he's one of the best, you know, writers in that regard.

And I just sort of love that idea. So that's a side tangent. But Wes wanted to start this band, and Justin said, not without Jare. Then that's how I got pulled into it. And I could play drums and a little bit of piano at the time, but I guess where I'm going with this is Wes and I became clear that we were, you know, writing a lot of songs.

Like Wes had already had a handful of songs he brought in. And then I was very like green in terms of songwriting. I didn't really have a lot of, what's the word? A lot of experience in it. And still to this day, I'm really bad with lyrics and words, but I would try to show him stuff and he could embellish it because he's a great writer. I mean, he writes all the lyrics for the band, so he's an exceptionally, you know, profound and talented writer.

But I think where I'm going with this is that we were really enamored, I think, at the beginning of our career writing music, I think we really tapped into the darker side of stuff. I remember, like, I was like, I want to write a song about my brother who died. And then, you know, again, tragically, in 2007, Wes's father, he passed away of cancer. And, you know, we wrote a song,

West wrote a song about that. And I think that we were looking at things around us that were happening, and this was a really positive, cathartic way to make sense of the things that were happening. And they happened to be sad. And I think too that, like, in terms of songwriting and creativity, if you have a really great day, I've kind of thought about any sort of joy you feel or positivity, it seems like that amount of like, if you were to translate that into like gasoline or fuel for writing a song, it seems to be like a short, short-lived, it burns up quickly. But like grief and depression and sadness, it gives you like tanks and tanks of fuel for, you know,

for better for worse and I think there's a lot more to draw from that and I think that's just kind of what we set out to do is be a band that was talking about things and I think you know just because it also it felt good to be like trying to make sense of these at times terrible things that were happening and I think that's what was interesting when Hohe came out it felt like people had maybe maybe more than a few people had pegged us as like this happy go lucky band and um I think that happens if you ask any band, you know, with a big song, any big song, even Radiohead with Creep, I'm sure they, like, hated that song and the shadow cast over them because you're like, we have so much more material and you don't want to be known for one song.

And I think thankfully after, you know, we've put out three albums, I think that we've shown people that were more than just that song, of course, I really feel that. But I think at the time it was a little bit difficult because, you know, you're like, we have more songs. and ironically, it has this kind of happy-go-lucky vibe, but it's actually a breakup song. A lot of people used it for their wedding and their first dance or they're walking down the aisle or whatever.

And Wes has said many times in interviews, it's funny because he's like, I hate to burst your bubble, but it's actually a breakup song. So there's that even into that song. Why did you... You ended up graduating high school. You ended up going to college. You ended up graduating college.

So you did get a lot of things together. you moved to Denver when? Just trying to get like the, is it after you and Wesley started the band? Or did you guys meet? No, we had, he came back to Ramsey. I was 19. I remember we, I think we moved to Denver 2009.

So that would be, I think we moved to Denver 2009. And I think the band maybe officially started in 2005, 2006, something like that. So we had been going for about four or five years. We had been playing mostly local to New York City. You know, we sort of, a lot of people were like, take the biggest city that's closest to you

and make that your home base. We were very close to New York City, so that was obvious. We were in New Jersey, but New York City was, you know, it was really close relative. Besides the traffic, it wasn't that far at all. So we played a lot of shows in New York City in the village and a lot of clubs

and a lot of the same shows and inviting a lot of the same people. But yeah, probably after four or five years of the band, we had moved out to Denver. And we had, before we moved out to Denver, Weston and I had completed a seven-song EP that I think had, like out of those seven, five or six of those

were off the self-titled debut album. So we were ready to rock. Like when we arrived into Denver, yeah we were like we had a really strong idea of what we wanted to sound like musically and what we wanted to do i think Denver has a surprisingly good music scene or at least there are a lot of accomplished musicians that have come out of Denver why yeah that's a good question i mean i think that the biggest thing that gets in the way of anything is just probably time and how people use that time and i think that

you know, if you can just eliminate distractions, then you will be able to work so much more on whatever it is you're into. If that's gardening, songwriting, you know, whatever it is. And I think that when we were living in the New Jersey, New York City area, Wes had actually moved to Brooklyn. And he realized very quickly he was working two jobs just to pay rent. I were still finishing up school at the University of William Patterson. in New Jersey. And so I was living with my parents, commuting, doing that whole thing. He was living

in Brooklyn. And I think he was working at least two jobs just to make rent. We weren't rehearsing as much anymore. And then, you know, we were like, we could move into New York City, but then we're both going to work so much just to live in a cool zip code. Is that really worth it? And the answer was no. So we thought, how can we eliminate distractions? Believe it or not, we actually looked at a couple years prior to that decision in 2009 to move to Denver, I had actually lived in Kingston and the Pontems, this small little city outside of London, like part of the study abroad program.

And there was this place called Brighton Beach. And it was the first spot I ever bought one of these fedoras. And it was a really cool area. It's called Brighton Beach. It's still a really cool place. And we actually both knew of the spot. We wanted to move to Brighton. So we actually wanted to move to England.

just with visas and working and doing it all legal. It just seemed like too difficult. So then we were thinking we could go down to Philadelphia, which was relatively close. We could go to Boston. And then as luck would have it or whatever, like the universe, you know, we had two friends moving out to Denver. One was going to grad school and the other one was becoming like a teacher.

And I think they were like, if we get four of us together, you know, we can get a bigger house, bigger, more space. less rent per head. Let's just do that. So we said, all let's do it. And, I mean,

this all sounds so... It sounds so unchained. Like, just the ability... Yeah, it sounds so... Yeah, It sounds so like, oh, yeah, we just did it. We made these decisions.

I mean, in the reality, like, you know, if this was condensed into an hour and a half movie, the reality would be, like, a 13 DVD box set of, like, eight-hour episodes per,

you know, 13 episodes or something. There was a lot of... Sure, of course. It wasn't easy just to make these decisions. And in fact, there was probably a brief moment at which me and Wes probably broke up the band. I want to say for like a day,

because we had been writing so much together and we'd been working so much on songs. And I think we just really loved songwriting. I don't think we weren't necessarily like we're going to become this great touring band. We had no idea even how to tour. But we were so focused on songwriting. and the biggest problem was the music arguably came easy.

The hardest part was actually the human beings involved. So, you know, it was me and Wes and this guy, Justin, and then eventually Justin left. And then we worked with this guy named Dave, who played bass, and then we worked with this guy named Joe who played, came in. It was always like one in, one out. We always remained a trio for many years. There was another guy that played bass.

There was another guy that played drums. and these people would they'd come in, they get really excited about the band, the songs. I think they thought it was really cool to go to New York City and play some shows. None of us were making a lot of money. In fact, Wes and I were losing a lot of money,

you know, paying for instruments and computer recording equipment and gas and all that. And they would say like, listen, good luck, guys, I'm going to become a teacher, I'm going to do the safe thing. And there's nothing wrong, you know, doing the safe thing. But, yeah, it was just, it was really hard to keep the band members together. So I think at one point, me and West

just were kind of fatigued from this revolving door of cast members of band members. And I think at one point I was just going to try to move into a different house in, what is the name of that Hoboken? That Hoboken area?

Maybe Jersey City or Hoboken. So live close to New York City. I think I was going to try to pursue like opening up a studio or maybe like go back to producing um beats or making some beats or something and it was a plan for one moment and then i remember west was really like bent on uh you know he was like i really want to go to denver and i remember he called me and i was outside my house talking him on the phone and i think he said something like i'm going to denver i think you should really come like and then it was like all right

let's go and that's kind of you know we like at that point though that was sort of like the fuck it moment like let's just try it

let's just let's go for it and it's so weird it's like the opposite you know if you were to tell someone in 2009 or so is that about when you went

to I think it was 2009 yeah so if you go to 2009 you know this is this is the pinnacle of of Max Martin music at pop radio.

It's like, it is, somebody says, like, I'm going to go pursue Americana music and move away from the big city to Denver. If that were my kid, I'd be like, wow, you're an idiot, man. Because even if it's genius music, this is not a very good rest.

You're going the opposite direction to where the hits are made and where the things are. and it's like it's the smartest move you guys could have made and it totally seems miscalculated. I think the reason it worked is because when we moved to Denver at the time, you know, back then over 10 years ago, it was a different, the city has changed so much for better.

I mean, there's just way more people that move. I think at one point it was at least 100,000 people were moving there per year. I think the number was even bigger. But, you know, also marijuana got legalized and all the stuff, but it just droves and droves of people moved out to Denver for a lot of good reasons and it got more expensive over the years. But when Wes and I moved out there, it was a lot cheaper.

And I think having very low overhead, that was kind of everything because it just was a matter of bogging down and being able to work on stuff and focus on stuff. So by working like a menial job at a sushi restaurant, that's where I worked. Wes was working at a Japanese restaurant, which was basically the same restaurant. we would actually like we live together we worked at the same restaurant job and then we also worked on music together

this was all in Denver I think having very low pressure and overhead to be able to work on music was really key and it was funny because when we moved to Colorado we were sort of known as the guys

from like New York City even though we weren't from New York City I think that's like the image we had and then it's funny, sort of to your point, the first time we actually got, we had the opportunity to do a residency at the living room.

It's a venue that closed down, but it used to be in New York City, and I think it was in the village. It was called the Living Room. And I think we'd always tried to play there, but I think there was almost this alluring aspect that, like, we were known as now a band from Colorado. So we were, like, now exotic fruit to New York City.

And being in Colorado, we were, like, exotic fruit since we were from the East Coast. So I think it's sort of played to our advantage in some weird way. But I remember playing the living room. It was probably March of, I don't know, 2011, something like that. And every, I don't know,

every Tuesday was our night, four or five Tuesdays in that month, whatever it was. I remember, like, the first night, 25 people came. Next week, 50 people came. The next week, it was 75. Then eventually it was like 150.

And then the last final night was completely sold out. a cool like okay something's happening the music we're writing the music we're performing now on stage is really um seems to be connecting with people what was the goal what's that you know like you're saying you're at home you're writing songs and you guys are really good at writing songs and and it's the people are the hardest and you're moving you live in denver you guys put together you know a live show that's reacting to people is the goal to then tour is the goal to be i mean there's no way that you could have predicted the success of Hohe

or anything like that at that point. But was that the goal? I mean, the goal was always to get it off the ground somehow. Whatever that means. Whatever getting off the ground means. It was more like how do we make money at this and be professional and not necessarily. How do we become rock stars?

Yeah, what's going to be like the lynchpin moment or whatever that is going to be take this from like we can quit our jobs and just pursue to be able to write music. It wasn't about making money or or anything. It was just like, how can we do this for the rest of our lives without having to worry about

other things that are not important to us? Totally. And I think that one of the best assets ever and it's good to remember stuff like this was meeting this guy named Stealth Olvang and that's his real name, S-T-E-L-T-H. He's the piano player in our band now. with us for, I don't even know, forever.

And when we moved to Denver, Colorado, we went to an open mic. I think we Googled, like, Best Open Mic in Denver. We found this place called the Metal Arc, which was a little dive bar. We went there, we met this guy named Stealth. I remember the first thing I said to him, I was like, there's no way that's your name.

Take out your driver's license and show me, and he, like, slammed it on the bar, and he proved his name was Stealth, and it was not a nickname. And he was in another band at the time, And we realized he was really talented. He could play everything from, like, piano to accordion to, like, guitar, the flute, I think even the saxophone. He's just a really, you know, a talented guy.

He was touring a lot with his band. I mean, they would go from Denver. They'd go, you know, maybe down to New Mexico. They'd go through Utah, Nevada, and they'd go up to California coast, from Portland, Seattle, over to Boise, Idaho, Chicago. They were playing. And what they were doing was very deep. different than anything I'd ever knew about. Because growing up in the suburbs in New Jersey,

I didn't know what the hell of a house show was. And it was actually kind of this like really eye-opening moment where stealth kind of gave us a lot of like idea to, uh, how to like, how do you tour and how do you make gas money? So if you're going from Denver down to like, you know, I don't know, Santa Fe, New Mexico or Taos or something, trying to play a gig. making money at a actual venue when nobody knows who the hell you are is a very bad business scheme because any money you even make from tickets at the door

go to other people and then with gas money you lose a lot of money anyway but if you play a house show and you're sort of vouched for like somebody else that knows them more people come out maybe you pass the hat around at some point and maybe you make like 50 or maybe you make 200 bucks cash and you know that goes to your subway sandwiches and your gas money and all that

and yeah so stealth was like he gave us all this great tips and info and um you know we eventually poached him from the other band we got him in our band and then uh that band was probably pretty pissed i think yeah i mean i think they were on the verge of going separate ways i you know that's that's that's my version of the exactly my memory of that there's i mean you the house the house show scene is so big and it's so important in telling when you're

you know if you want people to to enjoy the music where it's background venues are great if you want people to focus on check out this piano part and check out this lyric

house shows are everything you know they're like small theaters rather than small venues can't recommend house shows also like a lot of the times you would end up sleeping at that person's house because if they were having a house show they were likely very hospitable and they knew and that was like a lifestyle that they were into

having random people sleep on their floors and whatnot or somebody at the house show would be like you guys can stay with us and you know now it's just yeah like we'll probably never do that again in that way but it was a lot of fun and you know it wasn't always like sometimes you stay at someone's house and I remember two different times, like the heat, one time the place just, they didn't have heat, and we were freezing in our sleeping bags. And then, like, it was like comical,

like the next or like two nights later, somehow like one of us turned the heat off while just trying to simply turn the lights off to go to sleep, and it was like just comically freezing again in the house. But, yeah, those were like really desperate times. And, you know, we did a huge massive tour from Denver to coast to coast in my 2001 Ford Windstar. and yeah just really crazy exhausting

how do you go from how do you go from that to the luminaires that we know who discovers the band that's playing in people's houses even if you're selling out places in Denver like there's a big difference there must be a thousand bands that can do that throughout the country sure who notices what's the story from you

going from that to being, you know. I think that there's a lot of, I think that it's like a million things going right, a million things going in your favor. There was kind of, like anything, there's a confluence of events. I remember it's probably still on YouTube somewhere. It's probably not that hard to find, actually.

Our friend, I don't know if it's under his name, Isaac Ravi Shankara, he filmed us performing Hohe at a house show. It just was us performing. We didn't even know it was being filmed, and it was very just like casual, went up on YouTube. And I don't know if it went viral,

but it started to garner like a lot of views, like over 100,000 and maybe hundreds of thousands. And I think that was a cool way that Hohe was not recorded yet. It wasn't on Spotify. Spotify probably didn't even exist at that time. There was no Shazam. Even if you shazam the song,

there was no release yet officially, so it wouldn't have worked anyway. So that was sort of the first thing. And then we played that residency in the living room in New York City. And somehow a friend of a friend was working at this management agency. And I think once a week, every Monday, they kind of said, like anybody got any new bands, new hot bands in the sky. Just on a lark was like, oh, I hear there's this band,

the Luminaires from Denver. Manager from that company flew out to the living room. met with us and was just really excited, loved the show, loved how many people were there, probably thought this is awesome. I think we ended up signing with that management. We have the same lawyer since before we found anybody, before we found management or booking agent, and he loved our seven-song EP that we had recorded in her house. And he was like, if you guys never make any money, then, you know, there'll be no contracts and no work. So I'm not going to lose anything, but essentially,

if you guys ever start to play like Radio City Music Hall I'll ask for a commission and we were like all right cool and then we found management and he helped us make sure that we had a good contract

with our manager and then eventually we found booking agents but so once we found our management that really liked us they were like we got to get you guys in a studio and re-record all these lo-fi demos of the songs

so that's what we did we recorded what is now known as the self-titled debut album in upstate Washington. And, you know, we recorded whatever the 10 or 11 songs and the album.

And the first big, like really big moment was, I forget the name of the show, but our album came out in April. I forget which year. But in December, about five months before the album came out, it was our first ever sink, our first ever license. And Ho-Hay was in a TV show. and it might have been the show called Nashville. I can't remember now.

But I remember whatever show it was, we all went to someone's house and we watched the show. It was like live, you know, back like live, like it was on like at 8 p.m. on Channel 7 or whatever it was. And we were watching. And we kept watching the episode of the show and we're like, man, when are they going to play it? And it's like 847.

And we still haven't heard the song. We're like, did it get like, did it get bumped? Is it not going to be on? and then it must have been like the last minute and half of the episode we heard Ho Hey being played and it just was like such a cool moment because you realized it was coming from the TV and not from your iPod or your laptop or whatever

it was coming from the TV and I can still vividly remember going on like Yahoo somebody had texted us like yo people are asking what's the name of the song and Yahoo answers you know like Yahoo, like you can ask questions and answers and that type of thing. And I remember there was no release of the song at that point. So you couldn't find us. You couldn't find the song, Ho Hey.

And I think it was like truly going viral. Like a lot of, like potentially millions of people had watched this episode of that TV show, heard this song, couldn't find it on the internet. I remember answering to some people like, we're a band called the Luminaires. You know, it's coming out in April. And I think that that, that, that, literally started everything. Like we had a, you know, once we had the artifact,

once we had the high-definition recording of Ho-Hay, and then there was another guy to give credit. His name's John Richards. He's a DJ at a K-E-XP in Seattle, Washington. And he had a stack of CDs on his desk, and he just started, you know, he randomly found our Lumineers album. He found the song, Ho-Hae.

And he just said he was playing it back-to-back, which was very, you know, strange for anyone to do that in the radio. He just was playing it back-to-back. And I'll never forget that when we were leaving from Denver and going to play, you know, places like the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles and eventually other places in Portland and Seattle and whatnot. Shows, these were like 150 to maybe 400-cap venues. Shows started to sell out before we got there,

and that was the biggest high. Like if we sold out, you know, a 10,000 person capacity in a couple of hours today, I still think that's super cool. But it will never feel as cool as selling out that first 200 capacity room. Because I would even argue for you to headline, let's say like zero to 600 capacity, for you to sell that out by yourself with no extra help, is arguably harder in some weird way than to get to like the Madison Square Garden.

Because bands that get to play Madison Square Garden are most likely like just chopping away and eventually getting up to like 600 capacity to 1,200 capacity to 2,500 to 5,000. And if you just keep good and you keep getting bigger, you'll eventually play those bigger places. Not always, but that's like, that's one trajectory that some bands see.

To get, you know, most bands will just not get over that first hump, which is a real big, that's really sad, and that's a tragedy in its own right, but that's a really stark reality for when you start a band or as a solo musician, that first hump, pushing that first boulder of the mountain,

I think arguably is the hardest. So once we started sailing out those places, my mind was blown, and it was so exciting. And then it just got crazier from there. I mean, I remember we would be playing a place. It would be weeks or even a month out before we even got to that city. And they were like guys, the show in St. Louis or the show in Chicago,

it sold out so fast that we're going from the 400 capacity now to like the 1,100. And I remember even one time, like the 1100 got sold out so fast, so they re-booked it the third time because they realized that as the promoter and as the venue, they were like, we got to, you know, give these guys a bigger spot because people are going to be pissed. This is like the places were becoming too small for us. And it just was, it was mind-blowing. I mean, I really, you know, it's cool to go down memory lane right now because you can take it for granted sometimes

that you're going to sell tickets and that you're going to sell out places that are very large and it just was so freaking cool when that first started to happen. Yeah, there's no question. Being able to, it's a marker, like you were saying, it's like having a roof over your head is much more important than having a larger roof over your head. it gets hard to tell the difference

but you know you end up doing that and you go from that to being you know being nominated for best new artists I can't imagine what it must be like for parents to see their kid

get nominated for best new artists having lived all over the place and having toured like that. How did your parents react to something like that? Well, it was funny because my parents were over the moon, obviously, and I actually brought them to the Grammys. They were my date. We got to perform in the Grammys, and we were nominated for two. It was for Best New Artist, and I think... Best American Album. Oh, there it is. Okay. Yeah, it was Best Americana album,

which I believe Bonnie Rae. It was actually a funny story. Bonnie Raid. she won and she deservedly so won, but we were on the red carpet doing the mega press, and we didn't know if we had won or lost yet, for that matter. And Bonnie Rae just like happenstance came up to us in the red carpet and said, like, guys, I'm so sorry, y'all deserved it. And we were like, it was like this mind-blown moment of meeting her, but then also being like, shit, wait, we lost.

But all good. And so yeah, we lost both the Grammys. It was the only two Grammy nominations we ever received. But like I said, you know, I brought my parents out as my dates. And I think they must have been over the moon. And they were always so supportive, though. I mean, like all the rehearsals before we moved out to Denver, all the songwriting, having a son that learned drums in the house must be agonizing.

Like, I was in the house playing drums. And, you know, particularly my mom, because my dad worked a lot. He was gone a lot. my mom was always home. So listening to me, play the drums, or working on songs, or having to listen to me and Wes work so much on these bad songs when we were first starting out. You know, she had a lot of patience.

But she was always really supportive. It was a really, like, open house, you know, like people, friends would come over, musicians. We'd have the coffee always made in the pot. My mom always had tons of food in the fridge. And there just was a spot to really, like, to play music and, you know, learn how to play instruments and learn how to write and learn how to become a better performer and all that. So my parent, you know, every parent is always so supportive and my mom would always say things like, oh, you know, honey, I hope people all over the world should hear this music and things like that.

And then when it started to happen, it was like, yeah, I imagine it was a pretty cool moment for them. And I think it still is. They're really, you know, like my mom's ringtone when somebody calls her. It's like, I think it's, I think it's, oh, hey. And I'm like, yo, mom, I, it's, like, it's, like, it's, it's, like, it's, a little like that's a little much you gotta change that but no of course not i think any anybody who's in the industry their mom has one of their songs as i think that literally that's true um you know you said earlier that you you know you didn't want hohe to be the son that you'd be

remembered like the only song you'd be remembered for and it ended up you know a lot of people have a second album and they have a sophomore slump but you guys really didn't i think Ophelia might be the biggest song you have or it's got to be pretty close to being tied. It's pretty massive. So, once you start having a second album like that, do you start to feel satiated?

I mean, for me, no, I haven't and probably never will. I feel like... Fair. Yeah, I feel like... I think there's something to that where, you know, I think it's important not to let success be so intertwined with your identity and your state of mind, your state of happiness, or your lack thereof. I think that's a dangerous road to sort of walk down. But yeah, I mean, to be satisfied

or to be satiated, I think, you know, I think in some way it was a relief to be able to release an album that we thought was that strong because like you said the sophomore slump is a thing. It happens to it's happened to enough bands that it became a term sophomore slump so you know must be historically rooted in truth and

I think it is and a lot of bands that we admire have that moment they come out of it and they have you know bigger songs and you know even if it's Weezer or Maroon 5 or we can list a shitload of bands that their second album wasn't as big as their first.

one and then you know but there are much fewer people who have a hit off their second album especially because it came four years after your first album so it wasn't they weren't back to back and it wasn't just you weren't just running albums but something about that era and this is this is what is shocking is that you had as clean of pop that there had ever been at the top of radio charts. And then there's this giant scene that you guys are at the forefront, also with Mumford and some of these other more Americana-type bands that we can go through and list a ton of them. But you guys were at the top of it. What was it that changed the zeitgeist? Why did we all of a sudden start appreciating, I'm going to put in quotes, like real music?

I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, we got asked that a lot, a lot, a lot when we were doing press during that first album circuit. And I think for me, like, you know, I don't really think in terms of genres too much. And when we're writing music, we're not like trying to fit into some sort of genre. And for that matter, we're not trying to not fit into some genre. We're just trying to write great music, trying to write strong melodies, tell stories, the whole nine yards. I think with our music, I don't know, I think it was just like we were writing real music. I think we were writing from an authentic place in our hearts. I think that we were not trying to do anything, not trying to ride any sort of flavor of the weak movement that may have been happening or something. But I think that, yeah, other bands seem to gain success.

like you said, Mumford and Sons. I think they really kicked down a lot of doors for a lot of bands. Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero's, the Ava Brothers, the Felice Brothers even. A lot of bands were just, I think, either writing or being discovered as like, well, these are great songs and they don't need auto tune or massive drum beats or this or that. And I think Hohe was in a cool way, a really unique example of that. I mean, there's not even really like, there's drums,

but it's mostly foot stomps and there's a kick drum in there that I remember playing. and I don't even think there's necessarily electric bass. I think there's just a cello that was turned up like 30 dB that was plucked. And it's like the antithesis of like, if Max Martin was like, give me the next big single, you would never be like, well, it's got mandolin, almost no drums. And like, you know, it's really simple. Yeah, exactly.

I think he'd be like, I don't want to hear that. Show me something else. You know, give me Ed Shear and give me the new, this or that. But I don't know. think that you never know too like maybe ho hay comes out tomorrow and it you know gets buried in in the noise um or maybe it came out 20 years ago and it it would get buried and flop you just never really know and i think that in a cool way there's always these like oscillations and cycles of genres and sounds that seem to go to the forefront but i think for me like i think you know to answer your question

about being satiated i think that time helps me A, with perspective and B, with actually feeling some sort of form of satisfaction. Because I think at the time, for me personally, maybe I'm like George Costanza or something. Like any time that we saw success, I sort of got like afraid. Like anytime when we got nominated for the Grammys or when we met our management or when we were upgrading from the 15 passenger van to the tour bus style touring, it was just always just weird. Like I felt anxious or afraid that something was, I don't know what I, I don't

know specifically what I was afraid of, maybe losing the very thing that I helped to create or build, that it would maybe get diluted from other people or, you know, this industry is riddled with, like, losing the masters of your songs or managing getting screwed over by lawyers or signing the bad contract and paying for it with the rest of your life. And, you know, I've just heard a lot of those types of stories that maybe scared me. But I think having time is helpful because I just realized that 10 years after a song like Hohe and an album that came out like that, we're still being able to be ourselves, still being able to make music that we is authentic to ourselves.

And I think it's hard too when you start to come out as a band. A lot of people are quick to compare. So when we did that first press circuit for our first album, every question started off with Mumford and Sons was in the first question always. And I think that was hard in some way because it's probably similar to where other bands felt maybe like Pearl Jam and Nirvana

and like the small grunching of Seattle or... I mean, who didn't hear Stone Temple Pilots and think that sounds like Eddie Vedder? And then they went off. But over time, I mean, no one didn't, you know, not to move forward,

but this is true in your story. No one does an album like three where you have sort of three EPs that kind of like, or like three sections that make up, you know, a story. You know, you went and made it, an artistic choice and you kept going,

continuing to define yourself as someone different. I imagine that's difficult for a lot of people when they get compared early on, but I'd rather that than not get there. No, that's true. That's a good point. And I think, too, like, even, like, Oasis and Blur having these, like, rivalries and people comparing them.

And I think my point about the passage of time is so helpful and healthy because then you just, like, to your point, you know, you realize well, Stone Temple Pilots was just like its own band the same way Pearl Jam was and the same way we're our own entity, the same way Mumford and Sons is doing their own thing.

I think that's really healthy and cool and beautiful, but at the time, and I get it, the press want to compare and our brains need to compare and contrast and it's all good. And the passage of time has helped me understand all that. But at the time, it was sort of like, you're almost feeling like, yeah, we're our own band. You get that, right?

It wasn't like we heard other musicians. We're like, let's copy that, quick, get in the Spotify. You know, it was like we'd been grinding for years. And the overnight success that was the Luminaires took probably a decade. Yeah, for sure. Classic tale, yeah. All right, we're going to go to our next segment, which is called Five for Five. I'm going to list five people, and you just tell me what comes off the top of your head.

Like one word or a sentence? Yeah, sure. We really have no rules to this. I have yet to get mad at anybody. If you want to do one word, that's cool. Let's start with your wife. Francesca, brave, intelligent, beautiful. Let's start with, or let's go to your dad.

My dad. Father figure of the year. Yeah, I love my dad. He was and is a great father. worked very hard his whole life to provide for me and our family. And I think that he was always a really cool voice of reason for me pursuing music because I remember, you know, when he said, oh, you're moving to Denver?

That's cool. Well, make sure you have like X amount of dollars in your Wells Fargo checking account before you do because, you know, we're not going to, it's not going to be a free ride out there. So I think he's always like instilled the value of, over dollar to me and really, you know, helped me turn into a fine young man, I think so,

yeah. Let's say your mom. Huge inspiration for me. Massive amount of patience. And always was the number one fan and supporter of me and the music and the band really. And

always was there. Always let us do so much, make so much noise so forever forever grateful for that mom and yeah so thankful to have her in my life yeah let's go with the piano sublime uh the best most beautiful instrument the entire world wesley sheltz all right yes um brother from a different mother is that the phrase brother from another mother. Musical soulmate and ultimate partner in crime

for writing songs. So love you, man. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for being on the podcast. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. This was great. You know, it's like, it's, everyone has their journey

and not everybody succeeds in the same way and not everybody treats songwriting the same. But when you say defining your own path and that being different and coming out of the gates and people comparing you, you know, you're releasing instrumental albums and you're doing albums that tell stories and you're still creating and using your skill set to pursue a new path. And I don't think we've had anybody who's, you know, from, you know, who's lived in those cities in particular. and is now currently in Italy, and you just seem to be a person of the earth

that is creating something that is deeper than just trying to sell records. So I appreciate you being on here, man. Oh, man, that means the world. I really attached to me in a profound way. I really do appreciate that. And you put it like that, sounds pretty cool. So thanks.

I don't know. Honestly, thank you for. for the kind words and means a lot to have done this. So thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer Is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website at and thewriter is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us.

You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer Is is produced by Joe London and published by Big Deal music. A special thanks to David Silverstein from Mesa. mega house music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Golan.