Song Exploder - Black Pumas - Colors

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Black Pumas formed in Austin, Texas in 2017, when singer Eric Burton met producer Adrian Quesada. Their self-titled debut was released in June 2019, and got them a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. In this episode, they break down their hit song “Colors,” which Eric started writing ten years ago, when he was first learning how to play guitar. songexploder.net/black-pumas

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Black Plum is formed in Austin, Texas, in 2017, when singer Eric Burton met producer Adrian Cassada. Their self-titled debut was released in June 2019 and got them a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. In this episode, they break down their hit song, Colors, which Eric started writing 10 years ago when he was first learning how to play guitar. My name is Eric Burton, and I sing and write music for the Black Pumas. I wrote colors probably a little bit over 10 years ago. At the time, I was leading praise and worship at this Presbyterian church,

and the hyminal music just wasn't doing it for me at the level that I was kind of yearning for it to happen. I loved experiencing the beautiful hymns and the airy music for what it was, but I wasn't attracted that much to singing those songs over and over again before creating my own. I always wanted to see what a hymn might sound like from Eric Burton. When the song first came to me, I was taking a nap on my uncle's rooftop, actually, and I was having such a great day. The weather was great, the sunset looked pretty amazing, as it always does in New Mexico anyway, and I was just singing to exactly what I saw.

to the morning sky first. Baby blue, just like we rehearsed. When I get up off this ground, I'll shake leaves back down to the ground, ground, ground, ground, tell I'm clean. The sky there is among some of the most beautiful skies I've ever seen in my entire life. I was just trying to speak to what I, you know, to what helped me to feel connected to God and to my highest self. It was just a classical guitar and vocals before meeting Adrian Kasada when I moved to Austin.

My name is Adrian Kasada, guitarist and producer of Black Pumas. We met in 2017. At the time, I had recorded a bunch of instrumentals that I wanted somebody to write songs to, but I had been asking a lot of friends around the world, like, hey, I want to say, I want to start this thing and want to kind of work with somebody who would be a singer and a songwriter, yada yada, and people would kind of throw out names and email me suggestions. We met through a mutual friend of ours. His name is Brian Ray. I said, do you know anybody because he's a producer himself? And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah,

you got to try Eric Burton. And I remember him saying, like, that's the best singer I've ever worked with. I was doing solo gigs around town, and I had worked with a few other people before. And I just really wasn't finding the sound that I really wanted. So I started building my studio and I just started learning how to do it myself. And so during that time, I'm like, man, I don't know if I want to talk to any more producers, man. I don't know who this guy is, but I ended up looking up Adrian's track record and I realized that it would have been kind of silly not to hit him back. So I did. At first he came in here writing songs to these instrumentals that I had. And once we came together and we started recording, I think we both just

found that we just loved doing it together. We kind of looked at each other like, man, there's musical chemistry here for sure, and that's when we kind of became Black Pumas. Then I started sharing with him like, hey, I got a catalog of material here, actually. But I didn't share it with him at first. I'm like, oh, maybe I think I'm going to save colors from me. And I just realized that, hey, if this guy is as passionate and loves the music as much as I do, and if colors is fitting for this project that we're starting together,

then by all means, man, I just gave him full access. I do remember the day that he pulled it out and played that. It was just like this, oh, crap reaction that I had. My initial reaction was like, that's a hit, you know, and that sounds like a cliche producer guy and a music biopic, but, I mean, that was what I heard. I'm like, oh, my God. That's like a song that you hear once and you're singing it back.

We recorded it in my studio here in Austin, Texas. Eric played electric guitar on that. Something that Eric doesn't quite get enough credit for sometimes is the way he plays guitar. There's so much nuance and rhythmic feeling in the way he plays and it's so unique. And I remember telling people like his rhythm guitar part at the beginning is a hook already. So we can't like step all over that. You know, we have to spread out that arrangement. to let that breathe.

So Steve, our drummer, came up with this super sparse beat. I remember myself and our keyboard player, we're just doing downbeat chords just to really let his guitar part breathe. So we're just providing rhythmic bounce. But there's something about electric piano and two guitars that sometimes frequency-wise, they're kind of swimming in the same area. So it's hard for one to cut through, and I really wanted it to cut through.

I used to really like the way he played it on acoustic guitar, so I remember telling him, like, man, we should go re-record that and see what it does. So we went and re-recorded the acoustic guitar, and that's the guitar that's on there. When you take me to the other side, when you take me to the other side, the other side can mean from light to darkness or from happiness to sadness. And when you got the blues, you just got the blues. And so I want to be taken to the other side. where the baby blues birds fly to encourage them

that in gray clouds and white walls, blue skies, we gonna fly. So feel all right. In gray clouds or white walls or blue skies, we gonna fly, feel all right. And this is what it sounds like when we feel all right. We gonna, ooh, ooh, they sound like ooh, ooh, that I'm not even gonna try to sing. The strings pluck it as well.

I didn't know for sure if we were going to add strings to colors. But I had strings on the initial instrumentals before I even met Eric. And, you know, I definitely wanted to have somewhat consistent sonic tonal palette on the whole album. And we were on tour in Colorado. And I remember we went and found a studio and we went and added. violin. The very beginning of the song where he says, I woke up to the morning sky first, there's a little trinkle like do-do-do-do-do-do-d-do-d-do in a little whorlitzer part that I ran through my role in Space Echo, which is a tape delay.

Because he always told me the story of how he wrote it, and I imagined him literally waking up and lighting this like smoke offering to the gods. I thought I was doing the coolest thing of all time, but nobody ever notices it. I woke up to the morning sky first. Baby blue, just like we rehearsed. He's a great improviser, you know, and there's something that like these little kind of in-between yells that he does. Closer! There's really like a lot of magic in those.

They were in the moment. You know, they weren't like, that wasn't scripted. All my favorite colors, right? All my favorite colors. Yes, ma'am. My sisters and my brothers. See you like no other, all my favorite colors. Angela Miller was a backup singer,

and she was part of a group called The Soul Supporters, which is her and Lauren Cervantes. So we brought Lauren in as well to have two voices. To have the ladies sing the chorus part with me, that choir sound, oh my goodness, because of where the song came from in the first place. It was just so appropriate to have those black voices. singing in a way that was reflective of what I would hear in church sometimes.

It's a good day to be, a good day for me, a good day to see my faith, my see. I remember Angela one time at a rehearsal, she would sing that and she said to me, like, this is church, she was like, I sing that and I feel like, you know, this spiritual moment. I would say that my love for songwriting definitely started in the church, and I'd have to blame that on my family for me for. Sure, when I was younger, I didn't like going. I didn't want to go to church. I didn't want to go to choir.

And then I saw that my little brother was getting candy because he was in the choir. And the older women thought he was just so cute. It encouraged me just to kind of give in to my grandma's request. And when I did, the praise aspects of it was always my favorite part of it. Because when you're in song and you're trying to reach that state of bliss that is coming from wanting to reach something a little bit higher to grasp something that you can't quite put into words that was developed in my songwriting,

was my earnestness to grasp that thing that I knew I would never fully comprehend. When I wrote colors, it started with me trying to get to God, myself. But then it was to see about how I could connect universally with everyone from all walks of life, because I was to see, because it's not an exclusive thing. To me, God is the poetry in nature. All of these things that we experience,

that we take in with all of our senses. That is God to me. Here's Colors by Black Pumas in its entirety. I woke up to the morning sky first, baby blue just like we be heard. When I get up off this ground, I shoot leaves back down to the, till I'm cream. It's at SongExploder.net to learn more about Black Pumas.

You'll also find links to buy or stream the song, and you can watch the music video for it. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music

talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings,

John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website. Rishikesh.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me, Rishi Kesh Hirwe, with producer Christian Coons, production assistant Olivia Wood, and illustrator Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,

a collective of creative, independent podcasts. You can learn more about all our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at Songexploader.net slash shirt. You can also follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.