Harmony Witte: How’s the tour going?
Lucas Naylor: It’s great! We’re almost done. It feels really surreal that, like, everything is going as smoothly as it’s going. You hear a lot from people. It’s like, “oh you’re not going to like everyone on your tour.” and then, we like everyone on our tour! So, it’s nice, you know?
Harmony Witte: How long have you been on tour this time?
Lucas Naylor: This is the longest one we’ve ever done. The longest one that Carly had done before was 29 shows. This is 33. And tonight was show 31. So, we’re almost done. It’s wacky and really awesome, too. And, you know, no missed show for Carly. It’s also a weird air of atmosphere currently just because we had to lose good friends of ours to family stuff, which, it happens. Another weird thing about tour is sometimes you have those really sobering moments. You know, time doesn’t stop outside of tour while you’re on tour. The world still happens around you. You know, World War 3 is still imminent even though you’re on tour. There’s still a genocide going on even though you’re on tour. It’s a weird feeling to be confronted with all this negativity outside of it and then all this overwhelming positivity while you’re inside of it. And so, there’s some cognitive dissonance that creates, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, It’s a weird feeling, and it’s a weird thing to grapple with still. And, you know, I remember when we went on the Wonders tour this time last year, right as we left all that rail car in Ohio flipped and released all that air pollution into Ohio. And I was texting friends, “hey, are you okay?” Like, “what’s going on? “And I don’t know. So that’s one of the weirder things about tour, I think also, when you have friends and loved ones at home, sometimes it’s hard to explain how time moves differently. You get to this weird point where you just think about the world a little differently after. And I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m saying it’s just different.
Harmony Witte: It’s got to be a little bit of whiplash to come off the stage with all the cheering and stuff, to the news and everything when you get off the stage.
Lucas Naylor: Oh, for sure. I think it’s weirdest when, like, you’re alone. You get off stage, you say hi to all your friends, and then you go somewhere that’s kind of quiet.
Harmony Witte: You are very vulnerable in your song lyrics—you really put yourself out there and talk about anxiety and stuff like that. As an artist myself, I know what it’s like to put myself out there sometimes. Does it ever feel weird to get up there and sing the same songs all the time with those vulnerable lyrics?
Lucas Naylor: Surprisingly, no. I feel like once it is a song, you kind of get to be a little more detached from it than usual, unless you make a con. I feel like I’m at a point right now where we’ve been playing a lot of these songs for the good part of two years now, and I feel like after a while, it’s like you know, all those feelings and emotions and anxieties that you had just gets channeled into the song. And I feel like it’s almost therapeutic because you get to separate yourself from it. From that feeling through the art, which is nice. It’s a weird thing to think about, too, sometimes.
Harmony Witte: I put my stuff out there, and then sometimes I’m like, “oh, wait, my uncle sees that.” Or “oh, wait, someone that I just met is going to see that, and then who knows what they’re going to think?”
Lucas Naylor: I mean, another thing about that, though, is I don’t like–even though I’m being very vulnerable in my lyrics, at the end of the day, whether it’s conscious or not, I’m still censoring myself. Even though I’m presenting a vulnerable version of myself, I’m presenting a vulnerable version of myself that I prepared for other people to see. So, it’s not like I’m writing a song about a family member and being like, I hate you, yada, yada. None of those exist. I think a while ago, I got myself to a point why I’m prepared to, you know, for people to dissect what I’m saying and ask me about it. It’s kind of like you have to kind of accept the consequences of that, you know, whatever it might be. I mean, artists do it all the time who probably take a lot more risks artistically than I do, and it doesn’t pay off. Sometimes artists get their heads up their ass and think they can say a lot of things on the record and off the record that they probably shouldn’t do.
Christian Witte: I have a question about the lyrics in the song Munck. “I’m picking 69 over 74, and 85.” So, ‘69 is the summer of love. And I feel like ‘85 is, like, connected to, like, Black Flag and DC hardcore.
Lucas Naylor: Yeah, the revolution summer.
Christian Witte: I don’t get ‘74.
Lucas Naylor: It’s kind of, like, somewhat disputed whether it’s true or not, but I think 1974 was the year zero for punk proper.
Christian WItte: Okay. Okay, cool. Got it. Nice!
Harmony Witte: I’m glad you asked that because I never thought about that.
Lucas Naylor: My greatest fear is somebody hears” I’m picking 69” and takes it out of context of years.
Harmony Witte: Do you have any influences that might surprise your fans?
Lucas Naylor: A lot, actually. The bands that I listen to the most are Manchester Orchestra and Weather Box. They’ve informed a lot of my lyricism. Weather Box influenced a lot of my guitar work. But I went to jazz school in college, so a big thing that I find has influenced my writing was Old Great American Songbook songs and standards. And the idea of you have 32 measures to come up with a melody and a complex idea that people are going to not only comprehend, but also remember and be catchy. After a certain point, you get songs like Buttersock where it’s like, “how can I fit as much information into as few words as possible?” It becomes a fun challenge. A lot of those bands are like, I kind of studied this a little bit where it’s like, I try to listen to everything. There are bands in our scene and genre that I don’t really listen to that I probably should, but I just don’t. Not because I don’t want to or don’t like it, but just because I haven’t had the time to come around to doing it. One thing that I’ve personally noticed in popular music is the big divider in the way things are written was, honestly hip hop. Because pre hip hop, a lot of pop songs are very melody based. It’s melodic. It’s like quarter note, half note, 8th note lines, and post hip hop, there’s so much more information. It’s so much more rhythmic in the way that things are delivered. Choruses are a lot more complex. People are remembering a lot, just more wordy things. And it’s affecting how I think a lot of people, especially in our genre, write, too, where it’s like,” I’m going to fit as many words in here and it’s going to be a confessional.” I think there are things you can take from both. And so, I kind of look at it as, what I want to accomplish and how do I want to, take into the more rhythmic hip hop thing. here are some songs that do that I probably don’t. Don’t Lick the Swing Set does that, especially. And then there’s songs that don’t do that as much.
Christian Witte: You talk about your process being analytical, your writing process being analytical. For me, I find that, like, stuff, the more I analyze something, like, the harder it is for me to process it on a gut level, almost. What I wanted to ask you, have you found a way to be both analytical and use your gut in your music, or do you have other artistic expressions that help balance the analyticalness that you find in music?
Lucas Naylor: I think that I’m at a point right now in my life where it is hard to be as visceral as I want to be. And I never understood it because a lot of the music I loved, I watched creators I love become more and more cerebral and analytical and less visceral. And I was like, why? And as I keep doing it, I’m like, oh, that’s why. I think to achieve a certain level of self-awareness where you can just be a relatively well-adjusted human being, you need to sacrifice the part of yourself. It’s a little less rational. That is also a little more creative because you’re going to say things that you wouldn’t otherwise say when you. When you don’t have it all completely. That’s just my personal experience, though. You shouldn’t have to suffer to make good art either. There are a lot of artists that I love and respect who are perfectly awesome, well-adjusted human beings and others who are dead. I don’t think that you need to put yourself through emotional and physical stress to get good art. It’s a weird thing to talk about because you don’t want to be inherently exploitative about how you make things, but also, I hear people like yourself who the way that I’ve described similar experiences helps them. It’s like this weird double-edged sword sometimes. I don’t know.
Harmony Witte: I have this theory that every artist/musician suffers from some degree of imposter syndrome. Is that something that you struggle with or does confidence come naturally to you?
Lucas Naylor: Yes, I think that there are, it depends on the day. There are days that I wake up and I listen to the thing we made. I’m like, this sucks. There are days I’m like, this is the greatest thing in the world. And it’s that weird pendulum swinging thing. Always, constantly. But that’s part of it, you know? Yeah, you kind of have to go through this to make art. I feel like you teeter between just unhealthy self-deprecation and unhealthy narcissism and vanity and sometimes they both exist at the same time.
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