John Shakespear stopped by 88.9 WERS to play a few songs for Wicked Local Wednesday, which kicks off at 9pm Wednesday nights on 88.9. Before their set, they sat down with WERS’ Lily Doolin to discuss the release of their latest album Spend Your Youth, what John himself misses most about Boston, and the band’s favorite song to play on stage—which happened to be a very interesting cover song.
You grew up in Boston, Cambridge to be exact, so why the move all the way to Nashville?
John Shakespear: Moving to Nashville was a combination of different things. I actually started a grad program in creative writing. So, I moved to Nashville to go to fiction-writing school. At that exact moment, we had just started coming together as a band and started recording the album with Devon Dawson, who works with Local Natives, he’s a really awesome guy. It happened almost exactly as when I decided to move to Nashville, so it worked out nicely because Nashville is obviously a great city to be playing in, especially this kind of music. So, I guess I came for the writing, stayed for the music.
What do you miss most about Boston?
JS: I feel like I have to give a good answer to this one [laughs]. I miss so many things about Boston.
Greg Hum (Drums): You miss your bandmates!
JS: [laughs] I do miss my bandmates! I miss Sam Wilson (guitar) and Greg Hum [laughs]. No, honestly, I really do miss the amazing musical community I have here. They’re awesome, just so friendly and nurturing. Especially with the schools being here, like Emerson and Berklee and NEC [New England Conservatory of Music], there’s this community of musicians who are super talented but just starting out and are super humble. It’s a really great city to start out in. I miss the people in that community so much.
I also miss Felipe’s in Harvard Square. Just pretty much those two things [laughs].
Have you had a favorite show that you’ve done in Boston?
JS: Oh, that’s tough. We’ve had some really great shows at the Middle East Upstairs, both with our band Atlas Lab and solo with this project. There was one show there that we did with Aubrey Haddard that was really memorable. I know she’s been here recently. But I’m trying to think of… I don’t know—
Sam Wilson: Other earth-shattering moments?
JS: [Laughs] Yeah, other earth-shattering moments.
SW: Davis Square Theater, that was cool.
JS: That’s right, we did a show there.
SW: We have good shows at Atwood’s with this group.
JS: Playing Atwood’s Tavern is such a cozy spot. Amazing sound. That’s right in the neighborhood where so many of my friends live, so it’s just been kind of a home for this project. We’ll be playing there again in July.
You guys just released an album in May. What has the fan response been like so far?
JS: It’s been really awesome and really surprising. People that I haven’t seen in a number of years, who I went to high school or middle school with, have been reaching out and saying, “Hey, we checked this out!” It’s actually led me to reconnect with a bunch of people I haven’t seen in a really long time. It’s always interesting to see what songs people respond to, because they’re not always the ones you predict. But that’s cool to, because everyone seems to take away a different thing. People’s favorite song varies widely.
Someone described it as a “coming of age story.” What was the inspiration behind the lyrics and the album in general?
JS: This is sort of one of those cases where this isn’t a concept album. It’s not like I sat down four or five years ago when I was starting to write them and said, “okay, these songs are going to be about coming of age,” but I do think because that was the phase that I was in and the things that I was writing about, the songs—when we put them all together and it was time to record—I kind of looked at them and was like, “oh, there is a thread here.” There was this period where I moved back to Boston when I was working in restaurants and having a great time doing that, but also was really questioning if I should be pursuing music and starting out as an artist. I think a lot of the songs were inspired by that period. I was writing the songs almost as a way to combat my own doubt and depression in the face of starting out and feeling like you’re nowhere.
I wanted to ask you about those nerves. This is your first full-length project, so what was the process like? How was the prep and what were the nerves like bringing this “child,” if you will, into the universe?
JS: Devon Dawson, who made the record, is a really wonderful guy and is super experienced in studios in Los Angeles and working with bands like Local Natives. He was kind of a shepherd during the process. I had recorded six other albums with other different projects, and each one of them was a step in the learning process. It almost felt like, by the time we got into the studio for this project, Sam and I had a lot of experience recording together already, so it was almost like we had a much bigger sandbox in terms of what Devon’s capable of, and just our options in general. It was a lot of fun.
What was one thing that you learned either about music, or about yourself through writing this album?
JS: That’s a really good question [laughs].
SW: I think our emphasis was more on arrangement in this record. In terms of being in the studio, thinking more about how the parts fit together as a whole rather than throwing everything into the mix. We were like, “What can we leave out rather than jam in?” That was a big process learning in the studio.
JS: Learning about the white space, for sure. This only made me more excited to go into the process of creating a new album, and from the beginning say, “This is the vision of the whole thing.”
Are you guys on tour now, or did you just close it up?
JS: Yeah, we actually just finished up our tour.
How was that experience, bringing the album out onto the live scene?
JS: It was a blast. We started down in Nashville and we did a few shows in the South, a few in the Mid-Atlantic, like 15 shows. It was really interesting to experiment, because we were moving so far geographically. We actually ended up having a lot of different arrangements from night to night and each one was kind of a new and fresh experience. It was great. We met so many new people. We were put up by the kindness of so many strangers along the way. Touring is tiring, but it’s also like, every day I just want to get up and keep doing it, because every night you end up meeting so many new people.
Did you guys have a favorite song to perform while you were on this tour?
JS: We’ve been covering “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak [laughs]. We started covering it as a joke, and people loved it so we kept covering it [laughs].
That is epic [laughs].
JS: Yeah, so we’ve enjoyed covering that one, and it’s also been a lot of fun playing “Darkened Room” from the record.
I know you guys just released the album, but is there anything on your minds for the future?
JS: Absolutely. I’m demoing songs now, and I have a band down in Nashville with some four-part harmonies, so we’re really looking to build the next thing. Not sure if it’s going to be an EP or not, but we’re looking to build that around the four-piece harmony and have that be the center of it. I’m also doing a project with Leesta Vall Vinyls, they’re a Brooklyn-based company and label. What they do is they put out vinyls that are tailor-made for each person who orders them. And then we go in and we make a one-time only record. That’s also on the horizon for us in July.
