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Gov't Mule

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Warren Haynes Talks New Gov't Mule Doc, Writing With Gregg Allman & Growing Young

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Haynes opens up about Danny Clinch's new live-concert documentary 'Bring On The Music,' what he learned from writing songs with Gregg Allman and music's power to heal and rejuvenate artists and fans alike
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Jul 22, 2019 - 4:20 pm

Want to know what music can do to help us through life's challenges and the loss of loved ones? Just ask Warren Haynes, GRAMMY winner, guitar legend, prophetic songwriter, longtime Allman Brothers Band member and founder of Gov't Mule:

"You realize that sometimes music is not just a way of getting through the hardships, it goes beyond that. It turns the hardships into something beautiful and something positive."

Haynes speaks these transcendent words in the opening minutes of GRAMMY nominee Danny Clinch's imaginative new rock concert documentary Bring On The Music, which celebrates 25 years of Gov't Mule by capturing two nights of the band performing at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y. In the film, Clinch boldly blends an omniscient nine-camera live-show capture with backstage interviews, stripped-down warm-up performances and man-on-the-street Mule-head testimonials, providing an enthralling look at life in the service of music from every angle, all with a visual verisimilitude that is quintessential Clinch.

The electricity and wonder Bring On The Music captures and creates is especially striking when you consider that, in the beginning, Gov't Mule almost never kicked their way out of the stall.

"For a band that didn't know we would do a second year or a second album, the fact that we've done 10 studio records and gone past the 20-year mark as a band is pretty mind-blowing for us," Hayes admits in the film.

But for all the history a quarter century contains, Bring On The Music exists in the now, shining a light on Gov't Mule's inexorable connection with their fans via soulful, psychedelic, mesmerizing live music. Haynes spoke with the Recording Academy recently about what the milestone means to him, working with Clinch, looking back at losing Gov't Mule's original bassist Allen Woody, what he learned from the late Gregg Allman and why these days he feels like a much younger man.

Congratulations on 25 years of Gov't Mule and on the new project. Were there any surprises for you on working on this live album and film considering it's a different creative process from what the band has explored before?

One of the great things about working with Danny Clinch was that we've known each other for so long, and I completely trust and respect what he does. And it allowed me to just concentrate on the performance part of it and just try to make it where it was just another night, or two nights, even though it wasn't just another two nights. The more we could relax and approach it that way, the better the results were going to be. So I put a lot of trust in Danny's hands, and for good reason.

Why do you think he's become the go-to music photographer and filmmaker?

Well, it's several things. I mean, you look at his work, and it speaks for itself. He's got a beautiful eye and a wonderful imagination and a wonderful concept of depth and contrast. But as a person, he's just so unassuming and someone that you want to be around. Danny and I would be friends if we didn't work together, and he has that kind of endearing quality that you feel from the very beginning... He loves music and art and photography for all the same reasons that I do, but it goes well beyond that, to being a sweet person, a cool person, and I think everyone you talk to would have a similar description.

There's a beautiful moment in the film where you're playing the intro to "Bring On The Music" backstage and then it opens up into the full-band performance. How did that cinematic idea come together and why did you choose that particular song as the title track of the film?

Well, that song, lyrically, deals with loss and the passing of time, and also with the relationship between the band and our audience. And that seemed to sum up a lot of what was in the front of our minds when we were embarking on our 25th anniversary. And it was Danny's idea to film that acoustic intro in the stairwell backstage, and it just seamlessly flows into the recorded version that we did. I think it's an appropriate title for a lot of reasons, because 25 years later, from Gov't Mule's perspective, it's all about the music. That's what's gotten us wherever we are.

We've had an interesting journey, and it's still continuing and still growing. And the audience is still growing, but all of our decisions that we've made throughout our career have just been based on what felt right to us. They've never been based what we thought people wanted from us, or expected from us, or what the marketplace or the industry wanted or expected from us. It was always been just doing what felt good. And 25 years later, we're all extremely grateful that we have an opportunity to do that, to do what we love exactly how we love to do it.

In the film, you talk about this concept of music being able to turn hardships into something beautiful and something positive. Looking back at the past 25 years, is there an era of the band, or an album, where you can recall that being especially true for you personally?

Well, when I look at the songs that I wrote before [2000's Life Before] Insanity, when I look back at that now, it was foreshadowing what we were about to go through unknowingly. And then after losing Woody in 2000, of course, the only way we knew to move forward was to do the deep end sessions with all the different bass players, who are all Allen Woody's favorite bass players and our favorite bass players. So each day, we would walk into the studio, and his rig would be set up where he used to stand. And a different legendary bass player, sometimes two different legendary bass players, would come in and plug into his rig and record with us. And that was a healing path. That was a very cathartic way of dealing with such a massive loss for us, and it was the only way I think we could have dealt with it.

So those times were extremely bittersweet. On one hand, we're playing music and recording, and in some cases, riding with Woody's heroes. But on the other hand, the reason they're there is because he's gone... Speaking for myself, and I think [Gov't Mule drummer] Matt [Abts] as well, in the beginning, we didn't even think it was a possibility to keep going. But once we did decide to keep going, that seemed to be the best path forward. And we got a lot of encouragement from our friends, many of which who had lost band members.

And so, here it is all these years later. The last two or three years have been filled with a lot of loss. In the Allman Brothers, we lost Butch [Trucks] and Gregg back-to-back. And so, it affects the way you live, it affects the way you think, it affects the way you write, it affects the way you play and sing. But there's a celebratory [nature] to it, which is we're all still here and lucky to do what it is that we love to do.

"Music becomes more and more important as time goes on. And I really believe that, that as important as music has always been in my life, it's even more important now." –Warren Haynes

Wow, that's a powerful notion. If I could ask you a follow up about Gregg: What did you learn from him as a songwriter, and then what do you personally remember most about Gregg Allman?

Well, Gregg and I met in 1980, or '81, and went around the world together several times, played so much music together. We wrote a lot of songs together, and of course, I was a really big fan before we ever met. I learned more from Gregg Allman before I ever met him than I did all the years that I knew him, just because of how much I loved and studied his music.

When we started writing songs together, some of things that made an impression on me beyond what I had learned from a distance were the way he tended to not rush things. I'm one of these people that when I'm writing, I'm caught up in the moment and I want to stay in the moment until it wears itself out. Gregg was always like, we would work for a little while, and he'd say, "Let's step away and take a break, and we'll come back in a little while and look at it from a different perspective." He was a never in a hurry to rush the creative process, and he was really good at simplifying.

He told me a long, long time ago that when you were writing a lyric, one of the most important things was how it's sung. And so, if you had a great line, but it didn't roll off the tongue so well, it was more important to find a different way of saying that, that did sing well.

And he was really good at doing that. He had told me at one time that sometimes when he got stumped, he would imagine Ray Charles, like, "How would Ray Charles sing that line?" And so, I found myself imagining the same thing about him, especially now that he's gone. Like, "How would Gregg sing this line, and how would he change it if it needed to be changed?"

But we wrote a lot together, especially the last 10 years or so that he was around. I think one of the things that might surprise people… A lot of people probably assume that I was writing the music and he was writing the lyrics, and in some cases, it was the exact opposite. There were times when he came up with music and I wound up writing the lyric, or maybe it was a combination, but it meant more that way. And we trusted each other in a way, that if he felt like something was complete, then I would bow to that, and vice versa. And also, if he felt like it was unfinished, then I would bow to that, and vice versa.

Also in the film you say once you sign on for music, you sign on for life, and you're a student for life. But I think a lot of musicians get this sense that there are these masters out there, and you're certainly one of them. So I'm curious, because you do have a fervor for learning, what are you excited about now and working on and exploring in terms of musical ideas or techniques?

Well, I'm right now, thinking a lot about what the next Gov't Mule record is going to sound like, what it's going to entail from a songwriting perspective. The first record on the other side of our 25th anniversary, I know in some ways we're going to revisit the beginning and comfortably explore some of our earliest roots and concepts, but I'm sure we're also going to go into some places we've never gone before. I've been writing some instrumental music for the first time in quite a while, and some of the stuff seems to be influenced differently than maybe instrumentals that I've written in the past. As far as playing, I'm just trying to always look at things with a little bit different perspective.

We're performing all the time, so it's a gradual process and a perpetual process, of trying to decide the parts of your playing that you want to concentrate less on and open yourself up to other ideas and other approaches. It's hard to put into words what I mean by that. But I'm thinking right now that there are some new doors opening for me that I'm going to travel through that in some ways just are based on the way you think about playing and the way you listen to music as an entity and the way you look at music as an entity.

You had said before about being a student, and there are all these wonderful guitar players that I learned from, and even the ones that I put into the absolute top of the heap, I think everyone walks off stage from time thinking, "I was terrible tonight." And that's just part of it. That's part of what being a student is. I can't imagine anyone that's achieved greatness who always thinks of themselves as being great and having no need or desire to get better.

Yeah, that's one thing I love most about the guitar: there's always something new for you to turn the page to and discover.

Yeah, and no matter who you listen to, even if it's someone who's just starting on the instrument, or someone who's been playing 50-plus years, someone in a completely different genre, you hear something that they do that you would never have thought of yourself. And that's inspiring.

Every time I hear someone else play, I get some sort of idea that triggers something in my own head, because that's one of the unique things about music is it comes from inside a person's brain and spirit and soul. And each person is different, so they have something different to offer that the rest of us would never think of.

That's a great point. Just one more question for you, Warren. There's a great quote in the movie where you say, "I feel like a much younger man." Why do you feel like a younger man now, 25 years into your time with this band?

Well, it's all flown by. It doesn't feel like 25 years since we started Gov't Mule. It doesn't feel like 30 years since I joined the Allman Brothers. I get reminded sometimes that I'm 59 years old, but I don't think of myself that way. I don't know if there's an age that I think of myself as, but it wouldn't be 59.

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Robyn Hitchcock

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Robyn Hitchcock On Nashville Living, His 'Planet England' EP, John Lennon's Legacy & Making "Beatles Music"

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The delightfully eccentric singer/songwriter also discusses working with XTC's Andy Partridge, his cinematic single "Sunday Never Comes" and what other new projects he's got hidden up his colorful sleeve...
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Dec 8, 2019 - 3:34 pm

Chances are, you've never met anyone quite like Robyn Hitchcock. The beloved British singer/songwriter has spent the better part of the last five decades earning a sort of self-adjudicated PhD in all things rock and roll, poetry, folk, America, philosophy, the human condition, psychedelia and, of course, the Beatles.

"If there was a genre called 'Beatles music' rather than called '60s pop or psychedelia or something, that would be what I play," Hitchcock said. "There are other influences there, but the harmonies, the guitars, the tempos, the sounds, essentially, in my head anyways, [come from the Beatles]."

But don't let Hitchcock's reverence for the Fab Four fool you – he's one of the most imaginitive and original artists of his generation, which is saying a lot for someone who came up in the hotbed of '60s rock. From his early–and highly influential–work with the Soft Boys in the mid-'70s to his impressive catalog of 21 albums, either solo or backed by incredible bands such as the Egyptians and the Venus 3, Hitchcock has consistently released records that inspire the imagination, delight the ear and defy the norm.

These days, Hitchcock calls Music City, U.S.A. home, and plays with the aptly named Nashville Fabs. He's also recently diversified his psychedelc folk portfolio, penning the haunting number "Sunday Never Comes" for the remarkable Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke 2018 movie Juliet, Naked, and releasing a new collaboration EP with XTC's Andy Partridge just a few months ago titled Planet England.

The Recording Academy had the surreal honor of speaking with Hitchcock over the phone from his home in Nasvhille to hear about his ongoing project with Partridge, his love for the Beatles debates, John Lennon's looming legacy, and why what he's working on next is keeping him "incrediby busy."

By moving to Nashville, you bring an eclectic flair to its ever-widening creative scene. But what has living there brought to your life?

Well, it's brought great people to play music with. And you can also get anywhere in the bloodstream of the United States and Canada, anywhere east of the Rockies in about two hours by plane, which is fantastic. It's a very good place to tour from. Touring the States is my job, it's what I do for a living.

But I think all of the recent recordings I've done have been here with other people based in Nashville, and it's a joy that a great bunch of people just come around and run through songs in your living room. And then you find some other place to play, and then you can do a show or make the record. I haven't been in a community, such as small local, specific community of people all engaged in the same thing, since I was at what y'all call high school in my teens.

I see, regularly, people that do the same thing as me, and that I work with and play with. There was a little bit of that in the Soft Boy days in Cambridge, which was another small scene, but [Nashville] is bigger than that, much more professional. Very few musicians make it out of Cambridge alive. And Cambridge, U.K., it tends to kind of eat its own sons and daughters. But Nashville, it's a great hive. People are swarming, taking off and landing and get to the airport and it says, "Welcome to music city!" I love that element. It is great.

Being surrounded by songwriters like that, has it changed your writing process?

No. No, not at all. I haven't done that thing of getting into a cage with another songwriter and trying to co-write. Nashville wears a Stetson for publicity purposes, but all kinds of music goes on here. I think the commercial end of it is still quite country-ish. And my connection to country music really doesn't go any further than "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" by the Byrds, which I love and gave me a crash course in some elements of country, but it doesn't influence me on the whole. Every so often I'll come up with a kind of pastiche country song, but I don't have to be in Nashville to do that. I think the last one I wrote, my last faux country song was written in Norway and probably the one before that, I was living in London. Being out here hasn't made me any more twangy.

"Nashville wears a Stetson for publicity purposes, but all kinds of music goes on here." -Robyn Hitchcock

Yes, I thought I heard it for a couple notes of twang on your new EP with Andy Partridge, Planet England, but I was mistaken. Maybe I was looking a little too hard for the Nashville influence, but I'd love to ask you about that project, too. You've said it could have been made any time in the past 53 years. Why was now the time for you and Andy to do this together?

I think because of the stage in our life cycles that we're at. We actually wrote those songs and did the basic recordings 12 years ago. We were in our early-to-mid-50s, but we didn't finish it off until last year for a whole variety of reasons.

I think Andy and I probably were quite suspicious of each other when we were young indie rockers, and then we were kind of both on the alternative charts in the States in the 1980s. By the time we were over 50, I think we were kind of able to approach each other really. Now we're heading into our late 60s. I go around to his house in Swindon when I'm back in Britain, which is fairly often. It's just down the road from my sister. So I could easily see a day's gone where I can meet him in Swindon and get back to Bath. And I've got country roots anyway, so you know, it's my parallel life. It's two old psychedelic pensioners rocking away in a shed in a back garden. It's just everything that Americans probably dream of, these quaint little Brits in some damp shed in a backyard with primitive equipment.

But actually Andy has the equivalent of the entire firepower of Abbey Road's Studio One in his shed and has always maintained it completely state-of the-art sonic libraries. So he's capable of summoning out any kind of sound that we want for our proto-psychedelic music. We're two guys who had been 17 when the Beatles broke up, still looking for that missing Beatles album. And so we're sort of basically trying to make it ourselves. I mean both of our careers have been that to some extent. And we think that the Dukes of Stratosphear [Partridge's band] really nudged it.

When I make a rock record or I play with a band, it's always some kind of basically playing Beatles music, and there are other influences there, but the harmonies, the guitars, the tempos, the sounds, essentially, in my head anyways is just kind of- If there was a genre called "Beatles music" rather than called '60s pop or psychedelia or something, that would be what I play and largely what Andy plays and, As we're getting the arc of our careers, we're getting to the point where that's what we really like making. So fingers crossed, two songs into another project and I'm supposed to see him in Britain at the end of next month so we'll see what we can do.

The Beatle gene runs deep…

Well you know, again, it's what people have in common. I've got this show tomorrow night with my band the Nashville Fabs. They're all Beatles freaks, and we do a ton of Beatles encores with guest singers, and I'm doing one. Everyone just disappears into the corner of their own mind trying to work out whether something is a major-seventh or a relative minor-third. Is it a minor-sixth or is it actually a seventh of the relative-fourth? I mean, it's fantastic watching people debating and playing. Now they've all got the Beatles on their phones, and they just sort of hold the phone up to the microphone, and we can all hear this transistor radio sound, on whatever it is, "You Won't See Me," or something. "I think it's a minor-" "No, it's not actually, it's-" "Oh, gosh, they're singing a D over B or is it a B over D?" You know, nobody's ever completely sure. I love that, they get excited about defining it.

Yeah, it's like one, big, first chord of "Hard Day's Night." Everybody's going to be debating what it is until the end of time.

It is! It's the library in Alexandria that the Romans burnt down, the repository of all human knowledge, hanging on the first chord of "Hard Day's Night."

Well, we're coming up on the anniversary of John Lennon's death [Dec. 8, 1980]. I thought maybe you could say something about what John, specifically, meant to you.

John Lennon, to myself and probably millions of other kids, including probably Andy Partridge, was a sort of an elder brother, you know, he was the cool, daring, kick-ass, wise-but-foolhardy older brother, the one who took the risks, the one who went out and got hit, the one who challenged authority, but also the one who had success, you know, the trappings of success. You could think, "Oh wow, John Lennon's got a house. John Lennon's got a plane. John Lennon's got a beautiful wife. John Lennon's got a drug habit. John Lennon's paranoid. John Lennon's beautiful. John Lennon's falling out with Paul McCartney. You can look at anyone you admire and the way they are on a pedestal, you can never be them. In another way, they're just like you, if somebody's too alien, they're very hard to kind of connect with, you know?

And I think there's that thing about idols with feet of clay. I think people do want a vulnerable hero, and John was just that. He was vulnerable, and in the end he was killed. How's vulnerable is that? It was awful. I am still grieving Joan Lennon much more than I grieve my parents. And you know both of them lived a natural lifespan. I mean there's so much now for John Lennon to live up to, that if he came back, he couldn't. Since he's died, he's been the good cop. McCartney's had to be the bad guy because he lived on. It's been "St. John" for nearly 40 years and you know, he obviously wasn't.

But he, as Richard Lester [director of 'Hard Day's Night' and 'How I Won The War,' both featuring Lennon] said, he made you care about him. I think he's a real emotional touchstone. The Beatles always make me feel very human. A lot of people I like, Captain Beefheart or Syd Barrett, they're kind of elsewhere, or David Bowie, there is more of a kind of, "I'm outside of this human orbit. I'm not down there in the mud with you lot. I'm somewhere apart." And Bob Dylan, you know, they're kind of insightful, mythical creatures on the edges of things. The Beatles are right in the center, and John was right in the center of the Beatles. And then he couldn't keep it together, couldn't keep up with Paul, who was actually probably tougher than him, but didn't get the knocks. John was the ice-breaker, he was the one who started it, but also [got knocked].

But I also don't think John was better than Paul, you know. I think it works because they were so evenly matched. And then George, became as evenly matched as them, and it was too much, a mouth with too many teeth in it, time for them all to leave home. But the tension on that journey is sort of, John starting it, and then Paul coming up, and then George coming up – what that did to them still produced incredible records. I love the Beatles. Really. Lennon could rubbish the myth all he wanted. It doesn't really matter what you are, it's what people think you are, especially once you've gone. It was for him to demolish the Beatles, but even he couldn't really, the myth is as strong as ever. And you know, as you can see, I have a lot to say about John Lennon.

Indeed. It's a tough time every year when this anniversary comes around to remember that loss.

It's awful and I feel for Yoko [Ono], and Julian [Lennon], and Sean [Lennon] because it's a personal loss for them. And for the rest of us, we're all sort of projecting, a person we never knew but had a relationship with.

Absolutely.  I also want to ask you about "Sunday Never Comes," specifically the new video you've made, which leaves you with a very beautiful and disconnected feeling, much the way the song does. You wrote it for a film, but how did it feel to have the song survive that process, and kind of come back to you in this way with the video?

We deliberately decided to do a proper recording of it because the only thing that was out was my demo for the Juliet, Naked movie, and I really liked the way Ethan Hawke sang it, but I wanted to see what it'd be like if I did it properly. So I recorded it with the Nashville Fabs, and then our friend Jeremy [Dylan] actually did that video. He was our roommate for a while, and he very sweetly makes these videos for us. He made that in Sydney. My partner Emma Swift, who sings with me sometimes and is working on her first full-length record here in Nashville – in fact we're doing some recording in LA next week – Emma's in there as my kind of- I'm this artist in an abandoned apartment somewhere. Nobody's decorated since the 1960s. Somehow the electricity is still connected, and I'm watching obsolete programs on dead televisions, and then Emma appears, my muse, but I can't get at her. She's somewhere else across the world looking desolate.

Most of my videos have always had some humor in them. I don't like taking things that seriously, I guess. I just think there's always got to be a laugh in there somewhere, or it's- Life is pretty unbearable [laughs]. And this one, we didn't put any jokes in. There's nothing funny in there at all. It's just me. I start drawing her at one point, and then I see her on the telly, but it's very unresolved. Sunday never comes, and Emma never turns up, whatever Emma represents, my enigma, my muse. But it's quite a sad one for me, but I'm sure whatever I do next will be a million laughs. [laughs]

Robyn Hitchcock performs "Mad Shelley's Letterbox"

Well, you latest LP [2017's self-titled album] was not only your 21st album, it was one of your best. What are you working on next? What are your goals and interests these days?

Well, whatever I put out, if I put out a 22nd one, I want it to be as good as the 21st. So right now I'm rather avoiding that by working with Andy and working on Emma's record, and whatever I've actually written. I never write the songs that I want to write. I write the songs that appear. "Sunday Never Comes" was a commission. But even then I didn't know what I was going to write. They just said, "Write a Robyn Hitchcock song." So that's what popped up. So what I've got lying around or what I'm working on is a collection of piano songs, rather somber piano songs. And I guess when Emma's record is done, because I'm part of that, I'm part of the hive mind working on that, guitar and arrangements. And once Andy and I are well into the Partridge record, hopefully next year, I will start recording these piano songs.

"I never write the songs that I want to write. I write the songs that appear." - Robyn Hitchcock

I bought a four-track cassette machine and a reel-to-reel. I want to do it on hissy, compressed tape with tape delay so it sounds like something that was done years ago. I mean, I know Elliott Smith was doing it 20 years ago, there's nothing new about retro sounding. But kind of how I used to take demos in the 1980s, I want to kind of get a sound that's all my own before I bring anyone else in. And then, you know, it might be a long time before anything comes out, but I'm totally working on it. And I've got lots of other projects, visual stuff. I'm supposed to be doing some paintings, and I'm got a collection of lyrics with illustrations. That's probably going to be the next thing to be "on sale," if you like.

So I'm incredibly busy. You wouldn't think so, but actually there's a hell of a lot going on. Plus, I play a hundred cities a year and I have to get to them all. So I've got L.A., Chicago, New York before New Year's and then it all starts up again.

Robyn Hitchcock will be playing at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 13, and tickets are available here.

WATCH: Robyn Hitchcock Talks With Portia Sabin About Touring, Songwriting, Rock & Roll And More...

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Hero The Band perform at the Recording Academy Atlanta Chapter Annual Membership Celebration
Photo: Marcus Ingram/WireImage

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Report: Music & Culture Infrastructure Can Create Better "Future Cities"

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How sound planning for a creative future in our urban areas makes all the difference for artists and musicians
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Oct 23, 2019 - 2:27 pm

The future, as they say, is now. And for music makers around the world, building a future for themselves often starts at home, in their local creative community and in the city where they live. While technology has expanded communication and made the world smaller, cities continue to grow, making planning for the future a critical cultural mission of the present.

To that end, a new report by global organization Sound Diplomacy titled "This Must Be The Place" examines, "The role of music and cultural infrastructure in creating better future cities for all of us." The 37-page deep dive into community planning and development highlights the importance of creative culture in what it calls "Future Cities."

"The government defines ‘Future Cities’ as 'a term used to imagine what cities themselves will be like," the report states, "how they will operate, what systems will orchestrate them and how they will relate to their stakeholders (citizens, governments, businesses, investors, and others),'"

According to the report, only three global cities or states currently have cultural infrastructure plans: London, Amsterdam and New South Wales. This fact may be surprising considering how city planning and sustainability have become part of the discussion on development of urban areas, where the UN estimates 68 percent of people will live by 2050.

"Our future places must look at music and culture ecologically. Much like the way a building is an ecosystem, so is a community of creators, makers, consumers and disseminators," the report says. "The manner in which we understand how to maintain a building is not translated to protecting, preserving and promoting music and culture in communities."

The comparison and interaction between the intangibility of culture and the presence of physical space is an ongoing theme throughout the report. For instance, one section of the report outlines how buildings can and should be designed to fit the cultural needs of the neighborhoods they populate, as too often, use of a commercial space is considered during the leasing process, not the construction process, leading to costly renovations.

"All future cities are creative cities. All future cities are music cities."

On the residential side, as cities grow denser, the need increases for thoughtful acoustic design and sufficient sound isolation. Future cities can and should be places where people congregate

"If we don’t design and build our future cities to facilitate and welcome music and experience, we lose what makes them worth living in."

For musicians and artists of all mediums, the answer to making—and keeping—their cities worth living in boils down to considering their needs, impact and value more carefully and sooner in the planning process.

"The report argues that property is no longer an asset business, but one built on facilitating platforms for congregation, community and cohesion," it says. "By using music and culture at the beginning of the development process and incorporating it across the value chain from bid to design, meanwhile to construction, activation to commercialisation, this thinking and practice will result in better places."

The report offers examples of how planners and leaders are handling this from around the world. For instance, the Mayor Of London Night Czar, who helps ensure safety and nighttime infrastructure for venues toward the Mayor's Vision for London as a 24-hour city. Stateside, Pittsburgh, Penn., also has a Night Mayor in place to support and inform the growth of its creative class.

Diversity, inclusion, health and well-being also factor into the reports comprehensive look at how music and culture are every bit as important as conventional business, ergonomic and environmental considerations in Future Cites. Using the Queensland Chamber of Arts and Culture as a reference, it declared, "A Chamber of Culture is as important as a Chamber of Commerce."

In the end, the report serves as a beacon of light for governments, organizations, businesses and individuals involved in planning and developing future cities. Its core principals lay out guideposts for building friendly places to music and culture and are backed with case studies and recommendations. But perhaps the key to this progress is in changing how we approach the use of space itself, as the answer to supporting music may be found in how we look at the spaces we inhabit.

"To develop better cities, towns and places, we must alter the way we think about development, and place music and culture alongside design, viability, construction and customer experience," it says. "Buildings must be treated as platforms, not assets. We must explore mixed‑use within mixed‑use, so a floor of a building, or a lesser‑value ground floor unit can have multiple solutions for multiple communities."

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Wallows Discuss Debut LP ‘Nothing Happens,’ Working With Clairo, “Game Of Thrones" & More

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The pop/rock trio weigh in on the closing a chapter with their first album, the panicky process of picking an album cover and the 'GOT' finale
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Jul 11, 2019 - 5:24 pm

Since 2017's single "Pleaser," Wallows have been popping up on playlists everywhere. But with the March release of their debut full-length, Nothing Happens, the band's voyage took launch in earnest, although Braeden Lemasters, Dylan Minnette and Cole Preston have been making music together for a decade. And while many fans have discovered the band through recognizing Minnette or Lemasters from their acting work, Nothing Happens declares the pop/rock trio deserve to be heard. Fusing their classic rock-inspired core with dashes of inspiration coming from all over, Frank Ocean to Arctic Monkeys, theirs is the electric sound of clever, honest, modern youth.

Wallows On Clairo Collab "Are You Bored Yet?"

We chopped it up with Wallows in Santa Monica, Calif. at Recording Academy headquarters to learn about the long road that led to their debut album, collaborating with Clairo on its standout track “Are You Bored Yet?” and what TV shows they like watch on tour to unwind (spoiler alert: "GOT" is involved).  

Congratulations on releasing Nothing Happens. As a coming-of-age album that you guys been working on for 10 years in some ways, is it an extension of 2018's Spring EP, and how does it feel to have it out in the world?

Braedon: Since we released our first single, "Pleaser" in 2017, I feel like in a weird way, from that song to finishing in the album has felt like a chapter. I feel like now we're ready for the next chapter. It almost feels like everything was a snapshot of how we were feeling in those two years. So, it felt like a natural progression from "Pleaser" to the album, and I feel like Spring was like a little bookmark in the middle, but now we're closing that book on Nothing Happens, and now we're just going to go off and do whatever we've gotta do for the next one.

Cole: We've heard and people say, "you have your whole life to write your first album." We pulled so many tidbits of ideas from stuff we wrote in high school, and since we were kids, but now that the first record is done, pressed, released, all that stuff, we don't have that old material to pull from anymore. So, it feels like a total fresh start in the best way.

How do you guys like to write together?

Cole: I would say that it's very different every time. There's instances for example were Braedan will come up with the entire arrangement, and play all the instruments, and then we come in and all finish it together. Or, I'll write a baseline and Dylan will contribute a melody and the songs happen that way ...

But I will say that each song wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for all three of us, which is cool. There's no one main songwriter in the band, like we all contribute in different ways and it's all a collection of the three of us together, which is great.

And all of us play each others instruments, so in the studio that's helpful because we can like, if Braedan wants to hear a part, I can play it and vice versa.

Sure, very democratic.

Cole: Very.

For "Are You Bored Yet?" how'd you guys connect with Clairo?

Dylan: We had a demo originally that we just made on Cole's laptop, and  we had a part in the second verse where my voice was pitched up and it just naturally sounded more like a female. And then, it sort of had a bedroom pop vibe, the demo, and it reminded us of "Pretty Girl" or something like Clairo.

So, we always had this little thing that was like, "oh if we actually got Clairo on this song that'd be rad," without ever expecting it. But then we happened to, on tour, make friends with a couple of her friends, and I got connected with her through just Instagram, or something, and then we would talk here and there, but then we had recorded the majority of the song after that, and we had that second verse open because we knew we wanted to have another voice on the album. To have a girl on it was the ideal scenario for us, and we just decided to hit her up and say, "Would you want to be a part of this?" Sent her the tracks of the song, and she wrote back a couple days later and was like, “Yeah, I'm down. I'm in LA right now.” Came to the studio, recorded her part and wrote it in like, 15 minutes, and the rest is history.

The album cover of Nothing Happens is very simple yet striking. Where did the idea for that aesthetic come from?

Braedon: Yeah, so basically we had the album done, and we didn't have any idea about what we wanted the album cover to be, so basically we had like four months or whatever it was, to come up with whatever we want it to be. [We] reach[ed] out to artists, have a vision, whatever it is. I've come to realize that coming up with an album cover is the hardest thing about being in a band because it's just like, "What is the feeling? What do we want this to be?" It's just so confusing. It's almost like naming the band; it was very similar to that process.

We ended up settling on one, that a really talented person sent to us and we were like, okay that's going to be it because we were panicking, and we went over the deadline of when it needed to be done and we didn't have an album cover yet. So, we were over that deadline, and we were like, "okay, okay we'll do that, we'll do that." And then the next day I was like, “Guys, no that can't be it, that can't be it, that can't be it,” and we had already submitted it.

I was panicking. I was like, “No. That can't be the cover, like, I don't like it for the vibe,” and we were walking in New Orleans, at Voodoo Fest, and Dylan was wearing a shirt, classic. That's what you do when you go out, and I took a picture of his shirt, and I looked at it. I put it in a little square form. I was like, “Guys, wait I have something I want to say… What if this was the album cover?”

And I was expecting them to be like, "No, you're stupid. No, we already submitted it. This is dumb. This is my shirt. No." And we just realized, "Oh this is actually kind of cool that looks like something that Beach House would come up with, or artists that we would [listen to] and we wouldn't question it… We showed our friends. They were all down, so, we were like, "you know what? Let's just submit it. Let's tell our manager we scrapped the other one, now let's do this."

And then we actually found other meaning in the album cover, since it's been out. Like a striped shirt reminds us of youth, and growing up, and that's very youthful, so we kind of tied that into the album now.

"Scrawny" is very neo-Weezer - I'm sure you get asked a lot about your fashion and style sense. Is the song a statement about how people may perceive you?

Dylan: I think "Scrawny" is a statement, in a way, of how people will perceive you, but it started off more so as just a funny hook that I came up with over these chords that they were playing, and at that time in the album recording process. We were writing a couple new songs to throw into the hat, and we wanted something light. Because a lot of the songs we were taking on were more emotional - not darker, but just a little more of a serious path, and we were like, "I want something that's light, borderline funny."

I started singing that. I hadn't heard that before, and it just turned into this sort of skinny, sad boy anthem, you know? It's a statement in a way, but… it doesn't pertain to me. If people want it to be a statement for themselves, that's cool.

Obviously, television acting is a big part of the band's story. I'm curious what you guys watch when you have down time, on the road?

Dylan: So, I started "Game of Thrones," at the beginning, because I always had this goal of being ready for the finale by the time it aired. Really, I was six episodes deep in season one the night the finale came on… There were so many people on the bus, in our group, that were big fans, and were going to watch, and they saw all the episodes. And my girlfriend was there, on the bus that night, and she was going to watch with everybody, and I was just, like, "I always wanted to be a part of this, and I care more about seeing her reaction to all these things, and all these guys' reactions," like, just being a part of this and having a good time [rather] than sitting in the back watching episode seven of season one so I can get caught up and watch it by myself eventually. I'd rather just sit there and be able to enjoy, and see their reactions and everything.

So, I just totally cheated, and watched the finale of "Game of Thrones," so I've seen seven episodes total. Being the first six episodes of season one, and the very last episode, and it was great.

And this last leg of the tour, I watched all of Dead to Me on Netflix.

Cole: I like the show "Barry." Great show.

Braedon: I started watching on the bus "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," and I love it. It's freaking hilarious, I love it so much.

This Is SHAVONE.: Creative Renaissance Woman, Tech Titan, Artistic Force & Proud Advocate

Recording Studio

Photo: Jesse Wild/Future Music Magazine: Getty Images

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Women In The Recording Studio: Overdubbing History From Her Perspective

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As the conversation of gender equality in music presses toward progress, hear what's changed and what's left to be done from the women who have been making great records all along
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Mar 25, 2019 - 4:15 pm

The basic, age-old creative hierarchy in the recording studio usually goes something like this, starting at the top: artist, producer, engineer, assistant engineer, runner/intern. While these roles often blur, combine, overlap or vary, each person plays an integral part in serving the music and making the session a success. But can you imagine being mistaken for any of these roles based on your gender?

"I would walk into a session, six years ago maybe, and I would be the engineer, and they would say, 'Where's the engineer? Can you go get us coffee?' I'd say, 'I can get you coffee, and I can also record you,'" says young superstar producer/engineer Suzy Shinn. "Now, even in the past year, I've met other female engineers or producers. I think that's because a conversation has been opened up to say, 'It's cool, we can do this.'"

Shinn's anecdote is a familiar one among many women working in recording studios, and it stings with the sexism that runs through the nerves of our culture. But before it's through, it also weaves a thread of hope and progress.

Although other women have won GRAMMY Awards in the category for engineering, Emily Lazar became the first woman mastering engineer to win Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for her work on Beck's Colors at the 61st GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 10.

"I am so grateful to get to be one of the people...that young women see and they can say, 'I can see it. I can be it," Lazar said of her GRAMMY win. "'That's a cool career, I want to go do that.'" In a later interview, she reflected, "That quote really speaks to a big part of the problem – if you don’t even know a career exists how can you aspire to do it?"

Just last year, a report by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative on gender balance—or rather, imbalance—in recording studios sent a message to the music industry, stating just 2 percent of producers and 3 percent of engineers/mixers across popular music are women. While a glance at these figures creates plenty of concern, a deeper look at the women currently crushing it provides inspiration, optimism and perspective.

"I think the latest Annenberg study… has sparked an amazing discussion across the world about the actual number of women that are in this industry," says mastering engineer Piper Payne. "And not only has it given those women, myself included, [not only has it] shined a light on them and their careers, but it has opened the eyes of those who didn't know it was a problem, or it maybe never occurred to them."

Make no mistake, women have crafted countless timeless recordings in the past, women are growing successful careers in the studio right now, and, even though many have put up with a metric ton of adversity, discrimination and sexism, new conversations around gender diversity are bringing about visible change. The narrative of absence is shifting to that of an undeniable presence of great women in this field, and their new normal is changing the game.

Take Shinn, for example, a wildly versatile producer/engineer, musician and songwriter. Even if you haven't heard her name, you've no doubt heard her work with Katy Perry, Dua Lipa, Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, Weezer and many more. Her path to a career in the studio traversed a series of realizations about the craft—and eventually the industry—behind the music she loved.

Suzy Shinn

Suzy Shinn

"Growing up as a kid, all I knew was the artists. I didn't know the songwriters. I didn't know the producers or the engineers or mixers," says Shinn. "Then I went to this music camp and discovered that, 'duh,' they have to record, they have to get [their music] into a format. All of a sudden, I went home at age 12 or 13, I got my first microKORG synth. I got my first computer, I was using GarageBand and Logic to make terrible demos and put them up on MySpace."

Shinn went on to major in producing and engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she recalls being, "one of maybe three girls in the whole class," before moving to Los Angeles to break into the studio scene. She worked her way from intern to assistant engineer, but her musical creativity as a songwriter also shined through.

"I had casually written a song with one of [a publishing company's] writers. They said, 'Wait, you do this other stuff? What?,'" says Shinn. "Eventually it led to a publishing deal… That was very helpful and motivating, to think, 'Someone else sees something in me that they're willing to bet on.' That was a pretty pivotal moment for me."

Her success story is a reminder that the cornerstone of making progress is providing opportunity. In this spirit the Recording Academy Task Force on Inclusion and Diversity launched the Producer and Engineer Inclusion Initiative earlier this year. Aimed at making an industry-wide change, the initiative asks, "That at least two women are identified and therefore considered as part of the selection process every time a music producer or engineer is hired."

In a resounding swell of support, hundreds of producers, labels, artists, managers and agencies have joined, and there is a deeper reason to be optimistic.

"One of the amazing things about this Diversity and Inclusion Task Force is that it is an independent body," explains Payne. "We're able to get real, honest advice that is unbiased and fearless, and that's something that not a lot of other organizations are able to do."

The initiative marked a massive statement to those in control of hiring at all levels of the industry, from producers to executives. No doubt this will take a team effort, and it remains to be seen who might be the most powerful tide turners.

"Someone mentioned recently to me that a lot of this is in the artist's hands, because they know who they want to work with," says Shinn. "It's up to them to voice their opinions on what they want. I think it will just take time. I think in 10 years it's going to be a very different statistic, women in music."

But what is the reality of enacting this change? Acclaimed producer/engineer Sylvia Massy, who has worked with everyone from Prince to Tool to Johnny Cash to Red Hot Chili Peppers, offers her unwavering support of the initiative while acknowledging some of the real-world challenges of its implementation.

"I support it wholeheartedly," Massy says. "I have mixed feelings on whether or not it's right to push [or] to force people hire female engineers. I believe they should be hired on their own merits. But I am excited about this."

Massy's mix of enthusiasm and trepidation is not only common among forward-thinking supporters of such change, but also valid. But perhaps the solution rests in the heart of a time-honored studio tradition: mentorship. According to Shinn, this practice of experienced professionals taking a nascent studio apprentices under their wing is still alive, though it's evolving.

"It's not necessarily [happening] within the big commercial recording studios," says Shinn, "but it's these independent producers, writers that don't want to or can't do it all on their own, but who bring people up with them and who are positive people, are helpful and really just exceptional."

"I've hired and trained lots of women. I've hired and trained lots of men. And they've both been great through the years. Some of them have been terrible, some of them have been fabulous, and it has not been related to their gender." –Emily Lazar

In addition to thoughtful guidance, it takes a single-mindedness toward your dream to push through the uncertainty of a music career, according to Shinn.

"I think not having a backup plan," she says, when asked about the biggest lesson she's learned in her career. "The music industry is so unstable and unpredictable. If you're going for it, that's the only thing that you can do or can envision. If you have a backup plan, it gets really, really hard sometimes. You will fall on that backup plan."

Under any circumstances, the road to studio success has never been an easy one. Long hours on top of long hours, void of exercise and vitamin D, the stress of catering to the egos and of artists and producers – it can pile up. But the magic of a recording session can change not only the lives of those in its trenches, but the lives of those outside who are moved by its results. It takes teamwork, ingenuity and endurance, and the last thing anyone in that environment needs is additional challenges based on their background.

"When I walk into the studio, I don't think about myself as a female mastering engineer, I just think of myself as a mastering engineer," says Lazar, before catching herself and going one step further. "Actually… I just think of myself as a person, and I'm relating to my clients, and I'm relating to the world around me. I just don't view it in that way."

WATCH Behind The Board: TOKiMONSTA On Creativity And Finding Common Ground Through Music

This notion pulls back the curtain for a peek at what a truly respectful, dynamic and equal studio environment might look like, one where each professional, regardless of their creative role, enters the session as a person first.

So, how do we get there? One possible solution starts with connection, the concept that the community can help build the individual, who can in turn help the community.

The Recording Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing Steering Committee for 2018-2019 stands at 60 percent women, compared to the 2 percent industry index. This number's relation to the greater industry norm demonstrates something meaningful, that progress can come from the inside of the industry, and that community is key.

"I think with the conversations that have been opened up and the statistics that I've read and stuff like that, it really has made it eye-opening to say, 'Oh wait, yeah, I guess there's not a lot of females doing that. Maybe we should, give them a chance,'" says Shinn.

"A lot of people have asked me these kinds of questions through the years about, 'What is it like to be a woman in the studio? I'm like, 'Well, I can tell you what it's like to be me in the studio and the experiences I've had.' But I'm not quite sure, I don't really know how to answer. I don't view it that way," says Lazar. "However, I do realize there is a big problem, I do realize we need to fix it, and I really realize that I would like to be part of the solution and use my platform as much as I possibly can to help show girls that if they can see it they can be it." 

Setting the example of excellence and inclusivity for young aspiring music professionals is not only crucial, it sets off a chain of influence in a young person's life. And while this phenomenon is easiest to observe on the individual level, being specific and deliberate about progress can grow to a potentially limitless influence once larger communities and organizations lock step.

"The one cool thing is that that fearlessness and that bravery of the Academy to step forward and say we are going to help solve this problem, and here's how we're going to do it, and this is when we're going to do it, and this is what we're doing," says Payne. "That has sparked other organizations like the AES [Audio Engineering Society] and lots of educational institutions and other broadcast groups to really take a hard look at what their demographics are and what they're doing to be more welcoming and inclusive to all types of people, not just women in the industry."

The numbers are alarming, and the industry has a long way to go, but be sure it is on the move. Right now represents a turning point of unprecedented awareness, the kind of policy awareness Payne points out as it makes ripples across industry institutions, the kind of self-awareness Lazar feels when she walks into a session as a person first, the kind of awareness Massy describes when an artist or label must decide who is most-qualified and best-suited to hire for a gig, the kind of awareness that sharpens action and directs change.

And for someone as multi-talented, accomplished, and hard-working as Shinn, it is an awareness of her own professional and personal progress.

"I'm getting to produce some records that, a few years ago, I would've been engineering," she says. "I'm getting called in to do more creative roles on with artists and bands that I really admire and look up to, and still doing writing sessions and engineering, too. Tomorrow I'm doing drums, which is always fun. We don't get to record live drums that often anymore. Yeah, every day is a new day. It's going really great."

Read More: Examining Tool's Classic Debut Album 'Undertow' 25 Years Later With Sylvia Massy