Ep.1/ An Intro to Landon Conrath & His New Single “November”
Interview by: Divina Marfe
“You never realize the cost of your choices until you make them and ‘trade your gold for silver’ so to speak. I think November is just about what it’s like to make those choices.”
I’ll start off with a few basic questions before diving into the ones I have for “November” :)
What do you enjoy most about being a musician?
I think this answer changes super super often for me! I enjoy so many aspects of music; sometimes it’s the live performance, sometimes it’s the nitty gritty of production, and sometimes it’s just the overall lifestyle of being involved in the musician culture! I think lately I’ve really just been enjoying being a part of the music scene in general. It’s so fun to go see your friends play shows, and it’s so fun to meet up with people and write songs. I think I just like everything about the whole lifestyle that comes along with all of this.
I’ve met a lot, and I mean A LOT, of indie artists in the past year and all of them have had a different response: How would you describe your music?
Ah yes, the hardest question in the universe… haha. I think I would describe my music as indie alt-pop at its most basic. But going more in depth I would say that it’s characterized a lot by memorable guitar riffs, punchy drums, pitched vocals and big pop hooks.
If you could collaborate with anyone, dead or alive, who would be your DREAM artist?
Oh man, I think I would have to say Justin Vernon. I would be absolutely TERRIFIED to write with him just due to sheer respect for his craft, but I think it would be really incredible. People probably wouldn’t listen to my music and think “oh yeah this dude has been heavily influenced by Bon Iver” but when I tell you he is one of my biggest musical inspirations, I MEAN IT!!!!
When it comes to songwriting, do you create for yourself or for your fans?
I would say it’s a healthy mix of both! At the core of everything, I really do make music just because I really really enjoy it. It is so meaningful to have this built in part of my life where I can just unload all of my feelings. It is funny to think that my job is to just take all the good and bad things that happen in my life and reinterpret them into a song. But I also think a lot about the fans when I’m writing music! I respect people so much who are in music solely for the art and expression of it. But that’s really not who I am! I love making music that I know lots of people will enjoy, I’m always thinking of how we can make the songs more interesting, or more catchy. I think there can be a healthy balance of writing for yourself and writing for your fans. Going too far in either direction can lead to problems in my opinion.
Would you say your style has evolved or changed since the beginning of your career?
Absolutely. The first demo that I ever made myself was basically a rip-off of Coldplay’s first record. And when we finally finished up that demo and put it out into the world it was a song called “Pieces” and it was basically a 1975-esque indie-pop song. I think my style has become a lot more cemented into my individual sound. I’ve collaborated with so many people, and I’ve learned how to always sprinkle my own self into the music even when other people are producing the records. It has been fun to be the sole writer on a lot of these upcoming songs, the record really feels like my own creation.
How & when did music become a significant part of your life?
I took piano lessons throughout my entire childhood, and I started taking drum lessons and playing drums in church at about age 12. But it really didn’t mean much to me until about halfway through highschool. Drums were the only thing I really cared about with regards to music throughout highschool and I spent so many hours learning my favorite songs on drums, but I never really cared about singing or writing music in any form. I used to bike home from school, and one day I actually got hit by a car while I was riding back and broke my wrist. I couldn’t play drums but I had enough free fingers with my cast that I could play most songs on piano. I needed an outlet for music in my life and so I swapped from playing all my favorite songs on drums to playing them on piano and learning how to sing them as well. It blossomed into this massive part of my life and I started singing all the time. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in college a few years later that I wrote my first song and then released it a year later.
What is the best gig you’ve ever played?
I think the best gig I ever played was at a garage in Eau Claire Wisconsin in the fall of 2021. It was a DIY gig thrown by a few friends of ours that we had met only about a month earlier. They built a stage and we brought a couple of small speakers and raged. The energy was absolutely bonkers, and I couldn’t believe that there were moments in our set where people were absolutely screaming the lyrics. The reason it was so good was because we had just come off our first run of shows and we had an absolute let down of a show at Schubas in Chicago a few nights earlier. Everyone left during our set, and we had a bunch of sound issues so coming to this small garage in Wisconsin and having this wild crowd was truly a blessing for us. We have never forgotten that show at the Sandbox in Eau Claire!
Your worst?
Oh man, I’ve played a million terrible shows with different bands but as far as a “Landon Conrath” show, I think I would say that the worst show was the aforementioned show that we did in Chicago in late 2021. We drove out the day of from Minneapolis, which is about a 6 hour drive. So we’re not off to a great start since we’ve been up since 5am and we were all extremely tired when we got to the venue. Then we had some very unfortunate technical issues with our monitor system and we just had an overall less-than-ideal soundcheck. The show seemed like it was gonna be fine, and there actually was a pretty decent crowd for the local opening band. But as soon as the openers finished their set, basically everyone who was at the show turned around and walked out the double doors of the venue and resettled themselves in the bar that was in a different room at the venue. The venue also forgot to turn off the lights when we started playing so we had to look at about 15 brightly lit concert attendees as we suffered through our 65 minute set. I also began to lose my voice, and the whole thing just wasn’t great.
I remember my first concert like it was yesterday. What was the first concert that you ever went to & who was performing?
I was never gifted with a good memory! I honestly have zero clue what my first concert was, and I really don’t have any memories of my life before 9th grade besides a few small events. But I can tell you that my favorite concert of all time was seeing the 10th anniversary of Bon Iver’s self-titled record performed at the Youtube Theater in Los Angeles. It was incredible!
What is your creative process like? Do you experience writing blocks & if so, how do you work through it?
Oh my word, I experience SO MUCH writer's block. And not just writer’s block, but just inspiration block as a whole. I often go through month-long droughts of songwriting and creating. In my personal experience, my songwriting often comes in super intense waves. Like I think this next record was mostly written over a 4-5 week timeframe. I am a very obsessive person when I am excited about something. So if a song falls from the sky that day, I want to just absolutely be on it.
You’re currently on the road, correct? What is a typical “tour day” for you like?
We just spent the last few months touring and had the best time, so happy to be home right now, but I miss touring for sure. Honestly, the days look pretty different depending on how far apart the cities we’re playing are, and what our call time is etc. But oftentimes our day will start with finding some sort of breakfast/coffee and then spending the day exploring whatever city we find ourselves in. We recently all bought skateboards and we have all fallen in love with exploring cities by skateboard. It is always fun to try whatever food is the staple of that city and I love going to used music and clothing stores as well. Obviously not every day is like that, and sometimes you have an 8 hour drive before show day and you’re eating lunch at a gas station in rural Nebraska. Touring is super unpredictable, but it is such an amazing experience!
Stage presence, crowd interaction, & overall energy during live shows is so essential to a performance & every artist has their own style or take on how they approach it. How do you energize or interact with the audience?
My band is made up of my best friends in the whole entire world and I think that translates super well into our live performance. Fans always come up to us afterwards and say things like “You guys look like you’re having so much fun up there!” And it’s always easy to respond, “We are!” I think I want my live performances to always be characterized by being a big family event where everyone is a part of it, and we’re all just having a good time. I love singing with people during the shows and having eye contact with fans during the show is such a small way that I can say, “hey I see you singing! And it means the world to me!” We also always spend a lot of time at the merch table as a band. We really want to be able to shake people’s hands and tell them that we care about them and that we are so glad that they came out to the show. My fans are massively important to me and live performance is one of my favorite things, I can’t wait to get back out on the road!
You spoke of the importance regarding a sense of physicality for your audience. Most artists tend to stick to the green room or “backstage”, but you opt for a more personal connection by sticking to the merch table. Do you feel that initiating that connection & building that community is significant in this particular industry?
I think I kinda mentioned this in the last question, but I always want to try and convey to the fans how important they are to me. I want to spend as much time out at the merch table as possible and try to just bring the music into the real world. It’s so easy for all of this to just exist on the internet and people will continue to just be passive listeners on spotify etc unless you do something to bring that physical connection into reality. I think this is of utmost importance in the modern music industry. Tiktok has created an entire generation of artists who are famous before they’ve released their first song, much less played their first show. I think people are starting to get tired of music existing solely online and are getting hungry for real life connections with their favorite artists again. I think that’s one reason why bands are starting to get popular again instead of just solo artists. People want to be a part of something and when they can go to a show and connect with you and a larger group of people, it makes them want to keep building the community. My goal in music is to be one of those artists who has a dedicated live audience and can continue to build that “cult” following of fans across the world!
What advice would you give for someone who has just started in the music industry?
Find what makes you “you” and hold onto it for dear life! We have never been so oversaturated with content as we are right now and it’s so hard to stand out amongst the crowd. I would say that you should worry less about going viral on the internet and spend more time building something within your own friend group and your own city first. I am a huge fan of the more grassroots approach to music and I come from a city (Minneapolis) where the music scene is all a bunch of friends who are stoked about each other's music. Try and look at the limitations you have in front of you as something that sets you apart instead of a crutch, and get your friends involved!
Ep.1/
“AN INTRO TO LANDON CONRATH & HIS NEW SINGLE ‘NOVEMBER’”
Photo by: Sawyer Brice
Now moving onto the “November” based questions:
November has a “late-night driving with the windows down, music on full blast” type of vibe. Everyone has their own way of perceiving stories and songs, but in your mind, at its core, what is November to you?
It totally has that vibe to it! I love making music that has a really driving pulse which makes it perfect for driving in the car like you mentioned. I think the core of the track is a feeling of uncertainty. The song focuses on a relationship where the two partners are unsure of whether or not they should stay together. The constant movement of the drums and bass just reiterate the feelings of nervousness and anxiety surrounding the status of their relationship. I think I spend a lot of my life mourning all of the lives that I could have lived, and sometimes regret is an emotion that takes me away from my current experiences. You never realize the cost of your choices until you make them and “trade your gold for silver” so to speak. I think November is just about what it’s like to make those choices.
Nowadays, I feel as though artists are embracing their most vulnerable and raw experiences and using them as inspiration for music or even as just a way of processing it. I’m Alive… So It’s Fine is your most recent project born from “an explosive writing period during a tumultuous time” & came from “a singular, but painful, experience.” Was it difficult finding the right sounds, right words, to perfectly convey what you wanted to get across, or was it effortless?
These songs honestly felt like they kind of fell from the sky. When I was writing these songs I wasn’t even planning on putting them into a project, I was literally just writing for the sake of writing. It was so relieving to be writing songs without the pressure of deadlines or the pressure to make it fit into a cohesive EP. My manager randomly sent me a link with a few of the songs I had written that he had formed into an EP. I took a listen to all the songs at once and it just kinda worked. The songs all flowed into each other and the theme of the project felt so pungent and real. It took a bit of massaging to make everything work together, but it was one of the easiest projects I’ve ever been a part of in terms of the writing and overall formulation of the project.
Upon listening to November, I was intrigued to hear the mix of such a strong bass riff, electric trill, & natural acoustics. It all blends together beautifully with the lead vocals. I feel as though many artists in this particular niche of this genre typically don’t think to add glitchy electronic accents. What was your thought process or ultimate goal when it came to the production side of this track?
The whole thing just started with a bass riff and then blossomed from there. I was experimenting with lots of different vocal techniques and I bought this new pedal called the Marshmallow by Alexander Pedals. It basically is this crazy pitch shift and modulation pedal and I literally put it on basically every single layer of the track haha! My best friend Caleb Dee and I went to a cabin in Menomonie, Wisconsin and finished up all the songs in a singular weekend trip and it was so fun to just add so many crazy layers and try and make the production as close to a reflection of ourselves as possible.
It’s said that November is your most “expansive & experimental to date” as it deals with the hardships and uncertainties within a relationship. With lyrics such as “Trading my gold for silver. Thought I knew just what it would cost” & “Always told you I woulda changed and I hate myself for that” that convey such an honest and personal feeling of regret and uncertainty, are there times where you find it difficult to be so open with your experiences?
I am an extremely shy person. In basically every context outside of music I won’t talk to people unless they talk to me first. But once the floodgates are open with people, I will absolutely dump my heart into a conversation. This translates into my writing process and I have never had a problem with putting my emotions on my sleeve when it comes to my writing.
What do you hope people take away after listening to November?
I hope people can find some camaraderie as we all realize that we’re going through a lot of similar experiences. I always try to write songs that are really specific to my life experiences. I have found that the more in depth I go into my own experience, the more broadly relatable the songs are. My favorite part about writing is hearing how people connect with the songs, and I hope November is a continuation of that.
Finally, last and final question, what is one message you would like to give to your fans? :)
I don’t have much to say, but I just want everyone to know that it means so much to me when you listen to the music and when you send me messages etc about what the songs have meant to you. I have so much music sitting on my computer right now, and I can’t wait to get it into your ears!!
