Foreign Air

This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

This past month I was able to schedule an in-person interview with Foreign Air before they played a headlining show at The Atlantis (venue directly next to the 9:30 Club). In this interview, I asked the band about the writing and recording process of their excellent third album, Such That I May Glow, that recently came out, and how they stay grounded given all the “noise” that’s dominating today’s news cycle. Such That I May Glow is up on all streaming services here.

Thank you guys so much for your time this evening here at The Atlantis here in DC, just next door to the 9:30 Club. So your third full length record, Such That I May Glow, officially releases tomorrow, August 22. What goals did you guys set out for yourselves when crafting this batch of songs that are going to come out tomorrow for everyone.

Jesse: We did the second record, and we did a US tour, European tour, and then we were kind of like, “what do we do next?” We’ve always been writing since I’ve met Jake, I don’t know how long ago…17 years ago? And we’re always writing. We love writing and recording and producing, and that’s kind of our passion. And so we were trying to figure out what to do. And our decision this time was I would go to DC, and we would just kind of mess around at Jake’s spot to see what came. And I think the first four songs came out of that session that sort of told us where we were going to go. We never set out to do something in terms of, “Oh, we got to do this sound or…” And I don’t write my lyrics that way either. It’s all about creating and being in the moment and letting sort of my subconsciousness go, and what does the music make me feel. What do I improvise to sing, and what feels natural without thinking about it, you know? And I think it ended up being that the first batch of songs we did, “Awkward Bones,” we did “What’s Wrong” and we did “Save Us”…

Jacob: That was at your house. And yeah, “Awkward bones.” “What’s Wrong?” <originally> had the sample that we didn’t get cleared.

Jesse: And there definitely was a little bit of a tinge of New Order, because we’ve been into synthesizers, but still keeping the Foreign Air sound, which is huge drums, using guitars, but also experimenting with synthesizers And layering real drums with electronic drums. So it just kind of went naturally into a little touch of 80’s on top of what we’ve been and I think another huge thing that’s set apart is singing for me. I’m not doing a ton of falsetto stuff. It’s a little more raw. I think the lyrics ended up being a little more of how I’m feeling, and how I felt the past couple years and and just not trying not to think about it. Trying not to be like, “What am I doing, and jump into a falsetto, right? I’m doing a bunch of vibrato.

Is that typical for your guys’ songwriting process?

Jacob: This album was probably, well… we did the US tour, then the Europe tour, and then I feel like we took a little bit of time off, not a lot, but took a little bit of time off. And then I feel like anytime, at least for me, anytime you do that, it’s really hard to start. Like, once you stop, it’s really hard…so for this, I feel like it was in our heads for what we were trying to make. What was the next record gonna sound like? And it was really hard for me personally to conceptualize what it was gonna sound like, and what it was gonna feel like. I just didn’t really have a vision. Then with all this, you try so hard to overcompensate and start getting lost in your own head. So I think that’s kind of where I was at with it. And then, yeah, when Jesse and I got together and wrote those four songs, it came together quickly. It was like a relief. I was like, “Oh, okay, the magic is still here. There is still something here <that shows> we can write songs and record songs.”

Because you guys live apart, right? Like, you’re mostly from this DC area. And I think you said you’re from…?

Jesse: North Carolina. I lived in New York and Los Angeles for a little bit after the pandemic, and moved back home. And we do a lot of stuff virtually, and then we get together to kind of hammer it out.

So what does that look like for the virtual environment? Do you guys do Zoom calls to collaborate?

Jacob: Discord. And then we’ll get together, in Charlotte or DC, or maybe somewhere else, and we’ll just bunker down and work for like 10 days or so. This record effect, like what you’re saying, is probably our most personal record, and we didn’t work with any outside collaborators, people like producers or other songwriters. So this was just kind of something that the two of us made, and I think everyone just got all these decisions just kind of naturally followed by one or the other.

And there’s a song on there called “Maniac”. Was that a reflection of what’s going on in the world these days?

Jesse: Yeah, I’m a little bit of a YouTube junkie. There’s so many rabbit holes to go down.

No, yeah, my son does the same thing. He’s 14.

Jesse: The lady that I’m seeing has two wonderful boys, and one of them is so sucked into YouTube. And the crazy thing is it’s just echo chambers, obviously, and not necessarily negative. Like, I built a studio desk recently, and it’s never in my feed. But then once I’m researching “how to build a desk”, then I’m like, “oh, there’s a whole community here” and stuff like that. But there’s obviously a lot of noise. I mean, just wild stuff going on.

Especially now that you’re in the city of DC today. What’s the overall feel for you guys, when you came into the city today?

Jacob: It was pretty calm, honestly. I was trying to explain that the last two weeks have been pretty crazy.

The way the administration frames it, you’d think the city is on fire…

Jacob: It’s very calm, yeah. I think there’s actually a lot less people in the city because of all this stuff they’re doing. So the city is getting a lot quieter, and less people moving around, and less people from outside the city.

Yeah, I’d agree with that.

Jacob: I think a lot of it is like, your people’s vision of DC is like, “Oh, it’s a war zone.” And so tourism and people from outside the city, that’s what they think. Well, I’m not gonna spend money to go to that <city>

Jesse: No, and that’s what it was like when I lived in LA. I remember my friends or family would reach out whenever something happened. And it’s like, they’re gonna be bored here. Everyone that I saw at the grocery store smiled at me…everything’s cool.

It’s an unnecessary black eye for the city…

Jesse: But I think that the biggest thing for “Maniac”, inspiration-wise, was I was seeing a lot of things where it seemed like people can be on the edge, and you just don’t know when they are on the edge. And little things can kind of tip you over, and I’ve dealt with that in my own personal life, with mental health stuff. Where it’s like, you don’t know what that little thing is that’s going to tip you over to having panic attacks, or having anxiety, and things happen. I saw a lot of news stories, where one I can remember is a Taco Bell drive through where if you honk at the wrong person, you could end up dead, over nothing. But, there’s a mental health crisis there that’s sort of bubbling under the surface. And with all the drug stuff that’s going on with fentanyl, and there’s some sad stuff going on in the United States that needs some real change coming from the government. And coming from laws, coming from government funding, probably with facilities…because it all starts there. I mean, and that’s not the only thing.

Yeah, it seems like they all need to work together. It’s not just one problem isolated, you know what I mean?

Jesse: Yeah, everyone needs to be on the same page and working towards the same goal. And that’s what can be tough too. It’s like you have a lot of people who want to do good, but you could be doing bad, too. So especially with driving. I feel like driving is the biggest…if you go down a YouTube rabbit hole of road rage videos, because everything is on video nowadays, it’s wild.

So you’re in the middle of a quick three-show tour in support of the new record that comes out tomorrow. It sounds like it’s gonna give the fans of Foreign Air a glimpse of what you guys are capable of today. So how’d you go about crafting the setlist for tonight?

Jacob: Lots of new songs, obviously off the <new> record, because they’re new. They’re exciting to us and we want to play as much of the record.

And it’s great too. Your publicist shared the advance with me.

Jacob: Thank you! It’s fun to play those songs. It’s also nerve racking, because it’s the first time we’re playing the set. And then on top of that, we posted something on Instagram, on our socials, “What songs do you guys want to hear?” And there were three or four that we had never played before, from the first two records. So we’re playing two or three of those for the first time. So that’s exciting. And then we, of course, we’ll play our biggest songs that I think people paid to see.

Like, “Free Animal”?

Jacob: Yeah, and “In the Shadows.” Those are the first two songs we wrote as a band.

That’s kind of nice to have that success out of the gate, though. How’d that particular song come together, by the way, for “Free Animal”?

Jacob: I took a flight down to Charlottesville. Jesse picked me up from the airport. He had a voice memo. I was like, “oh, man, that’s amazing”. And people think it’s a sample, and it is a sample, but the way he was singing it…

Jesse: Kind of like Meredith Monk. I could see the work, the vocals going back and forth.

Jacob: So he was like, “check this out” in the car. That’s super sick. I’m excited to work on it. And then we sat down and just started simple: drum beat, bass line, and it just kind of wrote itself. We sent it to some friends, and some music people, who are our friends in the music industry. And the reaction was super positive, and they sent it out. And then I think Billboard ended up with the premiere, and Nike used it in a commercial. And I was like, “we didn’t even have a band name” at that time! <Laughter>

That’s funny! So which of the songs on Such That I May Glow came easiest for you two to write?

Jacob: “Save Us.” A friend of ours was down in Charlotte when we were there, and she’s playing this music and stuff like that. And a lot of it had that kind of break beat stuff to it. And I heard it, and I was like why can’t I make something like that? I was inspired by the beat and saw what we could do with it. But same thing, we came up with the beat, came up the bass line, and then Jesse kind of started singing the melody right off the bat, and then added the “Save Us” lyric…

Jesse: It was crazy. There was a lot of emotion in that song. I remember improvising to record after he had come up with that beat, and feeling sort of overwhelmed feeling writing that because it’s just off the top, and I don’t know what it means. And that’s kind of a thing about our lyrics…I want it to mean different things to me every day, depending on how I feel. And hopefully, the more positive I feel in my life, the more I will interpret it in a positive way. And a lot of my lyrics are that way.

Yeah, and that’s just the power of music in general. Once it’s released, like how you guys have a record coming out tomorrow, it doesn’t become yours anymore, because others kind of interpret it their own way and connect with it. So I hope people will do that for you guys tomorrow. On the other side of the coin, what songs went through the most versions from demos to final?

Jacob: “Awkward Bones” probably is a big one.The original version, Jesse had the original one in his house, which may have been on piano or something. And then came to DC, and the first version in DC had this like a Bruce Springsteen type of sound…

Jesse: Yeah with the guitar, sort of a New Order sounding guitar. And it had live drums, and it was really slow. But, for the melody, I was like, “There’s something really special there”. But it was kind of hidden. And then that’s when I went, “Okay, let me just do piano and vocal to make sure the chords are right.” And then I brought that to DC as sort of like, because when we meet up, especially before a record’s beginning, bring up anything with me that has a spark of something. I’ve been fooling around for the past couple years since our record, and seeing if anything can get off the ground, or if we just start from scratch. And that one we ended up doing at his place, and it then ended up being more guitar-driven.

Jacob: I think we both like the melody and the lyrics a lot. That song, as soon as he sang it to me or played it for me, I was like, “Okay!” I was super excited about that. And then we had a guitar-driven one, but it sounded like something had kind of already been done before. And we both worked on it separately, and banged our head against the wall so hard on that one. And then finally, I was like, “What do I like about this? The melodies are cool, the lyrics are cool. Let’s just start with that.

Jesse: And we ended up with a simple beat ourselves up on this version from DC with the guitar that started to have the drum production where we’re like, “okay, it’s got like an 80s drum production that we like, but we’re not necessarily in love with what the guitar is doing.’ And Jake would kind of push me too, and be like, “what do we do?” And he’d send me a couple things, and it would inspire me. And then I just tried programming strings, and it kind of had a special magic that almost felt like a graduation…almost like “Bittersweet Symphony.” Where I was, like, okay, just the vocal over this feels great, And so we ended up renting a studio and tracking real strings. And that’s how that one happened. At its core, it’s an 80s prom song,

Yeah, absolutely, I can hear that. Yeah. And the other question I have is kind of related to this new record, is about you guys playing mostly small sized clubs right now. How do you think this music lends itself well to this type of setting that you’re playing for tonight, and also for New York last night?

Jacob: Yeah, I think it’s because we haven’t played in two years, before this little run of shows, I think that was the big reason for booking these rooms. You don’t know what to expect. We took time off. And also, honestly, I like small rooms. I hate going to shows in arenas and 6000 cap rooms. That is not my thing. I need to be close to artists. Like, I need to feel it. I need to see what pedals are being used. With this, it’s intimate. But if someone says, “Hey, do you want to come play at the Verizon Center…”<Laughter> But, we love the community aspect of interacting with people here.

Yeah, that’s great! So what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of being a band of just two musicians/songwriters?

Jacob: I just didn’t realize when you have more people…I think there’s a lot of benefits where it’s easier to collaborate because there’s less voices in the room. And I think what we were previously in bands where every band member had equal say, and to be honest, there’s usually one songwriter, and that’s the original idea. For us, at least in my opinion, it’s really important to keep that true identity, or core of that actual song. And then when you have a drummer and other people wanting to put their stamp on it, you kind of lose that magic, and it’s just easier for us to get stuff done, and for us to write songs.

I feel bad for people with like eight people in their band…<Laughter>

Jesse: Yeah, when they’re on their third record, it’s like they’re not even getting together. I’m kind of a loner, you know? I have a personality on stage, but I’m a quiet person, and that’s what drew me to Jake, too. He’s a soft-spoken, sweet guy just like me, and I love his curly hair. <Laughter> And we’re friends, and we got along because we’re on that wavelength. And so I’m very happy just to be shutting off from the world and writing all the time. So I think it worked really well for me to have just one person. And to feed off of <each other> and we kind of see others, rather than what we had been doing, which is just everyone being a full band, everyone’s got different schedules…And I mean, it’s fun, and we definitely have collaborated with other people on songs in the past, because it can be great to to have three people in a room. But I personally really enjoy it now.

Jacob: It took a long time finding the dynamic. Like anything else, we were so different, but both of us kind of realized that this special stuff happens when it’s <cut down> in the middle. If we both pull really hard and challenge each other, and whatever happens in between is the thing that people respond to the most. So just being honest with you, like, oh, I don’t, like, think that’s your best idea. Or find different ways to say…we know when someone is with each other now, unspoken, is excited about something or not excited. And just like,” oh, that could be better.” And you’re like, “Okay, if he says it could be better, it probably could be better.” Start trusting the other person

Jesse: And it’s easier, too, financially!

I bet!

Jacob: That was never our intent <to make money>. But we very quickly realized, “Oh, you could be a full time musician when there’s only two people.” Where you’ve gotta have a second job if there’s four or five band members.

Absolutely. So after this mini tour wraps up, how else do you plan to support the promotional cycle of this record?

Jacob: We spent a lot of time on music videos for a good amount of the songs. We’ll probably continue that. We’re talking about doing a video for the title track, and then maybe doing some more live performances, and different variations of the song. Trying to film stuff. And we’re kind of open to other opportunities.

Jesse: I think, financially, it makes sense for us. But also, it makes sense to promote the record in a way that is effective.

Yeah, and have you guys pressed anything on vinyl yet, or is that in the works?

Jacob: That’s been such a big conversation that I guess we kind of overlooked how much of a demand there was for it…We were just so focused on other aspects of getting the album done, but when we posted a live Q&A, everyone kept saying “vinyl vinyl vinyl”. So I think we’re going to look into that as soon as possible. Yeah, probably in the next couple weeks for the new record. And we should have known, the first record we did, we had a pressing of about 300 and those sold out.

Didn’t you also press one album on cassette?

Jacob: Yeah, we did! The cassette, whoever helped us with it, accidentally sent an instrumental version for one track instead of the actual final version. I think it’s cool.

That is cool. So, when you play live, like you’re doing tonight, do you guys bring in extra musicians, or it’s just gonna be you two on stage?

Jacob: Tonight is just us two. This first time, it makes sense. No drummer, so it’s just us two jumping around on stage having fun. We have projections for the whole show.

Jesse: It’s kind of a learning thing. And yeah, a lot of our stuff is electronic. And so having a live drummer can bring an energy that relieves a lot of anxiety from us, but with our music, a lot of it is electronic drums so I think this run, it’ll be nice to see what that’s like. Have the kick drum be the electronic kick drum that we went through a million samples to find a snare drum sound that we chose, and make the performance more about our individually-focused instruments. And I mean, the vocals, I feel like is one of the biggest things, when it comes to live music, people have to hear a vocal live through a PA and feel the connection with the people that wrote the song.

Yeah, absolutely, it makes a lot of sense. You’ve shared stages with a lot of talented artists. However, what would be a bucket list show pairing that you absolutely could not turn down?

Jesse: For me, it would probably be Deftones, just out of nostalgia.

They also have a new record coming out tomorrow too. It’s called private music. Now you’ll always remember the release date of your third record sharing space with Deftones!

Jacob: My answer changes all the time. One band that I listened to a lot recently is The Shins.

Oh yeah, they played next door at the 9:30 Club a lot.

Jacob: So yeah, if someone’s like, yeah, you guys can go play with The Shins, we’re there.

Any last words for fans or reasons to check out the record tomorrow?

Jacob: Definitely go check out the record. We spent a lot of late nights on it. And, yeah, I just think it’s my favorite, important record. I think the way it came together, and how it came together. And, yeah, it just has some of my favorite Foreign Air songs on it.

Jesse: Yeah, it’s still Foreign Air in the way that each song is a little bit of its own universe. And there’s stuff for everybody on there. Please check it out. We did a lot of videos. We did as much as we could for like, here’s this song for two weeks with a video, and give you time to digest it. And so check out all the videos. We put a lot of work into those. We did them pretty much ourselves with our friend, Josh Thomas. We try to keep everything as DIY. So yes, please check out the record!

Yep, on streaming, and then when the vinyl comes out…buy that too!

Foreign Air: Yep! Thanks, Adam

more

Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos and other embedded content.