The Clamor

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Recently I was able to catch up with Aaron Louis of The Clamor to discuss his debut, self-titled LP. The new album was released today, March 17th, and we premiered the record yesterday.

Congratulations on your debut album release! Can you tell us a little bit about how The Clamor started and how you first got involved with some of the collaborators on this record?

Thank you! I appreciate you having me. It was all very unplanned actually. I had been in bands most of my life but I took a calculated break from playing music to focus more on filmmaking, theater production, writing, and working in the modern art world. That break stretched into almost 20 years. When the pandemic hit though, and the world slowed down, I picked up the guitar again. I really did so for just a bit of nostalgia but I fell back into songwriting immediately. As for my collaborators, my first connection was to the producer, Omer Leibovitz. I’d followed his music career for a long time, from his band Courtesy Tier up to his current solo stuff, and when I found out he was mixing and producing I approached him with a couple of my demos to see if he’d be interested in them. After the first mix, we fell right in and before I knew it we were making an album. And the process continued like that. Omer was really good at figuring out what it was I wanted a song or a particular instrument to sound like in spite of my unperfect demos and he assembled a perfect group of musicians to get that sound. Layton Weedeman, the killer drummer from Courtesy Tier, Will Raines on keys, Gary Atturio, who played bass, and Kirk Schoenherr on lead guitar, and then Jeff Berner at Studio G who tracked the record and finally Alan Douches to master.

What are some of your main musical influences?

I feel like I could go on and on with this but from the vault, I’d say The Fall, The Damned, Big Audio Dynamite, T.S.O.L., Adam and the Ants, The Cars, The Replacements, Alton Ellis, The Clash, and everything Joe Strummer ever touched.

Can you talk a bit about the overall creative process behind writing these songs?

This project was a lot different than all my past musical projects in that I used to focus on just the basic rhythm guitar structure and the lyrics of a song which I would always write simultaneously leaving all the other instrument parts up the band. On this album, I composed all the parts, whether on guitar or synth or otherwise, which gave me a pretty fleshed-out song before I began to start working on lyrics. By separating these processes it allowed me to break out of that pattern and put more focused thought into the lyrics. And to stop worrying so much about song structure in general. And more importantly, to have fun with it, while still trying to get something meaningful across.

Is there anyone you’d be interested in collaborating with in the future?

Any of the old geezers still alive that I mentioned in my influences!

What/who are you listening to now?

Tubeway Army over and over! I recently re-watched Gary Numan’s performance on Urgh! a Music War which I hadn’t seen since the ’80s. When I was a teenager, I didn’t give his music a chance because I just could not get past that little space cart he was driving around on stage. It still cracks me up and I’m still baffled by it but man I really missed out when I was a kid. His music is incredible.

What’s next for The Clamor? Will you be playing any shows or touring at any point?

Yes, and excited to do so. We will be announcing some tri-state area shows late this summer.

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