A Conversation with Greg Laswell – HuffPost 5.2.12

Mike Ragogna: Greg, what was the creative process like for your new album Landline?

Greg Laswell: Well this one was a little bit of a struggle, actually. I’m in a better place now than I was when I did my first two records, so I didn’t want to make another record similar to my first, and I had to kind of wait around and wrestle with it a bit and try to figure out what kind of sound I was going to hang on this thing. The biggest thing that kind of set it in motion was the idea to have these female guests on it–Sia, Sara Bareilles, Ingrid Michaelson, and Elizabeth of Elizabeth and the Catapult. Once that idea came about, it kind of freed me up to make the record larger than just me, and make it something bigger than it would have been otherwise.

MR: On “Come Back Down,” you feature Sara Bareilles, and as you said, you have a number of female artists singing with you. How did you get them all?

GL: Well, I’m friends with all of them, so that helps. I made a list of my favorite female singers, and it was very lucky for me that most of them are my friends, so they all said yes. It was a pretty easy process. I thought it was going to be a little bit more difficult to wrangle them all together and get it done. But yeah, it was pretty easy.

MR: What’s the story behind “Come Back Down?”

GL: “Come Back Down,” if I’m perfectly honest, is written to me from me — at least a former version of myself — so that’s where it started. Every album has one song that kind of helps it get going, and for this record, it was definitely “Come Back Down.”

MR: What about the theme of it? You said it’s from you to you, but what were you wrestling with in this song?

GL: It’s kind of like, enough is enough, and trying to move on from something. I got into a holding pattern there for a bit, and it was something personal, so I think it’s kind of a tough love song. It’s kind of grown up now, and it’s been written to several people that I know and love. Yeah, it’s kind of like a universal, “Hey, get over it!” tough love song, and it was actually a tiny bit harsh. Sara definitely helped kind of soften it up. There’s something about a male and female joining together and singing together in a duet that kind of effortlessly adds a little bit of compassion to it. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but at least for me as a producer, it kind of helped soften the entire song to have more than one person singing these lyrics.

MR: I get exactly what you’re talking about as far as the concept of tough love as far as, “Come on already, let go and get over it.”

GL: Right.

MR: Ah, but that’s easier said than done, right? I often wonder why people, me included, hang onto whatever the situation or relationship was that ended up being a disaster. I think it’s because it’s the only space you’re used to, you know?

GL: Well, it’s because it becomes your new relationship. It becomes the thing you lean on and that you count on. Being in pain, if you hang onto it long enough, turns into a sort of comforting thing. It’s really bizarre. You know, it’s something you can count on, and it’s something that will always be there, and it’ll never let you down.

MR: Wow, nicely said. Actuall,y I’ve never heard the concept put better. That’s really great.

GL: Thanks! I’m a psychologist on the side. (laughs)

MR: Send me the bill! Now, Dr. Laswell–nice ring to that–you have a song called “I Might Drop By.” Well, now, I just might!

GL: Come on by! (laughs)

MR: You got it. Alright, what are the secrets behind that one?

GL: Yeah, that one was actually — well, it’s embarrassing at this point because it’s kind of the first time I’ve talked about these songs altogether — is another song that’s written to me from the perspective of my now wife. At the time, I was making it difficult on us to move forward, so I kind of imagined what she was saying to me at the time, and so that’s what that song is about.

MR: Where’s your tour taking you?

GL: It’s taking me all over the country. For this first run, we start in Charleston, and then we kind of loop the whole country. We go to the Pacific Northwest all the way down the West Coast, and then back through the South, and then we end in Philly. So we kind of do a bird’s eye view loop of the whole country. There are a few cities that we’re missing that we’ll get on the next few tours, but this first one is almost six weeks long, so it’ll be a long one.

MR: Hey, talk about a couple of songs on that are the most revealing about you on Landline?

GL: Hmmm, the most revealing about me? Well, they all are really, really close. The way that I write is very autobiographical. Some artists will write pretend songs like, “Oh yeah, here’s a heartbreak song. I’m not actually going through a heartbreak, but here’s my best hand at it.” I was never really able to pull that off, so every song really is kind of a snapshot of either where I am or where I was.

MR: Okay, how about something like “Another Life To Lose?”

GL: I think the first three songs on the record, “Come Back Down,” “I Might Drop By,” and “Another Life To Lose,” are like part one, part two, and part three for me in my head, at least how I wrote them. The rest of the album kind of breaks up and goes off in different directions. But “Another Life To Lose” is really part three of the lyrics of “Come Back Down,” and it’s just about getting to that point where you realize the dust is settled and you realize that you’re actually better than okay. You’re better off than you were before whatever painful experience you’ve gone through. It’s kind of a happy song. It definitely has minor chords in it, and there’s this singular cello that’s kind of keeping the melancholy in place. But if you look closely, I think this song might be the happiest song on the record.

MR: Let’s get to a couple of your other duets, like “Dragging You Around” with Sia.

GL: Sia was one of my very first tours several years ago now. I opened for her and we became really good friends, and she was always in the back of my mind to do at least a song with her because I just love her voice so much. She agreed to be on the record, but we had a struggle deciding which song was going to be best, so I sent her a few that she wasn’t quite into. She was like, “I’m not sure about that one. Send me another one.” So we kind of went back and forth, and when we finally settled on “Dragging You Around,” it just clicked. She came over in the studio and did it in about thirty minutes and really changed the entire song. I was about to keep the song off the record until she sang on it and kind of changed the entire mood of the song just by her being on it. It kind of made it make more sense for me.

MR: Cool. And then there’s “Back To You” with Ms. Liz on there.

GL: You know, I don’t know why she’s not super famous already. She’s a really good friend of mine and she lives here in Brooklyn, and she’s been on the road with me as well. She opened for me three years ago now, I believe. She’s just absolutely one of my favorite voices. With her song, I was going to just leave it as one verse and chorus, and then I was going to be done, and it was going to be a minute long. Sometimes, I like to throw these little extra short songs on my records. I thought this was going to be one of those, and I finished it. It was done, as far as I was concerned. And then, I was looking for a song for her, and nothing really took advantage of the way that she sings, so I decided “Back To You” was it, if I could just make it longer. So I ended up writing another verse with her specifically in mind and turned it into a full song. She just sings and I became beside myself.

MR: Of course, I want to get to the other duet, the one with Ingrid Michaelson, “Landline,” the title track.

GL: We were in Maine together, actually for several weeks, and we were staying in her parents’ house up in Maine, and the power went out one night. It was storming pretty good, so we wrote this song together. It’s the only song on this record that I co-wrote with somebody, so we started writing this song about having to use the landline. Cell phone service was terrible the whole time there, so we ended up using the landline in the house for all of our calls. Then I ended up staying there by myself for about three weeks. That’s where I recorded the record, I moved my entire studio up there. So always having to use the landline and never really using my cell phone for that long kind of slowed me down, and I began to miss the good old days of where we all weren’t tethered to these things in our hands and it was nice. It kind of put me in a good headspace, and I think, in a weird way, being forced to use a landline–without sounding too artsy fartsy–put me in a good headspace to do this record. It helped me slow down, and it was minimal distractions. It was great.

MR: You mentioned Maine. It was recorded in a church, right?

GL: Yeah, Ingrid’s parents bought it several years ago, and have been renovating it over the years. The biggest room in the house that’s been untouched is still this big church with pews in it and everything, and I was there one week last year, and I was like, “It’d be amazing if I could be able to record my record here.” But I didn’t really think about it too much beyond the initial thought, and then I ended up moving my entire studio up there. It took me a couple days, and then finished about eight songs up there. I ended up doing three additional songs here in Brooklyn.

MR: Greg, What would you say is the main difference between your last album Take A Bowand Landline?

GL: Obviously, the guests that I have on this record…the four girls. I think if you took them away, I feel like it’s pretty clear that I’m in a better place just by the songs themselves. But I understand that I’m probably the closest one to the songs. I’m not sure if that comes across or not, but I feel like it does. When I listened back to Take A Bow for the fun of it a couple months ago, it took me back. I was in a really bad place. I feel like that’s the biggest difference–that I’m out of the woods, so to speak, and I feel like it really shows up on these songs. I’ve stopped a lot of self-destructive behavior, and even physically, it shows up in my voice. I feel like I sing better on this record, and I’m able to do things that I don’t think I would have been able to do two, three or four years ago.

MR: Very nice. And of course, the traditional question, what is your advice for new artists?

GL: Oh, yeah! Well, my advice is always the same with this question. If you have a Plan B, do yourself a favor and skip to it now. (laughs) And if you don’t have a Plan B, that’s probably your first sign that you should continue trying. It’s so difficult, and you know I never had a Plan B. Thankfully, I’m decent at what I do. If I wasn’t good, I think I’d still be trying. You have to be like 110% sure that you’re doing the right thing. And it’s a love/hate relationship, and sometimes, I love what I do, and other times I hate what I do. It’s a push and pull type thing. But yeah, if you have a Plan B that you wouldn’t mind doing and you think you’d be happy doing, then just go ahead and do it and enjoy playing music as a hobby.

MR: Nicely said. Sir, I wish you the best with the new album.

GL: Thanks, Mike.

Transcribed by Kyle Pongan