A Conversation with Jason Reeves – HuffPost 2.23.11

Mike Ragogna: It may be a little early to discuss your new album, The Lovesick, but you have a new single called “Sticks And Stones.” Can you describe what happened behind the scenes regarding the video?

Jason Reeves: Since the song was premiering on Valentines Day, I sent out a video to my fans. I was asking them to send a video to me telling me what they think of love or what love means to them. We took our favorite pieces of that and cut it all together into a video that has the new single playing underneath all of the people talking. It came out really well, it’s just amazing how many people sent in videos from all around the world and it was just really inspiring to see.

MR: It’s beautiful that you involved your fans, but you also gave back to them by putting it out there incorporating their work.

JR: Yeah, it was really fun and an interesting thing. I’ve never done anything like that before.

MR: You also have the single “Helium Hearts” off of your unreleased album, The Lovesick.

JR: Yes, that was the first single that we released off of the record and “Sticks And Stones” is the second. The whole record looks like it’s coming out this summer.

MR: I imagine there will be another couple of singles before the album is released.

JR: I’m not sure, I hope that a couple more songs can come out before then, but I’ll just have to wait and see.

MR: It seems that labels are looking for better ways to market artists, and they release a single literally every few weeks. By the time the album comes out, sometimes, it’s a like greatest hits record.

JR: Yeah, that’s sort of the new way, I guess. I’m not sure what I think about it as a whole, but I’m just excited to have music come out in any form. If it works this way, then it’s fine with me. We will just have to get used to it.

MR: Can you go into how you wrote “Sticks And Stones”?

JR: I wrote this song with two of my really good friends, Danelle Leverett and Jordan Lawhead in Nashville. It was kind of an accidental magical moment. I live in LA, this is pretty much the first time I’ve been to Nashville. I met these people there, but since then, we’ve become really close. They are really good writers and it doesn’t always happen that because people are good writers, they will work well together. There is something incredibly special about us when we write a song together, it’s kind of surreal. We wrote most of my whole new album together, and this song in particular is probably one of the craziest songs on it. It is definitely a lot different for me sonically. We got experimental–if you consider my past music–with the sound of this whole album. I say “Sticks And Stones” is the pinnacle of sonic change. It’s a defiant song coming in a moment in the record where it’s intense, where I’m just trying not to break. It’s a song for strength, not being beaten down and breaking beneath the weight of tragic moments in the story of this whole album. It’s a very up and down event after following a real life love between me and somebody else.

MR: You’re classified as a folk-singer-songwriter, though I would never go there. Where do you think that came from?

JR: I think it came from a few places. When I started, the first few albums I made were mainly (with) acoustic guitar. I’ve always had drums and full production, at least for the last few albums. I’m not really sure why that’s classified as folk, but I think the other reason would be that my two main influences are Bob Dylan and James Taylor. I’m sure I have a lot of that coming through, even though the songs are not necessarily produced in the folk style.

MR: Nowadays, “singer/songwriter” still seems like it’s being put in the folk lineage when you have so many different types of singer/songwriters. It just doesn’t work anymore.

JR: Yeah, I agree. I don’t even enjoy the term, it’s become something else. It doesn’t really represent what I am. I sing and I write songs, but what does singer/songwriter mean is the question.

MR: Let’s talk about the recording process, especially for “Sticks And Stones” and “Helium Hearts.”

JR: I recorded the whole record at this guy’s house in Nashville, his name is Adam Smith. It came about by accident. The first song, we actually recorded together was “Sticks And Stones.” I found him through a friend because all I was looking to do was to demo the song. We had just written and were really excited about it, but all we really wanted to do was to make a simple demo and turn it in for people to hear. That simple demo is the master recording that you have. We recorded it in a couple of hours, so it’s really surreal how the whole thing came together. It’s a very reactionary, instinctual recording process.

MR: Can you tell the story of how you and Colbie Caillat got together?

JR: It’s a very interesting story. I was in Iowa, I had been making records there in Iowa City where I’m from, and I had been putting them up on CD Baby–this is before I even knew what Myspace or anything like that was. I got an email one day from this guy in California that was a record producer. He had heard my music on CD Baby and wanted to know if I was interested in coming out to California to record. I immediately jumped on that, it was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. I think it was February in Iowa at the time so that was even more inspiring to go out to the West.

That producer that eventually called me after talking over email, his name was Michael Blue. He has a studio in Westlake Village, and out there is where Colbie lived. Her dad is a very famous record producer himself, he did Fleetwood Mac and a bunch of other amazing musicians back in the ’70s.

MR: Right, Ken Caillat.

JR: Yeah. So, him and Michael had been working together in Michael’s studio on various things and Colbie would be around. She had a gorgeous voice, so she would occasionally sing on stuff for them. When I met Michael, she was the first person I got introduced to out there. The first night we met was just very surreal. I went back to her house with her and wrote a song–that song is on her first record, and since I was planning on going back home to Iowa after the few days of recording, I kind of moved in with her. I had nowhere else to go, and I just wanted to stay. We could tell there was something amazing there and I didn’t want to leave. I fell in love with California. The story gets even crazier–her parents were gone in Hawaii, they were on vacation for a pretty long time, not just a week or something. So, I was living in this girl’s house and there wasn’t anything romantic or anything like that. We were just amazing friends but her parents were somehow cool with this boy from Iowa all of a sudden living in their house with their daughter. They basically became my California family, and I lived with them for a long time, probably a year or more. We really had no idea that this was going to happen–neither of us knew that this was going to happen. Neither of us had written anything with anyone before, and this was our first experience co-writing. I’ve never felt what I have had with her since. It’s something kind of magical and I’m very happy that it happened.

MR: Now, you co-wrote 10 of the 12 tracks on Colbie Caillat’s record including the hit “Bubbly.” How did it feel when you were experiencing your first success right out of the box like that?

JR: It was incredibly surreal. I didn’t know what Myspace was when I moved out there, and she and her friends were all about it. She kind of showed me what it was and after we had recorded a couple of our songs, we started putting them up on Myspace with no expectations at all, except for maybe our friends would hear them. Very quickly, she went to the number one artist on Myspace out of everyone. We really had no idea what was happening, I wouldn’t be where I was without that happening. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to write with a bunch of other people too. It probably wouldn’t have happened without that.

MR: You can just tell when everything lines up exactly right. It has a lot to do with not shooting yourself in the foot, having the person being a genuine person, and their talents shining through.

JR: Thank you for saying that. With her and I, I think the main reason with people like us is that they can tell we aren’t trying to put them on, and we aren’t trying to fake it. It’s just us being who we are and I think it works.

MR: What got you into music?

JR: Well, I had always played music. When I was five, my mom started making me take piano lessons, which I completely despised being a five-year-old boy wanting to run around in the mud. So, I played piano for about five years and got sick of it, so I started playing drums. I’ve always played instruments, but it wasn’t until I turned 17 that I wanted to play the guitar. I think the main reason why was because I discovered Bob Dylan and James Taylor and old ’60s music in general. When I heard their music for the first time, I hadn’t realized that people could express themselves so powerfully using just a guitar and a voice. I got really inspired by that, and I already really loved writing. I didn’t have a specific format that I loved, I just loved doing it. It came really natural to start putting those words to songs. It’s been about 9 years that I’ve been writing, I would say besides that, Iowa City happens to be a really inspiring musical town. There are a lot of good folk musicians there–it’s pretty much constantly happening out in the streets of that town. It was just a good atmosphere to grow up in.

MR: What inspires you when you sit down to write?

JR: For me, when I write, it’s coming directly out of my life and my emotions. Falling in and out of love plays a really big part in it. I’ve written songs from other people’s perspective before. For me, it’s just easier when it’s coming from me and my direct experiences. I kind of try to keep the barriers between the truth and what really happens and what gets written down in the song minimized. I want it to be as honest as it possibly can be.

MR: Did you see the episodes of Army Wives or One Tree Hill that featured your music?

JR: I did. It’s always incredible for me to have a song that I’ve written put to visuals that I have no control over. When you make a music video, you have control of that and you decide what visuals go with your music. When somebody puts your song in a TV show, you don’t have any control of what it’s going to be played to. It’s really fun seeing how they interpret that and how it works with what they are doing visually. It’s completely different and it’s fun to see. I’m honored that anyone would want to put any of my songs in any sort of thing like that.

MR: What was your favorite live appearance?

JR: That’s tricky…the first time I played on TV, I was with Colbie, we played Carson Daly. That stands out to me because it was my first. I had a lot of fun playing on George Lopezwith Kara DioGuardi just last year. We got to play a song we wrote called “Terrified.” I really think that’s one of my favorites because it wasn’t either of our songs we were promoting. For some reason, George wanted us on but we were just the songwriters of the song. Katharine McPhee recorded that for her last record, and I got to do a duet with it. I thought it was interesting that a TV show wanted the writers who are usually kept behind the scenes come on and sing the song. It was just really unique, in my opinion.

MR: Did you see how they used your song “Somewhere, Somehow” in I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell?

JR: Yeah, very interestingly. They put that song in kind of a sex montage, if I’m not wrong. Pretty much all the different characters were in a romantic moment which kind of goes with the song’s message. I definitely got a kick out of that when I watched it.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

JR: I think giving advice is a very intense thing to get into. I’m not sure that I have the authority or deserve to give advice to people. I think the only thing that I really know to be true is that, to do what I do and what all musicians do to get to this place is to have insane amounts of patience. It takes so much longer than you want it to or ever expect it to. To me, that is easily the hardest part, knowing something can’t happen as fast as I want it to. You have to really believe in what you’re doing enough to give all of yourself into it. You can’t just go half-heartedly at something like this. You have to dive all the way in.

Transcribed by Theo Shier