by John Glab (@glabglabglab_)
Andrew Savage has been at it for years now. Even before Parquet Courts broke into the wider indie scene in 2012 with the release of Light Up Gold, he was playing shows across the country with a myriad of different projects. He has history, and a lot of that history showed up on his debut solo release Thawing Dawn., an album that embraced a western, country sound.
Now, Savage is following up that project with his new solo record, Several Songs About Fire, a record that continues the sound of the previous album, but from flamenco like guitars to Latin drumbeats, it also includes a vaster range of influences. At its core, it’s still A. Savage. It covers the tender and somber parts of experience, all presented in his vivid distinctive prose. Those moments burn with different intensities, from smoldering embers to engulfing infernos.
Savage called in from a cluttered office space in the Rough Trade headquarters in London. He sat back relaxed, lightly fidgeting with a pen. The now vagabond artist talked with me about his recent life, the people and places past that went into the new album, and how those things might play into the future.
photo credit: Vince McClelland
John Glab: Thawing Dawn features “Phantom Limbo” which was originally a late Teenage Cool Kids song. Do any of the songs on the new album come from earlier times?
Andrew Savage: That was not actually a Teenage Cool Kids song. There is that video of us playing it live, but I forget the exact circumstances around it. At that point Teenage Cool Kids was mostly defunct. I think we all happened to be in New York at that time, and us playing “Phantom Limbo” was more so just a group of long-time friends playing music together. So yeah, not a Teenage Cool Kids song, but a song that I had kicking around.
But that kind of is the function of Thawing Dawn. It was a record of songs mostly that I had lying around that hadn’t made it to any sort of group. That was the impedance of making a solo record, because I had this material.
JG: A lot of those songs were just stuff that you had written in the past, but you still wanted to do and had a special place?
AS: Exactly, just songs that I had lying around that were in my repertoire that I played by myself. I guess I probably jammed those songs here and there with a few people. Really just songs I had lying around for a rainy day, and that rainy day was Thawing Dawn.
JG: Do a lot of the songs on the new album come from the same place?
AS: No not really. The original idea to do a solo record wasn't that I wanted to strike out solo. After Thawing Dawn came Wide Awake, and that was definitely a big Parquet Courts album, it’s just that I had these songs. Thawing Dawn is a record that came out in 2017, and I got a lot of nice feedback from it, but it just kind of came out with no big whoop, but a lot of people over the years gave me a lot of nice feedback on it and said I should do another one. It kind of got a cult following.
Then Jack Cooper, who plays on Several Songs About Fire said, “I’d really love to do another record with you.” He kept saying we should do another record and do another tour. He was very encouraging, and so was Cate Le Bon, who plays piano on Several Songs About Fire. She was very encouraging and said she’d love to make some music together. Also, a very practical thing was that Parquet Courts had just wrapped a long major tour and were due for a break. It was a combination of those circumstances. It seemed like the right place, right time for if I was going to do another solo one.
JG: Were the songs written within the break over the past year?
AS: Yeah, over the past couple years probably. I bet I started writing the earliest songs starting in early 2020.
JG: Like the previous album, the songs have an Americana, western country vibe. It’s very reminiscent of Denton After Sunset. Is that a specific sound with your trying to achieve with your solo projects?
AS: Does it? “Hurtin’ or Healed” definitely has a violin part that lends itself to that. I don’t get that impression personally, from Several Songs About Fire. Certainly, Thawing Dawn does with pedal steel stuff like that. I guess to answer your question it’s not really a style I try to articulate. I don’t really hear Several Songs About Fire like that. It doesn’t make your interpretation wrong, but it’s not a super important touch stone for me.
I guess the commonality between the two is that it’s me. It comes from my heart and mind. It’s all the idioms that are associated with my playing, lyric style, and vocal delivery. I am American and have an American psyche, so maybe that’s where the Americana comes from a bit.
JG: That’s something you touched on in the press release. Having all these places define you, but not isolating it to just one. Are these sounds being drawn from all these places you’ve lived?
AS: I haven’t lived in too many places to be honest. I’ve lived in Texas, I’ve lived New York, and I would say probably, but I don’t really care to be associated with any geographic place at the moment. I don’t really live anywhere right now. I don’t pay rent anywhere. I’ve been living in France, but at the moment I’m in London, and I’ll be on tour soon. The goal was to liberate myself from geography, but you always carry a little bit of everything with you.
JG: From the lyrics I picked up on listening to Several Songs About Fire, a lot of the songs relate to that, but also have an old sentimentality about those places. What is the balance you are trying to achieve between moving on from things, but also holding some things dear.
AS: It’s a record very much about my life, and my experience. Giving the audience a sense of setting is important. Maybe that setting isn’t so literal to be a time and place, but maybe it’s meant to imply a time and place. There are specific times and places that I associate with certain songs. For example, “David’s Dead” is largely about the block that I lived on in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn for twelve years, and the amount of change I saw happen on that block, and in my life. I mean I was a young man when I moved in there, and I’m 37 now. I moved off that block in May. A lot of things change between age 24 and 37. Specifically for me, my entire life changed. In that time, I more or less became a professional musician. I wrote a lot of the songs people associate with me in that apartment. A lot of people came through it. It was a three-bedroom, with a rotating cast of different roommates.
The neighborhood and New York City changed, and I witnessed that. So that’s a reflection on a place. I think as the lyricist, I want to give people an idea of where I’m at, so there’s hints on the record. It’s not placeless. I guess I’ve spent so long being called a New York artist, and now that I don’t live there, I don’t know how much that identity means to me at the moment, or being an artist associated with any place.
JG: Has all that change alienated you from New York City? Would you identify with it more if it hadn’t changed so much?
AS: No, I consider it home, because it’s the place I’ve lived longer than anywhere. It’s the place where I know the most people, where I have the most friends, where I’ve had the most experiences. What makes it New York is that it’s just in a constant state of change, and it doesn’t bend towards your sentimentality or idea of what you think it should be. It’ll change whether you like it or not. It’s kind of cruel in that way.
I went there a few weeks ago, cause I needed to get a visa, and just having been gone for a few months I noticed a huge amount of change. That would’ve seemed like the natural course of life had I been there. I don’t know if it feels alienating, because I just expect that of New York. I don’t expect to come back after five months and it to be the same as it’s always been. No one who knows the city would. I wouldn’t say alienating is the word. It’s just how it goes.
JG: Do you ever get too hung up on the past?
AS: Oh sure, change can be difficult. There are things like break-ups, deaths. Those are forms of change that can be really difficult. They’re just part of life. It just happens. I don’t want to overdue this talk about change. I guess I don’t think about it too much.
JG: What gets you optimistic for the future then?
AS: I don’t really know. I lean towards optimism, mixed with a certain degree of pessimism. It’s hard not to have at least a little bit of pessimism. I wouldn’t by in large describe myself as a pessimist. I think Several Songs About Fire to me sounds like an optimistic record. It starts on a note of optimism with “Hurtin’ Or Healed” and I think it ends on a note of optimism which is “Out of Focus”. Now they’re both bitter-sweet songs, but they do a good job of introducing notes of that bitter-sweet hope. I think “Hurtin’ Or Healed” sets the tone for the album as this hopeful vision for the future that is slightly out of grasp.
JG: What makes it just out of grasp?
AS: There’s a number of reasons, I guess. I don’t like articulating something too much cause it spoils it when you dig too deep into what things are about. It’s not about the immediate future, it’s what comes after the immediate future. It’s within the realms of possibility, it seems achievable, and it seems tangible, but it’s just a little bit past that, so it’s a little blurry. Maybe out of grasp isn’t the right phrasing, maybe that it’s just a bit blurry and unclear. Because of that it’s a little optimistic.
I mean, I don’t know. What do you think? You’ve listened to the record. That’s just my perception. But it’s not just what I say it’s about. I think your opinion of what it’s about as the audience is just as important.
JG: For me, it felt very sentimental. There’s a lingering poignancy in listening to it, with all these things that once happened, and have now passed.
AS: You’re not wrong at all. I can’t really write from things other than experience. I have a hard time writing from invented worlds. Some people are good at that, and they can invent these worlds they can dip in and out of. I need something a little more concrete that I can emotionally and intellectually relate to. So yeah, in a way, it’s all kind of about my past.
JG: A lot of your projects have these lyrics heavy in metaphor, and with vivid imagery, is that why they’re so tangible to you? Because they all lived in experiences?
AS: Well, I consider myself a lyricist before a musician. I definitely am a musician; music is something I think a lot about. I think that’s one of the biggest parts of making music for me, is writing lyrics and then signing about them. I care a lot about it, and I care about how specifically I phrase things. There are various ways to communicate things through words, but it really does make a difference with the words you choose, and the order you phrase them in.
Really a lot of the things that we talk about as artists are ideas that are talked about over and over again. You know, love, death, money, God. These are things people have been talking about since the dawn of art really, but the reason why we’re still interested as consumers of art is because people find new ways to say the same thing. I guess that’s the way you’ve got to think about it as an artist. Has anybody said this before? The answer is yes, but have they said it like this? For that reason, when I’m writing a song, I typically will write the same line a few times, and try to get to the bottom of what the best way of communicating that idea is. That’s why people respond to songs. You think, “Okay, I’ve thought that many times in my life, but I never quite thought about it like that, this person has a unique way of thinking about that,” and that stays with you, and that changes how you think. That’s just to say lyrics are one of the more important parts of song writing to me, because it opens people's eyes.
JG: People like seeing other people’s perception to get other ideas.
AS: That’s exactly what it is. That’s what all art is, just perception of reality.
JG: It’s probably like why they read or listen to interviews.
AS: Yeah, you’re probably right.
JG: With the songs you write, do the lyrics come first, and then bring in the music?
AS: Often, but not always. I’ve tried all sorts of different methods over the years. At this point I’ve had writer’s block quite a few times, and when you get that you need to switch it up a bit. I think I’ve more or less tried every approach to writing a song that there is. Maybe other than the Bowie, paste together lyrics kind of thing. I think that would be pretty challenging to me. I’d say a lot of the times it starts with lyrics.
What it is, is that I have little book on me at all times with a pen, and that gets filled up with stuff. Often times I’ll just take those and see if I can fit it to music. I do write music too. I’ll play guitar a lot, and I’ll come up with something. Then I’ll have the two, and through some process I’ll bring the two together.
JG: You’re in the Rough Trade Headquarters in London right now. How many more opportunities do you have rolling out through Rough Trade, rather than doing it more yourself through your own label Dull Tools?
AS: Well, Rough Trade is an independent label, but with a large staff. They have resources that I don’t. Dull Tools is a labor of love, and something I do as a fan of music, to release other people’s music, but I’m also a full-time artist as well. I only have so much labor I can physically devote, and only so much time I can give to Dull Tools. I don’t press a lot of records when I release them. The first press of Thawing Dawn was 500, and the second 1000.
I can only do so much for it, whereas working with a label like Rough Trade they just have so much more human power, and people who are good at their specific jobs. Ones that arrange interviews or talk to pressing plants and concert promoters. So, Several Songs of Fire will definitely reach a bigger audience than Thawing Dawn, which was more of a cult record.
JG: Is that why your upcoming tour for Several Songs About Fire is so much more expansive? Is Rough Trade helping with that?
AS: I have a booking agent that deals with that. I did a lot for Thawing Dawn, but I didn’t go to the West Coast. The tour was kind of limited to the East Coast and the Midwest. I think it’s just because there’s more time. Thawing Dawn touring happened in between the recording and release of Wide Awake. So now I have more time because there’s not a Parquet Courts record in the works right now. I think it’s just that I have more time to do it, and there’s some groundwork laid that the audience for A. Savage is growing a bit.
JG: Parquet Courts are still a band, they're just taking a break, right?
AS: Yes, Parquet Courts are still a band. It’s different being in a band when we’re the age we’re now, compared to when we started. When we started three of us were 24, and Max was 18. Our twenties were spent touring. I’m 37 now, and I’m probably the one that’s most eager to tour. The othere guys have wives, and children, and children get older and need a bit more attention. We’re all artists outside of the band who do other projects as well. I’m not the only one kind of doing their own thing here.
In order for a band to have a long and successful career, there needs to be time to do other things. It’s doing those other things that helps articulate what the main thing is, you know what I mean. When I was writing Thawing Dawn, that helped me write Wide Awake. I had to be like, “This is obviously different from Parquet Courts, I'm deciding it’s its own thing.” When I finished writing Thawing Dawn, I thought that really helped decide the tone Wide Awake would take. I have no doubt that doing Several Songs About Fire will be as influential for whatever it is we do next. We will definitely do something again. Rest assured.