I feel like they understand me and my aesthetic and what I’m going for creatively. And we’ve known each other so long that I trust them on a personal level, but also on a musical level, because we’ve played together since we were kids, in some cases. They’re all much more accomplished at their respective instruments than I am, so I knew when I started working on the record that I wanted them to play on it. And he’s been out here ever since and on the road since he came out.Īnd the other guys - one of them was here in L.A., but we grew up with him, and another guy from New York came out, then we got another guy from Sacramento to come up.
and play a couple shows,” thinking it would be a couple weeks and then he’d go back. I just kind of said, “Hey, would you be willing to come out to L.A. Mark, the drummer, the first guy who came out, was in Nashville working as a session drummer. They were kind of spread all over the place.
So I just sort of called up old friends, the only musicians I knew, really. A., I wasn’t really in the music scene, so I didn’t know anybody to play in the band. Schneider: Well, I recorded the first couple EPs, then started getting asked to do shows, when I was just kind of doing it as a recording project. Is the band made of people that you knew before Lord Huron, or knew from Michigan? You recorded the first two EPs by yourself, and then Lonesome Dreams was recorded with other people. SP: You say you’re up there with some of your best friends. And we’re working out our issues right there in front of people. If I’m playing up there with some of my best friends, we can’t resist having a good time, whether we look cool or not. A lot of the songs have things that are maybe sad or uncomfortable or dark in some ways, but that’s why you play it out, to kind of work through it. Schneider: Yeah, I guess that’s just part of the art of making music. So how do you do that? Is there any sort of purposeful reconciliation between the content of the songs and how you appear onstage, or is it just that this is what’s in the songs, and you like playing music, and it comes out like that?
A lot of bands seem like they’re afraid to do that it’s not really cool to look like you’re having fun. But then when you play, you’re all just having an absolute blast. You’ve got “Lonesome Dreams,” and then “Ghost on the Shore,” or “I’ll Be Back,” or “Time to Run.” There’s this very transitory and … I don’t want to say sad, necessarily, but kind of a sad-seeming quality to the music. SP: One of the things that struck me about the band when I saw you at Pygmalion was that you have this haunted quality to the music. And he’s the guy who helps us write this album. I don’t really have a good reason for why he is, but he is. It’s just something that helps me get into the spirit of writing and get into the world. Schneider: Well, George Ranger Johnson is a sadly unappreciated author of adventure fiction whose novels are based upon … yeah. Who is he? And more importantly, why is he? SP: In relation to the mysterious nature of the whole thing, you’ve created this character, George Ranger Johnson. But hopefully that kind of creates a mysterious nonspace that you can inhabit. I think the sound might be obscure and hazy because there are so many places I’m thinking of and referencing. Every place we’ve been and every place I’ve lived has influenced me in some way or imparted something on me. now, but being a Midwesterner originally?īen Schneider: I guess that’s part of it, a sense of obscure space is something I try to strive for in the music that we make. Smile Politely: I was listening to the album earlier today and it’s sort of like you combine these American folk elements with all these world music sounds, as well as this musical and narrative sense of dislocation that comes with that. So far, such expansion has yielded some fascinatingly deep sounds, as he synthesizes his diverse interests (except for maybe the Wu Tang Clan, who impressed Schneider early in his journey) into a cohesive musical whole. Guided by a fictional author of adventure fiction named George Ranger Johnson, for whom Lord Huron even hosts a website, Schneider has been pursuing his muses in every direction. Born and raised in Michigan, Schneider moved west to pursue visual art, but sidetracked himself into Lord Huron’s current success. I caught up with Schneider recently by phone, and what followed was a look into the mind of a consummate artist.
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