It has been more than six years since JD McPherson released an album. His last was the critically acclaimed holiday album SOCKS! from 2018. However, McPherson hasn’t just been hanging resting on his laurels for all those years. Today’s release, Nite Owls comes after more than four years of recording, scrapping, and recording again. Finally, on his third try, he stuck the landing with a brilliantly well-rounded rock and roll album. More than doing his best to pry this record out of the ether, he has been on the road with some of the biggest names in the music business.
Ahead of the release of Nite Owls, McPherson sat down with American Songwriter to discuss the trials and tribulations of whipping the record into shape, touring with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and more.
JD McPherson on Finding the Right Sound for Nite Owls
Listening to Nite Owls is like putting a fantastic vintage record collection on shuffle and letting the luck of the draw introduce you to one fantastic song after another. JD McPherson revealed how he found right sound for the album. About the record’s overall sound, McPherson said, “My elevator pitch was like if the ‘60s to late-‘60s Ventures were the session band for the first New Order record.”
“I’m not sure if there’s a tired and true formula. If I had one, there would be more records,” he joked. “The germ of the idea for the record came about when I was moving into my house in Nashville. I had been given a Spotify account and I was just going through to see what was on there. And it actually kind of surprised me how much was on there. Then, someone told me to do the recommended daily playlist,” McPherson recalled. “So, based on what I had been listening to, the algorithm recommended to me all of this stuff that I knew about but had never really listened to in that order. I was getting a bunch of bossa nova music and some late-career Ventures and the Beach Boys, things I was familiar with,” he added.
“But hearing them all together made me think that all of this music had a coast or water in common. It was all made near water. For whatever reason, that struck a chord in me to start combining things together that go together that don’t seem like they would just because of their geographic proximity to water,” McPherson explained. “These are the things I think about,” he added, laughing.
The Influences That Helped Create Nite Owls
The idea of combining music made near water led JD McPherson to the idea of making a surf rock record. However, he knew it had to contain more than that. “The single-string reverb guitar thing is kind of the motif for this record. So, when you think about all the different kinds of music from a production standpoint that would feature that, you’ve got surf music, you’ve got Duane Eddy which is desert music, Ennio Morricone like spaghetti western soundtracks, and Martin Gore’s guitar playing in Depeche Mode is super influenced by all that,” he explained. “All those things, to me, could go together. So, Night Owls became influenced by my teenage interest in New Wave and Darkwave music combined with surf rock.”
JD McPherson on the Trials and Tribulations that Led to Nite Owls
“Technically, this is the third time I’ve recorded this album,” said when asked about the recording process for Nite Owls. “The first time was pre-pandemic with my old touring band which I played with for nine or ten years. Things were pretty rough at that point and we were trying to keep everybody getting along and happy. I would say that my first attempt at making this record was like having a baby to keep a marriage together,” he explained. “I booked us in the EastWest Studio 3 out in L.A. which is where Pet Sounds was recorded. It’s a legendary studio with every bell and whistle imaginable at your disposal. I booked a nice big house in the hills and it didn’t work,” he recalled.
“The pandemic hit and the old gang started finding different things to do and went their separate ways. I was left with an unfinished record with some baggage attached to it,” McPherson said of the initial recordings. “To be honest, I was trying to move things quickly and the songs weren’t really in shape yet. It really didn’t feel finished even if I were to try to overdub and get the songs in shape. Production-wise, it didn’t feel like a finished album,” he added.
Giving It Another Go
“So, when it came time and people started saying ‘Hey, you should put the record out,’ I was still pretty skittish. I didn’t have a band and I wasn’t quite ready. So, I just got together with some friends I knew I could get along with and make music with and did The Warm Covers EP. Then, finally, the label was like, ‘You should try to finish this album.’ But they said we needed a producer because I couldn’t be trusted anymore,” McPherson recalled, laughing.
“We found a producer who was really fantastic and I really liked their back catalog but for one reason or another, it didn’t really work out. I think it might have been a difference in process,” he said. “Me and people I work with tend to have this weird language that we use, it’s like twins teach each other and doesn’t really apply to the outside world. He also likes to record things pretty dry and a bit at a time and mix later. I’ve always worked in a way where you can almost hear it finished as it’s happening. So, it wasn’t going to work out so we paused again,” McPherson explained.
Third Time’s the Charm
“At this point, you could imagine we were burning through budgets pretty quickly but we had to finish it. So, I said, ‘Can we just go back to where I recorded my first record with the engineer who did it?’ We put him on the drums and got a couple of buddies together and just blasted it out live in the studio, or as close to live as we could get,” McPherson said.
“Three attempts later, this is what we got. Honestly, the first iteration that we did at East West was super slick-sounding and I don’t think it would have been as successful without going through the process that we went through,” he said of the finished product.
JD McPherson’s Favorite Song on Nite Owls
“I think it’s probably the last track, ‘That’s What a Love Song Does to You,” JD McPherson said after a pause when asked about his favorite track on the album. “Because that song is about songwriter’s block. I hadn’t been able to write anything for months and months and months,” he explained. “I would go sit in the studio and play guitar, I did all the things you’re supposed to do to break writer’s block. I did the Brian Eno cards [Oblique Strategies], I did word association, I did the Bowie refrigerator magnet thing, and nothing was happening,” he recalled. “Then, the idea of writing a song about getting out of writer’s block came and I wrote it and suddenly the floodgates opened again,” he added.
“Kim Buie, who was my A&R person for this record, a very trusted person in my life asked me if I ever thought about making that song a little bit longer and I said, ‘Nope!’ It would like unbreak a curse if I did. It’s the thing that turned on the spigot. I think I’d pick that one as my favorite because I’m grateful for it. You have to kind of throw gratitude at things that help you out,” he said.
Touring with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
As the pandemic wore on, JD McPherson started to wonder if he would continue to make music or find another path. That’s when he got the call to join Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on their most recent tour. That experience, he said, gave him a new lease on life.
“I don’t even know how to really put it into words. It’s the best,” McPherson said of the experience. “They, themselves, are wonderful people and the band is as good as a band can be. Trying to keep up with that band is a challenge, so you never get bored,” he added. “The crew is incredible, everybody is happy and there’s no weird infighting. You always hear nightmare stories about big acts on the road and how people are always walking on eggshells. You don’t get bigger and better than Robert and Alison and they’re just so cool.”
Unfortunately, though, all good things must come to an end. “We said goodbye a few weeks ago on the last night of ostensibly the last tour. There may be more but as far as anybody knows that was the end of the album cycle and we all said goodbye and it was really hard. Everybody was really sad to see it end. That’s the way things should be. It taught me a lot.”
Nite Owls is available to stream across digital platforms and on various physical media formats today.
Featured Image by ALYSSE GAFKJEN
Local News
Comments / 0