Interview and Photography by Brianna Benitez<\/p>\n
I got the opportunity to speak with London-born singer-songwriter, Westerman, a day before he would stop by to transform the space inside the Sinclair in Harvard Square on March 23. We discuss the reason we create art, how the tour for his third album, \u201cA Jackal\u2019s Wedding,\u201d has been going, and musical influence from parents.<\/span><\/p>\n Brianna Benitez (BB): One of your favorite authors growing up was John Steinbeck, right?<\/span><\/p>\n Westerman (W): I love him.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: I\u2019m originally from Salinas, [California].<\/span><\/p>\n W: No way. I\u2019ve never been there. I would love to go.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: Where have you been based in the past year?<\/span><\/p>\n W: I\u2019m living in Milan right now.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: How\u2019s that treating you?<\/span><\/p>\n W: It\u2019s good. I keep having to leave because I have to go play shows. I don\u2019t know it as well as I would yet. I was living in Athens three years ago, and I felt like that was home. I don\u2019t know if I could already say that that\u2019s how I feel about Milan now. It\u2019s not about how Milan feels, but it\u2019s just that I keep leaving from there.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: How long have you been living in Milan?<\/span><\/p>\n W: I moved to Milan last year in April. I\u2019ve been on the road since September because I was doing these shows with Nation of Language before Christmas. Then, I started the European run and had to put the band together at the end of January. I\u2019ve been leaving a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: When will you be back?<\/span><\/p>\n W: We finish these shows on the ninth of April. Then, my plan is to be home for a while.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: What are you looking forward to once you\u2019re home?<\/span><\/p>\n WW: The food is excellent in Italy\u2013it\u2019s famously good. The things that I really miss when I\u2019m travelling all the time are simple things. Things which when you\u2019re in a routine and you\u2019re not leaving, you maybe find annoying: being able to do the wash, chop vegetables, make food. Sounds strange, but when you haven\u2019t been able to do any of these things for a long time, these are very grounding things that you take for granted until you\u2019re living out of a backpack for a long time.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: It\u2019s the mundane things that bring joy to life.<\/span><\/p>\n WW: And the repetition is grounding. It\u2019s exciting to be in new places all the time, but it\u2019s difficult to get any kind of rhythm. You\u2019re just floating.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: How does that feeling feel like right now on tour? Are you not feeling any repetition from all the shows?<\/span><\/p>\n WW: Well, that\u2019s the nice thing about the shows. They\u2019re different every time. I\u2019m used to it now, but it\u2019s tiring. Constantly having to reset your parameters. The brain works a lot harder when you don\u2019t have any familiarity and you\u2019re constantly in new places. Your brain, even without realizing, is trying to find reference points all the time. After a while, that becomes quite tiring, but I\u2019m with a really good group of people. Jake, who is drumming, is fantastic. Lawrence, who is doing sound, is an old friend and he\u2019s amazing. I feel lucky to have a warm body of well-meaning, good people to be doing it with.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: I would love to hear more about these collaborators. What do you specifically appreciate about the people with you on this tour?<\/span><\/p>\n W: I hadn\u2019t met [my drummer] Jacob until about a week ago, so it was difficult to know how this was going to go. And we have only got half the band [on tour]. We\u2019ve had visa problems. We had to reimagine. I had to take everything apart and put it back together in two days with somebody I had never met before, but he\u2019s been incredible. Jake comes from a jazz background. He enjoys the elasticity [I play guitar with], and he really listens, which sounds like a simple thing, but it\u2019s not always the case. Lawrence is doing the sound, but he\u2019s also taking care of a lot of the fronting of shows. Lawrence is amazing. He\u2019s a pure supporter of art. He makes sure that everybody\u2019s okay and tries to make things as good as they can be. We also have Otto Benson playing support. I\u2019ve been listening to this music for a couple of years on and off. It\u2019s great to be able to meet him. He\u2019s funny and sweet, and he\u2019s really doing a great job. He holds the room so well. He\u2019s just playing on his own with a guitar. No big egos and no primadonnas in the band. Everybody\u2019s getting on. Now, as you can see (he tilts his phone towards the sky), the sun is out. Now it is springtime, so everything\u2019s okay.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: A great collective, and under the sun. I would love to tap back into John Steinbeck. What about his writing attracts you to him?<\/span><\/p>\n W: John Steinbeck is a beautiful writer. Not always pure\u2013it has this kind of smarts to it and he\u2019s not afraid of it. It\u2019s not a sugar coated impression of what it\u2019s like to be alive, but I always find with Steinbeck\u2019s writing that there\u2019s a palpable, inescapable compassion\u2013an underlying compassion for the human condition, which bursts out of his writing. Even when the characters are miserable or bad, you see through the eyes of the person who\u2019s talking about it. It\u2019s love, really, without trying to be too grandiose or broad. There\u2019s an enormous love for people coming through the writing. I read <\/span>East of Eden<\/span><\/i> when I was about 16, and there\u2019s an interlude in that book where he talks about the creative process and how the creative act is an extension of the spirit of an individual person emoting. It\u2019s an extension of the spirit through one person, and that, ultimately, is the only thing that is worth fighting for\u2013the individual\u2019s capacity to emote and extend themself, trying to reach for something else while unguided and unimpeded by anything else. That was the best condensation that I\u2019ve read of the act of creation, what it can do, what the point of it is, and the underlying morality or sentiment of why it\u2019s important. Even if people don\u2019t respond, it’s more important than anything else. That stuck with me.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: Even with focusing on the individual itself, it’s grounding because it shows you how one person can be so powerful with their own capacity.<\/span><\/p>\n W: And all that stuff is informed by everything that they\u2019ve encountered in the world. I think it\u2019s about finding any number of reasons, there will always be pressure to sand down or muddy the expression. Maybe some of the time it comes from a place which is true, but a lot of the time there isn\u2019t, and I think it\u2019s just an invaluable thing that I carry with me when I\u2019m trying to work out what information is coming at me.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: And it sinks right into your music. All that you\u2019re talking about is obviously in your work. Right now, would you say that Steinbeck is high up on that bar of teachings that keeps you afloat, or is there any other writer that is helping you out right now?<\/span><\/p>\n W: I find it hard to read books when I\u2019m on the road. I feel quite sick when reading while in transit. But I think all of these people become part of you [over the years]. It\u2019s a journey. I don\u2019t really hold one person on a totem pole, or [to be a] be-all, end-all. It\u2019s like people who you can reach out to in different times for different things who are ultimately batting on the same team towards something greater than themselves. I don\u2019t think about Steinbeck that much now, but I\u2019ve been reading a lot of Byung-Chul Han, this South Korean philosopher, over the past few years. I\u2019ve found his work helpful in the way that he’s able to dissect in plain terms for the layman. I studied philosophy, but the way he writes is one that anyone can read. He does a great job with dissecting the shared experience of what we\u2019re all living through in this nullification through oversaturation of information and what it can do to a person if you don\u2019t know to sit and shield yourself from it at points. I found him quite useful. This is why I ultimately make music. It seems to be trying to add to the well of resources for people to feel less alone with whatever it is that they\u2019re experiencing. A lot of how we go through life is not an individualistic experience. It\u2019s communal\u2013and we don\u2019t talk about that conversation. That\u2019s why these things are like escape roads or torches right now.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: Everyone is hyper-focused on the individual and how the individual looks in the world, so I completely agree about the collective nature. People want to steer away from that. I would love to talk about your dad. We talked about your upbringing with Steinbeck, for example, but how has your dad influenced you through music?<\/span><\/p>\n W: My dad has very good taste in music. I\u2019m able to say that I\u2019m far enough away from the stuff I grew up with to be a bit more analytical. But it\u2019s not that I just ingested all this stuff and think it\u2019s great. My dad listened to a lot of blues when I was growing up and was a huge jazz head with pure songwriters. He was a big fan of Neil Young and John Martin. I\u2019d say [it\u2019s] the through-line of his music taste I resonate with. In respect to genre, it\u2019s like a spirit of freedom\u2013a spirit of something that\u2019s real and true. Whatever kind of direction I\u2019ve decided to go in with in terms of how I preserve the music is definitely a through-line. And it\u2019s not divorced from what I was talking about before in terms of what I read. It\u2019s the same thing. But some people grow up with no music around at all, and I grew up listening to McCoy Tyner, Courtney Pine, and [Igor] Stravinsky and [Johannes] Brahm. They\u2019re all quite varied, but it\u2019s stuff that\u2019s real. I feel lucky in that regard because some people don\u2019t have any of that. What did you grow up listening to?<\/span><\/p>\n BB: I\u2019m Mexican, so my mom would listen to a lot of <\/span>ranchera<\/span><\/i> music. I would listen to that a lot when I was younger and didn\u2019t appreciate it as much as I do now. I find myself revisiting it often now that I\u2019m in college.<\/span><\/p>\n W: It takes that distance to appreciate it. I remember resenting that music because it was a lot of what I was listening to. I was 11 or 12, just being like: \u201cTurn this off!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n BB: You get sick of it! On the way to school, your parents will play it all the time and you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, we\u2019ve heard this song before.\u201d But now, looking back, I’m like, “Wow, play it again.”<\/span><\/p>\n W: That\u2019s beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: I want to ask you about your music videos. They\u2019re interesting, and especially the recent music videos like \u201cSpring\u201d and others from \u201cA Jackal\u2019s Wedding\u201d with the split screen, slow-motion, avant garde-type pictures. How did you come up with that?<\/span><\/p>\n W: It\u2019s collaborative. With all the videos and artwork I worked with Br\u00e1ulio Amado, who’s an amazing artist and graphic designer here in New York. We’ve been working together for years. With those videos, I had this idea that morphed. My friend Demetrius was filming [during the shoots] on this mini DV camera. We had professional cameras, but then he was moving around [the set] with this grainy camera. I initially had this idea of splitting the screen, being playful with moving between and overlaying the two, splitting them and having them side by side. Then, Br\u00e1ulio came up with this idea with the vinyl sleeve. The idea of motion and everything constantly moving and things being gone before you realize that they’ve happened is a theme on a lot of the songs. The [record\u2019s] artwork has this photo I took of the phenomenon on Hedra. It cuts the title on the front, so you can’t read all of [the title]. The track listing is the same. They’re all cut off before they finish. Br\u00e1ulio just said, \u201cWhy don’t we mirror that with these videos. Why don’t we have one side of it?\u201d So he slowed down a lot of that footage. I think the \u201cSpring\u201d video in particular looks like a pixelated version of flowers, but it’s basically him just slowing the footage, which all comes from the same [shoot]. It doesn’t distract the eye. It’s an accompaniment\u2013it makes you keep moving off it, but you\u2019re still being drawn back to the thing, which was this idea of going through the whole record, of movement with this perpetual motion.<\/span><\/p>\n BB: It compliments the album. It\u2019s jarring when you first watch the videos, but once you get into the collection of the videos, you’re like, “This makes sense now.”<\/span><\/p>\n This conversation has been edited for clarity. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Interview and Photography by Brianna Benitez I got the opportunity to speak with London-born singer-songwriter, Westerman, a day before he would stop by to transform the space inside the Sinclair in Harvard Square on March 23. We discuss the reason we create art, how the tour for his third album, \u201cA Jackal\u2019s Wedding,\u201d has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25741,"featured_media":53710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,1523],"tags":[2684],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25741"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53711,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53709\/revisions\/53711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}