Waldemar's Gabe Larson on Debut Album, "Ruthless"

Photo courtesy of @thunderchicken2.0

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Gabe Larson, the frontman and driving creative force of the band Waldemar. This interview was particularly special, as it was just two days before the worldwide release of their debut album, Ruthless, so there was much to discuss.

This interview has been edited for clarity & conciseness.

Five Cent Sound: What was your creative process while producing this album? You worked on quite a bit of it in solitude, but there was still collaboration from the rest of the band. How did you balance that?

Gabe Larson: I mean, yeah, a lot of the record-making was me just working by myself. Probably 75% of the hours that were making this thing was just me in the studio by myself messing around with stuff. But the collaborative stuff tended to be me working one on one with the guys in my band, or other friends who came in and tracked stuff who aren't part of the band, like saxophone and trombone, and violin, pedal, steel, etc. For the most part, this record wasn't really made as a band in the room, you know what I mean? It was built more layered up. I would work a ton by myself just getting the songs to a certain spot. And then the next thing that it needed was somebody else, so then I'd call that person and they would come over, and then we'd spend a day in the studio just messing around with stuff, and so on. But yeah, as a band, we would kind of work on them together for a while, and it would get to a place where I would kind of start feeling a little bit stuck on it or something. And I needed to just work on it by myself for a month or two to reconnect with my own thoughts on the song and stuff.

Was there a song that you found to be the most challenging to record in particular?

All of them. Half of the record, we almost fully recorded. And then I deleted and started over on them. Like, “Ruthless,” “Ultimatum,” Prophet,” “Limbo,” “Patience.” All of those songs, there's an alternate version that's on my studio hard drive. All the parts were there and stuff, but I don't know, there was something that just didn't sound quite right. And I kept trying to wrestle it to the ground and make it work. So eventually on all those, I was like, “You know, what, screw it. Let's just delete this and start over and I don't know exactly what that's gonna do, but for some reason, that feels like what we have to do.” The actual spirit of the song ended up getting captured by starting over. I don't know exactly why, or what got lost along the way the first time around, but I would say “Limbo” was probably the absolute hardest one. That song is actually technically the oldest song idea on the record. I had a demo for that song that I'd started almost 10 years ago. I kept giving up on it over the years and stuff, and I just kind of kept coming back to it, feeling like there was something there that I just wasn't fully actualizing. So I wrote and scrapped and rewrote “Limbo,” while working on this record, I think three times until I finally got it right. And I was working one day, I was just sitting at the piano in the studio, and I finally just found the chorus melody. It was the one piece that was the missing piece all along. So yeah, the whole record was hard. But Limbo was probably the most brutal.

It definitely sounds like it. How did you know exactly when each song was done?

I knew it was done when I couldn't think of anything else to change. There was not really ever a super clear line between the recording process and the mixing process because I recorded and mixed the whole record. And I was doing all of that simultaneously. Normally, when you make a record, you record it, and then you send it to the guy who's gonna mix it, and so on. It's done in these segments and because I was doing it all myself, there was never a really clear line between when I was recording and when I was mixing it, but when I guess I was more so fully in the mixing state of things like I refinished wood floors. My brother and I have a wood floor refinishing business. And so I'd be refinishing floors and listening to my mixes on headphones while sanding floors, and taking notes while I'd be listening. Then I would get home and make all those adjustments. And eventually, the list just started getting smaller and smaller. I started noticing that I was having a great time listening to the songs. I eventually started finding myself not really thinking about the mixes anymore, and just experiencing the songs. I think that was when I just started knowing that the songs were done.

Amazing. So the album was recorded over a span of about five years. How did you keep your artistic vision and focus throughout that time? And what kind of kept you motivated to keep going at it?

The motivation thing is, I guess, easy. I just love songs, and I love songwriting. When I've got a song idea that I'm working on, I get pretty obsessed, I guess is a word that you could use. It just lingers in my brain, you know, and I get really hyper-focused and excited about something and just want to work on it, you know? How did I keep at it for five years? I think kind of like what I was talking about before, I really needed to spend a lot of time on the songs by myself. Working collaboratively with other people on the songs was really helpful and it got me unstuck on songs many times. The guys in my band added so much great stuff that I never could have done by myself, but the songs are really, really personal. And I think maintaining my vision for it really required me to just spend a lot of one on one time with the songs and really get very close to them if you will, like really feel like I understood what the spirit of the songs were.

Okay. So the album sounds like it features a blend of genres. I was picking up some indie, rock, folk, and all that. How did you develop your musical style?

That's a good question. When I'm making songs I'm pretty much just chasing what sounds exciting to me and what's feeling inspiring. Chasing tones and sounds that are feeling thrilling and feel like they belong in that song. Whatever genre that is, you know, that is just what it is. Sometimes it's a little bit more straight-ahead indie rock, and other times it comes out on a folk song or piano ballad, you know. I'm curating sounds and textures and styles that inspire me through the music that I'm listening to, and then kind of thinking about how to incorporate that into my songs a lot. The type of music that I find myself listening to is really old country music, stuff from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Willie Nelson is my all-time favorite artist, and in making this record, I don't think most people would necessarily guess that that is a pretty heavy influence on this record. But something that's so important in all of those old country songs is a really strong melody and a really clear focus on what the main thing in all those songs are. You know, a great old country song, after you've heard the first verse in the first chorus, you should be able to sing along for the second verse in the second chorus, even if it's your first time hearing the song, and I feel like that really got in my head.

Is there a song on the album that you're particularly proud of?

The first one that jumped to mind when you said that was “Summer Rain.” I think that one holds a really special place in my heart. And I think the way that one came about was almost the exact opposite of the entire record. “Summer Rain,” came together immediately. It was such a fast, intuitive sound. I wrote the lyrics, the melody, and the chord progression, and then recorded the entire song by myself in 10 days. The whole thing just came together. Instantly, there was no second guessing. It didn't really feel like I wrote it. I just felt privileged to be the person that got to bring it forth or something. So yeah, that's probably the one I'm–proud of isn't necessarily even the right word. I feel most honored if that makes sense.

I get it, I get it. How would you say your creative process has evolved from starting the album to finishing it?

At the beginning of working on the record, we had just finished building the studio to make this record, and I think I was a lot more precious with it. I mean, it was exciting, but it was also the first time that we'd ever built a studio before. I'd worked in studios before but had never gotten my hands dirty in actually building one. So there's a lot of nervousness and fear over things like, “Oh, are we doing things right?” Are we making a building that is going to be able to make good-sounding records? Then we finally finished building the studio and started recording. And so when we first really started recording, I was a lot more precious and hyper-aware of the quality of the recording and how it sounded. I think slowly things started sounding good, and I started trusting the process more and developing even more trust in my abilities as an engineer and as a mixer to be able to create something that sounded good. As that trust in myself, and in our ability to make a good record built, I started getting less precious with the way that we made stuff. Towards the end, I just started moving a lot faster and more intuitively.

What do you hope that listeners take away from listening to Ruthless? Are there any specific themes or messages that you kind of want to resonate with people?

For me, one of the main throughlines on this record lyrically and thematically is the idea of trust. I think all of us have realized that a lot of the things and institutions that we've derived a lot of security from, or at least a sense of security from, we have found those things to be way more fragile than we thought they were. I think we've, as a culture, enjoyed the illusion of security in a lot of those things. This record is not a political record, necessarily, like I touched on it. If there's a political song on the record, it'd be “Prophet,” for sure. But I wouldn't describe it as a political record. But I do think in a lot of ways, this record is wrestling with that, which is funny because a lot of the lyrics predate the pandemic and the ridiculous elections that we've had recently. And asking the question like, “Okay, if I can't trust in, in this, or in that coin, that politician or in this structure or in those brands in this family, et cetera, et cetera, what can I trust in?” But it's tinged with hope, as well because I do believe that even if things don't turn out the way that we want them to, there's still reason for hope, and that things will still be okay, even if they're not going to be okay. I would hope that people feel hope, despite hardship.

I'd say that definitely comes across through the lyrics. Even after my first listen-through, it left me feeling exactly as you just described. How do you see your music evolving in the future? Like are you going to start immediately on some new projects? Or are you just breathing for a second now that you've released Ruthless?

Yeah, I'm a little bit of that for sure. I'm trying not to be too conscious of it right now because sometimes I think that can kind of ruin the innocence a little bit. But I'm finding myself. I feel like I'm collecting right now. I'm not actively writing, and I'm not actively recording right now. But I am finding myself paying attention to songs that I'm hearing. I really love listening to other producers talk about how they make records or listening to other artists talk about how they write songs and stuff. I just finished reading “Jeff Tweedy” from Wilco. He's written two really great books on songwriting and just kind of about his life and stuff. And I don't know just from listening to other people, the way that they write songs is really interesting because nobody does it exactly the same way. Yet, there are all sorts of similarities to feeling this kind of kinship. I found out recently that I'm a little bit of a weirdo in the way that I write songs. On most of the songs I've ever written, I wrote the lyrics first and then wrote the music to the lyrics. And for most artists, apparently, it's exactly the opposite. They write the music first and then write the lyrics to the music secondary. So I'm thinking about future Wally songs, and I'm feeling inspired by “Oh, what would it feel like to try to just force myself to not write lyrics first, and just go and record some song ideas just on guitar and piano, and then write lyrics to it? What would that sound like? Maybe I'll try it.” And I'll hate it and just go back to doing it the way that I've always done it. I'm feeling excited about going and playing this record for people and being present to these songs and not moving on from them too quickly, even though I've had them sitting around for forever. I have no idea what the next step is going to be, but I'm feeling excited about trying to create songs in ways that I've never done and see what that sounds like.