Los Angeles – Nashville rockers The Wild Feathers knew they wanted to do something a little bit different for the follow-up to their 2013 self-titled debut. While their sound has had a bit of a rough around the edges quality, the four friends and bandmates wanted to tap into the raw, live sound they had created after playing hundreds of shows. The Wild Feather’s sophomore album, Lonely is a Lifetime, was released on March 11. It has a larger, more live-feeling sound than its predecessor. However, it still brings enough hooks for The Wild Feathers to match the commercial success of the single “The Ceiling.”
Lonely Is a Lifetime might sound like an album full of heady, depressing subject matter. Drummer Ben Dumas clarifies that while the album touches on loneliness often, it is not all doom and gloom. “One of the big themes on the record is loneliness,” said Dumas. “A lot of the songs, lyrically, were written while we were out touring. There are a lot of songs about missing people, being away, saying goodbye. Living life out on the road is very fun and thrilling, but it can make you feel lonely at times and isolated at times. It’s something we have been through the past couple years collectively. I don’t mean to sound like such a downer, it sounds like a really heavy title, but we’re not sad and mopey. I think the title is somewhat indicative of the lyrical themes on the record.”
“Ricky [Young] and Taylor [Burns] and Joel [King] write the lyrics. They’re the real wordsmiths, but it falls kind of evenly. On the new record, we don’t really force anything. We don’t re-write. A lot of times people will ask us about the writing process; it can happen any way possible. For example, one guy can write the lyrics for an entire song, or it can be split up evenly between three people, or two people, or one guy could write everything and one guy could just add in a line.”
To write the album, The Wild Feathers had to take breaks from their incredibly busy tour schedule. They squeezed in a weekend in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, as well as a 10 day stretch in Barcelona, Spain. The unique histories of each locale did not directly influence the record (there won’t be any flamenco or Delta blues passages on Lonely Is a Lifetime), but their environment had an overall effect on the songwriters.
“Sonically, for example, you wouldn’t hear a Spanish influence or something like that,” said Dumas. “I don’t want to say musically we were influenced by where we were. But for example, being in Barcelona for a while, we were stuck there between shows for about 10 days. Instead of flying home we just stayed in Barcelona and we rented out a practice space there. We were there just kind of, just us guys in the band hanging out in Barcelona. We were just left to our own devices, and we did so much sightseeing. We saw the amazing architecture, like the Gaudí architecture. That influenced us in a way to step out of our own box, basically, and try to do something different, being surrounded by totally different landscapes and different architecture and different culture and different art, different everything. Mentally and emotionally for us it had a huge impact, just being in different places and being by ourselves, removed from everything.”
Meanwhile, Muscle Shoals was a quicker stop for The Wild Feathers, but still crucial in the creation of Lonely Is a Lifetime.
“[Muscle Shoals] was a thing where we had a spare weekend or something. We were touring so much, and we knew we had to start bunkering down and getting some songs written to record. We just found a weekend of time and packed up and went to a cabin in Muscle Shoals for a few days. Again, like I said [we were] just trying to get away from everything. It was a stop in-between cities where we were touring. It wasn’t like we were in Nashville for a long time and we said ‘Oh, let’s just go down for the weekend.’ We thought, ‘Let’s just stop here [between tour dates] and work on some stuff and see what happens.’ And I think being in Muscle Shoals, as a famous music place, there’s a lot of soul there, and I think some of that seeped its way in.”
While the writing process can have an effect on an album’s final sound, the most important way for a band to achieve that live, on-the-stage sound is during the recording phase. Once again, the quartet teamed up with producer Jay Joyce at his studio in their hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.
“What was really fun, was Joy Joyce’s studio is this huge church in East Nashville, and [he] made it into this amazing, beautiful studio,” said Dumas. “And for some of the songs, to really get that live sound, we’d set up our amps and our instruments and everything up on the pulpit of the church, so it was like being on a stage. And we recorded as if we were on a stage, and it’s a huge room. For a lot of the stuff to get that huge sound we just set it up like it was a stage, amps turned up all the way. I like that. It sounds raw, and if you listen to it, you can kind of feel a lot of frequencies going crazy, like a real live band would at a show.”
Now that Lonely Is a Lifetime has been released, it is back to the grind of touring for The Wild Feathers. They will spend the third week of March down in Austin, TX for the music extravaganza that is SXSW. They then head out on a massive tour that will keep them on the road until mid-May. For more info head to the band’s website.
The Will Feathers tour dates:
MAR 17 – HOTEL SAINT CECILIA, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 17 – CONVENTION CENTER, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 17 – FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 17 – MAGGIE MAE’S ROOFTOP, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 18 – GQ X JAM IN THE VAN PERFORMANCE, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 18 – THE CHICK RANCH AUSTIN, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 19 – SOUTHWEST INVASION – SXSW, AUSTIN, TX
MAR 20 – KESSLER THEATER, DALLAS, TX
MAR 22 – SOUL KITCHEN, MOBILE, AL
MAR 23 – ONE EYED JACKS, NEW ORLEANS, LA
MAR 24 – SATURN, BIRMINGHAM, AL
MAR 26 – OLD ROCK HOUSE, SAINT LOUIS, MO
MAR 27 – THE WAITING ROOM LOUNGE, OMAHA, NE
MAR 28 – BLUEBIRD THEATER, DENVER, CO
MAR 31 – VENUE NIGHTCLUB, VANCOUVER, CANADA
APR 01 – TRACTOR TAVERN, SEATTLE, WA
APR 03 – MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS, PORTLAND, OR
APR 05 – BELLY UP TAVERN, SOLANA BEACH, CA
APR 06 – TROUBADOUR, WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA
APR 07 – THE INDEPENDENT, SAN FRANCISCO, CA
APR 08 – CRYSTAL BAY CLUB CASINO, CRYSTAL BAY, NV
APR 09 – THE STATE ROOM, SALT LAKE CITY, UT
APR 11 – THE RIOT ROOM, KANSAS CITY, MO
APR 12 – VARSITY THEATER, MINNEAPOLIS, MN
APR 13 – THE RAVE / EAGLES CLUB, MILWAUKEE, WI
APR 15 – BOTTOM LOUNGE, CHICAGO, IL
APR 16 – MAJESTIC THEATRE, MADISON, WI
APR 17 – THE HI-FI, INDIANAPOLIS, IN
APR 19 – THE A&R MUSIC BAR, COLUMBUS, OH
APR 21 – LEE’S PALACE, TORONTO, CANADA
APR 22 – THE HOLLOW, ALBANY, NY
APR 23 – HIGHER GROUND, SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT
APR 24 – PORT CITY MUSIC HALL, PORTLAND, ME
APR 26 – FETE (LOUNGE), PROVIDENCE, RI
APR 28 – WEBSTER HALL, NEW YORK, NY
APR 29 – BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, ALLSTON, MA
APR 30 – THE FOUNDRY AT THE FILLMORE, PHILADELPHIA, PA
MAY 01 – U STREET MUSIC HALL, WASHINGTON, DC
MAY 03 – TERMINAL WES, ATLANTA, GA
MAY 14 – MATINALES EL PAÍS, MADRID, SPAIN
JUN 25 – RYMAN AUDITORIUM, NASHVILLE, TN
Photo Credit: Frank Maddocks
Matt Matasci
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