Chicago – Santa Barbara native Nick Long is no stranger to the music scene. During his younger years, the LA transplant was a member of prominent Cali punk bands Staring Back and Dead Country. Now he’s going it alone and revealing a softer side through his new project Dark Waves. Dark Waves leans more towards pop and showcases him as a singer-songwriter. Armed with his guitar and the occasional backing band filled by friends, Long has begun a new chapter in his music adventures. Best New Bands sat down with Long at Bonnaroo to talk about his switch from punk to pop, his upcoming LP, and the loneliness of touring solo.
You went from punk to electro slash indie pop. What brought that on?
I was in a band that was kind of like rock, a punk band, and I would write a lot of songs by myself, in my house. I lived in this little studio apartment above a garage, and I was making these really shitty demos in Garage Band. I didn’t know how to record, so they were just like synths and program drones and vocals. I would take them to my band and turn them into these big rock songs. I kind of reached this point where the band fell apart and exploded, but that happens sometimes with bands. I just wanted to play the songs like I heard them in my head. I was jamming and writing and trying to demo them out as these mellow synthy songs and turning them into something different just felt wrong after awhile. That’s when I started playing a lot of late nights in my house, alone.
You’ll be releasing an LP this Fall. Can you share some details about the writing process?
All the songs on the EP I wrote either in my house or in the studio. So now that I’ve been playing live, I’ve seen what works and doesn’t work. And, I’ve gone into writing this stuff now with the live show more in mind. I mean, I’ve played in bands before, so it’s not like I’ve never played live before, but it’s like you said, it’s a different style of music.
I’m from Chicago, so I saw the video of your JBTV performance, where you performed “Echo” and “I Don’t Wanna Be In Love,” off of Dark Waves.
Oh, yeah! That was awesome!
At JBTV you performed what I believe is a new song, “Beast Like Them.” How did you come to write that song?
It is a new song. I’m playing that today. I wrote and recorded that with Dwight Baker, who is a producer in Austin. This one time I went down and stayed with him, [at] his studio, on his property, and that was from the first day we were working together. We wrote and recorded that song. I was kind of thinking about being drawn to doing the wrong thing sometimes. Where you are put in position to make a decision, like which road do I take, [and you] kind of [know]what the right thing to do is. An inner turmoil, where you’re like, “Well, I know what I should do, but I want to do this other thing.”
Okay, we must talk about “The Heartbeat The Soul!” What inspired this song?
That was inspired by a breakup I went through with a girl. My friend YetiBeats produced that, and he was doing some songs for this guy Trouble Andrew, who I’m a fan of. I was living like a block away from the studio, and he was like, “Yeah, Trouble’s gonna come in here. Do you want to try and write a song for him? He’s gonna be here in a few hours.” So I walked down there, and we started making this beat together, making this riff, and I started writing lyrics. I was like, okay I have a verse, I have a chorus, and we wrote the whole thing in a couple of hours. Then the dude showed up, and at this point, I was kind of like, “I hope this guy doesn’t want this song.” [laughs] He was like, “Yo man, that’s awesome. I don’t even want to f**k with it. You should just keep it.” Yeah, some songs are a battle to write. They just take a long time, trying to write lyrics and stuff. Other times things just fall into place, like that one.
It seems most of your recent material comes from your experiences with women. Do the ladies know going in they may end up your musical muse? Does it affect your relationships?
[laughs] No, I don’t look at it like that. I’ve dated a couple of girls before, and you know, like everybody, at one point you get heartbroken. I feel like a lot of the songs, even if they’re about a relationship, they have parts of different experiences. They’re not just about the relationship. Thankfully I don’t start dating somebody and feel like, “Oh, this gonna go down in a ball of flames!”
You’ve been touring and playing in bands since you were out of high school. How has touring changed now that you’ve gone solo?
There’s something really nice that I really miss, like the camaraderie, the brotherhood or whatever that you have in a band. You also drive each other crazy sometimes, and it’s difficult to agree on t-shirt designs and real trivial things. [It’s hard] trying to get four or five people to be on the same page. There’s definitely an aspect of it now that’s a lot easier, but I don’t know, it can be kind of lonely and boring traveling alone. I was just over in the U.K. and was playing by myself, but today I have an old friend of mine with me to play this show. I’d like to have a more consistent thing. I don’t really want to do this completely by myself.
I read you recently hired some friends to tour with you though.
Yeah, I did a tour a few months ago, and I had a few friends playing with me. We were out for five weeks. They’re all professional, good guys. They’re all friends of mine, but I ended up paying everybody and it was super expensive. I’m not on a big label, so I don’t have a huge bank account to pull cash from. Going out to the U.K., I went alone because it’s expensive to fly people around. You work with what you got sometimes. [chuckles]
Well Nick Long, keep working with what you’ve got because Dark Waves is pretty darn amazing! Dark Waves ’s stuff (Five Seven Music) is available on iTunes and Amazon. Follow Dark Waves on Facebook and Twitter for news of that upcoming LP and tour dates.
Sarah Hess
After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.
You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.
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