“You just have to write based on the experiences you have. You shouldn’t try to emulate somebody else with lyrics because… I just don’t think it’s gonna come out truthfully.”

Just after releasing their sophomore album Dumb Luck, Minneapolis alt-country band Harlow hit the road, traveling through the Midwest and Southeast. We caught up with the band while they were stopped in Athens to talk tour and learn about writing process behind their recent record.

Harlow are: Sam Ketcham (guitar/vocals), Des Lawrence (bass/vocals), Henry Patterson (guitar/vocals), Jules Kneen (drums) and Jonah Hatten (pedal steel)

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Death of A Rabbit: Is this your first time playing Athens? 


Henry: It was, yeah.

DOAR: Are a lot of the dates on this tour new places or are they mostly places you’ve played before? 


Des: The front half is all new to us. Then we’re on our way to Nashville today, which we’ve done a few times before, then Chicago and Madison we’ve hit before. So we’re getting back on the home turf, 
we’re on our way home now, technically.

DOAR: Does it feel different playing your new songs out on the road away from home?

Jules: Yeah, I think so. 


Des: Yeah. I think so, in a sort of indescribable way.

Henry: I think it’s the setting, also just playing the songs more frequently on stage because like, [At home] we would play maybe one show a month, to not play too frequently, but now every night we’re performing this in front of people.

Des: That’s a good point, and we are able to iterate more on each song every night when we play it, and that’s really fun because we are all fans of improvised music.

Henry: yeah, as we get more familiar with what each of us are doing.

DOAR: What are you guys listening to while you’re on the road? Do you have favorite road trip albums?

Des: Oh, man, it is all over the place.

Jules: We had this really long drive through the night, and Sam and I were in the back seat and I woke up to Henry and Des blaring The Replacements.

Des:
Yeah, we listened to Paul Westerberg solo and the Replacements albums for probably four hours.

Henry: We both realized that we had been listening to them a lot lately. So we were like, no way, you, you too? Yeah, and then we got to enjoy it together. 


Des: When we were coming from Iowa City, doing the big haul out to Asheville overnight, that was very entertaining.

Henry: Yeah, we drove after a gig. There was a 13 hour drive, and we opted to do that [right] after a show. So, Iowa City, 11 PM, we hit the road and drove through the night, saved money, and we had a show in Asheville the following night. We knew once we did that, we’d be conditioned for everything else and we’ve gotten caught up on sleep and worked out and the van’s been treating us well… and we listened to some Joni Mitchell yesterday.

Des: Oh yeah, we had a good stretch of that. We got some Justice in too… At some point we always listen to… 
Is it still the newest Skrillix album? Andy Warhol, whatever… that Skrillex album really hit for us a couple tours ago,
that’s a good one when it gets quiet. When we’re all sort of staring at our feet and staring out the windows.

Henry: We also lost signal because we were in the mountains on these beautiful mountain roads. We had to kind of go deep into the archives of what we had downloaded on our phones. So we had some fun surprises, like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

DOAR: The 13 hour drive sounds crazy. Do you guys have a favorite road trip snack or something like keeps you sane when you’re driving? 


Des: Yeah, I gathered a bag of hot Cheetos and a coconut Red Bull. 
And I really don’t think I would have been able to do it without those 2 items.

Henry: Gas station apples.

Jules: Those are so hit or miss.

DOAR: I’ve heard in other interviews, you guys say you wrote pretty collaboratively on the new album. Is that true? 


Sam: No… I think we arranged collaboratively… For this album, I wrote most of the material except for one song. Everyone always writes their own parts, so… I would say, the production is collaborative.

Henry: This album was written over the course of a year. So actually a pretty recent collection of songs that Sam and Des wrote.

Sam: All of the songs [except one] were written by me in my apartment with my acoustic guitar. Then Des was kind of like my main contact for arranging and figuring out how the songs were formed and then… this band has so much history and trust that we always write and practice together and flesh out the ideas.

Des: Yeah, we recorded it at my house in the basement, just with what we had lying around. It was super fun to take our time on it and, you know, be particular and not have to be paying a studio or producer or anything like that.

DOAR: Have you guys always self-produced Harlow records?

Des: Our first album, the album before this one, we were still fresh as a band and Sam had a lot of songs lying around, some of them were as old as 5 years or something. So we recorded with our friend McCoy, at casino time in Minneapolis. 
And he sort of helped us to compile the 11 songs… it ended up as more of a compilation. I think moving forward, we’ll do it the way we did it for Dumb Luck, self producing and writing the material in a shorter time for one album.

DOAR: So the songs were written more intentionally as one album. 


Sam: Yes, we had probably like 13 or 14 songs, we boiled it down to 8 that made sense together. That had a huge hand in guiding the overall sound of the record for sure, being very choosy about what went on it.

Henry: Yeah, allowing us to focus on the songs, make sure it’s quality, with limited time and energy.

DOAR: Sam, did you have any specific writers or lyricists who were inspiring you when you were writing for this album?

Sam: Good question…

Des: If you want me to buy you some time. I have an answer for my one song. Everybody loves Neil Young, he’s the godfather or whatever. I just love how for the most part he’s just telling it like it is. It’s pretty… cut and dry, not trying to be overly four dimensional or anything. So, yeah, my one song, Hope You Know, I was just like, having experiences and putting them in a song, and that was it.

Sam: Honestly I would say no. Every time I think about trying to write the lyrics like somebody else, I just can’t do it. I don’t really know if I subconsciously had [inspirations], but… I think lyrics are one of those things that if you’re trying to do it like somebody else, it’s just not gonna work out. Yeah, you just have to write, like what Des said, based on the experiences you have. You shouldn’t try to emulate somebody else with lyrics because.. I just don’t think it’s gonna come out truthfully.

DOAR: Were there any more like abstract things inspiring you when you started writing this maybe?

Sam: Well, I won’t get too into it but I had a bit of a darker year.
There was just a lot of venting and emotional things that I was working through with these songs, just trying to make myself feel better. Trying to give myself good advice and be hopeful…I think even the sad ones are hopeful. 


Des: Yeah, I feel like, not to speak for you because it’s extremely personal to you, but I feel, you can hear the light at the end of the tunnel in a lot of it, as a listener. And then I also feel like it’s affected your actual vocal delivery, a little bit.

Sam: Yeah, maybe loosened up a little bit on trying to… It was a very, uh, cathartic tool to have.

DOAR: I totally agree that comes through as a listener.

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Check out ‘Violet Hour’ off of Dumb Luck below!