As part of Country Music Week, we spoke to Logan Mize ahead of his performance at Bush Hall to talk all about his new single, the potential for his next record and his return to Kansas. The interview will also feature on the podcast.
Bit exhausted, having done all the touring backward and forward across the pond?
I was 100% sure this morning that I wasn’t going to be able to sing tonight because I’ve just had this terrible cold and my vocal just gets so tight that I can’t sing anything out.
You were just here last month, so what keeps you coming back to the UK and braving the jet lag?
Ah man, I love it over here, it’s fun to get out. I love being home but it’s also really good to travel..
Get to sample all the beers when you’re feeling better?
Yeah I’m on a huge cask ale kick right now. There’s a place in Scotland called the Clachaig Inn, it’s up in the Highlands near Glencoe that’s my favourite spot in the UK right now, maybe in the world and they have like 15 cask ales, so I’m trying every reason I can think of to come over here and sample all of them.
Is there anything that surprised you about the UK audience, any tracks that really resonated with them?
I like their song choice better than the States song choices. You have to be careful. The UK tends to gravitate more toward the songs that I liked when I recorded them, the artist cuts. In the US, they don’t care what the lyrics are, if it says beer they’re like ‘Yahhh.’ You’ve got to play to both sides, I like both of those things, I can cut up and have a good time but I also do take artistry seriously and want to have good lyrics and good sounds. So yeah I think it fits me really well to come over to the UK.
Your new single ‘I Ain’t Gotta Grow Up’ was released last week. How did that song come to you and why did you choose that as the next single?
It’s just fun honestly. The last song that was really big for us was ‘Better Off Gone’ and we’ve played it everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of times over the past two years and multiple times a day on radio studios. People like the song, but it’s also got a lot of dark energy to it, it’s kind of a downer song – the guy in the narrative of the song is kind of an asshole, so you walk into places to go and play that song for them and think ‘maybe we need something fun for them, something up beat and happy, let there be some breathing room before we dive back in.’ We just wanted to put this fun song out and see what happens with it and then we can dive into putting another record out.
You grew up in Clearwater, Kansas, so what was the scene like there growing up. Is it full of country or a mix of lots of different genres?
Ah man, the scene in Clearwater, Kansas… There’s a grocery store that my grandparents started, there’s a Walt’s Hamburger Shop and then there’s a bunch of farmers and they all drive their rusty trucks and they’re either going to the bar or going to church, that’s about it. That’s the scene, no one did music. When I told some people I was going to move to Nashville, I got in trouble for saying that with people thinking I need to go to college. What do I need to do with college, I dropped out of three of them? It didn’t work for me. The scene was basically get out.
You moved out of Nashville, but now you are back in Kansas. What made you decide to move back and what do you think you learned from being in Nashville from being there?
Just growing up in a space like Kansas which is so wide open and feels free, it’s good to grow up like that I think – it made me who I am and it gave me the ability to grow. When you get down to Nashville and you’re on Music Row, it’s good for me to know there’s life outside of that and I want my kids to grow up like that. Everybody runs 100 miles per hour, trying to get ahead but for what? What are you trying to get ahead for? What are you going to do when you get there? It’s a good mentality to have, obviously to keep moving forward, but I want my kids to be somewhere they can just grow up being happy being around their family – it’s more laidback and the pace of life is a little slower, which is good for me too because I’m a little slow.
It’s been two years now since the debut record. What was the process of putting that out as an independent artist – was it very difficult, particularly in Nashville which is such a single hits driven town, to put out a full-length project?
It was, it’s like a fight every step of the way. So, when I was on Sony I’d made a record that they didn’t put out – two actually – then I made another one brought it in they said ‘No,’ re-recorded it made it into an EP, made another record with Paul Worthing they shelved it, the next one I was like it needs to come out, so I made it on my own dime. Then when I turned it in, I knew we had a new CEO and he’d moved onto other things, which was fine because we’d made it ourselves so they didn’t own it. It was really cool to just put something out completely independently and immediately climb back into a spot where you’re having success.
Guess now are you moving into the next record or thinking about it?
Yeah I’ve recorded a bunch of stuff, but it’s trying to figure out where to go because I don’t want to do something we’ve already done. We’re just trying to figure out what it’s going to be. When you go out on the road, it’s good to have your own live show but everything right now is all about ‘let’s get a good streaming single,’ but that’s three minutes, if you’re going to play a good seventy-five minute show you’ve got to have music. That’s why I think the artist tries to put out as much as they can, so yeah just trying to figure out a good group of songs.
Do you think sonically then it will be very different?
Not super different because I’m using the same producer for this project. There’ll be a different element that wasn’t there before, steel guitar and stuff that wasn’t there on the last record, just because I couldn’t afford to bring a steel guitar player on the road. I have something I’m working on after this next project, because I want to shift gears a little bit for a little while, but that’s down the road.
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Final Few
Beer or whiskey?
Beer.
Give up songwriting or performing?
Performing.
Record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island?
Third Eye Blind (self-titled)
Complete the sentence…
Music is… my life.
Country Music is… great.
Logan Mize is… a nice guy.
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Listen to the full interview on the podcast
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