INTERVIEW: Spencer Crandall on My Person and New Horizons

Spencer Crandall is an independent country music singer/songwriter and entertainer from Denver, Colorado. His sound continues to push the envelope—a blend of country storytelling with non-traditional production elements. Here, we interview Spencer about his forthcoming EP ‘Lost in the Wild’ out tomorrow.

Hey! It’s finally happening, next week you’ve got the EP coming out. Life must be fun again?

Isn’t that amazing? It feels like everything’s flying into place here.

Have you managed to get some live shows? I know that you’re going back to doing social distance practice shows.

I’ve played the listening room and that was really fun – it’s more like a songwriting and storytelling session, one of my favourites. There’s a thing called Whiskey Jam here, and I just played the first full capacity one, so that was amazing.

For a long time, we played to socially distanced tables and then they finally lifted everything. It was so fun, but by the end of nine songs, I wanted to play nine more.

So how excited are you for this project to come out? ‘Lost in the Wild’ is such a well rounded out project, so how did it evolve?

Yeah, you know I put out an album at the end of last year called Wilderness that saw some commercial success – my fans took it and just lived with it and loved it. It feels like a next level project for the next step, it felt like levelling up across so many planes. I think what we want to do is just really point back to that project, we’re putting out new versions of the songs so that people can hear them in a new light or hear them again. The Wedding Version was such  big deal.

That song just blew up. When you initially released it, did you think it would get the response that it got?

I thought it would do well, but the reality was way more, it was so fun. I posted the wedding version – it was just one minute long, but I thought I have a thing here, check it out. Half a million views later, the original version was popping up on the iTunes charts and I have 20,000 comments asking me when it will come out. We thought, ‘oh yeah, this needs to come out.’

Social media has many downfalls but it’s amazing its power. Obviously on this project, the only external cut you have is the one with Julia Cole. I love that song, can you talk a bit about the first time you heard it and having Julia be a part of it?

Yeah, it’s so fun Julia has never not been a part of this – she was a writer. She was in the room and we got done with a verse chorus and I turned to her and was like, ‘yo, it’s crazy. This could be a duet, where the person’s talking to another person.’ It’s so tough to tell people that you love them and you don’t want to be the one who says it too soon – you don’t want to let that person go. So, Julia was actually in that situation at the time with her boyfriend and I was like, let’s write the second verse like you’re telling it with her harmony on the chorus – she has to be on this.

Hearing your vocals together, it just worked so well. So, how do you approach songwriting and how have you approached it in the last year because your creative output has been insane? 

You know, I love what I do, I really do and I know that’s the trope but it’s so true. If I don’t write a song for a week – if I save a week and write it off my calendar to not write, save my voice and take a break, I’ll be sitting down with a guitar and clicking some weird melody.

That’s the way it should be.

100%. I think people are starving for authenticity in 2021. I love what I do, I love writing music and it’s an outlet for me as an artist to connect with humans, which is my favourite thing to do. I’ve boiled my life into a mission statement that is ‘create things I love with people I love’.

Well songwriting is like another muscle to workout and flex – the more you do it, the more somebody will be like, ‘these songs are incredible’. So, when did you move to Nashville and how has being there changed the way you write songs?

So, I moved to Nashville in August 2016. Originally, I played college football, I got two massive shoulder surgeries and I’m sitting in my dorm room, I see this little guitar and I started learning more covers. Then I started writing music and that’s really what kind of pushed me over into thinking, ‘Oh, I want to do this’. It was not just singing other people’s songs, but singing my song, but when you’re writing by yourself, there’s like a ceiling. There’s just this place where you can get to.

When I moved here, I immediately was like, ‘oh, co writing is going to change my life, because four heads are better than one’. So, August 2016 I started co writing and really haven’t looked back. I feel so lucky that I have the people in my life that helped me write. The Wilderness album is drastically worse without all my friends.

What I loved about the project is the range and balance of songs on the EP, you’ve touched every part of the genre. I mean ‘Delete All’ is such a surprise, how did that track evolve?

‘Delete All’ was a funny song because we thought that was gonna be the hardest one to produce, I had nothing. Lalo who’s the producer on that whole project, we sat down and knocked it out so fast, because it just poured out of us. I think we tapped into this thing that was so new. I’ve been in the sessions where I put on the old guitar that we use and use that same snare, but when you create things it’s so inspiring. I think ‘Delete All’ is a great indicator of what I want to sound like and what I want to do – a country story that I can play at the listening room acoustically, that feeling of sitting there and you’re hovering your thumb over the delete button. Personally, I think it feels great and we just had the EDM remix that we are putting out on Friday. I think it can be both those things.

It was one of those things where it takes you by surprise, but you’re like ‘I love this’. It’s a great way for guys to be able to get introduced to music who are not into the country scene – it’s a good avenue in.

That’s my favorite compliment – when people say ‘I don’t like country music, but I like and I’ll take that’. On the opposite side, there are obviously people who are like, ‘you’re ruining the genre or whatever,’ but I’m okay with that. I do a thing and it might not be for everybody, but  it’s the music that I want to listen to in my car.

At the end of the day, what is genre anymore? I feel like the lines have blurred so much. Actually, the way people are consuming music and the ways people are touring live is so much broader than that. 

100% agree. I tell people all the time, I grew up with Limewire, I grew up with Napster – my iPod was George Strait then Eminem, but it works. Now when I’m doing it, I can’t help but love the phrasing of hip hop and rap and I can’t help but love the steel guitar. It’s interesting.

Obviously, you’ve got this project coming out, but what is the plan for the rest of the year? Are you going back on the road and touring the country?

The plan is to hit the road. Hopefully in September, maybe through Thanksgiving, a little touring. The second we have more details about that we will shoot them over. Shows are such an important part and I haven’t even been able to tour this album yet. The last time I played a live show was pre TikTok. I think it’s going to be really rewarding.

It’s coming and we’ll hopefully get you to the UK soon, because I feel like your music will go down super well over here. Thank you very much for your time today.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

 

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