I’ve been home so long the road’s become exotic again
Wesley Schultz, frontman of American folk rockers The Lumineers, talks family life and how his band’s new album was forged in lockdown, with
THE Lumineers’ frontman Wesley Schultz is torn.
Speaking from his home in Denver, Colorado, the singer and guitarist cannot decide whether lockdown has been good or bad for him.
“Being gone two or three hundred days a year – home is exotic,” he muses. “Now I’ve been home so long, the road has become exotic again.”
His band, with drummer and fellow founding member and cosongwriter Jeremiah Fraites (Jer to his friends) is known for its live shows, and hit 2012 single Ho Hey.
In recent years, the pair have developed further, contributing music to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay and Game Of Thrones, and delving deeper into personal matters on each successive album.
But they have spent much of the past year and a half stuck at home like the rest of us.
“Collectively, as a band – and as a country – it has been really hard to put into words,” Wesley offers. “Everybody has been through a collective trauma.”
The Lumineers came straight off touring their third album, titled III, and into lockdown.
Despite living for much of the year only a short drive from each other in Denver, they were forced to swap ideas for their next album remotely, through voice notes and phone calls.
“That’s what is so weird about this time,” he recalls. “He was actually in Denver the whole time, but everybody was being super cautious, so we didn’t get together for five or six months after the tour ended.”
The first months of lockdown saw The Lumineers find other musical outlets. Wesley recorded a covers album entitled Vignettes, featuring songs by a roll call of his heroes, including Springsteen and Dylan. Jeremiah completed an album of intimate instrumentals.
The band are also releasing an EP, Live From The Last Night Of Tour, through Decca Records, recorded in March 2020 in Milwaukee, weeks before lockdown began.
“It was like dipping your feet back into creativity in a much easier way than diving right into a record,” he says of the covers record. “The way we make records... we pour everything into it and you holler yourself out. This is more like, I would show up, we’d pick a couple of songs and sing them.
“Jer made his own beautiful solo record of instrumental songs. I think that helped us to wade back into the waters. Then we started making our demos for the next record after that. I feel that’s been the highlight, aside from I had a daughter in March. So new life in a time where it felt really dire for the last couple of years.”
Wesley is excited at the prospect of a full return to normality, but remains cautious in his optimism.
“You don’t know what to count on any more. Even just playing shows, I am really looking forward to it, but I will believe it when I see it.”
Wesley has a son, Lenny, born in 2018, with his wife Brandy, and they welcomed their daughter in the pandemic.
“It was a mixed bag,” he confesses of the lockdown.
“But I can say, my son – who is now three – I got to witness two of the most important years of his life, they say, with development. And I felt so lucky for that. “Whereas he would come on the road and on tour with us – his first steps were in Japan, in a hotel in Kyoto. His life was travelling with me and I didn’t see him a ton, because we were so busy.
“In that way, it was a huge, huge blessing and one that you didn’t feel that guilty about, because there was nothing to be done.”
The Lumineers have recorded a new record which does not yet have a release date or title. But Wesley says it will take the band away from the storytelling of their previous records, and take influence from Neil Young, Kurt Cobain and Sir Ray Davies.
“Album three got super personal,” he admits.
“It reminded me of the Harry Potter books, where they start and sound really innocent, and they become darker and darker. This record is very different for a couple of reasons. It certainly is personal, but it’s vulnerable in a different way.”
Lockdown has prompted The Lumineers to look back at their 20 year career.
“It required a lot of patience. I was about 30 when we got a break.”
“To have that was a blessing in disguise,” he continues. “I was more formed and I could say no to things I wasn’t comfortable with. Small example, but if you have album art you want to use and you are 30 or 20, you are going to have a different level of willingness to fight for it.”
Wesley points to a framed image behind him on the wall.
It’s the cover of The Lumineers’ eponymous debut album – a black and white childhood photograph of his mother holding a parasol as his grandmother looks on.
You don’t know what to count on any more... Wesley Schultz
■ Live From The Last Night Of The Tour is out now. The Lumineers tour the UK and Europe in early 2022