Interview: Jeremiah Fraites (The Lumineers)

Prior to The Lumineers kicking off their world tour on Friday, Jan. 31, and Saturday, Feb. 1, at Harrah's Cherokee Center - Asheville, songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Jeremiah Fraites spoke with Asheville Stages about scaling up the band’s shows, stumbling upon concept album fodder, and making the most of songwriting time after having a child.

Edwin Arnaudin: You played The Grey Eagle in 2012. Will this be your first time back to Asheville since then?

Jeremiah Fraites: To the best of my recollection, I think it is. I think when we played there, I can’t remember if that was a headlining show that we did or…it was either with Langhorne Slim, our own show, or Truth & Salvage [Co.], a band at the time we were opening for. But yeah, I remember we had a really good time. We had a couple of days off there and we all just were chilling in Asheville and I remember we got to take a tour of a studio — I feel like the name “Mountain” was in the studio’s name? But it seemed like a prominent, really cool studio that we actually considered recording our first album there. We did not do that, but Asheville left an impression on us. We thought it was a really cool city and it’s really cool that we get to kick [the tour] off there.

EA: Sounds like Echo Mountain.

JF: Perfect. That’s definitely it. For sure.

EA: Cool. Yeah, that’s our top studio. Folks like Dawes and The Avett Brothers have recorded there.

And also, looking at your history with North Carolina overall, you and your bandmates took a stand in 2016 when the state passed the horrible HB2 “bathroom bill.” I thought it was noble of y’all to make your show in Cary extra inclusive and partner with EqualityNC and The Human Rights Campaign and donate profits to them. I’m curious what your thoughts are on playing in North Carolina now that HB2 has been walked back?

JF: I think, at the time, to do something like that, it felt like the obvious right decision. I don’t want to get too political, but it’s crazy sometimes how the government makes these laws that affect people’s bodies — particularly female bodies — or gender or sexual orientation…what they want to do with their love life. It’s just kind of absurd. So, I think to do something like that was a no-brainer for us and hopefully it helped in some microscopic or big way. I don’t know.

So, that thing got shot down? It’s gone? That’s a good thing, you’re saying? In North Carolina? I don’t keep up with all the states’ laws. [Laughs]

EA: [Laughs] I mean, how can you? There’s one or two of them. But yeah, it wasn’t fully repealed and local governments can’t pass ordinances protecting LGBT people from discrimination in employment or public places until December 2020, which isn’t great, but you can use whatever bathroom fits your gender.

JF: Ah, that’s awesome!

EA: For sure! There’s still a lot of work to be done, but at least that part was removed.

JF: That’s great to hear. Like I said, it’s just crazy that some of these laws overstep bounds of people’s really personal decisions, whether it’s sexual or related to childbirth or whatever have you. When we played that show at that time, it’s one of those things where if you don’t play the show because of a state’s laws or something, you could be silent and cancel the show, or you could actually play it and try to make a little stink about it, if you’re into supporting it, even a little bit. I think it’s healthy to do that sometimes.

I think if you cancel the show, that’s one form of protest, I guess you could say, but the other form is…and in some ways, too, you’re cancelling a beautiful experience around music and art. All the people who are coming to see you are going to be bummed. So, cancelling the show in form of protest doesn’t appeal to me as much, personally. I don’t know. If we ever do it down the road, I don’t want to eat my words, but…[laughs] I thought it was cooler, and we thought it was cool to go down there and play the show and then talk about maybe some things that were going on that felt important to us, instead of being, like, “Hey, we’re cancelling.” But to each his own, if they want to do that.

EA: Yeah, around that time, Death Cab for Cutie played Asheville and they thought about cancelling, but then said that it would be their last show in North Carolina until the law was repealed.

JF: Oh wow!

EA: But it’s definitely a “different strokes for different folks” kind of thing.

JF: Yeah, for sure.

EA: So, the last time you were here, you played one of Asheville’s smaller rooms and now you’ll be in its biggest. I’m curious what steps the band has taken over the years to grow its live sound and take advantage of stadiums and arenas.?

JF: One thing we’ve done is baby steps in the direction of introducing video screens, whether it’s the typical zoomed-in shot of a particular band member so people in the back can see it, but also staging and the design of the stage in regard to lights and stuff. And I think that we’ve seen lots and lots of shows all over the world, whether opening for bigger bands or playing festivals where you get to see the really big stages at festivals all around the world. In any profession you are — if you’re a chef and you’re constantly going out to eat, you’re always like a sponge. You’re going to be kind of critiquing things and you’re going to be absorbing — and maybe even stealing some things for your own craft.

There’s one band — I’m not going to say the name — but I just remember we saw them at a huge festival somewhere in Europe, and I just thought it was such a bad…I love this band, I love their music, and I’ve always been a big fan of them, but they had all these screens on stage that were so distracting, had really nothing to do with their vibe or the way the music was being presented, and it just felt very static. For us, the hope, anyway, and the inspiration is to take these songs and take our live performance and still try to convey that we’re a band and that we’re playing these songs, but then also trying to implement a few ways to make it feel bigger and maybe better for the crowd and people who may be further away — really give them something that’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Also, this album, we made a music video for every song on the album and turned it into a film. So even at the live performance, there’s going to be a couple of, like, references from music video clips with the hope that when people come to the show, they’re really in kind of a Lumineers’ tour-speak. They’re going to be fully engaged, fully immersed in this new album campaign, and it’s not just, “Hey, we’re going back on tour and we’re playing these big venues,” but, “Hey, we’re going back on tour with a new album.” For sure, we’re going to play the first two albums, but we really want people, when they enter into the space, “Oh, wow! This is like…,” kind of like, I don’t know, when you watch Star Wars or when you read the Harry Potter books, you’re sort of in this fictional place that helps you escape from reality, which I think is really healthy for an hour and a half, once in a while. [Laughs] 

We’re really excited about doing that, and I think the hope is you never want to stray too far from what attracted your fans in the first place. Obviously, when you start out as, like, grassroots or organic — I hate that word, “organic” — but whatever adjectives, you do stand to risk alienating some of the earlier people. But at the same time, playing these bigger places, it’s insanely fun. It’s such a cool…we’re so lucky to be able to do that. All these venues that we’re about to play — as you said, that’s the biggest place in Asheville or a lot of these places are where NBA teams play. It’s mind-blowing for us that we’re doing that. We used to…The Grey Eagle, I can guarantee you I don’t think we sold that out. I don’t even know if it was our show! We were opening up for a band, I think. And, yeah, it’s pretty mind-blowing to return and feel really strong about it — and do two nights there, not just one. It’s so cool for us.

EA: On that note, how do you and your bandmates approach consecutive night shows in the same city? Do you treat them as if everyone is going to both nights or keep the setlists pretty similar?

JF: I think when it’s two nights and when it’s our third album — I still consider us a very young band. I think three albums, it’s not like it’s our 18th album or even 10th album. We’re still in single digits. I think we plan on the non-repeat offenders, so people coming to one show and then maybe not coming to the second show. I’m sure statistically we could figure that out and see after the fact. I have a feeling that, guaranteed, there are going to be people who come to both, but I think that if we play one show that we feel like is our best representation of a show, and then we’re like, “Oh, crap! Let’s change it for the second night,” and then that’s not as strong but different for the sake of being different, I think you might shoot yourself in the foot. If you went to both shows, you might get something out of it more, but I don’t know. We try to bank on it probably being different crowds both nights. If we were Phish and doing 10 nights at Madison Square Garden, we might be like, “Alright, we know our fan base. They want jams and all the songs and all the B-sides. They want a crazy, absurd rotation of material.” But, yeah.

EA: And then in looking closer at III, it of course tells the story of a multigenerational family. Were there any famous family sagas from film, literature, music, or real life that inspired you and [guitarist/vocalist] Wes [Schultz] while you were writing?

JF: Basically what happened was we finished… “Salt and the Sea” was one of the songs that was done originally, but then we got to the song “Gloria,” and basically “Gloria” was a song very much based on a real-life person, someone in Wes’ family and extended family that will be kept anonymous, but it was this thing where, how do you deal with somebody that’s going through really bad alcoholism, loving them, then being family and how does that all…it’s a very sad, destructive, angry — all these emotions mixed into one. So once “Gloria” was done, there was another song that came around called “Leader of the Landslide,” and again the lyrical material — and Wes was writing 99.9% of the lyrics — “Leader of the Landslide” is very much about [alcoholism]. It and “Gloria” are the two songs most about that on the record.

I remember I wrote the music to “Donna,” the first song on the album, and we were working on it and he came up with this lyric, “A little boy was born in February / Couldn’t sober up to hold the baby,” and I remember, like, we were in the studio and I sort of was like, “Hey, can we go for a walk?” For me, I think I was just like, “Hey, I just need to make you aware that there’s a lot of this stuff on the album right now about alcoholism and alcohol.” I wasn’t even so much saying, “Hey, let’s not do that.” I think it was just bringing up dormant, old feelings for me because a long time ago, my older brother died of a heroin drug overdose, and that was obviously the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It was one of those things where I was like, “Hey, this is bringing up a lot of heavy stuff for me.”

So it kind of snowballed into, once the album was done, him and one of his buddies actually started looking at all the material and realized, “Hey, we could kind of do a concept album here” or “Hey, we could kind of string it along.” I don’t think was so much like, “Hey, let’s mimic any sort of family or fictional family or any sort of saga that we’ve seen,” but taking into account, “People can really sink their teeth into this family if we make them feel as real as possible.”

It was weird how as complicated as this album rollout was or as dense as it was — whatever word you want to use — it all started from a very simple place of just writing music, me and Wes, and writing music that we thought was beautiful, powerful, moving to us on some sort of really basic, selfish level. And it kind of snowballed into this really cool thing where we were excited to not just make an album just because we have to. We made an album because we love to do that and now we have some really cool stuff that comes along with the album.

EA: And then, since III tells a cohesive story that builds as it goes on, do you feel like it needs to be performed in order for it to have maximum effect? Have you done that yet or have plans to?

JF: Yeah, we have actually. We’ve done it a bunch. We played a bunch of shows. We did a couple for press and fan clubs and stuff where we played literally the whole album. I think we did “Chapter One” — so, “Donna,” “Life in the City,” “Gloria” — then we peppered in a few old ones, and then so on: [tracks] 4, 5, 6 off the album, III, and then peppered in a few old songs.

And we play a good amount of the new album, honestly, on tour. We’ve been very surprised to see some of the reactions, too, already. We just did a huge tour in Europe in November — we played a lot of festivals last year. And playing the first single off the album, “Gloria,” I think has this sort of, “OK, cool. They’re playing that song. I know that song well because that’s been out the longest.” But then, playing the first song on the album, called “Donna,” which is just me on piano and Wes singing — at least in Europe [laughs], I don’t know what will happen in America, it’s had one of the biggest crowd reactions out of all the songs in the whole setlist. It’s kind of interesting to see…we’re playing the biggest rooms of our lives and then playing one of the quietest songs we’ve ever written, and for that to get one of the biggest reactions — I think it only shows you that you can’t predict what’s going to work and what’s going to not. It’s just a matter of all these things going right in your direction that are going to make people feel that way.

That’s been really cool. Typically, to me it feels a little boring, like, oh, if the song has the craziest drum beats and it’s the fastest and the loudest, that’s going to get the biggest crowd reaction. That feels a bit boring and obvious to me. The fact that one of the quietest, slowest songs with literally no drums or really nothing going on in it is eliciting that reaction, that’s really…I don’t know, that’s exciting for me.

EA: Very nice! Well, one more question and I’ll let you go, but I know you’re still a relatively new father.

JF: Yeah.

EA: How has that affected your professional life, both in terms of songwriting and touring?

JF: One thing that was interesting was that when we wrote this album…so, Wes and his wife had a baby about two or three months right before we had our baby — me and my wife. And Wes had a son [and we took] about two months off, and then I think we worked for a few weeks. And then my wife had our baby and we took another two months off. And I think, I don’t know if you’re a father, but everything changes drastically. [Laughs]

And it’s one of those things where, I don’t know if this is true, but any time, when you’re baby’s very small, when it’s an infant, the first even three months, any time that you are leaving the house, it’s pretty crazy. Every family has their own dynamics, especially when it comes to raising the kids when they’re really small, but in our family, any time I was leaving the house, it was like, OK, I’m leaving the house, my wife is at home with our very small baby and her mom was there, so my mother-in-law helped out a lot, which was insanely helpful, but you’re sort of hyper-aware. Like, OK, wow, I’m leaving the house for two hours — I’d better fucking do work, because, like, [laughs] there’s no guarantee for sleep. There’s no guarantee for this or that. It’s crazy! So, I think every time, perhaps every time me and Wes were meeting, we both knew the importance of time and the importance of, like, wow, one hour away from home — or, wow! Four hours today away from home, or six hours! Let’s really work our asses off. I also think it was a combination of, you know, me and Wes have been writing together for 15 years now, so when we started writing this album a lot of things fell into place quicker than in the past.

Having children, too, on the touring side is really different. I think it’s going to be a different tour. I think in some ways it’s going to be a better tour, too. Being held accountable to go to sleep maybe earlier than I normally would and waking up and having a sense of purpose to entertain somebody and…sure, it’s going to be tiring, too, but tour is tiring no matter if you’re a single guy or you’re bringing out your kids. And this will be the first time that I’ll have my own bus, so just me and my family. And the singer, Wes, will have his own bus, too, so I think that’ll be really cool. We’ve never been able to experience that before, and I think that we’re really lucky that we can do that, so that’s something we’re really excited about.

IF YOU GO

Who: The Lumineers with Mt. Joy and J.S. Ondara
When: Friday, Jan. 31, and Saturday, Feb. 1, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Harrah's Cherokee Center - Asheville, 87 Haywood St., harrahscherokeecenterasheville.com
Tickets: $57-225

(Photos by Danny Clinch)