Jonah Leatherman Interview
Q: You recently released “Overlap” from your upcoming album Ensuring My Uncertainty. Can you tell us a little about the song and why you chose that one?
A: We chose Overlap as our cardinal single because the lyrical and harmonic content of the track really seem to encapsulate all of the overlapping themes (pun intended - haha) that are strung out across the album. In a way it's a song about the album, if that makes sense.
Q: What can you tell us about your upcoming release Ensuring My Uncertainty?
A: Ensuring My Uncertainty is an album that I think was written as a kind of processing of what introspection is (at least to me) and learning how it can be kind of a skill. it's something you get better at as you practice it.
Q: What was the recording process like?
A: We recorded everything analog on a 24-track 3M tape machine. I'm not a huge stickler on tape sounding better or anything, I just really like the workflow and strangely enough the limitations recording onto tape brings. Only having 24 tracks means that you have to be intentional with things; Every instrument has to earn the real estate it's being recorded into, and it keeps you out of the rabbit hole of just adding more and more layers and plug-ins and all that. It feels more wholesome and intentional that way and brings out the best in all of us doing the work.
Q: What were some of the challenges making it?
A: For this record some of the songs that were brought in were songs that hitherto were not fully defined in what they were going to be and how they were going to turn out. These are songs that I had just written on acoustic guitar and wanted to go in with nothing but that and let being in the moment decide the direction of the tracks, which was both exciting but definitely strenuous not only in just executing writing a whole arrangement on the fly but also just the uncertainty around that approach and the temptation to try to force it one way or the other can be challenging to deal with.
Another challenge is when you're recording in an analog world, there is not a lot of fixing things in post production or mixing: the sounds you make in the moment are more or less the sounds you hear on the record.
Q: What are some of the themes and concepts?
A: There’s a saying "the more you learn, the less you know" and i think the album has that energy to it. Kind of like, the more and more you learn about something in a really precise way and how complicated and nuanced it could be, the more you begin to realize that not only is this one specific thing incredibly complex and difficult to grasp in a complete way, but also that there is a whole world of things that are just as, if not more, intricate and deep. which kind of reverses the whole idea that you've learned any more than you've just realized that it's a big big world you simply can't learn everything in totality: Hence the titled Ensuring My Uncertainty.
There is also this theme of interconnectedness as well. There is a line in Overlap: "like a frame of trembling stars, I see some daffodils in March, I see them burn like sparks upon the depths of green" - which is kind of trying to point to how two very different things can be distilled down to some commonality. And to circle back to the previous paragraph, I think sometimes feeling like you know something, and feeling like you don't know something, can in some strange way also simultaneously feel exactly the same.
Q: How do you feel it’s different from your eponymous release?
A: The last album was a collection of songs I'm really proud of. What separates this release from the last to me is that this album feels like one long song. Each song overlaps (another pun! haha) into the next in some way or another, whether it be lyrically or even harmonically. There are a few lines on this record that refer back to the first album as well. And some short investigation will show that the last album had a track called "Between the Lines" while this album has a track called "Beyond the Lines" as well as the first track of the album titled "Overlap" and the last track titled "Victory Lap" which is just another way of pulling from that whole interconnectedness theme.
Q: Will you be touring to support it?
A: Most definitely. We have a pretty good network across the midwest that we built from touring to support the last record, and I fully intend to keep that momentum going with the release of this next record as well.
Q: You recently released “Overlap” from your upcoming album Ensuring My Uncertainty. Can you tell us a little about the song and why you chose that one?
A: We chose Overlap as our cardinal single because the lyrical and harmonic content of the track really seem to encapsulate all of the overlapping themes (pun intended - haha) that are strung out across the album. In a way it's a song about the album, if that makes sense.
Q: What can you tell us about your upcoming release Ensuring My Uncertainty?
A: Ensuring My Uncertainty is an album that I think was written as a kind of processing of what introspection is (at least to me) and learning how it can be kind of a skill. it's something you get better at as you practice it.
Q: What was the recording process like?
A: We recorded everything analog on a 24-track 3M tape machine. I'm not a huge stickler on tape sounding better or anything, I just really like the workflow and strangely enough the limitations recording onto tape brings. Only having 24 tracks means that you have to be intentional with things; Every instrument has to earn the real estate it's being recorded into, and it keeps you out of the rabbit hole of just adding more and more layers and plug-ins and all that. It feels more wholesome and intentional that way and brings out the best in all of us doing the work.
Q: What were some of the challenges making it?
A: For this record some of the songs that were brought in were songs that hitherto were not fully defined in what they were going to be and how they were going to turn out. These are songs that I had just written on acoustic guitar and wanted to go in with nothing but that and let being in the moment decide the direction of the tracks, which was both exciting but definitely strenuous not only in just executing writing a whole arrangement on the fly but also just the uncertainty around that approach and the temptation to try to force it one way or the other can be challenging to deal with.
Another challenge is when you're recording in an analog world, there is not a lot of fixing things in post production or mixing: the sounds you make in the moment are more or less the sounds you hear on the record.
Q: What are some of the themes and concepts?
A: There’s a saying "the more you learn, the less you know" and i think the album has that energy to it. Kind of like, the more and more you learn about something in a really precise way and how complicated and nuanced it could be, the more you begin to realize that not only is this one specific thing incredibly complex and difficult to grasp in a complete way, but also that there is a whole world of things that are just as, if not more, intricate and deep. which kind of reverses the whole idea that you've learned any more than you've just realized that it's a big big world you simply can't learn everything in totality: Hence the titled Ensuring My Uncertainty.
There is also this theme of interconnectedness as well. There is a line in Overlap: "like a frame of trembling stars, I see some daffodils in March, I see them burn like sparks upon the depths of green" - which is kind of trying to point to how two very different things can be distilled down to some commonality. And to circle back to the previous paragraph, I think sometimes feeling like you know something, and feeling like you don't know something, can in some strange way also simultaneously feel exactly the same.
Q: How do you feel it’s different from your eponymous release?
A: The last album was a collection of songs I'm really proud of. What separates this release from the last to me is that this album feels like one long song. Each song overlaps (another pun! haha) into the next in some way or another, whether it be lyrically or even harmonically. There are a few lines on this record that refer back to the first album as well. And some short investigation will show that the last album had a track called "Between the Lines" while this album has a track called "Beyond the Lines" as well as the first track of the album titled "Overlap" and the last track titled "Victory Lap" which is just another way of pulling from that whole interconnectedness theme.
Q: Will you be touring to support it?
A: Most definitely. We have a pretty good network across the midwest that we built from touring to support the last record, and I fully intend to keep that momentum going with the release of this next record as well.