An Interview with Ellis Ludwig-leone from San Fermin [interview]

With butterflies flitting wildly in my stomach, I recently had the honor and pleasure of having a phone chat with Ellis Ludwig-Leone, mastermind bandleader of New York’s up-and-coming chamber pop sensation San Fermin. San Fermin has been puzzling and fascinating me since their first show ever — a sold out headlining spot at Pianos back in December. You’ve probably heard “Sonsick” (an obvious choice for our ‘Best of 2013 (So Far)’ playlist), and, if you’re like me, you immediately went and shared it with everyone you know. Months later, with a few more shows under their belt (and no more sheet music on stage!) San Fermin is finally approaching their highly anticipated album release. Tomorrow night (Wednesday July 16th), you’ll have the chance to see San Fermin at a Wild Honey Pie Presents showcase, so get excited with this sneak peek into what goes on in the mind of this young music wiz.

First of all, congratulations on all your success so far! Is there a release date for the rest of the album?

Yeah, September 17^th — it’s coming out on Downtown Records.

I’ve heard that it’s a concept album, a dialog between the male and female singers. What’s the story?

When I was writing it, I sort of realized that writing from the perspective of characters rather than just myself was really the way I needed to do it. Before I started this band, when I was writing songs, I would often just write them in this singer-songwriter kind of way, and I actually think that it’s tempting to try to say everything all at once when you’re writing from that perspective. Like “this is me, and this is what I need to say.“ And so, for this record, I thought the right deal is creating these two characters who can sort of voice different ways of thinking about the world and their own lives, and in a way, that was really helpful for me. So, loosely, the girl is slightly more cynical, and the guy is sort of more grandiose and maybe more hopeful. They just sort of talk themselves through this almost romance that never really happens. Really, more than a story, it’s just the concept of having these two people have a direct conversation about serious topics like romance. The idea was that there was a certain structure of just dialogue, but that really it should feel like a series of songs. I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘70s style total concept, though, not at all.

Sounds very cinematic!

Oh definitely, we’ve got a lot of strings, and my background is in classical music. I figure, what’s the point of a real band if you can’t create a larger arch to the whole story. I think the cinematic aspect probably covers that.

You mentioned your classical music background. Studying music at Yale, did you ever consider writing/composing for other artists?

Yeah, and I still do. Right now, I actually have a ballet that I’m finishing, which I’m writing for this dance company called Ballet Collective, and it’s a piano quintet (piano and string quartet). I’m writing it for this classical music group called Acme, and they’re totally great. So, I have a separate career writing concert music and writing for various artists, but the band is really for a certain kind of personal expression. The various other things that I do (commission chamber music, that kind of thing) are for a certain outlook that’s maybe a little more like what I studied in school.

So are there any collaboration possibilities that you’re hoping for in the future?

I’m not sure! You know, this ballet is kind of a big one, and I was actually hoping to work with this choreographer for almost a year now. The Acme ensemble, they’re just amazing players, so I’ve always wanted to write something for them. So, I’m pretty excited to be doing that, because I had been hoping to do something along those lines for a while. In regards to the band, I’m not totally sure about collaborating down the line yet. I think things are still so young and so early that we’re still meeting all our peers and possible future collaborators.

You get compared to The National and Dirty Projectors. How much have those two groups influenced you? Who are some of your musical role models?

I love both those bands, and it’s totally an honor to be compared to either. I think they’re both atypical groups that sound very specific with very successful sounds, and I think the Dirty Projectors were definitely a huge influence for me. The way they make pop music, David Longstreth is always changing things and sort of messing around with the vocal harmonies. There’s a certain aggression to how he writes the female vocals and how they’re treated that I think is totally brilliant. Then The National. They’re a band that I’ve listened to since I was younger, and they’re particularly good lyrically. So, those have definitely been influences. In terms of other influences, I think maybe one of the biggest early influences on this record was Sufjan Stevens. Records like Illinoise! are brilliant for how they take a sprawling, loosely connected concept album and use one concept to explore another different character. I also work as an assistant for this composer called Nico Muhly, who I think is just great. He’s a composer, but the way he treats his strings, the texture he makes — I really, really admire that. I also owe a pretty serious debt to probably Miles Davis, John Coltrane, sort of mid to late career, and some slightly earlier classical composers, ones like David Lang and John Adams. There’s not a ton of them on this record, but they’re definitely there for sure.

Have you had the chance recently to work on new material for San Fermin?

Yeah! I’ve been working, actually. I went away for two months right around February and March, to this place called MacDowell Colony. They give you a cabin and a miniature studio, and you can just work in New Hampshire. So, I went up there, and I wrote a rough draft of a new record. None of the songs are finished, but there’s a whole armature in place with songs and lyrics for a second record. The first album has been a long process of getting a record label, getting an agent, getting a manager, then putting a PR campaign in place. It’s definitely an exercise in patience since I really wanna put this stuff out in the world. It was great to start writing and working on that second record — enough time has passed that I sort of have more things to say, so we’ll probably work on that one next year, or try to put that out as soon as possible after the first record comes out.

Once you introduce the new music to the band, how much do they contribute to the compositions?

You know, that’s also just kind of changing now, because the band has sort of solidified a little more. The first record was pretty top down, though, and I wrote the whole thing. I had the written out notation of the whole thing before the people recording actually heard it. So, on the first record, it was done pretty much in a similar process to how a composer would have an ensemble play his music. Now, because the band feels more consistent and it’s a smaller group of the people who are more invested, the process has changed a little bit. For live versions of our songs, we do rework things here and there. I think what’s really exciting about the band is that you’re sharing the ideas with people that you care about and spend a lot of time with, and who you really trust as musicians. So, there’s something great about opening it up a little bit.

I know you guys have downsized a bit, but it’s still a pretty large group. How did you all come together?

It IS still a pretty large group. When you saw us at Pianos, I think we literally had 13 or 14 people on stage — it was completely insane. Now, we have 8, and that’s the smallest we can go. I put the group together really one by one: the first person who I knew would be in the band was the male singer, Allen. When I was writing these vocals lines, I definitely knew that he would be singing them, and there was a lot of back and forth. I’d send him mp3s from Canada, and he would send me back little recordings. That’s how I put the first really, really important piece in place. The rest was sort of word of mouth since I work with amazing musicians on a daily basis. In the touring band, there are a lot of new faces. The biggest change is that Rae Cassidy, who’s incredibly talented, took over female vocals since Jess and Holly, who recorded the album, play full time in Lucius. Over these past few shows, we’ve sort of figured out the best way to streamline and present the music — now everyone’s memorized their music, we look like a band as opposed to a big recital.

I think when I saw you guys at Pianos there was a lot of sheet music on the stage.

Oh, God, I know. It’s pretty embarrassing. It’s complicated music — all the brass and the string parts are at least. Nothing ever really repeats, which was one of my goals when I was writing it. The arrangement should be as forefront as possible, as important as a character in the music. In order to do that, you can’t ever really let them just hang out and play bass lines, so it was difficult. I was pretty impressed that everyone was able to memorize it. I’m really pleased about that, actually.

Sounds like it is a group compiled of people from all different places and parts of your musical life, but you identify as a Brooklyn band, right?

Yeah, I guess so. I’d say most people in the band live in Brooklyn, so I guess that’s why. I also live in Prospect Heights. It’s a funny amalgam — our guitarist was actually Allen’s guitar teacher, so it’s kind of a funny little group.

Do you guys have any band rituals or band traditions? Hang outs in the city?

Not yet really. Before big shows like our first Pianos show, Allen and I will go for a walk around the block to clear our heads a little bit. Each of the people in this band I have a different history with, but Allen certainly goes the furthest back. Our first concert we ever played together was in the dining hall of one of the residential colleges. It was a god awful show — me and him and a terrible PA, plus this cellist friend of mine who was playing with us. There’s a whole journey — San Fermin has moved pretty quickly, but the various other musical projects I had before this have had their own lives, so there’s a lot of hidden history here.

What’s on your agenda in the near future?  Touring, festivals?

Yeah! We have a few really exciting things lined up. We’re planning to release the second song from the record pretty soon and hope for a second music video as well. That should be happening before the close of summer. We’re also playing three shows this summer, one at Glasslands, one in Philadelphia and one in DC, but the big touring will happen in September and October. We’re playing Hopscotch and Pop Montreal, going on a West Coast tour, which will start in San Diego and go up to Vancouver, and we’ll continue touring into November as well. We’re also planning a lot of sessions over the summer, and then we’ll be doing a release show to support the album.

Do you have any advice to give? Things that you feel like you did right, or did wrong?

I’m excited about the way things seem to be going, but it’s also pretty humbling. We’ve gotten some press recently, but I don’t think a ton of people know about us yet. We’re just gonna get out there, play more shows and put out more songs, so I certainly don’t think that we’re in a place where advice from us is particularly useful just yet. The one thing I would say, though, is that I feel like the idea behind the album, and sort of the real driving force behind writing, has really just been to be honest about a particular time and place that I was in. I really wanted to try and capture a mixture of feelings that came with having just gotten out of college and feeling a little bit confused about where to go. This album is a very earnest and honest attempt to get to that place and to say those things. I wasn’t trying to make buzzy music, and that would be my only recommendation to other musicians. I think that people are always perceptive and they always know when something feels honest.

Here at the Wild Honey Pie we love to share what we’re been digging at the moment.  Is there one song you’ve been bumping recently?

I sort of go through these weird spurts where I won’t hear any new music for a long time, and then I’ll just buy everything I’ve been thinking I want to hear. I’ve been listening a lot to David Lang’s new record called Death Speaks. It has Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond singing lead vocals, then Bryce Dessner from The National, Nico Muhly and I wanna say Owen Palett. It’s a really great crew of people, and it’s an amazing record. I’ve been listening to that one song, “Step”, from the Vampire Weekend album a lot — I think it’s totally infectious — and this song called “Counting” by Autre Ne Veut. Then, there’s this woman called Violetness who I LOVE, and who’s doing a remix of “Sonsick” that we’re gonna put out pretty soon. She has an EP called Last Night In My Dreams I Was Talking To You.