Some things are just meant to be. Such is the case with indie rock newcomers John Louis & the Midwest. The collective formed at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana, out of a mutual love for making music, and includes singer and songwriter John Louis, lead guitarist Jason Boucouras, drummer Jarrod Bright and bassist Caleb Scott. Upon arriving at Anderson in the fall, they all began together as the backing band for Louis and his solo project. Over the next several months, Louis wrote for an EP, and before long, his first solo effort, an EP entitled Catalyst, was unleashed as a download on NoiseTrade. Recorded almost entirely in a dorm, the debut release from John Louis made him realize that it’d be best for his “backing musicians” to join him full-time, thus creating “The Midwest” of his band’s name. Since releasing Catalyst back in July, the group has finished the writing process for a full-length and is now ready to head into the studio in January to record it. The quartet has enlisted the help of their tightly-knit fanbase via the crowd-sourcing venue of Kickstarter, and aims to raise $3000 by the middle of December. I recently got the chance to sit down with them and discuss their varying backgrounds, how their environment affects them as musicians, and their future plans after recording and releasing a full-length. Before I dive into the substance of this though, feel free to get acquainted with what the band sounds like in this live acoustic video. This song will be the album opener for their full-length debut.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meFNz90StNM[/youtube]

TUNED UP: You guys are currently funding a Kickstarter for your debut full-length album. There you mention that the writing process is completely finished. Now all that’s left is brushing up on things and then going into the studio to track everything. Talk to me a little bit about how that process went, as compared to the last time, when you wrote for Catalyst.

JOHN: Last time with Catalyst, I would write a song, and if the guys wanted to play it, we’d play it, and if the answer was no, we didn’t. Everything was just random, and the songs weren’t really coherent genre-wise. We basically just did the ones that were fun.

JASON: John’s the songwriter, so he would write the skeleton of a song, have me write guitar parts for it, and then normally talk through [the song structure] with Jarrod. We played these songs together as a band two or three times out of the entirety of the year. That was the writing process. For the recording, Jarrod went home, tracked all the drums, and brought it back to Anderson. Then the rest of us recorded our parts throughout the following semester. We literally took the entire semester to track a six-song EP. Essentially we did it in the most inefficient way possible, and while it was fun, we don’t ever want to do that again. Right off the bat we knew that we were ready to do things professionally. That’s when we got the idea to do our next album in the studio and have all the songs written previously.

JOHN: This time around we did things differently. Over the summer I wrote all the songs, but that’s about the only thing that stayed the same. I got the chance to work with Mike Mains; in fact, he’s been my songwriting teacher for the past few months. He’s helped me perfect what I’d been doing before, and he works with me on lyrical content specifically. Our big mistake last year was that we didn’t play anything live before recording. This year we practice every week, we’ve played a lot of shows, and we know the songs right now, before going into record. We’ve even gotten a good response from much of the new stuff from everyone who’s come to our shows. People are really excited about the album, and we are too.

JASON: When John came back this fall and told me that he’d written a lot of songs this summer, I obviously wanted to hear them. So we started jamming out, and I’d just pick up my guitar and work on stuff. I was just blown away at the progression and how much more solid these felt right away, even before we heard them in the full band.

Do you think you’ll keep this same process going after you record this full-length and begin work on a follow-up, or are you already planning on changing things?

JOHN: In the future, I’d like for the writing process to be more involved. This time I really just picked the best ones that I’ve been working on, and we put a lot of work into those ones. Instead I’d like to take time and sit down with everyone to hash things out, and have the whole band be in on the decision-making process of which songs to record.

As I mentioned in my introduction, your new album is being funded on Kickstarter. Nowadays, the crowd-sourcing route is always a good one, especially when first starting out. What made you decide Kickstarter over other crowd-sourcing sites?

JOHN: We initially chose Kickstarter because it was the most professional site – it’s been around for the longest and so it looks the best because they’ve had the most time to perfect it. Also, it’s the only crowd-funding site where if you don’t meet your goal, you don’t get any of the donations, so there’s a greater sense of urgency about it.

JASON: That was the theory in why we wanted to go through Kickstarter, but then we started running into problems, mostly due to the payment service that they use. Because of this, we actually almost switched over to IndieGoGo, which none of us were necessarily happy about since IndieGoGo has a notably lower rate of success.

JOHN: Fortunately, it finally went through. We probably could have launched the campaign earlier though.

JASON: We were glad that it we were able to use Kickstarter. I just really wish they would use a different payment service other than Amazon Payments, because that was a nightmare for us.

Well I’m glad that it worked out. The next thing I wanted to ask was about the music scene here in Anderson and how it compares to your respective hometowns. How does the Anderson environment differ?

CALEB: At this point Anderson is pretty dominated by female singer-songwriters. I don’t think it has been in the past necessarily, but right now that’s where it’s at. There are plenty of people who like that, but personally I think I’d like a little bit more eclecticism. The other thing is that not many people here on campus seem to want to show up to anything, even if a show is on campus and it’s free.

JASON: It’s pretty much the same crowd that supports every musical artist, and while we’re not ungrateful, it can be a little discouraging at times. In terms of music, it feels like we’re the only “indie rock” band here in Anderson. That being said, we are really grateful that we get to be a part of such a great community here, because there are so many great artists right now. For instance, our friends in Doktra kick some math rock butt. Then you have Kristen Bennett, Elle Michelle, Bailey McBroom, and I could go on.

CALEB: There are also a lot of guys who play for all these singer-songwriters. I’ve ended up playing for a lot of artists other than John because there’s such a demand for bass players, and it’s always fun meeting other musicians. I’m glad that I’m able to have this learning experience in college because I most definitely did not have it in high school.

JARROD: Back home for me, I was friends with a decent amount of jazz players who played at bars, but that was pretty much it when it came to my music scene, so coming here was really nice.

JASON: I came from a really small high school, and this is not me trying to be cocky, but I was one of the better musicians there, so I didn’t really have motivation to practice because I had no competition. Then I came here and realized how many people were better musicians than I was. Honestly I really enjoy having people to look up to and thinking about what I can take away from what they’re doing. I can’t stress enough that Anderson has an amazing music community, and we’re super happy to be a part of it.

JOHN: For me, in my high school, there were a lot of people in bands, but nobody ever played live shows. If you wanted to be involved in something, you really had to make it [happen] yourself. When I came here, writing music and finding people to play was not difficult at all. I mean, right when I moved in, there was my roommate who plays lead guitar for us and the two dudes across the hall that play drums and bass. It wasn’t difficult to find people, and I wouldn’t trade this environment we have for anything.

It’s a given that different people will have different inspirations musically and bands that they draw their influence from. What does that look like for you guys as a whole?

JOHN: Much of the influence for me comes from Mike Mains & the Branches; it’s fun music that I want to listen to. I wanted to write songs like that, so I tried writing more catchy and upbeat stuff. Then growing up I listened to a lot of Relient K, Switchfoot; any rock music that’s fun and has purpose.

JASON: One thing about our band is that we all have very different influences. My current favorite band is Circa Survive, so I listen to them a lot, along with Manchester Orchestra, and groups like that. I’ve always admired somebody that gets up on stage and rips a massive solo, but the more I started really listening to guitar, the more I grew to admire the slower, more melodic parts. That’s really the biggest thing I took from some of my influences. I strive to write guitar parts that are catchy and that people can sing out loud to.

JARROD: With drums, my main goal is to play what I think the song calls for, but at the same time I like to keep it a little interesting, so specifically, I think I pull a lot from Jonathan Thomas, the drummer from Ascend the Hill, and Luke Holland from The Word Alive, which are kind of just opposite ends of the spectrum. Needless to say, I get my inspiration from wherever I can pull it from.

CALEB: I’m the oddball in the group. I grew up listening to ’60s and ’70s music, pretty much exclusively; the Beatles are my favorite band. Some of my favorite bass players are James Jamerson of Motown and Nathan Watts, Stevie Wonder’s bass player, and those guys definitely affect my tone. There’s all kinds of different music that I listen to so I’m pulling tricks from wherever I can, but I was always much more into the older school stuff, and that’s still what I listen to now.

You guys are going out on the road this summer in support of the full-length. Could you expand a little on those plans?

JOHN: We have a loose plan right now that will most likely change. It may end up looking a little more localized than it currently is, but we’ll start up here in Indiana and move over through Ohio, hitting Akron and going down through Columbus and Cincinnati, then through Kentucky, and to Nashville, before scooting along the east coast – wherever I have family that we can stay with. We’d end in Jacksonville, Florida, where I currently live. That’s the basic plan, but it’s definitely subject to change. There’s talk of adding Chicago to the bill or of even just taking more of a circular route.

JASON: As far as the idea behind touring, we really just want to go play for people that have no idea who we are. Our goal is to go play for those people and show them what we’re made of and hopefully win over some new fans, in addition to the friends we have already here in Anderson that know our music and love it.

Lastly, what has been your biggest takeaway of this writing process, and what are you most looking forward to as all of this work begins to come to fruition?

JASON: We learned a lot, not just on how to make a record, but also what works musically and what doesn’t. With Catalyst we really learned how to more-effectively write a record, and essentially what you’re hearing is us growing as musicians.

JOHN: As far as lyrical content, like I said, I’ve been taking songwriting lessons with Mike Mains, so I tend to cater to his kind of style, but one of the things he taught me was to look at stuff that other people do that work. I’ve been looking at lyrics from bands like Civilian, even folk groups like Saintseneca, stuff that is just lyrically challenging. Every song is a place where I’ve been, either emotionally or physically in some cases, and it’s a collection of stories. Everything has something different to relate to, but it all flows in the same kind of vein. There’s definitely a much better sense of consistency on this album than there was on the EP.

JASON: Overall we feel like it’s the best material that we’ve ever worked on. Now we just need to track it, and trust me: we’re incredibly excited to share it with people other than ourselves and those that come to our shows. We’re sitting on something that we’re incredibly proud of and we’re ready to go show that to as many people as possible.

 

We wanted to introduce John Louis & the Midwest to you because we think you’ll like their music. After all, who doesn’t enjoy feel-good indie rock? If you really love what you hear and would like to contribute towards the band’s Kickstarter campaign, you can follow this link. Either way, keep an eye out for this up and coming band, as there is certainly much more on the way from them.

John Louis & the Midwest on Facebook | @JohnLouisMusic on Twitter