Jordan Lewis premieres video for “Scared New World” – interview

Hailing from Long Island, 29 year old Jordan Lewis is a singer, guitar-player, songwriter and producer and already has quite the musical resume. Playing in bands from the age of 11, Jordan also later found himself writing and performing with a pop band who were opening for Kendrick Lamar.  After moving to LA in 2013, he bean engineering for legendary production team of The-Dream and Tricky Stewart (Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Rihanna).  Going from strength to strength, Jordan was introduced to Travis Scott, going on to work as his personal engineer, as well as having a hand in creating a string of hits with the likes of Drake, Miguel and Kanye West.

Fast forward to the present and Jordan has now got his sights set on his own musical path.  We caught up with him to find out more about his music and we’re psyched to be premiering his brand new video for his latest single release, “Scared New World” – check it out below:

Hey Jordan, how’s it going? Do you want to tell our readers a little bit about you and your sound?

Hey everyone, thanks for having me here. I’m from Long Island originally but I currently live in LA. It’s hard for me to really describe my sound. I don’t try to make anything that fits into a genre so everything kind of comes out different each time. I always think something is bad if I think it sounds too much like any one particular thing, so my music tends to be a really messy mixture of a lot of things. It’s obviously music made in a modern way, but I definitely don’t think it’s trying to be contemporary.

 

Who would you say are your main musical influences?

I’ve been influenced by so many different people at different points in my life and I think they’ve all shaped the kind of music I wound up making. I never really said to myself, “Hey, you have to make this kind of music, so you should be looking to these artists”. It’s kind of like, whatever I’m feeling that week is going to end up influencing the music I write. I think in general, I would say that David Bowie is a huge influence on my conception of what a great artist can do if they totally dedicate themselves. His ability to be himself in so many different genres as well as being an amazing character actor is really inspiring to me. I would say my two biggest influences as a guitar player are Jimi Hendrix and the post-rock movement as a whole. I was obsessed with the Explosions In The Sky for a while and I think I took a lot from them on melody construction and mood. Lyrically, I really admire people like Rivers Cuomo and Hank Williams. I want my lyrics to be as raw as possible and I think they both found different ways of achieving that although they are obviously very different. In terms of production I would say someone like Brian Eno or Brendan O’Brien are my biggest influences. I’m also in awe of King Crimson.

 

You recently released your project’s second single, “Scared New World”, what’s the story behind it?

I was really fortunate to be able to work with my childhood hero, Brendan O’Brien on this one. I had always kind of idolized him as a kid, and after leaving engineering, I was completely shocked that I was given the opportunity to work with him, let alone feel validated by him. I mean what I kind of set out to do in the first place was to see if I could evoke the same feelings I got from listening to the records he produced with a different means of production. I think he picked up on that pretty quickly. Anyways, I had started the beat with the producer, Jordan Ware, at my studio a few weeks before I showed it to Brendan. Jordan is an amazing producer in his own right and when I’m working with him I am able to find this kind of pocket that I can’t find anywhere else. I brought the beat to Brendan and we spent almost three days straight on writing the song and finishing it. It was the second song we ever wrote together. It didn’t really change too much after that. I remember I was feeling really down at the time about myself and I think you can hear that in the song.

 

Can you tell us about the music video for “Scared New World?

My favorite part of making music videos is coming up with a character to play. I’ve tried doing the generic kind of “mood” video but I’ve found that I can’t really get into a project unless I have a very specific character in mind. In general I find the whole process of making a video to be an antidote to the way I tend to write music, which is often very isolating and uncomfortable. Making videos is very freeing to me because I get to manage a crew and I am not totally responsible for the technical aspects of it. I can kind of just focus on how I want it to turn out and my performance. This particular video is an origin story for the character I played in my last video, Morning Pills. The idea for it was developed with the director, Peter Lansworth, who also shot my first two videos. We shot it over the course of a two weekends with a skeleton crew, as my budgets tend to require.

Was there a pivotal moment in your career that made you realize that you wanted to take your own path in the music industry?

You know, it’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I kind of realized it when I was on tour with Travis and Rihanna. I would be standing next to the stage every night watching them and I kept thinking how much I missed performing. Up until I moved to LA to become an engineer, I had been constantly performing. I frankly thought I would never do it again, but as I started to become more and more unhappy as an engineer I realized that it was what I was missing. Don’t get me wrong, engineering for people as talented and prolific as Travis or The-Dream was fascinating and rewarding in it’s own way, but I was kind of dying inside. I got to this point where I was so depressed and hopeless feeling that I made a promise to myself that I would either go for it as an artist or give up entirely on music.

How does it feel to go from working on other artists’ music to your own?

It feels amazing but it can also be a difficult to wrap my head around at times. A big goal of mine when I set out to do this was to make music that was the complete philosophical opposite of what I was making with other people. I thought the music industry was full of shit and I was tired of seeing artists putting out music that they didn’t truly make and then slapped their names on. That’s not what I grew up admiring and that wasn’t my idea of what an artist was before I moved to LA. I want my music to be mine and no one else’s. I don’t like correcting too many mistakes or polishing things to the point of being unrecognizable. I want my music to be mine, flaws and all. That’s a big reason why I do almost everything on my own records – write, produce, mix, sing, engineer, you name it. I want to make music that no one else could make, for better or for worse.

 

What would be your dream tour line up?

Oooo, that’s a tough one. I mean, I would love to go on tour with Denzel Curry, I think that would be so much fun. Maybe I could open, then Denzel Curry, followed by Rage Against The Machine. That would be a good show.

 

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