“Thank you for digging into the record and asking thoughtful questions. It means a lot.”
Listening to John Splithoff’s new record puts all of the many changes in his life on full display. A lot has shifted over the years – from the way he takes a stage to the sounds that make an album. What is central to him, though, is the way that he can string together all of those stories and styles to make a cohesive piece of art that is sensible, digestible, and sexy at times, but – more importantly – is him at its core.
Years pass, life evolves, people come, people go, and all sorts of unpredictable things go on day after day. Every aspect of those changes and adjustments can, and will, affect someone personally, but it can also affect them artistically and sonically if they are a creative-minded musician like Splithoff. It works for him, though. This new album, Far From Here, is his best yet, and that is simply because he has accepted that the pallette of memories and moments he could paint with are his most notable asset, even if he’s using a guitar and a pen as opposed to an easel and a brush.
Splithoff is an evocative, intimate performer with a soulful and unshakable indie rock catalog that is never going to stop growing alongside him. His blank canvas is found within the ‘record’ button and then reimagined on stage. He is an artist that is thoughtful and original, and who was able to find some time to talk with The Aquarian.
The album is here and tour is right around the corner. How have rehearsals for the tour been going, and what are you the most excited about? I know fans are just excited that these songs are going to be coming to life on stage for them in general!
You’re telling me! I’ve been living with this record for a long time. I’ve been working on this album for a long time, too. This is my first headlining tour with a band in years, because I was coming out of COVID and doing the solo tour for the last couple years. I love those shows. I love those tours so much, but to have a band of musicians who are just outstanding and bring these songs to life in a different way has been super inspiring. We had just two days of rehearsal and it was a lot of music to get through. Honestly, the last time I had a full band tour, I had a lot less music and it was more about, ‘Ok, how do we fill a 90 minute set?’ Whereas now it’s like, ‘How do we whittle this down to 90 minutes? What songs don’t we play?’ I think that’s been one of the challenges now with having more of an eclectic catalog to choose songs from. I’m so excited for it, though, and to hear how they sound and make them great. We have 25 shows to try things out and I couldn’t be more excited for it.
I do love how robust this era has been in terms of the musical dynamics. I think that a lot of the songs off of Far From Here, and especially a lot of the singles, will translate well in front of an audience and capture the intended energy. I’m stoked for you.
Thank you. Yeah, it was crazy to just try different things with different songs in rehearsal and also revisit some of the old arrangements that we had with the band. It’s just such a versatile set. It goes to so many different placees. There are a lot of intimate singer-songwriter moments where we’re singing an acoustic song on the acoustic guitar while sitting on stools, but then there are songs that feel like the arrangement could fill an arena. It’s just awesome and goes to a lot of different places, and that is super satisfying for me.
I can only imagine what that’s like. These songs are you – your heart, mind, and soul on paper, in song, and in harmony. I’m curious: because a lot of these songs have such a personable angle, not just in how you create them, but in what you’re writing about it, how do you go about deciding what songs get released as singles? How did you know that great songs like “Plateau” and “Tangled” are going to set a good stage for the record?
That is the intention of it: set the tone. There are different songs that go to different places on the record. Like “Plateau,” “Same Page” has the desert feel to it, which I think was a big part of moving from New York City out to LA and everything that went into that. I wanted to release two songs at a time just for the sake of getting more music out before the tour starts, and I think “Plateau” and “Same Page” go hand-in-hand together, so we did that.
Releasing “Tangled” was interesting, because it was the last song to be included on the record. I just wanted to include something that you didn’t really need to know the story of the record or the other music in order to ‘get’ it. It just felt like a nice ‘hello!’ after not releasing music for a bit, so we released that. And then “Magenta” was just a nice partner for that to just showcase a little bit more about how the rest of the record sounds. I feel like “Magenta” is a unique sounding song, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what would be the best song to go with “Tangled,” so I ended up just choosing that one.
I’m most excited for the songs on this record that are the non-singles, honestly, and the songs that are even more personal to me like “Glacier,” “Kyoto Snow,” “Oh Betty,” “City Days.” Some of those songs I am just so excited about.
“Kyoto Snow” is so heartfelt and special. I really hope that it gets to be played on stage, because I think everyone is going to have such a different perspective on why they hold that one close to them.
Thank you. I feel like with that one and “Glacier” were big goals for me as a musician and a writer. With this record, that was to branch out harmoniously with what I write. I feel like years ago when I was signed to a label, I wrote a lot less songs. I was just trying to figure out what clicks with writing a song that has two to four chords in it, like “Sing to You.” I’m proud of that song from a writing standpoint, but it does have like two chords, and then there’s a bridge that has three chords in it; whereas “Kyoto” and “Glacier” and a couple other songs of the record just really go places with the structure of the chords. I feel like where it goes musically evokes emotion and that is where it takes you. I don’t know exactly, I’m just proud of how that all came together for this record. I feel like it’s just been a step up for me as a songwriter and a musician to branch out with what I write.
Again, with just writing a lot over the years and getting older and trying to figure out what I want to listen to takes a minute, you know? Moving out to Los Angeles… there’s just been so much movement and change for me in the last couple years. I remember going to a lot of different events out here. I’m a pretty introverted person, and after talking with a lot of different people and meeting people, I just remember getting in my car, putting on headphones afterwards, and going home and being like, “I want to decompress and listen to something that just like lowers my blood pressure a little bit. What do I listen to?” That’s how I started to write “Maroon.” A lot of this record is just pretty chill for me, and I think working on it brought me a lot of peace, and that’s what I was aiming to do with the writing of this record: just relax [Laughs].
You did what you needed to do at that moment, and it’s wonderful to be able to put music out that is gonna be important to someone, but it has to be important to you first.
Totally. As a songwriter, and for people who release music and work on music as their craft, you go through so many ups and downs with it, especially if you are really dedicated to making it something special. There’s always that initial moment of creating the song or writing it where you have so much inspiration. It’s the kind of thing that will make you wake up after you’ve fallen asleep at three in the morning. You’ll still wake up at 7:00 a.m. just because you’re so excited about it. Then you could either get it done very fast, or you can go through the different stages of trying to figure it out. Before you know it, months have gone by, and maybe that initial spark has died down a little bit, and then you work on other music and you’re trying to figure out how you feel about that and you go through the same thing, but then you come back to it eventually that.
The inspiration for something you work on ebbs and flows throughout the process, and so I’m really proud of the fact that this whole time I’ve really been feeling good about these songs. I feel like a lot of times when it comes to release date, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I know. Don’t gotta worry about that.” This time, I’m like, “No, I feel good about this still. I want to talk about it.” I feel like that’s been different than things I’ve worked on in the past where I’m just like, “This is old news to me.” This still feels really fresh.
Wow. You’ve had a bit of a cathartic experience this time around, and it was a long experience. At what point in that process did you decide on Far From Here being the title of the album?
I had a couple of these songs in the works prior to moving out to LA. “Plateau” was kind of like an odd one out. I had the beginnings of the “Same Page,” and, again, “Plateau” and “Same Page” just kind of felt like they lived in the same world. I had “Betty,” “Magenta,” and “City Days” written, and I think I just had the outline of some other songs done, but there wasn’t really a connecting theme. Then one of the first songs I wrote out here was “Far From Here,” with my buddies Chris and Jesse – like.minds is their producer name. We worked a lot together on my last record All In. I remember just sitting there with them, writing, arriving at that title, “Far From Here,” and getting the idea of like, “Oh, that is the theme,” or that all of it has to deal with time and place. That could kind of connect all of these songs that I have, and that also made me want to write some more songs that had to do with location-based titles or songs that just hold significant memories to my story regarding places I’ve been and traveled to. Far From Here just tied it all together for me.
I love that. The relationships we have with people and art, but also with time and place, is a major part of our consciousness and how we go about our life. I often think about how some memories feel like yesterday and other memories feel like 10 years ago, and sometimes the one that feels like yesterday might actually be the one from 10 years ago. Listening to these songs kind of hearkens back to that, and it reminds of that fact that where I am today is because of one of those moments for better or for worse.
Oh, yeah? Thank you. Far From Here is kind of the escapist mentality I had of moving out of New York and trying to find something somewhere else. For me, there’s just been so much travel the last couple years of touring. I toured, or I have been touring, with jazz trumpet player Chris Botti, and he basically tours year round. It’s been quite an experience to go to all these places I’ve never been to before. A lot of this record was worked on in hotel rooms because of that, which is why it took a long time for me to get it to the finish line. I just think between going to all these different places and also just being nostalgic for things in the past is what I was reflecting on.
Even “Betty” is a song that is basically a tribute to my car from college, which was a 1999 Buick Century that I named Betty. It had a bench seat in the front so you could seat three people there. It drove like a boat. That song was basically me just reflecting on my time in Florida with that car. I went to the University of Miami and I remember going up and down 95 going to gigs at clubs and driving my Buick, Betty, and I just wanted to write something that felt breezy and took me back there, so I did.
I love the word breezy. In my notes, I wrote that “Betty” is pretty and cinematic in its musicality, and your inspiration for it kind of suits that. You also mentioned Chris Botti. He’s one of my favorite people that I’ve spoken with in the last year. He is someone that – on stage and off – brings such personality and genuine appreciation for music and art and life to everything he does. To work with someone like that, and then be able to kind of interpret that in your own way through your own work, is probably so inspiring.
Absolutely. Getting to work with him in the studio was amazing, and it was one of the first things I did when I moved out here to LA. I remember unpacking moving boxes when I got a text from him being like, “I’m recording my record out there in August, would you wanna be a part of it?” And I said, “Yes!” I had my studio set up, so the first thing I did was make a demo of my song “Paris,” which was something I had laying around since college. I sent it to him and he dug it. The next thing you know, we were in the studio in Santa Monica with legends. It was crazy for me to be in the studio with like 14 other people at once, and a lot of musicians who I loved listening to growing up, like Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, and David Foster produced his records. Getting to work with him and cut vocals with him was an experience. It was a very different environment for making music that probably goes back to how records were made in a conventional sense basically up until the last 10 years; a bunch of people in a studio – a beautiful studio – and making decisions together in a different way. I’m so used to just working on my music by myself or with one or two other people, so the flow of things happens pretty quickly. I know it was a different experience, but it was so cool, so having Chris be on this record after learning from him and touring with him is really special to me.
JOHN’S NEW ALBUM, FAR FROM HERE, IS OUT NOW WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO/STREAM MUSIC! FOR TICKETS TO HIS TOUR, CLICK HERE!
