Prior to attending weekend two of the Austin City Limits festival, I was introduced to the music of the Texas duo Leon III. I was blown away by the vibrant atmosphere of their music, and I knew I had to see them open up Sunday at ACL. After their performance, I got an opportunity to talk with the band about their new album, songwriting, and their first time playing ACL. Their album Something Is Trying To Change My Mind is out now. Here is my full interview with Andy Stepanian and Mason Brent:
Zachary: First of all, congratulations on the new album. I was curious, when you go to tackle a new album, how do you start with the process of writing songs?
Andy Stepanian: So, it all starts with me. I write the frames of the songs like a Christmas tree. I put up the tree. I put it in the stand. It’s probably leaning over a bit, but I go to everybody like “Here’s my Christmas tree”. Mason, in particular, is like “Why don’t we put these lights on it, this color lights, these ornaments, this star, popcorn.” Sometimes it’s “Oh, now it looks awful, and we got to take all that off.” It’s like a collaborative thing. It starts with a core that I create and send to Mason, and then it takes on a life of its own from there depending on who’s playing on it, and who is producing it.
Zachary: Did you do anything differently when you were making your third album compared to your previous two?
Andy: We did. We tried to make it in this particular way, and we kind of utterly failed. We went back to doing it with a big live band of different people with some we’d used and some we hadn’t used in the past.
Mason Brent: We included a couple of the guys who play basically each and every live show with us. Whereas before that, the duo of us was completely different than the live group, so we integrated the two which is very appropriate because the guys we play with, particularly on bass and drums, don’t miss a show. They’re always available to do a show or tour, so it helps you’re starting with a tight unit and then you just have to play with each other and the recording just goes that much easier.
Zachary: Speaking of people you’ve worked with when you were crafting these albums, I know people like William Tyler have been a part of your entourage almost. How do those collaborations form? How do you link up to create music with them?
Andy: Most of those kind of things like William came through our producer. He’s a really good friend of ours, and he knows a lot of these guys from Nashville that are kind of indie rock royalty guys like Brian Kotzur from the Silver Jews or Paul Niehaus who has played with Calexico for a while. We were introduced to a lot of people that we became friends with, and then ultimately we’re like “Oh, come play on this record for us. Matt Pence from Centro-matic is a guy who I had met a couple times and he was like my favorite drummer ever. We brought him in on the last record. Whoever you want to be around, that’s the best way to do things. Friends.
Zachary: I really liked how your albums go seamlessly or cohesively track-to-track especially with your new album. I really like how the tracks flow into each other. I know it’s a hard process to curate the album in that way. I was curious how that process goes down when you are finally piecing all the tracks together?
Mason: There’s all sorts of ways to try to get it right. That’s a lot of creative decisions in and of themselves. Particularly on this last album when we sagged more songs together, you have to make that transition work. Some of that’s through editing, and a lot of it is just through composition.
Andy: We’ll play out when we’re recording. We will play long intros and long outros that may end up getting cut, but we will mess around with different thematic things. Ultimately you’ll find these common threads that will link these songs together. That’s really fun. It’s a fun thing to do. We’re really good at intros and outros.
Zachary: Something that’s really interesting about your sound is how you fuse Americana and some folk with psychedelic rock. How would you specifically genrefy yourself as a band?
Mason: I think you’d definitely have to start with rock. We used to have a lot of Americana and Alt-Country in our previous band, and there’s a smidge left, but this is way more rock than we’ve been in a lot of years
Andy: We’re sort of a song-based band first and foremost. We’re trying to write good songs and let those songs kind of do whatever they want to do without trying to be anything. Of course, you take your influences into account, and they end up in the music one way or another, but we’re not like “Oh, we’re gonna make a Psychedelic Rock record,” or “We’re gonna make this record or that record.” Just the songs do what they want to do and you go from there.
Zachary: Speaking on influences, who would you say some of your influences are when you are making music?
Andy: We both really like Danzig and Megadeth as well as reggae, Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, and Steely Dan. It’s just a huge spectrum of things that we’re into and listen to. In some ways, all that stuff makes it into this melting pot of what we’re trying to do or what we do when we’re making up and recording the songs. Mason may have been listening to a lot of Megadeth, so you get a lot of palm mutes and big guitar stuff. That sort of juxtaposes with me. I have been listening to a lot of jazz, so I’m doing something jazzy and he’s playing metal over it.
That leads to what I think Leon III is.
Zachary: Every single one of those artists that you mentioned, when they perform live, it’s very jam oriented. It’s just kind of letting the music speak and seeing where it leads you, which I think really coincides with your music. When you’re on stage, do you just like sometimes just let it rip and see where the music takes you?
Andy: I think the live show rocks way more than the album. We are interested in rocking it. The music moves a lot in the live show.
Mason: Most of the songs, even the live versions, are fairly structured, but within that structure, there is definitely improvisation. I usually don’t play the same thing twice over the same solo part.
Zachary: Speaking of shows, how does it feel to be playing at ACL and opening up the Sunday slot with some great music?
Mason: Pretty awesome when it’s 73 degree and you got the breeze, seriously
Andy: It’s an honor to be here. Everyone’s been fantastic. They make you feel really special and cool. It’s a lovely day and a lovely setting. It’s one of the more prestigious music festivals, so of course, it feels awesome.
Zachary: I got one more for you. It is our KTXT signature question. We ask this to every single artist we interview. If you were to soundtrack or score a movie that already exists, what would that be?
Andy: I’m just gonna go with my gut. My guts says something that’s Quentin Tarantino-ish. So it is kind of all over the place. It has these big weird moments, but also some real roots in classic rock and roll or even a Spaghetti Western kind of soundtrack. Something like that sort of Django Unchained. I think that would be fun for us to unleash. A real mosaic of images.
Mason: I’m going to go with sort of the opposite. I have a large affection for classic rock. Doing a biopic on something like Oliver Stone’ The Doors. Being able to shape what you hear in that from the band. That would be fun.
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