Foto-© Rough Trade Records

Diese Woche erscheint For The First Time, Again, das mit Spannung erwartete Debütalbum des US-amerikanischen Newcomers Tyler Ballgame bei Rough Trade Records. Zwölf Songs, inspiriert von Songwriting-Größen der Sechziger und Siebziger Jahre, verwurzelt in Classic Rock, Indie und Americana.

Ballgames markante Stimme und die eingängigen, nostalgischen Melodien wirken vertraut und neu zugleich. Mit seinen Songs erzählt er Geschichten, die nun auf diesem Album verewigt wurden. Insbesondere sein Umzug von Rhode Island nach Los Angeles hat das Album inspiriert. So wagte sich Ballgame in eine ganz neue Stadt, ließ Familie und Freund*innen zurück. Doch es zeigte sich, dass es sich durchaus lohnen kann, Risiken einzugehen. In Los Angeles fand er eine Gemeinschaft und traf dort auch auf die Produzenten seines Albums, Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Miley Cyrus, Angie McMahon) und Ryan Pollie (Los Angeles Police Department).

Seinen ersten Auftritt in Deutschland hatte Ballgame im September letzten Jahres auf dem Reeeperbahn Festival. Wir haben ihn kurz davor zum Interview getroffen und konnten mit ihm über das bevorstehende Debütalbum, vor allem aber über seine musikalische Reise sprechen.

Thank you so much for speaking to me today! I am very curious to hear about your journey in music. How did you find your individual sound, and which artists have shaped you on your way there?
I think first and foremost, and it’s like the most boring answer ever: it’s the Beatles! I’ve been obsessed with the Beatles since I was a kid, and everything I do, I relate to: Oh, did the Beatles do that?
And then obviously a lot of like 60s and 70s songwriting, just like career songwriters, like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, that type of artist. So, that’s the way I look at songs, as little pieces. My band and I play like compositions, you know what I mean? Like little poems or something. So, that’s how we shape our style and sound.

I also heard you talk about wearing different kind of “masks” to figure out what would suit you, and to figure out your sound. What were the different kind of masks you were wearing to get to where you are?
For the Tyler Ballgame Project, there’s this jeans jacket that I would like to put on and put the sunglasses on in my producer [Jonathan] Rado’s studio. And we would do vocals, and I would imagine I was at Glastonbury on stage in the rain or something. I would sing like Elvis or someone, sing like the ultimate front person, you know? Jim Morrison, Elvis, Harry Nilsson, Roy Orbison, these types of great tenor voices. Not just singing flat tone, like I had previously. A more supported singing, like theater singing, that just let me be more expressive. Almost like I’m a character in a musical, like a character actor where you can show more of yourself because it’s not really you up there.

You already spoke a little bit about being in the studio with your producer, I’m curious to hear more about the process before a song is ready to be recorded. How do you usually approach the writing process? Do you do you prefer to write by yourself or with other people? And what instrument do you start writing songs on?
I think it varies. In the last year and a half, I’ve probably written four or five days a week with co-writers in LA, because there’s such a vibrant pop co-writing scene. So, it has really changed within the last year. But I think the best stuff comes from the subconscious, just when I would start on guitar. That’s where I feel the most fluent. I’ll just start strumming, start feeling something and don’t think about it. Don’t judge myself, I just get into this state of nothingness, this mindless state where I just babble.
And then I’ll go back and listen. What was I trying to say? To find which words fit regardless of whether it means something. I want to hear phonetically how the mouth sounds. How I was making it fit in rhythmically with what I was playing. Usually that ends up meaning something more down the line than if I sat down and was like: “Joey went to the store. Joey felt sad”, you know.

In some previous interviews you talked about that, in the past, you were trying to be really clever with your writing. Until you realized that it is actually more about people listening to what you write and about entertaining people. Can you talk a little bit more about that? And how did you come to that realization?
Yeah, well, I think from failing. And just from not understanding what exchange was actually happening. I think for a certain type of listener, they are looking exactly for that. Like how obscure can this song be? How much of a mystery, how complex and opaque can this song and composition be? I used to be like that because I went to jazz school. So, a lot of that, it’s the heads trying to make the craziest changes. You can get in a little bit of a self-aggrandizing mode, which is just not really it. I mean, that’s cool if people want to do that. I am not judging. But for me, I found that as soon as I wrote things that were very simple, there’s a genius in simplicity.

You used to play in some cover bands, right? How has that background of having live music experience helped you with your music and your writing today?

It’s funny, because I was really bummed to be in a cover band for a long time. It was really fun to play the shows. But for them to be my only musical thing, and to think I’m supposed to be this musician and songwriter, but I’m playing Van Morrison songs for people, who don’t want to hear them…I think it was great, because we learned to play between two and three hundred songs from the sixties and seventies from memory. So, nowadays when I go into that state of nothingness, when I go to write, I’m pulling from three hundred of the best songs I’ve ever written. I studied them over and over.
I also learned a lot about how to control a room of people, who maybe don’t want you to be there and do what you’re doing. Having the confidence to be like, you should look up from your shrimp scampi and watch me sing this Dido song, rather than talk to your friend next to you. (laughs)

You supported Shakey Graves on the tour earlier this year, and you have some more support shows for the Head And The Heart coming up. How do you approach being a support act for someone? Is it more of a challenge because people are not familiar with the music? Or a good opportunity because people don’t come in with any expectations?
I think I’m kind of reveling in that challenge right now. The Shakey Graves crowds and fan base was the perfect landing ground for our music, where we left the stage every night to standing ovations, and we were like, oh no, we’re the opener! But I mean, they have an amazing show. So, they weren’t worried about being upstaged or anything. I love that state of no judgment coming in, it’s very beautiful. That kind of blank slate of, they don’t know me and here I am on stage! I get thirty minutes of their attention. To win people over like that is a really beautiful journey. Maybe they’re talking in the first couple songs, but we’ve learned to craft our set to kind of wrangle them and then have them. So that’s been a really fun dialogue with this broader consciousness too, because it’s not just individual people, you kind of feel the spirit of the room move. And you just don’t read about artists talking about that too much. You have to go do it, to actually learn that side of the skillset of being a performer.

This might be a difficult question to answer on the spot, but what has been the best advice you were given in your music career?
Hmm. I forget who told me, but: just play shows. Like, just play free shows. Especially, when you’re starting out. When we started out, we were able to build an audience because it was always free. We would play maybe two times a month in LA just for whoever would be around. And that built up to where it then changed our lives and sent us around the world. It was just going and doing it. Sometimes to five people, like tiny rooms when nobody wanted us there.
I think in any artistic venture or pursuit, there’s so much control in not trying or thinking about doing things. I could be a painter if I want, you know. I just have to paint. I’ve never painted, but as soon as you start painting all the time, then you become a painter. If you want to be in a band, you want to be a musician – play shows.

Do you believe in the phrase of the ten thousand hours that it takes to master a skill?
Yeah. I think I’ve done ten thousand hours of singing, just because I always sang when I was a little boy. Maybe that’s it. Ten thousand hours is a lot. I don’t know if I’ve done ten thousand hours of anything else. Maybe listening to music. (laughs)

Your debut album For The First Time, Again is about to come out in January! Can you share a little bit more about what the title means to you?
I think it has a few layers for me. It’s the title track of a song that I wrote about losing love and finding it again, kind of the perennial nature of love. When I moved to LA from Rhode Island, I left everyone I knew, all my family and friends, to go to a place I’d never been to, to go try to be who I thought I was. I left all this love and ended up finding it again, wearing different faces. When you lose someone, whether to death or to life and circumstance, I think whatever you love in that person, it is something waiting in another form in the world, the world is made of love. So, I think it’s about losing love and finding it in another form.
On the album cover there is this orange tree. When we were making the record, there was an orange tree in Rado’s backyard that we would see every day. I took some pictures of it as we were on break. That then ended up being on the SoundCloud link as the cover – the Orange Tree. It made me think, just like the perennial nature of fruit. It’s things that you think are dead, and then it comes back, and every year it bears fruit, where you thought it was gone. And all of a sudden, here’s something that can satiate you.
Just like the nature of fruit and like packaging, it’s what we do in music. It’s this organic thing that’s so ephemeral, it slips through your fingers just like an orange could fall on the ground and rot and disappear. But instead, we’re going to package it and put a brand on it and ship it out across the world and commodify it.
We also made this album using analog technology, all to take really minimal overdubbing. No editing, really. People haven’t made music that way in a while. It’s like we’re bringing back those techniques, to package pop music in little oranges and wrappers and ship it all around the world.

That is such a great conclusion, very excited to listen to the album. Thank you for speaking to me today!

Tyler Ballgame Tour:
13.04.26 Berlin, Kantine am Berghain
14.04.26 Köln, Stadtgarten