Interview: Landon Conrath Shows Promising Future With Authentic Midwestern Indie-Pop Anthems
Interview by Greg Poblete | Photos by Sawyer Brice provided by Nettwerk Music Group
Photo by Sawyer Brice
June 14, 2023 — Minneapolis native Landon Conrath sprung out of the pandemic as an unexpected singer/songwriter, channeling his emotional experiences into indie-pop anthems. As he pumped out single after single, he began to receive traction from the Spotify algorithm landing him spots on playlists amassing millions of streams and listeners. With tracks such as “Papercuts” and “2AM,” Landon has made it apparent that he has a natural skill for creating colorful production, writing honest lyrics, and crafting the catchiest hooks.
The first half of 2023 has been a very big year for Landon from touring his debut record, Nothing Matters Anyway, receiving praise from numerous outlets such as Ones to Watch and The Current, and the release of two new incredible singles, “Broken” and “November.” With all this buzz around his music, it’s nice to see that Landon continues to stay humble by always making an effort to connect with fans, stretching his social meter thin, and showing his appreciation by greeting every single person that makes it out to one of his shows.
This respectful and admirable energy was evident through our phone conversation with the man himself. In between rehearsing for an upcoming show, Landon Conrath was gracious enough to chat with us about how he got his start in music, his latest single, “November,” and what he hopes his music career looks like in the future.
——
Greg: First off, how are you, and where are you currently in the world right now?
Landon: I’m in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And it’s great here right now. It’s summer, so I’m kinda enjoying some time off. I just got off the road so it’s really good to be home.
Greg: Being from Minneapolis, how has your physical environment helped with your songwriting and what’s the most interesting place you’ve gained inspiration to write?
Landon: I guess I’m trying to think if I get a lot of inspiration from physical places, but it’s mostly from experiences. I’ve always wanted to move to New York. Every single time I’ve been there, it’s been ridiculously inspiring for no reason. I feel like even just walking around the streets, it’s just oozing with, I don’t know what it is.
I think physical things that inspire me are being with all my friends here. Being around people that are pushing you and being around people who are doing similar things always makes me want to reinvest time into myself. That’s always been a big thing for me in terms of inspiration: trying to surround myself with people who are pushing the boundaries of what I think is cool and doing things like that.
Greg: I love that. Having a good creative support circle is always an important thing to have especially with making music and stuff.
Landon: Yeah.
Greg: I want to know, how did you get your start in music and what did your musical upbringing look like?
Landon: I started on piano, I feel like everyone else on planet Earth did, and I did not like it that much. I was always bugging my parents to be done with it. They said I had to do it until I was done with the eighth grade. So that was always the cut-off. And I always looked forward to that.
Then when I got into high school, I took up drumming and got really into that. I had a teacher that I really loved which I feel like helps a lot. And he was doing the touring thing and playing for, I’m trying to remember who he was with… it was like Owl City, Sara Bareilles; he was doing the thing. He was playing with these different artists and going to all these places, and I just looked at his life and was like, “That’s what I want to do with my life. I want to be a touring drummer. I just want to play drums.”
So I had a band that was like a folk, rock, country-ish band. We went on little tours, we played a lot of breweries, and all sorts of things like that across Minneapolis and the greater U.S. We went to Rhode Island for a show, it was super random. But we did a lot of touring and I was the drummer. I always thought that was going to be my life.
And then in college, I had some friends who were songwriters and I was interested in that and thought that was something out of reach for me because I kind of gave it a shot in high school and it was not good at all. So I kinda just gave up on that. But eventually, I wrote one song, and I met a friend who wanted to start producing music, so we linked up and made that first release. And that was my first release on Spotify, and it’s called “Pieces.” The song randomly got picked up by an algorithmic playlist and it did really well. And we were like, “Well, I guess we should make another one.” And so we just kept making them and then ended up here somehow.
Photo by Sawyer Brice
Greg: So with songwriting, how do you feel like songwriting has helped with channeling your feelings and how has it helped shape the person who you are right now?
Landon: It’s cool because it’s just a built-in outlet of your life. You just have this space that you can put everything in. It feels kinda funny sometimes because my day job is spent thinking about what’s going on in my life and putting it into music. It’s definitely made me a more introspective person as when I’m going through something, I’m thinking about how I can flip it into a song. I have a running note in my phone of ideas I jot down all the time. I feel like it’s made me a more thoughtful person thinking about my own emotions and being aware of things like that. But it is funny sometimes to be going through something intense and be like, “Oh, wait! I could write a song about this.”
Greg: Do you feel like your songwriting skills are like a muscle that you’ve been building and working out?
Landon: Yeah, absolutely. I used to be really self-conscious about my songwriting ability. I wrote my first few projects with another co-writer. It was the same co-writer for all of them. He’s just an incredibly strong writer and a strong-headed person. So he wants everything to be absolutely perfect which was so good for me back then because it pushed me really hard. But it was also hard because I had to prove every single line that I brought to the table and prove that it was good. I always used to think that I would never be able to write a song without him. It kinda gave me this really bad self-image when it came to songwriting like, “I can’t do this by myself. The only reason I’m successful is because of them.”
And I think in the past year, I feel like I’ve gotten to a place where I’m comfortable with writing. I’ve gotten to write with that songwriter again and he’s been super kind and supportive and encouraging about my work. It’s been cool to hear him say that after all these years. I think my confidence has gone up. I love being in a room with new songwriters now. I used to be scared of that.
Greg: One thing I’ve noticed about your music is that you know how to write a catchy chorus. I want to know, in your opinion, what makes for a great chorus, and is there a set formula that you try to follow when you write them?
Landon: I wouldn’t say that I have any rules or anything like that. I love writing really specific songs and I found that the more specific you go, the more relatable to the general population it is which seems like it would be backwards. But it seems when you do really personal things, people just resonate with it a lot. So I love to pack the verses full of intense imagery and shit like that. The choruses are more of a general thing.
Greg: Even if they’re general, they are very sticky and always reel you in. I know you haven’t announced your new project yet, but what can you say about it so far and what kind of creative headspace have you been in when writing the project?
Landon: It kinda wasn’t going to be a project in the first place. I had no intention of putting these songs together in a release. I was just writing music and it wasn’t for anything. It was kinda just an idea that my manager had one day. And he was like, “I was listening to some of these demos that you sent me and it seems that these fit well together.” And he put them in, there’s this site called Disco and it’s basically where you can upload songs and you could listen to them in a playlist. And he uploaded all the songs to a certain Disco, and we were listening to it on repeat. We were like, “Wait, this could be a cool project.”
I was in a state where I wasn’t sure what I should be doing. I was like, “Well, I just came off a record. I don’t know what the next step is, and I don’t have a collection of songs right now.” And so it came out of thin air. All the songs are based on one particular season of life. It was a really explosive writing period.
It wasn’t this thing that was this grand vision, it just kinda fell from the sky. I like it when things happen like that because I struggle with weaving together big storylines and projects like that. I’m impressed when artists have this grand vision and overarching thing like when they’re branding and their album, everything is woven together so well. Like they built this whole world. It’s convenient for me when a project just appears like that.
Greg: That’s cool that it was able to come naturally. And I know you just released a new song, “November,” which is amazing. What was the decision process like for releasing this single, especially during the summer? And what does the fall season mean to you?
November (Official Music Video) - Landon Conrath
Landon: I wish I had some heady, thoughtful answer for that but I think the reason that we put it out was… I have a focus group of friends that I send a lot of my stuff to, and I’m like, “What do you guys think is grabbing your attention? What song do you think people would enjoy? What feels like a single to you?” And that one kept sticking out to us.
I feel like I’ve been putting out a lot of music lately. Well, I guess “Broken” has been the one single before that. But the project that’s coming is all very different from my previous discography, sonically and instrumentation-wise. So I felt “November” was something that felt like some of my older music. And I kinda wanted to put this out to remind people, “Hey! I’m still here, I’m still doing the thing that you like but there’s also going to be some new stuff coming.” And it was just kind of a cool way to bridge the gap between the old and the new in my head.
Greg: There’s a line in “November” that I like that goes, “trading my gold for silver, thought I knew just what it would cost.” How did that line come to be? Where did you get the inspiration for that?
Landon: Writing that song was really fast. The way that I start a lot of my music is with production. I usually don’t start with lyrics ever. I think the only song I ever wrote with just lyrics and a guitar was “Pieces,” which was my first song ever. But ever since then, I always have a laptop and the production session is already going. But “November” started with a bass line and some drums that I thought were fun. I do this thing when I’m starting a song where I plug in some headphones into my phone and just mumble whatever melodies come naturally and then build a scratch vocal take from that.
And “trading my gold for silver” was a line that popped out of nowhere when I was going over the chorus. The idea behind that line… the whole song is talking about a moment that I had in my relationship where I was wondering what my life would be like if I had gone in a different direction, and I was getting stressed about it. It was my fiancé, and we’re getting married in a few months so it’s obviously like, “Holy crap! I’m making a huge decision here. This is so scary.” I was just stressing myself out and thinking about other directions that my life could have gone which is never a healthy thing to dwell on. Especially when you’re in a situation that you’re really happy with.
And so the line, “trading my gold for silver,” the idea was like I broke up with this person, I traded my gold but what I got back in return was less than what I previously had. You thought you knew what you were getting yourself into and you thought that’s what you wanted, but you got the worse trade and you lost out on something amazing. So that was the idea behind that.
Greg: That’s a very powerful line. And just the song in general is very emotional and impactful.
Landon: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: To backtrack a bit, I wanted to talk about your album Nothing Matters Anyway. What have you learned from the making of the album as well as touring the album and how has it helped with connecting with these new songs you’re coming out with?
Landon: Being on the road has changed my outlook on the album. I was a pandemic artist. I started during COVID, I started releasing music when I couldn’t play shows. Everything existed on the Internet in the first year, almost a year and a half of my music career. And dropping the album was so funny because, first of all, I’m a Minneapolis artist and I’m signed to a Los Angeles label. So I never see my A&R in person. I never see my team in person. I have friends who, when they do release parties, their whole label team takes them out to dinner, they do champagne, they do everything. I remember my album came out and I was in my basement, on my laptop finishing a music video or something and it was just like, “Oh, my album just came out. Holy shit.” It was super anti-climatic. I just put so much work into this and it was only 28 minutes long. People were like, “Why is it so short?” All this stuff, and it didn’t feel real. It felt like nothing in my life changed at all when I dropped that.
To finally go on the road and see people singing all the words to every song and people being like, ""Trader Joe’s" is my favorite song ever! This song really meant something to me during this part of my life.” Whatever it was, it changed my outlook on it. It was previously this whatever thing because my older catalog is still my top streaming music so I’ve always had a weird relationship with Nothing Matters Anyway. I always felt like people don’t like it or maybe Spotify doesn’t care about it as much. It was great to have the opportunity to go out and see this record does mean something to me and it does mean something to other people, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day. If there’s one fan out there that was stoked about this song, then we won. You know? It was great to take it on the road. I think that’s been my favorite part of music lately, is playing live.
Greg: I love that. And I’ve seen some clips of you performing live. Have you always been a natural performer or is that something you had to grow into as you started doing shows?
Landon: I’m not really a natural performer I wouldn’t say. As far as having a stage presence, I’m not a natural. But I’ve been doing piano recitals and playing at church and being on stages for a long time. But it was never as the frontman. So I’m super used to performing in the performance sense, but it took a while for me to develop my own flavor on stage and interact with audience members and talk to people afterwards.
I still consider myself extremely shy. People wouldn’t think that anymore because when I’m in the zone at a show, I’ll be super talkative and I’ll talk to everyone at the merch booth, and I’ll go up and do our set and everything. But in high school and college, I would never start a conversation with someone unless they started it first. I was super reserved and not a go-getter in the social sense. I was always a hard worker in music and school, but not with meeting new people. It just scared me.
So going on stage and being the guy whose name is on the poster was a little intimidating for sure. It was hard for me to let loose and have fun. I was so concerned with performing well that sometimes I looked so stiff up there. I’ve definitely loosened up and it helps that my band is all my best friends in the whole world. So it makes it a lot easier when it’s your favorite people. It’s been really good lately.
Greg: I feel like music is a universal language where you don’t need to say much for people to feel the music.
Landon: Absolutely.
Greg: You mentioned that it’s intimidating seeing your name on a marquee or something outside of a venue, but I’m interested in hearing you talk about being an artist who releases music under their government name. Why do you think it’s important to maintain authenticity in the world of music? And what do you hope people take away when listening to your music?
Landon: Oh, I love that. I honestly have this war in my mind every day of convincing myself that I made the right decision of releasing music under my own name. I always think that I should have made some weird project name or made it sound like a band. Because I always feel so stupid when people ask me, “What’s your band name?” And then I say, “Oh, it’s actually just my name.” And every time I’m like, “I should have just made it a weird name.”
But I do like how having music under my own name forces me like you were saying, you have to be yourself because you’re broadcasting your whole entire image and life to the world. You’re the product. I think authenticity is so important right now because people are exposed to so much content and so much music that they’re becoming music critics themselves.
And they have this understanding of how the industry works now just because they’re exposed to it. Like people on TikTok who are casual music fans understand the workings of a label deal because they saw a TikTok video about it. They understand all this weird stuff about the industry that used to be under lock and key. So they can sniff out when people are being inauthentic and when people are gaming them, and when people are using them for views. I think people can sniff out bullshit really well right now because they’ve seen so much.
When people come out and they’re obviously just trying to push a product and they’re not caring about their fans, and they’re not caring about the music, it sets off a blaring alarm. I’m struggling and working through how to go about content and social media while being yourself and being authentic. And I think that’s something that I want to figure out, and I think a lot of people want to figure out too. There are people who are doing it but they are definitely few and far between.
My goal in music is to create something that can be shared as a community. When someone comes to a show, I always do my best to make eye contact with the people who are singing and who are invested in the show. I want to show them that I care about them. I want to be able to talk to them after at the merch table, I want to be able to shake their hand and say “Thanks for coming.” And when they listen to my music, I just want them to, at the end of the day, feel like they have shared experiences. I want to be like, “You’re not weird for going through this thing and it’s not unusual. It’s super normal and I went through that too. Here’s a song about it.” That’s the kind of vibe I would love to portray.
Photo by Sawyer Brice
Greg: I love that. It seems like you’re trying to blend the artist Landon and the personal you into this one singular version. It’s definitely hard to maneuver through both of those worlds but I think you’re doing it very well and I can hear that authenticity in your voice and your music. It’s really beautiful. I do have one more question for you before I let you go. What do you hope the future looks like for your musical career? Who would you love to work with one day? What would your ideal live show look like?
Landon: I’ve always tried to say that my goal in music is to be able to pay rent and eat food by doing music. That’s still my core goal because I think if I attach anything else to it, it just leads to a bunch of disappointment because this industry is so up and down. It’s such a rollercoaster. I think that’s almost turned me into a bit of a pessimist which is not amazing because I have this mindset where I feel like everything I’ve done like my listeners on Spotify, anything, could all just be pulled away from me at any moment. I feel like I live my life through that lens which isn’t very healthy. I want to learn how to be more secure in where I’ve gotten and what I’m doing currently.
Earlier on in my career, I got dropped off of all the Spotify playlists I was on and I lost 60% of my following on Spotify. And I think it’s scarred me a little where I’m ready for that to happen again and ready for everything to be cut in half. So my goal is always just to survive playing music.
But going deeper into that, I just want to be an artist that has, I don’t know a better word than to say a cult following. I love the idea of bands… there’s this band called Fidlar and I reference them a lot when I talk about this. Have you heard of them?
Greg: Yeah, they’re amazing.
Landon: Yeah, sweet. They’re like that super cool, surfy, punk band. They don’t have a massive Spotify presence, they don’t have a massive Instagram or social media presence. They’re very big, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not crazy viral on TikTok. You know? But they announced a secret show in LA when I was in LA last, and it sold out in one day and I got the chance to go. And it was packed. It was crazy, it was so cool. People were just coming out of the woodwork to go see the show because they know the show is going to be so cool that they were like, “I can’t miss this.”
It’s funny because you see artists like that, and then you also see artists, I’m not going to name any names because that’s a jerk move. But there was an artist who had one of the biggest songs on TikTok, one of the biggest songs in the world, a duet between two artists, and I saw a video from a friend who was at one of their shows and it was at like a 200 cap venue and the room was empty. And you see that a lot. There was that video of Kid Laroi at a House of Blues in Boston or something and the venue’s half empty. All the videos of Steve Lacy doing “Bad Habit” and the whole crowd doesn’t know the song. It’s so sad.
I don’t want that to be my thing. I never want to be a flash in the pan like a viral thing. I want to figure out how to build that live show and build up the records for devoted fans. I feel like the way you’ve made it is by having a Reddit server and Discord server about you. And your fans are so passionate that they’re on there hanging out with each other. I would love to make a Discord server where I could go talk to people on there.
Greg: They’d be making memes about you.
Landon: Yeah, a community connecting the real world to the Internet. That’s a win for me. I think that’s what my goals are. You mentioned collaborations too. If we’re talking about an unrealistic dream collaboration, it would be Justin Vernon. Bon Iver is one of my biggest inspirations ever which it doesn’t feel like that if you’re listening to my music, but I’ve taken so much from him, melody and lyric inspiration. As far as people who are more my peers or the level above, or people I aspire to be, there’s this artist, his name is Garrett, but his project is called Carwash. I love his stuff. There’s a band called Slowpoke that I’m obsessed with. A tour that would be cool to go on would be, Del Water Gap was a tour I submitted for, Maggie Rogers is a bit up there, but people like that I really respect. They’re cool. I think that’s kind of it for goals and things like that.
Make sure to listen to Landon Conrath’s latest singles “Broken” and “November,” available on all streaming platforms, and connect with Landon on Instagram to keep up to date on future shows and releases!
