Midland is gearing up to release fourth studio album ‘Barely Blue' this week and it's their first time working with renowned award-winning producer Dave Cobb.
Ahead of the record the band has teased a number of tracks including ‘Old Fashioned Feeling', ‘Vegas' and ‘Lucky Sometimes'. The songs have that classic Midland feeling but it marks a gear change for the band as they enter their new era of music.
I caught up with band member Cam Duddy to talk about the making of the new record, discuss their experience working with Dave Cobb, and to find out how they keep things fresh on the road with their relentless touring schedule…
Cam, it's been a while since we saw each other. How have you been?
It's been a really rewarding last few weeks as we're getting ready to put the new album out and we're promoting it which is part of the deal. We're just working a little harder.
Your new album ‘Barely Blue' arrives this week. This feels like your most cohesive album yet. Was that cohesion something you consciously aimed for while making the record?
I agree. It reminds me of how we did ‘The Sonic Ranch' album 10 years ago. There's something similar in the vibe and in the feel of it, although I feel like it's much more advanced in terms of the execution (laughs). We went out to Savannah and recorded at a home studio that Dave Cobb has out there. You basically just live in the music for a couple weeks while you're recording, and I think that probably lends itself to the cohesion. The fact that it feels all the same is because it was cut just so consistently together. (We didn't) work on it in bits and pieces like we've done past. When we walked away from that recording session, where we lived there for two weeks and we were in it with Dave, we were done. There was nothing left to do other than mix the record so I have a feeling that's why it feels like one complete thought.
This is the band's first time working with Dave Cobb. What did he bring to the table during the making of this record?
What Dave's superpower is, especially when it comes to recording at that home studio in Savannah, is that he's very old school. (He'll say), ‘hey man, we're going to start at 1pm, we're going to talk about the music for a couple hours over tea, and then we're going to start to think about writing or recording the music. And then we're going to take a break halfway through, and we're all going to leave and go get dinner somewhere and just hang and then come back and record late into the night'. That's how we grew up making music and recording demos in our first bands. It was a little more rock and roll, a little more familial… a little more off the clock. In Nashville, it's not like that. There are many positives to doing the nine to five version of doing it and you treat it like, I don't want to say like a job, but (the way we recorded this album) is just a different thing than Nashville, and we really needed that. That's one of Dave's superpowers, is the spirit conjuring of it all. He's very proud of Savannah, because he's from near there, and he's really a maestro in that way. It makes the recording process much more fulfilling, I feel like, for me and Mark and Jess because, like I said, when you walk away from it you're done. In the past the way that we did records, we would walk away from it and then we would piecemeal overdubs and harmonies and stuff like that. It would Frankenstein its way into existence over a longer period of time and you kind of forget where you started, because it took so long.
The other part of working with Dave that I feel like we really enjoyed, was (it felt like) we brought in a fourth member of the band in terms of a vote for song choice. We really did allow Dave into that process of, ;what do you think about this song? Should we cut it? And how could we do it?' Before we were much more insulated and only democratically came to a decision in terms of picking songs between the three of us so. He's a wonderful arranger and rhythm guitar player; he's so tasty. He's all over that record for us, and he assembled a really great cast of characters around us to support our vision. It's like world building with Dave, and that's what we really like.
As you've been doing this as a band for 10 years now, has the dynamic shifted at all in terms of having a better feel for what you want to be making?
I think simultaneously we are less stubborn about what we want, and that's really good, because it opens you up to experimentation. On the other hand, and at the same time, we are much more sensitive to the things that we don't like. You're open, you're fluid, and you're not so hard-headed about knowing exactly what what your band should be and what the sound is. When you're working with somebody like Dave, you're open to allowing him to come in and tweak, and you arrive on these pleasant surprises. At the same time, you also are emboldened, and I feel like we're all much more attuned to the things that we don't like, and identifying a song style or even a song that we know we're not going to dig in the long run.
There was a version of a song that we've already put out called ‘Lucky Sometimes', where we approached it in a very like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers arrangement, and it was rock and roll. We spent the evening cutting it that way, and we were done, and everybody went on a 30-minute break to smoke cigarettes and have a glass of wine, and Jess and I had a pow-wow. We both felt like there's something that didn't feel right. I feel like we tried to do this on ‘Let It Roll', and we tried to do this rock thing. We don't play those songs anymore in our live set because I don't feel like we have a strong connection to some of that material because of that reason. We felt emboldened to go, ‘hey, we got to speak up here. This doesn't feel right. We want to switch gears'. Because Dave sets up a a scenario where it's okay to switch gears because you have all the time in the world and you're not punching the clock, we were able to to switch gears and go, ‘Okay, fine. What do you think? What should we do? What if it's much more sparse?' The version of ‘Lucky Sometimes' that you get is no bass and no drums, just acoustic guitars and some percussion, and it's something new that we've never done before.
You guys are always relentlessly touring. How are these songs going down on the road with the fans?
Our fans are great because they are just inherently receptive. I feel like our fans are fans for life. When you become a fan of Midland, there's no halfway when it comes to us, and that's fun when you get to put out singles leading up to an album. (The fans) are patient and excited to hear those, those songs without a context of the whole album. The reception has been great. They love ‘Old Fashioned Feeling', ‘Vegas' and ‘Lucky Sometimes' and we we built those into our into our set. We hadn't even released ‘Lone Star State of Mind' but we needed to rehearse it for ‘The Jimmy Kimmel Show', and we played that in a few shows and the response was incredible. Famously ‘Stairway to Heaven' Zeppelin had played that before releasing the album and the people in the audience booed him. They didn't have any context. I feel like we're lucky, and I think it's a testament to the songs and really our fan base.
Your fans have always been incredibly passionate. I think part of the appeal of Midland is that when you come to one of your live shows, you never know what you're going to get and there are always surprises in the set list. How do you keep touring interesting and exciting when you tour so much?
Covers. It's definitely that and also just trying to find stuff in the archive of our own canon that feels exciting. We have a new drummer this year, John, and he does not know the material like he's been playing in the band for eight years. That's been fun for us to go, ‘oh dude, have you heard this song? We haven't played this in years. Let's teach John this song'. That's been a fun unexpected element that has kept us on our toes. The anticipation of putting out new material is really exciting and kind of nerve racking for us. That element of (the) unexpected – anything can happen – it's thrilling. We're really ready to start putting out more material more often. We've realised touring on the same record for two years is just not as sustainable. We have had to rely on the odd cover to keep things interesting as you're going to the same market three years in a row since you put out something new. But what's cool is we have a tendency to make cover material feel like our own. We put our own spin on things. We love live music; nothing's to a click – it's all it's all human, it's all right there so there's always the chance you'll just completely go off the rails. It's like watching a boxing match if you're in the audience, dude anything can happen?
I've been to enough of your shows to know that's definitely true. Your UK fans in particular were some of the first to really embrace Midland and you've built up a strong relationship with us on this side of the pond. It's been a little while since you played in the UK, when will you be coming back?
I know for a fact that we're going to be there within the next 12 months, maybe even a couple of times. That's all I can say. We are very proactive in our quest to get back over there. We love our fans in the UK and, yeah, you're right, you guys were first in a lot of ways.
Midland's new album ‘Barely Blue' will be released on Friday 20th September 2024 via Big Machine Records.
