Jonny Pierce's the Drums — once a proper band, now a solo project for years — has experienced laudable longevity in the indie sphere. And part of that owed a semi-flagellatory work ethic.
"I view it as almost like a punishing way to go about making music," Pierce tells GRAMMY.com. "I would get all by myself and drink a ton of iced coffee and be really caffeinated all day. And I'd put this pressure on myself.
"I'd start a song in the morning and it had to be finished by sundown," he continues. "And if I couldn't do that, I would feel guilty; I would feel angry at myself. I would start doubting my abilities. It was just kind of setting myself up to lose. It was kind of this unfair way of making music."
Granted, this resulted in plenty of excellent albums, like 2017's Abysmal Thoughts and 2019's Brutalism. "So it's not that it was all a wash, but it certainly wasn't good for me," Pierce says. So, for the new Drums album, Jonny — out Oct. 13 — he intended to treat himself with kindness.
This was a long time coming: Pierce has been outspoken about his "dismal and lonely and overall very confusing" upbringing at the hands of Pentecostal preachers — which included being subjected to conversion therapy. Speaking over Zoom from a cabin in upstate New York and joined by his little dog, Pierce exudes an earned sense of serenity.
"She's sleeping because we spent about two and a half hours this morning throwing a ball into the lake, and her retrieving it," Pierce says with a smile — liberated from his own, decidedly unfun Sisyphean loop.
Read on for an interview with Pierce about how the spectrum of feelings within Jonny,why the next Drums record might be all electronic, and much more.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
What was the initial spark of inspiration for Jonny?
Honestly, when I started writing this album, I didn't know that I was starting an album.
I had decided to take some time away from recording music a couple of years before the pandemic hit. I don't want this to be a commercial for therapy, but I had started therapy, and it almost from the get-go started kind of revolutionizing how I went about my life, how I saw myself, how I understood myself, and helped me be more intentional on my comings and goings throughout each day.
And so, for about six years ago now, I started going to this more gentle space where I was appreciating stillness and calm and working on being patient with myself and ultimately just being more kind and loving to myself.
What happened from there?
The pandemic happened in March of 2020. I ran out of New York and came right up here to this cabin that I had. I thought I'd be here for a couple of weeks, and I ended up staying here for about a year and a couple of months.
In that time, I was able to focus even more, because everything was at such a standstill. I was able to be extra still and extra calm and take long walks in nature. And I was taking psilocybin here and there, which helped me kind of go to the deeper parts of my heart and understand and kind of unlock doors that had been locked my whole life.
I got a little puppy at eight weeks and started raising her. There was just this sweetness and this softness in the air that whole year for me. And in the midst of all of that, there were moments where I just felt very organically my whole body, the body that I was learning to be in touch with for the first time in my life sort of became my messenger.
I let my body kind of be the artist, and be the green light — or the red light — for when I would record. So, there were times where I would record a song in a day and that was great. And then I would wait two months and then maybe just record a bass line and then I would wait a couple of weeks and a lyric would come to me.
I like to view how I made this album as I was given a giant block of marble from the top of a beautiful mountain, and every day or every couple weeks or every month, I would just approach it with a little chisel and just chip away here and there as much as I wanted or as little as I wanted and just let it be.
And after a couple of years of doing this, I was learning about patience. My managers were becoming impatient and reached out and asked if I had any music. And I said, "Well, I've got a bunch of songs." I think I had something like 14.
I said, "But these were just kind of exercises of understanding maybe a new way of working, and these songs really aren't meant to be shared with anyone." And they said, "well, just send over what you have." I said, "OK, but I haven't even begun my album." And the next day, they called me and said, "Jonny, these are the best songs you've ever written, and this is a beautiful album."
Wow. How did you respond to that?
I kind of got in an argument with them. In my head, that was not possible.
As I was listening to these songs and kind of trying to work on a tracklisting, there'd be one song that was about being joyful and falling in love and being in a blissful state. And the song directly after that was about being sexually abused. And then there's a song about being nurtured by a mother, and the song before that is a song of rage and anger and anguish about not being loved.
That's a heavy contrast.
I think that's why I never saw it as an album, because there were so many parts of it that seemed at odds with each other. But as I was kind of going through it, I started to realize that that's what made it beautiful. That's actually what made it very human, and that's what made it very me, Jonny.
I have all of those parts and I have all of those feelings and a lot of how I feel about things conflict. And there are parts of me that get along really well. There's parts of me that can't stand each other. And it just felt like suddenly it was like I had this tracklisting, and it was standing in front of a mirror and seeing my whole self.
So, that's why I called it Jonny. There's 16 tracks, and I think each one is sort of a chance for a different, younger version of myself — whether it's the baby or the toddler or the child or the teenager or the emerging adult or even modern day Jonny or even future Jonny.
There was a space on this record for all of them to finally [be heard], from a place of understanding and not chaos — which was all the other albums, crying out from chaos and feeling lost.
I have things I finally understand. There's pain that I see and I get versus just blindly feeling pain, and I now want to talk about that pain. I now want to talk about that joy. I now want to talk about that rage because I have a better grasp on it.
So, there's something very healing in this record for me that I was able to go to those spaces and explore them rather than just kind of stabbing at the dark, trying to figure out what's wrong.
*The album art for The Drums’* Jonny\*.\*
How did that newfound sense of gentieness and intention translate to the actual music-making process?
I never took lessons to learn any techniques or processes… but I do record everything on my own with sort of a home studio. I honestly just have always fumbled around until I've found something that kind of works for me where my whole body says, Yes, that's it right there, and then I'll just record it as best as I can. It's a pretty DIY approach.
But this time around, it was the same process of fumbling, letting myself get there, being patient. But I not only wanted to honor where I was, which is the singer of the Drums and the songwriter for the Drums, which most people know as an indie rock or indie pop band.
I wanted to honor that part of my artistry. But I also wanted to go back in time and honor the younger Jonnys who maybe didn't get their musical voice heard.
Tell me about younger Jonny, as per your musical development.
When I was about 13, I fell in love with analog synthesizers. This was in the '90s, and it was when everyone was obsessed with digital synthesizers because digital was all the rage.
So, I fell in love with synth pop. And I started to collect old synthesizers with money that I had saved up and writing songs. I had a specific synthesizer called the Sequential Circuits MultiTrak. People know the Prophet series; the MultiTrak was much lesser known. But it had this really amazing onboard sequencer where you could sequence up to six voices.
And so I had these funny little analog synth, full songs sequenced, and I would record to a Tascam reel to reel in my bedroom. All this stuff was stuff that I stole from my father's church when they would buy new equipment for the worship services.
That was my first love, and I still am drawn to electronic music more than anything else. And I think in the end, the Drums may just turn into a fully electronic act — I don't know.
But on this record, there's a handful of songs where the synthesizer is the leading instrument where there's just not much going on but a synth sequence and vocal. And that's how a lot of my songs when I was a kid were structured and how they sounded.
So in a way, I'm letting the younger versions of myself finally get their shot at being heard out in the world, and there's something really sweet about that to me.
The other big thing is just letting some of these songs rest after they're done. There's a song called "Be Gentle" that has sort of a 1950s girl group sort of thing going on — which is a thread that goes back to the very beginnings of the Drums, the Shangri-Las being one of my biggest influences.
But when the song's done, it just gets this nice instrumental outro that just kind of lasts maybe a little too long on purpose, just letting the idea is that the song worked hard and it gets to relax at the end. And it's kind of a reflection of how I try to live my life now — in a more caring and gentle way.
Give me a tune on Jonny that exemplifies those qualities.
There are two songs that are kind of sister songs. I actually call them "the twins."
There's a big theme of motherhood and motherly nurture on the record and birth and rebirth. So I'd like to view these two songs as kind of twins being born because they showed up at the same time, and they're right next to each other on the album.
The first is called "Harms," which is kind of a song of anger that I was not loved as a child. And it's a short little moment on the album, and just as it's ending, it flips into the next song kind of seamlessly.
But the next song ["Little Jonny"] is from the viewpoint of a mother — in this case, the mother that I have developed in me to re-mother myself. And it's words of love and kindness and nurture and encouragement. I'm saying things to my younger self, "I love you. I'm never going anywhere. I'm really proud of you. I'm never leaving you." All of those things that I think as a little boy, I would've just absolutely died to hear.
I think for me, that is the most powerful moment of my entire career — those two songs together.
And which would you characterize as the lightest, or most jubilant song? The clearest reflection of joy?
It's a song called "Obvious," and I'm always a little shy about writing happy songs.
Happiness, for a lot of my life, has been kind of this abstract thing, but I skip little flashes up here and there, and I try to grab onto it and it slips out of my fingers and it feels so elusive, where sadness is cozy for me. I've been with it so long. I understand it. It becomes my friend. It's actually my greatest writing partner.
Happy songs rarely touch my heart in the way that maybe a sad song would. But "Obvious" is a really go-get-'em pop song ultimately about falling in love and realizing that the person that you've needed all along, it's right there in front of you.And then embracing that notion with all of your heart. So it's a joyful song, and when I wrote it, I was feeling that way, and I would even get goosebumps.
When I locked in that chorus, I remember just feeling blissful and warm and excited, but now when I try to engage with that song, it's a lot harder for me to connect to.
So, my happy songs — I always think they're my least favorite songs, but it was a moment that happened and I do experience joy in my life, and I felt it appropriate to include it on the album, because this album encapsulates all that I am.
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