Kellams: Dylan Earl recently came to KUAF to promote his fourth studio album, Level Headed Even Smile. While here, he talked with Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani about his process and about the importance of the music community in Northwest Arkansas.
Earl: The album was recorded in full on the Fayetteville Square at a studio called Homestead Recording. Homestead Recording had had a brief foray of a time in a building up there just off of the Square. And I guess I was really lucky that we were able to get this record in there. We did the whole thing up there, and it was just an absolute blast.
It was in January a couple years ago when it snowed a whole bunch. It iced over for one week. We were in session and we had a week off. Then we were back in session wrapping the album and it snowed a whole bunch. So that was really special.
Grady Drum was down from Springfield. He helped co-produce alongside Grant D’Aubin. Grant’s from Northwest Arkansas. Grant and I did a lot of pre-production in Lebo Kansas at his family farm out there. And then the rest of the crew, Dick Darden and Chris Wood. The rhythm section that everyone loves here in town. Lee Zodrow was on keys all over it. And then we had, you know, Grant was on mandolin and bass. I did guitars and vocals. We had a slew of extra singers, which was a lot of fun.
There’s a lot of fun bird sounds on this album. Those are all done by Nick Shoulders. He did all that. The Okay Crawdad, his band, did a lot of backing vocals on “Two Kinds of Loner" and on “Lawn Chair.” And then Meredith Kimbrough and Jude Brothers and Charlie Jones were also on some background vocals and such. So it was, it’s just, when I make albums, you know, people in L.A. and New York and Austin, Nashville, they all say, “Oh, you come make a record with us.” You know? I’m like, I’m sure you have awesome, nice studios, no doubt. But all the buddies, where it all started, is right here in Fayetteville.
Nourani: A lot of names that KUAF is familiar with.
Earl: Exactly. And so it’s like, you know, it’s so important to make art with my buddies that were around all the events that inspired the art. And everyone here is so fantastic. And I think it comes through on that album, how much fun we had making it. You know, that’s kind of the most important thing for me.
Nourani: So a lot of collaboration. Tell me a little bit about, you know, it sounds like you were working on it for a couple of years. Tell me about kind of how things transitioned and maybe did you have ideas that started that maybe didn’t come out at the end the same way? Tell me a little bit.
Earl: Oh yeah. Yeah. Things really changed. And that same thing happened with the previous album. “Highland Ouachita” was initially, I’d kind of, I had written it for the other album and it just wasn’t quite ready yet. And so I held it off of the I Saw the Arkansas album, and it kind of inspired the push to this new one. I’m like, “Oh, we’re digging deep into what we’re talking about here.”
But the collaborative effort, you know, on that, it kind of comes from where the collection of the songs comes from, and it’s from, it’s kind of all over the place, to be honest with you. Sometimes, you know, when we write a couple of songs right before we get into the studio to help fill some space, and I hate to say these are just filler songs, but I don’t know. You know, they say pressure makes a diamond and sometimes, sometimes I operate best under those circumstances.
And so when I have to, when I write some stuff kind of last minute to bring into the studio, you know, like “Get in the Truck,” I wrote like the day before we went into the studio, you know, and it’s some folks’ favorite one on the record. But a lot of those do require a serious amount of collaborative effort, because I haven’t had a chance to flesh them out on the road.
Most of these songs I’ve played live for a year or two already out on tour. They kind of start to, you know, even though I have different players and different parts of tour with me, and I like to travel with different players because it keeps the sound fresh for me, but it definitely starts to shape the song.
So the new ones that kind of happened right before the studio are the ones that really the band has more of a collaborative say, the guys that are the players in it, because I just kind of show up with my acoustic, you know? I’m like, here it is. And like I said, we did the pre-production up in Lebo, Kansas with Grant, and so we kind of had a bit of an idea of how at least tempo wise and arrangement of what we wanted to do. But, you know, we wrote some basic melodies and some guitar parts here and there, but a lot of the stuff the band has full say of what they’re doing, and that’s an important part of having those guys play on the album. I like the way they play. I trust their instinct. I trust how they play. And so I trust that whatever they come up with is going to be appropriate for the album.
And I do want the record to be a bit of part of each player that’s on it, you know, and not just entirely my vision singularly.
Nourani: I like that, because it’s like, not only do you just enjoy collaborating for the sake of being able to spend time with your loved ones and your friends and the people that you work with, but it’s also like a really distinct part of your creative process, it sounds like.
Earl: Yeah, it’s absolutely crucial and it helps. Again, it kind of helps make that album feel fun, I think. And those are things that no matter how fancy your mics are, you can’t fabricate that feeling.
Nourani: Yeah, I like that. Well, and I think it really fills with the music too. It all kind of makes sense. So tell me about the three singles that you chose to release ahead of the album and why you picked those?
Earl: Yeah, we put out, let’s see, it was “Level Headed Even Smile,” the title track. And then we did “Get in the Truck" and then “Two Kinds of Loner.” You know, we probably would have, we had kind of standalone released two other singles earlier in the year that probably would have been one of those three that came out as like feature singles.
And this is kind of strategy that’s all new to me. You know, it changes so fast and I feel like the longer I’ve been working in music, the way you put music out is changing so quickly, because there’s some new app that has come into play or some new thing that’s come into play or something like that. Things I hate even talking about. But you kind of have to learn how to play the game or you’re going to get left behind, you know, especially for people that were born in the late ’80s like me. So it’s a little tricky to kind of figure out.
Luckily, the team at Garhole is totally on it. And so at first they said, we’re going to want to do these two standalones way early in the year, and then we’re going to release those. Even though those are going to be on the album, we just won’t tell nobody, you know, kind of thing. And I was like, dang, we’re going to release half the record before it comes out. That kind of feels weird to me. But it has proven to be a great strategy.
And I’ve learned from Kurt. Kurt and I go, we lived in little dirty punk houses and stuff together in college. And so we go way back. And dude’s always had a finger on the pulse of kind of like what’s cool, so to speak, it seems. So I just kind of trusted him to begin with. And now he’s gotten so good at putting music out, you know, because there is a strategy behind it. It’s like a skill to it, you know? And so going back to all that, I was like five songs before the album’s coming out. It’s quite a bit, but it’s proven to be a great strategy.
So in terms of, you know, I probably would have done “Outlaw Country” and “Highland Ouachita” as one of these three feature, but it was kind of nice. The byproduct of all this was that I got to dig a little deeper into the album and kind of pull two songs up that I wouldn’t have considered as like the best three on the album, but I got to feature them. And they’re songs that I really care about.
And “Get in the Truck,” you know, obviously “Level Headed Even Smile” is the title track and it’s important to get that one out. But “Get in the Truck” was a fun one. It features my friend Johno Leeroy’s truck and John is on there as well. That’s kind of an important one too, I think just kind of as a life philosophy.
But I think the one that I was really excited to feature out of those three is “Two Kinds of Loner.” I think that one kind of encapsulates a lot of what I’m talking about on the record. And it’s for my friend William. And it talks about kind of when I first came up from South Louisiana to Arkansas 20 years ago. And, you know, I was a pretty destitute and desperate and depressed young boy. And William was one of the first to really kind of help me break out of that and make me realize that I was in a whole new, beautiful place. And it allowed me to be naturalized by the Natural State, I suppose.
Nourani: Yeah. And I also wanted to ask, especially because you said that this other song feels like it sums up the album and your thoughts behind it, why did you choose “Level Headed Even Smile” as the title track?
Earl: I thought about naming the album so many other things, and I was picking certain phrases and words I liked out. And then, you know, I think when I wrote Level Headed Even Smile, it felt like this is a cornerstone to the next record, which is an exciting feeling to have. And I haven’t had that feeling yet for the next one.
But you get excited when you put out a record and you ride that thing for a while and then you start, things start kind of kicking in. And I wrote it, I was on the road with my friends Chris Haggard and Desiree Keenan. And we’re kind of talking about how awful the world is and how important it is to stay tuned in and stay on top of things and be active in your community and vote local, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s also really important to pull out of that for a brief second and just take a little reprieve and a breather. And that’s all that song is really about.
And I wrote it on tour with them, and I was, I thought, “Well, dadgum, you know, I think I have this. This is like, I can, I’m starting to see a new album kind of come into being in front of me.” And so, I don’t know, everything I tried naming the record, I just kept going back to, like, what’s the whole point here? You know, what is the basic point of this record? And it’s just like, put a smile on your face, man. Like, that’s it. Like, that’s kind of if you take anything away from this album, it’s like the message in that song is kind of like, if you’re going to get anything out of this, this is the one. This is the one little message I want you to get, you know, like, go take a deep breath.
Kellams: That was Dylan Earl talking with Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani. That was recorded during a live session. Recording took place right here at the Carver Center for Public Radio.
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