Interview: Wild Love on their newest single "Tuesday Night"

Nashville-based multinational rock band Wild Love is back in action after the release of their newest single, “Tuesday Night.” The newest song follows their September single “Seasonal,” the first of this year. Following up on a previous interview in the days before they played Live on the Green, I talked to lead singer Brandon Gorman, guitarist Michael Crecca and bassist Si Geçener about new music, quarantine and their plans for the future.

What inspired your newest single “Tuesday Night”?

Brandon: I think the song is just thinking about modern dating culture and how I have some difficulty with it. It’s not your traditional kind of love, you know, it’s a lot more about the physical thing. The idea of meeting someone online, not actually knowing them, then meeting them. We have this idea of what we want love to be, and we spend more time trying to make it that idea rather than loving something for what it is. So when we were writing it, me and our producer Ryan would hang out and listen to country music. And I had never really listened to the genre much but he was kind of trying to open me up to it more, and now if you listen to “Tuesday Night” it kind of sounds like a country song if you strip it back to just vocals and guitars. So the lyrics came to me first and I ran to the other room to pick up a guitar and add a few chords, then Ryan and I built up the song from there. When I write I struggle to actually stick to a narrative because I can be pretty scatterbrained, so Ryan helped choose a path to go down and incorporate his own personal experiences with love.

And last month, you released “Seasonal.” What’s the story behind that song?

B: “Seasonal” is a slightly older song, a little over two years ago. It came about because I was looking at past relationships and how they were very on-and-off. It felt like nothing was ever happy for a whole period of time. I started to think that love changes in the same way the seasons do, and so the lyrics came before any of the chords or the melody. And that was the first time I was really deliberate about a metaphor — I rarely use them but I just thought it was a little easy, sweet thing to write about since love doesn't have to be seasonal. 

M: It’s funny because when we recorded it we knew it would be the first single, but the demo for this was so weak. I don’t know what it was, maybe we were all just tired the day we recorded the demo or something and the whole time I was thinking are we really gonna do this song? But it ended up being so good the day of recording and we knew it would be the first one. It’s just funny how you never know what’s going to happen.

Hannah Hall shot your most recent cover art, how did you get connected and start working together?

M: I was working at a coworking place called WELD when she was interning there and she’s just one of those always-happy, always-friendly people. So I would come in the morning, like, not awake at all and she would be so sweet and energetic so over time we got to know each other and the projects we were each working on. When we had the idea for the cowboy themed stuff, she just felt like the right energy to bring to the project. She’s that super positive person looking to explore the idea fully and encourage ideas rather than discourage them. She’s just a real pro.

Along with the cowboy idea and listening to more country music, where else have you each been drawing inspiration these days?

M: Now that you say it I guess Nashville kind of rubbed off on us in some ways since we’ve been here for a while. We had the idea for the cowboy look and I think this is probably the first batch of songs where we were just starting to explore and appreciate country beyond the idea that a lot of people have of the genre. 

B: I think obviously country music has become a big influence for the songwriting and storytelling qualities of it. I think country and rap are very similar in the sense that so much can be said in a short song or without as many words. I’ve also been getting into more pop music as well, trying mostly to focus on melody. But to go along with the theme I think specifically pop country artists like Maren Morris and obviously Kacey Musgraves have been a really big influence on me. I think with these new songs if you strip them down to the original form in which they’re written, you could probably argue that they’re closer to a country song than a rock song.

Last time we spoke it was just a few days before your LOTG performance. How did playing LOTG impact your trajectory?

M: All the music we’re releasing now was all stuff we started writing right after that performance. It felt like a culmination of the year or so before and the kickoff for a new chapter.

B: Last time we talked about some of the difficulties we faced, but Live on the Green was the spark that got us back in gear. I think the momentum carried into wanting to do more of this, forced us to write better songs so we could continue to do more things like that. Obviously with the current situation we can’t do that, but it’s definitely nice to look back on because this is such a hard year to be positive in.

How did the events of this year impact your creative process — both content themes and physically creating music as a group?

M: We had written all the songs before, between Live on the Green and the start of quarantine. We were already about to try something different and it forced our hands to change in some of the ways we were planning on and some of the ways we weren’t. We didn’t practice for the first couple of months because we were trying to be safe, but once we were able to know more and be safe about it we started to get together again. But we spent a lot of time sending ideas back and forth and kind of flipped process on its head with the level of collaboration. In the week that everything was shutting down we had actually just finished our last live tracking session and the timing was kind of ominous. There were a couple songs we had to finish remotely, but we got creative and dropped off gear at each other’s houses and sent files over Dropbox. 

Has quarantine caused you to shift priorities at all? What are some of the things you hold dearest these days?

M: We really had to shift priorities because we had a bunch of touring plans for the fall in Europe, and then we just had to start from scratch again as far as what to plan. And music is the most important, so once you take away touring and rehearsing for shows so much extra attention gets placed on creating new music.

S: When quarantine hit we knew we weren’t gonna be able to practice together. And personally I love to go climbing and that usually fuels my creativity, and I just couldn’t actually go out and do the things I wanted to do and it put a damper on me. So it’s been pretty difficult to find that energy from other places.

What should people expect from upcoming music?

B: The new music follows a theme about the stages of love. I don’t want people to think we’re a deep, philosophical, band trying to create something new, and we’re not that. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel because love is the single most written-about idea in music. Everything is about love, and we’re just trying to show our perspective of it in a different light.

What are you looking forward to most in 2021?

M: PLAYING SHOWS.

All: Yeah.

B: I’m so excited to play shows. New music obviously is exciting too. I’m really proud of the stuff we’ve written, are currently writing and the stuff we haven’t written yet. Those are the ones I’m most proud of and really want to get out there.