Frank's Corner #17: In Conversation With Searows
Drawing from Oregon roots, agony and bliss of singing, and performing in the biggest rooms to date.
Good to see you all again. I spent this week backlogging as many of these things as I could while cooped up inside, trying not to freeze to death. Thank god I did because I am SO thrilled about this week’s installation.
In a word or two, the prince of beautiful devastation has returned yet again with a new record reflective of uninhibited emotions told through hyper-specific scenarios that Alec Duckart (Searows) tells me are “actually hardly real.”
I feel like a lot of people pull the “I remember where I was when I first listened to ‘x, y, z’” card all willy-nilly, but the genesis of Searows in my life is clear as day. I got to see him play on the last day of New York City Pride in 2023 (slightly delusional from heat and tequila remnants), and I knew pretty immediately that this was the beginning of something far bigger than the 200-cap room I found myself standing in.
“Death in the Business of Whaling” sings in with the flows of the deep waters it references. It’s a contemplative, dynamic body of work—one that, through its writing, identifies what we as humans all know to be true. That we will all one day die.
In reference to a quote from Ishmael from Herman Melville’s classic “Moby Dick,” he, too, recognizes his mortality in a fraction of a moment. Even still, he suggests that the common ideas about life and death as we know them are fundamentally wrong or shallow, and insists that people misidentify this frightening, though eventually essential, part of human existence.
Searows, too, draws around this silver lining. Each track merges like a compilation soundtrack for the end of a long, well-lived existence. Passively, it’s a celebration of death rather than an eagerness for it. He makes peace with the fact that mortality is a crucial aspect of our experience, regardless of how we choose (or are predisposed) to navigating it.
Beyond this, the production value of the music itself oozes with intent as each stem, strum, and drum speaks to the spiritual nature of the lyrics and scenarios that, though sprawling with grief, deep reflection, and at times complete devastation, never specifically happened.
All this to say, I adore everything about Searows and this record, and I am buzzing at the fact that I got to hop on a call with him and get to know him and his work through words outside of an album.
This was such a treat. I hope you enjoy.
25F: How are you feeling today, kind of just in this moment, a little over two weeks after the record came out?
Searows: I’m feeling really good. I feel like it’s sort of settled in now after those really intense first weeks following the record coming out. I think that first week was so intense, and I really didn’t know how it would be received, so it was a little overwhelming. Now it’s just nice to have it out in the world and to still be seeing how people feel about it.
I wanted to start with something that I saw you post about recently—people coming together and organizing all of these really awesome listening parties. What has it been like to see people share a space and listen to your music together, or almost treat your music like the roof of that listening party? I think that’s super cool, and I’d love to hear what you think about it.
Yeah, I mean, it’s so crazy and really special that people had that many friends to invite to something like that. It was very surreal. My team had proposed the idea before, when we were planning things and sending stuff out, and I was kind of like, “I guess we can do that, but I don’t know.” I just didn’t really think there would be that many people in the same place who would come together around the record. But it seems very special and very cute.
I was reading about how you recorded your vocals, and you mentioned in another interview that they can sound almost agonizing to make in the moment, but that they’re also one of your favorite things to produce. Is it your favorite part because you get to hear everything come together in the finished product, or is there some kind of silver lining to the “agony” you talk about when recording those vocals?
I think singing and the tone—the way I say the words—feels very important to the words I wrote. I feel like I’m not making the song the way I want it to be if the specific vocals aren’t how I want them. Obviously, it’s not really possible to get every single word and note exactly how I imagined, but that’s always the goal in my head. Singing in general is just a part of the process that I love. It is one of my favorite parts, but I also have a very high standard for what I feel I should be able to achieve, which makes it a little intense.
Talk to me a little bit about how your music reflects Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. I loved reading about that, and I’m curious to hear you talk about it in your own words.
I feel so influenced by growing up in Oregon. There’s just so much nature everywhere, and I think that becomes part of everyone’s identity living here. I didn’t necessarily realize, when I first started writing, how influenced I was by it. But writing about animals, bodies of water, and things like that has always been a recurring theme in everything I make. It’s just something I always come back to.
Alongside that kind of scenic presence in the record, I was reading about some of your influences. A lot of the people I bring on TO BE FRANK are rooted in ambient and doom folk, and I’m curious, in that specific lane, if there were artists who were especially influential to this most recent record, or just people you’ve been loving and have on rotation right now.
I’m trying to think of others, but the super influential ones are the ones I always bring up. Emma Ruth Rundle and Chelsea Wolfe were so influential to this project. I just love them. I’ve found myself very inspired by the really heavy guitars in their work, and the way their sound captures something so cathartic and satisfying. I’m trying to think of other artists I’ve been listening to more recently, but I always kind of go blank when I have to list them.
I was also reading about the setting where you made most of this record, in a studio barn with Trevor [Spencer]. I’d love to hear more about what it was like to work on a project in that space with someone like him, and to be able to go in and just focus on producing—without having to mix on the same day, as you might have with Guard Dog. How did that help protect some sense of peace in the record or keep you motivated as you were creating it?
It was hard to let go of control, but I think it was crucial to being able to just let myself be creative. I don’t know what it would have been like if I’d been mixing and trying to do everything myself—honestly, I think it would have been an entirely different-sounding project. There’s a lot more freedom when you’re not holding all of the control, even though that was something I had to weigh the pros and cons of going into it. Ultimately, it was very beneficial, and I’m so happy with the result.
When you’re working with someone like him, who has such a strong production identity, how do you protect the quieter or more fragile parts of your writing without playing it too safe? On this record, you’re clearly bringing a bigger sound and taking more risks, and I think it really pays off. I’m curious how you navigate that balance.
I think Trevor went into it very aware of the quietness and rawness in my older stuff and how important it was to keep some of that. He knew certain elements needed to stay, even with all the additional instruments. There were times when he encouraged me to let things stand on their own—to let things be how they sounded in the room and not add a bunch of instruments that weren’t necessary. I also came in with very specific ideas for certain parts; some demos already had full sections mapped out, and I was like, “We’re going to do it like this.” He gave me space to hold onto those ideas and be particular about them.
On more of the written side, I read a quote of yours that I loved. You said you write—especially on this record—about real feelings, to say something that never actually happened. Does that approach make it easier to write something raw or vulnerable, or does it make it more challenging when what you’re writing isn’t literally based on specific events from your life?
I definitely tend to write things that aren’t literal, not things that actually happened exactly as I describe them. It makes it a lot easier to convey something when I don’t feel like I need to be truthful in a literal sense. I can get more of the emotional or internal feeling across if I’m not stuck thinking, “This didn’t really happen like this, so I can’t write it that way.” It lets me convey how big something felt, even if in real life it wasn’t that huge of a situation or experience.
Do you find there’s a specific feeling when a lyric is emotionally true, even if it isn’t literally true? Is it just like, “Oh, that’s the feeling,” or does something else happen in that process?
Yeah, there definitely is a feeling, but it’s hard to describe. There are lyrics I’ve written where I didn’t fully know what I was trying to say at the time. I just thought they sounded good and put them in the song. Then, months or years later, I realized they were very emotionally true to what I’d been thinking and feeling, even if I hadn’t consciously registered that.
That must be kind of gratifying as an artist, being able to look back later and think, “Wow, I was really doing something there.”
Yeah, it is. It makes me feel like I’m channeling something, even though it feels weird to say that out loud. It can sound a little lofty to claim that, but I do think it’s true for all artists on some level. In a broad lens, that’s kind of what art is.
With your tour coming up, you have a lot of really exciting dates ahead. As you prepare to play bigger rooms and maybe longer sets, what feels like the hardest part about keeping the intimacy of this record alive on stage in those spaces?
It’s going to be interesting. I don’t really know yet what the shows will feel like on this tour. In the past, the shows felt very intimate, partly because I didn’t plan what I was going to say or do between songs. There was a lot more vulnerability because I’m pretty awkward on stage. This tour, I’m trying to make things a bit more planned, with less room for me to just ramble and be awkward in a vulnerable way. That awkwardness is definitely part of those older shows, but it makes touring harder to sustain. So I think this run will feel different, and I kind of have to wait and see what happens.
It’ll be an experiment of sorts, it sounds like.
Yeah, exactly!
When you picture someone coming to a show months from now, what’s a feeling you hope they walk out with, no matter what city they’re in?
It’s hard to put it into words, but I always think of the feeling of walking out of a movie theater after seeing something that really pulled you into its world. You’ve been so immersed in the characters or the universe that when you leave, you still feel like you’re in that other world, and you’re changed by it. That feeling of leaving, but not really having left yet. I love that feeling. That’s kind of the goal with this project—it’s very cinematic in that way.
Listen to “Death in the Business of Whaling” on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp. Follow Searows on Instagram and TikTok.
Peak
So wonderful Ian!!!!!!!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️