Singleton Series - Connor McLaren 2

Music Wave's favorite repeat guest is BACK! Join Brianna Guntz as she catches up with Connor McLaren. He is back with another single leading up to his album release. This one is inspired by Bob Dylan and a guitar part written by his brother, Alec. McLaren also talks about his experience playing shows and how his audience has increased by 5x compared to 5 months ago!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7znO39TWCRY3uOuWSxkMIQ?si=28a463134c8e4762

Brianna:

Hi I am Brianna Guntz and this is Music Wave. With me today I have your favorite and only repeat guest Connor McLaren.

How have you been? It’s been about 5 months since we last talked, what have you been up to?

Connor:

Man, 5 months ago. I’ve been good. My situation has changed quite a bit. We’ve played basically every weekend for the last like 3-4 months I think, which is really really cool. Got more singles coming out of course and the album is starting to get released. And the type of gigs I’m playing has changed.

Brianna:

I know you have been playing a ton of shows. What has that been like to play for an audience instead of a studio like the last time we talked?

Connor:

It’s been really fun kind of just learning how to perform. I mean we’ve been playing shows all the time. It’s a lot easier to perform for a crowd than in the studio. So it honestly, it’s been easier. The thing that's difficult is getting to the shows and like, organizing them and making sure I’ve got a band ready for the shows. That stuff is the stuff that I worry about. It's not about the actual performance. That tends to almost always go pretty well. It's been a lot of fun and I'm glad that I had the belief that it could go up because it's proving to be that way, that it’s not just me playing it in basements anymore. We've moved up to the next level and then some.

Brianna:

Some of the shows that you've been playing have been openers. What's that like, to play for an audience that isn't necessarily there to see you?

Connor:

It’s a fun game to me at least, because, like, when I walk up, I know that none of them care about me. So the worst I can do is leave it the way it started. So I just try to get one person in the audience or two people in the audience to care about what's going on. And if that happens, I've made a difference and I had a good show.

It's definitely interesting navigating the different crowds because when I play in Bloomington, I know the audience, it is my audience, they understand me very well. But when I go open for somebody at the City Winery in Chicago, I can't cuss, for instance, and I didn’t know that until I was on stage and I cussed, and everyone gasped, that stuff happens, though. I mean, now I won't do that again and it's not a huge deal. The headliner thought it was hilarious. It's definitely more challenging. See, that's the part. It's not about playing the songs, it’s about making sure that I'm professional and the headliner has a good time. There's all these other things that don't involve the performance.

Brianna:

Do you have a favorite show that you've played recently?

Connor:

I've been trying to think of what my favorite show this year was, and there was a show at the atrium. It's in Bloomington. It's a place called Kilroy Sports, but there's like a sub room called the atrium where they have live music. And we opened a show there for 500, 600 people. I felt like we killed it. Everyone really loved the show. And we're playing there again in a couple of months or like a month as the headliner. So I think they really enjoyed us. But it was really, really cool to play in front of an audience that big. They thought the music was really cool and it was like just another moment of, man, this could really become something. We had like, half that crowd or more seeing all the words to songs. That doesn't always happen. I've seen bands not be able to do that, so it was cool to have that opportunity to sing songs with others.

And I don't know, like the song that I'm releasing, that we're promoting, but we're going to talk about today I played it for like the third or fourth time at that show. And by the end of the song, people were singing the chorus because it was apparently that catchy, which is just really, really cool. And you have, like, a crowd of 600 people going “oh oh oh”.That is a special moment to have. I understand why people like that so much. I wish I could go back, and relive it over and over and over again.

Brianna:

So this is the third time that we’ve been able to sit down and talk. And the first time, there was no music under Connor McLaren on any platform anywhere because you were working on the album and you were really committed to making music a career. Since we talked, you dropped out of college to pursue music. Do you feel like that career is becoming more achievable?

Connor:

I feel like a year ago, there were a lot of unknowns, and it made it feel as if having a career in music was very much out of reach. But now, at the point I'm in, it definitely feels very much out of reach. But I feel like I know how a lot more stuff works than I did before. I'm only 21 I feel like when I'm 28, I'll have a lot of this figured out and be pretty good at it. I think I'm going to be able to make this a career.

Brianna:

Your newest single, Candy Rain, is coming out in early February.What is the story behind that song? What inspired it?

Connor:

Well, it comes out February 3.I'm a really big fan of Bob Dylan’s trilogy of records, of his going electric Records, in the mid-60s.But there's a record called highway 61 revisited, especially that I really, really love. Bob used to call that trilogy of music, Thin Wild Mercury, but I always felt like it sounded more like Candy Rain. And I don't know why, but that just made more sense in my head than thin, wild Mercury. And I was like, that's a really cool saying, Candy Rain. Just having that as like a thing, I sat on it for six months. Eventually, I'm just going to use this phrase and it's going to be awesome. And then I was walking by my brother's room, and we hadn't been really talking for a month or two. I think we've been fighting, and he's playing this guitar part, and it was the verse of Candy Rain. I stood there for a second and opened the door, and I was like, did you write that? And he was like, yeah. I was like, no. Who came up with that? He's like, I did. I was like, all right, we have to write right now. And he was like, no. And I was like, no, Alec, we have to write, like, right now. I've got a whole song in my head just off that thing. And he was very hesitant, too. And I was like, just play the guitar part. And he was trying to write the song, he wanted to hold it for himself. He recognized that I thought the part was cool. I let him sit there for 15 or 20 minutes and I was just holding on to every part of the guitar part I could hear. And I'm writing in this book and I’ve got the whole song written and I'm like, all right, just play the guitar part. Stop talking. And he played it. And basically what I sang is what you hear on the record, minus or plus, a couple of things.

It was originally about a pill head. So it says, so many thrills, but it used to say, so many pills and it used to say and I think my brain is screaming for another drink and to swallow the fixing because I was writing about a pill head. There was a guy that lived in the town that I grew up in that just completely destroyed his life and overdosed on fentanyl. And he passed away, like, six months after he graduated. I didn't know him at all, but it was just insane that this 18-year-old kid died and I just thought I should write a song about a pill head. So then I did. By the time I finished it, it just kind of made more sense to be about escaping reality.

Brianna:

This is the fifth single that you’ve released since the album. What makes this track stick out compared to some of the other previous releases?

Connor:

This song is like the oasis song on the record. In my opinion. It's the most kind of anthem, rock, stadium rock track. It has a heavy psychedelicness to it. I think it's the song with the most personality on the record. It's the song that's the most Connor McLaren.

Brianna:

so why is Candy Rain coming out now? Why not first or second? What's the reasoning behind it?

Connor:

I'm more of an organic musician, so we wanted to get the numbers going a bit with other songs and have a bit of a buzz going on. Basically, we wanted people to be begging us to release Candy Rain. Which, I think it's a great problem to have. We were originally planning to release it a lot sooner, but once I was getting the feedback at shows of people saying,” that song Candy Rain is just different. When are you releasing that? I couldn't find it online”. Like I said, singing the words at shows and requesting it. We were like, okay, we need to push this back more, closer to the album release, and give it more time, more buzz, just to amplify it as much as we can. When that song releases, get as many people to send it to their friends as possible. I guess that was the reason.

Although I'm seeing now that the timing of stuff doesn’t matter at all because cliche last week and the week before was getting rotated on WTTS, like being played on the radio and I've never had that happen before.

Brianna:

Is this the last single release before the album?

Connor:

We're going to release one or two more singles, I think probably just one, though. It'll be released the week before or the week when the album is released. It's like its own single. It was the song that made Ben want to record me. It was the song that kind of started all this stuff. It's the one that we see doing the best out of all of them. And then, in essence, I think we're looking at late April or early May for the album. I’ve got a spring tour lined up and then we’re hoping to do an opening slot on a whole summer tour where I follow somebody around for a whole summer.

Brianna:

This tour that you're going to be doing, are you focusing on the midwest? Where are you looking at going?

Connor:

Mostly just the midwest. I'm trying to get to North Carolina.I went to school there for a semester and there’s a festival that they have there every year.It's a college-run thing and I’d want to play at that. But most of it's like Nashville, and I'm playing in Chicago. I'm playing in Michigan. I'm in Ohio. Hitting all the big cities in Ohio and Michigan. And we're planning to go to Pittsburgh.We'll see which ones confirm. I've got like four or five confirmed around the midwest. If we stay in the midwest, we can make a lot of money, not pay to play, as some people say.

Brianna:

Where can we follow you and listen to your music?

Connor:

You can look me up on Spotify or iTunes. Connor McLaren. c-o-n-n-o-r and then McLaren liked the car, but I am not related. My Instagram is @itsconnormclaren