In Conversation With Jon Waltz: How “Trainwreck” Captures Resilience Amongst Chaos
Jon Waltz, a Memphis-bred artist, begins 2022 with a strong new sound which compliments his blues roots mixed with a new alternative/r&b sound. With a trusty internet connection, Waltz wrote “Trainwreck” with William Ardui entirely over a Zoom session, and collaborated on the track with Toronto artist, Verzache. Waltz embraces the mess of the world in his new single, as well as the mess that the world has created. Along with the release of “Trainwreck”, Waltz announces his forthcoming EP My Golden Horse due late March. Embracing the mess of the world is all part of Waltz’ plan because no matter what happens, even if he is hanging by a thread, he will always figure it out. Waltz sheds a version of his old self in the three screened music video for “Trainwreck”. As the three visuals are displayed across the screen they sometimes compete with one another creating an uncomfort visual while other sequences compliment each other; all while giving the viewer the choice of what to look at. The creative direction of the music video perfectly mirrors the chaotic energy of the song and their lyrics. Waltz soars in capturing exactly what life feels like both visually and sonically.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you feel now to have this record out in the world finally after working on it for so long?
[JON WALTZ]: It feels weird because it’s been mine for so long. This whole little project has been only mine to listen to whenever I go on walks or drives. So it’s cool to be able to share it with everybody else more formally.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You wrote “Trainwreck” over Zoom with William Ardui. I can imagine that could be a difficult process, could you walk us through how you two built this song over a trustworthy internet connection?
[JON]: Yeah, well he’s also in Belgium so there’s like an eight-hour difference between us. It was kind of hard to find a good schedule. “Trainwreck” was one of those songs that came together in about 20-30 minutes, but it’s weird because the majority - I think everybody except one producer that worked on the song - was in the Zoom with us. I also haven’t met any of these people in real life, which used to sound like a crazy thing to say, but I think that’s changed a lot since the pandemic.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What part during the pandemic did you all begin writing most of the song?
[JON]: I want to say like mid to late 2020. I’m very OCD about my music, so I’ll hear something and we’ll tweak something a little bit and then we’ll go through a million different versions before I’m confident it’s even close to getting it right. Then we’ll reach the final version after a whole lot of deliberation.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How was working with Verzache on this record? Could you tell us a little bit about your collaboration with him and how you two balanced your ideas with one another?
[JON]: I’ve been a fan of Verzache for a while, and I finally reached out to him last year. We got to talking over facetime and started to build a relationship throughout the pandemic that organically turned into us writing Trainwreck over zoom. I had thought about having a feature on a track of mine for a while, but have held off because it was super important to me that it felt organic. Verzache was the first person that it actually felt right with, and I’m so happy he’s a part of the song.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The blues, mixed with alternative RnB and a bit of indie-alternative is a new sound that we haven’t heard much from your discography yet. Does “Trainwreck” redefine your sound in any way as you enter into this new era?
[JON]: Yeah, this one specifically was one of those songs that I think a lot of people might not have seen coming. It blends a lot of the bluesy vocal and guitar tones with drum breaks that are sampled in unorthodox ways. It’s so interesting because I’ve always been an artist that likes to bend genres and not worry so much about the label.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Throughout the verses of the song you repeatedly sing: “It’s all part of my plan”, even though in prior lines you sing about how messy the world can be as you sing: “If I’m hanging by a thread, good luck it’s still in my jeans”. Can you expand further on this concept?
[JON]: Yeah, at the beginning of the pandemic I think everybody was running around, terrified, and everyone was saying ‘Don’t put out music, let’s just wait a few months’. I feel like at that moment, I was kind of panicking. I wrote this song as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying, ‘Alright, well if everything is burning down around us and I’m still alive, that’s good enough for me, I’ll figure it out’. The denim metaphor is really a metaphor for resilience amongst the chaos.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I’m absolutely in love with the chorus of this song. Can you walk us through how you built this particular part of the song?
[JON]: Have you seen the movie Wall-E, the Pixar movie? Well, I really liked the imagery of everybody just sitting in their little chairs, lounging around, and ignoring the fact that everything is ending while they are living on repeat with the same bad habits. I wanted to write a song about that as a concept. Especially where I’m from- the states, nobody’s taking this whole pandemic seriously. Nobody really cares. We’re still doing every single bad thing that we’re told not to do and treat it as entertainment.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you walk us through the creative production of the music video for “Trainwreck”?
[JON]: Yeah, so my creative director, Nik MacMillan, did all the artwork and he had been pitching this idea about using multi-screen videos. I really hadn’t seen too many music videos with that aesthetic and style, which got me pretty excited. I know Kanye did it with the Cruel Summer record, but that was a short film that was never actually released. Anyways, I really liked the idea of having the multi-screens but I also wanted to have a little lifestyle aspect to it. I wanted everybody to dress like 2Pac in the “Hit ‘Em Up” music video - everybody’s got these big jeans on, tank tops and just like oversized clothing styles. Felt like it made the whole thing a lot more familiar, while still being artistically unique.
[UNPUBLISHED]: One of my favourite compositions in the video is just within the first few seconds when we see you sitting in the barber’s chair and the extras are surrounding you lost in their own worlds. Was this direction done intentionally to convey a specific message?
[JON]: Everything in the video is really a representation of shedding the old you to embrace your new self. For instance, shaving my head was shedding off my old self, scrubbing the denim and peeling the oranges are all one in the same.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Denim is constantly in focus through the music video as well as used for the cover art for the song, can you tell us about the significance of the denim fabric and why you chose to use it through those mediums?
[JON]: Yeah, I guess especially being from the south I think of it as hard work. Because, you know, I’m in a city that’s not New York or LA - it’s not a big city like that. So I wanted something to kind of reflect that aspect of it and I felt, as a texture, denim really resonated with me. It sounds weird but it kind of represents a lot of the traits I see in myself - it’s workwear material. It’s meant to be thrown in the dirt and worked really hard. The video reflects this as well- we wanted to really focus on these really monotonous tasks and doing them over, and over again. There was this dude, SK, who the creative director knows, who makes custom jeans and he lent us I think 200 pairs of jeans or something crazy for the video, which was really cool. I’ve never seen that many jeans in my life!
[UNPUBLISHED]: Congratulations on the announcement and completion of your upcoming EP titled My Golden Horse due March 23rd. Can we expect similar styles like “Trainwreck” on the new project?
[JON]: Kinda, but I’m proud of this project because although it’s cohesive as a whole, each track stands completely on it’s own. I draw influences from so many different places throughout the project, like even though every song has guitar, in each song I’ve tried to see how many different ways I can play with the inflections of the guitar and create unique textures. I was listening to a lot of garage music and dance type music when making this project - so those influences are definitely present.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Without completely giving the entirety of the project away, if there is one message that you hope the EP conveys to your listeners what would it be?
[JON]: Yeah, good question. No matter how much chaos or change that you go through, staying strong and durable throughout life is the most important thing. Growing up, I always felt like you had to be the best of the best to do music, and I never felt like I was really great at anything. The idea of that made me work a lot harder. It’s amazing to me that I now get to be in the room with all these really talented musicians and that what I write is able to blow their minds-even though they all know how to play all these crazy chords. Music has been very labour intensive and I just want to show people that you can be in a small market city, have little to no resources and still make something great. I just want to let people know that you can do this too and it doesn’t matter where you are or if you’re the best at what you do- it just takes hard work.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’ve been making music since 2016, breaking into the music scene with “Riot”, “Anna” and “Justified” - how do you feel you have changed as an artist since those first records?
[JON]: I feel like I’m becoming a better writer but also feel like I’ve learned a lot more about the actual music industry - in a good way and a bad way. It’s definitely influenced my creative decisions and I feel like when I first came into it, I was a bit more naive. One of the things that people never tell artists is that you are going to be asked about your lyrics all the time. I want to be able to write things in such a way, that it’s open to interpretation but also at the same time, has one meaning to me.
