Interview: The Lumineers’ Wesley Schultz

Founded in 2005 by Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites, Colorado band the Lumineers have gone from playing small Denver clubs to headlining stadiums, including Coors Field in 2022 and now Empower Field at Mile High, where they’ll play on Aug. 2.

Wes joined me in the studio to talk about the band’s fifth album Automatic, which comes out Feb. 14 and marks 20 years of he and Fraites making music together. We talked about what he’s learned from working with Jeremiah for so long, how Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary Get Back inspired the album, and other themes of the album such as combating boredom and overstimulation in this crazy world we live in.

Below is an edited version of our conversation.

Ben: The new Lumineers album Automatic comes out on February 14. What would you say separates this album from your previous work?

Wesley Schultz: We made this album without much editing or rehearsing of the songs. I think that there’s a lot more fire in this one and it’s like a candid photo of us, [That’s] what this album feels like to me. It’s really honest. It’s kind of like what we did in our first record in the sense of it just sounds really innocent except this time around it was done very quickly in the studio, whereas the first time we had been playing those songs for years and then went in to try to recreate some magic.

You’ve mentioned that the album explores how we deal with boredom and overstimulation. Do you want to expand on that a little bit and how you deal with these issues?

If you take a walk around an airport, you find yourself surrounded by people who are both around each other but not really. You’re typically seeing someone on their phone with headphones in or on a laptop. That’s one way we’re overstimulated. I think there’s a lot of people on medication – a lot of people who are doing their best to numb how they’re feeling.

And I think the beautiful thing about music, and the reason why I think people come back to the well of music over and over – why Red Rocks is so popular to this day, maybe the most it’s ever been – is because it reminds us of how to feel, like really feel emotion and feel things.

So I think part of it is getting out of that. I don’t have answers, man. I’m just as guilty of being on…I have little kids who at times we’ll sit them in front of an iPad if my wife and I really want to have a conversation without getting interrupted every two seconds. And then you feel guilty for putting them in front of a screen.

Right.

So I think it’s a really hard thing, and I think [these devices] are well-designed to keep our attention. But they don’t give us that thing that almost, I would call it nutritional value, that other things can, like spending time with each other or going to shows and listening to music.

The first song you released from this album is “Same Old Song.” What was the thought process behind it?

We went into this just kind of running as fast as we could, so to speak. It was like we recorded this all in a single night, basically, and the song itself is sort of what I was alluding to earlier. Which is that no matter what the circumstances are, it seems I always come back to some of these albums, and often they’re sad songs. And they make me feel less alone and less sad, even though they are very lonely and sad songs.

Yeah.

So I think there’s something beautiful about realizing that no matter what’s happening around us, those are just the details. We still seek out these same songs that we’re singing to each other. There’s something comforting about that.

And so the song is kind of like a reflection of the last 20 years of me and Jer [Lumineers cofounder Jeremiah Fraites] making music together, because this album marks 20 years of that. We started in 2005, and some of the memories like getting robbed as a band and just different stream-of-consciousness kind of memories, and then how the anchor of all that is this music.

To piggyback off that a little bit, that you and Jeremiah have been making music together for 20 years, what’s something that you’ve learned while working with him?

I’ve learned that I’m very lucky to be in a band with him, and that the things that he is so passionate about don’t always overlap musically with what I’m passionate about, which is really our superpower. Everything he’s obsessing over, I don’t understand as much and vice versa, so it’s really nice.

When I met him he was making instrumental music, mostly. Not when I met him. I grew up around him, but I just mean when I sort of started making music with him, and I was really into lyrics. I love poetry and I love songwriting in that way. And so we came together over very different passions around music, and I think it has served us well.

I read that this album took some inspiration from Peter Jackson’s documentary about the Beatles, Get Back. What was the nature of this inspiration?

I would say the way we recorded it. If anyone listening hasn’t seen [Get Back] yet, it’s quite a long doc. Totally worth it though. It kind of sets the scene for how things go in the studio for real, and not just some weird movie depiction of it. There’s a lot of sitting around and sort of…you could be sitting in front of…in that movie, Paul McCartney is playing “Let it Be.” And you just can’t believe that these other guys aren’t sitting there going, “What is that?” They’re kind of oblivious to him.

Yeah, right?

I think there’s a lot of moments in the studio where you never know what’s working, you’re not sure. It’s just a lot of stuff. It’s hard to understand how good something is in the moment and when an idea is not good.

But [regarding] how that related to our approach to Automatic, I think one of the things they did really well as a band – and it sounds like it should be obvious – is that they played so well together. That was like their magic. They spent all these years in Hamburg cutting their teeth and getting tight and just harmonizing, and they just gelled in this almost otherworldly way.

And for the 20 years that Jer and I have been playing music, we have this weird chemistry where the way he plays drums or piano, it just kind of fits like hand in glove with what I would want. A lot of the previous recordings we had recorded separately, and this was one of the first times where we tried to do a whole album where we were recording at the same time, doing our takes together and not multi-tracking and doing it separately. Which is a very normal thing to do in the modern era, it gives the engineers a lot more power to edit. But in this case, we did it all together and it probably drove the engineer a little crazy, but it worked.

I ask this to every band and artist that I interview. So we’re 105.5, the Colorado Sound. What band or artists would you drive 105.5 miles to go see?

Because I just had dinner with him the other night, and he’s a good friend of mine, I’m going to say Nathaniel Rateliff, whether it’s solo or with the Night Sweats. I would drive a great distance for him, and I would say the same for Gregory Alan Isakov. Two good friends of mine from this area that both put on incredible shows that I’ve known now for, I don’t know, 12 or 13 years. Just amazing people and amazing musicians.

And keeping it to Colorado artists. Well, thanks for joining me.

Yeah, appreciate you having me, man. Thanks.

The Lumineers album Automatic is out Feb. 14. They play with Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver, Colo. on Aug. 2.