„But it’s a little bit funny, it’s all a bit weird, right?“

It’s so nice to finally meet you and to see you play tonight. What are your feelings about the recent tour and the release of your btw phenomenal album?

Yeah, well it’s really fun whenever you get to release an album that you had done for a long time, it’s a little weird though because you’ve spent all this time building up to something and then it’s just out and people can hear it. Yeah hopefully the feedback’s good and positive like I haven’t heard too much negative feedback (laughs) so I’m glad people like it, which is nice. And this tour is just kind of getting started but it’s been good so far, just a little tired, I’m just jetlagged a little bit but it’s good.

It’s pretty rare to find more than one version of the same song on one album. But there are even three different versions of ‚Where’s My Love‘ on yours actually! Why did you choose to release all of them on the LP instead of putting it on an EP?

Yeah, well the original plan was to just have the one version but suddenly my label was like ‘hey, do you want to do an acoustic version?’ and I thought ‘oh okay, I’ll just go add an acoustic guitar to it and then we released that. But when I went back to the studio we couldn’t find the recording session, no one had it and so we just had to start over basically. So that truly started the multiple versions. And after I did the acoustic version they were just like ‘Oh just do a violin version or like a radio version’ so that’s the reason. And I think because of Spotify and Apple and sites like that it just makes it a lot easier for people to digest music and to find different versions, I think it makes sense in that world. But it’s a little bit funny, it’s all a bit weird, right? (laughs)

The music video to ‚Where’s My Love‘ is very emotional and even when watching it for a couple of times I get goosebumps. Did you have something to do with it?

A little bit.. I met this great director Gavin Michael Booth in the U.S. and we were working on something together but it wasn’t for SYML and he mentioned he had this idea for a music video and that he thinks it would work really well with the song ‘Where’s My Love’ and so he told me about it and I was like totally into it. We didn’t know until we put it together that it’s gonna be so powerful and really impactful. So it was kind of like we both had this piece of art and we put it together into the same thing. So it’s mostly him…

But it really fits perfectly…

Yeah it does, I think so!

„But it’s always so cool when your music is hidden in the TV shows, because it’s cool, I mean yeah it’s exciting!“

Here in Germany many of your songs are played more and more often in the background of TV shows and stuff like that. Is that a noticable fact for you far away in the USA and did you ever hear a song of yours in a TV show maybe?

Yeah I’ve seen a lot… when it’s in TV shows in the U.S. it’s obviously easier for me to see them but for the international ones people send me a link and stuff so I can check it out, too. But it’s always so cool when your music is hidden in TV shows, because it’s cool, I mean yeah it’s exciting! (laughs)

You’ve covered Lana Del Rey’s song ‚Young & Beautiful‘ in a very emotional and SYML like clear version. Is there any certain song that inspired you during your career?

I think Jeff Buckley is one of my favourite artists and his version of the song ‘Halleluja’ is like really heartbreaking and beautiful. And I think any song that I heard of him is just exactly that, it’s just so heart-felt, passionate and I think I learned a lot from him, about how to sing and how to write songs. That song is sung a lot now but that version is really special. (smiles)

You’ve been a member of the band ‚Barcelona‘ before. What has changed for you as a solo artist? Are there advantages/disadvantages (like creative issues, touring etc.)?

It wasn’t an intentional change.. umm… we had toured for a lot of years and the two of us started having families and didn’t want to tour as much anymore so that’s kind of why the band kind of went down and it just happened like tiny wise that I made some music for SYML and like I got on these different things and it gave me a reason to start touring again. But from the songwriting point it’s not that different as I wrote the songs for Russel and then we put the music together and in this case I still write the songs and then just work by myself on it. So it’s better and worse in some ways. It’s really fun being in a band with other people and cooperate and travel together, cause it can be very lonely traveling by yourself.. but I love working on music by myself, that’s really really fun, so… yeah different but the same.

Thank you for the nice interview, it was really fun!

Yeah, thank you! There are so many good questions!

Interview conducted by Julia & Maria