Never Shout Never interview

Your current tour kind of ties into your album: “I ran away to Californ-i-a” – you’re doing exactly that at the moment.

Pretty much. It’s pretty much a different place than the U.S., I think, just cause the vibe’s right. It’s a very liberating place, instead of the midwest, the bible belt.

I know you’re spending most of your time on the road lately, but when you are home, do you still call Missouri home?

Yeah definitely. I just actually purchased a house there, a little two bedroom, me and my buddy, so that’s gonna be my homestead for awhile. I’m gonna build a little studio in the garage. I’m pretty stoked about it.

So you’re gonna carve out your hometown as your permanent home. No pressure to run off to New York or anything.

Exactly. There’s no pressure. That’s how you get lost. That’s the last thing I want. I just want to stay a small town kid and do this for a job, do this for expression.

When I listen to your album What Is Love?, the thing I notice is a lot of the songs tend to be pretty concise, about half of them are around two, two and a half minutes. Do you try to keep them that concise or do they just turn out that way?

I try to keep them definitely under three minutes unless it’s like an epic ballad or something like that. I try to keep them very short, especially with the pop songs, because I usually can’t get through an entire pop song because it kind of gets old. But if you keep it down to two to two-thirty then it’s super easy to listen to and you just want to listen to it again, you know, and that’s kind of what The Beatles did. Buddy Holly, a lot of his hits were only like a minute-fifty.

In today’s modern society songs have to be three minutes for some reason, you know what I mean? But I think a good pop song, I think the perfect time is about two minutes, especially with kids’ attention span today.

When you play these songs live, do you stretch them out and add extra stuff in there, or are your live performances pretty faithful to the album?

Actually, we pretty much redo the songs. We keep the structure, and then instrumentation wise we just kind of jam it out. It’s kind of like a Bob Dylan and The Band vibe, we take these acoustic kind of songs and then just folk them up a little bit and get some real cool crunchy electric lead-in. It’s super jammy, kind of like a sixties vibe. It’s real fun.

What led you to choose Butch Walker as your producer?

I never worked with a big producer before. It was super nerve racking, but I was a big fan of Butch’s work, you know? I wasn’t too big of a fan of the stuff that he’d produced, but I was a big fan of his music, and I loved the tones that he got and things like that. I just thought that he kind of fit with my vibe, instead of a big rap producer or something.

It just kind of made sense. We went with him and it was a really good decision. He taught me a lot, because I went in there and I told him, I was like “I just want to make like a fifties vibed album, you know, fifties pop,” and he was totally cool with that. He taught me a lot about big harmonies, Beach Boys style harmonies, and a lot about vintage tone and recording analog, and going from analog to digital and stuff like that. It was a great learning experience for me.

When you first started NeverShoutNever, you could have called yourself Christofer Drew instead, and presented yourself as a solo artist with your own name. Now that you’ve had a couple of years to look back at that, do you think you made the right call?

That’s a weird question, just cause I don’t really like the name NeverShoutNever too much, but I think that there’s a purpose behind it. There’s a reason that I called it that, you know? I don’t know that there’s any point in changing it now at this point. I tried to fight it for awhile and just gone with the solo thing, but I think there’s definitely a reason that it’s called that. I think there’s a reason for everything, and there’s no point in fighting it. So I think it was definitely a good decision.

I’ve seen “Never Shout Never” as three words in iTunes, I’ve seen it as one word on MySpace, do you consider both of those to be correct, or do you have one that you prefer?

I don’t really care [laughs]. People can do whatever they want, they can say whatever they want. I think it’s all correct.

You’ve got a pretty varied audience, but a fair number of them are of the screaming teenage girl variety. Are you comfortable with having all these girls looking up to you?

Yeah, why not? All I really wanna do is kind of like, just, positivity, and give these kids knowledge on how strange our society is, you know, and hopefully enlighten these kids. They might not get it right now, but I hope in the long run that they’ll understand where I’m coming from. Some kids are kind of confused on some of the deeper stuff that I talk about, but I think as time goes on they’re gonna understand it and they’re gonna grow with it. I think it’s great they’re at such an age where they’re kind of easy to influence, but I don’t know, I think it’s a good age because they’re super relatable. I was at such a strange point when I was that age too, and I think it’s great that maybe I can give them some positive words of encouragement, just keep going and knowing that it’s a weird phase that they’re in but they’re gonna grow out of it.

About a year ago you announced that you were a vegan. Have you been able to keep up with that on the road?

I’ll sometimes dabble into, like, a cheese pizza and what not. But other than that I’m pretty much a vegan. I try to eat all natural and stuff.

I see that you’re using an iPhone. Are there any apps or features that you can’t live without?

I have a tuner app that comes in handy a lot, and also a recording app just so I can jot down ideas or jot down lyrics. If I think of something I can just hit record and then talk it out or sing it out. Those are very useful.

I’m not really big into technology. I don’t really like it. I don’t think it’s necessary for humanity [laughs]. But it’s something that you can take advantage of and use to benefit things that you love, like music.

You posted on Twitter, “What would happen if this entire world lived selflessly?” Have you come up with anything approaching an answer?

I haven’t really thought about it since I posted it, but I think if the world lived completely selflessly, I feel like there would be no need for money or stress or anything like that. Everybody would just kind of want to work with their natural energy and stop trying to fight it.

Research assistant: Keri Franz