Ozwald Joins Our Instagram Live Interview Series 

Watch: Jason Wade and Steve Stout discuss the writing of their new record, the endless inspiration of the Beatles and the emotion of releasing music at this time.

Jason Wade and Steve Stout (of Lifehouse) recently released their third full length record under OZWALD music. The duo have been quite busy the past year-and-a-half and already have a fourth set of songs in the works. With a fascination in their ability to harmonize their songwriting, I recently had the chance to speak with Wade and Stout about their artistic process. 

Given you are in a plentiful songwriting environment there in Nashville, and you’re both such experienced writers, what is the process of how an OZWALD comes to be? Is every song a collective effort?

Stout: I think there are three main streams. With Head Movies, we started totally from scratch. It sometimes started with a drum loop and then we’d go back and redo the drums to safe time, but a song like “After The Glowin”, we were doing our first real photoshoot. Our buddy Erick Frost, who is great took the photos, we felt weird about it so we figured maybe we’ll just starting playing stuff. Then we ended up writing the song with Erick. The crazy guitar solo is all him actually. “Some Kind of Magical” was spontaneous like that as well. Other times one of us will start someting on an acoustic with vocals or a lyrics and sometimes I’ll have an instrumental bit and we’ll come together and finish it. Having put out as much stuff as we have, if there are other ways in which we can write songs, it’s like – maybe we can figure that out next. It’s trying to trick yourself to get excited about an idea in whatever way you can do that.

Wade: The fun part too is that our main process is all about whoever is feeling it in the moment. If I’m really inspired and I come in with an idea, Steve will help me finish it. Or sometimes I’m not feeling it and he will come in with three great ideas and I help fill in the blanks. It’s very much a collaboration. We’ve also had times where we both come up with something on the spot. It is very cool in a sense that we both bring ideas to the table. Most of the time it’s whoever is inspired in that moment and then the other person comes in, like if we need a bridge in there for example. Songs are puzzle with a bunch of puzzle pieces. 

WATCH –  The full interview here:

OZWALD, Head Movies is out now.

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JeffGorra@ArtistWaves.com