Reading Invisible Ink with Leon III

(Photo Credit: Sean Mathis)

We had a chance to chat with one of our favorites bands and also major earner of the “bandfam” title that we give out about their new record Candy Cigarettes, how they achieve their unique psych/roots style, and what goes into a Leon III record. Candy Cigarettes drops everywhere Friday, September 18! FMI on Leon III, visit their website at www.leoniii.com.

One of your trademarks includes diverse use of sound and instrumentation. For example, on “Count Backwards from Zero” I heard horns, sitar, and strings (in addition to guitars, etc.). There’s so pedal steel on the record. Can you all go into your choices of instrument use when you’re writing?

“Most of it is guided by the song. The way we record is we record the skeleton of the band, which we do live. We try to get a take we like. For “Count Backwards from Zero” a lot of things happened. That song is kind of a cyborg of a lot of iterations of it. The best version of it is kinda a freaky country version of The Doors. The intro we recorded, then we had a sitar player and then we had Katie who sings all over the album and she plays this primitive fiddle. That song is an exercise in experimentation.”

One thing I love about you all is that you throw convention out the window. What I mean by that is, that in an age of character limits and sound bites, you all flip the bird to what musicians “should” do for marketability in the cookie cutter PR sense of the word. You released the single “Brushstrokes”, which clocks in just under eight minutes. Most bands wouldn’t be bold enough to make choices like that. And to be clear, the track never feels cumbersome to listen to because its length. That’s a testimant to your skills as musicians. What goes into your process for selecting singles and how you sort of tease what’s coming with the full length record?

“Yeah it’s thinking about what songs will grab people and we put out two in “Invisible Ink” and “Brushstrokes”, we felt that it was a good representation of the record and something that people would dig. Instead of putting out a three minute song with a bunch of hooks in it. There’s no confusion here, 90% of people might be like ‘I don’t do eight minute songs’. The people that are going to like us will put the time in and listen. The first one we did like this was ‘Fly Migrator’ back on Antlers in Velvet. The people that want to put the time in will get it.”

You all have a psychedelic bend to your sound, but as was mentioned in your press release, you never aimlessly wander when building your tunes, which sometimes people associate with that genre. Can you speak a bit about how you’re able to weave a story both musically and thematically both in short and longer ranging tracks?

“I don’t know honestly. At the end of the day, these are songs I write. They sometimes start with a turn of phrase lyrically or start with a chorus that fits the song. The people that come to the Leon III table generally glean something out of the tunes regardless of length. On the last record, I tried to write shorter songs whereas this time I tried to write songs that were dictated by where the song needs to go. “Brushstrokes” is long because when we were recording and let loose and stopped worrying about length, that’s where it really came together. Someone asked if we could cut off the beginning of “Invisible Ink” and we declined.”

One of your hallmarks is your live show. Can you go into a bit about what you’re most looking forward to about debuting these tracks in a live setting?

“Yeah the only ones we’ve played so far are “Brushstrokes” and “Invisible Ink”. Personally, I look forward to playing “Habits of Creatures” because it’s in 3/4 time and it has this cool keyboard section that I really look forward to playing live. The other one, one of the songs that is the most beautiful or poignant is “Watching People Swim”. When we play live were a little harder and jammier. Mason is such a good guitarist and sometimes he doesn’t play what you think. Our drummer was in an Iteration of Black Flag, so when Mason tees off, Isaiah goes wild.”

You had the opportunity to collaborate with producer Mark Nevers, who has worked with a ton of artists, including one of our favorites Silver Jews, which featured the late, great David Berman. Can you discuss what that experience was like having Nevers at the helm from a production standpoint?

“So Mark has produced all the Leon III albums, to this point. Mark is as much a member of the band as anybody. He has helped our evolution from our first record to now. Mark cut his teeth with in country, with everyone from the late Dolly Parton, to George Jones. In 2016, before we recorded the first Leon III album, we reached out to him cold and he was like “Yeah let’s do it”. The first album we didn’t really know what Leon III sounded like. We had studio musicians who had worked with Silver Jews. As we went on, we continued to get better. Going back to your question, Mark is not a producer that dictates the direction. He tends to get the band comfortable and let us go. There will be times we ask for feedback, he’ll be like “…It’s getting there, keep working”. Once the recording is down, he gets hands on. He’ll be all putting a tiny piece of bell into an intro or something like that. He’s got a lot of cool ideas, Mark is just part of the band he just doesn’t play an instrument.”