Q&A: Cautious Clay Weighs In On The Power of Community and Fandom
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY ANNA CUCIUREAN-ZAPAN ☆
CAUTIOUS CLAY INVITES YOU TO REFLECT—Cautious Clay has always been one to experiment. Having collaborated on work for Billie Eilish, John Mayer, John Legend, Khalid and Remi Wolf (to name a few), he’s now wrapped up a three album arc titled The Hours composed of Morning, Night and now concluding with High Noon.
The trio of albums present themselves as a breezy, playful journey through all hours of a day, from 5 a.m. all the way to 4 a.m. Groovy and the most sonically diverse of the trio, High Noon takes listeners through 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. It’s easy listening that almost feels meditative in nature. It’s calm and reflective, yet motivating and exciting. You can almost feel the warmth of the sun while listening to this installment, making you want to get in the car and drive with the windows down blasting “Green Screen (1pm)” or wind down at home on the sofa with “Shadow of Doubt (8pm).”
If there’s anything these three projects prove it’s that life is just a balancing act. There’s so much to go out and experience, people to fall in and out of love with, moments of growth. It’s rare to witness someone with emotional maturity and even more rare to put that feeling into words, let alone music, yet that’s exactly what Clay does. And that’s what he hopes fans connect with.
Having moved to Philly for a few years then back to New York, Clay now works, plays and hangs out in Brooklyn. Luna touched base with him in between mixing sessions.
LUNA: How has your summer been going so far? How are your overall vibes doing? I see you've been playing some pickup.
CLAY: It's been great. Like you're saying, playing a lot of basketball, writing a bunch, doing a lot of collaborations with other artists and musicians. It’s been great to expand out into other creative fields as well, outside of just my own work and doing some painting as well.
LUNA: How does it feel finally having concluded this album series?
CLAY: It's felt really awesome. It's been two years in the making, and I'm very glad that it's at a place now where people can finally connect to it on their own. I've poured a lot into these songs, but they were very easy to make. There wasn't a lot of intense thought that went into it. It just flowed out of me. It's nice to feel like people are receiving it in a way that's genuine.
LUNA: I was gonna say I feel like all three of these albums flow so seamlessly into each other, and I was wondering about writing a series of work that all connect with each other—what is that writing process like?
CLAY: I knew I had a plan, but people have asked me if I sat down and was like, “I'm gonna write a song about 9 a.m.” I tried that at first, and it was very, very hard. Didn't feel necessarily as natural. So what I ended up doing was just creating and then after the creation was at a place that I felt was good, I could determine if it felt like it could fit the project—if it felt like it was a particular hour of the day. I did probably write about 60 plus songs for the album, and then a lot of them just ended up on the hard drive. A lot of them are songs I'll recycle someday.
LUNA: With these albums, is there a certain order you would want people to listen to them in? I know you just released High Noon, but you released Night beforehand so would you want them to go in the order of the day or order of release date?
CLAY: I thought it would start with the morning and then go through the afternoon and into the night. I think that's what I had envisioned. But the reason I released High Noon as the final album is because it felt like the most nebulous time. I couldn't necessarily totally specify what I wanted that to sound like as easily as the night or the morning. The morning into the night—they have so much contrast sonically and lyrically, and so it felt much easier for me to make those two projects. But then the middle ground is the afternoon where there's elements of excitement and energy, but overwhelmingly calm. You're probably actively doing something with your day, and so it's like having something that can sort of slot into that. I was very conscious of how I wanted each project to feel. The night is obviously more like party time, a little more dancey, a little more energetic. It's like you’re at an art museum, or it's late, late, late at night, and you're driving back from the bar. There's a lot of visual representation for me within how I create.
LUNA: When you have moments where you're in a creative rut, where do you usually turn to get inspiration from?
CLAY: I'll either look at old stuff I've written and think about that, or I just live my life. I have to live. I have to go to trivia nights. I play basketball. I meet up with friends. I talk to people. Travel. That’s the main source of inspiration, and also being comfortable with being uncomfortable is a valuable skill and a way to create.
LUNA: Would you say you have a favorite album out of the trio? Would you be able to pick a favorite child?
CLAY: Definitely. I'd say Night is probably my favorite. I'm a night person anyway, so that sonically fits my overall energy for sure.
LUNA: I saw you had some album release parties, and then some community basketball games. What do these moments with your community or your fans mean to you?
CLAY: It’s very stereotypical, but it literally means everything. It's the rawest form of connection possible. It means more and more as time goes on because there's just more and more of an attention economy where people have many [choices of] where they go with their time and energy, and so to have people who've been to some of my first shows and wanted to connect with me over almost a decade is just crazy. Definitely keeps me going sometimes where I'm just like, “What am I doing?” Community is the most important and connective thing. Especially now, I think it's being actively suppressed in some ways, or it's being put only online, which again, I understand the necessity of, but meeting up in person, it’s…chef's kiss.
LUNA: I feel like online fandoms too can sometimes become so toxic so quickly and things become so misconstrued over the internet.
CLAY: It's like just music, you know. This isn't war. We could all just take it down 1000. Maybe I'm going off the rails, but it made me think about what we were talking about [with] community and having a healthy relationship with how it manifests in your life. Music is literally a universal language. It's used in a way that can be bad, but I think it’s inherently the purest form of love because it exists in this nebulous place, and it doesn't expect anything from you.
LUNA: Agreed. I love that the main theme of this whole album series is the concept of time, so I was wondering: how do you feel that you've evolved in your career as an artist and have there been some lessons that you've carried throughout your life?
CLAY: If you have a side of yourself that you want to embrace, and you want to showcase, don't hold back. Don't try to fake parts of your life, and have a true connection to what you're doing. You have to really know that what you're doing is from a place that is genuine.
LUNA: After this show and all the albums releasing, what's next for you?
CLAY: I'm going to continue writing my music and finding out what I want to do next. But I also want to start working and writing with other artists and facilitating their work in a way that’s fun, exciting and engaging. I’ve been in this industry now for some time and I've been on the outside, so I feel like I have a real deep understanding and connection to help steward and mentor other artists who are starting their careers.
I also do have some shows coming up early next year. I'm going to be doing a residency in New York, so I'm excited about that. I'm just taking it day by day, and I'm trying to develop my next work and path forward. I think I wanna do more events now—I really enjoyed this basketball event so maybe we'll have an annual thing. I'm trying to grow deeper roots into the music community, and I already have some to begin with, but I want to grow that out a little more.
