Q&A: Lying Wide Awake With DREAMERS
WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? — is an age-old question that’s driven countless artists, creators, and innovators, and now, DREAMERS. In this place between sleep and waking life is a special getaway where creativity is unhinged and unafraid. It’s a sweet spot the Brooklyn-based band DREAMERS takes us to with their imaginative and hard-hitting music.
It’s like living through a lucid dream, being engulfed in a wondrous immersive experience you don’t want to wake up from. The DREAMERS discography is reminiscent of a nostalgic film series, inviting listeners to take a break from reality and escape to a comforting place. Tucked away in this getaway are songs that put a rock ’n’ roll spin on life’s difficult moments, not magnifying them but making them livable.
For DREAMERS, the focus is on what is possible. From inventive lyrics and avant-garde stage set-ups to abstract music video concepts, the band is just beginning to scratch the surface of bringing their greatest dreams to the world stage. And what’s to come is just as exciting as what’s been. Their upcoming single, “Robbery,” featuring Sueco, is set to be released in late August and is ready to be played on repeat wherever your dreams take you next.
Looking to follow DREAMERS on the road? The duo will be going on two co-headlining tours this fall. Catch them with The Score starting on August 19 and see them play with Smallpools when November 4 rolls around. While you wait, stream their newest releases, “Black Confetti” and “Body Language (feat. Kiiara),” and mark your calendar for their new song with Sueco being released August 26.
Luna attended a virtual press conference with Nick Wold from DREAMERS, hosted by 1824 of Universal Music Group. Read below to learn his thoughts on creating art, making music for the modern age, and planning ahead into the future.
LUNA: Hi, it's great to meet you! So, my first question: What’s the songwriting process like for you, and how do you get into that creative zone?
WOLD: At this point, I'm kind of just in that zone all the time because we write so often that I'm always thinking about it. We called ourselves DREAMERS originally because I write a lot of music in dreams or I dream about songs and then I wake up and write it down in the morning. I've found no pattern with them. And as far as what works for songwriting goes, I like to try everything and try to be inspired or craft something out of a concept. Sometimes things work and sometimes they just don't come together and then you have to write a lot and pick out the best of stuff.
LUNA: That's awesome. Do you have a favorite guitar to record with, and if so, what sets it apart from others?
WOLD: Yeah, I definitely have a guitar that's kind of like my baby. It was a guitar that I bought in New York when I had zero money and was trying to make it happen. It's a ’70s Fender Mustang, and Fender Mustangs are my favorite because of Kurt Cobain and the whole grunge thing. It’s a special find… It sounded and still sounds incredible and way more rich and better than any guitar I've found. I had that with me on all my first tours and it somehow survived the craziness of the band tours and, like, a million shows. Now it's retired and I keep it at home for recording. But yeah, that'll probably always be my favorite.
LUNA: I love that. Thanks for sharing! Next up, how do you come up with your music video concepts, and what's it like working with other artists when you collaborate on them?
WOLD: I've always loved music videos. I'm a big movie nerd and that's our chance to pretend we're making a movie, so I've always had a lot of fun with them. Sometimes it's like the song’s kind of right and there’s a million ideas, but others it’s like I can't come up with one idea in a year. I honestly don't know how to come up with ideas. I've had a lot of experiences… like when I need to make a music video and I don't have an idea and I'm like, it's all about a good idea. Then other times I'm like, “I have a great idea for this one song that we're not even doing a video for,” so then I have to just do it anyway. I don't know, but it's super fun for me to make videos. The vibe in LA with other artists is super collaborative so everyone is always down when we ask if you want to do a video. It's fun.
LUNA: Is there a main message you want listeners to take away after listening to your music?
WOLD: Yeah, I think the thing that inspires me the most to make music is sometimes this crazy feeling.
There isn't a word for it, but it's kind of like nostalgia or sadness mixed with happiness — a certain type of sadness that presents itself — that makes me feel inspired to be better. And I get that a lot from music or just from life. So, often when I feel that I just want to express it. I think hopefully our music can be what great music has done for me: inspire people to do more and to be better people. I think music is one of the few art forms left that still kind of can be pure in that way, and righteous. There's so much bad stuff in the world, so I think music is just one of those places where you can be real.
LUNA: I definitely get that nostalgic vibe from your music. My next question is kind of fun! If you had to describe your discography as a movie genre, or genres, what would you describe it as?
WOLD: That's a good question. Thank you! I think of music the same way I think of movies. There are some movies that are totally popcorn movies like The Avengers, where it’s about explosions and stuff, and then you have movies that are super deep, and like art films that are abstract. My favorite movies are always somewhere in the middle, where you can have deep concepts but they're being conveyed in a way that's also fun and kind of a guilty pleasure to watch. I don't know… Inception, or there are a lot of movies that are deep but also just cool and fun. I probably think of music the same way. That's [how] you know I grew up in Seattle and I love Nirvana because I feel like they were the band that was able to do both the most at the same time. On the one hand they're deep, on the other hand, it's rock and it's fun to mosh to. So, yeah, just trying to get both of those dials turned up as far as possible.
LUNA: That was such a great answer, thank you. In a world where you were headlining Coachella, what could fans expect from your set and who would your dream collaborators be?
WOLD: I think if we were to headline Coachella or insert the name of the biggest festival here, I would just want to do way more crazy stuff with the production, the lights, and the crowd. You know Pink Floyd is one of the greatest rock bands of all time and they kind of started it with giant creatures coming over the wall during their show and I always wanted to do crazy stuff like that. It's just far too expensive. So beyond that, I hope we just would play music the same way we do now and make it heavier and more rock ’n’ roll than most artists that headline Coachella. And dream collaborators for sure are David Bowie, Bob Marley, and John Lennon — those are all my favorites. And yeah, all my favorites have passed away.
LUNA: Those are solid ones. The Bowie one got me. Then my final question: At the end of the day, what would you say inspires your music and informs your sound?
WOLD: I'm always looking for new music that I find interesting, and I usually fail — I find that I like almost everything. I just don't relate to it always, and occasionally I find something that's super cool and fresh and it reinvigorates my joy of the whole thing. Usually, I'm going back to my original influences, which are early rock ’n’ roll, like The Beatles and The Doors and up to ’90s grunge Nirvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, and that kind of stuff. And those bands loved ’60s rock too, so it really starts with The Beatles kind of and goes from there. But I don't want to make revivalist music, like just make ’60s music — I always wanted to feel new and use technology to do that, but honestly the biggest inspiration for me is usually old stuff.
1824: In Speaking of Clouds, I read — and you can correct me if this isn't true — but I'm pretty sure I read an interview that you're a big fan of The Strokes. Is that correct? I think that The Strokes and DREAMERS collab is what we need.
WOLD: True, they're like one of my biggest influences that's alive. When I was a kid, it was like all the music was kind of bad at that point and then The Strokes came out. It was like a revolution for us kids at the time. Especially for me who liked old music like The Doors and wanted to hear rock ’n’ roll again. They totally represented that and that got me started. So they are probably the reason that I started this in the first place.
1824: How did the band start out? Were you booking performances? Did a manager see you perform and wanted to sign you? What was that process like?
WOLD: Yeah, so Ian Nelson and I were playing music together. I have been playing saxophone since I was 10 years old — I studied it and went to school for it. But then after school, I wanted to start a rock band and I was really ambitious about it. We were booking all our own stuff. There was a wave at that time in Brooklyn of awesome DIY artist stuff for people who were renting out cheap warehouse spaces and doing cool stuff. So it's me and one of my best friends and we're playing this DIY venue on our own completely. Our manager already was our friend there at that time too. I had one band and then I had another band. We were trying different things. Eventually, the second band started getting some attention on Twitter and on Sirius Radio for our song “Wolves,” right before we came up with the name DREAMERS. We kind of just went from there. I mean, just working part-time jobs and pouring all our money into it and doing whatever we could.
1824: Gotcha. And what was the process like of moving from one band to another — how was that?
WOLD: It's kind of like a horrible friend divorce. In that [first] band, we all had very different desires for what a band should be. We never really agreed on anything and just kind of eventually came to realize we should separate, and so we did. And it's probably the best thing to do because you always have to be looking for what's better and not just getting married to anything. I think creatively, that was a great new start and we got to kind of do a second draft. So, it's like, “Okay, now that we know what a band is, we can start from scratch and do it better.”
1824: You’ve toured with some incredible artists, including Young the Giant and Stone Temple Pilots, and having been in the industry for a long time, you’ve been surrounded by several experienced and impressive people in industry. What would you say is the best piece of advice you've received from someone in the music business?
WOLD: What really did strike me when we did the first big tour we ever got to do with Stone Temple Pilots… Chester from Lincoln Park was singing for them, and we were such a new band with only one song on Sirius Radio, and they picked us out of all these bands because they liked it. That band was just so welcoming to us. They're legends, you know, and they put our name on big banners, which was super cool to us and kind of showed us the way. It was beyond kind of them, especially to have these established artists looking out for us. Because the industry is brutal, the fact that they were so nurturing was important in our formation of that idea.
1824: You guys are probably getting close to being industry experts now. Having been involved in the music business for several years, they're pushing for artists to connect with wider audiences and curate those personal connections with their fans. With all that happening, I'm curious to know what you think the most promising innovations are?
WOLD: I'm always “nerding” out on stuff I'm really interested in, like AR projection mapping, or how you can project things exactly onto specific things behind yourself. So I do a lot of stuff with VR. I like interesting ways to dress up to the music. They do these visuals now where you can look through your phone and you look at the stage and you see dinosaurs walking on the stage or something like that. As far as the actual music goes, the innovations to me don't change anything because the soul of music is still all about the creative human mind or a soul doing something cool, and that’s what's important.
1824: When you're at the end of your career, what do you think is the one thing that you hope to look back on and say that you were proud of accomplishing?
WOLD: It sounds cliche, but I would hope that I would have made some real art and managed to get it in the hands of people. I feel like there are so many people, especially since we moved to LA, that don’t care what their music is as long as it sells. And I get that because I know how hard it is to make your true art marketable. Most people who make their true art never get heard. And the downside of that is that most people never really got to make their true art. I would just like to have done the most difficult thing, which is to get real stuff out in the market.
1824: We’d like to touch on your creative process and what inspires you. What's your earliest memory with music like that stood out to you?
WOLD: This has forever been my passion. My mom tells me that I was, like, two years old and I wanted to play saxophone badly. Man, I don't know that there's a bunch! My neighbor growing up was this sweet old lady who was a violinist in the Seattle Symphony, and I remember going over to her house one time because I wanted to learn stuff and she would show me how to play the piano. It felt awesome that I could do that. It's just like all the other things you learn how to do as a kid, like writing and tying your shoes. But yeah, I never really thought it was going to be my job or my passion until later when I became a teenager, and I was super depressed. It was like life can't just be going through the motions — like there has to be something else. That's probably what got me in that direction.
1824: When you begin the process of writing a song, are you inspired by the melody first or the lyrics? Or does that happen all at once?
WOLD: It's almost always melody first, or a vibe, but sometimes it'll be a lyric first. Sometimes I literally come up with songs in my dreams. I had this one dream where I was in a weird place and John Lennon was there and he played a song. When I woke up, I was like, “That’s like an actual song.” It’s weird at times and I don't know what's up with that, but yeah, that's usually how it goes. It's usually music first, then I think about what it means. Like what is this about? Why are we rocking here for you? Then I write the lyrics.
1824: Do you have a lot of vivid dreams often, and has that always been where you get your creativity from?
WOLD: Kind of, yeah, I've always had vivid dreams and I was obsessed with dreams for a while. I even learned how to lucid dream — you can practice and get yourself to do it more often. And I used to write dream journals as a kid. I thought it was interesting that you have this crazy other existence when you're asleep, or you have this crazy psychedelic trip that's like all-encompassing and you forget about your life and you think it's real. I thought that was crazy and an interesting place to draw ideas from because they're so subliminal and still it's like you're coming up with stuff that you would never come up with.
1824: What can we expect for the tour? Are there any crazy big productions you have planned?
WOLD: Totally. I'm tired right now because I had a 6:00 a.m. to midnight day just building our light show, which is going to be pretty nuts. It's, like, the biggest one we've ever had, so that's going to be crazy. We have a new drummer, this girl Jess, who's been absolutely crushing it. And we always wanted to bring on like an auxiliary player, someone who can do a little extra on guitars, vocals, or keys here and there, so we got that. It's kind of like a new band in a lot of ways, and it's our first tour since the pandemic so we've really grown as people and there's tons of new songs. I don't even know what to expect. I think I'm in the same boat as you, but it's going to be awesome.
1824: Is there a song that you are most excited to perform on tour?
WOLD: For sure, I'm kind of fresh on new songs. That song “Robbery” — I'm really excited to perform it. It has guitars in it all, so it's one of those songs where I get to put down the guitar and dance around. That'll be fun, and “Body Language” is another new song that's going to be fun to do too.
1824: If you could have your music featured in the soundtrack of any show or movie, is there a song that you'd pick? And then which show or movie would you choose to have it in?
WOLD: It's a good question. I think I’d want one of our heavy rock songs to happen in like Game of Thrones when they're having a medieval sword battle or something. I don't know really. I've always thought our music would work better in a movie. I love Richard Linklater, and he has this movie called A Scanner Darkly, which is an awesome cartoon version of a sci-fi novel. The ending is mind-blowing and tragic and then the credits play this perfect song. I’ve always wanted to be that mic drop credits song in a cool movie like that. That'd be sick.
1824: If you could describe your sound without mentioning any musicians or genres, how would you describe it?
WOLD: I don't know man — it's a great question and I love it. I would definitely say nostalgic — it’s how my music feels to me. I always thought of my music in an ideal world, being like a sad person in a happy moment. Like, a person who's been really hurt in this moment and they found something cool. Because happy music never captured the depth of that human experience to me. And some music is just about how life is painful, and that's not capturing it either. I'd say deep sadness mixed with finding the cool, or at least a way through those hard times.
1824: Is there an ideal location that you would envision people consuming your music in? Would it be in a car, maybe at a party, or in a bedroom? What setting do you imagine people listening to your music in?
WOLD: That's a cool question and I have two answers. One is obviously the live shows because those are really special with thousands of people. But then also for the recorded album, I'd say to listen to it in a car or bedroom because those are the places I had some of my best listening experiences growing up. You can listen alone or with some close friends.
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