Portugal. The Man Scale-Back Their World On ‘SHISH’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IZZY PETRAGLIA ☆
Photos By Nathan Perkel
FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF “FEEL IT STILL” IN 2017 - John Gourley and his band Portugal. The Man has become the artist success story they wanted to see as kids growing up in Alaska. Their accolades and achievements broadened the scope of their world significantly. Recognizing that and remembering lessons from his father while growing up in Alaska prompted a return to the DIY-mentality that Gourley loved in the band’s early days. Following the end of their Atlantic Recordings contract and establishing independent label KNIK, Portugal. The Man’s new album SHISH was born.
Working on the album with Kane Ritchotte, SHISH saw Gourley scale-back from the limitless world to a tightened circle. It became a call back to the band’s Alaskan origins and upbringing, adopting a mentality of taking only what you need rather than everything at your fingertips. Through SHISH, Portugal. The Man invites listeners into their home, proudly representing the community they came from. Speaking to LUNA, Gourley dives into the lessons that inspired SHISH, with the goal to transfer hope to rural kids with dreams similar to his own growing up.
LUNA: Thank you for joining me today! First of all, I love the new album. It's awesome to see your progression over the years, I've listened to a lot of your stuff as time has gone by. I remember when “Feel It Still” came out, I was still in high school. It's one of those songs that gained a lot of popularity and was played a lot but never got annoying.
GOURLEY: That's funny. I mean, I love that song. It's so fun. I got to see kids dancing in car seats to our music for the first time.
LUNA: A lot has changed since then and since your 2023 album–including leaving a major label to start your own independent label, KNIK. Can you walk me through some of the thoughts and feelings you had that prompted you to take that venture?
GOURLEY: I've been playing music a long time. See, I have white in my beard now–I was really excited when I saw that happening. I've never really maintained a beard, but as soon as I saw the white coming in, I was like “I need to show you that I've been around.”
I think some of the most fun I've ever had playing music was when I was putting out my own records. Going to Atlantic was something new and different for an Alaskan kid. I had never done anything like that. I was in New York City and going in the building, I just thought about Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and all the music that has come out through that. This is a new experience for me and I did that. I'm very lucky, I worked with Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald directly. They were my people at the label. I love them forever. It just came down to our contract. We completed the contract and I went around and talked to labels. That felt weird.
You're going into all these labels and you have a totally different status than when you first signed. The band signed and we were just a baby band. Now I can kind of talk to everybody and there's a lot of opportunity there. As I went into these meetings, it just felt like the most natural thing to me has always been the DIY mentality behind the music we make. Being Alaskan, that never left me. Even at Atlantic, we just did it. That just felt the most honest and real. When we first sat down, I had this idea that I'm going to bring in Kane Ritchotte, who I haven't played with in six or seven years, but he's played with me on and off since he was 18. We played together quite a bit on In the Mountain in the Cloud, American Ghetto, Evil Friends–even on Woodstock, we tried out a bunch of stuff on that, and Chris Black Changed My Life. It was suggested that he produce the album, so I reached out to him.
I think a really cool thing to see as somebody who's been playing music a long time is you see those people who are coming up around you and recognize the ability to go from a little brother relationship to a peer relationship. It was really great. I brought him up here and we started working on new music and jamming in the living room in a house. Everything was just sounding really good and it sounded good just at the house. We didn't need to go into a big studio. Songs just started naturally pouring out. As they came out, I had a bit of that feeling where–I've had all this experience. I got to work with Jeff Basker, even being around Benny Blanco–he's so funny and sweet. You learn so much from these people. Danger Mouse, Paul Williams is the classic, an all-time favorite collaborator. I got to learn so much and be in such amazing writing rooms that it all naturally started coming out that way.
It was like “Oh, here's the song. This is how a song sounds.” We all know how it sounds. These are the parts. Music is easy. And that's what makes it fun. I like to hear what pours out and then challenge yourself with it a little bit. I'm very ADHD. I decided to be true to my original intent when I started playing music, which is to just be very intuitive with writing. It ends up being a very linear album, following wherever it goes and not being beholden to verse, chorus, verse, chorus. If I want to hear the same part again, sure, that's the chorus, but doing it naturally.
LUNA: Would you say while you were scaling back from being in rooms with bigger names that you've looked up to and invited your peers that you saw coming up at the time into your home studio, enforced a cognitive change in your approach to making music and made it easier for this to pour out?
GOURLEY: There's less pressure is a really obvious way to put it. I have a daughter who struggles with a rare disease. She has a rare genetic mutation that manifests in Parkinsons-isms. It's akin to dementia or Alzheimer's in kids. I see how resilient she is and her mom Zoe and I are both natural introverts. Frances is so extroverted. If you go to “franceschangedmylife.com,” you'll learn more about what she is. Her personality though, she's so punk. She definitely got all of the punk DNA from Zoe and I. It's paired with this very extroverted, emotionally explosive kid that I think watching her deal with her own situation and her own difficulties, it inspires you that this whole world is about just doing what you want. Who cares what people think? I like the way she does things.
LUNA: I like the way with this album that a lot of it has these family ties, including lessons from your childhood. One thing that stuck out to me specifically “taking only what you need” while you were growing up in Alaska. What prompted you to re-visit lessons like this one from your childhood ahead of this album?
GOURLEY: Life is about lessons, learning, and growing. You take everything in, but some of those lessons take time to take root and to really start figuring out what that lesson was. Even this story of “take only what you need” was from a hunting trip with my dad. Basically, my dad's going to take me on my first hunting trip. I'm 10 years old. He's taught me how to shoot. I've carried guns since I was a little kid. This is Alaska, not a city. We carry guns for protection. We know how to shoot. We know how to handle ourselves. He's taught me everything, but he's never taken me hunting. We see a moose while we're eating lunch. And my dad asked me if I wanted to hunt. I told him yes. Everything I've ever known about other kids that I meet in town, they go hunting with their parents.
So we go out, we get ready, and track this moose down. I felt anxious, like we've tracked down this moose and I'm scared because moose are aggressive. My dad and I have this conversation through a lot of looks and nods. He asked “Do you think I should get this moose, Johnny?” and I told him yes. We have a back and forth, and ultimately end up leaving the moose. On the way back, my dad asked if I knew why. It was because we didn't need it. He said “If you ever need that moose one day, you'll find it here. You can afford groceries right now. We got things in the freezer. If you need that moose, it'll be here.” It's this really valuable lesson about what life is. It's not going to be that moose, it might be the future moose. This is the relationship that we've had with everything for thousands of years. You don't take everything. I sit with each of those [lessons] a little bit longer. I think over time, they sit differently with me.
A big inspiration for this album was talking to my dad. He often inspires these stories and these songs through the weirdest things that he thinks about. The one for this album in particular was him telling me “Johnny, every night I go to bed and I look up at the ceiling. As I'm falling asleep, I think about the things I would put in a six foot toboggan if I were to leave today.” It's just him saying when I leave, there is no where he's going. It's just when I leave, I'm going to take these things. I thought it was really interesting, like this is everything you've taught me and I don't think you're trying to say that right now. I think you're literally telling me, this is what you think about when you go to bed. But there's a lesson in it, in wondering what are the things I would take?
LUNA: Even that lesson of only taking what you need could be applied to a number of your endeavors personally, within your music, raising your daughter by passing that on, as well as your foundation Pass The Mic. How do you find a balance between your ambition and taking only what you need from each of these areas?
GOURLEY: Wow, that's a good question. Is that a super deep question? I think it's a difficult balance–I wouldn't just say in America, but within a capitalist system. I don't really operate like that. Alaskans work on a barter system. Like “Hey, you know how to do plumbing, I know how to do electrical work, I'll come over to your house, I'll do that for you. If you do some plumbing for me.” We exchange favors. That's how a community is supposed to work. I feel like we've lost a bit of that because you stop seeing your neighbor, especially in cities.
LUNA: My friend and I have talked about how we used to be so connected with our neighbors. At one point you would go to your neighbor and ask if you could borrow an ingredient you were missing, but no one really does that anymore. There is a lack of community that's been lost and it can kind of be tied to taking what you need versus feeding your own ambition in a way.
GOURLEY: Everything's at your fingertips. I think within music, the reason it's difficult is there's so many moving parts. It's not as easy to just do everything yourself. You just have to keep the people around you very close. You have to know that you want your crew treated a certain way. Everybody understands the values of this band. It's a difficult thing for me in particular, because my family grew up moving a lot. We're dog mushers and builders and have worked all over the state. A lot of time outside of Denali, Healy, Fairbanks, Wasilla, Palmer, and Kinnick. I moved around a lot. I really love working with new and different people. It's one of those things that I heard Tyler [The Creator] say in this interview, “I'm around the same people I came up with.” I think that's sick, but I don't know what it's like. I like going out and trying a bunch of different things and a little bit of the way I view that is, you work with people and you learn lessons. I get to take that with me and I'm hoping that on the other side, they take something as well. We all come out of it having these little lessons, having worked together and creating something cool. I try to embody that.
LUNA: By blending all the lessons you've learned throughout childhood into your present life, how has that helped you redefine your idea of success in your career and your personal life?
GOURLEY: My idea of success has never been any of the “stuff.” Even getting the Grammy, we were walking out on stage, and they spent all this time writing this speech. As we're walking up, I was like, “I didn't write this song for anybody. I wrote this song because I was a kid who grew up in rural Alaska and I listened to The Marvelettes a lot.” I wrote that song because of the communities I grew up around. I just rewrote [the speech]. I gave it to Zach [Carothers] and said this is what it is. I don't really need to thank the industry for this because that's not our goal, our goal has never been this. Our goal is to represent the community and represent people we grew up around. Success is a weird thing. The fact that we get to do anything is cool. I have a studio in my house where I can make whatever I want. I hope it's inspiring to kids and younger artists coming up around me. I want to give them a bit of that support to do that themselves. I think mentorship is very important. Find me, I got you.
LUNA: My last question for you, when the album comes out and people get to hear the lessons and the stories within it, how are you hoping that people can translate what's within this album to their own lives?
GOURLEY: I think ultimately, it's an album that's meant to speak to rural kids. I had a friend, the Devil [Derek Schklar], who I’ve worked with for a bit. We were chatting when we first met years ago, and he told me he’d never listened to my band. He had just discovered it and thought it was cool. He said “Tell me more about yourself.” I told him how I grew up, about dog mushing communities, Joe Reddington, Herbie Nye. He said “That's funny. I don't hear any of that in your music. Maybe here and there, but I don't see you.”
It was a very profound thing for me to think about. Because of the way I've grown up, I think about community and how the things I would put in a six foot toboggan are different from the things I would put in a toboggan to take care of a community. That's kind of what he was asking. How would I represent myself as a kid who grew up out there versus writing from the perspective of my group. We have a song called “Purple Yellow Red and Blue” where I'm saying this is the general group I'm talking about. I didn't grow up where Kurt Cobain grew up, but I felt like an outcast. I didn't grow up in New York, but hell yeah I had my Wu-Tang in Wasilla and Fairbanks. That's what it's about. It's for rural kids. I think whether you grow up in a city or with no neighbors, it's things we can all connect with that's important to me.
