Pete Yorn was the guest on the debut episode of my new podcast series last week, kicking it off in some style.
The ‘Various Artists’ Podcast is available through this website and on iTunes and is part of the early promotion for my forthcoming novel Peach. Pete has handwritten some of his lyrics which will feature as the introduction to the novel.
On June 1st, Pete released a new EP, ‘Apart‘, with actress Scarlett Johansson. He talked about that work and also about an exciting new project which could be released as early as this year.
“A few things came together, it had been in the back of my mind but I hadn’t been actively pursuing it,” Pete said about connecting with Scarlett again. “There’d be a lyric I’d write and I’d think how great it would be if Scarlett would sing it. People would ask when we were making another record, and Scarlett would email me and say ‘Pete, when we gonna make up?!’ We got lucky with the timing, she had some down time and I got inspired… I got everything ready, she came to the studio in downtown LA, so I had some old school flavour of working with R Walt Vincent.”
Apart has a sound that will be familiar to fans of early Pete Yorn records, thanks to Vincent’s influence. “We worked with Sunny Levine on Break Up who is an amazing producer,” Pete said. “Walt brings another sound to the table and I happened to be working with him at the time, naturally, working with him there’s a different sensibility with the music. Purists of what I do, people who go way back with what I do, might recognise the sound of this record.”
Those who have followed the promotion of the new EP will be familiar with some of Pete’s comments above. However, he revealed to me some exclusive and very exciting news about new original material. Pete said it is the most excited he has felt since writing the material for his first two records, and this new energy is the result of a new collaboration following a chance meeting at a party late last year with a producer.
“We had a plan to maybe do an EP, twelve days later we had twelve new songs!” Pete told me. “It’s not just twelve new songs… its the most excited I’ve been about new music since I was 25 years old. It was so crazy how it came out of nowhere. You know, we’re talking about the creative process, I watched a documentary on Steven Spielberg and he said how every shot he does still makes him nervous… it made me feel like, ‘yeah I know’, everything seems dry and then the floodgates open up.”
You can listen to the podcast here and on iTunes.
The second episode of the Various Artists podcast, with author Frank Morelli, is released later today.
Incidentally, yesterday was another big day in the early promotion of Peach. The cover was revealed exclusively over at The Book Magnet – go and take a look!
