Gavin DeGraw

to heal and is a way to connect. Face the River marks the recent passing of his parents, the figures who nurtured him emotionally and musically, whom he refers to as his heroes. The double loss changed him forever, and this new record finds him coming to terms with the grief and the resulting growth. Though born out of this sadness, it's a record that lifts and inspires, a triumphant reminder

that we get stronger in all the broken places. I'm so happy to welcome Gavin to grow This album Good Lord, I is just so powerful. I I love it so much as somebody who's lost a parent at a young age myself. I it hits me in all sorts of other ways. I mean, obviously, these songs. We'll touch everybody, but I think for people who who have gone through that particular loss, I think it's there's a little something extra in there, and I want to thank you for that.

I want to thank you for for for going to that place and giving us that. Wow. Man, wow man, thank thank you. Man. I'm sorry, You're sorry. You're part of this club we never wanted to join. Right, so uh the uh the the uh the lost the lost club. Right, but man, I I appreciate you a you um allowing the music to speak to you. And I'm like annulences.

I know I know exactly where you're at, man, um, but uh but I think that uh, in general, we just have to uh, we just gotta keep going, right So this this, this is the this is just this is just life cycle stuff. And um, we're all we're all going to have our have our number called one day, um and uh, you just gotta keep going till then that's it. I just think it's so inspiring that at these moments, when you know your hardest moments, you can make something as beautiful as this album. I just think

it's absolutely stunning. The songs are beautiful, the stories are beautiful. I mean just congratulations. It's it's such an incredible piece of work that it means a lot. Thank you for a compliment, thank you. I know this is obviously a very different kind of record for you in a lot of ways, as well as being a really personal one. And I mean I think it shows off just the full extent of your talents as a singer and as a songwriter. Uh. Full circle is the phrase that keeps

coming up when you're talking about this record. He was the name of your tour for it, and it comes up a lot when you're talking about Face the River. I want to ask you about full circle? What that what that means to you? Well, Um, when I first paid my father the first couple of songs of the album, uh, he said to full circle. And I, uh so, what

do you mean? He said? He said was he was saying that it was the way he remembered me, you know, before I ever got signed, before I started you know, making albums, you know, making these produced, produced records, and that he remembers the music sounding more like more like this when you know, when I was out playing live and playing with pickup bands, and you know, and uh, you know, sitting there with people and and and going through that phase of my my life and and and career,

trying to just get your name out there. Just the live sound and UH, I think Dave Coperty captured this UM live sound and enhanced it and just just made it so much better and kept it off then they can. In fact, I feel like he reached deeper and forced me to reach deeper. UM. Then I would have arrived at UM without his his influence and his input, UM,

his taste UM. And so the full circle thing was was yet initially the comment my father made and then UM and that in my opinion, is because Dave Cobb had had really great taste and really authentic taste in music and loose those almost those those seventies singer songwriter type records. Uh, you know, those singer songwriter records, those those rock records, but that nineteen seventies approach to sound

and UH and performance and UH. Also when we went out and did our our little UH tour run that we did for playing the music live, we decided we're gonna, you know, go back and play a bunch of small club and that that was really about getting back to again that initial feeling of of performing live and small venues that weren't necessarily the places that just had developed acts playing at them. So it was important to me to go back, in particular to play a place called

a Bit of Rent here in New York City. Um, because the Bit of Rent was the first place that ever gave me a gig in New York City, you know, before I ever got signed. And they were always good to me, you know, And and UM, I wanted to go back there and particularly reward those those smaller venues that got really badly hurt during COVID that really could use the business, you know, um, and and have keep those relationships going because you know, loyalty is a big deal.

And you know, you never forget who your friends are. Those are people who had your back when nobody you know, gave a damn a value. And uh, you know, the Bitter End is just one of those great places, the Bitter End, the Red Lion. Um, there's places on Bleaker and I want to keep those and yeah, and just keep those places in Greenwich Village alive that have always been a staple for live musicians like myself. There's there's thousands of thousands of us and and those places are

home for for people like like me. There's there's great talent out there that I always admired them. Maybe some of them, you know, don't have a record deal, or didn't get a record deal, or didn't didn't get lucky here and there. Um, but there's still great talent. And those are the houses that embraced that town, and I want to keep those a lot. God bless you. They've spent a lot of happy nights in both those places.

You mentioned The Red Lion, the Bitters. Man, Absolutely, I think I mean you mentioned the sounds on this record. I mean it just it sounds. It's so unique and classic. I mean one of my favorite tracks is Chasing Way, in which to me, it's got a little bit about like the band doing their muscle shoals, sound like going down the Fame studios. It's so great, man, I love just the classic sounds on this record. Wow. Man, that's

a huge compliment. Actually, uh, I had the bulk of Chasing went finished and I wasn't sure how to start it. And although it might be a cool deviation from the the kind of the way the way the song sits, you know that brink D D D right, the way the verse comes in. I thought a nice kind of push against that would be that little into ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. And I it's funny

you mentioned the band I was thinking about UH. I was channeling Cripple Creek when I when they exactly, I was exactly channeling Cripple Creek, thinking something along the lines of Cryptical Creek would be a good lead into UH. To Chason Winn and it's it's funny you mentioned it because it's exactly what I was thinking about. Killer. You get it. You totally get it. You're recorded this most of it, or if not all of it in our c A studio A, which is I mean, that's that's

the house the chet Atkins built. It's got everybody, Leon Russell, Lynn, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings. What was it like working in there? I mean's just the energy in that space must have been off the charts with Dave legendary, Oh yeah, man,

I mean legendary room. And I felt like I feel like Dave knew every nook and cranny of that room, like you knew every sonic characteristic of that room, you know, and had all of the gear to suit each space when required, and um, yeah, you couldn't feel the ghosts, you know, the presence of of the many years of acquired mojo that occurred in the room of live bands playing together and and recording together. And it just felt right.

And you know that place was built back when like the labels were dumping money into creating spaces like that, into creating great sounding room you could record in orchestra in that place, you know, so you know, being able to go into a comfortable place like that that sounded good everywhere and had enough space in it that we could separate but be together and play together and make eye contact, you know, and and read read each other and be like, you know, like I got I got

this part right here, and you know you heard some of my God, and you're like, I'm going, yeah, yeah, okay, me right here, you know, and um, you had those great um communicative moments because you were you're able to have sight lines and be within the acoustic parameter of what's coming out of the instrument. You know, that's that that's there too, you know, it's not just headset. You're like, oh, it's right there. I hear it, I feel it, I feel it in the I feel it coming through my heel,

you know. And there's a great sensation when when you get to uh, when you get to play like that, and then you just keep the best takes. And Dave had a really great sensibility of you know, casting the right players and and and just a great sensitivity to which takes for the best, and you know about like, yo, man, this is cool, that's cool. But those two other songs you played me, they're too close to these two other songs. Here,

what else do you have? Let's go through your catalog and stuff and see what else you have that is different than what we already cut, so that the album has real variety sonically. And by him doing that, it also forced me to finish up songs I hadn't finished that, and by finishing them during that time frame made the lyrics more present to my life in that moment as well, you know, by him saying, hey, has that done? Is that that idea? I like? Is it finished? No? It's

not finished. When can you have it done? I could have it done in an hour from now. I could have it done tomorrow. Cool, finish it up, man, Let's hear where you're you're at. Come in and play it and uh and then we cut and I just feel like it created a really um present approach to the album, feeling cohesive in some ways and at the same time allowed the album to be varied stylistically because his taste

is excellent and and and he's got colectic taste. But he was also looking for helping me find uh, a sound that that that would allow it to feel like a complete work, a complete album, you know, in a in a you know, in a culture that isn't really necessarily embracing for albums anymore, right, But I think that's part of one of that's part of Dave's strong suit is he's such a music purist. He has such good taste, and he also knows that, you know, we're making music

for an audience that's also grown up with me. They're not just kids anymore right now. They're you know, now their parents, now they have kids, and there were were in these different stages of our lives now than when they first may emerge a song of mine, you know, like on your first hit back in maybe two thousand three or four. You know, life, life change, the world change, and your music can change to reflect where you're at

in your life now, right, Um. And and he really allowed me to He allowed me and helped me get to a place where I could embrace those changes and um and speak my my mind and my my my current mindset. And it was really really really uh thoughtful and and and he was sensitive about it, which was cool. And he wasn't afraid to challenge me, which is good.

You know, it's always good to be around people who who who can challenge you, you know, and you know, and it's better for your ego to be people who can challenge you and you know, and tell you that you're wrong and for you to go you got me, you know, they know you're Yeah, that's exactly right, man. And uh, it was all really a good, strong process that you know. And at this point in my life, I don't want to make children's music or music that's

necessarily market to kids. You know, the kids can grow up and you know and become adults and listen to music that speaks to someone who's actually you know, lived. Um. You know, there's always music out there for children that's great, but you know, this is this is music for people who have lived. Mm hmm. That's a beautiful way to put it. I mean some of these songs, I they sound like they could be fifty years old, and I

mean that is the highest compliment. I mean, you know, Destiny sounds like something that could have been on Talking Book, or you know, it's a descendant of I Shall Be Released or something. It's I mean, it's incredible just the quality of these songs, and thank you for that. Thinks that the blow me away. I mean, obviously these songs are so personal and there's so much bravery in that.

I mean, the things that blows me away about these songs, like the best story songs like the Billy Joels and the Springsteens and the Bob Seekers, is that they're so specific and so uniquely personal to you. Yet they hit me and so many others in such a personal way. I think that's such a delicate line to hit. How was there ever a fear of being this this open and this vulnerable when you were working on this? I mean, it's it's funny you say it for a couple of reasons.

One is there's a great irony in it, and that I was telling a buddy mine the other day I said, the irony all this is that I wrote the songs so so I wouldn't have to talk about it because I couldn't talk about it, you know. And I feel like the songwriting was a way too say the things I wasn't able to say, uh in conversation. And so the therapy for me was writing songs UM, which is often therapy for me and just in life. So I

always been therapy for me UM. And so that's one of the great ironies of it is is that the songwriting took place because I wasn't having an easy time talking about how I felt. I still don't have an easy time talking about how I feel UM, because part of it is because your emotions are such a crazy range of emotions, seemingly by the you know, by the moment. You know, it's just so much stuff that life is, so you know, some of it's just man, it said, oh man, this hurts me right now. I missed them,

you know, I miss these people. I missed my parents. And then there's very my dad did this. You know, you're laughing about it, and nobody gets the joke, but you do. You know that you know, someone says something at dinner and you make a face and you think to yourself, Wow, that's weird. I just made the face my dad used to make. I've never made that or you know, it happened to me yesterday. I made a face at dinner and I thought, oh my god, I just made the face my dad used to make. I've

never felt the desire to do that. Always thought it was weird when he did that, particular based on just I know, I just made that face. You know. You know what I mean, don't you. I'm I'm looking back at my face and zoom right now actually and having a similar moment somebody else's face coming back at me. So I totally hear you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and um. And it's one of those things. And some of those things are it's just they make their way into your songs.

One of the other things that happened with the making of the album was, you know, the my initial meeting with Dave Um. You know, he took a lunch meeting with me. He's like, I really like what he did um with that Paul McCartney cover. Maybe I'm a base because I love the cover that song thinks a perfect song, and and I think maybe that that could have been why he took the project. You know, maybe he saw the live thing and and thought, okay, cool, this guy's

all right, you know. Um. And we talked about that and that kind of music, that kind of song, that kind of records. And then we talked about are the records that we loved, and you know old you know, the stack stuff, you know, the classic R and B stuff, the great old soul stuff, you know, Duck Dunne and Steve Cropper, but um, so that kind of stuff, and then classic country records and great old songwriter records. And you know, I'm a big odist reading Sam Cook fan.

You know, I'm a big you know, George Jones fan. Uh, you know, I like those kinds of singers, imperfect singers, because that's where the feeling, the feeling is there, you know, um and imperfect records. And he asked me, what do you want to do? I say, well, it's the world is you know, I said, the world's all fucked up. Man. It was right at the hide of COVID. I said, the world's fucked up. My life is fucked up. I'm sucked up. Things are all sucked up everywhere around me.

And I have a lot to say. And you know, I've written a bunch of songs, and I want to write this record alone. I wrote my first few record it along, but I really have a lot to say. I feel like I need to write this one along. I feel like I need to get this out of me. And I just feel like it's also personal. I have to do it that way. But I feel like you're the greatest producer in the world, specifically for this kind of record. And he was like, fuck, yeah, man, let's

do it. And and we went in the room and he really he really permitted me to stretch beyond what I would have, you know, like like the greatest production experience, so sensitive, so sensitive to what I was doing, and um, but not at all yes man about it. He really wanted me to reach man. And it was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful thing. Um. And he you know, man, I remember it. I was writing the song um Face the River, and um, I wasn't finished yet. So he said, yeah, man,

let me know when you're done. I said okay, and I finally finished it. I walked into into the room by saying, man, um, I'm done. He's like finished. I was like, yeah, I'm done. Now it's done, alright. That cool, come on, let's go played first man played for us, I said, okay. We walked out to the PM and I played him. You know, I am tired of the waiting. Got to the end of the song and goes, why man, you go let it's like a masterpiece. I said what.

He goes, you were a masterpiece, You're a masterpiece. I was like, I did. He was like, yeah, man, mastarpiece, let's cut it. Let's cut it, you know. And it was just like immediately, you know, he wanted to cut it immediately, which is one of the things I loved, Like as soon as he heard it, as soon as he felt it, and it was in the moment he wanted to cut it. It wasn't let's make a plan, let's uh blah blah blah, let's set a click, let's find it. There was none of that bullshit. You know.

One of the first things that happened in the studio, I think it was on Johnny Song Johnny Songs, the first on Freedom, first song that we cut. I'm sitting at the piano and I want it goes like this, goes like this, And before he said did anything, I said, so, do you want to set a click. He was like, no, no, let's play and I said, my man, I said, my man, exactly. I knew it was the right of guys, especially when he said no click, because I don't want to play

to a click. Music is supposed to move, man, it's supposed to be varied. All those great records we love, you know, they don't know in on the exact same bpm they move. You know, that's stuff, all that bpm stuff being shared right there. That's not for the music to be better, that's for the editing to be easier. Yeah, that's got nothing to do with music. And so we got to really we got to play music at and I felt like I had been freed because musically we

got to go outside the fence. And that's what made it cool. Is there a supernatural element that goes into making music? That's why is you're concerned. I honestly think that there's uh things that we can't control. And you may have your craft and that's very special, right. We all know that there's a there's a almost like a thing that has nothing to do with you that you channel. Sometimes you get lucky you have a piece of an idea, Like I didn't do that it just kind of came

to me. And then there's a craft element of it, which is the carpenter part of it, which is creating the right structure around the song, working through a line here and there and whatnot. But then there's the other thing, and the other really special thing is you go and you get in the room and you play it. And once you play it, particularly when you play it together.

It was it was I think it was Joe Walsh talking about where the mojo is, saying, it's not one guy playing that makes the mojo, you know, the way a lot of albums are made now, A lot of songs are cut now, it's one guy with his laptop programming his drumps, and then he's programming the baseline and then the guitar parts, and the he's singing, and then he's doing the synth section, and then he's auto tuning everything. It's on that bpm metronome gridd and you're looking at

the music instead of hearing it. Right, it's going to click. Are staring at music, that's it, and the people are lining things up to hit the line with the beats that go on there. It is the sine of the drums exactly on this line, like, that's not when the beat is. That's where the bpm click is. That's not the groove, that's not the beat, and the mojo is sort of like when you got all the guys playing actually together, a guitar player, a bass player, a drummer,

a piano player, of us singer, everybody's playing together a song. Okay, let's say that the beat, the what you think is about the about the bpm in that moment is here, Well, I'm gonna hit it a little bit here, and the

other guy is gonna hit oh, I here. Another guys said that a little bit right here, and someone else is sitting there a little bit right here, and the other guys seeing that a little bit over here, and somewhere in there is the mojo, the part that none of us are playing, the part that only exists all all of us are playing, but none of us played it in right. So it's the thing that none of us can create along that can only be created as

a whole. That's where the mojo lives, right, and it strucks you play until you get that moment where you go there, it was there, It was, it was right there back and you'll play all night hoping to feel that again, and you might not get it back all night, but you go back tomorrow because you know that there was one special moment, one high while you were playing that you went oh damn, and it could only lasted for a few seconds or best second, but you lack

and it's just like right, and you you could play all week and I have a moment like that again, but you know that there's mojo, but there was that one moment within it where you or right. It's there's nothing like it. There's nothing like it. That's maybe the best description of the joy of playing together in mojo that I think I've I've ever heard. That's beautiful. When did you first experience the mojo? Was it? I know that you played a lot of hooting Nanny's upstate growing

up with with family and friends. Was that something that was kind of party your upbringing all playing together like that? You know what's funny is that I knew the joy of it from watching people just playing. And it wasn't because they were hitting it. It wasn't just like you know, my granddad could plug a little bit, or playing the accordion a little bit, or the harmonica a little bit, or my dad played some it's saying real great. Everybody

played a little bit. It wasn't like they were hitting it like we were experiencing the whoa moments At that time in my life, we were just experiencing the joy

of music. And then in my teen years, playing more, hanging out and playing with my brother, playing with my dad, going out, playing ball rooms on school nights, you know, as as a teenager, you know, all the other kids are, you know, studying for tests and you're on a Tuesday night you're out, you know, at the bar across from the police station with dad, you know, and your brother playing,

you know, playing Tom Petty songs. Uh. You know, though, you're having moments right there once in a while like oh that feels good. We're finally getting the song together. You're in that developmental stage of being a musician and then once in a while you lock. But having a brother and having a dad, there's music in the house. You could lock more off, right, You're playing more often, so you may have more of those moments, you know, where you where you just listen to each other play

and like, oh, that was really really good. You know, I want to feel like that when I play or I want to be able to make him sound that good, you know. And uh man, it's just there's really nothing like the joy. There's nothing like the joy of playing music is he is the ultimate therapy in my opinion, And it's a real display of what somebody's got right in here. And you know, I talked about talk about it a lot like it's something more than it is. But but but as much as I can describe it

to you, it's much more than that. Music is the thing that you cannot see or touch, but you could feel it. It's magic. I mean, think about the memories associated with the song. If you hear some songs, you're it's some songs that will transport you to the day you heard it. It's time trap, you know. Do you hear the song and you go wow, I remember the first time I've ever heard that song. Wow, I just

went there bang in my head, you know. When I hear the song Hey good Looking, I'm three years old at my dad's parents house, because I remember it being played right there, right there. I remember the room I remember being in when I heard it. Abou thought it was the greatest song in the world. Because it was right. So it's just so we's spoke to me in that in that way, And I think if you were to take away music, you realize what a tremendously culturally deficient

society would be without a song, without those sounds. We hear music so often that we forget that our society and most of the cultures, they're surrounded by music all of the time, surrounded by it so much so that they think it's just part of the air. Almost every restaurant you walk into has music playing in it, every store, you know, and you can change the way that place feels to you completely by changing the station, right, So it's a different restaurant with Frank Sinatra plane in it

than it is with you know, metallic. Yeah, it changes the whole thing. It's very potent. We even base our friendships, so many of us based on the music that our friends listens to. We find friends through it, you know, we think, you know what you listen to that you we probably have a beer together. Sorry I'm talking about it so excitedly, but it's really how I view it. Oh,

a thousand percent agree. I mean, you look at these you know, they find remnants of early early early cultures, the earliest civilizations we know, and they still find remnants of early instruments at a time when we're still struggling to learn how to survive and to eat, you have this, you know, traces of music. So clearly this was something that was an important priority at a base, primal level.

I completely agree. And and that's the mystery of music to me, is that we can't fully articulate or know why. It just is it just is. It just gets us absolutely correct. Man. It's it's a it's deep, it's therapy, and it's it's necessary. Necessary. And that said, that's what's so crazy to think that is that necessary? Yeah, But you know, once we put into context like that, we realized, wow, this is this is this crazy. You know people used to top their little good hours off tour. Yeah, yeah,

they needed it, and they knew their friends need a bit. Well, Gavin, I gotta say I I started this call feeling a little little low energy. I'm coming out of COVID right now talking to you about music and your excitement, and you're I I I feel transformed, and I I really want to hopefully people that hear this conversation and most importantly,

people who hear your record feel the same way. It has been such a joy talking he Thank you so much, so much for your time today, and most importantly, thank you for your music. It's been such an honor. Thank you, Jordan honors by Man, Thank thank you, brother. I can tell man you just you're just like me. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production

of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.