Q&A: Michigander on meeting Sylvan Esso, buying a Costco Guys endorsement and releasing their debut self-titled album
Jason Singer of Michigander has been releasing music for a decade. The timing is finally right for a debut album.
When Jason Singer jumped into our Zoom interview last week, it was a sunny 70-ish degrees in Tampa, Florida, where the Michigander songwriter spent a well-earned day off. He was there for the 10th show of his headlining “Broadcast” tour, where the band hit 14 cities in 18 days.
Singer — whose surname may have been some sort of prophecy — is a prolific performer. He opened for Band of Horses and The Head and The Heart last year. Currently, he’s on the road with Phoenix songwriter Sydney Sprague, a personal favorite of mine as a former Arizonan.
In a few weeks, he’ll be on the road again, opening for Dawes on their “Oh Brother” tour that stops in April in both of my most recent home metros, the Quad-Cities and Twin Cities.
I saw Singer play a solo show in Davenport almost one year ago to the day before our interview. But his music has been part of my life for a whole lot longer. In 2020, I had “East Chicago, IN,” a 2018 single, on rotation often.
My love for that song carried into 2021, when I met my girlfriend and identified with the pleading romantics of the searing, brass-blasting final refrain.
It doesn't matter where you are
It doesn't matter where I am
You know that I've got you
You know that I’ve got youThrough all the rain and all the snow
It doesn't matter where you go
You know that I've got you
You know that I’ve got you
Tracks like 2021 freeway-ready rocker “Better” and 2023 Manchester Orchestra collaboration “In My Head” reinforced my fandom.
At Singer’s solo show in Davenport, I fell in love with “Safe,” a plucky, acoustic 2018 track that’s become my favorite Michigander song.
Of course, it’s about departure.
I lost another friend to the war again
A prison with a pretty face
He said it would be fine, but I said just give it time
And now he's sleeping with those choices that he made
“I thought I would be somewhere else by now,” goes the chorus. “I thought I would be someone else by now.”
His songwriting has been around for such a significant chunk of my life that it’s somewhat startling Michigander has not put out an album yet. That is, until today.
Michigander, the self-titled debut from Singer and Co. is out now from Totally Normal Records, via Thirty Tigers. It’s an album full of sticky, soaring indie-rock songs about anxiety, acceptance, the American Dream and a whole lot more.
That last theme comes to the surface on the opener “Broadcast,” which Singer has been sharing bombastic live clips of for a few months now. It’s got little woodwind flairs and incisive lines about the American Treadmill. It revels in the uniquely red, white and blue self-voyeurism that would put a nation in *gestures* this fucking situation.
Everyone’s a movie star on a diet of their own facts
Put your hair and makeup on, welcome to the broadcastI’m an American dreaming
I’m an American dreaming
Well I’ve been hooked on a feeling
I hit my head on the ceiling
But don’t you look away
’Cause I’m American
Singer turns inward on singles like “Emotional” and “Giving Up.” The former grapples with the frustration of boiling emotions, the kind of feelings that make one reluctantly and beautifully human. The latter teeters like a swing set, mourning a relationship gone by with an admirable allocation of apathy.
The B-sides round Michigander out. The aggressive, groovy singalong “Socialite” and bass-licking slow-burner “Hair” are two favorites. Sugary piano ballad “Important” has a familiar line.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” goes the hook.
It’s not the first time in Singer’s 10-year tenure of releasing music that he’s opined about that kinda thing.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Singer crooned on “Misery,” his biggest single, in 2019.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he sang on “East Chicago, IN.”
So it’s about time Singer tells us what’s on his mind. Here’s what he had to say about Michigander’s self-titled debut, handling grueling tour schedules and budgeting for a Costco Guys ad.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
This interview has been edited for cohesion and clarity.
So how are you spending your day off in Tampa?
Well, I woke up like an hour ago. I’ve been playing Block Blast on my phone, which is an iPhone game that my friend Connor told me about. So I’ve been playing that a lot. I’ll probably go for a walk in a little bit, because it’s very nice here.
Yeah, I’m gonna take a walk on a 30-degree day here.
Bundle up.
Let’s talk about the new album. You’ve been putting out new music for almost 10 years. I know your music has been a part of my life for four or five years now. What makes now the right time for a debut, self-titled album?
I think I just felt ready for it. I felt like this was the first time I had enough songs to put out a full record. In the past, it was always this huge struggle for me to put together five or six songs that I thought were really good, enough to put out in a collection of tunes. Having 12 always seems very daunting, but over the last few years it came together.
What separated the songwriting process of making an album from making an EP or a standalone single?
I wrote a lot more songs. I think I wrote 40 or 50 songs and I had to narrow it down to 12. And some of those 40 songs sucked. Just because there’s a lot of them doesn’t mean they’re all good, by any means. But it just felt really cool to have a cohesive body of work.
The main thing I want people to do with this record is have at least one, intentional, conscious full listen through as a whole. That’s how I consume music, so I guess that’s how I create. I’ve always tried to do that with EP’s, and it’s always been a little bit harder, because it’s half the amount of songs.
You said that’s how you listen to music, too. I’m a big album person. Way more of an album person than a singles person. Were there any cohesive projects that were a guiding light for you when putting together something like this?
Man, definitely. “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” by Oasis is such a perfect record. I feel like “A Rush Of Blood to The Head” by Coldplay is such a perfect record, from top to bottom.
Amen.
The layout of that record is so inspiring. “In Rainbows” by Radiohead is also a perfectly sequenced record. “Trouble Will Find Me” by The National, I think that’s a perfectly sequenced record as well. “Suck It And See” by Arctic Monkeys, I think that’s a really good laid out record, too.
Those are all emotionally heavy but also super earworm-y, so that makes sense, because that’s my main takeaway from your record, too. “Giving Up” has been in my head for the last couple days.
What is your approach to writing a hook and getting it to sound so sticky?
That’s a great question. I don’t really know the answer to that. If it sounds good and it feels good and I can remember it without recording it, that means it’s probably good. The ones I had to record are the ones I forget the most.
Like “Giving Up,” I have voice memos of me driving and just being like — da da da da, da da da da da da da da — and I took that, went away for a day to write some songs, and that was one of them that came up writing a song on a guitar on a little cabin outside of Nashville. I don’t know that there’s a trick to it. It just happens, like I’m just accepting the melody from the universe or something. Not to sound too goofy.
Lyrically, it feels like there’s a lot of acceptance on this album. “Giving Up,” “Emotional,” there’s this very accepting the things I can’t control kind of thing that ties things together. Was that purposeful? Has that been on your mind the last couple of years? Am I misreading things?
No, you’re probably reading that well. I think other people tend to analyze the songs a lot better than myself, and then I find out what they mean later. I have been reading stuff about stoicism. The gist is that you can’t be in control of certain things, you just try to control how you react to them. So I guess that is kind of true. Being accepting of things and moving on.
“Emotional” is kind of a song about being human in spite of being human. Like, I’m just annoying, and I know that I’m annoying and emotional and let emotions dictate a lot of my behaviors. But I’m just trying.
The other lyric I had to ask about: “I’ll Be OK” has a line about seeing Sylvan Esso at a ramen shop. What’s the story behind that?
Yeah, that song is written about SXSW last year. We played nine shows in three days, which was horrible. But, you know, rock and roll. I really experienced anxiety for the first time, where I thought I was having a heart attack and had to go to the urgent care. But right before, I went to this ramen shop I really like with some friends, and meet Sylvan Esso in line. And then I went to the emergency room right after that.
Did that amplify the anxiety? Or was it almost calming to see another artist?
No, it was just weird. I wasn’t anxious because of that, I was just feeling horrible. Like, the worst I’m feeling ever. I might be dying. But at least I met an artist I like.
I’ve never been to SXSW, but I hear stories. Are you just running into artists every which way? It seems like it takes over the whole city.
It’s just a crazy couple of days. It’s very overwhelming, but it is a necessary evil, maybe. I don’t really want to do it again after my last experience, but it is a cool thing. We got signed and got management because of it years ago, so I guess that’s important.
Doing festivals vs. doing headlining tours, do you approach those differently? Or are you in the same headspace no matter where you’re at?
Well, festivals — when we’re at like Austin City Limits or Lollapalooza or Bonnaroo — those feel like we’ve made it. We feel like a real band, like this is the moment and we’re playing for 10,000 people or whatever. And it’s just so cool. And then we play in, like, Tallahassee to like 20 people.
So it is a different mindset. At Lollapalooza, you feel like a rockstar. In Tallahassee, you feel like you should not be doing what you’re doing. But also, at these festivals, you’re with bands that are way above your pay grade and have these massive crews and tour buses. We’re just in a van with a trailer. Not to undersell what we’re doing, but it is very different.
Even as a concertgoer, I feel like I’m in a different headspace at a festival vs. when I saw you at the Raccoon Motel in Davenport. It’s a very different experience.
Well, that’s the cool thing about the smaller shows. Everyone’s there for us. At the festivals, it feels awesome because it’s so much energy. But at the Raccoon Motel — which we love, we love the Quad-Cities — it feels like everyone’s there for the songs that we have, and that feels really cool.
That Raccoon Motel show was a solo show. And what I love about this album is that it’s so full. There are even these little saxophone flourishes. What’s your dynamic like working with the band? How much do you lean on them for those little moments?
For the shows, we’re really locked in. It’s kind of weird how long we’ve been playing together at this point. But those solo shows, I loved doing them. It felt like what it felt like when I first started touring, and it was just me and my friend Dylan and our buddy Alex just traveling around in a van. Not a lot of gear to set up. I hope to do more of those in the future.
It is a very different dynamic, though. On the stage, I can’t hide. There’s no good way to transition between songs and there’s awkward silence. You were there for it, but I tried to script it, so I had a through-line and a story and I think that made it a lot more interesting.
I’m sure the improv can get exhausting.
Big time.
You’ve got a tour coming up with Dawes. It’s coming out this way to Minneapolis. How did that come together? What’s your relationship like with their music?
They’re one of my all-time favorite bands. Taylor Goldsmith is one of the best songwriters of the last 20 years. I’m so excited for it.
We get to play First Avenue. We’ve got to do that one other time with Manchester Orchestra and that was so cool.
I was there just a few nights ago.
Who’d you see?
Beach Bunny, for an anniversary show for the local radio station The Current.
Oh yeah, we love The Current.
A silly thing I have to ask about, because it killed me when I saw it: The AJ and Big Justice Cameo that you got. I imagine that’s the type of thing you have to budget for as an artist. How did you come to the conclusion of “We need this.”
Any cost. We need that. I put it on a credit card and said, “This is what we need if we expect this project to go any farther.” I just paid for it.
But I will say, I paid for it a long time ago when it was cheaper. And the thing with Cameo is that they don’t refund your money. They just give you a credit. Which is crazy. So I had this money and had to spend it. But I thought, it’s worth every penny from the Costco Guys, who we love.
Michigander: certified Costco Guys fans.
Absolutely.
And the Costco Guys are certified Michigander fans, now.
I guess so. We’re in their region. They live in Florida, so I was hoping to run into them while we’re here.
Hopefully you can get a couple big booms for the new record.
Yeah, five big booms.
It’s still January, so I wanted to ask what resolutions you have for this year, with the album rollout and everything.
That’s a good question. I don’t really do those. I would like to, but I just don’t. It ends up being depressing by March, because you fail.
I’m just really excited for the record to be out. I’m excited for people to hear it and hopefully listen to it as a whole and sit down with the vinyl.
What would a successful album release look like for you? Is it feedback from fans, people singing the songs at shows, what is it?
Obviously, if it opens some doors and stuff. But that’s out of my control. It’s already successful, because it’s finished.
I’ve worked my whole life for it, and that alone is good enough. As corny as that sounds.
Listen to Michigander by Michigander now, on Spotify, Apple Music and more.
Great interview, Gannon! So cool!
I’d been listening a lot to “Giving Up” and a couple other of their tunes a lot on my 2024 playlist. Such catchy, melodic, intelligent pop— we need that! I just went back and peaked at my Spotify and I have about six songs favored over the years. (Again, I think I heard the name just from seeing ads for upcoming shows at the Raccoon Motel.)
Do you have any idea how COOL I feel now that I’d been listen to someone before they had a full album out?! Thanks for making me believe I am still hip. 😆
Can’t wait to read this!! I am late to “discovering” Michigander. Once I did start to hear and fall in love with some of their tunes, I kicked myself a bit, because (if I remember correctly?), I think they played at the raccoon Motel more than once. Please forgive all bad writing /typing as I do it with one finger. Bummer that we no longer have you at the Quad city times, but We were lucky to have you when we did! Cheers on you recent awards!