AM

AM is LA’s new golden boy.  A philosophy major with an organic pop style that you already know even if you didn’t realize it.  With over 80 song placements in TV shows and films and counting, you’ve probably heard the newest he has to offer off of full length Future Sons and Daughters (QRO review).  He has toured extensively of late with French musicians Air (QRO photos on that tour) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (QRO photos on that tour) exposing local populations across North America and France to his charming warm sound.  With a past checkered with cities and experiences and residing where, as he puts it, "The desert meets the ocean", AM is slightly enigmatic but also feels strangely like home.  QRO sits down with the man at Miami’s historic Fillmore for a chat.  We can almost forgive that he wouldn’t give us his name…

QRO: So what is AM?  Why AM?

AM: AM is me, um, I don’t know… Maybe a bit of a reference to the days of AM radio.  Also initials perhaps masking a boring name.

QRO: Yeah as I couldn’t find your name anywhere…

AM: [laughs] I am quite un-Google-able…

QRO: I do believe that!

AM: That certainly was not the plan, just unfortunate circumstances and the moniker. [laughs]

QRO: So will you tell me your name?

AM: No.  It’s more fun to not. [laughs]

QRO: All right.  You’ve mentioned being from Tulsa and New Orleans, how have you come from both?

AM: Well, I was born in Tulsa, raised there, spent my childhood years there and then when I was twelve or thirteen my family moved to New Orleans.  Actually right outside a little town called Mandeville, about 30 minutes outside of New Orleans, and then I later ended up moving into the city and living there as well.  And then I ended up moving up to Los Angeles.

QRO: That’s something I find interesting, where were you when you started writing music?  LA is a far cry, temperedly, from New Orleans…

AM: You know I started playing guitar in Tulsa as a kid.  I probably wasn’t doing any songwriting, per se, ‘til I moved out to LA.  Maybe right before, so I was mostly an instrumentalist until I moved to LA.

I moved out to LA because I always had a fascination with the West.  The weather, the vibe of the west.  The desert.  LA I visited before and it fascinated me, where the desert meets the ocean.  The vibe.  For what I’ve done musically in terms of songwriting, it made sense for me to be in a place like that as opposed to New Orleans.  New Orleans has a very identifiable vibe about it.  It’s certainly versatile in the sense you have zydeco and jazz and funk and blues, but I really don’t do any of that; I kinda do more pop.  I put those influences in, I put the Latin, satin funk, soul and groove influences in, but I didn’t find New Orleans was the place for me to execute that.  So, so couple reasons.

As for my fascination in thinking musically I needed to be somewhere else, I guess I have to attribute growing up in Tulsa; I still have roots in those cities.  Just because I don’t live there doesn’t mean I don’t go there often.  I have family in both those cities.  I go back and perform and go back and visit.  I absorb, I’m very much a part of those cities.

QRO: Where was the turning point in going from an instrumentalist to a songwriter?

AM: Well I dabbled with it in New Orleans, but when I moved out to LA that’s where I realized that it was what I wanted to do. 

  I just had to start singing more, ‘cause I hadn’t been a singer up until then.  I just tried to play as many shows as I could, in any format I could; just needed experience as a person who sings and writes songs and performs.  It’s very different then playing guitar in a band.  I just started racking up experience.

QRO: Explain the songwriting process.

AM: I have an idea of what I want coming in. 

  Reality hits you there, you can imagine something, but when you produce it for real, the person in the other room made a loud noise and jarred me and I hit the fader in the mixer and the instrument got louder.  I would have never imagined doing that before but circumstance gave me that opportunity.

But you go in with an inspiration having a love for Brazilian boss nova soundtracks and just a lot of world music and pop from the sixties and seventies and rock and going in there with those equations.  I would go in with the song written but production is how you color it.  You color the song but I’m very involved from beginning to end in the whole project.

Some people write the song and I did have the producer write with me on the album, but we were producing it together.  But I was there at every session; even if I wasn’t performing on it, I was there.  I was present for every mixing session, every mastering session.  I was present from start to finish.

QRO: Sounds exhausting…  What’s your favorite song on the album?

AM: One I really enjoy playing is "It’s Been So Long".  I like it because it really kinda captures the essence of some kind of Brazilian vibe without totally mimicking it.  It’s still kind of a pop groove type song, with Brazilian.

QRO: Who did the other vocals on the song?

AM: Angela Korea.  She goes by the moniker, ‘Koreatown’.

QRO: It’s lovely.

AM: Yeah it was really fun.  I know I wanted a call and response thing and she came in and knocked it out.

QRO: Can’t wait to hear it live…

AM: Well she won’t be here. [laughs] Yeah, we’re looking forward to it.  We’ve stripped down our lineup; we are normally a six-piece but for this tour [with Air] we are going out as a three-piece.  So you’re going to hear things done, we spent a lot of time reworking this.  We are really excited about that because it’s fun and challenging.

QRO: What was the story behind the album name, Future Sons and Daughters?

AM: It’s sort of a moral- I don’t want to say ‘statement’, but it’s about what the next generation, being who you are now absorbing what you do now, is going to affect what you bestow upon the next generation.  Even if you don’t have kids, someone is going to look up to you.  You are going to have an effect on what someone does.  The record I think, I hate to sum up the record in that way but the title is definitely about an evaluation of values.  Of your own values of what you are going to pass down.

QRO: Awesome.  You are like the king of licensing, how did that happen?

AM: Well a station in LA called KCRW, which is sort of the godsend indie musician radio station there, they started playing my first album [Troubled Time] like crazy and a lot of people in the film and TV world heard those tracks and started calling.  And those floodgates opened and kinda stayed open.  A little bit of luck and a little bit of maybe a cinematic quality to the music perhaps.  Just all those piece came into play.

QRO: Do you think that the location you are in, LA as the center of the movie/television industry, has helped at all?

AM: I think that helps.  You know I think that definitely helps, but if you produce great work and somebody feels inspired, that’s the only rule when it comes to that stuff.  I’m not going to lie and say that well you’re probably going to meet more people in the movie business living in LA but it’s funny, they still heard about it in a more… they didn’t hear about it because I was at a party saying, "Listen to my music."  They heard because a radio station liked enough; they made their decision before they knew me.

QRO: With over eighty films and TV shows you had so many songs fit for so many different shows, from Men In Trees, The Bad Girls Club… do you ever feel any of those songs were misplaced?  Or against the root of the song?

AM: [laughs] You know sometimes I’m like, "Hmm… interesting.’  In the end, those shows are the reason I can come and bring my music to the rest of the country.

QRO: Yeah it’s true – You could be snobby and say that you won’t want your music played on, for example, The Hills, but maybe the people watching it should be listening to it… [laughs]

AM: I think those days are kinda over.  These days I think musicians would be honored to have anyone want to show their music to anybody.  There are so many bands out there; you want people talking about your music.  I’m not saying if some advertising campaign came up and said they wanted my music to sell their product that I didn’t agree with, that’s something.  I can’t say my music is free for the picking.  That’s not necessarily true, but by and large a TV show – look music and imagery go together.  If they want to put my music to any of that and someone responds positively, I just can’t not be cool with it.