PARK NATIONAL

Basement: What influences your sound?

Liam: I take heavy influence from emo and pop punk bands, and my writing usually reflects how I’m feeling at the time or who I’m listening to. The music I have out so far is mostly influenced by staple emo bands like Modern Baseball, Oso Oso, The Hotelier, and Mom Jeans, but I also take a lot of influence from smaller bands like Macseal and Algernon Cadwallader. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of new stuff, like Horse Jumper of Love, Weatherbox, Phoebe Bridgers, Spirit of the Beehive, and Alex G just to name a couple. For the future I’m hoping to blend my current sound with some less-“emo” styles of music, and continue to add on to my style rather than going in a different foundational direction completely.

Basement: Forced isolation can be a blessing and a curse for musicians- how has quarantine been for you creatively?  Has it impacted your flow at all?

Liam: Quarantine has really done a number on my creative process, in both good ways and bad. Back in late spring/early summer, when I was writing for TBG, I had this huge rush of motivation to get an album recorded. I had spent way too much time getting comfortably started with this project and not enough time grinding to get new stuff out. Almost the entire writing and recording process for the album took place in just over a month, which is crazy to me when I look back on it. I worked incredibly hard getting all these tunes recorded and I had all the time in the world to do it. However, lately quarantine has been more of a curse than a blessing and definitely has impacted my flow a bit. I’ve found myself becoming very lazy and withdrawn, as it’s incredibly easy to become that way when nobody is expecting me to leave my house. But I’ve been realizing this lately and I hope to ramp up the creative flow as soon as possible, and try to get a large amount music written before the end of the year to hit the ground running once the dust settles from the pandemic.

Basement:  How did this project start?

Liam: I started writing music for Park National in very late 2019. At the time, I was active in a couple different bands and had my energy focused on gigging as much as possible, doing anything I could to get out there and play shows. However, with it getting increasingly difficult to find opportunities, I was often left unfulfilled in my efforts, which caused me to start withdrawing a bit and sticking to my own thing. Around December/January, I had a few guitar riffs demoed out here and there, but didn’t really have any intention of doing much with them and ended up sitting on them for a while. It wasn’t until late February or early March that I took the main riff from “How to Stop Caring” and fleshed it out into a full song. I will admit, this was honestly a bit terrifying for me since I had never before recorded my own vocals, let alone an entire instrumentation on my own. To this day I’m surprised I was able to overcome that fear and just full-send it, and put the track up on streaming services (kind of ironic that the song is called “How to Stop Caring” and I spent the majority of its making overthinking every slightest detail) . I had very little hype leading up to the release; as far as I remember I announced I was putting out the track two days before it hit streaming. When it first came out I was genuinely surprised by the traction it was getting. Even though it wasn’t much, it was far more than any other piece of music I had put out in previous years. It was a very very new feeling for me, and that’s what motivated me to keep pushing and write more songs. And the rest is history!

Basement: What is your songwriting process like?

Liam: I usually start out with a chord progression or riff, or even a tiny musical moment and use that as a sort of “seed” to grow the rest of the song, but it really depends and varies track to track. Every person I know who writes music does it in a different way, and I don’t really stick to one method all the time; it tends to start as a specific vibe for the song and then things just kinda come out from there. Sometimes I think about songs like a movie or TV show. There’s always a scene that has a couple really interesting shots that last a couple seconds, like in Breaking Bad when the camera is at the POV of the tray that Walter White pours the liquid meth into (weird example, I know) but many songs have little musical snapshots like this that give the song spice and make it interesting and listenable. It doesn’t always work, in my opinion, to have the song be entirely made up of these moments. Using these little bits sparingly and sporadically provide some dynamic contrast within the song that gives the listener specific moments to look forward to. If I don’t enjoy one of my own songs, then I’m probably not gonna use it, which is my general rule of thumb. If I really like it, then other people will probably like it too.

“I think what music means to you is the memories and feelings you associate with it, and it would be a beautiful thing to have my songs mean a variety of different things to people.”

Basement: What narratives do you hope come across in your music?  What inspired The Big Glad?

Liam: I hope for my music to be completely open to subjective interpretation by whoever’s listening… For me personally, The Big Glad touches on my relationship with myself, my emotions, and my psyche. This year has been especially difficult mentally for many people, including me, and the album expresses some of the contemplations I have had about my own mental limitations and abilities, and the constant battle between contradicting internal messages. I think this is a concept that all people can relate to, but it the end it’s really up to you to decide how my music makes you feel, what thoughts it provokes, and what it means to you.

Basement: What do you hope is next for the industry given these circumstances?

Liam: I really hope that this entire experience will give people perspective on how important it is to support artists and to support live events. Many people don’t understand that the entertainment industry is a significant part of the economy and I truly think we can come out of this even stronger if more people come to the universal agreement that music is not “non-essential”. Many different lines of work have been able to adapt to the online medium, but I think music is one of those things that will never be the same over the Internet. Live shows are absolutely critical to making the music scene grow and thrive and I really am hoping for more people, especially politicians to understand that and to offer more support to artists and venues. And of course, none of these things can happen until everyone follows public safety guidelines and wears masks. That is of the utmost importance right now if we want to see live music come back anytime soon.

Basement: What is special about being a musician in Chicago?

Liam: I am incredibly lucky to live in a place like Chicago. I truly believe this city is a place that cares about local art, and a community where artists can support each other and the collective. This is super important these days, with independent music venues on their knees, and the outpouring of support I’ve seen from Chicago musicians has given me hope that the local scene can bounce back from these challenges. I’ve made countless memories through the Chicago music scene; I’ve played at and been to tons of shows at many different sized venues, and I’m insanely proud to be able to call this place my home. I truly love this city!

Basement: What’s next for you?

Liam: As of right now, I’m thinking about a variety of different plans for what’s next and I’m hoping to really do whatever I can to take Park National to the next level. I’m currently a student at Berklee College of Music, and even though my classes are online, I’m hoping to eventually be active and involved in the east coast scene. Countless bands that I look up to and dream of performing with are east coast-based, and I’m really looking forward to hopefully becoming part of the scene there and making some new friends around Boston, Philly, and New York. I’m working on some new music as well (slowly but surely) and my goal is to have a new body of work finished once shows start happening again. Obviously, it’s super tough to grow in these circumstances and it’s crazy to think that I exist purely on the Internet. However, success takes time, and all of the biggest bands in this scene started at a point similar to mine. I’m really hoping to take this project to a new level, and I can promise you that I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m only getting started, and I have a very long way to go in order to reach my goals for this project.

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