In first visit to Spokane, Jack Van Cleaf reflects on Zach Bryan tour, studio recordings
Before playing the famed Red Rocks Amphitheater with Zach Bryan and heading to Spokane for the first time, Jack Van Cleaf found himself, very intentionally, making music in the middle of the desert.
After graduating college, Van Cleaf went through a deep depressive episode in which he felt ill-prepared to manage his life. He wrote songs while processing the experience, riddled with self doubt.
These dark, barren themes took him to two studios in order to chase a true sense of desolation: Goat Mountain Recording, among the Joshua trees of Southern California and West Texas’s legendary Sonic Ranch.
“It was funny, looking out at the Joshua Tree desert when we were recording at first, I was like, ‘Man, this is beautiful. It’s almost like the Joshua trees are making it too lush,’” Van Cleaf said. “Even just the little bit of vegetation there was not quite what I wanted, and getting out to West Texas and just seeing the expanses of nothing for so long and letting your eye be able to travel for miles and miles really did something for me creatively.”
The result would be Van Cleaf’s second record, “JVC,” released in May. The 14-track project heavily contrasts from his 2022 debut, “Fruit from the Trees,” as Van Cleaf explores these more grim themes and sought to create a “more cohesive” record.
“JVC” features more laid-back, raw production that manages to encompass the listener in a sense of isolation, melancholy and reflection. The project leans heavier into alt-country and alt-rock while continuing to expand upon his indie-folk sound.
“Not in a way to diss my first record, but I kind of had the image in my head the whole time while making my first album of painting a rainbow and every song feeling like a different color of the track list,” Van Cleaf said. “This one felt like they all lived in the same color palette.”
Van Cleaf doesn’t exactly seek the sense of storytelling found in much of his work and more actively attempts to create with the strokes of a broader picture, like a musical canvas of sorts.
“To me, storytelling feels like ‘beginning, middle and end,’ and then after the song is done I totally see how like ‘Oh, I guess there is a story here,’” Van Cleaf said. “But as I’m writing it, I feel like I’m just trying to create a painting, more so, like one thing to look at.”
The album also includes “Rattlesnake,” featuring not only one of country and Americana’s biggest artists, but one of the world’s biggest, Zach Bryan.
“Rattlesnake” was first released in 2022, as part of Van Cleaf’s debut, to acclaim from artists like Bryan and Noah Kahan. Van Cleaf says “your guess is as good as mine” as to how Bryan discovered Van Cleaf’s song, but he obviously enjoyed it enough to the point of messaging Van Cleaf and asking if he would like to record a new duet of the track.
Van Cleaf took him up on the offer, and Bryan was quick to fly the original band – Van Cleaf’s close friends – out to New York City and the iconic Electric Lady Studios.
Over the course of the weekend, Bryan’s signature style of recording (“Something in the Orange,” “I Remember Everything”) challenged Van Cleaf’s in the best way possible. Van Cleaf will be the first to admit he can let perfectionism get in his own way while recording, but Bryan, known for his own sense of rawness and authenticity, doesn’t exactly operate in the same manner.
“He showed up to the studio and just brought a lot of life to the process,” Van Cleaf said. “I would do 20 takes and he was like, ‘I don’t believe in doing more than five,’ and that really sat with me and influenced me a lot and I hope to take it with me moving forward with recording, because it changed my perspective and made me realize how much fun it can be.”
At the time of this interview, Van Cleaf and the band were just leaving Denver and the Red Rocks Amphitheater bound for a show in Omaha, Nebraska. Van Cleaf plays the District Bar at 8 p.m. Monday. The night before arriving in Omaha, Van Cleaf performed “Rattlesnake” with Bryan during his opening set.
“It’s definitely a bucket-list item checked off,” Van Cleaf said. “I hope to come back again and hopefully soak it in a little bit more. That being said, the most present and the most fun I had during the set was playing ‘Rattlesnake’ with Zach last night (Aug. 10). Again, he just kind of brings that energy to it that’s not careless but just takes the pressure off.”