Orion Walsh’s Homecoming, New Record | Q&A

If ever there was an embodiment of wanderlust, it’s Orion Walsh. The Lincoln-based troubadour has trotted the western world mostly via train, playing living rooms and coffee shops from San Francisco to Dublin to Berlin.

Walsh returned to Lincoln Monday after running that exact route. He plays his homecoming show tomorrow night at Crescent Moon coffee (RSVP here). The concert will also serve as the release of brand new LP Love Isn’t What You Would Expect, a sort of musical diary filled with stories of love and loss and the weariness (and rewards) of travel.

I met with Walsh at Lincoln’s Coffeehouse earlier this week, where we chatted about playing with friends all over Germany, sight seeing in Norway and finding his roots in Ireland. Hear the new album below, and read our entire conversation:

Hear Nebraska: How does it feel to be back?

Orion Walsh: It’s kinda surreal in a way. I see some things have changed a little bit.

HN: Physically?

OW: Yeah, some things have physically changed. Just new places that have come. That movie theater that says ‘Fly’ now, the gym. And there are these big apartment complexes. But it feels good to be back

HN: I’d ask if there was a point where you get homesick, but I can’t imagine. It feels like you live out on the road, but is there a point where you miss it?

OW: Yeah, I think there is. However far or long you travel, there are thoughts of home. My family is here in Lincoln, my grandma and my mom. There’s always thoughts of home.

HN: I’m really excited to hear about your trip. You went all over the place. Let’s start simple: what was your route?

OW: It started in Lincoln, I took the California Zephyr for two days to Sacramento. I played a show there. I used to live in Sacramento for a short time. Then I went to San Francisco to do a house show, and that’s where the tour basically started. I mostly just played house shows.

HN: Even throughout Europe?

OW: Yeah! But then I went to LA to do a house show, back to San Francisco to fly out to Norway. My plane was delayed so I had to fly to a place called Borgen. It’s very beautiful near the ocean. The town is known for its fjords. It’s hard to describe in words. But then I flew to Berlin, and that’s where my European tour started. I played sofa concerts. It’s hard to really remember the number of shows, but I went through … some different places that tourists wouldn’t go. A town called Meissen. This town wasn’t destroyed in the war. There’s a castle there that’s 1,300 years old, and has the first spiral staircase in it. It was cool to see those types of things. In September I was all through Germany. I played in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt … the bigger cities. Then I teamed up with a guy named Kristof Valen, which was the reason I went to Germany.

HN: On this most recent trip, you mean?

OW: Yeah. Four years ago, I went on tour with my girlfriend at the time, and we stayed with him. He had me come back to Germany to do these house concert tours. So that’s why I went back again this year. I was basically repeating what I did last year. A lot of the places I played [were with] people that I already knew. Some of them I’ve had to cancel because there wasn’t enough time, so I got to go back and make up for it. I also used a website called Sofa Concerts. Two ladies in Hamburg started the website for German musicians to tour there. So that’s how I was able to book some of the shows myself. People basically pass a hat [around the room]. The main difference is the audiences are really … it’s like a listening room.

HN: You mean the main differences between a house show here and one there?

OW: Yeah. The main difference is that everyone is listening intently. You can hear a pin drop.

HN: I’ve heard of this before. Here, you go to a show and it’s a social event. But in places like Italy and Germany, people are intently focused even if they aren’t English speakers.

OW: Yeah, even if they aren’t English speakers. That’s what’s really interesting. A lot of the young people in Germany speak fluent English because they learn it at age ten. But the older people they don’t know any English. Some house shows, a lot of them are for younger people in their 20s and early 30s. But some were for older people.

HN: So you played to audiences that were predominantly non English-speaking?

OW: When I went to Meissen, even the host didn’t speak any English. I speak a very small amount of German, so I was able to speak and try to communicate, but at times it was very difficult.

HN: What is different about playing a show to a room you know doesn’t understand your lyrics? How do you communicate otherwise?

OW: [I know] that my music is mostly based lyrically. The music, if I’m being quite blunt, it isn’t extravagant, in the folk tradition. I always think, “What if the audience is bored be cause they can’t understand me?” But music is an international language. The feeling is still felt, even if they can’t understand the words. When I was in Copenhagen listening to people sing in Danish or at the end of my tour … I toured with a German artist named Jante, and he sang half the songs in German and half in English. I toured with him for one week in Eastern Germany, and we traveled in a car. When he’s singing in German, and I can’t understand, I got a feeling about what he was playing. When I’m singing to an audience that doesn’t understand English, I still speak slow. But out of all the concerts I did, roughly 30 or 40, there’s at least one young person that speaks English and will interpret.

HN: But you’re able to communicate general ideas of emotion — general happiness, general hopefulness, general sadness, whatever it may be — with what the music sounds like.

OW: Yeah. The tonality of music is an international language. People can tell if I’m singing something sad. They might not understand the topic. When I was touring with Jante, he would sing about the refugees. That was going on when I was there.

HN: Yeah, what was that like?

OW: It was great. One show, in the middle of Germany, I played in a student town, Giessen which is much like Lincoln actually. It has about 250,000 people. It’s a college town. When I first started a show, I was playing in a cafe, where you usually run your own sound. They showed a movie and then everyone left. I was like “is anyone gonna come to this show?” All of a sudden, all these different students came, everyone listened intently. Afterwards, a Syrian guy came up to me and said “I’m a famous singer from Syria. I want you to know we should do a song together.” I haven’t contacted him yet because of travel, I almost forgot.

HN: It’s more than a full time job. You’re a musician and your own travel agent.

OW: You’re exactly right. But it was cool to meet him and basically see someone that was from Syria that had left his country … and he’s well-to-do. He was able to seek asylum in Germany. So I was on tour from September to the end of October in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Toward the end, the day before Halloween, we played in Leipzig. There were some Syrian people at our show, and Jante was singing a song in German about refugees and what it’s like to not have a place to call home. I was watching him sing the song to a guy from Syria, but he can’t understand the words. That was one of those magical moments, really. That can’t be planned. There was a lot of different moments like that along the way.

HN: Did you encounter many refugees along the way?

OW: In the beginning, I didn’t really see any. When it was in the news, I had heard about it and then I would see people in family groups. I started to see more refugees. When I was playing in Dresden, there was a guy from Syria. I met three different people around the way. The guys that I spoke with were quite well-to-do, so they left early. One of the guys that hosted a show left a long time ago. He was very well educated, well-off. He welcomed people into his home, that he didn’t know. He welcomed me into his home

HN: You’re just a strange traveling American!

OW: Exactly. One of the beautiful things I experienced, whether it was this guy in Leipzig or all of the German people that hosted me, or in Switzerland or Italy or Ireland, they’re all welcoming.

HN: What’s the most fun you had at any one show?

OW: I had a lot of fun. It’s surreal in a way. The funnest part is when other people are interacting with you at shows. I have different people from the audience come up and play kazoo. I took shakers along and people played them. Involving with them with what I’m doing is special, because each time it changes. I’m never sure of how it’s gonna go and that makes it fun.

HN: Let’s talk about the album. These songs live in a lot of different places. You’re traveling with your experiences from the states and from abroad. I was wondering when listening if there were any particular places you can point to that stood out as meaningful when you were writing this particular record. Galway (Ireland), for instance?

OW: It is an important place, for sure. My ancestry goes back to Ireland. There is a reason that I went to Germany and to Ireland as the main places. My great-grandfather on my mom’s side comes from Germany, and my great-great-grandfather comes from Ireland. It was an ancestral homecoming. Galway always sticks out in my mind. The first song, Greetings from Galway, is about letting go of a relationship from the past and then embracing the now.

HN: Thinking about all of those places, and thinking about “Where I’m Going Next I Don’t Know,” I feel like there’s some sense of sorrow in it, a weariness in your traveling. Do you get bouts of uneasiness when you’re traveling?

OW: That is true. The song is actually about some of that weariness. I experienced it even on this journey. That homesickness comes, but there’s this drive to keep going no matter what. I think that is apparent in that song. In that song I talk about being in Portland for a while doing a job I don’t like, and then leaving and going on tour again. Whether I like it or not, it’s a cycle that’s been in my life for 13 years (laughs). Unless I decide to stop and to stay home …

HN: That doesn’t seem natural.

OW: (laughs) It doesn’t seem natural, but it might be time to let some things go and embrace the comfort of home for awhile. But I think that tiredness does come.

HN: Is that something you notice in cycles? I suspect if you’re here for long enough you’ll get the itch again.

OW: Some people say “he has wanderlust” or “he has the travel bug.” Which, I do. There are still places I haven’t gone to. I’ve only seen a glimpse of Europe, and a lot of my own country. But there are places I would like to see still. Asia, Africa, South America … and if i was really interested, Antarctica.

HN: There’s no one there though! Researchers, maybe.

OW: (laughs). Coming home to Nebraska is an essential part of relaxation and regrouping my thoughts and myself. Seeing family, friends and acquaintances. Its essential for keeping my sanity.

HN: In spite of all of that, there are a lot of places on this record that are very optimistic. What about travel specifically energizes you in that way, even when things suck?

OW: The hope part of the record is the “love never fails” song. Through all of this stuff, it doesn’t fail. that’s the hope or message that I’m trying to lay out. Even all this bad stuff that’s going on in the world, love is not failing.

HN: What have you seen on the road that has cemented that for you?

OW: The generosity of strangers is love. They’ve given me love. Me giving that generosity back through music. Sometimes I’m giving my experience back to them. Sometimes that’s just laughter. Even just a couple of minutes where people are laughing where they aren’t thinking about what’s going on. Overall, my reason to go is that it makes me a better writer. But I find, oddly enough, most of the songs are written here at home. I don’t write songs on the road.

HN: Why not?

OW: There’s just so much going on. I always write words but I don’t write songs. So a lot of them are written here in Lincoln. Part of that homesickness and tiredness and coming home is being re-energized and then being able to write from those experiences. I’m sure there will be some new songs.

HN: What do you think you will feel on Friday, playing at home after playing in all of those foreign living rooms?

OW: It’s definitely a homecoming. I started the journey at Crescent Moon. I got on the train that night. So that’s a cool feeling in a way. I think I’ll feel a sense of accomplishment, really, and joy for being able to see my family. I think Crescent Moon, overall, I don’t think in America that we aren’t able to listen. I think we are, and I think Crescent Moon is one of those places, along with house shows. It can be very similar to my journeys in Germany and Ireland.

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Crucial Changes spotlights Omaha hardcore band Purgatory

Omaha hardcore band Purgatory is set to release brand new 7-inch record Gospel Of War December 18 on Escapist Records. Keith McGrath of hardcore blog Crucial Changes interviewed vocalist Matt Anderson for the blog earlier this week, in which the two discussed the upcoming release, the upcoming Toy Drive orchestrated with Bent Life and the state of Nebraska hardcore. Here’s a sampling:

CC: How do you feel about the current Midwest hardcore scene?  Is it great the way it is?  Is there room for growth?  In what direction do you seen the Midwest hardcore scene moving in a year?  Five years?  Ten years and beyond?

MA: There are a lot of great bands and some of my favorite places to play are in the Midwest. Iowa and Milwaukee are home to some of the best people, bands and shows I’ve been too. There’s always room for growth but that’s what sick, there’s younger kids coming out to shows more and more and hopefully they’ll get stoked and start a band and keep everything going. I really think a lot of the region is going to continue to grow, a lot of that will matter on if kids feel invited and accepted and how everyone manages the things happening in their scene (keeping bullshit out, racism, homophobia, crew beef etc etc).

Anderson gets a little more critical later in the conversation. Read the entire Q&A here.

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Singer/songwriter Jon Jerry featured in latest Stairwell Sessions

Omaha musician and videographer Ben Baldwin published the latest in his Omaha Stairwell Sessions series yesterday. This edition features singer/songwriter Jon Jerry’s soulful performance of “Seattle,” seated on a landing in Baldwin’s Omaha apartment building. Watch the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8nQZJimi5s

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Concert Round-Up

Tonight, deejay Nick Warren will be spinning at Vega with Todd Fink and Brent Crampton. Warren is an English house DJ and producer. He rose to popularity in the early 1990’s, performing regularly at superclub Vision and DJ-ing for Massive Attack. His early 2000’s Global Underground mix series was highly influential, part of a 17-album discography. His most recent output is an entry into the Renaissance compilation series, highlighting a diverse mix of forward-thinking electronic music. RSVP to the show here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICfoRQhyyk

Also tonight, Omaha bands Rival Fiction and Skyloft play the Slowdown front room with Lincoln’s Down In Circles. RSVP here.

As always, head to our statewide calendar at hearnebraska.org/events for a full listing of this week’s shows. If you do not see your show or one you plan to attend, email us at news@hearnebraska.org, or add it yourself. And keep those song submissions, story ideas and news tips coming.