100,000

6 feet beneath the rooftops

THANK YOU all for your kind words about release. It’s been overwhelming and amazing. I have much more on that matter later, but first, I wanted to shine a little spotlight on my track 100,000 which was the focus track released in tandem with the record yesterday.

Here’s a post I wrote about 100,000, which is accompanied by a wonderful video made by the great Cody Duncum, who also made my Bittersweet, TN video a few years back. I was so inspired by his short film London, Kentucky, and he brought some of that same energy into the 100k video.

Anyways some words about 100k:

A few years ago, around the time Tom Verlaine passed away, I found myself wanting to write a sort of guitar-forward song in his style. In doing this I knew I’d have to tap in my guitar sibling Meg Duffy. Meg used to play in my live band and we’ve got this telepathic guitarmony shorthand with one another that I feel is heavily and unapologetically influenced by Television.

I wrote the initial riff sitting on my couch one day and then wrote a song around the riff, eventually taking it to Meg. We then tracked the song in LA with Tim Carr, who drums with Meg in Perfume Genius, and Phil Hartunian at his great studio Tropico Beauty in Los Angeles. It is the only song on the album not tracked with Aaron, and about a year later I took the song to Aaron and we, in his words, “Long Ponded it up”.

My intention with this song sonically was to have the feeling of being in a car on a highway that’s gradually gaining speed, going faster and faster, until it flies off a cliff. I think we did a good job achieving this, especially with Meg on lead guitar duty. They did what they do best, and created a whole guitar universe unlike any other.

In terms of what the songs about - I’m always on some long solo drive across America. It’s my favorite hobby and while doing so I’m always enamored in the small and somewhat nameless towns you pass off the side of the highway. Towns so small that it makes a mid sized midwestern city, like Kansas City, look like Oz.

I stop in these towns as often as possible. It reminds me a lot of my childhood, visiting extended family in Scottsbluff and Petersburg, Nebraska. I like to walk the desolate mainstrips and sit at bars and people watch and go on runs through the quiet neighborhoods that almost always stereotypically end up running alongside some train tracks. Salina, Kansas, Odessa and Amarillo, Texas, Jonesboro, Arkansas, etc. God bless you all. The glue that binds this crazy fucked up country together.

And so this is about those towns - the quiet lives taking place within and the nests of highways that tangle all around them, transporting people anywhere but there.

I hope you enjoy! This one is a blast.

Also we out here! I am on tour now and it’s off to such an amazing start. We had a big count down on stage in Denver for my album release and our double header in Salt Lake City was a blast. I have such a kick ass band and crew at the moment. Not sure how I got so lucky.

So much more soon xoxo

Liam Kazar, Dom Billett, Cochemea Gastelum, Cole Berggren, Camellia Hartman

Photos by Emilio Herce