This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Taking a walk Nashville. Hi everyone. This is Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking a Walk Nashville. Today's episode is brought to you from the Russell, a historic East Nashville church transformed into a one of a kind boutique hotel. The Russell's mission is to give back into the Nashville community through their rooms for rooms program by donating a portion of each day to local non-profits who are helping those experiencing homelessness. Visit Russell Nashville.com to book your experience today. So here with me in the Russell's podcast studio is Will Paquin, a musician originally from Boston that gained widespread recognition in 2020 when his guitar riffs and debut song, Shandelier went viral on TikTok, accumulating millions of streams, his indie rock and alternative songs blend elements of classical guitar with heartfelt lyrics and energetic instrumentation. I'm really excited to dig into Will's story today and discuss his upcoming album. Ha, ha, ha. So thanks for being here today. Well, how are you? Of course, I'm good. So it sounds like you just moved to Nashville a few days ago. Right. So what brought you here to Nashville? I would say love. Love brought me to Nashville. I met my now girlfriend. I was out here recording an album, the album that is coming out. Ha, ha, ha. I was recording it here in Nashville because my friend lives here and he's an engineer, so he engineered the whole thing. But while I was here, I met my girlfriend, Gabby, and I was living in LA at the time. OK, so you came from LA, not Boston, right? Yeah, I grew up in Boston, went to school in Boston. But was only in LA for a year. OK, nice. How's your experience of Nashville been this far, even though you're brand new? I have spent a lot of time here. OK. I spent like three months, maybe, writing the album here and recording it. So I kind of got to see a little bit of Nashville, but I am still pretty fresh. I don't really know the spots yet. I don't have many recs. People are always asked me, like, oh, what would you rec? Like, what would you recommend going to? Just I don't really go places or at least I haven't been places. So yeah, there's definitely a lot to explore in Nashville and a little bit about your backstory. Just curious, when you posted your music on TikTok in 2020, were you trying to go viral with your music at that time? It's funny. Well, it's it didn't. No, I guess short answers. No, because I didn't really it was more just a fun pastime for me to do while covid was happening and school was on zoom. You know, I would just play guitar all day. Yeah. And my sister is the one who told me about TikTok, my little sister. She's like, you should just make you should put your videos up here. And I was like, OK, I guess so. So I downloaded TikTok and kind of it took off pretty much within the first video that I made it. Wow. It kind of caught on. It was kind of new to be playing guitar, I think, on TikTok when I came into it. So it was kind of like a new thing. I don't know, within like four months, I think it really it only took four months until Chandelier got released from that. So it really only took four months for me to get that idea for the song and then end up recording it and releasing it. Yeah. At that time before you went viral, were you trying to become a full time musician and make that your career? Certainly, no, certainly not. I was going to school for advertising. I went to BU, Boston University. And I was just getting a degree in advertising, which I was like fully prepared to be in that industry. I had like an internship. So it was definitely a switch when I had to make the decision to kind of stop focusing on that career path, which I'd been kind of prepared for my whole life. Yeah. And within like pretty much overnight had to really decide what I wanted to prioritize. And it took me a while actually to fully accept that maybe there is a chance that I could be a musician full time. Because that was kind of a dream that I had that had kind of died years and years ago because I just I don't know where I grew up. It seemed like not an option like where I people just didn't. They just weren't musicians. They weren't really playing music or listening to the music that I listened to. So it just didn't seem like a thing. Right. So you could say social media definitely helped influence your career path in that way. Yeah, it definitely created the career path for me, I'd say. So, yeah, I mean, that was it was definitely a big shift for me that year. Yeah. 2020. Yeah. And advertising can definitely like having that knowledge, I'm sure helps you a lot with your own career. Yeah, it's probably subconscious. I don't it's I always think about how much that has helped me. And I think it has. It's just hard to determine what I learned in school and what I had just already known. Right. Yeah. So a lot of your music features, finger picking and riffs on the guitar and even the recorder, which is cool. Who are some of your musical influences and what did you listen to growing up? Well, I was kind of all over the place. I grew up. I mean, my dad was really into music and still is really into music. So he introduced me to a lot of stuff from when I was like born onward. He's still turned me on to new music, but 40s through 60s pop music was what I kind of grew up listening to. And I still listen to it. But that was really the foundation of where my earliest influences came from. I think like my first musical awakening was when I kind of started listening to the Beatles a lot. OK. I'd say the Beatles were like the first musical like major musical influence in my life. And that was when I was like 11 or something. And my friend, Will, who produced this album, he's my childhood like best friend, his name is also Will. But he's the one that got me into the Beatles. And we just spent fourth and fifth grade just only listening and talking about the Beatles, that's like all we did. Were you playing guitar at the time? Yeah. Yeah. I started playing guitar when I was around eight. OK. So you could just emulate the Beatles on guitar. Yeah. We would like write like Beatles copy songs and sing harmonies. But yeah, I started playing guitar before that. It was kind of a my dad played guitar before that, but he hadn't really been playing since I was born. So it was kind of I didn't really associate guitar with him. Until like he showed me he had like an old guitar that he had from when he was in school and playing in bands. It was kind of like a classic. I pulled it out from under his bed and would like play it in secret. Nice. Special. Yeah. And I kind of did just fall in love with it immediately. I was like obsessed with it like pretty much that day forward. And I still kind of am. I'm still learning new stuff as much as I can. Were you doing shows at all at that point before you started doing TikTok? I mean, shows is a stretch. I was playing like in my friend's backyard. OK. Sometimes I had a little band that was I was in two bands early on. I like had my own band where we'd play like bluesy covers like rock, Led Zeppelin. What else? We would play like Freddie King and but then I was I played drums in my friend Will's band and we were doing more like Beatles type things. So I was kind of doing both of those at the same time. And then once I hit middle school, I pretty much stopped writing my own music and like taking my own creative stuff seriously. But I still played drums in my friend's band. Now it's just like a nice creative outlet. Well, you definitely wear a lot of hats between songwriting, playing multiple instruments and also audio production. You've been known to record songs and unconventional places like your car and a closet. So did you teach yourself audio production? And why did you choose these places to record versus a studio at the time? Well, my friend Will, I keep giving my friend Will shout outs, but he got really into recording music around 12 or 13. He had like a little four track that he I remember when he showed me the first song that he ever recorded back then and was just blown away. That that it just didn't seem like a possibility that you could just record your own songs. I just wasn't aware that you could do it. Right. So that kind of turned me on to recording really early stuff like I recorded some demos when I was like 13 on GarageBand. That was like my first intro to recording. But I mean, the unconventional places was a lot of out of like insecurity, I'd say. Because I have always kind of kept my music stuff a secret. Because a lot of my friends don't they're not really music people. They're not into music. It was just always like a or my own writing has always been such a like personal process. So I think back then I was like really scared to have someone hear something that wasn't finished yet. Right. So I would like record in my basement closet when I was like 13. Or I would turn my amp up really loud and play and then record vocals on the slide. So that no one would hear me singing. Was your earlier music self produced like Chandelier? Yeah. Yeah. So this was all when I'm only talking about when I was like 13. But right. I mean, I pretty much stopped through high school and pretty much into college until COVID hit. But yeah, Chandelier, I recorded a lot of it like in my car because that same type of insecurity like all my friends were rugby players. Like I was on the rugby team and they were very not like music forward. Right. People. So I was like again, just finding myself keeping it a secret from everybody. I'd recorded most of my my first like four songs I recorded in my car. That's cool. Just at night. Well, it shows you you don't always have to record in a studio because the quality of it is sounds really good. Oh, well, I listen back and I'm like, oh, God. I was. Yeah, that was definitely it was always I always had like a DIY approach. I always thought that a DIY or it was it was the only option that I had. So I didn't really consider doing anything else. Right. I really just had like a computer back then. Was this your first time in a studio recording your new album? Yeah. How was that experience compared to, you know, you're used to doing everything on your own? I was really nice, honestly. It's like I did miss aspects of having full control over stuff. And also the real major difference was I'm playing with a full band on this. OK, so there's other musicians on it. We're just doing like live takes. And that's the cool foundation of the song. When before I would have to just do everything, like I'd play the guitar and then I'd I didn't have a drum set. So I would have to figure out some way to go around making a beat or making some sort of percussive element. That's why none of my songs have drums in them until now. OK. And you're a co-producer on the album, right? With with your friend, Will. OK. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, Will kind of took control over the engineering aspect. My band I've been touring with for years, so we're pretty gelled already. And I just sent demos to them that I did my I did my little DIY demo album that I sent to the band. So I got that little like I was able to scratch that DIY itch. That's cool. And you recorded it here in Nashville. Mm hmm. What studio? At Last Dollar. OK. Studio. It's very nice, very nice studio. My friend is the he's the engineer there. So we're able to get in there. Cool. For like a month. Did your band come into town with you or are they already in Nashville? They are spread out. My bassist, Abby, lives in LA now. Mm hmm. And then my drummer, Seb, lives in Seattle. Cool. But they're coming to Nashville in a few weeks to rehearse for this tour coming up. Nice. What inspired you to write this album? What does this album mean to you? I was kind of feeling a lot of angst post releasing this EP that I recorded last summer. It was all like really acoustic, really quiet, introspective, thoughtful songs that I really love. And I really love the way that came out. But I think I just after releasing that wanted to do like the total opposite. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a big contrast. Definitely more rock and I've heard singles that have come out already. And Ha Ha Ha is a fun one to jam to. It's definitely more rocking. I was listening to like a lot of Fugazi and just more loud stuff as well. So I think that kind of inspired it. I was also about to go on tour and wanted songs that I could have fun playing on tour. OK, that was like a major inspiration for the sound of the album was just I wanted it to sound like we were just playing it live because that was kind of a thing I've never really done before. It's not meant to be listened to like in a live setting. Like a lot of the songs that I'd recorded, I didn't have live in mind. Right. So then going to try to convert them into like live performance songs. I had like kind of a lot of trouble. Right. Especially if there's so many different layers of instrumentation on it. Yeah. Some of my songs have, you know, four guitar layers and I can't have four guitar on stage. So I had to either cut the song off my set list or try to come up with a way to make it work. Yeah. So this album, I didn't want to do that with this album. I just wanted to be able to play the songs live. And that is essentially what the entire song is. Yeah. So kind of minimal production on it. Do you ever play the recorder on stage? You played on your TikTok videos. No, that is a new hobby of mine that who knows how long that will last. It'd be kind of fun to pull that out on stage. I know. I thought that recorder would be an easy thing to learn. The basics of it are it's really easy to like first begin playing it. But then if you want to get more complicated with it, it's actually such a hard instrument to really learn. And I've hit a wall, I think, on my recorder playing. I think that's most everyone's first instrument from taking it in like elementary music class. I still have mine from when I was in kindergarten or whatever. Nice. That's cool. Well, you mentioned you have a tour coming up in a few weeks. Is there a stop on the tour that you're most excited for? Boston. Because I've never played a headline show in Boston before. Cool. So this will be my first and all my friends will be there. My family. What's the venue again? It's the Red Room. Is this your first time playing there? Yeah. And I've seen a bunch of shows there. I went to shows when I was in college there. Nice. So it'll be cool to be on the other end of that venue. Yeah. Are you looking forward to your Europe tour? Your Europe shows? Yeah. Yeah, we went to Europe in the spring and it was super fun. It's like a very different energy playing shows there. So yeah, very excited to go back there. Very cool. Well, you have certainly achieved a lot at a young age. So after this album and this tour, what do you hope to accomplish next with your music career? And I've been thinking about that. It's hard to think about it because I kind of have such a daunting thing ahead of me that it's hard to think what I'm going to do after it. But I am thinking about it. I mean, I think I want to settle down into Nashville for a little bit. And I've kind of been running around for the past like two years, either touring or being somewhere else recording. Like I lived in LA for a year and a half, but I pretty much wasn't there ever. So I haven't had a place to just sit down and write for months on end. That's kind of what I want to do after this tour in the new year. Just kind of relax for a sec and kind of think about what I want to create and what I want it to sound like and what I want to say. Do you write to working on the next one? Do you write most of your songs yourself or do you collaborate and co-write with others? I've never really co-written something before. I've never really done like sessions with people. Well, that's not true. Now, I've there is a collaborator in LA, Gabe Greenland that I wrote some songs with. I would like take an idea and he would help me just finish it out and produce it. And that was fun. I do enjoy collaboration. I want the next project to be a little more collaborative with my band before I kind of had the parts in mind and they would kind of do their thing on it. But it was mainly just the part I had in my head. It would be nice to sit down with a band with no real direction. Oh, I've never really done that before. And create something from scratch. Yeah. Yeah, I've never done it. So I've never really had the opportunity. This I have never lived in the same place as my band before. Right. Yeah. That can make it a little bit challenging. So I'm trying to get some time and rattle them all together so that we can sit down and do something together. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we wish you luck on your upcoming tour and everyone should give a listen to Ha Ha Ha, which is out on streaming platforms. And again, we're here in East Nashville at the Russell podcast studio. And well, since we're on taking a walk in Nashville today, I know you're new to Nashville, but since you've explored it a bit, do you have a favorite place you have like to take a walk in Nashville? Yes, Shelby Park, I'd say that's a pretty obvious one. Yeah, we're right near there too. Yeah, I've done. I walked the entire the entire run of Shelby Park last week and it's a good one. It's finally getting a little cold out. So well, not cold, but temperate. Yeah, not overbearingly hot. We call it false fall in Tennessee. I know I'm ready for the next heat wave to come. Yeah, sometimes I wish we had Boston weather down here. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, Shelby Park is great. The airfield in Shelby Park. I like it. Yeah, there's definitely so many parks here in Nashville that you'll have to check out while you're here. But thank you again, Will, for being here today on taking a walk in Nashville. Is there anything you'd like to end by letting our listeners know? Yeah, going on tour. I'm playing. Where am I playing in Nashville? A dark matter. Cool. In Nashville. Should be a good time. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Look up Will's upcoming shows on his website. If you're in Nashville, check out his show here in dark matter and his other stops on the tour. Thank you again, Will, for being here today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with singer-songwriter Sarah Harrelson and check out our other podcasts, Music Save Me, Comedy Save Me and Taking a Walk, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
