Grey Reverend is an indie/folk artist based from Philadelphia, PA. On September 2nd, he released his newest album, A Hero’s Lie. Reverend will begin touring in support of the new LP in October. L D Brown will be playing with The Cinematic Orchestra in Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) and then Grey Reverend will be touring as a support and guest with Bonobo.
Reverend was nice enough to talk with us about the creative process behind A Hero’s Lie. He recorded a lot of this this album at his home. He did everything from the guitar work, vocals, and the arrangements at his house. Then for the keyboards, he recorded much of that in a Brooklyn studio. There was no schedule in the means of creating this album. The creative juices came natural to him.
During the interview, Reverend expressed how essential individuality is in the case of songwriting. He then goes into elaborating on how authenticity keeps him satisfied in the creative process of songwriting.
“I got caught up into listening to a lot of different music and in popular music especially. I discovered that a lot of music out is merely based on production. When you break it down, the songs don’t really have much to them. I was really conscious to make sure not to copy from anyone’s writing style. I wanted to take the influences I have and make them my own songs with lyrics and chord progressions you wouldn’t hear very often,” said Reverend.
Any band or artist can resonate with the creative process behind original songs. Some ideas come out of nowhere and others take forever to develop. That experience is no different for Reverend. The easiest song for him to write of this record was “Everlasting”, which is the first song off it.
“Not only did I write that song a couple years ago, it takes me longer to listen to song than writing that one. You practically hear it as a demo because I barely made any changes to it,” said Reverend.
Ironically, the most difficult song for him to write was the title track, “A Hero’s Lie”. What made it difficult for him was to play and sing at the same time. Creatively, he felt very ambitious to get it down the way he wanted it to sound like.
“I really like the idea for the song, but I wasn’t able to get the performance that I wanted for it. That one in particular took a few demos before I was satisfied with the outcome,” said Reverend.