Greg Freeman on Jack White, Johnny English, and the Coziness of Burlington

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Greg Freeman just recently released a great new album Burnover, which is a follow-up to 2022's also-excellent I Looked Out. I hopped on a call with him last week, in which he graciously took a beat from him and his band's current European tour, to chat about all things Burnover as well as his quickly ascendant career and what makes him tick artistically. Check it out:

Burnover, to me, sounds like a considerable change in your overall sound from the first record. Talk to me about that.
For me, it feels like it's going in a slightly different direction. I didn't want to just make the same record twice, and I knew that people who really liked that first record were maybe expecting something. But in my head, I realized that I'd rather just make a record that's inspired by what I'm inspired by right now than to try and make the same record again. The first record was a product of my resources at the time, which was nothing. I just wanted this to sound better than the last one,
and I didn't really have any interest in making another super lo-fi record.

Talk to me a little bit more about what specifically has been inspiring you lately in terms of your songwriting.
What I'm inspired by now as I'm writing another record isn't what I was inspired by when I was writing Burnover. Everything—movies, books, my immediate surroundings, geography—all goes into the music. For Burnover, I was less inspired by music as I was by ideas, motifs, things from poems. A lot of it is right there in the songs, in terms of specific things like nature. There's a ton of motifs that are bouncing around the whole album—ancient Rome, the Wild West. I didn't really try to insert all those things into the songs as much as they just found their way in them.

The title of the record specifically refers to the burned-over portion of New York State. Talk to me a little bit about how that album title came up for you.
I don't know. It's funny—you tell an interviewer a specific influence that wasn't necessarily something that needed to be attached to the album, because then you have to explain it in interviews—and it's not a concept album in that way.

But I was reading a book about like the history of the Northeast, and it was talking about people like Charles Finney and Joseph Smith—the apocalyptic creatures of the 18th and 19th century in the region. I thought that was a cool way to try and understand the psychic geography of the area and some deeper thing about what it means to be from there. But I don't think I need people to have to understand anything that's related to the album.

You said you're already working on a new record. Do you usually work pretty quickly when it comes to songwriting?
Usually not. The first record took many years to write, and by the time I finished Burnover, it was such a long process of trying to mix that record, finishing it, getting a record deal, then having to re-release the first record, and then suddenly having the resources to remix and remaster Burnover. I was so sick of the bureaucratic things that come with finishing a record that just really wanted to write as much as possible, knowing how much touring I'd have this year. I had a couple months off, so out of that came this new batch of songs that I've been working on.

Tell me about finding your voice as a songwriter, figuratively and literally. Your vocals are distinctive and they're very noticeable to listeners right out of the gate.
I've been writing songs for so long that it wasn't until Burnover that I really felt good about them, Maybe the only thing that I felt proud about when it came to making music at that point was the lyrics, because you can't really control your voice that much or how well you record something. There's so many limits. But when it comes to writing the words, you can spend as much time as you want on that by yourself.

I felt really good about the lyrics for "I Looked Out." Writing those songs, playing them, and trying to record them, I wanted the delivery to be more direct, confrontationalm and in your face. I was just sick of not being able to hear people's lyrics when they sing—not that lyrics are everything in music, but I wanted mine to be unmistakable. I don't want that part of the music to get lost in translation, so that factors into my delivery. I also need to write with a guitar to help my voice move, so the guitar and vocal parts are in tandem.

In terms of lyricists, who are some people that you look towards and admire?
There's a couple of huge people for me. I remember getting this Townes Van Zandt CD when I was 14. I was already into Bob Dylan at that point, but Townes felt more classically poetic, concise, potent, and sad, and that really resonated with me. Also, early White Stripes. When I was a young teenager, I fucking loved those lyrics, and I always thought they were underappreciated.

I listened to White Blood Cells recently for the first time in forever, and I was really taken aback at how good it still sounds.
The first three records are some of the best songwriting of that era of indie rock—really, concise, powerful, angry, beautiful, and unique. [In terms of more influences], all the classic people—Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Joe Strummer. I try not to listen to my contemporary peers so much when I'm working on new music—I don't know why. But I do have modern influences that are friends of mine.

You mentioned movies earlier—what are some you've seen recently or are close to your heart?
I remember watching this Todd Field movie, In the Bedroom, which is such a good movie. We watched Johnny English in the car, because the touring band came with only two DVDs and that was one of them. It honestly brought me back to my childhood days. We were in Hamburg the other day, and one of my favorite movies is The American Friend. Imagining what people not from America feel when they come to New York and they've only seen movies from there, and they feel like they're in the movie—I had that going to Hamburg. We were literally playing in the seediest part of town, right next to a literal brothel. Everyone was all freaked out, but I was like, "This is awesome. This is exactly like the vibe of the movie." It was depressing and dreary, but I thought it was cool.

The cover art for Burnover is really striking—very much something where, if I was digging through the stacks at a record shop, I would see it and I'd be like, "What's going on with this record?"
My friend Merce Lemon took that picture. We were in a natural history museum in Niagara Falls that was a wax museum. I've been trying to go to this place for many years, but I never had a reason to go to Niagara Falls. We were driving to Pittsburgh and decided to make the detour. It's in the back of a gift shop—you pay $5 at the counter, you go through the door at the back, and it's totally unattended, falling apart, and really weird. But I like that picture. I thought it was striking, and I don't know what it represents.

Talk to me about living in Burlington. What's the vibe like for you there in terms of day-to-day existence?
It's becoming very unaffordable for most people, but I've been in the same place for four years and the rent is really cheap, and I can walk everywhere so I have everything I need in one small place. It's my home at this point. There's frustrating things about living in such a small place, but I love Vermont, and I love Burlington. My sister lives there, too, so that's great.

How does it compare to kind of growing up in Maryland?
It's so different. Burlington's such a wacky, weird place to live. It's tiny, but there's so much going on. It's a very social little town, and there's always something to do. You can go outside and there's nature stuff. Growing up in Maryland, there's nothing to do except smoke in the 7-Eleven parking lot and drive around.

You're opening for Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump anniversary tour next month. I'm curious to hear if Grandaddy has ever played a role in your own musical upbringing. I feel like Jason was actually quite underrated for a period of time, but I feel like over the last few years, I've been seeing younger people rediscover his catalog again.
Weirdly enough, not until after people started listening to I Looked Out did I start listening to a lot of the things that people were comparing it to. I really didn't know that much about Grandaddy, embarrassingly, until a few years ago. Same with Sparklehorse. But listening to that now, I hear so much so much of it in that album. Making that record in the way that we did, I think we tapped into what those guys were doing with home studio, following your instincts, and trying to make something creative that has that organic, weird feeling through it.

Is music your full-time thing right now?
Right now, music is my full-time thing, because I'm touring so much the next six or seven months. I had a summer gig working in a bar, and I had to quit that so I could tour. Usually, when I have a couple months off, I get back into the workforce in Burlington. You also make money on tour—in the States, at least. At our level, it is possible to make money on tour. I know for certain bands, it's not possible because their circumstances are different or whatever. But we just crash on people's couches and sell a shit ton of merch, and we usually come out with some money. I mean, that's not the case in Europe, where you're just losing all of your money. But it's been self-sustaining—at least, temporarily, this last year.