Raised in Milwaukee, WI and now Los Angeles-based, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joe Wong has grown more adept at realizing his ambitious musical ideas. Over the years he’s learned to better utilize guitar, bass guitar, piano, and drums in the eclectic music he’s created. In addition to recording albums with his own original music (2020’s Nite Creatures and 2024’s Mere Survival), he’s created compositions and scores for TV (Midnight Gospel, Russian Doll, Master of None) and film (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, The 414s, All This Panic), hosts the entertainment podcast The Trap Set with Joe Wong and produced albums for artists such as Mary Timony.
While he’s able to do much on his own, Wong has found that collaborating with others allows him to more fully build around his musical ideas and unleash his musical ambitions. Any chance he gets to work with someone is an opportunity to grow his knowledge and experience and find new ways to express himself.
“When you work with somebody who’s one of the best, you can’t help but be inspired and you can kind of feel the breadth of their experience when you work with them,” says Wong.
“I think I feel more comfortable working with people and I try to surround myself with people that are more talented or more experienced than I am. And I think in the same way that when you’re a tennis player, it’s always better to play against people that are better than you. I try to follow that same strategy when I’m making art because it lifts you up to work with people that are great.”
Seeing how other musicians function has given him growing confidence to try new things in his music.
“I think watching other people bring their vision to life and helping them along the way, whether it’s somebody who’s very experienced and has made several films or TV shows or somebody who’s doing it for the first time, watching it from the side of a helper, which is kind of my role as a composer, can be really informative and inspirational,” says Wong.
“So I think the two sides of what I do feed [into] each other in the sense that making albums of my own puts me in a better position to understand what someone is going through when they’re making something, especially when challenges arise and vice versa.”
Collaborations are a major part of his sophomore album Mere Survival, which came out February 2nd via Trap Set, Inc. He says that the album was “equally as difficult in a different way” compared to Nite Creatures. However, “having made something that I was happy with the first time” gave him “a little bit more confidence that even in the thick of difficulty with [Mere Survival] I knew that I would get to the finish line somehow.”
In addition to a 30-piece orchestra, guest musicians include Matt Cameron (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden), Nate Mendel (Foo Fighters, Sunny Day Real Estate), Mary Timony (Helium, Ex Hex, Wild Flag), Jim Keltner (John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob Dylan), Mary Lattimore, Money Mark (Beastie Boys), Anna Waronker (that dog.), Craig Wedren (Shudder to Think), and Joey Waronker (Beck, REM). Dave Fridmann, who mixed Nite Creatures and has worked with bands such as The Flaming Lips, MGMT and Spoon, mixed the album.
The album was recorded across the country at various studios including the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood, CA and the Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 in L.A. The album has a rich orchestral and psychedelic sound that is often driven by synthesizers and electric guitars. Album single “Into Nothing” was co-produced with guitarist Timony and features a drum breakdown by Cameron.
Scummy Water Tower recently caught up with Wong about how his goals for the album evolved, what it was like working with music heroes like Matt Cameron and Jim Keltner and the ease he felt recording at some famous studios in California.
What music have you been really into of late?
I have this newly discovered album, [ Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy], by John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy that was recorded at the Village Gate in New York. They discovered the tape recently and issued it for the first time. And then there’s Pharaoh Sanders.
Did those albums have an impact on your new album?
I don’t think so because my album was done before I listened to those new ones. The new album’s been done for a while. I think everything that I listen to impacts the music I write in some way or another, but not always, obviously.
Were there any that really had a big impact on this album?
No, not really. Nothing in particular or nothing that I’m aware of anyway. Not to say that I don’t have musical influences, but it doesn’t really work that way for me when I listen to something and decide that it should affect how I write music. Most of the time
With the new album, you continue to handle much of the heavy lifting as far as writing, performing, and producing. You also sought to challenge yourself by adding more instruments to the mix and people to work with. How did your goal for this album evolve as you got into the thick of things?
Well, I think I just, the way that I heard the songs in my mind a certain way, and then we brought in the people necessary to kind of realize what I was hearing as far as some of the new folks that I brought in. One of them is a drummer called Jim Keltner, who is one of the great session drummers of all time. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work, but he played on the Imagine album by John Lennon. He played with George Harrison. He was in Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, and he’s played on something like thousands of albums. And somehow he heard the first album and liked it and got in touch with me. He mentioned that he would be interested in working together at some point.
What were some things that you were most excited to do for this album that you hadn’t tried before?
I worked with Jim Keltner and because he is who he is, a lot of other people wanted to play with him. So I brought in a live band for those songs comprised of Nate Mendel on bass. Nate played in Sunny Day Real Estate and he’s currently the bass player of Foo Fighters and then Money Mark on keyboards who was in Beastie Boys among many other bands, and Drew Erickson also on keyboards and Joey Waronker on percussion. And so it was fun recording a couple songs live for this one.
Much of the album’s lyrics provide a not too rosy outlook on humanity, including album single “Into Nothing,” yet you always find glimmers of hope. Why is it important to remain hopeful?
I think it’s important to always search for hopeful outlook, even if there’s plenty of evidence that shows that humans seem to be a suicidal species because there’s always the potential to evolve.
What was the inspiration for your song “Into Nothing”?
The song is about the futility of legacy building, but it’s also about embracing the finite nature of our existence as individuals and as a species, and that’s what gives it meaning.
How do you think this album’s theme builds on the last album? Do you see any connection with the lyrics from that album to this one?
I think they’re probably connected. I think the newer album is a little bit more introspective, but I don’t really know. I don’t really think about my lyrics until much later. They come out and I don’t really analyze them until I notice certain themes emerging. And one thing that happens is if I’m practicing with the band and we play the songs over and over, then the topic of conversation when we go out for lunch or dinner tends to be a reflection of what the lyrical content is. And then I start noticing maybe what they’re about, but I don’t really think about it too much when I’m writing it. It’s almost like going into a dream state, but the first album I noticed a lot of people talking about losing folks. I think the new album is just kind of about what’s our trajectory as people.
I really liked how sonically rich that song is, and enjoyed the journey that you and the others took on that one. What did you like about that one?
It features one of my favorite drummers of all time, Matt Cameron, who was in Soundgarden when I first started playing drums and was a huge influence on me from the beginning of my life as a drummer.
Dave Friedman helped produce the album. What was the biggest way that he improved the songs?
A lot of the sonic character of the album also has to do with Dave Friedman who mixed this one and the previous one. He’s brilliant. Dave is somebody who has a very strong sensibility, but also technical mastery. So, I just kind of surrender the material to him and let him work his magic. But everything that he touches takes on extra depth. It’s more exciting and it tends to be more vivid once he’s touched it. I don’t know how he does it, but I think he could achieve it with very minimal amounts of equipment or in this case we went to his studio that has anything that you might need. But I think that the main asset that he has is his sensitivity in his ear, which is extremely advanced. And when you’re recording something for months or years at a time, I think sometimes you can lose perspective and it’s always important to bring in somebody to listen with fresh ears and bring a new perspective to it and Dave is the perfect person to do that.
What was it like working with a 30-piece orchestra? What did you like most working with them?
Well, a lot of them are my friends, so it was great to see everybody. This was at the tail end of the pandemic, so I hadn’t seen a lot of these folks in a long time. But what I like about working with these particular players is that I’ll have spent months on the songs writing them and recording them, and then as soon as we add strings and horns, it totally transforms the character of the recording and we move so quickly that it is almost like magic and you watch it happen over the course of a couple hours because most of these folks can nail it in the first take. So the whole album changes in the course of a couple hours. It’s really fun.
What songs surprised you most with how they came together?
I don’t know if I was really all that surprised because we spent so much time charting out the songs and kind of arranging them that I could hear how they were going to sound in my mind. But I would say the first and last songs on the album, “The Ape of the Wafer” and “Ordinary Light,” came the quickest and those were the two songs that I wrote at the end of the album process. And I think often that happens when you’re nearing the end of the project, that some of the most interesting stuff comes out at the end.
Capitol Studios and Studio 606 were two of the studios you recorded at. Did your connections help give you the chance to record there?
Anybody can record at Capitol [Studios]. Well, not right now because it’s under renovation. But you can just book time at any of these great studios here in L.A. It doesn’t matter what project you’re working on, but since my first album was released on a label that was under the same umbrella as Capitol, which was Deca [Records], it was a little bit easier for me to get sorted out over there. And then Studio 606, I’ve been working there for several years now. I did a project with one of the owners of the studio maybe about eight years ago, and I think I recorded some of the first album there too. But yeah, I worked there from time to time and I rent space there pretty often.
As far as other projects. What else are you planning to work on later this year or is there anything that you’re looking forward to?
I co-produced Mary Timony’s new album, which is coming out in March, and then I’m producing a couple albums right now, and then just scoring a couple TV shows. And I should probably start my next album soon now that this one’s about to come out.
What did you enjoy most about getting to work with Mary again?
Well, I toured with Mary for the first time in 2004 and we’ve been very close friends ever since then. And so it was just great to help her bring her vision to life. She hadn’t made a solo album in over 10 years and I was on some of her last solo tours. And as we discussed, she helped produce my albums and so it was really great to be able to return the favor.
As far as touring, what are you most looking forward to this year?
Well, we just played some shows with the larger ensemble and then I’m going to do a residency here in L.A. in the summer and then there’ll be some festivals later towards the end of the summer with the large ensemble again. But I just love getting a chance to get together with everybody and play these songs live.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
