Q&A with Steven Leftovers
Steven Leftovers is the musical project of a friend I overlapped with briefly in college, and I’ve been meaning to highlight his work in this newsletter for a while now. When I asked him about “Futurebrother,” he said:
I recorded that clapping on about 2 hours of sleep in my kitchen. in fact i recorded that whole song on about 2 hours of sleep in my kitchen. that was a while ago now, on a different career path in my life and surrounded by different individuals. how time flies (changes? )
I figured it was as good a time as any to ask him some more questions, so we emailed back and forth a bit about his work, his life in Dallas, and the kinds of things that inspire his music. I’ve edited it down some for clarity and length below. Be sure to follow him on Instagram, Bandcamp, Spotify, and wherever else you get your music.
Ben Tapeworm: Can you tell me a little about how Steven Leftovers began? Did you just start releasing music or was it a more intentional thing?
Steven Leftovers: SL began as a recording project in summer 2018. I’d been self-releasing music since 2014, as a senior in high school. Over the course of several years, I changed names a few times and pursued different styles before settling on SL. It was a more impactful transition than I’d expected, as I’d been releasing music for several years and didn’t think a simple name change would bring about a stylistic adjustment. But it did, and it felt big for my personal development as a musician. SL was the first time I started making music truly for, inspired by, and of myself. It was really when I began making music I wanted to hear. The name came about through a Facebook post that prompted you to make your own CIA name by combining your middle name and the last thing you ate (It was around Thanksgiving of the year prior)—hence, Steven Leftovers : )
BT: You’re such a prolific musician, working at a pace of about two records per year. And they’re all so great and varied and full of surprising moments. Songs like "Cold-Blooded Old Times (Reverb Study)" and “A Song I Considered Making A Bonus Track on the Last Album” feel like a kind of winking disregard for what an album is supposed to look like. At the same time, each record feels self-contained and tight. Is each one an opportunity to try something slightly different or do you see them as all part of the same musical project?
SL: I think each record allows me to approach distinct stylistic backgrounds and try new methods for songwriting and recording. For instance, the latest record I released was the first I'd recorded almost entirely on a DAW, and the first on GarageBand. All of the other records prior were done using a digital 8-track recorder (TASCAM DP-008ex). With each record I am listening to new artists, undergoing changes or avoiding some, and generally thinking about music in a slightly different regard. I feel this helps delineate between them, but keeps them threaded together using certain motifs or creative methods. I hope to write and record as much as I can but am able to do so at different speeds throughout my life—always varies…
BT: Tell me more about your most recent record, The Actor Playing the Part. At least on Bandcamp, it has more collaborators listed than on earlier records. How does collaboration fit into your process?
SL: Collaboration has never been something I've embodied while making art but was definitely an approach I’d considered! When you play with a band, you free your songs to the collective mind, and often what comes is something fascinating and inspiring. So I thought, “Why not just take this mindset into the recording process?” I think collaboration became this for me during the making of the last record. It revealed to me how many different pathways exist to take one idea and see it through, and with some help from good friends I was able to traverse those pathways. This latest record has collaborators with whom I’d love to collaborate in the future. From Dallas, Suburban Sorcerers (1/2 of Future Nest), reynoldsflow, and Matthew Devil. And from Austin, stunts and Font.
BT: How do you choose the cover art / cover photos for your records?
SL: The art always has a link to something important in my life—be it a location, a feeling, an object. I try to find a nice picture that can stand alone, but for this last record I tried something new and had my friend Jack Diller (IG: @skoobala) draw a piece based on some images that had really captured me lately. The title of this latest record came from the Orson Welles movie F for Fake (1973), so I took a few stills from the movie one night watching it while drunk. I sent these images to Jack who twisted them and turned them and came up with the final piece—a really excellent creation, and so beautiful.
BT: A lot of your lyrics have to do with worrying, thinking, rearranging things. Many of them make reference to these kind of domestic smallnesses: small bathrooms, traffic lights, cottage houses, glowing TVs, trash bins, city buses, frozen pipes. Are there certain themes or places that you try to explore in your songwriting?
SL: I think one that comes back often is the concept of life and death in the form of objects or discrete incidents. I've tracked my own life through punctuated moments or personal collections, and so I often use them to turn back to those feelings and mindsets. Other times it is more of approaching a generalized, defined concept abstractly, or attempting to turn upside-down the rooms in which those words reside. I try to reconsider the things I’ve accepted as indisputable truths, because I think those are the things which will be the easiest to re-evaluate. The things I question often are tougher to explore in this regard. I think a lot about love and the many forms of its expression, for instance—this one comes back to the creative process often.
BT: “Doubleheader,” from the recent record, is a track that really resonates with me and my own project of writing, particularly the opening stanza:
i hope that some day one piece of my art's worth a lot of money
and i can just give it to a friend
and when i visit that person, i’ll be reminded
of how old i've become, yet again
I love the thought of creation as a generosity that is also a kind of way of giving yourself something. But by the time it comes back to you it’s something else—a reminder of time or aging or past selves that may or may not be comforting. Do you see your work as Steven Leftovers doing something similar? Or am I over-reading or projecting?
SL: You are definitely not over-reading, definitely the idea for that set of lines! I wrote those while watching YouTube clips of Antiques Roadshow, seeing how shocked some of the participants were by the incredible appraisals of their offerings. But thinking as well about how strange it would feel to create those works and have to grapple with the intersecting universes of your art being an outpouring of personal expression as well as a commodified object, and, for many of these artists, very highly valued. And that’s really fascinating to me, to think about your art transcending the boundaries of its initial form and infiltrating the minds of the general public as this important object, but never losing its personal value… Simply gaining a new value. I think it’d be interesting to experience that one day.
BT: What have you been listening to lately? Or reading, watching, thinking about?
SL: Lately I’ve been listening to Earl Sweatshirt’s new record, alongside ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH by SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, anything recorded by Canadian multi-media collective Crack Cloud, local DFW artist Teethe and their new song “Tag” (teethe.bandcamp.com). Just finished the very touching 10-episode miniseries The Last Dance about Michael Jordan and the Bulls’ basketball hegemony in the 90s. New Parquet Courts album… Sparks, 2-piece band from USA, HQ in UK… DJ Sabrina the teenage DJ (shoutout Matt)… been watching a LOT of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's movies from german new cinema in the 60s-80s.
BT: What’s the music scene like in Dallas? Do you play shows often?
SL: I love the Dallas music scene! It stretches north, south, east, west… Where else can you drive in any cardinal direction and find opportunities to play music and associate with musicians? I mostly play in and around Dallas, but have played in Denton (a college town 30-40 min north of Dallas with a thriving, special music scene of its own). Never played in Fort Worth but always open. We've done a show in Austin, which was also a lovely time. But I do really enjoy my immediate musical community and the people with whom I can collaborate who are a part of it. Exposed me to lots of incredible artists and wonderful people. Forever grateful.
BT: What are you working on now?
SL: Another record is in the works : - ) Working slowly but steadily… 2-3 songs done, unsure at which point it will be considered complete but chugging along : ). I may also put out a book, a collection of foods I've eaten photographed in the same position underneath this lovely painting of one of my family's deceased cats. But that could also just be a fever dream.
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ben tapeworm