Call & Response: Ehren Ebbage

(10 min)

Ehren Ebbage is the kind of collaborator you want sitting across from you. The award-winning songwriter, producer, and composer continuously seeks new opportunities that push himself while leaving room for unbridled creativity and discovery that feed the spirit of whatever he’s working on.

While Ebbage has numerous projects in the works for 2023, we focused our conversation on how he connected to Lizzy McAlpine’s songwriting and co-produced her latest record, his exploration of the studio and recording with Olive Klug, his process and influences, and his work on albums from our own catalog.

If you work in a creative and/or collaborative space, Ebbage drops some real gems that are sure to inspire.

Lab Notes (LN): If you had to boil your musical journey into one sentence, what would it be? (Run-on sentences accepted and encouraged.)

Ehren Ebbage (EE): It's been a lifelong process of exploring, expanding, experimenting, and experiencing as much as I can, the scarier the better.

LN: Congratulations on the success of your work with Lizzy McAlpine! What has it been like starting as a co-producer on 5 songs from Lizzy’s debut album and then becoming a producer, engineer, and instrumentalist on her follow up five seconds flat?

Do those roles feel like wearing different hats on different days, or is it more fluid during the album making process for you?

EE: Thanks! The majority of what you hear is some combination of Lizzy, myself, and my brilliant co-producer and dear friend Philip Etherington. Lizzy is one of the most potent songwriters I've ever known, and has an incredible sense for and commitment to her own creative visions, but she's not the sort of artist who wants to spend time auditioning mics or experimenting with drum tuning. Much of the record was made by Philip and I, and each of us move pretty fluidly between the various roles. I don't think either of us would claim to be the greatest tracking engineer or instrumentalist, but we held each other to a standard of quality and just kept at it until Lizzy was happy. A lot of the credit goes to Philip... his finishing touches and mixes took it from being a good record to a great one, in my view.

LN: What was it about her songs that initially resonated with you and what kind of growth have you seen in her writing at the ground floor level?

EE: In films, one actor might seem like they're playing a character and another seems like they are the character. It's hard to articulate the difference, but it's that difference that I feel in her songwriting. It's not just that she writes clever lines and sings them well. She is giving the listener a view of the world through her eyes and I can't imagine the songs being written by anyone else. That's really appealing to me, both as a listener and a collaborator.

It's not just that she writes clever lines and sings them well. She is giving the listener a view of the world through her eyes and I can't imagine the songs being written by anyone else.

LN: You’ve been working with Olive Klug, producing, engineering, playing, and mixing on their newest single “Out Of Line.” It has such a great balance of musically sounding playful and light while also “deconstructing gender, capitalist expectations of time, and neurotypicality,” as Olive says of the song on their Instragram. How did this song take shape in the studio?

EE: Olive is so much fun to work with and it's been a real joy to be part of their process. When working on someone else's record, my single highest priority is to make something which sounds like them, not me. Olive wasn't really sure what that meant for them when we started working together and it was a bit shaky at first. We talked and talked about references and concepts, etc., and never really got clear about any of it. We turned a corner with “Out of Line”, and I think it happened when I encouraged them to pick up instruments and play ideas, even though they felt a bit awkward with unfamiliar tools. Everything except the upright bass and the group vocals was played by Olive or I. We stumbled into a really fun process; one of us might track 'the part', but the other would be playing something else or humming along in the background. It creates a very unique musical ambience; lots of little ghosty bits, sometimes barely audible but still perceptible on some level. Again, I love the idea that we're making something which could only be made by this artist in this room at this time, etc. I think Olive will always feel some sense of connection with these recordings because they had their hands in every part of it. I hope it always feels like them, even when they move on to other creative ideas.

LN: Reading your bio, we get the sense that you know how to stay open to new and unexpected opportunities. How impactful has that been to your career? Do you have any guiding principles or artists you look to that help maintain that mindset?

EE: Beyond just being open to them, I actively seek them out. Music is a landscape to be explored and I really admire the fearless explorers among us. I'm interested in finding great people and challenging projects above all else. Long ago I worked with Rob Schnapf on a record and I think my personal approach was largely shaped by being around him. He has a very good signal to noise ratio, and my takeaway was that music can pursue truth, greatness, and hilarity all at the same time, while keeping the BS at bay. We're in service of the work, not the other way around. He became a kind of model for the types of folks I want to be around, and I've been lucky to have found a bunch of them along the way... they inspire me as much as any of the legendary artists do.

Music can pursue truth, greatness, and hilarity all at the same time, while keeping the BS at bay. We're in service of the work, not the other way around.

LN: Your work as part of our production music catalog on Palindroma (DAA-025) and our recent Indie Folk albums on Eyeballs & Eardrums displays your ability to tap into emotion and distill it directly into the music with authenticity and finesse. Can you tell us a little bit about the origins of Palindroma and how the form of a palindrome made its way into the music?

EE: Cool! Palindroma was 100% Daniel Holter's idea. I think he presented it like 'this breaks all the library rules and we might not make any money, but I think it would be fun.' Daniel is exactly the sort of person I described above, so when I get a chance to do something for License Lab I really try to do right by him because I know he cares. On this project, sometimes the palindrome concept is represented by the dynamic arc of the tune. On others, it's more literal; an idea might be played forward to the halfway point and reversed to the end, as much as it could be done in a musical way. It was a little tricky to figure out the form at first, but he helped me dial it in and I loved the challenge.

LN: What is your approach to composing production music? How does that differ or intersect with your other work?

EE: Ideally, the only differences are small technical ones. The purpose of production music is to serve media by conveying emotion and providing momentum... that's usually accomplished via simple arrangement techniques. The hard work is in finding the core of the emotion and defining the sonic landscape, and in that regard I treat production music the same way I would an artist record. Sometimes a media music project doesn't afford me the time to explore very thoroughly, but I still try very hard to think of the process in the same way. It's all about using the available resources to make something which serves the project as well as it can.

LN: What inspires you, what gives you hope?

EE: I'm at risk of sounding ridiculous here, but everything does. I couldn't tell you how we got here or what we're meant to do with our time, but I think the human experience is a crazy, wonderful, tragic, exhausting, and very inspiring one. No matter how weird or bad or sad things get, there's always someone somewhere who decides to make the best of it, and I find that really inspiring. To be more specific, my wife and kids inspire me every day. The unbelievable output of incredibly talented people all over the world is inspiring. The guy who so carefully built the rock wall in my backyard, promising that it would stand for hundreds of years, is also inspiring. I dunno. Life is weird and people are weird but I really like it.

LN: We know you have a lot of current or upcoming projects, but what do you do when you’re not making music?

EE: Family. Exercise. Books. Time outside. Trying to learn something about cooking. Trying to give a little something to the community. It's mostly music and family, though : )

LN: If you were trapped on a desert island, what 5 albums could you not live without?

EE: I have no idea. I'd rather have a diet of five food items than a music collection of 5 albums. I don't think anyone has made 'the only album we need', which is probably why we all keep trying. I know that's not really the point of the question, but I think my relationship with music is as much about engaging with the present and imagining the future as it is studying the past. I've enjoyed Taylor Swift's Folklore as much as John Coltrane's Giant Steps and live videos of Glenn Gould as much as live videos of Kendrick Lamar. For me, music is about experiencing ideas and emotions through the lens of great artistic communicators. Total cop out answer. Sorry : )

LN: What are three things about you that wouldn’t want left out of your Wikipedia page?

EE: He lived a long life, left the place a little better than he found it, and is survived by his happy, healthy family.