COLD WAR KIDS
A Conversation with Nathan Willett
March 8, 2024 by Traci Turner
Long Beach rockers Cold War Kids are in the final weeks of their extensive North American tour and look forward to wrapping it all up with some SoCal shows. The alt/indie rock band founded in 2004 by Nathan Willett (vocals and guitar) and Matt Maust (bass) dropped their latest album in November and has been sharing the new tracks during the trek.
Many of us got to know Cold War Kids thanks to “First,” “Hang Me Up to Dry,” “Love Is Mystical,” “Hospital Beds,” “Something Is Not Right With Me,” and “All This Could Be Yours.” Willett and Maust have been consistently releasing intelligent, interesting, and incredible music, and do not seem to run out of material.
A tour and a new album would be enough for most bands, but the past few years have been absolute insanity for Cold War Kids. They released a trilogy of albums – “New Age Norms 1” in 2019, “New Age Norms 2” in 2020, and “New Age Norms 3” in 2021 – and toured in support of the records. They spent 2023 supporting Tears for Fears on the highly successful The Tipping Point Tour. As that tour traveled North America, Cold War Kids was preparing to release their 10th studio album, “Cold War Kids.”
Once again, they are back on the road, this time in support of their album. Ahead of their Washington D.C. gig, Nathan Willett checked in with us to give us an update.
Traci: Now first off, Nathan. I saw a photo of you from the other night that gave me concern. You are onstage with one foot and the other foot on the barrier. That looks a little dangerous! (laughing)
Nathan: (laughing) Yeah! We had a guy come out and take pictures and he somehow got that magical moment when I was stepping off, but down to the step that is on the barrier thing, which I’ve gotten pretty good at, but, yeah, that looked a little dangerous. I’m glad he caught that moment because it was a little like floating for a split second.
Traci: You’ve been on the road since January. When I travel, I need my Sour Patch Kids. What is your required road snack?
Nathan: You know those peanut butter bars that you have to refrigerate and they’re somewhat good for you?
Traci: Perfect Bars!
Nathan: Yeah, Perfect Bar. That’s probably been the daily, “All right, I’m about to start. I really need a meal, but I know that I can’t get to one anytime soon. That will help me survive.”
Traci: You and [co-founder] Matt [Maust] have been friends and doing this for over 20 years now, so you guys probably travel well together, right?
Nathan: Yeah, we do.
Traci: No bitter fights? No throwing things?
Nathan: (laughing) No. He probably loves touring more than I do. I really like it, but with family and everything. And also I sing; I have a different relationship to it. I’ve got to work a little harder to stay able to sing. But yeah, I think between he and I, and really everyone, I feel like years ago we realized for as much as we tour, moving forward, we just have to have crew, band, we have to have that chemistry where everybody gets along well and likes each other, and we have as good as it gets. I think we have a great vibe and everybody loves each other and laughs and it’s really nice.
Traci: The past few years you did the trilogy of albums (“New Age Norms”) and “Cold War Kids” came out in November. You released a single, what was that, a couple of weeks ago?
Nathan: Yeah, the first night of the tour, actually.
Traci: Do you ever sit still?
Nathan: No. (laughing) I’ve been thinking about that more. I do think there’s potentially a downside of it for just oversaturating your fans with music; that it is too much. There’s a lot of bands out there that put a record out every three or four years and that works really well for them. And so I sometimes wonder if we actually have done too much.
Traci: No, because you turn out quality material. The new album is amazing: “Double Life,” “Empty Inside,” and “For Your Love.” “Betting on Us” was a song I had to stop and just listen on repeat a few times. Such an amazing song.
Nathan: That’s cool. Thank you. I love to hear that. Honestly, it’s funny just because going on tour and obviously having put out so much music, you can’t play it all, and especially with a brand new record, you can’t play it all. Even with some of those songs, like “Betting on Us,” that’s one of those. When you’re in the studio and writing, the great thing is that every song feels like it could be the biggest deal in the world, and it’s going to change your life and it’s the greatest moment. But of course, in the way that it does that. A lot of them become album cuts that maybe you don’t play for a long time. It’s very interesting to hear what songs people gravitate towards and that’s one that I almost kind of forgot about for a minute. So it’s cool how that happens.
Traci: Do you always know when the song is done, or when you play it later are you like, “Oh, I still want to tweak this?”
C W K
Nathan: Always want to tweak it. (laughing) Always want to change it. Yeah. And a lot of the making of this record was relative for us, actually was the most patient and not rushing to finish it. It allowed me to take a lot of time and do a lot of tweaking and revising. The guys, producers that I work with really love to laugh at me because we could have a song mixed and mastered, and I will go back in there and re-sing certain lines, and they’re just like, “This is unreal.” But I’m just like, “Yeah, I’m sorry, I have to do that.”
Nathan continued: I care very passionately, especially about lyrics and having them be right. And that also can be something that you just have to let go of, even if it isn’t. If there’s still some questions there, you can sometimes still let go of it. But at the end of this record was a big… I was very unsure for a long time if I should have let go of it. I’m so glad I got to kind of sit and live with it for a little while. But, yeah, I think getting to play with that relationship to the writing and releasing of music is, to me, a big part of what really keeps this really fresh and engaging for me.
Traci: What kind of songwriter are you? Are you always writing in a journal, or is it an event that inspires you?
Nathan: It depends. It can go just about every way, but I have definitely notebooks full of words that I then look at when it comes to working on music. I’ve become much more music first, because the idea of cramming in a lot of words into something that doesn’t exactly fit a mood of music. And it can go the other way as well, but making music fit a lyric to me, for some reason, it’s a little harder to do. Of course, it’s great when they come at once. But then there’s always scraps of music or lyrics that I’ll go back to and be like, “Oh, my God, we never finished that. We need to work that in.”
Traci: Does it get easier to basically “birth that baby” each album, or is it harder and harder each time?
Nathan: I guess a little bit of both. It’s kind of the cliché. People say, “Oh, you had your whole life to work on the first one.” I don’t really think that’s true. I don’t think anybody spent years writing songs. The way that we have existed has always kind of been just very much on the go. So it’s almost like the writing, recording, touring, performing, it’s all very connected. The idea of the writing being very separate or having songs for years or something, I don’t feel like that ever really existed. I think even the early ones, a lot of them came, and I was substitute teaching and writing “Hospital Beds” from reading, and always doing 10 things at once.
Nathan continued: I remember I had an A&R guy a few years ago asking how lyrics are coming, and he said, “Why don’t you take a trip to Paris and just work on lyrics?” What are you talking about? That sounds crazy. That doesn’t register. It seems like it really has to come just from living. The idea that you do something really out of the flow of my regular life seems very silly.
Traci: Going back to those early days, do you remember where you were the first time you heard one of your songs on the radio?
Nathan: Yeah, there was a station called Indie 103.1 in LA that played some of ours. We were living in our little house in Whittier. That was our practice studio, and they were playing our music, and it was crazy.
Traci: You are winding down this tour and you have several sold-out dates and some Southern California hometown shows coming up. Are you allowed to talk about what’s happening after that?
Nathan: We have a Record Store Day vinyl EP that’s coming out in April, which I’m really excited about because there’s five songs that didn’t make it onto the record – but that I love very much – that just didn’t make sense all together. They make sense in this way, and I’m very excited about it. And it seems like something that is cool for the fans and for the people that can only get it that way, at least for a while. I’m really excited about those songs, and I’m really excited about working on what comes next. But I don’t quite know what that is yet.
Traci: Hey, you don’t HAVE to know.
Nathan: Yeah, that’s true. But I’d like to. I don’t like too much time to pass without knowing.
Traci: So the pandemic must have been hard for you!
Nathan: Really hard! (laughing) Yeah.
Traci: Did you pick up a hobby?
Nathan: Well, tennis. I never played it before at all and I needed something. I didn’t even know how bad I needed something to be obsessed with. That’s the funny thing about music is that it’s so all-consuming and nothing beats it. Finding a hobby to even sort of scratch that same itch; it’s so hard to find anything that comes close. But tennis was the thing. It was like, “Oh, my God, I love this. I love everything about it. This is what I want to do.”
Traci: It probably helped you not drive your family crazy being home all the time too!
Nathan: Yes. It saved us all! (laughing)
Thank you Nathan for making the time to talk to us and we look forward to seeing Cold War Kids in SoCal on March 18th at The Observatory North Park (San Diego), March 20th and 21st at The Fonda Theatre (Los Angeles), and March 23rd at Pappy & Harriet’s (Pioneertown). They will also hit some festivals this summer including the epically cool BottleRock in Napa Valley on May 25th. Also, look for their brand new EP and exclusive vinyl for Record Store Day on April 20th. And you never know; you may see Willett on a tennis court near you…
TO FOLLOW
COLD
WAR
KIDS
SID 240311 | JIMMY ALVAREZ, EDITOR
HEADER & FOOTER PHOTOS BY SEAN FLYNN
