Ellis Ludwig-Leone of San Fermin

Ellis Ludwig-Leone, bandleader of eight-piece orchestral pop-rock ensemble San Fermin, isn’t your typical indie rocker – he boasts a degree in composition from an ivy league school and scores the band’s songs like classical pieces. On Jackrabbit, San Fermin’s second full-length, Ludwig-Leone demonstrates his mastery of the art of arrangement, particularly on tracks “Woman in Red” and “Reckoning.” We chat with the Brooklynite about Sufjan Stevens, high school metal bands and his favorite new music.

How did you get started with music as a child?

I always took piano lessons, but I kind of kept it secret from my friends. I didn’t really tell anyone that I played piano. I started when I was 8, but I didn’t really tell anyone until I was in college. It wasn’t really a part of my daily life in high school, except that I had some rock bands I would play with at Battle of The Bands and cover Evanescence or that sort of thing. Basically, when I went to college I actually started studying music and it changed my relationship with it.

How long have you been writing songs? 

Since high school. I was about 14.

Do you remember the first song you wrote? 

It didn’t really qualify as a song. I had this three piece metal band that was keyboards, guitar and drums, and we had no singer or bassist, but we wrote a lot of songs and argued whether the lyrics should be about girls or about cooler stuff. But no one was singing it, so it was kind of a moot point.

What is your typical songwriting process now, and how do you think your classical education plays into how you craft your melodies? 

When I’m writing a song now I think about it in the context of a larger record, so before I even start writing it I generally know where it’s going to be on the record and what I want from the song, whether I want it to have more male driven vocals or more female driven vocals. Then I’ll sort of start with what idea I want the song to be about, and then I kind of piece it together all at once. I don’t write on the guitar or piano – I basically write the whole thing at once, including all the arrangements and everything. So I can start with anything. I could start with the trumpet line, the strings… I think that sort of stuff feels very natural for me, but I think a lot of that stuff came from my education writing concert music

Do you think you write better under a deadline? 

If there’s a deadline you get it done, but I think when you’re writing a record, a lot of that stuff is self imposed. I do write better if try to write quickly. Often what I’ll do is I’ll say, “Today I’m going to get at least the bare bones of a song done.” And I just make sure I do it. You can take longer with it afterwards and tweak it. To me, if you try to write on a schedule, it helps get the work done, but in the end you break away from that schedule because you’re trying to make everything perfect.

What’s the most difficult thing about songwriting?

I don’t sing, so there’s a lot of imagination involved. I can’t just say, “Oh, it sounds pretty good if I do this,” or,  “Do this perfect falsetto.” I’m kind of guessing a little bit as to what Allen or Charlene is going to sound like. That’s a little difficult for me because you can’t tell what lyrics are going to work. Sometimes you think the lyrics are good and then they sound kind of dead when they’re actually sung, and sometimes you can write something that sounds stupid and works. It’s kind of an extra layer of guesswork for me, anticipating how the lyrics are going to sound live, and that’s the thing that’s most difficult.

What song of yours was the most difficult to write? 

On this new record there were some songs that required some serious pounding to get into shape. There’s a song called “Woman In Red” which went through three or four iterations, which is not how I usually write. When I write, it usually comes out as one thing that kind of knows what it is, but with that song I ended up having to cut a lot. I had whole vocal sections that I cut, I changed the drum beat a couple times… that song was elusive to finally nail it down and figure out what it was about.

Do you still feel afraid to show your work to people? 

I think that the most scared I am is before the first rehearsal with the band because I’ve already written the song and I’m basically handing them their parts, and it’s terrifying because if they don’t like it, I’m basically asking them to play it hundreds of times. I really trust their musical opinions on things. I’m definitely most nervous before first rehearsal, but also right before you put an album out, there’s obviously a certain apprehension because everyone’s going to judge it. But by that point, it’s gone through so many ears and so many people have heard it and talked to me about it that it’s less of a thing.

How do you feel about criticism when you put something out? 

I think it’s important. People aren’t generally mean just to be mean. There’s always some people, and you can always tell those people are just out there to shit on your parade. For the most part, people out there aren’t trying to be mean, so if people are saying things about your work and what it is, if it sticks in your mind, they might be onto something. If it resonates, you’re like, “That’s something I can adjust for.” At the same time, you know what you’re doing. Nothing that you do is going to please everyone. It’s kind of an unrealistic task, and even the best artwork gets criticized by some people. I think you have to keep it all in perspective and listen without getting obsessed. It’s hard. The way I try to deal with it the best is to have a group of people whose opinions I really care about and have them be really honest with me, and once it’s gone through that I tune out other stuff a bit more.

Who are your favorite songwriters? Who has impacted you the most? 

My favorite songwriter is and always has been Sufjan Stevens. He’s really versatile and a really smart musician. At multiple points in my life, his music has meant a lot to me. When I was growing up his Michigan and Illinois albums were always something I listened to, but even now, I listen to everything he does very carefully.

Which of your songs means the most to you personally? 

On the first record there’s a song called “Daedalus” which I think is the most personal song on the record. It was the only song where I was dealing with imagery that was directly taken from parts of my life. It ends with this big chorus where it’s trying to make some sort of sense of everything that has happened on the record. When I played it live, it definitely hit me in a way that other songs don’t. On this new record, the jury is still out. There’s a song called “Reckoning” and there’s a song called “Two Scenes,” both of which were songs I think were pretty personal as well.

Who are you listening to right now that we should be listening to? 

That new Sufjan record is pretty amazing. I’ve been listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins lately. I watched a Rage Against The Machine documentary the other day that was… somehow I missed them because i was in the wrong age or whatever, but that was awesome. I wish I had seen them live. It changes a lot cause we’re always touring, so whoever we’re touring with or who we’re playing with, there’s always somebody doing something awesome. I’ve become much of an omnivorous music listener now.

What do you think was the best musical era and why? 

The era we’re living in now is pretty cool. People can do what they want. There’s not much money in record sales, so there’s not really any major labels controlling all of that stuff. The downside, of course, is that there’s all this great music but it’s a lot harder to make money on it. There was a period of time in the late ’70s when great stuff came out. It would have been cool to have been alive in the 1920s. There was a lot of good classical music back then.