An unexpected collaboration influenced the music. Some life-changing, traumatic events inspired the lyrics. That combination of elements spurred the creation of The Hard Way, the stirring, emotionally potent new album from esteemed singer/songwriter Pete Yorn.
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The Hard Way was released to great acclaim on digital formats earlier his year. Coming up before the end of the fall, fans will also be able to get their hands on a vinyl edition of this standout record, which is fantastic because this album flows beautifully from one song to the next and deserves to be heard in a single sitting. Yorn recently spoke to American Songwriter about the process of making the album, one that took some unexpected twists and turns that rocked him to the core.
Tragedy and Resilience
It started benignly enough. Yorn was contacted by Josh Gudwin, who had mixed one of Yorn’s previous records. Gudwin explained he had been putting together some pieces of music, and he wondered if Yorn had any new lyrics. Yorn sent some along, and Gudwin sent him back an acoustic voice memo with the song “Someday, Someday” largely fleshed out.
Yorn was so thrilled with the results that the two began working more in earnest, albeit with no specific end goal in sight other than just to come up with some more songs. That’s when Yorn was hit with a one-two punch of reality that put making music on the back burner.
“I had two life-changing experiences happen,” Yorn explains. “One of them put the whole process on hold for eight months. I had a crazy health thing come up, and it had to be dealt with. The recovery from that took a long time. I wasn’t ready to go to the studio for a long time. That put everything on hold. And then my dad passed away too.”
“These are things that everyone deals with in different ways,” he continues. “It’s just human stuff. My dad dying, he was older, but still it’s never enough time. Everyone has to deal with that at some time in different ways. But the health thing was really freaky. It was one of those things where it changes you. You’re either going to face it down and grow from it, or you’re just going to get pummeled by it. I figured out that I have to get really strong here.”
Returning to the Music
The good news is Yorn recovered, and he tells us that his health is now strong; he just finished his first tour in five years, providing evidence of that. When he went back to start writing and recording again with Gudwin, the perspective he gained from his tough times influenced the new songs that emerged.
“I looked at it as a gift that I took back to the writing sessions when we did eventually get back together,” Yorn says. “Everything was colored by what I had gone through. When we went back, we already had some songs, but then we came up with all these new songs. I could just tell that although I wasn’t trying to write about my dad, there were lines coming out that made me think of my dad. It’s just the way it was.”
The eight songs on The Hard Way all boast an acoustic guitar-and-vocal foundation. Accents come from strings, horns, and other evocative touches that bring out the deep feeling in the lyrics. Yorn credits Gudwin for helping it all come together. “Working with Josh was wonderful,” he says. “I’ve written so many songs by myself, just alone in a closet or dark room. It was nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of. He was great in that way. He also brought a beautiful sound to the record.”
“Pretty quickly, we realized it was going to be a more organic-sounding record,” Yorn adds. “A lot of acoustic instruments and strings. We embraced this sound, and we weren’t going to compromise. Maybe someone on the team would say, ‘You need an upbeat number.’ I was like, ‘No, this is going to be what it is.’ It didn’t feel like anything else made sense.”
Hard Truths
That cohesion of sound is echoed by the lyrics’ thematic similarities. Yorn sings of love lost and missed connections throughout the record on touching songs like the title track and “Different Roads.” “Golden Dream” is a lovely tribute to his father, even though he didn’t consciously start out writing the song with that intent. And closing track “I Keep Going On” was influenced by the wise words of a different family member.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, things are going to happen, and you just keep going on,” Yorn says. “I always remember my grandfather, he lived to 104. Herman Goldblatt. Great guy. He outlived everybody. I remember asking him around his 100th birthday, ‘Pop, what’s it like when you slowly lose everybody who was part of your life?’ He looked at me, and he had an answer: ‘It’s hard, and you’re sad at first, but then you just go on. You keep going on.’ And I never forgot that. Just hearing that, it gave me faith.”
That notion of resilience also lurks underneath the melancholy nature of The Hard Way, even if listeners might not notice it as much as the guy who created it.
“The other theme on the record to me is rising above adversity,” Yorn explains. “That’s the reason the record is called The Hard Way. I love sad songs. I love songs that bring out that emotion. We tried to get into that on this album. But for me, I know everything that went into this album. I know the road I went down to be able to finish this record and get up on stage and do this tour. I hear triumph through adversity, and I hear being able to prove that you’re able to handle heavy stuff. So it’s inspiring in that way to me.”
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