Ways Away’s album Torch Songs, out now on Other People’s Records, is a complete thought from Jesse Barnett set to his dueling guitars with Sergie Loobkoff and backbeat Jared Shavelson and Ian Smith. When the key ingredients are the bands Stick To Your Guns, Samiam, BoySetsFire, and Racquet Club and that talent sits over fire on the stove all day the stew is deep, rich and nourishes the soul. Take a bunch of heavy music, a pinch of punch rock and some alternative music—the ingredients are a satisfying and well composed main dish. Building on their first record as an appetizer, “Working Class Suicide Pact” single a perfect amuse bush, “For A Moment, I Don’t Want To Die,” connecting to Torch Songs. The new album sets the musical palate ablaze with warm melodic notes, tight base and cool, maybe not calm, collected thoughts.
Jesse Barnett, at home in Los Angeles, takes some time away from doing his yard work to explain what makes Ways Away work. It’s very different from Stick To Your Guns; it’s gaining its own traction and helping Barnett tell an even deeper message through a different musical genre or tone.
“It’s awesome; obviously the writing process with both bands is completely different. It doesn’t feel super redundant. If I was in multiple hardcore bands or multiple metalcore bands, whatever you wanna call it, it’s like, it would start feeling pretty redundant. But the fact that I get to go in with this new band makes me feel like I’m doing something completely brand new. And I enjoy that. I’m kind of like a jack of all trades, master of none type of guy. I enjoy picking up a guitar and especially, coming off the back of writing a new STYG record and doing a bunch of STYG touring; it feels good to change it up and come home to L.A. to work with a new set of people and on different kinds of songs. It’s definitely refreshing, and it keeps my thirst for songwriting going.”
Barnett elaborates, “I think it’s because I’m able to sing about a similar a similar topic, but in a different way. You normally are expecting to hear protest songs or socialist-ish type of songs in hardcore music because it’s angry and you’re willing. You hear it in hip-hop with KRS One or Dead Presidents or all of these revolutionary type of rappers, which also sounds angry. I think when you have these, just like rock songs and even these kind of slower songs, it gives these subject matter a different kind of context in which, maybe people who don’t gravitate towards those other two kinds of music can relate to. At least that’s the point for me, as a living, breathing socialist in the 21st century, is to constantly be pushing those ideas through any kind of medium, whether I’m screaming it, whether I’m singing it, whether I’m whispering it, whatever it may be.
That’s what I feel my purpose is—to push class consciousness and push this idea of unity and togetherness for working people who are just trying to survive and just want to pay their mortgages and feed their kids and so on and so forth. So definitely, I think that it has given Ways Away its own kind of voice separate from STYG. Although, there definitely is, if you were to draw a Venn Diagram, the middle section where we overlap is probably the subject matter, but everything else from the songwriting styles to the sound is, is very different.”
It may be a little pretty, prettier in its melody, it may not be as in your face, but Ways Away is full of anthems. Barnett thinks so.
“There’s definitely the angry song to the Ex-Girlfriend on there. There’s all sorts of different subject matter as well. I’m also a human being. I’m not just this guy who just talks about socialist 24-7. Although, it definitely seems like that that. I just love a big chorus. So any time, any chance I get to write a big, gigantic, anthemic chorus, I’m gonna take any chance. I think with Ways Away there’s not really a song on the record that doesn’t have one of those.”
Now that the songwriting’s done and the album is out, Barnett is ready to share the tracks.
“We dropped the album and we are focusing on “Heaven’s Lathe,” which features our buddy Jeremy [Bolm] from Touché Amoré, that song is ultimately about letting go. ‘Cuz I don’t know a single person in my life who’s not feeling the effects of current society in one way or another. I know that some people feel it harder than others. That song’s basically about my coping with the fact that I can’t help my friends or everyone the way that I want to because I’m also going through the same things that they’re going through.
“It’s kind of like my, ‘Hey, you can, I’m here for you, but to a certain capacity.’ Because I can’t take on everyone else’s (stuff]) because I have my own laundry list of things that I’m trying to deal with. That’s a sad feeling cuz it’s like, you want to be able to help your friends; you wanna be able to help your family at any moment that you can. That’s my song of kind of just being like, ‘Hey, I love you all deeper than any ocean.’ I just—I’m going through my own as well, so try to be patient with me.”
“Only Living Boy In L.A.” is a track for which Barnett took the title and some inspiration from Paul Simon.
“I think it’s a Simon and Garfunkel song, actually, there’s a song called “Only Living Boy in New York.” Right. So that’s kinda where I stole the title from. That that song is also about, it’s an autobiographical song about me kind of living in this city. L.A. is a great place, and I do love it very much. A lot of people move out here cuz they have all sorts of dreams and aspirations. I think that that’s great, but I think that the dreams and aspirations that they are sold are not, they don’t turn out the way that they intend.”
Seventies easy listening classic rock aside, Barnett doesn’t need to talk to Paul Simon to learn about the music business. He has a ton of industry experience; “Only Living Boy In L.A.” locks a lot of that time into the song’s storytelling.
“I’m losing track, but this is maybe, like, my 15th full length LP that I’ve released throughout my entire career. The more I learn about this monster that is the music industry, the less I feel like I know, or the more that I feel like I’m in the dark. And I think that’s ultimately because it’s just a contradiction in and of itself. It doesn’t know how to truly take care of people. It just knows how to take everything it can from people to sell it for profit. That is the basis of any industry. We all like to believe that the music industry is different, in that it’s an industry of the arts.”
“We feel like maybe this monster is a little bit of a different one, but it’s identical. That’s, that’s what that song’s about. And just being like, ‘OK, well I don’t know much.’ All I know how to do is write songs. Once upon a time in the music industry, that’s all that people in bands had to do was just write songs. Now they have to be their own managers, sometimes be their own booking agents, be their own social media people, all this other that artists now need to learn how to do—which takes time away from writing songs. It takes time away from spending time with their families. The modern day artist, which is a term I hate to use, but the modern day artist is one that is—a lot more is expected of them nowadays than used to be.”
“Happy With What I Have,” is a deep breath from all of those thoughts and feelings.
“It is, it is definitely a reminder too, to take inventory of the wins that I do have and not spend my entire life just, just constantly trying to chase this other thing.”
Barnett tells continues, “There’s this, there’s this old worker song from back in the, I dunno, thirties or forties or whatever that was called. “I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister” that’s how I feel. I don’t need a mansion. I don’t need a huge house. I don’t need a fancy car. I don’t need to be eating at the all the fanciest restaurants all the time. We all have to make sure we take a step back and, as corny as it may sound, be thankful for the things that we do have. It’s easy. Like I said, talking about L.A. earlier, it’s easy to get caught up in the, ‘Oh, we need to do this. We need to add that; we need to be here. We need to…’ It’s just like, ‘OK, well, let’s just take a moment to be grateful for, for what we do have,’ our health, our loved ones, and all that kind of stuff too. It’s a breath of relief between the anger.”
He’s grateful too for these bandmates. Barnett thinks working with Loobkoff and Shavelson is gelling.
“Man, those are some of the best people that I know. And they’re both so weird. I love it so much. They kind of come from a different world completely than I come from. It definitely took a lot of—It was a learning curve for all of us. I kind of come in last minute. I’ll come in, for example, when I go in to record the vocals for the record, no one in the band has heard what I’m gonna do and that kind of causes a lot of anxiety for people. Just being like, ‘Well, we have no idea what the song is even gonna sound like, and you’re getting ready to record it on the record.’
“And I’ve always been kind of—I always hold my songs like that close to the chest. Although with Ways Away, I’m opening up a little bit more just because I realize it’s not them coming from a judgmental place that they just want to hear it. They wanna be like, ‘Okay, well I think maybe we should change that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so yeah, there was just like little learning curves like that, that we had to kind of adjust. They had to ease up a little bit and then I had to be willing to show them behind the curtain a little bit more than I would, than I would normally feel comfortable with. But, we do it old school, we get into a practice room, we write these songs together.”
With that experience, knowledge and gut feeling, he’s grateful to have Torch Songs out on his own label, he says.
“I can’t imagine that I would put any of my releases out on another label unless I felt really comfortable. That’s not even necessarily an indictment of other labels. It’s just being—When I have control over it, I feel like it could be treated the way that it needs to be treated. It’s always a double exciting thing cuz not only is it a release of another album, but it’s one of mine and it’s on my label as well. So it’s a cool thing for sure.”
A lot of bands, including Stick To Your Guns, live in different cities, write and share music over software like Garage Band, and never get together to bring their music to life. It works; a lot of records were created in the last few years this way and they’re perfect. They helped artists navigate COVID, quarantine, and compartmentalization. Barnett has a funny, opinion of its necessity.
“At first it was like, ‘How are we gonna do this now?’ It’s become like second nature. It’s very easy to write it like that. And it’s like, it was weird when, we have Ways; Ways Away has weekly band practice. Right?! And now it’s weird for me, I was like, ‘What are we doing?’ It’s like, this is what being in a band is you idiot. I think the songs reflect that though. We’re a pretty tight band. Cause we’re playing, we’re playing together often. So it’s cool.”
You can argue Jesse Barnett is just warming up his burners. He’s ready to cook, and Ways Away are standing ready with the mis en place. No matter his genre, no matter his station in life, his point of view is in-your-face like a fine dining meal is in-your-face. He’s the cook, and he’s the chef; Ways Away are sous ready to define new music like new cuisine. They’re having an in-person album release party in Los Angeles early in November. Barnett is ready to play these songs live.
“I’m very excited for that. I think the main goal for Ways Away is to showcase that it has its own legs. It’s not just a side project of Samiam, Stick to Your Guns, and the Bronx, all this other stuff that we have going on the side. It’s trying to show people, like, ‘No, no, we’re, we’re trying to actually do this.’ Like, this isn’t just for fun when we get together. This is something that we’re actually laboring over, and this is something that we actually care about. We really want to see through. And although it can sometimes seem like it’s going slow, it’s like, Stick To Your Guns was the slowest build of all time. We’re, coming up on 20 years of Stick To Your Guns now, and you just gotta stick with it. You gotta love what you’re doing.”
Photo courtesy of Ron Yamasaki
