COLLiDE Travel with Purpose | Page 57

“A lot of my lyrics, if they take place during any specific time, it’s usually those weird hours before sunset, before sunrise, you know, the really early, kind of just before dark moments. I think that’s always been a trait of my music.” “The nature of being in a band that’s on tour, and flying all over the place all the time, you have this weird connection to a new place that you’ve moved to, where you’re never there long enough to get acclimated,” he explains. “And every time you come back it feels like you’re in a new city. Your relationships don’t necessarily get far enough, don’t get deep enough to make you feel like you’ve actually been someplace for a long time. So everything has this constant newness to it. I write about that on the album a lot; the duality of knowing a lot of people but never getting far enough in a relationship to actually know them well.” Two years since moving to Los Angeles, Lewis has tried to find himself here, or more accurately, get lost here. “There’re so many places to get lost in the city,” he says. “When I first moved to LA I bought this vintage motorcycle and this vintage car that I always wanted, and so a lot of my time was spent taking really beautiful drives at night. Some of my favorite [times] were sneaking into the Griffith Observatory on my motorcycle because you can just jump this little median and ride up the sidewalk and get in there, and there’s usually never people up there. [“I’m Ready”] has a lot to do with actually driving to these peaks in LA and looking over the city, and trying to take it in from that perspective.” While his time spent perched on top of the world provided lyrical fodder, Lewis sought somewhere quieter to actually make the album, and would drive to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and hole up in a small chapel on the cemetery grounds. “I just started working on the album night by night. That really is hands-down the most undisturbed place in Los Angeles. ” If that sounds like something that would freak a person out, even a dedicated artist with all their eccentricities, it did. “It actually got the best of me in a way. You know, I’m not an incredibly superstitious person, but when you’re in a place long enough, you understand the weight of it. It’s an active cemetery, so I would see funeral services in the morning, and that was starting to trip me out a little bit.” CULTURE COLLIDE . 55