PropertyOfZack recently caught up with Casey Crescenzo of The Dear Hunter for an incredible interview. Casey discussed in heavy detail the process behind finally creating The Color Spectrum, how much of a role Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra had in helping the project finally come to fruition, what’s next for The Dear Hunter musically following The Color Spectrum, touring, and so much more. Make sure you take the time to read the full interview, because it’s something you don’t want to miss out on!

The Color Spectrum project began somewhere around 11 months ago and we’re one day from its release. At times did it seem like the concept would never be able to be finished?
It started a lot longer than eleven months ago when I tried a few times to get it off the ground while simultaneously dealing with the normal politics of being in a band, but this sort of project really demands a lot of hard work. I just was never able to actually get things going, and most of it was because it was a project that required a lot of dedication, time, energy, and a lot of your life to do something that is this ambitious. That’s not me commenting on the quality and saying that I necessarily did a great or a bad job, but that amount of work just requires a lot of work. After trying to get it done so many times, the only thing that kept me thinking it wasn’t going to get done, was that I was relying on the people around me to sort of be a part of it and help me out and help see this big undertaking actually happen and only at the point when it was up to me personally did it seem to me that it was something that I would do. About eleven months ago is when that happened and when it became obvious that it was going to get done. It was going to require me going away for a better part of the year and working as hard as I could on something that I really loved to do. As soon as that happened, I knew it was going to happen. I didn’t have any other thought in my head other than that I wasn’t going to stop until I accomplished this.

The Dear Hunter is obviously not new to concept releases, and you’ve said that The Color Spectrum was a long-delayed idea, but what originally inspired you to do this project?
Originally, it was while I was working on the first full-length of the other concept that is running in the band. I realized the timeline that would be required to finish that concept and that was about eight years away at that point, and I just got to thinking about what I might do once I finish that concept. As time went on it was more about what was another outlet for music, not that I’ve dug myself into a hole, but that I have set out to do this one set of six records and just wanting to have some idea in the back of my head about what I’d do when it was over. It developed into a project that became a break in between working on Act III and Act IV.

What does The Color Spectrum mean for you as a whole?
The idea of the whole project was not necessarily to declare to every listener that this is the way that they should hear these colors. It’s not me putting my foot down on me saying what I think everyone should feel. At the end of the day, it is just music, but it was more about naming the inspirations for the music and for me taking these things that were absolutely visual and representing them in the way that I am inspired by them sonically. When I sit back down I look at an entire collection of music and I see it as a very wide representation of my inspiration from something that is not audible. If that could sound any less emotional, but it is definitely from the heart. I wanted to be inspired by something that is very basic, and let that inspiration kind of grow and run wild in my own head. I think that’s what it represents at the end of the day.

Was your work for The Color Spectrum a necessary break from Acts, or did it happen naturally?
I think it was both. It came about naturally and the amount of times the situation presented itself was very natural as well. At the point that I realized it was what felt right to do next it seemed even more obvious that I needed it and if that I was going to go write myself to write Act IV or jump right into the standard release system for labels with an eighteen month record cycle that I felt like I was going to write something that was going to be very forced and something that would be very dishonest and that I would just be doing it to do it, because at the moment I didn’t really feel like doing it and it didn’t strike me as what I should be doing. It was kind of like everything aligned; we had just finished touring for Act III, and by default we were getting less tour offers and it made less sense for us to tour around the country for the tenth time on the same record. I was thinking if I should do Act IV, and I was sitting with my cousin in my studio late at night and it was like, “Remember that idea that I had about doing a bunch of records about colors? Maybe I should do that right now.” It was very easy going. That’s what I did.

When did the writing process for the EPs actually begin?
The last false start was about eleven months ago when I was trying to get people behind it around me. I was trying to get it started that way with musicians behind me that I knew. As soon as it became obvious that it was another false start, but that I still felt compelled and inspired to complete it, the actual songwriting didn’t really start until September.

Each of the EPs are supposed to represent what the nine colors represent to you. Was it an exhausting process separating and planning out what should be written for each EP?
Really just a knee-jerk response. It’s not necessarily like sitting down and thinking, “If I make this EP like this, then I can’t make this EP like this.” I think that some of the EPs have similarities to each other, but I think no more so than Red and Black might inspire my on fairly similar planes. It was just a knee-jerk response and sitting and playing music and thinking what each color represented to me and trying to take that idea and emotion and represent it stylistically and melodically.

Like we mentioned, The Dear Hunter has really only released material that fits into some sort of concept, but creating 36 songs for one project is a big task. Was Triple Crown Records behind the decision immediately, or did it take some convincing?
We weren’t on a label when we started. Ironically, that was one of the reasons that I felt ready to do the project, because we were not on a label. I thought that it would be something we could self-release, but as time went on, I spent and invested quite a sum of my own money that I had raised from producing and selling as much equipment as I possibly could, and I started the project that way. Halfway through I was working on White and Violet and I went into a meeting with Triple Crown and a manager and they were really interested. They really wanted to make it to make it the way I wanted to make it. The whole idea from the beginning was this box of music and these nine individual records. They wanted to do it and didn’t want to bastardize the project and just take it and release it on CD. They knew it’d be a big undertaking and after working with me in the past, I definitely can say that they were interested. They didn’t come into the fold until halfway through the project. At that point I think that having that additional support and encouragement from the people that were going to release it was encouraging and reassuring and gave me that second-wind four or five months into the project.

How was the initial fan response to the idea?
It’s definitely divided. There are a lot of people who love the music and love the idea of having another release. Then there are people that are excited that it’s concept based work. Then there are people who just think that it’s overboard and it’s pretentious and it’s egomaniacal or whatever. They don’t see it as going against the grain, they see it as an archaic approach to music when people should be making singles and appealing to that system of the music business. They think there is no way that there could be quality across the board. It’s varied. Some people are excited, and some people are skeptical. Some people want me getting back to the Acts.
POZ: Did you see any negative reaction about the next release not being Act IV?
Casey: I haven’t yet. Now that the music has been released and we gave a lot of material, the response has been so positive. I haven’t really heard people just wanting me to get back to what I was doing, which is really awesome. I took a chance after building a fan base that really aligned themselves with the concept of the work before. This is so concept driven, but it has nothing to do conceptually or emotionally with what those records are about. I’m definitely really happy with the response.

We know that at least one of the EPs was recorded in Atlanta, but where were the rest recorded and why did you choose to do them in different locations?
The Red EP was done in Atlanta. I played a show in Rhode Island with Manchester Orchestra and Coheed and the night before we were in Brooklyn. Manchester saw me perform for the first time and we hit it off. When we played in Rhode Island they showed me some of their next release, which is Simple Math, which is an amazing record. It’s amazing. They showed me it and it was before mixing and a lot of other stuff, and I knew it was going to be special. I was explaining to them the concept of the next thing that I was going to do. They were excited about it, and we kept in touch. At the point that the false start came to a head, which was shortly after I met those guys, I called Andy and I talked to him about it and he gave me really good advice to do it and not to worry about the politics. A few days later he called me and asked what I’d think about doing one of my EPs in Atlanta at his studio. It was presented as a get out of my head thing, and at that point I had never thought about leaving home to do these records because I have a very comfortable and very nice studio here where I live. Something about what he said about getting out of my headspace and travelling and even just going down to Atlanta got me so excited and was the point that I started raising money to make it happen. I didn’t want to do a Kickstarter or ask fans for money, I just did it all on my own. For me, I didn’t want to do that. The more I thought about it, I got in touch with other friends who have studios and Mike Watts who had produced the As Tall As Lions record, I’m a huge fan of him. In working with him in the past he’s been such an incredibly talented person, that the idea of being able to work with him popped up and we worked something out so I could do two EPs in Long Island. I spoke with Mike Foreman, who I also love, and went out to do two EPs in Rhode Island with him. That accounted for five EPs. I recorded some stuff on my way out with my fiancé and one dog. I recorded stuff in hotels and played some acoustic shows for friends. It was all because of that phone call with Andy where he just said, “Come to Atlanta.” In my head it changed everything. I decided not to limit myself in a project that was supposed to be about a range of emotions and frustrations. Why would I think that’d be accomplished in one studio all by myself? That sort of idea really spawned the whole trip around the country.
POZ: Do you think that switching up studios make for a better final creation?
Casey: Oh yeah. I think that if I had done it all on my own at my studio that the result and music would have been varied. Emotionally I think it would have been farily linear, and I don’t know if I would feel accomplished or proud of the end result like I do now.
 
Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra and Tanner from O’Brother sang on the Red EP. Are there any other guest appearances on the release?
Mike Foreman and Mike Watts both respectively played and sang on some of the material that was done at their studios. Jesse from Falling Up played and sang on some of the Green EP. A band from Southern California acted as my band for the Yellow and Blue EPs playing bass and drums and background vocals and some auxiliary instruments. That’s about it. My cousin Max helped out a lot and obviously my brother played drums on almost everything. Anyone who was around. If friends were in studio, I tried to get them on to lend their emotional spin on it. Brendon from The Receiving End Of Sirens also played bass on the Orange EP.

There are 36 tracks made for the nine EPs, but only eleven are being released on the standard version of the album. How did you go about picking individual songs off of the concept EPs to pull together?
I personally couldn’t. I left that up to my manager and the label because it was never conceived that way. I had actually written about 50 songs and changed it to 36. I liked the idea of releasing a shortened version for a casual listener. I couldn’t really have an opinion, so I left it to my manager and the label.

Do you feel like mixing them together at all lessens the idea?
I think that it does and it doesn’t. The concept is my personal representation of my inspiration, and that concept was to have the box and the vinyl and the certain amount of songs on the record is about 60% creative and 40% the way of packaging it up. While an eleven-song record is a shortened version of it, it still represents to a certain degree the inspiration. It’s obviously not the 36-song box, but it’s also a cross section that I think is a good doorway into it. While I didn’t pick all of the tracks, I think they did a pretty good job of picking them.

How have fans reacted to the tracks that have been released so far?
Surprisingly good because there is some varied music in there.

Before gearing up for the release, The Dear Hunter went on a tour in direct support of Dredg alongside Balance & Composure. How were those dates?
Amazing. I haven’t toured in almost a year, and I can say that the first week or so was getting back on track and remembering what it meant to be on tour and remembering how you have to become someone else in the way that the simple luxuries at home like your own bed kind of go out the window. I spent so much time in the studio that switching out of that persona was tough. Beyond that, going around the country after doing something for so long and still seeing people come out and talking to me about the upcoming release, it was amazing. In my head when I go away for that long, I think that no one’s going to care because there are so many bands. If there’s a gap in time they could go find another band. Having people excited was really amazing.

The next tour the band will be heading out on is a headliner alongside The Felix Culpa and O’Brother, among others. How excited are you to headline for the first time?
I’ve been doing The Dear Hunter for about five or six years and I’ve never done a headliner around the country. So to finally be able to do it, whether or not it’s going to be a great tour or have a lot of people there, I’m just excited to play longer than 30-minutes a night.

A bunch of the supporting bands are rotating in and out of lineup. Was there a reason to that?
I thought, even though I love Kay Kay and Wild Orchid Children, that it’d make no sense for them to come out on this tour because it’s basically the same band. It’s the same people. They explained that they could do half the tour as Kay Kay and the other half as Wild Orchid because some people would need to go home. That sounded good to me and it’ll be cool to have the same band stay on with different music suddenly. Recently we found out that they are going to do Kay Kay for the whole tour. So it’s basically going to be us, Kay Kay, and O’Brother. Naïve Thieves and The Felix Culpa are bands that don’t have the ability to tour for an extended time and we wanted it to be a three-band bill in a lot of markets. So we brought those bands out for just their specific regions that they can make work for touring. Beyond that, there’s not a ton of changing out.

Will many of the Color tracks be worked into the set on the tour?
I think more than half of the music is Color specific.

Are there plans to announce any touring overseas for the fall, or possibly other US tours?
There’s definitely some US tours that are potential right now. I would really love to go overseas or anywhere in the world, but we can’t seem to get anyone to release our music, and because of that we can’t afford to get anywhere else. Every now and then we hear rumors of someone releasing this record, but that’s on the backburner. I hope people will be receptive to this on other parts of the world. When you spend so much time obsessing about success in America, you can forget about it’s just such a small part of the world and that there are so many people that could enjoy what you’re doing. So to limit yourself to one place seems narrow-minded. I’m hoping it happens.

Obviously you’ll want to support The Color Spectrum for a long time considering how much effort was put into it, but is a split with The Felix Culpa still in the works?
That’ll happen. I was just talking to them a week ago about it. I don’t know about how long I’ll support this for because at the end of the day it seems like a big project. I don’t know if it seems like a release that could take the band to the next level. I don’t want to put a pessimistic spin on it, but at the point where there’s any time at all I’ll either do that split or something else musically. Being creative is my favorite part of life.

And fans have always continued to wonder: Has the rough plan for the completion of all six acts been further made into concrete, or is everything still up in the air?
I think everything is up in the air. The story isn’t up in the air, but the completion of the music is up in the air. I think it’s because it’s hard for me to tell where my heart is at before it’s there. That’s the problem I ran into a long time ago four years ago when I announced that I wanted to do this Color Spectrum thing because then it was questioned every time I did an interview. People said I’d never do it, and I seem to put my foot in my mouth more often then not. I’m going to finish it, but there’s no plan in place. I don’t know if it’s going to be the next thing that I do. I won’t know what’s coming next until I have time to be creative again.

Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add or that we should be on the lookout for?
I hope that anyone who does take the time to listen to The Color Spectrum enjoys it.

*This interview was conducted by Emily Coch