Duncan Jewett, who grew up in Durango (his father is Fort Lewis College professor Andrew Gulliford) and now lives in Santa Fe, recently released his debut full-length album “Blood Red.”
Q: How did you end up in Santa Fe?
A: My then-girlfriend-now-wife was going to school here, so I moved here to be with her. That was fall of 2011.
Q: Were you always going to be a musician?
A: I always played music; it took longer for me to start writing words, but now, that’s sort of what I primarily focus on, maybe even more so than the music because so many other people also make just sort of like instrumental music stuff that it’s easy to collaborate with and not have to worry about as much of the music part of it, rather than the lyricism and the singing.
Q: This is your debut full-length album?
A: Yeah. And this is sort of a collection of songs from a real sort of long period of time.
Q: What’s your favorite track on it?
A: I don’t know ... it’s all kind of different. What about you?
Q: Well, I like “ESC” and I like “Sinner International” too.
A: The record’s good, I mean there are really only one or two songs I didn’t love to keep on it, but that doesn’t matter.
Q: Has there been – it’s only been out what? Four days? Has it blown up?
A: No. (Laughs.) Which is totally fine – I’m just glad that it’s out there. Strange Famous, the label that did the digital release of it, is like an indie rap label, and so it was sort of an awkward ... so no, it hasn’t gotten huge or anything like that, but I’ve gotten good positive feedback from other people I respect, which was great.
Q: How would you describe “Blood Red”?
A: It’s a little moody. I wish it would play in really dark bars ... it’s like bloody, indie pop.
Q: How did you end up with Strange Famous Records? They set up a new department just for you for this album, right?
A: Kind of. This record sparked that idea for them to start their SFDIGI imprint, which is just a digital distribution of artists that they like and want to help do their thing, but there was no sort of physical place to also do that, so they wanted to create sort of a digital space for some of the things they really liked to be released on. I emailed Sage Francis (head of Strange Famous) four or five years ago, just with some bare-bones skeleton tracks of four(ish) songs that became a grounding for the record. And then he actually introduced me to the person who produced most of the drum tracks and then a little bit of the instrumentation for multiple songs, James Hancock. So he actually introduced me to the person who was going to help sort of flesh out the songs more than they were.
Q: Who are some of your influences?
A: All sorts of stuff. I grew up listening to a lot of indie rap, like Sage Francis or Sole and Buck 65, Doseone … I listen to all sorts of stuff.
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