Jack Van Cleaf Talks Perfectionism, Climate Change, Zach Bryan and More

Oh, to be young again. Isn’t that what they say? I just turned twenty four, an age I’ve been told is a time of endless possibility. A time those beyond it would give anything to get back. But maybe we have a tendency to romanticize young adulthood, blinded by its splendor which shines brighter in hindsight than the uncertainty and anxiety which underpin youth’s free spirit. Jack Van Cleaf, budding Nashville based Americana songwriter, knows this duality well, and shaped his sophomore album around his existential coming of age experience.

JVC, the sudo-eponymous record, is refreshingly of its time, exploring battles with self-motivation, vaping, relationships and the looming threat of climate change. Its sonic lucidity and starkness are a significant departure from the sound of Van Cleaf’s first album, Fruit from the Trees, which delivered its songs via more fuzzy, lofi production. This aesthetic change reflects a newfound clarity; JVC sounds like the first steps in finding your footing, a glimpse into the eye of storm while you’re still susceptible to the wind. I recently spoke with Van Cleaf to unpack his journey of songwriting and self-discovery, and was delighted to dive more deeply into the world of JVC. Read our full conversation below and don’t hesitate to check out the record.

Photo by Sam Lindsey; Edited by Jooeun Choi

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Part 1: Welcome

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David Feigelson: I wanted to start by saying I'm a big fan of your music. I got into it when I heard the new version of “Rattlesnake” with Zach Bryan, and have found so much in your back catalog, even though it only spans a few years. I’m excited to dive in.

Jack Van Cleaf: Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

DF: How’s life been on the road? I believe your tour started last week?

JVC: Yeah! It’s funny, I memorize my trajectory for tours pretty quickly, but I lose track of the days of the week almost instantly. This one’s easy though, we started on Mother's Day in Chicago. We've played four shows since leaving Nashville, and it's our first day off as we're driving to Denver. But it’s been great so far.

DF: How does it feel having the album out in the world? How has the reception been?

JVC: It's felt great. I'm always surprised when I put out new music. I never know how it’s gonna go, and every bit of positive reception that comes blows me away. In St. Louis, we had some really enthusiastic crowd members—people even knew the words to the vinyl exclusive tracks on the record. I guess they had ordered the vinyl and studied up before the show, because they barely had any time.

DF: That must feel so cool. You were rolling out singles for a while, so I imagine fans also had some time to acclimate to those.

JVC: Yeah, I've especially seen people resonating with “Using You” more in a live setting; I think having time to sit with it really helped. The reception in general has just been really sweet and open-armed.

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Part 2: On Recording

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DF: That’s awesome. My understanding is that you made your first record mostly in one place, but for this one you got to choose a few different places to record in. I'm curious how you picked the spots that you did, and what existing in them was like.

JVC: Yeah, that’s basically right. I made the first record just after graduating, and it was in Nashville for the most part, although we did get to do a bit in Colorado. That was a treat. But mostly Nashville, and it was different because it was kind of like a work day. You wake up at your house, leave to do the job, go home when you’re done, and soon you're gonna wake up, go back and do it again. For this record, it was cool to immerse ourselves, get away from our lives and exist in an entirely different environment.

I specifically looked to the desert for this album. The imagery that I kept feeling when I was playing the songs was barren, and writing the songs was almost like looking into an emotional desert. The songs felt like they had a lifelessness in them, but also a search for signs of life, which called to that desert space that just kept coming up for me. Like looking out at something empty and sprawling, but catching occasional flashes of green. I wanted to find that visual representation to surround us while we were making it.

We went to two studios for the bulk of it. The first one was called Goat Mountain, in Landers, California. It was awesome—off the grid, run on solar power, and the tracking room had this huge window that looked out at the desert with all the Joshua trees. It was a great experience and I left it really happy with the work, but at the same time, it didn’t end up being exactly the desert I was picturing. It was almost like the Joshua trees interrupted the desolation and expansiveness I wanted to see. But a number of people recommended Sonic Ranch when I was asking around, and I had the opportunity to stop by to check it out on a road trip. Right as I drove into the West Texas desert, I looked around and knew it was what I had been picturing. It just goes on and on without much vegetation for miles. We had an incredible experience there, they’re very hospitable and took great care of us. It was the perfect place.

DF: That's super cool. I didn't grow up anywhere near a desert, and wasn’t aware until recently how varied they can be. I now actually live next to Joshua Tree, but it changes so much, and if you go somewhere like Sedona it gets way more green than here. Had you spent much time in deserts previously, or was that choice more of an instinct?

JVC: Not really extended time. I grew up in the San Diego area, and I was lucky to be pretty coastal. But it was always very close, and since you mentioned Arizona, I also love Tucson. If I found a studio that would’ve worked there, I would have gone. I love those Saguaro cacti.

DF: Yeah they’re sweet. When you finally landed and started working, did you have any revelations or ideas that came from being in those spaces?

JVC: That's a good question, but I can't point to anything specific. I can get psyched out when I get into the studio, feeling perfectionistic and freaked out, like a deer in headlights. Maybe looking out at the scenery gave me a calm, every now and then, a reminder to breathe and trust that everything was going to work out. Ultimately, I'm just really glad that I got to make that dream of recording out there come true.

DF: For sure. Sometimes it can be hard to put your finger on exactly what work the place is doing. How would you say your perfectionism manifests when you're recording?

JVC: Yeah. Great question. There's this voice that springs up, and I can feel it approaching as we get closer to the studio. It says stuff like, “You didn't do enough to prepare for this, it doesn't matter what you do now, you're going to fuck it up.” So I’ll try to fight that by doing as much as I can in the studio. Especially vocal takes, I’ll beat those into the dirt trying to get the right one. Even though there's no such thing. But the idea of being able to infinitely do something, like you can in the studio, and still never “get it,” is what really terrifies me. It's the opposite of what engages in my brain when I get on stage, where it’s like, I only can do it once, so the most important thing is to enjoy it. 

DF: Yeah, that makes sense. You reminded me of something I read which you said about recording “Rattlesnake” with Zach Brian, that there's a way in which he’s committed to things like expression, rawness, and honesty in the studio, rather than getting all of those takes. What was it like to work with someone with such a different approach?

JVC: It was awesome. You're exactly right. He came in just after we had set up to start recording, and I was already starting to feel myself spiral. And when I'm spiraling, it's not like I'm throwing things in the studio, I'm just quietly going down a rabbit hole. I could feel that setting in, but then Zach came in and immediately shifted the approach and decided we were going to record it live. It was super inspirational, and it really helped to see an example of someone who's done this so much and so well, to see firsthand that it might not be serving me to be weighing myself down with these expectations and fears. Because, ultimately, the spirit of fun and liveliness Zach brought to it is what makes that version as good as it is.

DF: Yeah definitely. It's hard though, because it's one thing to have that revelation consciously and “know” those anxieties aren’t helping you, but it’s another beast to make new habits and develop a different approach.

JVC: So true. It's so much easier said than done.

DF: I guess that's why you gotta practice.

JVC: Yep, totally. I mean, I would love to literally practice recording, as I did performing, in lower stakes environments. Like not just going to the studio when I have to record an album I know will be released, but it would probably help to just record things with my friends more often. To get more comfortable with it, so that when the moment arises when we're recording an album, I can feel like I’ve done it before and it isn’t a big deal.

DF: Yeah, I bet. Had you recorded much before that first record?

JVC: As far as released stuff, I made an EP in high school, and did that in a lot of friends' bedrooms and such. But the time gap between that and the album was so long, so I was still pretty inexperienced.

DF: That's fair. As you’ve moved further along in your recording career, it seems like you've been pulling more voices and musicians to work with, especially on the new album. What does your collaborative process look like?

JVC: Yeah, it's definitely become more and more collaborative. With the first album, all of the songs were mostly set in stone compositionally. So I wasn’t taking input on things like lyrics, but the production was mostly up to everyone's best judgment, and we worked through it together. On this record, there were quite a few moments where I had been sitting with a song for too long and called in some help to work through difficult sections. Sometimes I ended up reverting back to how I had the song originally, but other times close friends would help me figure out a bridge or update something that wasn’t working. There's definitely more co-writing on this album than there was before. As far as the playing and production go, I'm always leaning on my friends—I trust their ears and I love the parts they come up with.

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Part 3: On Songwriting

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DF: When you're co-writing, is it stressful to bring in other voices if you have some perfectionism about that as well? Or if you can always go back to the original version, maybe it’s just fun to try different ideas?

JVC: Both of those are true. It is stressful. I'm always worried, maybe that we're not going to agree and it's going to put strain on our relationship, or that it's not going to turn out how I want it to. That’s probably the biggest fear. But it’s also liberating to bring something that has been weighing me down and give it up a bit. You know, see what someone else thinks, throw something at the wall and see what sticks.

DF: Do you feel like your relationships with the people you've played with for a while have changed as a function of doing this work together?

JVC: I think they've been strengthened. I'm on the road with quite a few of them right now, and it's definitely an intimate part of my life I've let all of them in on. I lean on them in a musical sense, but maybe even more as friends. And this album was made with my friends—recording, sometimes writing, and certainly performing all the songs. But it was also made through my friends, because the songs are grappling with a pretty depressive part of my life, when I was basically floating in a void, and my friends were my anchors during that time. Even the songs that weren’t co-written wouldn't have come without their emotional assistance.

DF: Yeah definitely, and there's a lot of lyrical content about them as well. When you're writing and approaching different narratives, how often do those come from your lived experience, versus stories that you hear, or things you imagine and embellish?

JVC: Great question. There's a lot of embellishment, for sure. In all of the songs on this record, there's a bit of me and a bit of things outside of me. It’s usually the best way I can paint a picture of what was going on inside. I’m thinking about “Hikikomori,” a word I found in this thing called The Box of Emotions my mom had at her house, which is just a set of colored cards with obscure emotional states on them. I read that word, related to it, and wrote the song about it. I was pulling from an experience I'd had in a relationship where I felt like I was dragging the other person down, so that part was real to me. But there are details that aren’t. There’s a line that says you can't live on cigarettes and Benadryl, and I did have a cigarette addiction, but I wasn’t abusing Benadryl.

DF: That makes sense. Do you learn about yourself while writing, or make discoveries about things that you've gone through or are going through as you're translating them?

JVC: Absolutely. I think that's a huge reason why I write, to get a better understanding of myself. I try to be self aware, as much as I can, but I wouldn't say that I have a very comprehensive understanding of myself. It’s a constant, growing process, and writing is a huge help in getting closer to that.

DF: Are there any moments that you look back on when a certain lyric clicked in a certain way, or some part of the process brought about a significant revelation or relief?

JVC: Yeah, I can think of a few. “Piñata” came out quickly when I wrote it, mostly in one sitting. When I wrote the line in the chorus, “I'm full of shit,” I just thought it'd be funny to say that in a song. But then I was surprised at how much I related to it. I hadn't put it that bluntly before. There’s also a moment on “Couch Potato,” a positive lift toward the end where I’m telling myself something that I wanted to hear [“You deserve a break… you’re too hard on yourself”]. It took a while to shape the outro exactly how I imagined it, and my perfectionist side got into my head, but I'm happy with it now.”

DF: That part is really nice. I like the choral, floaty atmosphere that comes in, it does a nice job at bringing home that feeling of comfort. That part was actually impactful for me, probably because I resonated so much with the message of the song.

JVC: Thank you so much. That means a ton. We definitely all can be way too hard on ourselves. Even if we’re sometimes lazy, beating ourselves up about it certainly doesn't help.

DF: Do you ever find it hard to be vulnerable, when writing and baring your soul, or having to perform and communicate with a crowd? Or is it mostly cathartic?

JVC: I probably relate more to it being cathartic. Maybe the hard part is writing it, doing the work of sitting down and facing some things you might not want to. Reaching those places can be isolating, but the feeling of finding something within yourself that you know is worth saying is priceless. It's great if you can perform it for other people too, but writing and clarifying something you know is true is one of the best feelings in the world, on its own. When that happens, I have a pretty good idea that other people will feel similarly about it. There's always the risk that they won't, but I'm not usually worried about that.

I do worry, though, about losing perspective on a song that I've written. With a lot of songs on this record, I beat them to shit for a long time and couldn’t figure out if they were done, and in the process, I sometimes grew away from how I felt when I first wrote them. Playing those songs, where I think the truth is still there, but I can't see it anymore, can definitely be scary. It’s like I’m almost waiting to see if people see what I saw and can help me revive it. It’s scary, because the chance that they don't would be heartbreaking, like losing something you really cared about.

DF: Almost like other people can keep these things that you've experienced and shared alive as it moves through them.

JVC: Totally. I think with all the songs on my first album, the performance process was the final stage of the writing process. I would try them out at shows, play them once or twice and then bring them home to fix what wasn’t working. But this go round, all of my performance opportunities were spent promoting the last record, so I didn't spend a lot of time playing the new songs live. I felt like I missed out on that, so it's great to get to do it now.

DF: Maybe for the first record, a lot of the songs reached a natural endpoint, like once they existed and felt right, they were set. But if you didn’t get the opportunity to test them like that this time, I imagine it could’ve been harder to know when to let songs go.

JVC: Yeah, I had to lean on my friends who had heard the songs. I would play them versions in the studio and really have to trust their feedback.

DF: Listening back and playing them out now, are there songs that you wish you could change?

JVC: I think for the songs I was doubtful about, I sat with them for so long that it might take me a little longer to get perspective. I need some distance to know if they’re fixed or if there are other versions out there. Regardless, I've been playing quite a few of those songs that were tough for me to finish on the road, and it’s felt good so far.

DF: That makes sense. I feel like a lot of what you talk about on this record revolves around becoming, stepping into a person that you didn't necessarily expect and trying to steer the ship. Is that accurate?

JVC: That makes me think of “Smoker” first, which is about reflecting on what I expected of myself and probing some of my earliest memories. You know, looking at as a kid how you think you're going to be as an adult, and how different it turns out in so many ways, trivial and not. The rest of the record was written out of graduating from college, and I was thinking the entire time leading up to that moment that it would be the turning point where I got to take control over my life. Nobody would tell me what to do and I could write all day and be so productive just making music. Then the minute I got the reins, I woke up and had no motivation to do anything. I was so confused and scared.

DF: That's so fucking relatable.

JVC: Laughing I’m glad. Well, I mean, not glad for your sake, but glad I'm not alone. It's a tough realization for sure. I'm still working out of that. But the last song on the record, “Life,” is the best beacon of hope I could find. One day, you’re going to figure it out, even if you thought you were going to have it figured out six years ago. One day you will. And I do believe that, it's just a quiet journey up until that point.

DF: Definitely, and having “Life” come after “Couch Potato” gives a soft landing at the end of what can be an emotionally difficult record. Like a reminder to give yourself grace. 

JVC: Yeah totally.

DF: There's also a freakout moment on “Life” about the state of the environment. And obviously “Green” goes more deeply into that fear. How do those things affect you, one as a musician and songwriter, but also just as a person? Especially as you’re coming into adulthood, excited to make music, start your career and become a person, but facing a world that feels increasingly like it's always on fire.

JVC: That's a great way to put it. Yeah, you're a young person, and you want to just think about how exciting life could be, while seeing an opposite trajectory for the planet.

DF: Does writing about it help you to cope?

JVC: Definitely. On the road so far, playing “Life” and saying that line, “We put the planet in a plastic chokehold. It’s over, we know it,” has been really cathartic. Something about saying “it’s over” feels liberating. Even though I’m still holding out hope. It’s a weird experience to grow up not thinking too much about these things, and then to realize all this stuff. Like, we make a lot of trash. I'm consuming without giving much back to the planet. They're chopping down rainforests and burning all the wood into the sky. With that, we're simultaneously removing the filtration systems for carbon while putting a bunch more into the atmosphere. It gets overwhelming, kind of like the feeling of walking through Walmart. Like, “Holy shit, what are we doing?” It is cathartic to put it in song, and have a place to put that mental chaos. I think everybody is feeling that buzz in their subconscious and it’s good to let it out for a bit. But sometimes you do something like what we’re doing now, driving through endless plains, looking at a lot of green. It makes you feel like everything might be okay. It’s kind of a back and forth. And it’s something I’ve wanted to get out musically for a while; some of the vinyl exclusive tracks talk about it as well.

DF: That makes a lot of sense. I tend to think that when you zoom in, it's easier to feel more at peace with the chaos. If I’m in a beautiful space, or just talking to a kind person, everything feels calmer. But if I'm on the internet, looking at the world and what gets shown in the ways people treat each other, it's so easy to freak the fuck out.

JVC: Totally. I've also wondered before about people who live out in the country who end up voting against environmentally proactive measures. But when you get out to the country, you kind of understand why. Everything looks fine there.

DF: Yeah that’s a great point, it might not feel as dire. Changing gears slightly, were there any big influences on JVC? Artists that you look up to, learn from, or take inspiration from that helped shape the record? 

JVC: Yeah, one that jumps to mind is The National. I'm a relatively recent fan, meaning I've been listening to them for five or six years. Their record Sleep Well Beast really stuck with me.

DF: Yes!! That one’s my favorite.

JVC: Awesome. I love it too. “I'll Still Destroy You” is one of my favorite songs.

DF: Ugh same, the mallets are amazing. So how does that play into your creative process? It's a bit different stylistically.

JVC: Absolutely. I’d like to lean even more into their influence in future writing. But I love Matt Berninger’s lyrics, how abstract they are, while still hitting home, even if you don't know what he's talking about. There are a lot of good singer-songwriters that give you images to chew on, but I just love the way he does it and depicts things in a way that’s so raw. Specifically on “Smoker” I was trying to write lyrics that felt like that. I wanted to capture childhood in the verses, which feels to me like a distorted array of images to cling to, and I thought that the abstract approach Matt Berninger takes in lyric writing would be appropriate. I had a lot of fun writing that way. There are a couple other songs, like one vinyl exclusive track called “Remember Katrina,” that I was influenced by him on. Their production can also be pretty minimal at times, which I love. That and a few other alt-country or Americana bands I was listening to, influenced wanting to keep the elements in the production identifiable, not having too many clouds of vague sound. I didn't want to do that this time.

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Part 4: On Production

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DF: It's interesting you bring that up, because it’s something I noticed and a great way of describing the shift from the first album to the second. That first record sort of exists in a lofi haze, whereas this one is much punchier and crisper. How did you manifest that shift? It was executed so cleanly.

JVC: Thank you so much. I produced the record with Alberto Sewald, and I told him from the get go that I wanted it to be minimal while still keeping the energy high. But really emphasizing using as few elements as possible. We still ended up with a lot of layers on some songs, but we spent hours going through the sessions taking a magnifying glass to everything and deciding if it was necessary. Muting things and ruthlessly chopping shit out. I'm so glad we did. It felt like cleaning out a closet, trying to not hold on to stuff just because it was there, but really refining things to get to exactly what I wanted to say. I guess ultimately that’s the writing process too.

DF: That's interesting, because as a musician, my perfectionism comes out the most when I'm making those decisions about what to cut and how to clean the closet. Is that part more fluid for you?

JVC: No, it was definitely new for me. I think it was only doable because I’d always envisioned the album as more minimal, so I had a lot of time to sit with everything and get really comfortable with how it sounded and where I wanted it to be. So when it came time to chop things out, I had more resolve. But it doesn't come naturally—I was just trying to clean out my literal closet the other day, and it's really hard to let things go.

DF: Yeah, that's definitely true. It's cool when you make those, in the grand scheme of things, minor decisions in the production. Like the little melodies and different textures and instruments that get emphasized by making space. The two versions of “Rattlesnake” are a great example, because it's the same song, but the different small moments you highlight make it feel like an entirely different experience, a new world.

JVC: I'm glad to hear that. It was so fun to have an opportunity to reinterpret something in that way. You don't always get to do that. It helps my perfectionist brain too, because it proves to me that not everything is permanent.

DF: Exactly! Big Thief is a band that inspires me a lot in that way, because of how often they’ll re-record music. Adrianne Lenker will put a song on her solo record, then they’ll do it again as a band, and then put out another live take. The songs can just be so fluid, like you can update the production or make a different writing decision the next year. It's very freeing.

JVC: Absolutely. That's beautiful, I need to check it out. I listen to them but I haven't done a deep enough dive to see the different versions of the same songs.

DF: You should dig into their song “Vampire Empire.” It got big on TikTok a few years ago when Big Thief uploaded a live demo, then they released a studio version with minor lyric changes that got blowback because fans were so used to the other recording. Then a year later, Adrianne released a more raw, lofi version of the song on a solo album and changed the lyrics back to the original, and put out yet another take of the song on a solo live record this year. So now there's functionally four versions of that song, and they're all really cool.

JVC: Yeah that's great. I know the song but need to check all that out. I totally agree with you, it's just so liberating to have that approach.

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Part 5: Farewell

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DF: One thing I like to ask every musician I talk to is for thoughts about the state of streaming. How does it affect your approach to songwriting and your life generally? Is it something you think about more than you'd like to, or can you coexist with it peacefully?

JVC: It’s a double edged sword, because it lowered the barrier to entry for a lot of people, including myself. I started releasing music when streaming was in full swing, and I felt like I had more of a shot to get people to listen to the music, because it's essentially free for them. So I'm grateful for that, and that a lot of platforms so far have been very kind to me about playlisting. 

There are a lot of people consuming free music because of streaming platforms and their massive playlist followings, and I don't think that's a bad thing. But I've used the word “free” a couple of times now. I don't know when Gillian Welch put that song out, “Everything Is Free,” but I know Phoebe Bridgers remade it in response to streaming platforms. I think it’s a very apt description of the whole dynamic. It's tough to make all the money go around, but at the same time, it sounds like there’s enough. I don't have a great understanding of all of it, but I did see an infographic years ago which stuck with me, that highlighted how platforms having finite pools of money for artist payouts is a big problem when more and more music is being uploaded every year. So the slices of the pie for everyone just get thinner and thinner. And that’s whether or not CEOs get disproportionate amounts, which might be another good conversation. 

DF: Yeah, it's helpful to be able to get a platform and audience more easily, but maybe it can still feel like you're getting the short end of the stick.

JVC: Sometimes, yeah it can. At the same time though, musicians have adapted to every change that's been thrown their way. iTunes was super disruptive for a second, but we figured it out. So yeah, I'm grateful but I also stand with the musicians that want to see more pay for songwriters and such.

DF: Hopefully things swing up at some point. The last thing I want to ask is if you’d like to reward readers who made it this far with something to chew on. Have you been listening to any artists, reading any books, watching any movies, eating any food, or doing anything that you want to highlight and recommend?

JVC: I'm gonna plug a couple people I'm a big fan of right now. Emma Ogier is opening for us on this tour and she's extremely talented. I think she's going to put out new music soon, but I’m just a huge fan and it's been great to hear her every night. I'm so excited for what's coming up. I've also been listening to Briston Maroney’s new record JIMMY a ton. I think he captured some of the spirit of his earliest stuff, like the Carnival EP, while doing something new at the same time. I’ve been sitting with those musicians for a bit lately.

DF: Awesome. I'll have to check both out. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

JVC: Oh my gosh. It was really fun to go through all this stuff. Thank you so much for the thoughtful questions. I'm already thinking about quite a few and wondering about other things I should’ve mentioned. You really got me thinking.

DF: I’m so glad. Guess we have to circle back for part two after the next record. Have a great rest of your drive and best wishes on the tour.

Photo by Sam Lindsey