Catching Up With… Alexander Ebert
Alexander Ebert first grabbed our attention as frontman of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Now, Ebert has returned to his birth name with his first solo release, Alexander. Paste caught up with Ebert following his return from a few solo shows in the UK to discuss his debut solo album, Edward Sharpe and trading one name for another.
Paste: What inspired you to take on the solo project?
Alexander Ebert: It just sort of happened, really. While doing it, I knew there were several reasons why I was doing it, but the initial reason was that I was writing and recording a lot. I love recording, and I didn’t particularly feel like making demos. I wanted to sort of share what I love doing so much in my bedroom without having to feel the need to go re-record those demos, and make something I can share directly from myself. Then the other thing was the experience, a sort of rite of passage into musician-hood and really like I’m on the path to being what I would consider a musician. And we’re all musicians and all of that, of course. This is sort of the example I’ve been giving, but when I would fill out cards to enter countries and it would say, “Occupation?” I would hesitate to say musician because I considered myself more of a songwriting singer as opposed to a legitimate musician. It just sort of felt like it would be a fun thing to do, to play everything and just sort of really go for it.
Paste: How did you feel about the whole experience after it was finished? Did it turn out the way you wanted?
Ebert: Ah, man. I’m amazed by it, actually. It was just so fun to do to begin with. I’m really happy with it which for me is a really big deal because it’s not that easy for me to be totally happy with the way things come out sometimes, and sometimes I just have to sort of just let it go and go through a process of letting it go and all that. I guess maybe because I was doing it by myself I was really able to really tinker as much as I wanted to without feeling like I was sort of wasting someone else’s time or anything. I was able to really just get almost obsessive with it. It took plenty of time, and there’s plenty that I forgive about it. It’s not that I think that it’s the perfect sounding album or anything like that, but it sounds right for what I was doing. I made it almost all in my bedroom, nine tenths of it in my bedroom, without any outboard gear and just kinda having fun and playing everything myself. I just see the album for what it is and not any grander than that, and within that, I feel like it’s something really really grand actually for me. It’s just this experience of making an album and doing it and having lyrics that represent me in a day-to-day personal sense. I’ve always tried to be relatively personal, but I’ve also had an eye towards broad themes, and also I think that’s partly to do with being the lyricist in a band of many people. I have a slight feeling of wanting to represent somewhat a large group of people and not just my own sentiments. So, I got into stuff like specifics of relationships and sort of day-to-day feelings of what was going on for me throughout the last year. So, in many ways, it’s really sort of a gratifying experience.
Paste: What kind of expectations did you have for yourself when you first set out to make this record? What kind of record did you want to make?
Ebert: Well, I wanted to make something that was just sort of humble and fun and childish and poetic and deep and all the qualities that I admire, but I guess the expectations were just the reality of me doing it the way I was doing it and feeling okay with that and feeling okay with being a sort of an elementary guitar player and rudimentary bass player and a completely novice violinist and just experiment with instruments that I didn’t really have much experience with and having fun. So my expectations were just sort of about joy and the love of doing it and wanting to share that, but really it was just so much fun.
Paste: Did you play all of the instruments on the album?
Ebert: Yeah, yeah. It was really fun.