Interview: Podge Lane on his newest single “Heatwave”

Last week, Irish singer-songwriter Podge Lane released his newest single, “Heatwave.” This is Podge’s first release since relocating to the US for his music career. Known for his emotional and honest storytelling, 'Heatwave' is no exception.

Sound Stage sat down with Podge to discuss the single, his experience in the US music industry, as well as his future music endeavors. You can stream “Heatwave” now on Spotify and Apple Music. 

SOUND STAGE: Who is Podge Lane?

PODGE: A very awkward singer-songwriter who doesn’t fit into any genre or style, and plays a lot of instruments at an okay-level so that I can make way too many albums, release way too much music, and drink way too much coffee.

SOUND STAGE: I love it! Who are your biggest inspirations for your music?

PODGE: Johnny Cash, the band Dawes, and Fiona Apple.

SOUND STAGE: I can totally hear Fiona Apple. I didn’t even think of that at first, but now that you say it, I definitely hear how she is an influence for you.

PODGE: Oh yeah, she’s a huge influence for me. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is in my top three albums of all time. I just love that kind of honesty where it doesn’t sound like any genre you have heard, but I’m going to tell you everything.

SOUND STAGE: Do you feel like you are more inspired by [Fiona Apple] musically or lyrically?

PODGE: With Johnny Cash it’s more the music and Dawes it’s very much lyrically. With [Fiona Apple] it’s a packaged deal. If I read her lyrics on its own I would be like “that’s a great lyric,.” If I listen to her music separately I would be like “that’s great music.” But together, I get an emotion that I wouldn’t get from one or the other.

SOUND STAGE: She’s really one in a million isn’t she?

PODGE: Oh absolutely.

SOUND STAGE: There is a trend going around where musicians are saying ‘if you like these artists, you’ll like my music.’ Who would you put on your list?

PODGE: I do love that trend. Maybe some people will disagree, but for m,e it would be Wilco, Dawes, Zach Bryan, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska era specifically. Waxahatchee as well, I know that may be a weird one, but I take a lot of influence from her arrangements and the fact that it always sounds like a full band playing live. I’ll throw in MJ Lenderman as well.

SOUND STAGE: When I have told people to check out your music I literally always say you sound like a mix between Bruce Springsteen and MJ Lenderman.

PODGE: That’s the biggest compliment. When people ask me what my music sounds like I always say, “it sounds like me and I am so sorry about that!” But when someone tells me I sound like someone, that’s amazing. It also always makes me think of my favorite insult-compliment I’ve ever gotten. Someone once walked up to me and said, “you sound like Niel Young, no offense.” I was really honored until they said, “no offense.” [laughs]

SOUND STAGE: It’s because people either love him or hate him.

PODGE: This person seemed to feel both ways! Which might not be a bad thing?

SOUND STAGE: I would take that as a compliment, I love him.

PODGE: Neil Young did an album about three years ago that has been a very big influence for my upcoming album. It was an album called Barn where he recorded in an old rickety barn with a small set up. And it influenced me so much in the sense that music doesn’t need to be recorded well, it sounds terrible but that made his album better for me.

SOUND STAGE: MJ Lenderman kind of has that vibe too, and I love it so much. Because it feels like the live experience, it’s not overly-produced.

PODGE: Exactly, and even with the new single, when we were recording I messed up a chord on the acoustic and I started laughing towards the last chorus. I could have chopped it out and done another chorus but I really liked it. I’ve gotten so many messages from people telling me that they love the laugh.

SOUND STAGE: It gives a lot of personality to the music.

PODGE: I’ve been listening a lot to Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II that recently came out.

SOUND STAGE: Oh yeah, that’s a hefty one.

PODGE: It’s hefty! But I just love it. I’m a demos guy. When I hear a song that’s not fully done, that’s my favorite version. I want to make that but for my own music.

SOUND STAGE: I wanted to ask about your experience coming to America. How is the music scene different here from Ireland?

PODGE: The music scene here is different in a lot of ways. I think there is more of a chance here because obviously, shocker, America is a bigger place than Ireland. There are a lot more venues and opportunities and I don’t think there are as many genre borders here. I’ve noticed that in a lot of places where I have done showcases [in America] I might be fourth on the bill behind two rappers, someone doing jazz music, and then the next person after me might be doing blues music, which has really excited me. I’m not being put with all the other singer-songwriters just because I play acoustic guitar. It’s challenging me because I see who is coming before me and if it is a really exciting set then I can’t just play my slow ballads. It’s like those YouTube videos where a soccer player will try a different sport for the day, and you can see it really excites them, and then they take that back with them to the sport they are playing. It’s kind of like Ted Lasso!

SOUND STAGE: So living here is definitely giving you more of a challenge musically?

PODGE: Yeah and gig wise we just hit over 60 gigs since we got to America, which has just been so much fun for me. I’ve said since I got here that as long as it’s an original music gig I’m not saying no. Even if I have to take six trains and a boat, I’m doing it. That has challenged me to keep myself interested all the time. “Heatwave” started off when I had a show in Brooklyn and I was getting sick of one of the happier songs on my set and I wanted something new. I had two hours before the show and I wanted to write something, that’s where “Heatwave” came from.

SOUND STAGE: Tell us a little more about “Heatwave” what inspired the track?

PODGE: Well I’ve been doing this since I first moved to Savannah, Georgia. I started a challenge where I write a song in two hours. I’m someone who tinkers with songs way too much, so I wanted to say how I was feeling in the moment and see what happened with it. It’s like Nebraska with Bruce Springsteen, there are lyrics he took from a song earlier on the album because he thought they were demos that he could flesh out later. I was doing this challenge and then I had that show where I needed to write something new beforehand. There happened to be a heatwave in New York at the time. With my last album, Multiple Dead Ends, it was a rock album, and my goal on that was to not hide behind anything. I wanted to talk about my fear of death, fear of anxiety, all of the sadder stuff but with complete honesty. I realized after doing that, while it was so much fun, it was also exhausting. It was much easier for me to talk about the bad, the anxieties, things like that with honesty than it was for me to talk about being happy. So this song came from a place where I asked myself, “can I write a happy song about how I am doing well without trying to hide it behind like six metaphors?” I just thought to myself, “okay so there is a heatwave right now. What have we been doing the past couple months while I’m traveling with my girlfriend who is also my best friend?” We have been doing the craziest stuff that I never dreamed I would have done, some of which can be very painful such as the heatwave and going outside with no sunscreen, but it’s all worth it in the end. That’s where that inspiration came from.

SOUND STAGE: I also really love your use of the harmonica on “Heatwave,” it adds so much to the song. How did you make the decision to add it to the track?

PODGE: When I was doing the track I had this idea that it was going to be a much slower, chiller, almost like a John Mayer and Jack Johnson kind of song. I tried recording it a few times and I just didn’t like it. I asked my girlfriend, Rebecca, who plays piano, to try a piano line over it. I didn’t give her any warning beforehand, we borrowed a piano for 35 minutes and I told her to just play something. She played a riff on the piano that was really nice, and I thought I might try to add the harmonica over it. We did one take after that and we were both like ‘oh that’s it! That’s the song!’ Bruce Springsteen has a simplicity where you can just whistle the harmonica line and I love that. I didn’t want to go all over the place on the harmonica, plus the piano riff Rebecca wrote was only four notes so it was perfect. 

SOUND STAGE: It really ties it all together perfectly. What can we expect from the new album coming out?

PODGE: You can expect a lot of raw honesty and a lot of songs that were written in one to two hours. The whole album was recorded in fourteen days. There are going to be one to two minute songs as well as more fleshed out ones. Everything was recorded super DIY. Fun fact, the cello on the next single coming out was bartered for by getting someone a packet of salt and vinegar chips. So that’s what I’m talking about when I say super DIY.

SOUND STAGE: [laughs] That is so New York.

PODGE: I was just saying, “I need a cello!” and the guy said, “for a bag of chips?” so I said, “yeah, sure.” I recorded three cello lines just outside in the middle of the road. 

SOUND STAGE: That is so cool, I love that. It really is the New York experience.

PODGE: It’s amazing because I was super inspired by Cameron Winter who is the lead singer of Geese. His last album was recorded essentially around guitar centers in New York. He would just go in to try out an instrument and record the line. I wanted to do that but for folk music. It’s going to be a lot of raw honesty and a lot of tracks where I’m not hiding behind a metaphor. There are going to be a lot of ambient sounds, but not on purpose. Like in the next single you can hear an ambulance in the background because it was just going by as I was recording. You can hear a little bit of bird sounds in the background of the piano in “Heatwave” too. It’s happy even in the moments where it’s sad, it’s pure honesty. 

SOUND STAGE: Keeping all those sounds in really puts the listener in the environment of New York City.

PODGE: Exactly.

SOUND STAGE: Where did you mostly record? Did you record at all in a studio?

PODGE: I have recorded around a lot of random spots in New York. There was a thing going on in June where they had pianos in random spots around New York City. At one point I walked up to one with a little mic set up and just recorded stuff. I have also recorded in several different buildings that should never be used as studios. [laughs]

SOUND STAGE: You don’t ever hear that though which is what I love about it. Everything feels so polished all the time and it can be boring.

PODGE: With every album I’ve made I have a one-sentence rule. I was always that kid who made up rules for the games that no one wanted to play with. I love rules they contain fun.

SOUND STAGE: [laughs] Me too, I’m the same way.

PODGE: It’s the best feeling! So with this album the rule was that I wasn’t allowed to soundproof anything. No popshields or anything. What happened in the room is what you are going to hear on the song itself.

SOUND STAGE: It still sounds so good though. It doesn’t sound overly produced or overdone, it’s something I haven’t heard before.

PODGE: Thank you so much, oh wow, that means a lot.

SOUND STAGE: What are your goals musically? What can we expect from you in the future?

PODGE: I want to play every single venue I can. I will play anything from Red Rocks to an ice cream parlor in Hoboken. As long as I get to play original music. I don’t mean this in a snobby way but I just don’t know other people’s songs. I write way too many songs to remember someone else’s music. As long as I can play live shows and connect with people, that’s my big thing. I would always listen to a demo by Jeff Tweedy, or a demo by Father John Misty, or Benjamin Booker and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I want to do the harsh noises, I want to make this music. Lyrically I just want people to not feel alone. I want them to feel the emotions whether it’s joy, sadness, the in-between, the awkwardness, everything they are feeling.

SOUND STAGE: I think you’re already doing a great job of that. Where can everyone find you and listen to you?

PODGE: Streaming on everything, even Russian bootleg websites! I found out the other day that my music was on one of those bootleg websites. I got so excited that I illegally downloaded my own song. It might come with 700 viruses but I was just so happy, it was the best feeling ever! 

SOUND STAGE: That is so funny. I mean that’s how you know you made it if you can illegally download your song!

PODGE: It was the best feeling! But I’m on literally everything, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.

SOUND STAGE: Awesome! Can people in the New York area expect more live shows from you in the near future?

PODGE: Yeah! We will be announcing more live shows in the next three weeks I believe.

SOUND STAGE: I haven’t had the chance to see you live yet, but I have a feeling your live shows are incredible.

PODGE: My live shows are 70% music and 30% very bad stand-up comedy.

SOUND STAGE: But that’s perfect! That’s what makes a live show. Thanks for being our first interview Podge! We can’t wait to hear the new album coming out in the fall.

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