Multifaceted creative Livingston released his debut album, A Hometown Odyssey, last year. A singer, songwriter, and producer from Denton, TX, he crafted the album as an homage to his upbringing, describing it as his “high school journal.” Channeling emotions and experiences from his youth, he takes listeners through each chapter, spanning across 14 tracks. Following the album release, he embarked on his first ever headlining tour across North America, Europe, and the UK, getting to connect with audiences and experience how the album resonated with listeners across the world.
Released one year after the original release of A Hometown Odyssey, his deluxe record A Hometown Odyssey (The Story Continues) features 9 additional tracks that expand upon the emotions and experiences explored in the original album. From the cinematic opening ballad “The Game” to lighthearted Owl City inspired track “Nightlight,” this collection of songs showcase Livingston’s ability to craft different sonic spaces, allowing his emotions to be conveyed to the fullest and most authentic extent.
Ahead of the release of A Hometown Odyssey (The Story Conintues), Livingston sat down with Poptized to talk about the record, his creative process, and reflect on this era of his artistry.
Brigid: Thank you for taking the time to chat today! A Hometown Odyssey (The Story Continues) is released this Friday, can you walk me through the emotions you’re experiencing leading up to this release?
Livingston: It feels like a breath of fresh air, honestly it feels like releasing a breath that’s been pent up that I haven’t been able to release, because this is an album I’ve lived in since I was 14 years old. I’m ready to kind of share where all of those emotions culminated, which are in these new songs. Some of them have already come out and some of them are about to. It’s really just like the crystallized version of these emotions I felt in middle school and high school. I’m excited to kind of let that out of my hard drive and into the real world.
B: The deluxe includes nine new tracks, and is being released a year after the original release of A Hometown Odyssey. I was curious about the creative decision to include these songs in this project era versus a new project, what made you decide this story wasn’t over yet, that there was another chapter?
L: I think that my favorite artists tend to really innovate when they move into a new phase. And these are songs that build on the emotions of the first album in a really direct way, but they don’t really represent the fullness of what I have been through in the last few years. They more represent just really intense versions of the original emotions from the first album, so it felt right to make it a part of that story rather than introduce a new story, because really there’s nothing new here. There’s just better versions and more clarity on the old. Almost think of it like a prequel. Some of the songs like “Nightlight” go back in time to when I was like 17. They’re not songs that talk about me at 20. They’re songs that largely talk about emotions I felt that I wish I would have put songs in the first album, but didn’t get a chance to.
B: You just recently went on tour, and were able to see in real time how this album resonated with people. What was that like?
L: It’s so much different than being on social media and being on a screen. There’s something so heartbreaking and powerful about seeing how music reaches people. Music really changes people’s lives. It has this infectious electric thing about it, that really feels magical in a room, and you can’t get that feeling anywhere else. You also don’t get to choose if you have the type of concerts that do that. Some people do and some people don’t. I’m definitely not the reason that that feeling is in the room. I feel like I’m just kind of watching the energy and experiencing it from the other side in real time, and I feel incredibly lucky that that gets to be my concert experience because it’s enriching for me, and it makes me want to show up and give my everything to every single show.
B: Definitely. You’re also about to tour again this year, what are you most looking forward to about being on the road again?
L: I love being with my friends, I tour with some of my best friends in the world. I love getting to travel. I love that life kind of becomes chaos on the road and you just kind of deal with it, and you grow and you learn. It’s like a boot camp style training… it challenges you. Like, are you going to keep a good attitude and treat every single city from the smallest city to the biggest city as if they deserve the same show? And when you do that, and you follow through on that promise to yourself, it feels really rewarding to know that those shows that are in the middle of nowhere mean sometimes just as much, if not more, than the shows in the big markets. Because that’s the theory of my album. It’s why I make it music. People feel the same things everywhere, and it’s cool getting to prove that in person.
B: I was curious about your move to LA, especially when speaking about a project that is such an homage to your hometown and your upbringing. How did moving from your hometown in Texas to LA impact you both artistically and personally?
L: You know, it really opened my eyes to the world. I feel like my vision of the world went from a very narrow set of experiences, and what I thought and expected, to this really wide, really scary, really beautiful version of life, with a lot more color. It gave me more to talk about, and it also gave me a lot of challenges and things that really threw me for a loop that I would have never had to experience from the comfort of a small town. But those things shifted me, they changed me, and they brought songs out of me that make it all worth it.
B: Circling back to the record, I wanted to ask about your latest single “Brainstorm.” It’s a pretty upbeat track, but the lyrics are really vulnerable. Can you share a bit about the creative process behind the song?
L: Yeah, I just wanted something that tackled something that’s really small and annoying, but prop it up in a really big anthemic sounding song. It’s a nuanced thing, this idea of… some people experience this and some don’t, but being stuck in thought loops, just obsessive, negative, anxiety… It’s a really small thing and it just makes you feel small sometimes. Making a big song out of that, and pulling this electric feeling out of that, kind of has a way of taking that shrinking feeling and making it powerful again. Finding power in that negative experience and putting that out into the world is a little cathartic.
B: Really powerful, yeah. I love that dichotomy between the lyrics and the instrumental. I’m curious, from your perspective, do you consider this album to be a concept album?
L: I think it’s like the training wheels of a concept album, because I didn’t quite have the resources necessary when I was creating it to realize… like an interwoven story with all these expensive music videos and stuff. But I’d like to think of it as a concept album in premise, because it does tell a story of a character that you can definitely project your own life into, and experience kind of vicariously. Obviously J.K. Simmons is there as a narrator, so one could consider that it’s a concept album, but really it was just a bunch of songs that I wrote in high school and middle school that happened form a story when I zoomed out and looked at them all.
B: I feel like it’s definitely immersive, especially with the introduction. A fully fleshed out story.
L: What I’m most grateful for is that people listen to it as a whole. I don’t have this thing where I show up to the shows and I’m like, ‘oh, yeah, this song’s coming on, everyone’s gonna know this one.’ The fans who really get it, at any level, tend to get all of it, which is a cool thing. And that’s how I want it. You’re all in or you’re all out. If you understand these feelings, if they’re meant for you, if they reach your life, it seems like it kind of hits you as a whole, which I’m really lucky for, and I definitely didn’t control that.
B: That’s really cool to create a cohesive work and have it appreciated and interpreted by your audience as such.
L: That’s what a lot of artists want, and not a lot of artists get that. I’m very lucky that that has been my experience.
B: Yeah, that’s awesome. I know that you’re inspired by various types of media when it comes to making music. When crafting these tracks for the deluxe, what did you find yourself inspired by?
L: Literally, I’ll close my eyes and I’ll see video game environments. I see colorful scenes from movies. In the sense of how a world for a song gets built, at least the production of it, the sounds and the way I’m delivering and treating certain vocal stuff… It’s like I close my eyes and I see like, Fortnite. I’ll see Minecraft. I’ll see Lord of the Rings. All these magic things that most people leave behind in their childhood and then move on to adulthood… I never really did that. I don’t have interest in doing that. It fuels my spark and the way I view the world. So, yeah, it’s very environmental, and visual, and colorful, which is also why I wanted to shift the colors of the project.
B: From a songwriter perspective, what did the song selection process for this project look like? How did you decide which tracks were going to be part of this story?
L: My favorite songs are the ones that just capture the clearest, simple version of whatever emotion it is [that] I’m trying to get out of my system. Some songs are more like Jackson Pollock paintings where I’m throwing everything at the wall, and it’s kind of… ‘this means something, but maybe it’s just for me.’ When I’m talking about pop music, which I love, I grew up on pop music and big pop anthems. It’s like, you know, pick a reason for each song and have it be a confidence statement for whatever that thing is. Every song that ended up on this is just a clear message of an emotion I really believe is real, and I want people to feel.
B: You’ve been making music since you were a teenager, how do you feel your creative process has evolved over the years?
L: I used to think very narrowly about how to make songs, and I didn’t fully trust myself or my creative process. I had all these rules of ways that things needed to be. I start with the beat, or I start with this sound and this is how I treat my vocals. More rigid, but that was out of fear. The more I’ve grown up, and the more I’ve experimented, and had wild crazy ideas that land and work, the more confidence it’s given me to be like: hey, I can attack this thing from any angle, the only requirement is that I’m really trying to be honest with myself. And I’m not trying to copy someone. I’m not trying to be in anyone’s shadow, not trying to project a version of myself that I want to be viewed as. I’m just letting something out that inspires me, that makes me scared, that makes me wonder. Whenever I do that, the magnetic pull is usually for it to be something pretty fun.
B: I feel like that’s what resonates with people as well. I think the intention plays into how people interpret your work, like how people interpret your album as a cohesive work. I think that really shines through. Reflecting on the creative process for the deluxe, do you have a favorite memory or maybe a moment where something really clicked?
L: “Nightlight.” When that landed, it just felt so good. I had that song sitting on a hard drive for a year, it was just a bit of a mess. It had this “Fireflies” (Owl City), wonderful, youthful feeling to it. I remember I was like, I’m going to stop trying to change the world and just figure out what this verse is. I just started playing the progression… I have my lights set up in my room, I have all these LED lights that just change colors, they’re automated to change at different times during the day to different scenes and stuff. It inspires me to be around different colors of light. I remember I was sitting there, and the lights weren’t even on, and I was just playing the progression for the verse, and then suddenly the time cue happened and all the lights turned on, this brilliant blue and orange. I just started having these lyric ideas hitting me out of nowhere because it felt like I was in my childhood bedroom, and it’s like the lights were coming to life. The ceiling kind of caught all the reflections of these different colors, and I was like, oh, this feels kind of wonderful and it reminds me of like, when I could see magic before I was in the real world and had to deal with pain. The verse just really flowed and came easily after that. I remember it was very emotional, it was nice.
B: I love that you mentioned “Nightlight,” I think it’s my favorite from this batch of new tracks. Now that you mention Owl City, I totally see that. The magical, youthful vibe. To wrap up here, which of these new tracks are you most excited for listeners to hear?
L: “Nightlight,” because its the most I ever pushed myself on a song to try something else. It’s just fun, it’s not so heavy. It’s just fun.
Listen to A Hometown Odyssey (The Story Continues) here!
