Fancy Gap

Stuart McLamb says the magical thing about making music is that it rewards you for being honest and real with it. That also proves true for musical ventures as well.

When going in to record the next Love Language album with his friend and fellow songwriter Charles Crossingham, a global pandemic forced McLamb to consider a different path or timeline. Given that the pair were already hanging out and writing music, McLamb and Crossingham found themselves making music that was honest and real—and audiences are being rewarded for it with a splendid new outlet, Fancy Gap.

While no one wants McLamb to completely turn the corner away from The Love Language in any permanent way, there's no doubt that audiences should love this new venture with beautiful songs like "Strawberry Moon," which features Sharon Van Etten, and "Magnolias". We recently asked Stuart all about the origins of Fancy Gap and his expectations going forward.

Analogue: Besides promo for the new record, what else makes up a day like today?

Stuart McLamb: That's a good question. I do some web development as well and DJ some weddings. I had a Zoom with some clients I had, or a couple whose wedding's coming up. And man, we're kind of doing it all. We're doing the screen printing for the posters, me and my wife, and getting all that stuff that we need. This is actually our first time screen printing, but we've been doing a lot of research on it. So just kind of juggling a few different things.

I kind of rambled, but I feel like that's sort of the nature of most musicians in 2024. You've gotta juggle a few different things. I just made a Canva-assisted design for a Meta ad to promote our show. So that's what being a musician in 2024 is like.

Analogue: Oh man, what's your relationship with that?

Stuart: I definitely had spent some time being bitter and angry about how hard it is to be a musician, but I think through age and experience, you just have to accept it. You have to be grateful that you're alive and you're able to create. And it's hard t expect the world to sort of open up for you. You gotta sort of enjoy the process.

Especially in this day and age, I think musicians are some of the hardest-working people I know. I've dealt with and met people who are in other businesses, and I have a lot of respect for them, but I can tell from my experience and others that I really, truly think they're some of the hardest-working people. There's so much to balance all that you have to put into the creation of music while also managing all the promotion.

imagine you have a food truck, but everything's free. It's ultimately like a free product, but I guess the positive is that music... it's like this elusive sort of little fairy you're trying to capture and it only seems to honor and reward you when you're honest and real with it. So it's a noble venture, you know? It brings a kind of joy that I think is hard to find in a lot of other things in life.

Analogue: I've been along for this whole ride with The Love Language, so it made me curious about this new collaboration with Charles [Crossingham]. I know from at least reading the press material put out around the album that this was expected to be the next Love Language album and then it kind of turned into a whole thing of its own. How true is that?

Stuart: Oh, it's very true.

Analogue: How you end up going, "All right, let's roll up our sleeves and invent a whole new identity here"?

Stuart: It was really organic how it happened. It wasn't like Charles came in saying, "Let's do something new!" He came in as a really genuine Love Language fan. It was a hard decision for him to even suggest or bring up the consideration, but it was all so organic.

So if we back up, it was 2019 and I wasn't in the best place of my career. I mean, the grass is always greener or something, and for where I wanted to be, it felt like maybe we had peaked awareness-wise in 2010. We did Coachella and bigger national tours, and we still did an awesome tour with like Teenage Fan Club in 2019. But at the same time, it wasn't like I was killing it in the music game or anything.

Analogue: Does that mean that Grand didn't do what you thought it would do?

Stuart: Yeah, I'd say that. I'm always careful, and I mean this genuinely, not trying to just like play politics, because it's nothing to badmouth Merge as a label or anything...

Analogue: Sure.

Stuart: They're constantly navigating new bands they're signing or whatever, and I think that's gotta be a tough part for a label. You wanna invest in an artist or someone and then, you know, certain ones, you can't predict why, but they catch on. And then the others sort of become these dependents or children and you're like, "Okay, well, I don't wanna help."

I can definitely understand that. And, you know, hindsight's 20/20. There are things I would have done differently on how I should have run the business. But ultimately, the long-winded answer is I wasn't in the best spot. I wouldn't say I had a lot of people in my corner that were like really enthused or wanted to help or invest, and I was sort of alone. I had my band and had people in my corner, so it wasn't nothing, but it wasn't the hot new thing. That's when everyone's like kind of knocking on the door—that time had passed.

But Charles showed all this enthusiasm and he had been over the course of years. It wasn't like every day or even every month, you know, once a year or something, but he'd always check in on me. This was before we even really got to know each other. We'd get messages like, "Hey, I love your stuff. If you ever want to record or anything, I've got this studio here."

I finally just took him up on it, since this guy's showing a lot of enthusiasm. And I mean, I could talk to you for hours, but it's because this is five years, but long story short, as we finally met up and really clicked, we recorded a little stripped-down version of a song called "Strawberry Moon" I had at the time. Then that just turned into more phone calls, more get-togethers.

Analogue: How long ago was this?

Stuart: This was right before the pandemic and there were times when we would talk for an hour, two hours sometimes on the phone about music, about the hardships of being a musician, and what we thought was important about the recording process and songwriting. And we just clicked in a lot of ways. And so I was like, 'Well, I'd love to do the next Love Language record with you. Let's do it."

The idea at the time... I was like listening to Tonight's the Night and On the Beach-era Neil Young. It was scrappy and I was like, "This is great. We don't need fancy gear. I want to bang it out in a month." That's what every songwriter thinks. They're like, "I'm ready."

Analogue: "Let's do the album."

Stuart: And it's like three years later and it's nothing like they planned. [Laughs] That was sort of the case here. But that was the initial agreement to give it a shot and then the pandemic hit. There was another guy who was going to be involved, but he had a kid on the way. The pandemic, you know, messed things up for everybody. We certainly weren't alone, but I think that the initial plan just had to be sort of redeveloped and reconsidered.

We found that me and Charles sort of formed a pandemic team, you know? I don't know if you had like certain people you felt comfortable being around that you knew weren't around other people. So we had this little pod and that just snowballed into more and more meetings. And then I told Charles, "Hey, let's not look back. I don't want to go back and listen to any old Love Language. I want to move forward. I want to not think about what it is and just go with our gut."

I feel like we were very slowly chipping away at what became the new idea. It wasn't overnight, you know, but we were like, "Let's see what this turns into." It wasn't forced or anything, but once we were like three, four songs in, it was a new project. We knew this was turning into a new thing.

Analogue: So what does support look like? Are you touring?

Stuart: We certainly want to. We need a strategy about that. I'm rooting for all the young bands who can crash on couches and cut costs. [Laughs] But to be realistic, touring is expensive with gas and hotels and all of that. We'd certainly jump on something if we were offered a support tour. Maybe the more we promote the album and band to see how the reception is to here we're confident that we could break even... that's just the reality.

I think we'd be happy to book some meaningful shows around North Carolina and regionally and on up to New York. But I don't think a big national tour is quite in the cards right now. It's something we'd want to do, but we just have to time that right.

VISIT: Fancy Gap

Photo: Jordan Brannock