Words By Zach Collier
Photos By The Young Astronauts
It’s always awesome to hear dope music and then find out the music came from an even doper person.
When I first heard “Dirty Blonde” by GUNNAR, it knocked my socks off. His latest single, it fearlessly taps into 00s rock nostalgia (think The Dangerous Summer and The Academy Is… with a pinch of The Strokes) and shoves it all into a modern pop spectacle that slaps you in the face with raucous live drums, screaming guitars, and a shoutable chorus. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to drive through the city with your friends in a packed car and scream along with the windows down.
It’s that kind of energy that landed GUNNAR a spot on the US leg of JXDN’s “When The Music Stops” tour. GUNNAR performed on 14 of the 15 American dates before returning home to Los Angeles.
“Hold on. I'm grabbing coffee,” GUNNAR says as he heads into his kitchen to pour himself a cup from the pot. The 23-year-old returns and sits down casually. “I'm really happy to be home. I obviously love touring more than anything, so I'm bummed to be out of that routine. But I missed my bed and my own shower.”
He sips his cup as we talk about the tour. He tells me all about how his manager drove most of the tour like a legend; how a bus compares to a sprinter van; what it was like in the early days, handing out free posters and trying to get just one person to buy a t-shirt; how fun it was to get to know JXDN and to perform with him night after night; and how kind JXDN’s fanbase was. He’s especially stoked about that last point. You can tell GUNNAR loves the audiences he played for and the people he met.
“I think the fans from this tour were just the perfect kind of crossover,” GUNNAR smiles. “His fans were really, really receptive, which has been really nice because you know how it goes: some tours look amazing for the resume, but how much are you really building from it? And there are tours that are smaller that sometimes mean 10 times more connections. This tour was definitely not a small tour. It was a great size – about a thousand cap rooms every night. Everyone was really pumped.”
GUNNAR explains that he loves “building fans from the ground up.” He says the most rewarding and gratifying part of being an opener is making friends with people who have no idea who he is before they come to the show. He puts hours and hours into rehearsal to impress them with his live show, but makes sure to talk to everyone at the merch table when the show is done and get to know them. He tries to be as sincere as he can be and let them know that he cares and is grateful that they came. He loves it when they walk away as friends. “When you can build a fan that way, it’s just so cool,” he says.
He was incredibly impressed by one group that followed them around the entire tour. “I have a group of like three to six girls (I know them all very well at this point) who have come to every show over the last two years,” he laughs. “We're talking like every stop. Whether it's the US, Europe – anywhere. They’re really, really special and important to me. Every damn show, man. They drive all the hours that we do to see the same show every night. I mean that's what it's about, right? Those are the moments that are the special ones. That’s where you really know your work pays off.”
I recently took a deep dive into GUNNAR’s discography and was amazed by just how eclectic it was.
I can confidently say that if someone rolls up to a GUNNAR show for the first time and walks away impressed, there’s going to be something for everyone in his discography when they get home. For example, his compilation album, old shit, is tried and true, dependable pop singer/songwriter stuff. It’s comfort music.
His album, Best Mistake, is aptly named. It wasn’t at all what I expected when listening through his music chronologically. For those familiar with Eagles, this record is GUNNAR’s Desperado. It’s a wild swing for the fences – a genre-bender that plops his smooth pop/rock vocals in the middle of radio-ready yallternative.
“Cinnamon” is a “Tennessee Whiskey”-styled slow-burn blues ballad that’s heavy on the soul and grit, but is completely unashamed to add e-drums underneath it all. The chorus in “Cinnamon” did the epic drop from Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” before Benson Boone did.
GUNNAR does a really good job at incorporating different textures that you don't see coming, but in a pop context. Those pop stomps that explode into a chorus would never happen in your mainstream country sound. It all subverts expectations in a really cool way.
Promotional Photo from Bad Idea
So to transition from pop to quasi-country and now into a 00s alt revival with “Dirty Blonde” is exciting, unexpected, but somehow incredibly cohesive. GUNNAR’s vocals, songwriting skills, and charisma are the glue that keeps everything together.
“I'm 23, so a lot of it is just kind of growing up and going through life,” GUNNAR says about the genre shifts. “I got thrown into this at a really young age, and so I started really down the middle pop and then realized that fucking guitars and blues and rock – that's what makes me feel something. That whole Best Mistake record was just me wanting to make shit that's going to be fun to play live. ‘Bad Idea’ is the western one, which almost started as a Jack White reference that then swung into this country thing. For me, I’m just trying to make music that makes me feel cool and makes me feel good.”
After thinking for a second, he adds, “I think that's what being an artist is: never truly being satisfied or never truly knowing exactly who you are.”
But GUNNAR is confident that “Dirty Blonde” – and the similar songs from his upcoming record – are a clear snapshot of who he is and what he’s feeling right now. “It has older references and undertones to it, and it feels like it's familiar, but also new and fresh,” he says. “I don't like small music. I like the big, anthemic kind that makes you feel like you need to go hear it in a venue.”
As much as I enjoyed researching GUNNAR’s entire discography, talking to him is even more fun. It’s always awesome to hear dope music and then find out the music came from an even doper person. The most fascinating thing I discovered about him was just how important service and philanthropy are to him. Everywhere he goes, GUNNAR tries to find a way to make the world a better place. And not just by throwing money at causes, either. Boots on the ground, hands-on experiences are very special to him. For example, when he was in New York during this last tour, he took the time to go help at a food shelter, pack lunches, and help patrons get affordable groceries and affordable food.
“Honestly, all of it goes to my parents and my upbringing,” GUNNAR explains when I ask him where his love of service came from. “My parents were always very big advocates for giving back. I have memories from as young as I can remember. We'd be on a family vacation and we would take a day and go into a village or go into the not-touristy-fun areas, and go really see the difference that you can make with just a little bit of effort and a little bit of love.”
Being able to make a difference, whether it’s small or large, is what it’s all about for GUNNAR. That’s why live shows and interacting face to face with people is so exciting to him. “I love making music, of course,” he laughs. “I make a lot of music for me. But really, the reason I’ve always done this is for the live shows. What happens in a live music setting is life-changing. I think music saves people. There's nothing that’s more gratifying – whether you’re in the audience or the artist on stage – than being in a room with live music, where there’s real energy and love. It feels almost like a church.”
GUNNAR’s message to anyone struggling in life is to get out of their own head by putting their energy towards helping someone else. GUNNAR has built wells and schools and villages all over the world in places like Africa and India, and his hands-on work has helped him keep a proper perspective.
“I’ve been very lucky and I’m very grateful for opportunities that I’ve had to go and make little differences,” he says. “When you can really get hands-on and see the difference that just a little bit of effort makes in other people’s lives, it’s amazing. Life gets so busy, especially as an artist. But even for anybody, life is so busy.”
GUNNAR says it’s really easy to forget about the things you can do for other people when most of us are drowning in our own schedules and our own lives.
“What I want my message to be to people is that the greatest thing you can do for yourself is help other people.”
He shares a brief story with me about helping install hearing aids in Mexico. “It was the first time they had ever heard noise in their entire life,” he recalls. “How does my day-to-day life – stress and anxiety in Los Angeles – how do I get worked up about things, after going and seeing a person hear their mother’s voice for the first time?”
GUNNAR songs like “Dirty Blonde” are rowdy, fun, carefree, and incredibly effective on a technical level. But I think they’d only be half as effective without GUNNAR’s wholesome energy behind them. He wants you to have a good time because he cares about you, the listener. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the merch table hearing him for the first time; following him to Europe on a girls’ trip; listening at home; or not listening at all and just looking for your next meal in New York somewhere. He cares about you.
“What helping other people does for you is it opens you up spiritually and makes you realize what really matters. What are we stressed about on a day-to-day basis that we think is so important and so valuable?” GUNNAR asks rhetorically. “Helping people is so naturally healing. You come home and stop caring about things that don’t matter.”
GUNNAR is thinking a lot about the future lately. Not just about his upcoming album. But about the things that really matter. “I’m an adult – my own person,” he says about service. “How do I carry that torch and eventually do the same for my kids and my family? Try to make the world a better place?”
I think those are questions we should all ask ourselves. I don’t have all the answers yet myself. But if you need me, you can find me pondering the questions of the soul while listening to “Dirty Blonde” on repeat. It’s an absolute banger.
Make sure to follow GUNNAR on Instagram and check out “Dirty Blonde” below!
What does tmrw mean to you?
“Tomorrow is another day to keep my head down, work, and be a better person. If each one of us is lucky enough to have tomorrow every single day, it gives you a purpose to commit to the things that are important to you and to give everything your all. Tomorrow is not a given. If there is tomorrow, it signifies purpose.” – GUNNAR