Interview: Jeff Larson Finds The Place And The Time For ‘Adobe Home’

Hannah Means-Shannon (Wildfire Music) - May 15, 2024

Singer/songwriter and Producer Jeff Larson has recently released his first solo full-length album in ten years, titled Adobe Home, via Nashville-based label Melody Place. His most recent previous release was the 2023 six-song tribute EP to the late singer and songwriter Tim Hardin, titled It’ll Never Happen Again. The creation of Adobe Home coincided with a pandemic-era move to Southern California from Larson’s native Bay Area and also a big resurgence in songwriting that led him to rekindle his vocal abilities. Bringing in his Production chops and many of his regular collaborators, like Gerry Beckley of the band America and Jack Tempchin, who penned several hits for The Eagles, Larson created a series of songs that speak firmly to place and mood and conjure the warm vibes of his new locale.

The songs on Adobe Home also represent a wide range of collaborative approaches, with Larson writing many of them solo, but with others calling on him to create either the lyrics, or the music, based on existing material. The sum total is a remarkably consistent mood-based collection that shows similar sensibilities among collaborators, as well as a complementary approach from co-Producers Larson and Gerry Beckley. 

I spoke with Jeff Larson about the fortuitous developments that led to Adobe Home and how the “reset” of the pandemic period encouraged him to take up recording solo work again alongside his busy life as a Producer. 

Hannah Means-Shannon: I understand that the imagery and ideas on Adobe Home are in tribute to California, particularly Southern California, but that’s a recent shift for you, since you’re from further north.

Jeff Larson: A lot of my songs get tagged with “California Sound”, whatever that may be. I’m from this state. I’m a native of the Bay Area and was there until 2020. This whole record is really about a transplant south in my surroundings. We all lived through a pandemic. I’m a songwriter who, ten years ago, started doing much more audio production, mainly for [the band] America. But I did stuff with Abbey Road, I did archive releases with The Royal Philharmonic. I did a Beach Boys, Buddy Holly, and Roy Orbison release. That stuff was going on behind the scenes, but what the pandemic did, which I thought was really unique, was it was kind of a reset if you were creatively inclined.

During the pandemic, it was like being a kid again. All of the sudden, you really didn’t think about business when you picked up an instrument. You could return to your core. Thankfully, I could still sing. So that’s what I did. I did it almost all from my head and my heart. It brought back a whole chunk of songs and emotions. It was really good for my head during that time. It was a survival tactic, and I’d work on stuff every morning.

HMS: Were you also able to continue your Production work during that time?

JL: I’d also work on a live album for America called Live From The Hollywood Bowl, and that took six months. We also did a bunch of stuff on Gerry [Beckley’s] records, one of which will be out in June. In the meantime, Gerry and I co-Produced each others’ records these past couple years. So he co-Produced Adobe Home, played bass, and sings on “This Summer.” We just go back and forth. We’re getting older, but the truth is, you’re an artist first, and you really can’t stop. We find ways to keep going.

HMS: You mention getting back to singing and there’s so much importance to the vocals on this album. Did that take some thought and arrangement to get back into?

JL: During the pandemic, I somehow realized I had a falsetto and could do this myself. I was kind of taught by Gerry, basically, how to do that the right way. All these tools led the way to what Adobe Home is.

HMS: California is such a giant state that moving from the North to the South is quite a big shift. Did you feel like this really opened you up to new impressions?

JL: It is giant. Culturally, it’s kind of the same shift as well, and even climate-wise. I grew up in the East of South Bay and have watched the emergence of Silicon Valley. There’s a line in the song “This Summer” that says, “I want to ride with no kick-stand.” That’s just a childhood memory of riding as far as I wanted to go, total freedom, I guess. But what became of the Bay Area is it became a concrete jungle. Warehouses go up all the time. When I was a kid, it was blue collar, but it’s the opposite now.

Coming here, where I’m at, Carlsbad, I’m only a backroads drive from the beach, so my whole situation changed drastically. I had a house that I already owned, so coming out here was actually easy, and I have a daughter who went to school out here. I fell in love with the climate and the slightly slower pace of life.

HMS: There’s plenty of magic about the desert, too.

JL: I’m right between the both of them. I’m 90 minutes from Palm Springs, with total desert life. I’m near the ocean. My guitars don’t love it because of the dryness of the air! It’s a different world.

HMS: How do you deal with that? Do you have to use climate-controlled rooms?

JL: Yes, I had to invest in a lot of stuff. I have a couple Martins I don’t want to lose.

HMS: Are you now nearer to some of your collaborators?

JL: Jack Tempchin became a good friend because he lives twenty minutes from me. I’m really proud of the record I made with him, More of Less, that’s out on June 14th on Blue Elan. That’s one of my favorite things that I’ve Produced, and I also sang on it. It’s quite sparse at times. It’s crazy how many records I’ve worked on that have come out recently or are coming out this summer. Then we have the America documentary, which I helped out on.

HMS: I wanted to mention that premiered the video and track “Something of a Dream” and really appreciated the animated lyric video for that song. It was really in keeping with the album art and feel of the song. Not everyone puts a lot of aesthetic thought into lyric videos.

JL: I’d rather do a lyric video but do it right, have it be something that is creative and likeable. They did a killer job. It’s always the goal, to have it relate on the visual side. We want to capture the vibe for people.

HMS: For these songs, we have different levels of collaborations. Some were just written by you, but for some, you’re working with other people. Is that different every time in terms of how you approach that?

JL: Oh yes. It’s different depending on who you’re working with. When I first moved here, I was in the middle of collaborating with Robert Lamm, the founder of the band Chicago. We had a handful of songs together, and one of those songs is on this record, “A Matter of Time.” I knew that he was into Bossa nova, and I had never ventured down that road. I had a melody, believe it or not, from junior prom, that I had never used after all these years. I just did a loop that was Bossa nova, and used that melody on it, with some rough lyrics. He said, “We should pursue this.” That one started with a hint of my past, and a demo. He chimed in with some keyboard parts. We both did the lyrics, back and forth, and it was a true collaboration.

When I work with Gerry Beckley, on the America side, we pretty much work daily. I just did a vocal on a song yesterday and we would easily have a whole album together. We jave just been collaborating and writing. Sometimes he will give me a melody. Sometimes he will give me a finished track with no real melody carved out, and I will do the melody and the lyrics. Sometimes it’s just the lyrics.

I have two songs here with Jack Tempchin, and basically, he has a database of [unused] lyrics. I will say, “I want to write a song about birds or flying.” He will say, “Here are six lyrics I have.” I go through them and say, “Okay, this one fits the music I’ve started.” So working with Jack can be more music from me and more lyrics from Jack.

HMS: That’s hilarious that he has a whole database library of lyrics. It reminds me of Emily Dickinson, who had a whole box full of scraps of paper that might be poems.

JL: He’s meticulous and very organized. He’s always at it and he’s a real example for me. He wrote “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Already Gone” for The Eagles, two huge hits, and he was a good buddy with Glen Frey, co-writing a lot of his solo stuff. He’s always been more of a songwriter, so when we did his new record, it’s more Jack as a singer/songwriter. Jack’s singing on that record.

HMS: It sounds like you hadn’t really planned to do another solo record, but all this songwriting naturally led to one. Do you think that’s the path you’re now going to be on, doing both Production work and solo albums?

JL: I wasn’t seeking out to do another solo record, but through friends and connections, this situation with the label Melody Place came about, and I had songs stored up during that time. Now I had an outlet and could go forward. That’s important, psychologically, to write something, finish something, and get it out there, if you have the opportunities.

HMS: It seems like that’s a natural process of variation in terms of work that can be good for you.

JL: Yes, if you’re not changing, that’s time to worry.

HMS: One song that I know is personal to you is “The Better Part of the Morning” which is about the Pacific Northwest. I may be reading this in, but I feel like it sounds like the Northwest, musically. Do you try to convey a sense of place through sound?

JL: It’s actually a song about not being afraid to be alone. That’s good about the sound, that is also the goal. The last song on the album is called “Santa Ana Sunset” and I wasn’t going to use it originally. It’s the 13th song. But that song is really my vocal exercise for when I’m warming up to do harmonies for other people. I sing harmony for other people, like Gerry and Jack. 

What happened was that Jack called me and told me about how he was sitting on the beach watching the sunset, and it was beautiful and red. I used that for my morning exercise, with the lead vocals, a ukulele, and then I stacked some harmonies. It’s very obvious Beach Boys rip in many ways! [Laughs] It was captured in a small amount of time and is a simple song. It felt fitting.

But where I got lucky is that a buddy of mine who is in Nashville, Jim Hoke, helped a lot on this record and he added the flute on this. Also, the sax and the pedal steel. That’s him saying, “This is how the song could be.” So we decided to put it at the end.

HMS: It’s a mood poem. It’s very much about the place.

JL: That’s what this whole record is, really.