A Chat With S.L. Houser

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First, how are you feeling after that performance?

Good! You know, I think I’ve done everything I can to be prepared and rested for today. It’s gonna be a long day, but it’s all ultimately fun stuff – and helpful to me.

This is your first time at ACL, right? How has the experience been so far?

Technically, it’s my first time at ACL as S.L. ouser, but I performed here with a band called Golden Dawn Arkestra years ago.

What’s it like to do ACL as S.L. Houser?

I’ve been a musician in Austin for, like, 15 years, and I think at many points in that chunk, I thought ACL was unattainable or maybe wasn’t in the cards for me. To be asked to play this year was incredibly special and meaningful to me.

You’ve lived all over the place…Florida, South Carolina and Boston. What draws you to Austin?

I graduated from Berklee College of Music, and they really try to steer their graduates toward music industry cities like L.A., Nashville, New York. After being in the northeast for four years, I was like, I don’t want to stay up here. I hate the cold; I'm not from the cold. L.A. felt like the other side of the planet for me, and I truthfully never vibed with Nashville. On a whim, I was like, I think I’m gonna visit Austin during SXSW. I immediately thought I could fit in here; this is my speed. I wanted an affordable city, which it was at the time, and also a city that was maybe not an industry city. Something that had more of a grassroots, punk rock feel, which Austin felt like to me.

Your music has a groove, a kind-of smokey bar energy to it, where does that come from?

I think there’s an inherent edginess to people from the east coast that’s very different from California, the Midwest or Texas. That can come across in my music sometimes.

How would you describe your sound to someone unfamiliar with it?

I come back to indie, art-pop a lot. I have a pretty extensive classical background, and there’s a level of nerdiness to my musicianship that I can’t ignore, and it comes across in my writing. I call it, like, left-of-center pop music. Radiohead is one of my favorite bands, but I also listen to Dua Lipa. So I think there are some pop sensibilities that come across in my writing but it’s always on top of this weird music thing that’s happening. I think modern artists that I’ve certainly felt a sonic kinship with would be Mitski, Magdalena Bay, Japanese Breakfast, Madison Cunningham. Just artists that are writing very intentional songs but also have some weird, cool music things happening underneath that.

If I understand correctly, you do a lot of production on your own tracks? What comes first for you, lyrics or melodies?

It depends on the song. For this next album, I’ve been writing pretty much all the music first and then going back and writing the vocals, which I’ve found makes me approach vocal melodies very differently. I’m not worried about playing and singing at the same time. I do a lot of voice memos when I’m driving and sometimes those turn into songs, too. I certainly have a plethora of lyric notes in my notes app that I pull from. Or I like to write phrases and then use it to get a song idea. I’ll come at it from all sides truthfully.

I can feel, in tandem with your love for music, your passion for music education as well. Why is that something you’re interested in?

I feel very privileged in my education; I was really lucky to get to go to school for music. It’s important for me to pass on that education to young people and also get people excited about music education. I think there’s a stereotype that “those who can’t do, teach,” and I really don’t ascribe to it. I don’t think it’s fair. I had a lot of students see me play today, and it’s important for students to see their teachers as still creative, performing artists. I come from a long line of educators, it’s something that I’ve always been passionate about, I teach at the community college here and then I do freelance teaching as well. You know, I don’t have children, so the least I can do is tell you guys about music while I’m still here.

Finally, why do you write?

I write to understand myself truthfully. Songwriting’s always been sort of therapy for me. It allows me to say what I’m scared to say in a safe space. And to talk to myself, try to understand things. It’s always been a way of processing my feelings. I’m writing letters to myself, and I’m hoping that someone else hears it and, even if they feel something completely different than what I felt, can take something away from it.