Q&A: With Energy and Rejuvenation, Luke Wild Talks Quarantine, Collaboration & ‘Shoebox’
ARTIST, PRODUCER, AND MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST — Luke Wild is spending the end of the year getting more rest. “I had a really hard time sleeping this year, and a hard time being calm,” Wild tells Luna, from an undisclosed location in New York. “These past three or four months I’ve been doing a lot better; operating in my own space. That’s kind of why I came out to New York … just to get away, record, and reflect on [my] life.”
A period of rest and relaxation is well overdue. Wild currently lives in Los Angeles, about 2,500 miles away from his hometown of Tampa, Florida. After spending his adolescence as both a skate kid and a gospel band guitarist, he eventually began producing for artists in music hotspots like Atlanta and Memphis. With about a decade of experience under his belt, Wild eventually released his well-received EP Sunburn in 2020. Instead of taking a day off, a tremulous period of COVID and quarantine pushed Wild into productive exhaustion. As days blended together and tasks turned repetitive, the artist’s frustration and burnout began to build up. Finally, Wild felt the need to expel this frustration out of his system.
The result is the energetic and honest six-track EP, Shoebox, released in October of this year. With his instant-hit melodies and heart on his sleeve, Wild accomplishes feats that many artists take years to reach. Singles like “New Miss America” and “Slow Motion” confess struggles of creative drought and fame-induced illusions and turn them into cathartic tunes that his listeners can dance and sing to. Wild’s collaborations with Deb Never and Dora Jar elevate his sound to heights past his previous EP, showing the amount of growth he experienced in a one-year gap. His diverse musical tastes develop into a sound that dips its fingers into rock, pop, electronic, and indie. As Wild himself says, “You just have to listen to it.”
Read Luke Wild’s conversation with Luna about music, inspiration, and growing up below.
LUNA: If you were to describe the genre or sound of your music, what would you say?
WILD: First, I would just ask someone to just listen [to it], you know, because I feel like however I describe myself, I sound like a goober no matter what. But I’d say it’s a good mix of nostalgia and high energy … mixed with some Britpop elements.
LUNA: You grew up in Florida and bounced around to Memphis, Atlanta, and then moved to LA. Was there any city in particular that had an effect or influence on you?
WILD: I think Atlanta was the most important city that I lived in. At the time that I lived there, I was working with a group of people that were so free, artistically and musically. It really showed me that you should just make what you want. And if you love it, and if it's pure, it'll work. Bringing that attitude to LA, I think it's helped me a lot, whether I'm writing for myself or helping other people. I just like doing music. I don't really like doing anything else. I like creating, and I was, for the first time in my life, with a group of people that all kind of had the same attitude.
LUNA: Who or what led you to form your sound?
WILD: A huge moment was [when] one of my managers, Danny Parra … we were listening to music in the car, and I had just moved to LA. We listened to this Anderson Packer record called Ventura in the car one day, and he basically turned around and he was like, “You know, you can make music this good.” And he wasn't talking about that particular genre, but he was just saying quality wise, you know? I had been trying really hard, but that moment really inspired me to — when I make music now — try to make it sound almost better than my favorite artists. That was a real wake-up call for me. That, and a combination of finding myself as a person a little bit more; being really confident in your identity.
LUNA: Did you learn more about yourself while writing songs for the new EP?
WILD: Yeah, I think so. The room that I live in in LA is very small. Creatively, I felt really constrained because of COVID, and I was literally just waking up and going into a small room recording all day, every day. In some ways, I felt like I grew a lot in that time. When LA opened up a little bit, I started opening up myself to working with a lot of other producers. As opposed to the first [EP], the first one was primarily me with the help of like one or two other producers. And this EP, even though at the end of the day I had my hand in everything, it was much more collaborative. I feel like that pushed me into getting into the room with people that think differently and come at creating from a different perspective.
LUNA: What’s your favorite track on Shoebox?
WILD: I think, right now, probably “Pack a Punch,” because the outro is so, so pretty with Dora Jar. And that song came in such a funny way.
LUNA: Was the outro something you and Dora Jar came up with together?
WILD: I had a different outro for the song. The outro originally went into sort of this lo-fi hip hop, and I was like, “Dude, this is so weirdly sad. We should make a really beautiful, sad outro.” So I did all the instruments in an hour and then Dora came in and we asked her to sing backgrounds on the track. At the end, I said, “If you feel inspired, just sing.” She sang that freestyle first take and that’s what we used. It was a really special moment in the studio.
LUNA: I think “Slow Motion” is a standout song for me. It’s so interesting to hear the phrase “running in slow motion” because it’s such a contrast with the first few verses.
WILD: Yeah. I think it was more exemplified in quarantine, but you know how sometimes you feel — whether it be personally or professionally — like you're doing the same thing every day and you're not progressing? That song really came out of pure frustration. Actually, originally the lyrics that Danny had written — the hook lyrics — were different. I was in the booth wearing sunglasses and I jokingly said, “I’ve been running in slow motion.” Danny was like, “Wait, I think that’s better.” It was how I was feeling so deeply inside of me.
LUNA: There’s another line in that song where you sing “carti on my speakers,” which is a Playboi Carti reference. What other artists were you listening to while writing the EP?
WILD: There’s an artist, Q, who I really like. He has a song called “Take Me Where Your Heart Is,” and I was listening to that song a lot. For the first time, I was listening to a lot of artists that [other] people love. During quarantine, I dove into Mac Demarco for the first time, Radiohead for the first time. It was really cool because I didn't go in with any preconceived notions, you know? I just listened. Baby Keem is a really, really big inspiration for me just [for] how cool he is.
Yung Lean has a side project called Jonatan Leandoer127 — it’s like a folk project. I was listening to a lot of that and a lot of Bon Iver, too.
LUNA: One of your friends, Deb Never, is a feature on “PIE.” How was it collaborating with her?
WILD: She’s like a pure artist, and I like working with people like that. As I’ve worked with more people, she’s one of my favorites. We come from a weirdly similar background. We both were working with other people, and when we first came to LA, some of those people didn't want us to go off and do our own thing. We really connected over that. We just became friends; she's literally like a sister to me. We spent a lot of time together on her record and “PIE.” We did it in Copenhagen, actually — we did it in like a day. It originally was going to go on her album, but she already had kind of like a funky, groovy song. She was kind enough and was like, “Yo, you should just use this for your project.”
LUNA: What do you want people to take away from your EP?
WILD: I would love for them to just truly enjoy it. Growing up, I didn't really feel confident in expressing myself emotionally, and then when I listened to artists that were my favorite, it helped me sort of process. I would love my music to be able to do that for people, whether it's in the background or at the forefront. And also, just have fun! It's not that serious, you know? I hope people can just listen to it and feel something. When you listen to something and it really, truly makes you feel something, that makes me so happy.
LUNA: What’s next for you?
WILD: I have a show on Dec. 18 with Teenage Priest in Santa Ana, California at the Observatory. I would say right now I'm working really, really hard on two things: I'm gonna have new music coming out at the top of the new year, [and] I'm working on a folk project that's almost done. I would love to be on the road, like, almost all of next year — that would be my goal.
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