Photocredit: Dennis Morton
1. Thank you very much for your time! Before we introduce your new release to our readers – what kind of drink would you recommend to sip on while they listen to your new music?
My wife’s cousin is married to a guy named Tue, who lives out in the countryside in Denmark. He had a wine business for a while, but now he’s making his own cider, from his own apples and pears. Some of the ciders he makes are kind of easy to drink, and cool and clean. Others are quite wild, full of strange flavors and surprising combinations. I’d recommend one of his ciders if you can get your hands on it.
2. Please give us an update about – new single, new album, tour dates, new videos?
The most recent single is called Flowers for David. It is written for a friend of mine who passed away a couple of years ago. He and I met via our shared love for music and he sang in the first band I ever played in. The track is built around 4 guitar parts that interweave and connect with each other in different ways, as well as viola, cello, clarinet, and synths that were added by the people in the band.
The new album is called The Animal. It’s the first Blue Lake album made in collaboration with the people in the band (Carolyn Goodwin / bass clarinet, Oliver Laumann / drums, Tomo Jacobson / double bass, Pauline Hogstrand / viola, along with Nicold Hogstrand on cello and Johan Carøe playing synth and cello on one track). The other Blue Lake records were made solo, so it was an exciting transformation to work with the band’s sound, and to record in a studio, after making the other albums in my home recording space. We toured a lot in 2024, and started to record the album in autumn of that year, so the process really took advantage of the connections we’d made to each other during that touring process.
We’re doing some release concerts at record stores in the UK and Denmark, and then doing some touring in spring 2026 in the UK and the EU.
3. We live in times of many conspiracy theories. Which, harmless, theory would you wish were true? (For example Dinos living inside Earth or E.T. living in a home in California)
My parents live in Oregon, and there’s a lot of semi-serious interest there in finding a sasquatch living somewhere in the woods. I would love it if we could find some other kind of hominid / human-like creature living among us.
4. What fashion style or brand would best describe your music?
I make some of my own instruments, so I’d say: a hand-dyed t-shirt, made with plant dyes.
5. Tell us more about your songs – Topics? Message?
The songs are instrumental, but I think of them as “songs” – they are very reflective of the emotions and experiences that I’m having during the course of writing and recording the music. I spend a lot of time in both Denmark and Sweden out in nature, on the beach or in the woods. These places are important for me for many reasons, and they’re also complicated. The forest in Sweden is often logged by the local farmer. Our local wilderness area in Copenhagen is actually an old industrial dump. So on this record, I think my inspiration was a lot to do with thinking about nature as it exists in this strange dialogue with human activity, where there are places that are beautiful but have a complicated history.
6. Beside music, do you have any special talents?
I am pretty good at finding mushrooms in the forest.
7. Name 5 things we all should know about you as an artist?
1. I grew up in Dallas, TX, where I saw my first concert: Beastie Boys / Rollins Band / Cypress Hill.
2. I play guitar, and a self-designed string instrument that is a bit like a zither, which has 36 strings.
3. For many years I made visual art, mostly films and drawings
4. When I was in college in Vermont, I worked as a concert booker for the college radio station, WRMC FM.
5. I would say I’m equally influenced by American music, and by the music that I experience here in Denmark and Scandinavia.
8. The road so far…. who or what was your biggest support?
I guess a sort of obvious one would be the label that I work with, Tonal Union. Adam, who runs the label, has been a huge support these past couple of years and really works to make things possible for the music.
I’d say before that, when I was self-distributing the earlier Blue Lake records, the biggest support was a handful of record stores: World of Echo in London, All Night Flight in Manchester, Ergot in New York, among others. Those places would really introduce the records to people, and that was incredibly important to me at that time.
9. A question you’d like to answer, but never been asked in an interview before? + Answer pls
Q: What’s your favorite classic hip-hop track?
A: Scenario, by A Tribe Called Quest
Instagram: @the_bluelake