Conversation with One Last Job about "Been Here Ever Since"

Thank you so much for joining us today, One Last Job. Can you share with us a bit about your journey in the music industry and how you got started as an artist?

Happy to be here! So I was a suburbs kid from Dallas, TX, and in high school my friends and I were really into folk/indie music. Bon Iver, Bright Eyes, Belle & Sebastian, etc. And then when one of my best friends started learning the guitar and writing songs, I decided to learn along with him. That was when I was 15, and since then I’ve been in three projects: Junior College (songs from when I was 16-17), Cheap Haircuts (where I played bass and wrote a few songs in college), and now One Last Job (which I started after college with the guitarist from Cheap Haircuts).

Your stage name, “One Last Job,” is intriguing. Is there a story or significance behind the choice of this name?

It’s kind of a reminder not to take things for granted. So while I was in my previous band in college, Cheap Haircuts, we played tons of shows and hung out all the time—generally, it was just a blast. But then as school came to an end, I was moving from Texas to Seattle for work, and I had this moment of fear that after this, “life might happen” and I might not get the chance to make music again. But then in Seattle I did keep writing and sending demos to my old bandmate Will, and during lockdowns in 2020 we realized we might be able to make it work recording a new album ourselves, remotely. And it kinda felt like that moment in a heist movie when you get the band back together after everyone was out of the game—”one last job!” So the name is partially a fun nod to the excitement of that moment and also a general reminder to make the most of every opportunity/”job” since you can’t always assume you’ll get another one.

How would you describe your personal and musical growth since you first entered the industry?

I think the main musical development compared to previous projects has come from the DIY element of the recording process for OLJ. With both Junior College and Cheap Haircuts we were recording mostly physical instruments in a professional studio—so your range of sounds is limited both by what instruments you own / can play and also by the time you’ve paid for. But both One Last Job albums have been recorded from laptops in home studios. While that started as a challenge in having to learn the software and the process ourselves, once you’re up and running it gives you much more creative freedom being able to experiment with digital instruments and having essentially unlimited time to revisit and revise what you’ve done. So compared to the previous projects, OLJ has more diversity of sounds—synths/keys, brass, woodwinds, etc.—and thus, potentially, a greater or at least different sonic-emotional range.

Tell us about the creative process behind your latest album, “Been Here Ever Since.” What themes or messages were you aiming to convey?

The album is basically about gratitude or, more specifically, a dialogue between gratitude and ambition. I start from a kind of standard “Western” worldview assuming individuality and autonomy, and over the course of the album that perspective undergoes a kind of transformation to one that gives up some of that need for control.

Can you highlight some standout tracks on “Been Here Ever Since” and share the stories behind them?

Two of the more interesting songs conceptually are the opening and closing tracks, “Been Here Ever Since, Pt. One” and “[same] Pt. Two,” and both tracks are themselves mostly just stories told over very stripped-down arrangements. The story in “Pt. One” is the basis for the album, and when it first came out a bunch of friends and family called me like, “Oh this story!” since I’ve been telling it for years as like my “here’s what I’ve been worrying about” mainstay haha. And then when I wrote “Pt. Two” I had been sitting on the rest of the songs for about three months, knowing that I needed a conclusion but drawing a blank. Then one day I take an Uber back from work, and on the way up to my hotel room it hits me like, “Wait! That was it!” and I frantically scribble down a bunch of details about the conversation so I could write the song when I got home to Austin.

Are there any challenges you faced during the production of the album, and how did you overcome them?

The main challenge was that I was travelling pretty much every week from my home in Austin, TX to Las Vegas, NV for work, so recording time came in short bursts. The strategy to deal with that was having as clear a plan as possible for what I needed to do next so that I could make the most of my Saturdays (which were the best days for tracking physical instruments) and then preparing accordingly. All kinds of little things can throw you off—you realize you need a 9V battery for the acoustic-electric guitar, you haven’t played bass in months so your hand gets tired immediately, etc.—so trying to identify as many of those things in advance and dealing with them during the week so they didn’t eat into prime recording time was a significant logistical effort.

Can you share any interesting anecdotes or behind-the-scenes moments from the recording or production of “Been Here Ever Since”?

My favorite story is probably the album artwork. In between travelling for work, I also took the opportunity of being on the road to do lots of sightseeing around the US last year—national parks, northern lights in Alaska, leaf-peeping road trip around the Northeast, etc. And for months of recording I had been wondering what to do for the album artwork—I had assumed I was going to use an illustrator like for the last album—but getting no ideas. Then one weekend in October I’m trying to get recording wrapped up before sending stems to the audio engineer, and I also want to send him some kind of placeholder for album artwork. I remember that the CVS by me did photo prints, so I just print out some photos from places I’ve been over the last year and put together the artwork in a few minutes with craft supplies they had at the store. I originally didn’t intend for that to be the final artwork, but the next day I realized that it actually works quite well conceptually—there’s no place where I feel more grateful than in nature, so for an album about gratitude I can’t think of a better visual complement for that theme.

How do you balance staying true to your artistic vision while also adapting to the changing trends in the music industry?

If a song you love uses a technique that resonates with you, go ahead and emulate/adapt it, however popular or unpopular the technique may be at the time. But it should always come back to what moves you as the artist.

Can you share your thoughts on the importance of authenticity in the music industry and how it’s reflected in your work?

I mean, authenticity is what makes it art as opposed to something else like pure entertainment. Both have valid purposes—I love fun popcorn movies, sometimes—but to the degree that your pursuit is artistic you have to be saying something real and vulnerable. I saw an interview recently where Rick Rubin (the music producer) said he used to advise his artists to treat music like a ‘diary entry’, and that’s almost literally how I’ve always treated music. It’s frequently a mechanism I’m using to resolve questions I’ve been struggling with, and often the writing of a lyric is the moment I’m pushing my thoughts forward and documenting a resolution as I’m coming to it. So for the listener we’re basically going on that journey together in near-real-time, and hopefully that resonates.

Looking ahead, do you have any specific goals or aspirations for your career or upcoming projects?