INTERVIEW: Indie Folk from Burn The Louvre

Hamilton-based indie duo Burn The Louvre has released their debut album Silhouettes, a record that showcases their songwriting talent and musicianship prowess in dazzling style. The album’s closing track, “Honolulu,” is a bright indie folk tune that delivers a reflective and catchy acoustic rock sound. The song features light guitar and ukulele tones with blissful melodic leads that make for a truly enjoyable listen.

Jordan Speare, the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist, started working on Silhouettes years before he met guitarist Sean Cooper. He recorded as a solo artist, enlisting the help of friend Andrew Billone of Silvertone Hills to play lead guitar and bass on all 11 tracks on the LP. He also invited Stephanie Deshane to sing with him on “Alison,” a fun duet with charming back and forth. After Speare and Cooper met, they re-imagined Burn The Louvre as a duo.

The sombre ukulele-powered “Honolulu” closes out Silhouettes on a high note. The track showcases the duo’s songwriting skills as they take the listener on a journey through their emotions. The light guitar and ukulele arrangement creates an airy and light atmosphere, evoking a sense of calmness and serenity.

Speare’s vocals are sincere and heartfelt, delivering the lyrics with the right amount of emotion. The song’s composition is simple yet effective. The ukulele provides a gentle and soothing rhythm, while the light guitar adds depth and texture to the melody. The melodic leads bring a sense of hope and optimism, creating a reflective and ultimately uplifting atmosphere.

Overall, Burn The Louvre’s “Honolulu” is an elegant and poignant indie tune that highlights the band’s songwriting ability and performance panache. The song’s stripped back structure and dynamic melodies make it an instantly memorable listen and with Silhouettes, the duo has successfully delivered an impressive debut album, revealing their ability to create meaningful and captivating music.

We caught up with Burn The Louvre’s very own Jordan Speare to find out more about the project’s journey so far, their new single “Honolulu” and what they’ve got lined up for the future. Check out our interview with Jordan Speare below.

Hey Burn The Louvre, how’s things?

Hey not bad Plastic Mag, thanks for having me!

What was your biggest highlight in 2022 as an artist?

Well, releasing our debut LP Silhouettes as 11 separate singles over the course of 11 months was a massive amount of work. Especially considering I was doing all of this by myself. So I didn’t really get the chance to take anything in, but playing some gigs again after some time away and sharing the stage with some artists we really admire is always its own highlight for sure.

Furthermore, the radio play we’ve received all over the world has been extremely encouraging as are all of the positive reviews and features we’ve received because of the album (thanks again Plastic Mag;) to go with all of the playlists we’ve been included on and whatnot. Seeing “Lost With You” surpass 10,000 streams on Spotify was nice. It’s the first time we’ve ever had a song crack 10k, so that’s something tangible I can brag about, right? [laughs]

So all of those small victories were great, but I think the one that I am most proud of is the fact that Belgium-based blog TURN UP THE VOLUME named our song “Dumb” one of their Top 30 Tracks Of 2022. They were very nice to us last year [laughs]. I’ve never made one of those year end lists before, so it was just a huge honour to have them recognize our little indie band alongside some much bigger names.

How did the Burn The Louvre project start?

So I actually started out playing the drums in a bunch of really bad high school and college bands until I decided I wanted to start my own project and play my own songs; so when I was 20 years old, I took up the guitar and started Burn The Louvre with my brother Dylan. We released 2 EPs together from 2014 – 2017 until he decided to leave the band to pursue other interests.

Shortly after my brother left the band, I started recording these new songs that would become Silhouettes with producer Mickey Ellsworth. I got some help from my friend Andrew Billone of indie rock band Silvertone Hills (look them up!) and fellow singer/songwriter Stephanie Deshane (who sang with me on our song “Alison”). After Mickey & I finished recording the album, I met my current guitar player Sean Cooper around the end of 2018. He was answering an online “Musicians Wanted” ad on Kijiji (Canada’s online buy & sell) that I had forgotten to take down [laughs]. We got together for a beer, hit it off and then got together to jam the following week. We’ve been getting together an average of once a week ever since.

Fast forward about 4 years later and here we are with that new album we just released called Silhouettes.

How did you first get into making your own music?

I guess the short answer to that question is Led Zeppelin. I just thought they were the coolest thing ever when I turned 12 and started going through my Mum & Dad’s record collection. My Mum was a big Zeppelin fan, so I took up the drums at age 12 because I wanted to learn how to play like John Bonham.

So as I mentioned earlier, I played drums in a bunch of really mediocre high school & college bands. I didn’t take up the guitar until I was 20 years old and sick of playing the drums. So, I kind of taught myself and then took some guitar lessons here and there (both in person & online) until I was finally “good enough” (what does that mean, right?) to start recording and working on performing these songs that I had written. I formed Burn The Louvre with my brother back in 2010/2011.

Obviously this band has changed a LOT since then. Please refer to Question #10 for Burn The Louvre’s full written history [laughs].

Which artist first made a lasting impression on you?

In line with my previous answer, the artists who made the earliest impression on me were artists that my parents loved. My Mum & Dad both have a huge record collection and there was always music playing in the house when I was growing up.

My Dad is the biggest Beatles fan ever. He’s got a copy of everything they’ve ever done and just loads of books and Beatles memorabilia. So if I had to pick one artist that had the earliest lasting impression on me, hands down it would be The Beatles. Their songwriting, their approach to music and the way they made records was just a massive influence on me personally as both a musician and a songwriter.

What do you love about your local music scene in Hamilton?

Well, first and foremost, I love how supportive it is. I’m not cool or prominent enough in the Hamilton music scene to know all of the faces [laughs], but I do know quite a few and the vast majority of those I do know are just some of the most passionate, hardest working people you’ll ever meet.

We’ve opened for a lot of local artists and bands that I really admire and each one has always treated me as a friend regardless of how well I knew them or not. I know a lot of music friends who play on each other’s records, it’s not uncommon here to see musicians play in multiple bands; it’s just a very friendly community full of open-minded people who are always willing to help.

Hamilton, Ontario really is a special place to be an artist (of any discipline).

Which artists do you draw the most inspiration from today?

So I basically have 3 main lanes when it comes to music and the 1st lane is definitely dominated by female singer/songwriters and female-fronted bands. I’ve always held such an affinity for women in music and in my humble opinion, they’re better at it (find me on Twitter @burnthelouvre if you want to debate this).

Some of my favourites are: Lana Del Rey, Phoebe Bridgers, Snail Mail, Men I Trust, Caroline Rose, Alexandra Savior, Emily Haines & Metric, Hayley Williams & Paramore, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tennis, Alvvays, boygenius, Bully and The Beaches.

The 2nd lane would be reserved for hardcore punk bands and anything in that arena: Single Mothers, PUP, White Lung, Mannequin Pussy, Alexisonfire, Protest The Hero, The Dirty Nil etc.

The 3rd lane is all about great hip-hop with something to say. Some of my favourites are: Mos Def & Black Star, Run The Jewels, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Childish Gambino, The Fugees, The Roots, k-os etc.

How else do you find inspiration for your music?

That’s a really great question and unfortunately I don’t have a good answer for it [laughs]. I suppose the short answer here is: “I don’t.” I never go looking for inspiration, I feel like it finds me when it needs to.

Not to drop a music cliché in here, but it really does vary from song to song. I’ve had some songs where I’ve had the music and the chord progressions written and ready to go, but struggled with the lyrics until something happened and inspiration hit.

Then there’d be some cases where I’d get the lyrics written very quickly and already have the melody in my head and I’d just have to try to transcribe that on the guitar afterwards. Every song is a little different for sure. Sometimes I’ll basically finish a song in under an hour and sometimes I’ll leave it for months and then come back to it and finish it off later. Sometimes it’s literally just one line I’ll get stuck on, so I set it aside for later.

Inspiration can be tricky for sure, but the one thing I will never do is rush a song or force something that isn’t there. I’ve always operated as more of a lone wolf in regards to collaboration. Even when my brother was in the band, we would each have our own songs written and we would basically just edit each other’s work. If he were stuck on a line here or there or maybe he’d tell me what he’d want me to play on the guitar etc. – Sean and I operate much the same way. He has his songs, I have mine and we try to edit each other’s work and compliment it as best we can. It’s a system that’s worked great for me my whole life and Sean seems to enjoy working that way as well, so we’ve definitely found our formula.

What would you say is the perfect setting for listeners to enjoy your sound?

I’m a little biased here because I just really don’t like gigging in the fall/winter. It’s almost not worth doing so when you live in Canada. People don’t like going out to shows during the colder months…so I strongly prefer playing in the spring/summer.

Any outdoor patio gigs or small outdoor festivals are easily my favourite kind of gigs to play, so I would say that would definitely be the best setting for our music. This new album especially has a lot of indie pop/indie folk style tracks that really work well for outdoor festivals. Hopefully we’ll get to play a couple more of those kinds of gigs for Summer 2023.

Morale of the story: listen to Burn The Louvre outside on a nice sunny day [laughs].

How has your sound evolved since you started out?

Evolution and Burn The Louvre have gone hand in hand over the past 5+ years or so [laughs]. So as I mentioned earlier, I started Burn The Louvre as an indie rock band with my brother Dylan. He had his songs, I had mine so we decided to combine our ideas, edit each other’s work and do this properly. We went through a few different bandmates during the 5 years we were active and released 2 EPs together: Post-Romance EP in 2014 and We’ll Be Just Fine in 2017. However, shortly after we released that 2nd EP We’ll Be Just Fine, my brother decided that he didn’t want to do this anymore. So that was difficult for sure. I basically had to start all over again from scratch.

I went through another line-up change that didn’t go well, so I found myself all alone at 28 years old for the first time in my life. I really didn’t know how to be a “solo artist”, but I had these 11 songs all finished and ready to go that would end up becoming Silhouettes, I knew I had to record them. However, because I was recording the majority of this record myself, it kind of became more stripped down & a little more acoustic than I initially planned for and it ended up working out great. I definitely drew inspiration from one of my favourite albums: The Majestic Majesty by Portugal. The Man, which is basically the acoustic/stripped down version of their record The Satanic Satanist.

Having said all of that, Silhouettes wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a few excellent people. My friend Andrew Billone of indie rock band Silvertone Hills (have you looked them up, yet??) played lead guitar and bass for me on all 11 songs on the album and I also asked my friend & fellow singer/songwriter Stephanie Deshane if she would sing with me on “Alison”. My friend Mickey Ellsworth recorded, mixed, mastered & produced the entire record himself and was instrumental in the sound and the finished product. I learned so much from Mickey.

It was around that time when I finally met my current guitar player/creative partner Sean Cooper and the band’s sound changed yet again.

I was extremely impressed with the way Sean stepped in immediately and took these songs that were already finished and completely made them his own. These new songs definitely sound different when we play them live compared to how they were recorded, which makes sense as we had 2 different guitarists’ interpretations of these. I absolutely love what Andrew did with these songs on the recordings, but again, I was just extremely impressed with the way Sean changed up the lead guitar parts on all 11 of them, exploring different nuances but still maintaining the vibe of each song. He’s given this undeniable stability and a bit of swagger, which is 100% him. I’m extremely hopeful for the future of Burn The Louvre and very excited to start recording our new music Sean & I have been working on together.

How did you find making your recent single “Honolulu”?

Okay, so “Honolulu” is a song I wrote when I was 24 for my first girlfriend Gillian for her birthday. We’d always joked about running away to Honolulu one day, so I wrote this song about the idea of doing just that. To be honest, I really wasn’t the best boyfriend, but I did some things right and this song was definitely one of them. After opening the album with “Silhouettes”, which is a song about the aftermath of that relationship from my perspective, I felt it was fitting to close the album with “Honolulu”, a song about when times were great.

Before we went into the studio to record, I knew that I wanted to play that one on the ukulele. I mean, the song’s called “Honolulu”, it felt fitting, right? So while I actually wrote this song on the acoustic guitar, I transcribed it on the ukulele and learned to play it on there as well so I could record it on the uke with electric guitars in the background once the tempo kicks up halfway through the song. While the vocals and the story really drive this song, I feel that the way the ukulele and the bass guitar compliment each other gave “Honolulu” the atmosphere I was going for.

Mickey was instrumental in the sound here (as he was for the entire record) and I could not be happier with the way this one turned out.

What message did you want to get across with this song?

Obviously “Honolulu” is a pretty personal song. I wrote it for my ex-girlfriend, so this song is really her’s more than it is mine. I think I already explained it, but I called the song “Honolulu” because we would always joke about running away to Hawaii and getting away from the stress of living in the busiest part of Canada. I mean, who doesn’t dream of running away to a tropical paradise, right?

“Honolulu” is meant to capture the earliest stages of a relationship. I took it all the way back to the first night we met with this song and then just tried to tell our story in as beautiful a way as possible. I suppose the message I’d like to get across with this song is that you don’t know how long you have somebody for. No one knows what tomorrow brings. So just try to cherish that person for as long as you have them for.

What artist have you been listening to most recently?

Well, keeping in line with my previous answer: a lot of female singer/songwriters [laughs] – what can I say, I like my girls. I mean there have been so many great artists that I love who just recently released new albums that live in my “Recently Played”. Lana Del Rey, Paramore, Tennis, Tanukichan, boygenius – just to name a few…but if I had to pick 1 artist who’s been at the top of my rotation lately, hands down it would be Men I Trust.

I’ve listened to them before, but just recently I really started going through their entire discography and really taking it in. I’m a huge fan of what they’re doing, mixing disco with shoegaze. Their sound is just so unique. I feel like it would be really hard to hate their music. Just another incredible female-fronted band; can you see the pattern here?

What’s the main thing you want people to get out of listening to your music?

I just hope they don’t hate it [laughs]. But seriously, I really just hope listeners like what they hear and appreciate what I’m going for, you know? I’ve never been one of those artists who gets off on people connecting to my music or whatever. If you can relate to it, great. If you can’t, that’s great too. Not everyone needs to connect with everything, right?

As long as listeners like what we’re doing musically and appreciate the themes we’re trying to present within the music, then I think Sean & I have successfully done our jobs.

What’s been your favourite live show so far?

Such great questions Plastic Mag! So this is a tough one… my favourite show that we’ve played so far would probably be this impromptu outdoor gig that we put together with some friends of ours on the small beach at Bayfront Park in Hamilton 2 summers ago. It was just a really nice excuse to have a bunch of friends hangout together on the beach as an ‘End Of Summer Bash’ (that’s how we billed it, anyways).

As an added bonus, we had a bunch of passersby that just happened to be at the park walking their dogs, roller blading, biking etc. – a lot of them stopped and sat down to take in some of the show once they saw all the people with acoustic guitars setting up.

So that one was a lot of fun. I really do prefer unique smaller gigs as opposed to bigger club gigs; and as I mentioned earlier, outdoor shows in the summer will always have my heart.

My favourite live show I’ve been to… this one is extremely tough [laughs]… so I’ll tell you this, my 3 favourite shows I went to last year were The Arkells at Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, Rage Against The Machine & Run The Jewels at FirstOntario Centre in Hamilton and Metric w/ Interpol & Spoon at The Budweiser Stage in Toronto. 2022 was a really great summer of concerts for me [laughs].

Who would be 3 artists to headline your dream festival? And where would it be?

Another excellent question! I love this one. My favourite music festival of all-time is Osheaga in Montreal, it’s just such a cool city. So we’ll throw Louvre-a-Palooza in Montreal too as a nod to Osheaga.

As far as the headliners go… in the spirit of the 3 main genres I listen to, I’ll pick one of my favourite artists from each genre to headline each separate day:

Day #1: Single Mothers – they are honestly one of my favourite bands of all-time (I’m finally seeing them later this year, can’t wait for that) and I just think it would be so much fun to see them headline a major festival. They’re one of those bands that garner a ton of respect in the punk community and they’re pretty popular(ish) in Canada, but I feel they’ve never gotten the international recognition that they deserve. Headlining Day #1 of Jordan Speare’s Louvre-a-Palooza should fix that.

Day #2: Kendrick Lamar – It is really hard for me not to pick Mos Def just because he’s one of my all-time favourites and seeing as I already saw Run The Jewels last year, I’m going to go with Kendrick to headline Day #2 of Louvre-a-Palooza. I’ve never seen him in concert before and with all the excellent things I’ve read about his Big Steppers Tour, I would just love to experience it for myself.

Day #3: Lana Del Rey – This one’s a no-brainer for me. Lana’s my absolute favourite. I actually saw her at Osheaga back in 2016 and she was just incredible. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to see her again ever since. So for my own selfish reasons [laughs] and for the mere fact that she’s fucking Lana Del Rey, I can think of no better person to close out Day #3 of Louvre-a-Palooza in Montreal.

Do you have any advice for a new artist wanting to follow your footsteps?

Save yourself years of headaches and take up a trade instead [laughs]. Clearly I’m not the right person to be giving advice on this, so instead I will paraphrase a quote I read from an interview with The Guru himself, the great Rick Rubin, that I found extremely encouraging:

“Don’t listen to anyone else and make the things that you love, whatever it is. Be the audience. Make art for yourself. You can’t make art for someone else in mind. I don’t think it would be very good if you did.”

Rick Rubin’s interviews are just a wealth of information. I highly recommend any musician looking for some advice or inspiration to go to YouTube and listen to him speak.

Finally, what do you have lined up for the rest of 2023?

Considering the massive amount of work that I put into this album, after I’m finally finished with all of the promotional things (we’re very close now), I am taking a long break from my laptop and social media. Pitching and promoting 11 songs all by myself over the course of this past year has just completely drained my mental health. I need a break from the internet in 2023 [laughs].

As far as the future of Burn The Louvre is concerned, I am sitting on at least 10-15 songs that I think are more than good enough to record and produce. Sean has at least 5 more songs of his own which we want to get in and record sometime soon as well. I mean, right there we already have another couple EPs worth of material, basically. So as of right now, the goal is to push this as far as it will go and make sure I get all of the songs we are currently sitting on recorded & released within the next 3+ years or so. So 2023 will be a lot of demoing, practicing and trying to bring these new songs to life. Hopefully we can get into the studio by the end of 2023 to at least get started on recording some of this new material.

Also gigs, we’re hoping to be playing a bunch more gigs later this year (once Canada finally starts to warm up again).

Please sign up for our mailing list if you want to stay up to date on any gigs we have lined up and get a sneak peek of our new songs early: https://www.burnthelouvre.com/contact

Listen to Honolulu below