Name: J.E. Sunde
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer
Nationality: American
Current release: J.E. Sunde's ALICE, GLORIA AND JON is out June 16th 2023 via Vietnam Records.
Recommendations: Music: Gold by Alabaster DePlume - I’ve never heard a record like this before. Make sure to listen to it with headphones.
Painting: George Tooker. He is an American painter who worked in egg tempera. His paintings are amazing.

[Read our  Alabaster DePlume interview]

If you enjoyed this J.E. Sunde interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

That’s an amazing thing to have the experience of a sort of synesthesia when you listen.

The only experience that I’ve had which is similar to that is when I’m writing lyrics. Sometimes I will write something and the words feel amazing to say and sing. They can almost feel like a substance in my mouth. It’s a very strange sensation.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

My earliest experiences with music were singing with my family.

Both of my parents are musical and so they had my two brothers and I singing together in the house and at church. My parents grew up influenced by the folk movement so my Dad played guitar and my Mom played guitar and piano. So there were instruments in the house. I eventually started playing guitar and writing songs at 12 years old.

After going to university to study music with a vocal emphasis, I’ve come to believe that knowing more about music (technique, theory, etc…) primarily helps you actualize you ideas faster but isn’t necessary. The creative impulse and experience will eventually give you the capacity to create whatever you can imagine.

I think the inbuilt creativity that has been there from the beginning, grounded in a certain amount of naïveté from my earliest love of music, is a compliment to the experience that has come since then and has opened my mind up to more and more possibilities musically.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

At 13-16 I was totally obsessed with songwriters and the esthetics of rock and role culture. I was (and still am) a pretty square kid, but I was totally fascinated by the outsider, bohemian sensibility that I perceived in the musicians I loved. I thought they were enormously cool.

I still admire the perspective of the outside observer in songs but I’ve come to value authenticity and generosity in music more and being cool less.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

In college I started arranging my own songs for the first time. It happened when I got Garageband for the first time and suddenly had an easy way to record and overdub. It transformed my music creating and led me to work on composing around the songs I write.

The other tool that comes to mind is my nylon string acoustic guitar that my Uncle Mark built. The year after I graduated from University, I experienced terrible writer’s block. Part of what brought me out of it was starting to write on this guitar. It just seemed to ask for different kinds of songs than I’d been writing previously and it opened me back up.

It's been the primary instrument I write on ever since.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

When I am writing music it is the most connected and present that I feel in life. That sense of connection and flow is very motivating.

And out of that comes an understanding of myself through the processing of my confusion and experience as a human being. I’ve realized over the years that some of the key ideas in my music are: that we are not alone in our struggles and confusions, that there is hope, that this hope and connectedness is and aspect of a spiritual reality that is part of who we are undergirds our existence.

I seem to write about that stuff with some frequency.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

That’s interesting. I haven’t thought much about how I listen to my own records. I guess I do try to hear the piece as a whole. To not get distracted by the individual instruments or performances. If It all feels connected I take that to mean that we got to where we want to be with it. I’ve also realized that I can never fully experience my own records like I experience other people's records that I love. In that sense I will never have a fully accurate experience of the thing I’ve made.

I’m not sure how I would define my personal sound. Some things that I value and tend to explore are lyric and melody forward compositions, a combination of acoustic and synthetic instruments and creating energy without being loud. Also, vocal harmonies. Some combination of these things makes up my personal sound.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I love the sound of wind and thunderstorms. I can’t think of a particular experience that stands out, but throughout my life I’ve always loved the sound and experience of windy days and thunderstorms.

Also the sounds of bird calls. Bird calls always feel very musical.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

My temperament seems to prefer mellower / quieter music but I also find that I can really connect with harder and louder music even if I don’t listen to it as often.

Music that elicits and enhances calm in me is very comforting but the energy of loud or maximalist music can feel like joy.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I love songwriting in its most traditional forms but I also love more free and avant-garde explorations of music and form.

I think my favorite approach is when a piece is grounded in a recognizable form but then introduces avant-garde touches that subvert the listeners' expectations in some way. I attempt to do that in the songs I write.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

There is a song on my new album called “You Don’t Wanna Leave It alone.” It often happens, and did for this song, that the initial idea, often a verse and a chorus, arrives in a rush all at once. I then keep singing those parts over and over again, trying to develop the idea further.



The development of the song after that initial rush is often much slower and more difficult. I’m trying to understand what the song is saying and trying to write more verses that feel as interesting as the initial verse / chorus. That can be very hard to do.

If I’m really stuck I will often start trying to arrange the instrumentation around the lyrics and melody that I have, to see if that inspires further lyrical development. If the energy isn’t there after a while I will just put the song down and move on to something else. But I’ll keep coming back periodically to see if there is movement.

For “You Don’t Wanna Leave It Alone,” I think I had the initial verse and the chorus for 5 years before the arrangement finally came together and I was able to write the second verse and finish the song. That is longer than it usually takes but that general flow to the creative process is pretty common for me.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

I can’t say that I do.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I think it does reflect some of the ways that I try to live my life. It requires empathy and deep sense of listening in your pursuit of understanding yourself and the people around you. I try and live with that posture in my life outside of music. It has also helped me to become more vulnerable in public when I perform and that has cultivated a willingness to be more vulnerable generally.

I think all art is articulation. It is a distilled expression of some aspect of what it is to be human and in that way I think has a lot to teach us about life and how to live it.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I think making music just brings together so many different things in this alchemical sort of way. It can combine the mundane and the transcendent and everything in between in a way that I do think is unique because it can function on all these different levels (lyric, melody, timbre, instrumentation, relationship to the cultural moment).

I think there’s probably more going on in our mundane tasks as well but with music it is more plainly evident and something you can create.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

The most recent song that comes to mind is “When I Get to Heaven” by John Prine off of his last record The Tree of Forgiveness.

The song is so humble and funny and strange but also so beautiful and heartfelt without being melodramatic. When he says “I wanna see all my mama's sisters ‘cause that’s where all the love starts” it makes me tear up every time.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I hope that the current expectation that musicians are supposed to be filmmakers and social media content producers ends.