A Conversation with David Lefkowitz
David Lefkowitz ’22 is one of the oddest people I have ever met, in the best way possible. I can confidently say this because I have had the privilege of knowing him since high school. He relentlessly pursues his ambitions — whether they be creating a disturbingly accurate puppet of our ninth grade teacher or writing unique music with complex instrumentals and lyrics. His latest album, “Greatest” “Hits,” perfectly encapsulates both his talent and wit.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ // COURTESY IMAGE
After catching up over kayaking at Lake Matoaka, we settled down for a distanced discussion in the middle of the abandoned amphitheater. Listening to Lefkowitz speak reminded me why I am so honoured to call him a friend. While I would never say it to his face, his passion and energy inspires me. The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Ellie Voorhis: What made you want to become a musician? Did you have a “Whoa I want to do that” moment or was it more of a gradual thing?
David Lefkowitz: So I started playing mandolin when I was 9, mostly because my dad read a newspaper article about a girl who was good at mandolin and was like “Yo, you should play mandolin.” I had never heard of it, but I started taking lessons from this guy at a local guitar store, and then when I was about to turn 13, I switched over to guitar cause my favourite part of mandolin was always the chords. So I switched over to my mom’s old guitar from college and I don’t know, I liked it. I liked that one a lot more pretty quickly. I didn’t sing at all, I just played the songs she gave me, didn’t listen to a lot of music, certainly didn’t care about writing music and then it was right before my high school freshman orientation. I was 13 years old and my mom and I were in a Lowe’s parking lot listening to a CD of The Best of Bob Dylan my guitar teacher gave me, and I was like “shoot if they let that guy sing, they’ll probably let me sing, right? I could do that.” And it sort of all spun out from there.
EV: Is that when you started writing music?
DL: I started trying when I was 13, I started finishing songs when I was 14. And even 14 through 17, I still have those notebooks, I wrote a lot of songs. Not a lot of them are still in the repertoire. There is one deep in the internet on SoundCloud somewhere, but I still play a lot of songs I wrote when I was 18 which is kind of a weird thing to think about.
EV: How do you think your music has evolved since then?
DL: I know a lot more about music now because I'm a music major. Even my guitar playing has changed a lot. Between when I released my first EP, which was right after right after graduation, and the end of my freshman year here, I developed some sort of a guitar style. Nothing groundbreaking, just there’s a way I play guitar that I think is very much like my thing now, just the way I fingerpick and that has developed over time too.
EV: I know there’s a divide between guitarists over the value of theory. How has being a music major impacted your music?
DL: I mean the stylistic thing was less a product of a music major-dom and more just my playing and what I was playing. But certainly, in songwriting, it’s played a big role. Just actually knowing how chords fit together more than just the basics has been really big. Understanding music has opened a sort of a new dimension to it. I’m glad I didn’t know it when I was teaching myself to write songs, but now that I’ve kind of got a handle on that, it’s fun taking that left turn, so I’m glad I waited. Well, I didn’t wait. I just couldn’t figure it out and now I have a professor. I’m glad I’m learning it now, but I’m glad I didn’t learn sooner at the same time.
EV: You’re also a religious studies major, does that impact your music too?
DL: Definitely the lyrics. I think there are definitely songs where you can hear it. I have quotes embedded in certain songs. I’ve gotten to read a lot of very cool stuff as a result of being a religious studies major and what you read is going to influence a lot of what you write — especially the poetic stuff because I'm reading a lot of the oldest poetry in the world so it’s pretty cool. There are songs where you can hear lines from the Bible or the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads. The whole song Francis of Assisi is basically my religious studies song. Francis of Assisi was a fourth-century monk. There’s a line in there that’s “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
EV: How would you describe your music to someone?
DL: The thing that seems to have proven true the most has been “your dad would love it.” I don’t think it’s that sad, but I’ve been told it’s sad. It’s dad folk, you know. There are a lot of jokes in the songs that I’m still waiting for people to catch. There is a song that my friend pointed out is like a folk diss-track in a way. it’s not actually a diss track, but the opening verse to the song is “Once I was a child, it’s true. Ignorant in heart and mind. The difference, dear, between me and you, is I have left that life behind” which I think is funny. She was like “That’s a diss track” and I was like “Oh no.”
EV: What made you release your first album, “Greatest” “Hits” on Spotify over quarantine?
DL: A lot of my friends were bugging me about putting my songs up on Spotify so they could put them on playlists. It has been really nice because people just understand Spotify a little better. I like Bandcamp a lot better than Spotify, but Spotify is much easier to convince people to actually listen to, which is why I did a compilation kind of thing. Heavy air quotes on the “Greatest” “Hits.”
DAVID LEFKOWITZ // COURTESY IMAGE
It was partially for that reason and partially because I didn’t want to pay to put four EPs up. I finally had the money to do it from working over at Old Navy that I was like I’m going to do it now. It was less quarantine and more of the fact that I was working full time and could spend 100 bucks to do it, because I’m not making that back anytime soon. You get 0.3 cents a stream. I have this idea of sneaking into Swem at some point and pulling up Spotify on all the computers and just looping the album. Swem computers don’t have speakers so no one would know, it's just running in the background but racking up the streams. I could make upwards of five dollars doing that.
EV: Do you have a favourite song from the album?
DL: I think lyrically I’m proudest of “Death of Me” and I’m really really happy with how the actual recording for “Harvest Moon Light” came out. Something I would like to do more of is producing and recording other folks. I don’t know if the media center is open.
EV: Are there any specific lyrics in “Death of Me” that you’re most proud of?
DL: All of the verses have a certain turn of phrase that I’m just kind of proud of. The third verse has “Time is not for lovers it only clips their wings and dawn is just a dirge that all the brokenhearted sing.” Then the fourth verse is “Don’t worry about tomorrow, just think about today, what makes a ring worth anything is nothing gold can stay” The lines that I end up liking the most, I like what I’m saying in them but I also like the way they sound coming out of my mouth. Those, I think, are perfect examples because it has like a little bit of embedded rhyme and of alliteration. That was one where I came up with that and I was like “Nice!”
EV: Out of all the aspects of creating music — songwriting, singing, recording, producing —
DL: The album art —
EV: What’s the hardest part for you?
DL: I think recording is hard because it’s just kind of gruelling at times. You can go in and work for hours and nothing works. There have been times I would walk into Swem with six different songs, like maybe I’ll record this, maybe I’ll record that and I just couldn’t get anything. I would’ve been there for like five hours and I left with nothing. But when it clicks, it really clicks. The nice thing about doing it alone and playing the type of music I play is when it was really working I recorded “Death of Me,” the redo of “Someday, Honey” and “So Spins the Earth” all in the same four-hour stretch. Then I went back at a different time and I added some stuff to it and made it sound nice. When it works it works, but when it doesn’t it sucks.
EV: Is Swem the main place you make your music?
DL: There is one EP called “So Spins the Earth” ' that was recorded in Swem with digital equipment, and I worked to make it sound nice sonically. ’Cause Swem has really nice software and gear. If you record in Swem you have access to thousands of dollars worth of stuff: the software, gear and microphones. It took me a while to learn how to use it all. But that was only the one, and that came out in late February. All the other ones pretty much have been recorded on this little four-track cassette recorder I have. It does not sound amazing but I really like the way it sounds. I like the simplicity of it and the limitation of it. Two EPs have been recorded on that and a Walmart karaoke microphone, and you can hear it.
EV: Do you prefer those recordings or the ones with Swem’s thousands of dollars of equipment?
DL: I don’t know if I prefer one, they’re just very different. I’m really proud of what I ended up with, having done the Swem thing. I’d like to do that again at some point, but at the same time I like the immediacy of the cassette, it's very, what you're hearing is what you’re getting. It doesn’t hide anything, you can’t edit, you’re just limited. You have to be good to sound good. I don’t know if I do, but what you’re hearing is what was happening into the microphone which I like. It’s harder but it’s a lot of fun so I don’t know.
EV: Is there anywhere on campus that inspires your writing, or what inspires it in general?
DL: If I knew I think I’d be a lot more prolific. There are very specific instances I can think of, like “The Hand That Signs” was written on the Sunken Garden on this unseasonably warm February day. “Death of Me” was funny, I was writing it in my head as I was walking to Botetourt from my radio show at like 11 o’clock at night freshman year. I kept repeating it to myself so I wouldn’t forget and I got three verses in and stopped and pulled off the trail and typed it on my phone so I wouldn’t forget. Then it was like 3am in Dinwiddie and the walls were so thin and I was just playing and singing so quietly into my voice memos so I wouldn’t forget it. It’s different for all of them, but I definitely have very specific memories tied to very specific places.
I remember when I needed to practice for Homebrews and I didn’t wanna go all the way from Botetourt to Ewell, but I couldn’t practice in Botetourt because it was too late at night. I would go out to the Keck Lab, like the BoteDock, and I would play there. It was very spooky, because it would be midnight and I didn’t have a light, so it was me in the dark playing and singing at top volume. But you know, whatever works. I serenaded a couple of deer around those months.
EV: If you could pick anywhere to do a performance, where would it be?
DL: The abandoned amphitheatre is probably number one. It was sad, I actually had a lot of gigs of various sizes lined up for the second-half spring semester that didn’t end up happening. I was gonna be playing guitar in someone’s Meridian show and Chi O-Rodeo. I got paid for a gig recently for the first time and that was huge.
EV: What gig?
DL: I played outside of LOKAL Café and there’s a tip jar so I’m at like nine dollars in tips because the wine moms dropped me a five-dollar bill.
EV: Go wine moms!
DL: Go wine moms! But yeah, they actually paid me which is nuts. This is the first time I’ve got paid to play in front of people. I didn’t really play in front of people until I went to college though.
EV: Is there any reason for that in particular?
DL: The big thing in college was just who I would be playing for. I love my parents and they're very supportive of my music but the idea of playing at Sam Ash and my parents and these people I’ve known for years being there just felt weird to me. Not scary, just kinda wrong. But then playing here felt a lot more natural and I think I was able to start doing it early enough that it felt natural, I think I couldn’t start now.
EV: Have you had a favourite venue or you’ve done?
DL: The Meridian has my heart fully. I've gotten to play all sorts of different types of things there in different types of settings. I’ve gotten to play there with my band, I’ve gotten to play there solo, I’ve gotten to play there in a duo with my friend Josie. Also, when AMP does the Returner’s Brew’s on Sadler Terrace that’s always really fun.
EV: That’s so exciting. Do you do more solo work or band stuff nowadays?
DL: It’s mostly solo stuff, the band is really fun too, but we’re all just busy and there are five of us. And now my amp is locked in the Meridian and I’m gonna need to contact Williamsburg PD to get it back, so I haven’t really been playing much electric. Now I’m playing bass in Natalie Rowland’s band, Future Bigfoot, which is really fun. I don’t really play bass but I enjoy playing bass cause I just get to sit back and watch everyone else and just sort of focus on what I’m playing.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ // COURTESY IMAGE
EV: Okay, I must know: what’s your hottest musical take?
DL: Ooh Okay. I’m gonna give you two — one is that the first Matchbox Twenty album is actually very good. The second is that Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” is a triumph of songwriting and I will stand by that. She wrote it when she was 17; the melody is amazing. It is like a perfect pop-rock song. There’s this cool guitar line that comes in at like a minute and 45 seconds in the left earbud that is just so cool. I can talk for hours about Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” Damnit. I know that’s gonna be the pull quote from the interview. “I could talk for hours about Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”” — David Lefkowitz.
EV: Are there any musicians at the College that you really enjoy?
DL: Natalie Rowland — awesome singer-songwriter, super cool person. One of the only people who makes me enjoy ukulele. Ben Heath — the best drummer in the world. Josie Adolf —amazing bass player, pretty good housemate. Also, Emma Shahin, Corey Bridges, and Brigid Cyan.