Jack Downey Says Hello: Wave Goodbye frontman on where creativity and technology collide As the solo member of indie-rock project Wave Goodbye and self-proclaimed clone of Harrison Reed Dolan (the drummer of alt-rock band grizzlies.), Jack Downey wears many hats — drummer, bassist, guitarist or vocalist. He juggles all of these roles with ease, and presents his stories with poetry. His latest EP, summer, tackles the feeling of time lost as a result of the pandemic. “Lately I’ve been freaking out because it seems like the world is crashing down” are probably the most universally relatable lyrics, presented with undeniably raw enthusiasm. Although Jack isn’t a professionally trained vocalist, his sense of tone is completely authentic and fearless. Like a shattered pot repaired with gold, subtle imperfections only bring more personality to the music. Paired with slick layers of guitar plastered over different structures and time signatures, summer is an EP that exists somewhere between sadness and joy, in the place we know as the odd in- between of 2020. I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Jack about this project, including what he wants to accomplish with Wave Goodbye and his plans for the hopefully not-so-distant future of live music. Angelina Singer (Motif): I’m really excited to hear about your experiences while putting summer together. What inspired you to build this collection of songs? Jack Downey: The solo project [Wave Goodbye] came around in the summer of 2018, so I’d just finished junior year of high school and was in kind of a dark spot. I was basically caught up on various teenage things: worries about school, girl troubles, etc. Also, I was in a band at the time – Friday Life, which I sing and play guitar for, but I needed something on the side where I could get my emotions out without putting it through a whole band first. I could come up with the music on my own and just do it whenever I felt like it. So out of that need came Wave Goodbye. And it started out as really nothing serious – as I said, it was just a way to vent and just screw around with more minimal music. But over time, I got more attached to it because writing the music for the project came so easily to me, as I had a lot more wiggle room in terms of what direction I could go in. So I tried a bunch of different things. And eventually, I started polishing it up a little more, because I took a lot more pride in what I was doing with the project, and I started mixing it better. So, with each release, starting in 2018, the mix has really improved. This last EP summer is probably my most accomplished EP yet in terms of mixing. So that’s how it’s come about, and it’s always been a solo thing. Occasionally, I’ll collaborate with people to help mix. I’ve played a couple shows, and I’ll probably start doing that again when shows are back. I was always worried about playing solo with the loop pedal and stuff, because that’s always how I do it – since it’s a bunch of layered guitars. That always scared me, because if you do even one thing wrong you have to start over. Now I’m much more ready to take that on. As for the EP, I was writing another one called Dead Summer, and then I came up with the song “adrift” in June, just by screwing around with the loop pedal a little bit. And it was different than the other EP I was working on, so I decided to pursue that one for now. The EP was under the working title Milk because my friends, The Mudskippers, have an album called Dairy that also has a dog on the cover, so I figured I’d kinda just make a joke out of that. Then I recorded a bunch of songs for that, just chronicling my experiences that happened over the summer: dating a girl before we ended up breaking it off, going back to school, and just living in a pandemic. So I took all that and put it into the lyrics. And then when it came time to send my music out to the label that put my songs on tape – AS: Congrats on that! It’s so cool that you have a label backing you. JD: Yeah it was really cool and it was a first for me! I realized when I sent it to them that Milk was a stupid name unless you knew what I was talking about, so I changed it. And I figured summer was a good name, because it’s about what happened over the summer – so it’s like a chronicle of that time period. AS: Yeah and it’s interesting that you chose to chronicle that, because like you said, the original name was going to be Dead Summer. And I think so many people relate to because we all feel like a year of our lives was wasted essentially. Finding purpose and meaning in that is really powerful. So I really enjoyed hearing the different textures and emotions that you have in the EP, and how you chronicle the emotions throughout that experience. Was there one song that you feel sums up your whole experience the best out of that EP? JD: The fact that they cover so many different topics makes that one kind of hard. AS: I know! *laughs* JD: The music on that EP except for maybe “tuesday night” and “you and me floating in space” have lyrics that are kind of depressing, but I’m not normally that depressed, and it’s probably because I have that musical outlet that stops me from bottling up all those negative emotions. But I would say, there isn’t any specific song that sums it up; I’d say the EP as a whole sums up my experience of the summer in the various moments it was written; some of the songs were written early in the summer. “206 (i hate weekends)” was the last one I wrote – that was when I was going back to school. So that one is probably about summer the least. If I had to choose, I’d say either – that is kind of tough. AS: Just pick one; don’t overthink it! JD: I’d say “summer of love”, mainly. AS: That was my favorite! JD: Oh, thank you! AS: Yeah, I really liked that one. JD: I would pick that one, just because it details the broader scale of summer. “crashing down” would probably be second, because that’s also about an extended period of time. I found ways around the mindset in that song where it’s kind of the feeling of hopelessness about a situation – which is fortunate. But yeah, I’d say “summer of love” because everyone around me found a girlfriend or something over the summer – which I thought was pretty funny. And like it says in the song, I thought I was in that boat, and then it didn’t end up working out. So it chronicles the rise and fall of that experience. AS: Would you say that song helped you cope with that? I’m sure it was frustrating to feel like the odd- one-out in your friend group especially. JD: It helped! It’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek song in a way – like the whole summer of love turns into the fall of despair. I was in [Martha’s] Vineyard, and that line just popped into my head, and I was like “okay this song will be called “summer of love”. Though the relationship that it was based on – it was never really a terrible thing that happened. Sometimes in music, I guess, you take things that happened and dramatize them a little bit. The girl in question and I are still really good friends. She’s a musician too, so I’ve helped her with a couple of her songs – we’re still really cool. AS: I think everyone can relate to that optimism, and the frustration when it all crashes. You really portray that so effortlessly with this whole piece. I also enjoyed the way you use different time signatures and different musical structures to reflect your ideas. How do you attack your songwriting? Do you go and say “I want to write a song in 5/4 time, I want to do this or that”? Or do you let the lyricism and the emotion drive the technique? JD: Yeah, that’s a good question. I would say a lot of the songs are definitely instrumental first. On my computer, a lot of them are labeled “untitled” and the date they were recorded. I don’t want to stick a specific name to them at that point if they haven’t had an idea put to them first. So I said how “adrift” came out of the loop pedal. “you and me floating in space” (the 5/4ths time) came out of me seeing if I could do something with that. And I did, so that was pretty cool and I decided that would be on there. I had the riff for “golden” since the very end of 2019. It was a much different song, but I just took the basic idea of it and restructured it over the loop pedal too.