Since the band’s early beginnings, Judah & the Lion (made up of Judah Akers, Brian Macdonald and Nate Zuercher) has drawn in audiences with their alternative/folk sounds, upbeat performances and positive lyrics. Now, with a pandemic pause, some solo work under the belt for both Judah and Brian, and Nate presently taking a break, the group has certainly changed. But the message of hope hasn’t. It’s just “matured” according to Macdonald.
To dig a little bit deeper into their latest studio album ‘Revival,’ and their ‘Happy Again’ tour—which comes to The Fillmore Philadelphia on Oct.16—Macdonald sat down with Metro to show just how the band has shifted and grown into a renaissance.
I want to talk about ‘Revival.’ There were a lot of changes leading up to recording this album—the band changed, the world changed, you did some solo work. How did it feel coming back to the band to record?
The pandemic, for us, brought a lot of change as you’ve said. Up until 2020, we’ve been touring pretty much nonstop for about eight years or so, and we went into 2020 with the mindset of trying to simplify a little bit and take a little bit of a rest. But serendipitously, the pandemic gave that to us in a much more extreme way, which, in some ways, was a really good thing. I think for us as a band, we were getting close to the point of feeling burned out, especially on just the amount of traveling that we were doing. Being able to slow down and have that perspective has helped make this latest album what it is and given us so much new energy to be back out playing shows.
I lived in Sweden for a year in 2020 and 2021, and at that period of time, Judah and I were both writing on our own and just taking that time to rest. It was very uncertain for everybody, so we didn’t really have a game plan as far as what the next chapter of Judah & the Lion was going to look like. And by the time I moved home from Sweden, that was about the time that Nate decided to leave the band. He was with us for 10 years and he, in the beginning, was the one that really pushed us to become a band and was really excited about it. So we love Nate. We’re super happy for him just taking it as a time for him to slow down and just feel more grounded.
What was the recording process like for the album?
By the fall of 2021, we were ready to record the songs and we did something that we had never done before—we went out of town to record the album. We went to Asheville, North Carolina and just stayed there for two weeks, and we were able to be more immersed in the process that way. It was just so easy for us at home to come into the studio and then whenever dinner time hits, we were trying to get home to our family.
It was a new creative process for us too because, in the past, Nate, Judah and I were making all the decisions together and writing the songs together. Now, it was just me and Judah. Then on top of that, I started picking up the banjo and played it on the record, and I’m still learning, but that’s another new thing—and you can definitely hear it in this sound.
Did the solo work play a part in the sounds on ‘Revival?’
Definitely. When we came back together, I think we each had a new respect for each other’s balance when it comes to making music. And that just changes everything when you’re going into a collaborative process like that, that respect. Not that we didn’t have respect before, but I think it just brought it to a new level of both of us being able to see the music that we had each created on our own during that time, and then it just made that collaboration even sweeter.
Do any songs stick out to you on the new album for a particular reason?
I think one that stands out to me a lot is “Be Here Now,” and the reason being is the way that that came together in the studio. Each song has such a different story of how it was written and how it came to be, but that one, Judah had showed me that song idea a while back, and [it] basically just got buried under other song ideas and we forgot about it. But one of the days in the studio, I mentioned it and had him play through it….and It’s hard to describe, but we were all just having so much fun playing it. We played through it 30 times and we were there. You lost track of time. It was way late in the night, but all of us were just so in that moment, which is what the song’s about—being in the moments that are in front of you and not being distracted ’cause it’s so easy to be distracted these days.
What can audiences expect coming to a show on this tour?
As we were going into this tour, it felt like the first time. This is our, third studio album or fourth studio album, so we’re starting to get to that point where we have way more songs than we can actually play in a night at a show. We’re definitely playing a good amount from the new album, ‘Revival.’ We have some staples, some classics in there too. We’re playing one song, ‘Kickin’ da Leaves,’ which is from way back when, with ‘Kids These Days,’ our first album. So it’s fun. And then we’re doing some old songs in new ways….we’re doing ‘Why Did You Run?’ acoustic, which we’ve never done in the show before.
And what do you hope people take away from the ‘Happy Again’ tour specifically?
I think one thing that has not changed for us in these years is—we want to bring people joy and have a lighthearted, happy show with high energy and people can have fun. And I think that definitely has been accomplished on this tour, but one thing that’s new and different, while we’re still leaving this message of hope with people, I think with this tour, we don’t want to sugarcoat it either. This album, I think, is more mature for us. We have songs that are going a little deeper and getting more depth as we’ve continued, and even halfway through the set, we’re really slowing down and having that more somber, more serious moment.
I think we want people to know that it’s okay to feel all those feelings, but we also want to leave people with that positivity and joy in the end. And we welcome anybody at the concert to feel that hope.
Catch Judah & The Lion at The Fillmore Oct. 16.
