Wesley Schultz

My name is Wesley Schultz and I’m the co-founder of the Lumineers. My solo album Vignettes is out now. This album is a love letter to songs and artists I‘ve admired and held dear for many years. Playing other people’s songs is how I learned how to write songs and find my own voice. To this day, I still find myself growing as an artist by learning the songs of those I revere. 20 years ago, playing coffeehouses and bars, I would always get the sensation of flying when I would play a cover. My own songs often felt like running in slow-motion. It was the power of the song that gave me those wings, and it drove me to work harder and harder at the writing.

The way I envisioned this album was as if you had all these songs represented by little houses on a street, and then a tornado ripped through the town and tore them all the way down to the studs and foundation… that’s what you’d have with every one of these songs after I re-imagined them. I was also trying to create something that doesn’t ask anything from the listener — it’s simply a companion, a friend in both good times and bad. Like how I listen to James Taylor’s greatest hits, often, and it just seems to soothe me.

You try to make your own medicine sometimes. I think music is medicine. For me, the intention in making Vignettes was so simple – what would I listen to right now, in these times? And this music is what I felt like I needed.