Keegan DeWitt shows what inspires him

With a new album Nothing Shows, set to release July 13 via Daytrotter, Keegan DeWitt, who shares family with fellow Nashville outfit Roman Candle, is a busy man.

Since the success of 2009’s Islands, the singer-songwriter has trotted the globe, touring extensively and finding time to record new material. Diversions Editor Linnie Greene chats with DeWitt about inspiration and his ever-present wanderlust.

Diversions: Your new album is dramatically different from Islands. Was that a conscious decision on your part?

Keegan DeWitt: Well, mainly because Islands is old. It’s something I created when I was still in Brooklyn and it took like two years to make. And then I came to Nashville. And then it got released again and it got released in Europe. Not to be stupid and be in third person, but the person that I was when I created Islands is significantly younger and different than the person I created on Nothing Shows.

Islands was a lot more about just really early youth and understanding friendships and when friendships sometimes turn into more than that. It’s a lot more kind of naive. Nothing Shows is more of — kind of understanding what it means to get a little bit older and continue to have that same optimism and passion, but knowing how things are a little bit more.

Dive: I know poetry’s a big influence for you. Did your interactions with other art play a big role on Nothing Shows?

KW: It’s primarily, I feel like, primarily influenced by poetry and visuals. I have a website, kind of like this secret website that I’ve hidden on my regular Keegan Dewitt website where every month I just collect images, like hundreds and hundreds of images.

At the release show in Nashville here, we had them on all these massive screens the entire time. It’s kind of a cool way of mirroring the things that influenced us.

For me, I guess you could — if you listen to the stuff you can get this, but a lot of the songs are about isolated moments. That’s why I feel like photos and films and poems capture that.

Dive: You recorded a lot in Europe, right? Did being away from the states influence your sound?

KW: I don’t know. I spent like seven years in Brooklyn and then I moved to Nashville, and they’re such opposing forces. In Nashville I gained being near Roman Candle and my family, but then I lost out on all that sort of fervent art culture that’s in New York. It felt like my identity was being split up into different things. I went to Paris and Rome on two different trips for a month each. When I was younger I went to Hong Kong and Fiji by myself for two months, and there’s something really great about being in a place where nobody speaks your language.

Dive: What kind of response have you gotten to the new album?

KW: For “Say La La,” there have been some interesting responses out of people. When anybody that I know hears it, they’ll say, “It’s great! I love it, it’s so much fun.” And then I’ll go and sit with somebody in music row in Nashville and play it, and the look on their face is just kind of, “Huh?”

I felt like Islands was really nice but it kind of sat a little bit on the cusp of what is this, what was I trying to achieve. The power of all this stuff seems more representative. People respond to different things, and I think everybody seems to be surprised in a positive way, not in the kitschy, “this is new just for the sake of being new” way.

It’s tough to judge peoples’ responses to your stuff, because if it’s your mom she’s just like “It’s great,” you know? The singular thing that I try to capture in my music is that feeling that you have in your heart, that feeling where something really positive is happening.

Dive: You’ve got some major Nashville pride. How do you think your roots and sense of community affect your music?

KW: Well, it’s a good thing and a bad thing. I always seem to fight against the thing that I’m in the midst of. The whole time I was in Brooklyn I was always ready to move, and I feel a little bit the same way about Nashville.

I’ve been really cynical about some of the music that comes out of here, but in a great way I’ve been really surprised and I’ve met some really amazing people — mainly Madi Diaz and Caitlin Rose. Madi’s an amazing talent, and Caitlin’s the same, and Roman Candle. All three of those people have been major contributors for me.

Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.