The Super High Quality Podcast

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of The War On Drugs' Lost In The Dream, we've put together a special long-form episode of The Super High Quality Podcast to tell the behind-the-scenes story of how the record was made.   Between sessions in Hoboken and North Carolina, Adam Granduciel worked regularly with engineer Jeff Zeigler in Philly adding "paint" to a collection of songs that would be widely hailed as the band's first masterpiece on its release in March 2014.  As the band struggled against the repetition and inevitable distractions of working close to home with local friends and collaborators, as the recordings took shape, Adam  was simultaneously struggling with the unpredictability of his own mental health.  In candid conversations with the key players, and using previously unheard early mixes and demos, we'll follow the work in progress from the first sessions in early 2013 through the late summer and early fall when the songs  took their final form during mixing.  We'll also ride shotgun with Adam on his  journey home from the mastering studio to the shoulder of I-95 in a fitting conclusion to the making of Lost In The Dream."One of 2014's Truly great records.  The perfect American road trip"  - NME"The War On Drugs make archetypal road trip music.  Shimmering, steady, gritty as pavement and open as the sky." - Rolling StoneHost: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Dusdin Condren

To commemorate the 10th Anniversary of The War On Drugs' 2014 album, Lost In The Dream, we've put together a special episode of the SHQ Podcast to tell the behind the scenes story of what it took to make the album.   The full episode will be available on March 25th.

After a handful of North American festival dates in August, The War On Drugs headed out for their final run of shows in September and October 2022.   As the band continued to refine their performances, the tour moved east to west, north to south across the US and Canada, and finally back to Austin TX where the tour had started in early January.  An extraordinary and unbelievably rewarding year of touring finally concluded with a final show on Mt Tamalpais just north of San Francisco in late October.  Having weathered the Covid storm as well as a city-closing blizzard in January and a show-cancelling hurricane in September, and with 23 more shows in the bag, in this final episode, the band and crew take a last look at a year on the road like no other.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Eliza Hardy-JonesCameos: Josh Goldsmith, Ben Silverstein, Matthew Walsh, Jimmy Russo

After returning to the US in late April 2022, The War On Drugs took a short break berore heading back out on an intense 7-week tour that took the band to Mexico, across the US, and back to Europe.  After a massive show with The Strokes in Mexico City, the band returned to the US for a tour that concluded at Bonnaroo in June.  They made a quick turnaround, and headed back to Europe for a show opening for The Rolling Stones in London, as well as run of mostly festival dates across Europe.  Despite a Covid outbreak that took down 3 members of the tour party simultaneously, the band and crew rallied to support each other once more, and by the time they returned to the States in early July, they'd successfully crushed another 28 shows.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Eliza Hardy-Jones, Craig McQuiston

Following their 6-week run of shows across the US in January and February, The War On Drugs headed to Finland in mid-March 2022 to begin 6 weeks of shows across Europe.   As one of the first international bands to tour overseas as pandemic-restrictions lifted, the band performed their epic full-production shows to enthusiastic audiences in 11 countries between March and April.   The band recorded more Covid cases, but each time a band member went down, as had happened on their US tour earlier in the year, someone else stepped in to keep the show on the road.  After 19 shows, the band played 2 final sold-out arena shows in the Netherlands and Belgium to cap-off an amazing and eventful run. Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Eliza Hardy-Jones, Craig McQuiston

In January 2022, The War On Drugs kicked off a world tour in support of their latest album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore.  At a time when there weren’t a lot of bands on the road as pandemic restrictions eased, TWOD packed multiple road cases with PPE and Covid tests, and headed to Austin TX to begin a six week tour of the US.  After the 4th show, singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel tested positive for Covid, shows were cancelled, and the band and crew found themselves quarantined in North Little Rock AR, uncertain of the tour's fate.  However, with Adam back to full health, the tour resumed, and in spite of additional sicknesses and some very unforgiving winter weather, the band completed the first leg of the tour in Phoenix AZ 28 shows later.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Eliza Hardy-Jones, Craig McQuiston.Cameos: Josh Goldsmith, Jimmy Russo

The War On Drugs have just announced a series of sold-out “Drugcember” benefit shows to take place on December 19, 20, and 21st at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia.  Proceeds from the shows will benefit The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, a nonprofit that coordinates investment into the Philadelphia public schools.  Adam and Dominic talk about the upcoming Drugcember shows, the band’s deep connection to Johnny Brenda’s, and their plans for a new season of the podcast to be released in 2023 chronicling the events of their 2022 tour.

After 18 months apart, The War On Drugs were finally able to reconvene in person in the summer of 2021 ahead of their first scheduled live performances of the songs from their new album I Don’t Live Here Anymore.  How does a band articulate the uniquely abstract collage of a studio album crafted partially in isolation during the pandemic?  How will it feel to finally play music together in the same room?   Who will play the cowbell l at the end of “I Don’t Wanna Wait”?  We look for answers in the final installment of our deep dive inside the making of IDLHA.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez

No one has been as instrumental in crafting the sound of The War On Drugs’ last two albums as Shawn Everett, the multi-Grammy-winner who has formed a remarkable studio partnership with band leader Adam Granduciel.  Perfectly suited to handle all manner of explorations, detours, and deadline elasticity, Shawn and the band talk about their collective dedication to the process of making records, and the many ways their process informs the decisions and revisions it took to craft the final versions of the songs on I Don’t Live Here Anymore.  Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Shawn Everett

Over the course of recording I Don’t Live Here Anymore, The War On Drugs continued their obsessive exploration of the recording process in sessions at some of NY and LA’s most prestigious studios.  One standout session was the three weeks the band and an extended circle of collaborators and friends, spent at Hollywood’s Electro Vox in the spring of 2019.  A favorite of the band because it provides access to an outrageous palette of gear that playfully challenged the group’s experimental side, the Vox session was the center point of the IDLHA recordings.  In this episode, the band revisits the keeper takes, wrong turns and discoveries that helped inch the songs closer toward completion.  In addition to the 6 band members, guitarist Michael Bloch joins the conversation as the guys re-live the highlights of those memorable weeks at Vox.  Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Michael Bloch

Over 5 days in March 2018, during a short break in the band’s heavy touring schedule, Adam Granduciel took bassist Dave Hartley and multi-instrumentalist Anthony LaMarca to an Upstate New York studio.  Decamping to Outlier Studios with Philadelphia friend and engineer Nick Krill, the four quickly realized that the session was becoming more productive than a typical demo session.  With the added focus provided by the remote setting (immortalized on the cover of the new album I Don’t Live Here Anymore), the sweet “engine room” of this stripped-down configuration of The War On Drugs, set the course for the development of Adam’s next batch of songs.  In Part 1 of this season’s SHQ Podcast, Adam, Dave, Anthony, and Nick discuss their time at Outlier and revisit the four songs that were uncovered as the 3-year journey to IDLHA began.Host: Dominic EastGuests:  Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Nick Krill

Four years since their last studio album, The War On Drugs have just released I Don’t Live Here Anymore, the follow-up to their Grammy-winning best rock album A Deeper Understanding.   Season 2 of the Super High Quality Podcast is a four-part audio documentary that tells the story of the players, studios, engineers, songcraft, and happy accidents that define the 10 songs on the band’s new album.  Told through casual conversations with band members and their collaborators, and featuring unreleased recordings, guitar tech Dominic East tracks the album’s progress from the earliest demo sessions in 2018, through the final full-band recording sessions in 2019, and finally inside the summer 2021 rehearsals that marked the band member’s post-quarantine reunion after 18 months apart.   With episodes set for release in January 2022 to coincide with The War On Drugs’ tour in support of IDLHA, season 2 of the Super High Quality Podcast picks up where we left the band in the fall of 2020 as they were poised to release LIVE DRUGS.

With studio sessions put on hold and their new studio album postponed, The War On Drugs decided instead to release LIVE DRUGS.  In Part 4 of The Super High Quality Podcast the band members share their individual experiences under lockdown and the ways the experience informed the decision to punctuate this point in The War On Drugs’ history with the release of a live album.   From sanitizer-insanity to anticipation for a return to live performance with “David Lee Roth kicks”, the band reflects on an extraordinary year.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Craig McQuiston

Perhaps no song in The War On Drugs’ catalog embodies the “sound” of the band as much as “Under The Pressure”.   Part 3 of The Super High Quality Podcast, digs deep inside this ambient journey.  From the improvised sonic stew that developed into an alternative song intro, to the iconic sample drop, through to the tension and release created by the mid-song breakdown, and culminating in the indelible image of the illuminated audience when the song kicks back in for the driving two-chord climax, “Pressure” is the centerpiece of the band’s live show.  The band and key members of their road crew, discuss their individual roles and how the interplay between each of these jobs converges to define every unique performance of this epic song.   The band also discusses how a casual mid-tour gear purchase changed this song forever, or at least for now.  “Under The Pressure” is the penultimate track on the fourth side of LIVE DRUGS.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Bob Strakele, Laurence Eaves, Matthew Walsh, Ben Silverstein

Connecting with a classic Warren Zevon album after relocating to Los Angeles where the band was recording 2017’s Grammy-winning A Deeper Understanding, Adam Granduciel presented Zevon’s classic  “Accidentally Like A Martyr” as a song the band might try to cover.  In Part 2 of The Super High Quality Podcast, The band discusses in painful detail, a less than auspicious debut performance for a private LA audience which happened to include the song’s original producer, Jackson Browne.  That performance aside, the song went on to become a mainstay of their live show throughout their  2017-2018 tours, and the band reveals the ways this song continues to influence their approach to songwriting and performance.  “Accidentally Like A Martyr” is a featured track on the album, LIVE DRUGS.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Bob Strakele, Laurence Eaves

“Eyes To The Wind” was a standout track on The War On Drugs’ 2014 album Lost In The Dream and quickly became a crowd favorite during its live shows.  In Part 1 of our Super High Quality Podcast, the band tries to dissect exactly how the arrangement was reinvented when leader Adam Granduciel pushed the band to find their way through a somewhat spontaneous new acoustic version onstage in Copenhagen in 2017.  Possibly the result of questionable venue catering, and certainly inspired by the crowd, the band succeeded in the reinvention by reconnecting with each other onstage during that performance.   A mature acoustic version of “Eyes To The Wind”, affectionately now dubbed “Copenhagen Wind”, is featured on the new live album, LIVE DRUGS.Host: Dominic EastGuests: Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Craig McQuiston

In a year without concerts, The War On Drugs are set to release LIVE DRUGS on their own Super High Quality Records.  In this podcast, guitar tech and band confidant, Dominic East, listens as the band talks casually about how they arrived at the performances and the decision to release their new live album.