Verskotzi, at Vandals tonight, talks about writing sad songs and where they come from

Back in November, Minneapolis artist Joey Verskotzi released his latest full-length album Lemon Heart. It was a highly anticipated release for the community up there, mostly because the 22-year-old Verskotzi – who goes by his last name only – is sort of a return to the roots of the categorical singer-songwriter. His lyrics are specific: themes of love lost and gained, yes, but with a real and genuine flavor. It’s some intricately constructed folk pop, like a fruity cocktail blended with shards of glass. Lemon Heart is not a windows-rolled-down summer jam. It is the record you want to put on at sunrise, when everything is quiet and you’re sneaking a cigarette.

Verskotzi is on his first tour with a full band in support of Lemon Head now, swooping through the Midwest and touching down in the South. Ahead of Verskotzi’s gig this evening at Vandals (above the Black and Gold Tavern), we dialed him up from the road.

The Pitch: Let’s talk about Lemon Heart for a moment. I really like the track “Heartless Songs,” but I’m guessing you don’t think you write heartless songs, right?

Verskotzi: “Heartless Songs” is kind of like this play on songs getting lushed up within the noise of how many bands put out songs all the time. Like, you can write a super-cool song today, and it’ll get lost in all the other songs that are being put out because there’s such a mass of them. So it was me expressing some of that frustration.

It’s also kind of parallel to what I was feeling [at that time]. I was pretty depressed when I was writing that, and I was struggling with my music and feeling like the songs I was writing – they would come out, and I would be happy with them at first, but they wouldn’t make me feel any better. At the time, I just felt like I was slaving away to get something out of my system but struggling to find the reward.

And now it’s so funny, at this point, because I feel such a reward from that song – and all the songs on the record, really. It’s so ironic because I sing that song now, and it didn’t feel like it was satisfying at the time, but now it’s my favorite song to play live.

Is that when the whole batch of the Lemon Heart songs happened, in a rough patch of your life?

Yeah. It was the summer of 2012 when I was writing songs, and I had just broken up with a girlfriend of just over two years, and we had talked about getting married and moving in together, and it was a super-tough time. And I was also struggling with addiction at that time as well, and I was just not in a good place.

I was living with these three marines in an apartment – and if you ever meet me, you’ll know that I do not fit in with an apartment full of marines – so that’s when the songs were being written. I wrote close to 50 songs for the whole record, and then I started bringing them to my producer Isaak Burkhart, and preproduction was at least a month, I had so many songs to bring.

It sounds like the recording process took longer than writing the songs.

Well, once we got all the songs chosen, we started recording them, and then as the album kind of came together, I started writing more songs. I was starting to get a better idea of how the record was shaping up to be, and it inspired new songs out of me. “Honey,” for example, that was written after we had recorded four songs, I think. The same thing happened with “8th St. Train.” I wrote that two days before we were completely done tracking. The entire process from start to finish was about a year.

So, a year and a half after writing these songs… where is your head space now?

I’m definitely in a much better place. I’m still kind of struggling with some of the addiction pieces, but that’s just a continuous process… Also, I’m married now. In the process [of writing and recording], I met a beautiful girl, probably like eight months after I broke up with my last girlfriend. It was such a random chance meeting, and we fell in love super quickly and we got married two months ago, actually. I also graduated in December from the University of Minnesota, and that took a lot of stress off my plate.

Mentally and emotionally, I’m in a much better place. I struggle with anxiety. And the winters in Minnesota, the short days – they really get to me. I get depressed. But whenever I’m in a place of despair or whatever, there’s always songs coming out of me. This winter, it’s been so cold, and I never get outside like I want to, and the sunlight is never there, and I’ve been writing a ton – almost 15 new songs. It’s like, do I have to be sad to write songs? [Laughs.] But overall, the amount of negativity that was surrounding me in that summer has decreased significantly, and being married has been a great thing – she’s so supportive of my music. With that part of my life, I couldn’t ask for a better situation right now. I’m very blessed.

Verskotzi is at Vandals tonight. Details here.