Swapping Stories With Leopold and His Fiction

Daniel James Leopold of Leopold And His Fiction took some time out of the group’s tour of the Northeastern and Southern U.S. to chat with Pollstar about his roots in Detroit, the band’s evolving sound, and why you can’t find the short stories some of the group’s early music is based on.

Daniel has been the only steady member of Leopold And His Fiction through the years as the group has transformed from heavy folk and prog leanings to incorporate Motown and hard rock influences.

As Daniel has moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Austin, Leopold has traveled with him. The group remains signed to Native Fiction records, which is owned and operated by Daniel himself.

Leopold And His Fiction just released the album Darling Destroyer last month and is in the midst of a tour to promote the tunes. You can check out the group’s routing at the end of the story.

Photo Courtesy of Girlie Action Media – Leopold And His Fiction
The album cover for Leopold And His Fiction

You are from Detroit, right? Do you still go back?

I haven’t lived there in about 15 years or so, but we go back about two times a year, touring. It’s always great.

What do you think about all of negative press in recent years regarding the economic troubles of Detroit and the water crisis in Flint?

Yeah, that’s pretty horrendous, for sure. I don’t know when they’re gonna have a remedy for it. [The suffering] been going on for a really long time, this is just the first time that the media has picked up on it. I’m not sure why it has to get to that extent [in Flint] for the media to do something or say something about it.

But Detroit has been in despair for my entire life. I’m 35 years old and my entire life Detroit has been in recession, economic crisis. I’m glad that the world is seeing it but it’s nothing new to us.

So how does Detroit fit into your sound on your latest album?

Leopold has been my band for almost 12 years now. The younger I was, I was trying to tap into something that I hadn’t yet discovered. I moved out to California and I tried out the psychedelic form of rock, the folk form of rock. I feel like I did a decent interpretation of it. But it wasn’t until [this year that] I really got in touch with who I am and that makes for the best album. It took me a long time to get there, but I feel like we did a good job.

This album does sound more hard rock ‘n’ roll than some previous stuff. Do you feel like this is “your sound”?

It’s always been my “sound.” I’ve written all the songs with the help of different band members. I’ve moved around a lot from Detroit to Los Angeles to San Francisco, now I’m living in Texas when I’m not on the road. Whether it was the moving around, or it was just the time in my life I needed to identify who I needed to be, who I was. I think being out of Detroit for so long made it more evident that … I was born and raised fully by a long lineage of people from Detroit. When people say “it’s in the water, it’s in your blood” it’s 100 percent true about my upbringing in Detroit. And I was finally willing to accept that after a long time. One of the greatest things Detroit is known for is rock ‘n’ roll, even R&B with Motown. I feel like I finally came full circle.

It seems like you have come to terms with the influences that molded you. Why’d you leave Detroit?

There’s really nothing there. You can’t really sit around and wait for the government to do something about it. A lot of people stay in Detroit based on their jobs or lack of jobs. At 19 years old, it was really the only healthy thing to do, to get out and try to make something for myself. It just wasn’t gonna happen in Detroit, as much as I love it. The grass is definitely greener outside of Detroit and it made much more sense for me to get out and pay homage to it than to struggle within it.

You are now based in Austin, which was recently ranked No. 1 on the 2017 list of the Best Places to Live by US News & World Report.

I love Austin. It’s a great place to have a daughter and it’s a great place to raise a child. There’s a lot of room, there’s a lot of community. Detroit has those things. But I left Detroit and moved to California. And California is not as fluent with lots of room. Sure, there is community in California, but not like Texas. It’s community first. It’s really amazing. That’s my main reason for being in Austin, is my daughter.

And I happened to meet my band members down there so through that community we have roots. … In reality, it’s right in the middle of the U.S. It makes touring that much more available, to do the West Coast, to do the East Coast. That’s probably why it’s such a great spot for a musician to live.

Why do you only release an album every couple of years?

We’ve been on our own label up until now. That gives us the luxury to write the songs at our own pace, which is nice. … I feel like I can go through each album and be proud of every song. There’s no throwaways, there’s no filler and that’s what it takes, it takes a couple years. As opposed to the constant turnaround if you’re on a major label, you have to put out an album every year to fulfill your contract. We haven’t been underneath that strain.

Is it a big strain to manage your own label?

The first three albums are on Native Fiction … and that’s been my career, just to run the label. The band recently partnered with a label out of Boston called ILA and they brought on a big marketing team and a publicist and our manager is really great, so I’m not doing it alone, that’s for sure.

Being indie gives you freedom, but big labels can give you lots of resources. Can you talk some more about staying indie and the tradeoffs?

I’ve never been on a major before, but I have a lot of friends that are on majors and we have the same publicist … [they] use the same marketing team we do. I suppose a major difference is the level of work an artist gets to do. Being an independent, right now, is the only way Leopold could function. I’ve run this operation for 12 years, I know the ins and outs of my band better than a label would. We’re able to dictate our sound, our touring schedule, pretty much our entire career.

I don’t think the majors would give you that much freedom, especially on the creative side, and if you lose your creative side what’s the point of making music at all? What’s the point of being an artist if you’re just being told what to make?

It sounds like staying independent is the best option for Leopold?

I’m sure there’s other labels that aren’t as heavy handed as majors and maybe the majors aren’t as heavy-handed as I think they are. Again, I never had to go down that road, we’ve been really fortunate to do it on our own. If someone told me differently I’d probably take it into consideration. But we’re getting the same [spots] in movies and commercials that major label artists are. Sometimes I feel like commercials and movies are looking for stuff that isn’t so exploited. So they’re actually very beneficial for us. When advertisers are trying to sell a product and they don’t want something that’s been watered down a million times, they come to us. They say, “Hey, you’ve got a great sound. It might sound like this, it might sound like that, it might be compared to other people, but it’s still unique.” So it puts us in a lucrative spot. But I’m never closed minded. If another label came along and said, “Let’s do something,” that’d be great so long as we can retain our creative control.

So I read that you used to write short stories as inspiration for your songs and that’s where the band name came from.

Yeah, the name of the band was a main character in one of the short stories I was writing.

Is that stuff available for people to read?

No, it’s not. It was just essentially a [method] to get the songs out. It was never intended for the public.

It sounds like there is a lot of content though?

Yeah, there is a lot of content, for sure.

So you don’t have any desire for that content to be out there?

None whatsoever. The albums are for just that, to get the message across. There’s a lot of time to create, but it doesn’t have to be out there.

So you’ve got some new band members for Darling Destroyer?

Every album has had different players on it. It’s another part of the process. In order to get the best songs out of me, in order to keep the creative flow going, it’s really nice to have people who are inspired, and usually it takes fresh minds to do so.

What’s next for Leopold?

I think this year is touring, making another record. The people on board are super amazing, so I’m real excited to see what happens. Even 12 years in it’s still all brand new. Everything has evolved, so I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Photo Courtesy of Girlie Action Media – Leopold And His Fiction

Upcoming dates for Leopold And His Fiction:

You can learn more about the band at LeopoldAndHisFiction.com.