Photo by Adam Kerner
Jacob Duarte wants to make one thing crystal clear: his new solo album, released under the moniker Nihilistic Easyrider, doesn’t signal any trouble for his other band, Narrow Head. Far from it, Duarte is the primary songwriter for both projects, deeply invested in each. He knows the distinct formula for Narrow Head’s post-hardcore sound, just as he’s tailored his debut solo album to showcase a wider, more varied range of influences, a true reflection of the music he grew up with and still loves.
Both projects pay homage to the past. Nihilistic Easyrider, however, distinctly draws from the early 2000s, with clear nods to alt-rock, emo, and pop-punk. Across its dozen tracks, you’ll find everything from straightforward power pop numbers and introspective bedroom recordings to twangy guitars and post-emo tracks. And, the album features guest backing vocals on the song “Drive All Night” by Momma’s Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman.
Duarte shared the origin of his project’s name, described Deluxe Edition as a sort of mixtape, discussed his musical family’s influence, and laid out his expectations for the album.
Where does the name Nihilistic Easyrider come from?
JACOB: It’s a song title by this other band that I played in for over 10 years, a Houston punk band called Sexpill. That was just the name of the song. Around that time, I made that my Instagram name and never changed it. I just adopted that name, and I thought it would be cool if I ever called my solo thing to have it be called that instead of my first and last name. I like the way it looks when I have it written down and it’s kind of long. It seemed to fit. I seem to have identified with it.
You’ve described your solo album as being like a mix tape. Did you make mix tapes or CDs when you were younger?
JACOB: I used to make mix CDs all the time. I never really did that with tapes, but I did it with VHS tapes. I would tape a TV show that was on, but a real mix to me was a mix CD. I had a CD player super young, so I was always just in the back seat of the car playing music, whether it was something my parents had gotten for me or a mix CD that I made. I didn’t start making them myself until about sixth grade, but even in elementary school, I think my uncle made me a mix CD.
Do you remember the mix CDs your uncle made for you? Was he trying to turn you onto music you didn’t know?
JACOB: Yeah, him and my dad played in a band called Tie That Binds, a Houston emo band. So I was coming up around a lot of the music that I still like today. When I was a kid, I really liked Blink-182. My uncle must have seen that and would make me CDs of similar things, maybe things that weren’t as radio-friendly as Blink-182, I guess, like stuff that was a little more uncut.
Were you making mix CDs for friends or just for yourself?
JACOB: It was mainly for myself, and then I would make myself another one and give my other one to someone else. If someone asked me for one, I would do it, but it was kind of just for my CD player. Then I got an iPod and started figuring that out. I stopped making CDs around then.
There’s different strategies for making mix tapes and CDs. Sometimes, sequencing can be strategic if you’re trying to tell a story or convey feelings. Did you treat the sequencing for the album the way you’d put songs in a certain order on a mix CD?
JACOB: Well, that was a little unintentional. I think by the term mix tape, it’s not really how the album is sequenced, but how all the songs sound because I wrote a lot of them throughout the last seven years or so. They were all at different points in my life, so some of the influences might sound different than the others, you know? That’s what I meant by mix tape. As far as sequencing goes, I don’t really think about that until the end. But I knew what the first song was going to be, at least. There wasn’t that much thought put into the sequencing, just how I like it to flow, at least, like a loud, fast song here and a mid-tempo song here, something like that. It was more like that than trying to be a mixtape or anything.
Do you consider songs you write for your solo project or for Narrow Head to be snapshots in time? Are there songs on this record that you’re going to go back to in ten years and be like, “Ah, yeah, I remember exactly where I was when I wrote this song and remember what I wrote it about.” Or, do you construct songs from different ideas you have that aren’t necessarily connected to any specific time in your life?
JACOB: I would say it’s half and half. Sometimes when I write a song – it’s very rare – but sometimes I finish that day. Other songs haven’t really been a snapshot of a specific time, but more of a timeline where I’ve been messing with something for a couple of months until I think that it’s done.
”Facedown” was the first song written for what would eventually become your solo album. Can you remember the situation when you wrote that one?
JACOB: Yeah, me and Carson, who plays drums in Narrow Head and on the album, we were in our practice space. I was listening to Saves the Day and Lifetime a lot. We kind of made that song as a joke to be like, “Okay, let’s write a straight-up Saves the Day, Lifetime-sounding song. We’re not even going to try to add any other influences. We’re just going to straight-up copy them, I guess.” We wrote two others that sounded similar and were going to make a fake band for it, but I just didn’t have the attention span to go through all that just for a fake band. When we were demoing these songs, I brought that song up to Carson, and he still remembered how to play it. I was like, “Honestly, I think this will fit with this stuff.” That song’s supposed to be, it’s not a joke, I take it seriously, obviously, but it was supposed to come out and be like, “Oh, they’re doing the pop-punk thing.”
Thelonious Monster put out an album called California Clam Chowder where they literally named songs after the bands that influenced the songs. So, there is a “Ramones Song” and a “Joy Division Song” and a “Iggy Stooge Song”. That’s one way to page homage to your influences!
JACOB: See, I do name songs in my notes that way though I’ll probably never use that as a title. When I’m demoing a song, I’ll be like, “I don’t know what to call it. I’m going to name it after my go-to influence for the song.”
You mentioned Saves the Day and Lifetime as an influence for at least one of the songs. The early 2000s emo/punk stuff is a bit of a weak spot for me. I don’t know that I can pick out the influences on your solo album as well as I can on the Narrow Head stuff. That stuff, to me, sounds like Quicksand, Helmet, Hum, those types of bands.
JACOB: You pretty much nailed the big three. A lot of people say Deftones also.
Oh, of course. Forgot to mention the Deftones.
JACOB: Yeah, we love Deftones, obviously, and I’m sure at some point we were heavily influenced by them. All of the Walter Schreifels bands were kind of big for us too – Rival Schools and Quicksand. So, yeah, you nailed that one.
You don’t have to tell me, song by song, who the influences were but can you tell me, in general, who influenced the songs on the album?
JACOB: Yeah, Elliott Smith. I was jamming a lot of Sugar. A lot of 2000s bands. I can’t even think of them off the top of my head, but that Vagrant Records 2000s stuff like Hot Rod Circuit, Get Up Kids, Reggie and the Full Effect even. I would say that whole 2000-2005 time period. I was jamming a lot of compilations because my dad would get stuff from shows. So I was listening to Taking Back Sunday and stuff like that. If I wanted to hit a deep, deep cut, I would say Hot Rod Circuit. Maybe Oasis a little bit. I don’t know, just a notebook of stuff I listened to throughout my life that has given me a type of music that I can identify with and write. All that stuff mixed together is kind of what I think it is.
Do you think of the album as a way for you to pay homage to those roots and aim for something that sounds like 2005 or are they just influences that you used to create something that sounds like 2025?
JACOB: Yeah, I would say so, but that wasn’t my goal outright. My goal was to write songs with no filter on them, just songs that Jacob wrote. In the long run, that kind of happened on accident, showing my influences, because I was just thinking of everything I’ve ever liked when I was writing these songs with no filter on them. So, it’s a little bit of both.
So 12 songs on the record. Do you have like a second record kicking around in your head already?
JACOB: No, I’ve got some song ideas, but as far as like, “Oh, I’ve got another thing of 12,” no. I’ve got some ideas and songs, not like a full album.
I didn’t know if you had like a whole drawer full of like 70 songs.
JACOB: I have maybe 70,000 ideas that could work, but it’s too much to sift through to find the right one. Time will tell because I could be inspired tomorrow, you know.
You’ve put out two videos for the album. Are there other videos you want to make once the album is released?
JACOB: There hasn’t been talk of it but it’s not that hard for me to just make a video for myself. So yeah, I think I will make more videos because the videos we’ve done so far, there’s a little sense of humor to them. I think if I just keep going in that route, if I made a shitty quality music video, it’ll probably still match, it’ll probably still fit that vibe that I’m already doing. No real ideas, but I have thought about making videos for the other songs myself, just to have some more stuff out there, some more content or whatever.
How in touch are you with that part of the business, making sure you have content to put out regularly?
JACOB: No one’s really telling me to, but in my experience with Narrow Head, and now that Nihilistic Easyride is my Instagram and social media, it’s an easier way to drop content because it’s just me. It’s never really been something I like to do or care to do, but I have some funny ideas that I could just do to drop it, and it wouldn’t hurt or do anything for me at all. It would just be some content out there. I haven’t thought too much about it.
Having seen what your dad and uncle went through in a band together, do they offer advice, or do you look at things they did and either say, “I want to go down that path,” or “I saw what they did, and I’m going to go down the other path?” How much interaction do you have with them in terms of career choices?
JACOB: I kind of made all my choices myself without even asking for advice because I’m easily turned off to things. If I’m asking for advice and it’s not what I think I should be hearing, it kind of scares me away from stuff. So I think the last 10 years or so that I’ve been touring and doing all this stuff, I just didn’t ask them anything, just kind of like, “I’m just gonna do what’s in front of me and see what happens.” They had kids, you know? So maybe I shouldn’t go down that path.
Does your dad ever look and either say, “That’s my kid, that’s awesome,” or is he ever like, “Man, that should have been us”?”
JACOB: No, he’s so stoked. At our shows, he’s out there in the crowd telling everyone that I’m his kid. He’s really stoked, and that feels good because I’d say I found out about music through him. Everyone finds music at some point, but I liked his taste growing up, so I would guess you know what he would show me or what I’d find that sounded like that. He’s definitely super proud.
Have there been any moments where you kind of look around and have been like, “I can’t believe we’re here?” You toured with Quicksand, right?
JACOB: That was our first straight-out-of-COVID tour. That’s one of my favorite bands, so that was something that I feel I manifested when I was a kid. I was like, “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna tour with them one time,” and we did. It’s pretty crazy because even back then, we had a name, but we weren’t making money. I guess we could sell out a tiny club, but we weren’t really doing that. Then, from 2021 to even summer of 2022, we did a tour with Bleed and Temple of the Angels, and that even seemed insane because we were selling out shows. They weren’t big places, but even that was like, “Damn!” That was just from last year to this year, and then it’s gotten better and better. So yeah, I do sometimes stop and look around.
I remember discovering Narrow Head early on in the pandemic and telling some friends about the band. But, it being 2020/2021, I had forgotten about you by the time the full length came out. When that album came out, I was telling my friends, “Check out this band I just discovered” and they were like, “You told us about them 8 months ago.”
JACOB: The first EP was in 2014, and then Satisfaction was 2016. But we put those out ourselves on this label called Floodlight. I think Run for Cover might have grabbed them in 2021, so they got put up on Spotify. A lot of people think those came out then, but they’re really like 10 years old.
Is there a lot of misconceptions about how long you’ve been together? I thought Narrow Head was a new band.
JACOB: I think so, yeah. The fans that have been there since the beginning, they will let you know that they’ve been there. It’s kind of cool whenever I’ll see someone say we’re a new band, and then someone from our deep fanbase is like, “Oh, you know, they’ve been a band for 10 years, right?” It’s kind of cool, and it’s funny. But, yeah, people think we’re new. In the grand scheme of things, I guess in a way we are new to people who didn’t know about us back then. It’s not like we were popular or anything, but we definitely had something going on.
At this point, do you – or do others – consider Narrow Head to be a local Houston band or are you more of a national touring band that just happens to live in Houston?
JACOB: The latter. I’ll get comments on the Narrow Head thing that’ll be like, “Come back to Houston,” and I’m like, “I literally live here!” But yeah, we don’t really play here. We play maybe once a year in Houston. I guess we’re not really a local band anymore, especially since I’m the only one that lives here.
Do you remember when that shift from being a local band to being a touring band happened?
JACOB: Yeah, that was 2020-2021, not that long ago, because we were going strong as a local band from 2014 to 2020, to be honest. I mean, we wouldn’t play every day, but every other month or something, we’d be playing around here.
You mentioned that the solo album is “Jacob’s influences.” With Narrow Head being a five-person band, is that music a collection of all your collective influences?
JACOB: Not really, because me and Carson have been writing for Narrow Head. We’ve had a lot of different members throughout the years. I think we’ve been most consistent in the last five. For the most part, it’s always been me writing songs. With the lineup now, we do all contribute, but before that, it was kind of just me and Carson. I think we just have a Narrow Head thing that we’re trying to get across. When we write our unfiltered songs, it’s like, “Alright, how do we add the Narrow Head sauce to it?” It’s more of an intentional thing. We’re trying to write a Narrow Head song.
So there’s no competition between your Nihilistic Easyrider and Narrow Head because you’re the primary songwriter for both. You equally invested in both.
JACOB: Yeah. To be honest with you, I’m not really trying to go solo. I just wanted to drop these ideas, and Run for Cover was down, so it seemed all kind of laid out in front of me to do. But yeah, I’m definitely not trying to go solo at all. And I can play shows if Narrow Head’s taking a break and I need something to do.
That is nice. What does a touring band consist of? Is it different from Narrow Head?
JACOB: For the first tour, we’re going to get Carson because he already played the drums on it, and he’s available, and he’s one of my best friends, so he’s my go-to. I’m trying to keep it separate from Narrow Head so we don’t have all the same dudes. So as of now, it’s just Carson from Narrow Head. Stuff might change next year. Maybe Carson can’t do it, and I’ll have to get another drummer. I have a feeling this band will be kind of a revolving door because I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. I don’t know if I’m going to be taking it super seriously like that.
Will the upcoming tour just be the two of you?
JACOB: Oh, no, we’re going to get some other people to play, too. It’s going to be a full band, two guitars.
Will the rest of the touring band be friends of yours from Texas?
JACOB: No. We have our friend Shannon Connor, and he plays in Graham Hunt’s band, and he lives in Wisconsin. Everyone else is in Texas. But Shannon was down, and I thought it’d be cool because he was the engineer of the record too, doing a lot of the technical stuff. For the most part, it would be better if everyone lived within an hour or two of me, but it’s not necessary. I’m sure we can make anything happen.
The dates you have coming up, On Being An Angel is playing with you. How did that come about?
JACOB: I’ve known Paige for years. She’s one of our really close friends. Sweet person. She’s awesome. I remember maybe like 2016, I saw her on Instagram and asked her if she wanted to play in Narrow Head. I don’t know what happened, but yeah, they are very good friends of mine. I think they’re a sick band, and everyone else that plays in the band is awesome too. I went to go see them a couple months ago, and we were planning this tour, and I was like, “It would be cool to not go alone, like, who’s chill that I’d want to tour with?” I saw them play, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I don’t know how I didn’t think to ask On Being An Angel that night.” I just brought it up, and we figured it out.
What are your realistic, and your unrealistic, expectations or hopes for the record?
JACOB: The unrealistic expectation is I wish that something like MTV would exist again, 24 hours of music videos, new stuff, new bands and stuff. I would love to be on that. I wish there was like, even on the internet, it’d be cool if there was a live stream where someone does a show, and they play brand new music videos. That would be sick, and people could probably get down with that. That’s unrealistic to me because I don’t know. People don’t like music anymore. I’m not sure what they want, but that’s if I had a magic lamp and someone could grant that, that’d be one. Realistic, I mean, I think people will like the record. I was a little concerned, because all that matters is if I like it, really. But I was a little more like, “Damn, how is it gonna be seen or perceived?” But as soon as I let go of the fact that I have no control of that, it is what it is. So I’m stoked on it again, and once it’s out, it’s out. It’s not really gonna bother me anymore.
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Nihilistic Easyrider tour dates
Sep 12: Houston, TX – Secret Group
Sep 13: Austin, TX – Mohawk (Inside)
Sep 16: Chicago, IL – Subterranean
Sep 17: Bloomington, IN – The Bishop
Sep 18: Detroit, MI – Parts & Labor
Sep 19: Toronto, ON – Sneaky Dee’s
Sep 20: Buffalo, NY – Rec Room
Sep 22: Ridgewood, NY – TV Eye
Sep 23: New York, NY – Night Club 101
Sep 24: Philadelphia, PA – PhilaMOCA
Sep 25: Washington, DC – DC9
Sep 26: Raleigh, NC – Kings
Sep 27: Atlanta, GA – Aisle 5
