Photo by Alexa Viscius
Liam Kazar isn’t a household name yet, but he has built an impressive resume over the years, earning a paycheck as a sought-after sideman performing with artists like Waxahatchee, Jeff Tweedy, Kevin Morby, and Sam Evian.
With the release of his second solo album, Pilot Light, Kazar has stepped into the spotlight, capturing the timeless sound of accomplished 1970s songwriters while incorporating the classic influence of crooners like Sinatra and Nat King Cole. It’s the kind of music that hipster kids will dig as much as their Gen X parents.
Kazar’s 2021 debut, Due North, was a decent and engaging listen, a retro pop album driven by keys and bouncy vocals. But as he admits during a recent break in Jeff Tweedy tour dates, he hadn’t quite discovered who he was or the type of music he was destined to make when he released that first album. Still, you have to start somewhere. For a guy who was active in the Chicago scene as a teen, performing with a hip-hop group (Kids These Days) and an indie rock band (Marrow), a pop sound was a natural progression.
Pilot Light’s mature sound finds Kazar fully coming into his own. He’s no longer worried about following trends or trying to become the next hot singer/songwriter. Instead, he’s pulling inspiration from his vast and diverse music interests, delivering everything from breezy indie folk (“Pilot Light,” “Holiday,” “Mission”), to twangy fiddle pop (“Day Off”), and intimate late-night jazz (“Listening”). It’s a wonderfully diverse album and one that seemingly only Liam Kazar could make.
I read an interview you did a couple years ago where you said the words “joyful” and “vulnerable” framed the record. Do you have two words that framed Pilot Light?
LIAM: I don’t know if I have two, but I have one, and it’s “home”. I spent the last 3 years, pretty much since that last record coming out, touring, traveling about 200 days a year and going through periods of living in Kansas City, or living in Chicago, or living in New York, subletting places. Bumping around Europe in between European tours or whatever, and the concept of home became very foreign to me, and I kind of lost touch with what a home even really was. I’m talking to you from my family’s home, but I’m my own person now. I’m in my 30s, and this is not my home. Certainly a guiding principle of the record was trying to reconnect with the idea of a home, because I felt like I’d got separated from that.
This record, stylistically, sounds different than Due North. Dare I say it sounds more mature?
LIAM: Yeah, maybe so. Maybe just somebody who’s a bit more comfortable with who they are, I think, which happens as you get older. I’ve been making music since I was a teenager and writing songs since I was a teenager, but, for a period of time at least, I didn’t even know how to be honest if I tried, or if I wanted to. I didn’t know what to be honest about. Because, you’re just trying to scrap together pieces of music and form it into a music-shaped ball, but true expression or whatever. Some people come out the gate at 20 years old, and they can express themselves in ways that are deeply true, deeply honest, deeply vulnerable, or deeply themselves. But I kind of came at it from a place of being a student of music, and learning how to use music as a way to express myself, maybe, further down the road.
You’re not a new artist. You’ve been making music since you were a teenager. But, I have a feeling some people are going to think this is your first album. Because you’ve played in bands in the past, does performing as a solo artist feel like a rebirth to you? Does it feel like something new or is this a continuation of the musical path that you’ve been on since being a teenager?
LIAM: I think I might feel like it is new, interestingly enough. I might agree with people who are finding me for the first time. They’re like, “Who’s this new guy?” And I’m like, “I agree. Who is this new guy? I don’t know him.” I think there’s some truth to that. I was always making music, and music was always in the context of being in a band until about five or six years ago for me. I think when you’re in a band, and this is what’s great about bands, you’re sort of confined to, what does it sound like when these four people, or these seven people, or however many people are in a band, what does it sound like when these people play music together? Okay, then that’s what that band is. And that’s always my experience of navigating, making a record, or playing music, or whatever. I didn’t play solo. And then when I made the decision that I wanted to make a solo record, it was like this huge confrontation with myself. It’s like, “Well, what do I sound like?” I know what I sound like as the rhythm guitar player in this band of four people over here, but me? I don’t know. And it took me a long time to figure it out, quite honestly.
My first record, I spent a long time working on, and probably recorded multiple albums worth of music. What ended up needing to happen was playing shows live. And once I figured out how I wanted to present my music live, that helped me figure out who I am as a recording artist. And I feel like I’ve only gotten more in touch with that on this newer album.
It’s been four years since Due North was released. You’ve been living all over the place and touring non-stop. Is that why the gap was four years or were you just not prepared to make another record and needed some time to figure things out?
LIAM: It was a combination of a few of those things. I never stopped making music, and I finished my last record and started chipping away at music again. And I made some music that I really liked, but didn’t necessarily seem like it was going to be my next record. But the goal was to make my next record. And then also, the true behind the scenes was: when you put out a small record and you don’t have people knocking on your door for the next one, and you’re busy working for other people, playing music for other people, I couldn’t find a home for my next record, and I had to make my next record to find a home for it, you know?
It is really, really difficult. I had the music, I was writing songs, but I just didn’t have anyone knocking at my door saying, “We need the next thing.” And you have to manifest it yourself, and it took me a long time to do that. So many, so many months and months of unresponded emails, you know?
Do you think of the songs on Pilot Light as chapters in a bigger story or are the songs each individual short stories that were collected together?
LIAM: Well, the songs are written maybe in three or four different little chunks, or chapters, however you want to think of it. There’s a really old song on the record that’s as old as my last record, called “Next Time Around,” and it’s the last song on the record. That song felt unlike any other song I’d written, unlike any other song I’d written for my first record, and unlike any of the other music that I was working on after my first record. It was kind of this anomaly. I really, really liked it, and I wasn’t certain I wanted to follow that path, but I’ve had that song since 2021, which is when my last record came out. I eventually did sort of decide to use that song as a guiding principle later on, on what became Pilot Light. And then I had a few songs on the record that I’d maybe written on the road in 2022 and 2023 here and there, but the bulk of the record I wrote very quickly in 2024 by booking time, paying for a recording session on my own dime. Which, to me, was a lot of money, and the pressure of using that time well forced me to write all this new material, and most of that is what Pilot Light is.
The older I get, the less attention I pay to lyrics. But, I have to say, when I was listening to “Day Off,” there’s a line that you deliver that I absolutely love. You sing, “Gathering pedigree doesn’t mean that much to me / See music is easy, you just have to count to three (four).” With the expected me/three rhyme, adding “four” afterwards just sounded so brilliant to me because I wasn’t expecting it.
LIAM: That’s a little Easter egg for the musicians. I added the word “four” because that comes on beat four. When you hear a band counting in a song, it goes “one, two, three, four.” And, it’s in four-four time. So that’s just a little cheeky nod to the music nerds out there. In the song, on beat four, we said “four,” and that was about it.
I love that.
LIAM: That makes me happy. I can’t remember now when I was writing it, because I wrote that song really quickly, like in an afternoon, but I think I had that idea of “one foot in the door” as well before I had the “four” thing. And all those verses were in different orders, and at some point, that “four” line, halfway through the verse, rhyming with “a foot in the door.” And, in that song, I say “second alarm.” I kind of like that I say “one foot in the door,” “second alarm,” “three and four,” all in the same song.
This past summer, I went to the Nelsonville Music Festival in Ohio and I saw Waxahatchee’s headline set. I didn’t know who you were at the time but I was literally standing right in front of you, about 20 feet away. And, I kept thinking, “Is the guitar player 25 or 45?” And also I kept thinking that, while you weren’t showing anyone up or standing in the spotlight, you gave off a certain vibe that made me think you fronted your band or something. I was like, “This guy can’t just be a guitar player in this band.”
LIAM: You know what? We Midwesterners are not great at taking compliments, but I’m just going to take that as a pure compliment. I don’t know why you felt that way, but it made me feel good.
(Waxahatchee at Nelsonville Music Festival. Photo by Rob Cohen.)
You’ll be on a headlining tour in January and you’ve got a stop in Columbus, Ohio, which is where I am. It might be the first show I go to in 2026.
LIAM: Oh, lovely. Make sure you come for the opener. My friend Brad Goodall is a very talented musician. He’s in with the Tyler Childers crew of people in West Virginia, and he just spent the last year playing keyboards for the lead singer of The Zombies, Colin Blunstone. If you listen to The Zombies, you know that all the music is vocals and the keyboards. And Brad was playing in that band. He’s an exceptional musician, and he has really cool, funny, interesting songs, so make sure you come early.
You did a video in a record store a few years ago where they asked you to pick out some albums. You said something like the music made between 1971 and 1983 is a big inspiration and some of the albums you picked were by the Nat King Cole Trio, Frank Sinatra, and Dusty Springfield. Was that stuff you grew up on around the house or were you like that weird kid who didn’t like all the “modern” music your friends liked but listened to old stuff?
LIAM: I mean, I was that kid a bit, in all honesty. There’s footage of me as a kid in a suit and a fedora singing Frank Sinatra songs. I did love that from as early as I can remember. And I liked some modern music. I was actually a massive Wilco fan, when some of my friends weren’t. I was pretty early to that. I do attribute learning how to sing from singing along to Frank Sinatra records, Stevie Wonder records, and Wilco. If you want to know how I learned how to sing, it’s those three.
Those are good teachers.
LIAM: Yeah, yeah. Jeff’s an amazing singer, and obviously Stevie and Frank are some of the old-timers. But, going back to that point about ’71 to ’83, or whatever I said, that’s more speaking sonically. I’m drawing from those sounds. And I still do love those sounds. But music that I listen to, or I’m inspired by, songwriting inspirations, I love old standards. I love modern music as well, there’s so much great music now. But I think what I was referring to was definitely a sonic treasure trove in that window, at least for my music.
Were you able to channel that inspiration into this record? Were you able to record in a more organic, less technology method?
LIAM: Yeah, Sam Evian, my producer and one of my dearest friends, recorded this record to tape. We were using modern amplifiers, there’s a sort of tonality you can seek out on modern instruments and all that sort of stuff, or use instruments that are even older than that, but using it in a style that’s relative to perhaps a ’70s or early ’80s sound. I just love so many records in that era’s sound.
In that video, you also picked up a Kinks record that you said you had been trying to find an affordable copy of.
LIAM: One of my closest musical friends and collaborators, James Elkington, who’s British, says, “People are always debating who the great British rock band is. Is it The Beatles or The Stones? And the correct answer is, of course, The Kinks.” I don’t agree with that. I’m a Beatles fanatic through and through, till I die, but The Kinks are definitely my number two. I adore The Kinks, and Ray Davies, which I’ve just learned is pronounced Davis.
Really?
LIAM: Yeah, it’s said “Ray Davis,” according to Jeff Tweedy. That’s how it’s pronounced. Ray Davies’ imagination and the things that he would write songs about still just floor me. He could write a song about anything. He could write a song about a teapot that is more compelling than a love song written by 99% of the people that have ever lived.
While you don’t live there anymore, you sort of grew up in the Chicago music scene. I’ve interviewed Chicago bands like Friko and Free Range and in talking with members of those bands, I hear the word “community” a lot. People helping each other. People playing in each other’s bands. In fact, between those two bands, Bailey Minzenberger plays in both and Friko and Free Range don’t sound anything alike.
LIAM: That’s Chicago. I mean, that’s really all I can say. There’s so many things that make it that way. We’re lucky. We have so many incredible venues. We essentially have no big conglomerate promoters, it’s small promoters, small venues, tons of places to play. You mix the big city with Midwestern niceness and you get a thriving community. It’s more affordable, it gets cold in the winter, and everyone just packs it up and makes records, and it’s just a perfect soup for a thriving music community.
Friko is actually a part of a slightly younger generation. I just saw Bailey last night. Friko’s obviously an amazing band, Free Range is an amazing band. Bailey is going to do many different things in their musical career, and they are one of the best musicians I’ve ever seen, I’ve ever met. They’re someone to keep an eye on, for sure.
Oh, absolutely. I know Bailey’s Friko and Free Range stuff but have also heard some solo stuff posted on various places on the internet and, you’re right, they have so much going for them.
LIAM: Anything Bailey touches, I’m going to check it out.
I’ve been asking everyone I interview this same final question. What’s a song that reminds you of a specific moment in your life?
LIAM: I’ll just say the first one that comes to mind, and try not to overthink it. My family was a road trip family. All of our vacations as a kid were in a van, in a Volkswagen van, and we would go camping. We had a six-CD changer, which was very new technology. And one of the CDs was called Motown Number Ones, or Motown Singles, and it was all the Motown hits that went to number one. It was a compilation of a bunch of different artists and the one song that immediately pops to mind, I mean, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” was on there, but the one that really pops to mind that, if you play that song for me, I’m in the Volkswagen van with my family, driving through Montana to Yellowstone National Park, and I’m about eight years old, is “Tears of a Clown.”
