Burn the Louvre is an indie duo based out of Hamilton, ON comprised of Jordan Speare (vocals/guitar) and Sean Cooper (guitar/vocals). Their debut LP Silhouettes was recorded, mixed & mastered by engineer/producer Mickey Ellsworth and is slated for release across 2022. Speare started working on Silhouettes years before he met Cooper. Recording as a “solo artist” for the first time ever, he enlisted the help of friend Andrew Billone of Silvertone Hills to play lead guitar & bass on all 11 tracks on the LP. He also invited friend & fellow singer/songwriter Stephanie Deshane to sing with him on “Alison”, a fun duet with a charming back & forth.
By Kamil Bobin
Discovered via Musosoup
Hey Burn the Louvre, super nice to have the chance to chat with you. What first got you into music?
Hey Kamil! Thanks so much for having me! So I guess the short answer to that question is Led Zeppelin. I just thought they were the coolest thing ever when I turned 12 and started going through my Mom & Dad’s record collection. My Mom was a big Zeppelin fan, so I took up the drums at age 12 because I wanted to learn how to play like John Bonham.
I played the drums in a bunch of really bad high school and college bands until I decided I wanted to start my own project and play my own songs, so when I was 20 years old, I took up the guitar and started Burn The Louvre with my brother Dylan. We released 2 EPs together from 2014 - 2017 until he decided to leave the band to pursue other interests.
Shortly after my brother left the band, I started recording these new songs we released this past year with producer extraordinaire Mickey Ellsworth. I got some help from my friend Andrew Billone of indie rock band Silvertone Hills. Andrew played the lead guitar and bass on all 11 tracks on this LP. I also asked my friend & fellow singer/songwriter Stephanie Deshane to sing with me on “Alison”. After Mickey & I finished recording the album, I met my guitar player Sean around the end of 2018 through a ‘Musicians Wanted’ ad on Kijiji that I had forgotten to take down [laughs]. Fast forward about 4 years later and here we are with that new album we just released called Silhouettes.
What is your creative process like?
I love this question because of how complex the answer is to it [laughs]. Not to throw a total music cliche out there, but It really does vary from song to song. I’ve had some songs where I’ve had the music and the chord progressions written and ready to go, but struggled with the lyrics until something happened and inspiration hit.
Then there’d be some cases where I’d get lyrics written very quickly and already have the melody in my head and I’d just have to try to transcribe that on the guitar afterwards. Every song is a little different for sure. Sometimes I’ll finish an entire song in under an hour and sometimes I’ll leave it for months and then come back to it and finish it off later. Sometimes it’s literally just one line I’ll get stuck on.
Inspiration can be tricky for sure, but the one thing I will never do is rush a song or force something that isn’t there. I’ve always operated as more of a lone wolf in regards to collaboration. Even when my brother was in the band, we would each have our own songs written and we would basically just edit each other’s work. Maybe he was stuck on a line here or there or he’d tell me what he’d want me to play on the guitar etc. – Sean and I operate very much the same way. He has his songs, I have mine and we try to edit each other’s work and compliment it as best we can. It’s a system that’s worked great for me my whole life and Sean seems to enjoy working that way as well, so we’ve definitely found our formula.
Your latest song is called 'Honolulu'. Can you tell us more about the making of it and if there were any unusual things happening during the process?
Okay, so "Honolulu" is a song I wrote when I was 24 for my first girlfriend Gillian for her birthday. We'd always joked about running away to Honolulu one day, so I wrote this song about the idea of doing just that. To be honest, I really wasn't the best boyfriend, but I did some things right and this song was definitely one of them. After opening the album with "Silhouettes", which is a song about the aftermath of that relationship from my perspective, I felt it was fitting to close the album with "Honolulu", a song about when times were great.
Before we went into the studio to record, I knew that I wanted to play that one on the ukulele. I mean, the song’s called “Honolulu”, it felt fitting, right? So while I actually wrote this song on the acoustic guitar, I transcribed it on the ukulele and learned to play it on there as well. I could not be happier with the way it turned out.
What was the most difficult challenge you faced?
The most difficult challenge I’ve had to face so far would definitely be having to start this entire project all over again from scratch when my brother quit the band back in 2017. Hands down, that was the most difficult, soul-crushing, time-consuming endeavour I’ve ever taken on. Obviously everything worked out in the end and Sean & I have a great thing going now as a duo, but yeah, definitely not something I ever want to go through again. Rebuilding Burn The Louvre from scratch almost destroyed my mental health.
Here’s hoping we’re done with the lineup changes for good now.
What is the biggest mistake you have made within your career to this point?
So, while nothing glaring stands out - which is probably an encouraging sign, right? [laughs] - I can point to various situations where I know I could have handled myself better, done more to resolve an issue etc. Again, nothing glaring, but there have definitely been some circumstances where I had a lapse in judgement and wasn’t as understanding as I should have been or maybe I trusted some people I shouldn’t have trusted, you know?
I try to look at every failure or shortcoming as a learning opportunity.. As long as you’re improving and you don’t make that same mistake again, then was it even a mistake to begin with?
Are there people who help you with the production of the songs?
So for this album in particular, there is only one man who deserves all the thanks and praise in that regard and his name is Mickey Ellsworth.
Mickey recorded, mixed, mastered and produced this entire record and I honestly could not have asked for a better finished product. Mickey was instrumental in the sound of Silhouettes. Every suggestion he made ended up making the final cut, he was just never wrong. Even in the rare circumstances where I didn’t particularly agree with a decision or a direction (there were very, very few of these, by the way), what I really appreciated is how Mickey would let me do a take the way I heard it, so he could play it back for me to actually show me WHY it didn’t work. He’d let me hear it for myself.
I really appreciated that. I learned a LOT from Mickey about how to make a record while we were working on Silhouettes. I can’t wait to get back into the studio with him again sometime soon to record these new songs Sean & I are currently working on.
What are your long term goals?
Well, I still need to finish up pitching & promoting the new album Silhouettes, first and foremost. I have already put a massive amount of work into that throughout the entirety of 2022, so the good news is that because of all of my consistent hard work, radio is basically the only thing I have left to pitch to in 2023 (all the music execs I’ve talked with have all told me to pitch to radio last - blogs & playlists first). So I am hoping this record continues to get picked up by a number of these radio stations and I can generate a lot more airplay for us in 2023.
And after my radio pitching is all finished, I am taking a long break from my laptop and social media. Pitching and promoting 11 songs all by myself this past year has just completely drained me. I need a break from the internet in 2023 [laughs].
As far as future projects go, I am sitting on at least 10-15 songs that I think are more than good enough to record and produce. Sean has at least 5 more songs of his own which we want to get in and record sometime soon as well. I mean, right there we already have another couple EPs worth of material, basically. So as of right now, the goal is to push this as far as it will go and make sure I get all of the songs we are currently sitting on released within the next 3 years or so. So 2023 will be a lot of demoing, practising and trying to bring these new songs to life. And gigs, we’ll definitely be playing a bunch more gigs this year as well.
Please sign up for our mailing list here if you want to stay up to date on everything we’re working on in 2023: https://www.burnthelouvre.com/contact
What do your fans mean to you? What do you value most in them?
It’s funny, because I’ve never really thought about this before, the idea of having “fans”; I honestly don’t think we do [laughs]. I think we’re just fortunate enough to have people out there who actually listen to our music. I really do appreciate those people taking the time to listen and check us out. Because at the end of the day that’s what they’re spending on us, their time, which is the most valuable thing of all. So I genuinely appreciate anyone who’s ever played our stuff.
And to those beautiful people who’ve actually bought merch or paid for our records or bought tickets to our gigs: “You people are the real MVPs and I want to buy each of you a drink sometime.”
What memorable responses have you had to your work?
It seems that this answer changes quite a bit depending on who you ask. Over the past year alone, I’ve gotten comparisons that have varied from The Kooks to Phoenix to The Violent Femmes to Elvis Costello (which was extremely humbling). I did quite a bit of genre-mashing on this new LP SIlhouettes. There are obvious singer/songwriter influences on a number of tracks, obvious indie rock influences on a number of other tracks, there’s a bit of folk in there, a couple of the songs are heavily punk influenced, one of them has a cowbell in there [laughs]...so it’s an extremely mixed bag to say the least.
We’ve gotten quite a bit of positive reviews for the record so far though, so that’s been extremely encouraging! And what’s most interesting to me is how “the best song” on the album is constantly changing depending on who’s listening. While some songs are obviously more popular than others, according to the streaming gods [rolls eyes], everyone I talk to seems to have a different favourite track, which again, I view as a huge positive. Our music is obviously eclectic enough to attract many different music fans.
But I ALWAYS enjoy hearing the comparisons as to what listeners think we sound like. I’m definitely not one of those musicians who gets all particular about his own work, I like hearing the comparisons.
My favourite way to describe our sound is that: “we’re an indie rock band with folk tendencies.”
Where is the best place in the world you’ve ever been to?
This is a great question to close with, albeit a very tough one to answer… I feel that this answer would vary depending on which Jordan you ask. 9-year-old Jordan would probably say Disney World [laughs], which was a great time with my family, of course. I’m not a huge fan of the United States, but I really did love California when I went to visit back in 2017. As a kid I always enjoyed visiting the Caribbean on our family vacations.
To be honest, I’m not the most well-travelled person as of right now…which is something I’m looking to correct now that I’m 32 and I have a decent paying job with some vacation time [laughs]. My best friends and I are actually planning a Eurotrip later this year, so I am very much looking forward to that. I’ve wanted to see Europe for some time now and I figure this trip will be a great place to start.
I’m definitely going to make sure we spend some time in France. I feel a trip to The Louvre would be quite necessary, right? No fires though! [smiles].
Fun Fact: The name Burn The Louvre actually came from a quote out of the novel Fight Club, which just so happens to be my favourite movie. So it’s just a cool band name, I definitely have no quarrel with the world’s most famous art museum [laughs].