Lars Nagel is Making a Scene

February 16, 2024

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Lars Nagel

When Atlanta alt-country / Americana veteran, singer-songwriter, and guitarist Lars Nagel was kicking around titles for his new solo album, he kept coming back to a familiar three-word phrase and well-known Ringo Starr-ism: Tomorrow Never Knows. “I was of course hesitant about using the name of a classic Beatles song,” Nagel says, “but I figured if The Replacements can put out Let It Be, I can put out Tomorrow Never Knows.”

For Nagel, the idea came from a conversation with a friend who works at renowned Atlanta trauma center Grady Hospital, and also from the 2004 comeback record by proto-punk legends the New York Dolls, whose guitarist Sylvain Sylvain was backed for a time by Nagel’s old band The El Caminos.

“One day, I was bitching about something trivial, and my buddy Andrew—who had just gotten off his shift at the hospital—said to me, ‘If you can get out of bed in the morning under your own power, you’re having a great day. None of us gets the promise of tomorrow.’ So that was on my mind, and I was also thinking about when I saw the New York Dolls on their first reunion tour. Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane had just died, and the band had released One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This. It’s a beautiful album with a beautiful title. So when it came time to name my new record, I had to go with Tomorrow Never Knows. Because it really doesn’t. And that title is very representative of the songs on the new record.”

Tomorrow Never Knows runs the gamut from ’90s-style alt-country to contemporary Americana, ’60s cosmic country, and vintage folk and roots rock. The record features a pair of timely political tunes—“So It Goes” and “Gotta Move”—that address gun violence, the opioid epidemic and the descent of millions of Americans into QAnon conspiracies and right-wing propaganda. But outside of those tunes, it’s a largely personal, reflective and philosophical album, touching on the importance of living in the moment (“Years Gone By”), having a friend’s back as they struggle with addiction (“The Fool’s Way Home”), knowing when to walk away from a romantic relationship (“Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”) and setting boundaries in a dysfunctional friendship (“You Will Never Change” and the Thunders-inspired “Johnny Was Right,” which impactfully invokes classic punk ballad “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory”). Tomorrow Never Knows also recounts Swedish immigrant Nagel’s first experience visiting America as a child, and the death of his father (“Old Photographs,” “Now That You’ve Left Me”).

“I started writing ‘Now That You’ve Left Me’ while sitting on the front porch of my old house in Stockholm while my dad was in my childhood bedroom dying,” Nagel says. “I’d read somewhere that when a boy’s father dies, he takes the boy’s childhood with him. I’m still trying to fully understand what that means, but the idea ended up being the chorus of the song.”

“Old Photographs”—also a nod to Nagel’s late father—documents the singer-songwriter’s maiden voyage from Sweden to California in the mid ’70s, 10 years before he permanently emigrated to the U.S. “I wanted to capture the beautiful thing my Dad did for me with that trip. He worked for Scandinavian Airlines at the time, so it wasn’t a matter of the plane tickets costing money, but it was a really cool thing that he let me tag along on his business trip to L.A. ‘Old Photographs’ is written from a very pure, childlike point of view—it captures that sharp contrast I felt coming from cold and dark Stockholm in March, snow piled up to the the windows, to my Dad and I renting a Pinto at LAX and cruising down Hollywood Boulevard, mesmerized by all the palm trees. It was like ‘wow’—there’s this place called Disneyland, and I get pancakes and syrup for breakfast? Are you kidding me? In Sweden, it’s a Björn Borg breakfast—you chop up Wasa bread in sour milk and you eat like a damn viking. And here I am in L.A. with a stack of pancakes and Saturday-morning cartoons and we drive past and Elvis Presley is playing The Forum. It was all pretty magical.”

Tomorrow Never Knows was recorded in Atlanta at the home studio of Nagel’s friend Daniel Groover, who worked for years as a session player on hip-hop and R&B records from artists such as 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Wale, Toni Braxton and Macy Gray. “Daniel is an extraordinary guy and a phenomenal player,” Nagel says. “While I ended up playing most of the guitars on Tomorrow Never Knows, Daniel played just about every electric guitar on my first three solo albums Happy to Be Here, American Honey and You’re My Only One. For Tomorrow Never Knows, he engineered, played drums and also added some key guitar parts and backing vocals. Me, Daniel and my friend Diane Coll—a wonderful singer and songwriter who appears on the record as a backing vocalist and also plays piano on “So It Goes”—co-produced the sessions.”

In addition to Nagel, Groover and Coll, Tomorrow Never Knows also features Sam Rountree (backing vocals on “The Fool’s Way Home”), and on “Johnny Was Right” Atlanta-scene mainstays Tom Cheshire (vocals, percussion) and Steve McPeeks (upright bass), who play together in the Tom Cheshire Band as well as long-running project West End Motel with Mastodon’s Brent Hinds. “We had such a great crew,” Nagel says. “Diane and Daniel were a pleasure to work with and an immeasurable help.”

Though the recording of Tomorrow Never Knows was not without its setbacks and struggles. Halfway into the sessions, Nagel—who is a tennis pro by day—severely injured the SCM muscle in his neck, and had to put the record on hold for half a year. “It was dreadful,” he says. “I hurt it so badly, I wasn’t able to sing; I couldn’t even really speak for six months—not even a kitchen-table conversation. It was extremely disheartening at times. I was at the physical therapist once or twice a week for months trying to get myself into shape so I could get back on the court and work, and so I could finish the record.”

During this hiatus, Nagel put in countless hours doing just about the only thing he could—editing, rewriting and punching up his lyrics. “I really sweated over the songs on Tomorrow Never Knows, far more than I did my previous solo records,” he says. “I really pushed myself. Like with Townes Van Zandt, I wanted every line to matter.”

Eventually, the work Nagel put in toward his rehab helped him get into a different, more positive mindset, which he says was a big part of physically healing. “There’s probably nothing more important than mental health,” he says. “That’s where recovery starts.” Finally, he was well enough to get back into the studio with Groover and Coll, recutting and completing the new album.

Before he set out on his own as a solo artist in 2015, Nagel cut his teeth playing in several alt-country and rock & roll bands, most notably as guitarist for ’90s cowpunk outfit The Ditchdiggers, as well as power-pop group Motor 76 and punk rockers The El Caminos.

“I have so many great memories playing with these bands,” Nagel says. “When I joined The El Caminos, my first gig was opening for The Batusis, which was Sylvain Sylvain from the New York Dolls & Cheetah Chrome of The Dead Boys. With Motor 76, we had an amazing run touring Europe. And with The Ditchdiggers I remember playing the main stage at this festival in Pensacola for a crowd of 10,000. In the middle of our set, I turned around and there was Little Richard—who was also on the festival—smoking a joint, tapping his feet and checking us out. It was pretty surreal.”

Over the years, with his bands and as a solo artist, Nagel has opened for artists such as Dr. John, Emmylou Harris, Drive-By Truckers, Hank Williams III, Todd Snider, The Bottle Rockets, Drivin N Cryin, Webb Wilder, Jason Ringenberg of Jason & the Scorchers, Man or Astroman, Agent Orange, Humble Pie, Richie & CJ Ramone, The Misfits & more.

Little did Nagel’s tennis students know that his bands were gracing magazine covers, charting on college radio and sharing stages with so many legendary artists. Nor did most of his rock & roll friends know about his stint as a high-ranked competitive junior tennis player out of Sweden. “Having that whole other world of tennis was good for me,” Nagel says. “It grounded me and kept me from getting too far gone into the party, especially in that ’90s rock scene where everybody was going out of their minds. Tennis helped keep me on the path because I knew that whenever the show was over, I had to be together enough to still do my job. In many ways, it benefited my music.”

Reflecting on his three-decade-plus music career, and the coming release of Tomorrow Never Knows, Nagel says one of life’s greatest blessings is to know exactly what it is you want to do. “Once you have that, especially with music,” he says, “I think you have to claim success. To me that means being an artist who writes, records, releases and performs my own songs. It means being able to do what you want to do—what you love to do—on your own terms.”

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