Evan Weiss learns to loosen up

In recent months, Evan Weiss has gotten back in touch with his musical roots, launching a couple runs of small, DIY solo shows after leaving the tech job he’d held for the better part of a decade.

“I was really miserable with the tech company grind, and I wanted a change of pace,” said Weiss, who recalled how he phoned his Into It. Over It. bandmate JG Shadid to see if he wanted to join him for a series of small-scale shows in which each would play their own solo set. “And when I called him, I was like, ‘What do you think about booking six or seven intimate house shows, like how it would have been 20 years ago when this project started?’ … And it’s such a different muscle, because it’s so much quieter, so much prettier. … But also, you’re out there and you’re alone, so it’s pretty fucking naked. And that requires a little more attention to detail, a little more rehearsal, a little more skill and confidence. If you’re with the band, you have three more people you can lean on if you screw up. But when you’re alone, you have to be able to handle it.”

In revisiting past songs, some of which were written two decades ago when Weiss was in his early 20s, the musician said he has been able to view them in a different context, applying the perspective granted him by experience. “And there are some songs where they still feel like good stories, and I still feel the same way about them now as I did then, where there’s still this wistful, romantic quality to them that I appreciate,” continued Weiss, who will join Shadid and Lydia Loveless in concert at Secret Studio on Saturday, Oct. 3. “And I’m sure not everybody is like me, but when I’m singing and performing a song, I’m in my mind, and sometimes I’m thinking about those specific moments in my life as I’m playing. And it’s nice to reflect in that way. It reminds me to send that text message or make that phone call and reconnect with that old pal.”

Other things have changed, of course, with Weiss acknowledging that he’s taking up music as his sole venture from a place of greater stability this time out than he did in the first go-round – a reality he attributed to having a better established support system that includes his own label and recording studio, a manager, and the wisdom accrued over “30 years of doing this.”

“The pressure of wondering how I’m going to pay my rent has been alleviated somewhat,” he said. “It’s just not as stressful now, so I’m able to come at it with a much healthier attitude, and one where I’m not in the deepest, darkest depths of evil, intrusive thoughts, like, what if this doesn’t work out? I already know what it’s like for it to not work out. … And there are no delusions of grandeur, and no thoughts where it’s like, ‘I’m going to make it.’ That was a thought in my 20s. That’s not a thought in my 40s.”

At this stage of life, Weiss also allowed that a different set of priorities has emerged. He said his family now takes precedence, along with a renewed desire to pursue music purely for pleasure rather than letting his creative joy be crowded out by commercial ambition. To that end, rather than success, Weiss said he now craves stability, which he defined in part as the ability to keep his focus on being there for the people most important in his life rather than thinking “10 steps down the road,” as he explained it, which has helped him to remain better grounded in the moment.

In more recent months, this sense that he’s working from a more anchored place has also begun to impact Weiss’ songwriting, which has taken a more outward view following decades of more intensely inward interrogation. 

“We’re working on a new [Into It. Over It.] record now, and it’s the first time I’ve gotten overtly political, frankly, which is something I’d avoided for most of my career. … And so, it’s not just about me, it’s about a lot of other shit,” said Weiss, who also credited new albums from Ratboys and Algernon Cadwallader with granting him the permission to more explicitly unpack the social and political landscape. “When I was in my late 20s and early 30s, back when Into It. Over It. was doing a lot more, I think I got hung up on what the fans would want. And that’s a prison, and it doesn’t make for good anything. … The music and the lyrical content need to evolve with your age, right? And you just hope that the people who enjoy your band are able to keep up, or that maybe they’re experiencing the same thing and their lives are changing in the same ways. But I think I’ve gotten better at not worrying about what the listener would want as much as what I want. … And that has really loosened me up.”