Casper Allen & The Naturals: The Story Behind Their Origins and Recent Music

After a decade-long solo career, Casper Allen’s new full band, Casper Allen & The Naturals, debut their latest single ahead of the upcoming release of the The Hard Way EP. The band is composed of Casper Allen (vocals and guitar), Shawn Hess (bass), and R. Cooper Long (drums). Their latest single, “Damned Old Sun,” is only the first of the many releases the group has planned. Casper Allen & The Naturals seem to coincidentally be named for the group’s authentic connection and natural musicianship. 

If you can just do a brief introduction to yourself, what inspired you to become an artist and how has that evolved?

I think it got the bug way early, like 9, 10, 11, maybe younger. I was really into Elvis when I was really young and the Beatles and all that stuff. My dad sacrificed his dreams to have kids, but he was a full scholarship English lit student at UVA (University of Virginia) in the 80s. He was really into literature and poetry, and so I grew up with this crazy bookshelf in our trailer. I grew up kind of always thinking about things in an art way, sort of. I feel lucky in that way.

I was selling drugs when I was in high school for a while and moved to LA and I was running Pro Tools for SoundCloud rap at one point. It was 2014 or 2015, I got myself into some shit and I was in a coma for two months. I got jumped. I mean, I was selling drugs in an area I shouldn't have been doing that in. I got dragged down a staircase and woke up in a hospital two months later. All of a sudden when I got out, my girlfriend at the time was like, “you need to be playing music. You need to stop doing all this bullshit.” I didn't even have a guitar at the time. I bought a guitar, and my voice sounded the way it sounds now. It's not how it sounded when I was younger.

I moved to Joshua Tree for a little bit and then back down to Texas. I was living on a farm writing songs and then started touring again. I got angry enough at one point in my first dabbling in the music industry, and I just quit playing music for two-and-a-half years. As Covid started, tours got canceled and stuff and [I] had a lot of resentment. Then right as my ex-wife found out she was pregnant, I started writing again, and here we are. The band stuff is the newest development, which is exciting.

You had a decade-long solo career, but now you play with a band, which you said was a very organic meeting and formation. What inspired this new era of finding your bandmates and your own sound too?

Well, I guess more like six, seven years ago now, I toured with a band for a couple years. But it was just like pickup players. I was living in New Orleans at the time, so I was picking up good guitar players, and my brother played [pedal] steel for me. But it just never worked out, and I was a mess when I was younger, I was way off the rails. But then Sean, who's my bass player, was opening for me for about a year on tour. He and I were on the road a lot together and we had just become friends. And his songs are just fucking incredible. 

But all early parts of last year and into the late summer, I was trying to get a band together. I had all these songs that I'd been working on that needed a band. And so I was trying different people in Denver, and it was just not working. I tried some Nashville guys, but never got out of the rehearsal stage. I did some recording sessions in Nashville and elsewhere with pickup players and session players and the vibe was so off. Then I started going through divorce stuff and was spending a ton of time going to visit Sean.

Cooper, our drummer is also a songwriter, and I had met him twice I think at that point, just playing shows together. The three of us had gotten along really well just taste wise. Cooper came down and we literally just spent two days, the whole EP is just two days, not even. It's like maybe 12 hours worth of recording. And they didn't know the songs. I was still kind of working out the songs. The next morning we would play the songs like one, two times, and those are the versions that are on the EP. I don't think there's anything later than a third take on the EP.

We played the first one, which is actually the next single that's about to come out. And we all just looked at each other, and we were having so much fun and it sounded really good. And Sean looked at me and was like, “we should take this on the road, shouldn't we?” I was like, “yeah, we should.” 

How do you think that you've evolved as a musician or your songwriting has evolved from your earlier music to this new era?

I mean, the writing's evolved a lot just because you get better the more you do something. But when I was younger, the stuff that I kind of made a reputation on is - I was writing about heroin a lot and real serious personal struggles and a lot of my friends were dying. So that's the stuff that people love and are really into, or that they started to love me from. I kind of had to play those songs every night, or I felt like I did at least. And I love that stuff, but I haven't done heroin in eight years now, and I don't live that way anymore. I have a child and have settled down quite a bit, and I'm not sad all the time. I still get that way, but not every day. 

I mean the divorce stuff was going on and I was touring a lot, and December was great. I kind of knew that it was the last time I was going to be doing those sets for a minute. But October, November, and the beginning of December, was kind of a struggle. I was just already going through some totally different shit and a new version of pain, sadness, whatever you want to call it, just a different thing. I tend to be, even through divorce stuff, I tend to be a pretty happy person. Especially when I'm hanging out with my friends, I'm having fun and laughing or playing with my daughter or whatever.

So I started writing different stuff, it's me. Since we started recording stuff, we went back out to this cabin up in Wyoming and recorded the rest of the album. But I’m having so much fun with my friends playing, and whereas before, I loved playing solo, but it's a very stoic thing and it's really intense. A lot of those songs are really intense. I kind of have to get myself into a place to sing them and just close my eyes and let it go. But with the band stuff, it's like I close my eyes when I sing, and then I turn around and I'm grinning ear-to-ear at Sean and having just a blast.

So your latest single that you released is “Damned Old Sun.” What inspired this song? How was it created and what was that process like?

Well, I was going through personal stuff with me and my child's mother breaking up. But I was in New York with her family on Long Island. So I was doing a lot of thinking last summer, reading a lot and reading a lot of poetry. And my dad loves Yeats, and my dad and I are really cool again now, which took a couple decades. So he gave me this Yeats collection. So I was reading a lot of that and walking around, walking on the beach being a little sad fuck. 

Because I'm with my daughter a lot, I kind of have this huge playlist of all, “this-will-make me-feel-better-music.” I was playing electric a lot just for shits and giggles, for fun, which I hadn't been doing for a while. I had been thinking in terms of real romantic poetry kind of stuff, with the Yeats stuff. I just randomly started writing the lyrics in my head and kind of walked my way from one end of the bay to the other end where the house was. And I think by the time I got there, it was pretty much done. I did some editing, but that was the first one of these songs, “Damned Old Sun.” 

And it was that fast basically?

I mean, I think it was like an hour, which sometimes songs take me fucking forever. I was writing into my head, and then I got back, picked up the guitar, and I think I maybe fucked around for 20 minutes and figured it out. Whenever I write stuff, and there's three people or four people I send it to, I'll just make a little phone demo. There's a version of me that's like a music nerdy dude that's into all the hip record store guy stuff. And then the other version is I grew up in the streets and selling dope and I loved to gamble. It’s hard to put those two worlds together. And then in the last five, six years, I've gotten more comfortable just being myself. As I was writing these songs I figured out how to just, it's all there pretty naturally now. Now I'm writing in this way. It's not one or the other, it's just me. I started pumping songs out, and I had a lot of good writing material, so it just all started banging out pretty quick.

When you're writing, does it often start with you coming up with lyrics? Or do you sometimes take songs with you to the band? How does that relationship work?

I mean it's different all the time, but with the band stuff, all the songs on this record were done. I had the chords, the melodies, but then stuff just changed when I got it in front of the band. It's nice because it's a three piece, so there's not a ton of moving parts. They just know me well enough and know my taste and know where I'm drawn from. They turn into something different once you get it in front of the band. I mean the versions of all these songs that were phone demos are vastly different. And “natural 7,” which is the next thing we're going to put out, that one started as a three-minute song when I was writing it myself. And then once I got it to the band over the course of two play throughs, it turned into a seven minute song, which is great. The possibilities that come just from having two other instruments and two other people that are onboard, that are in it with you, it's just a totally different experience and becomes something new.

What do you think everybody in the band brings to the table?

I swear I could break it down to a bunch of very particular things, but honestly it's just a whole. It's the vibe. Whether we're playing, rehearsing, hanging out, watching movies, driving, whatever, the three of us are just on the same page and we're all having fun. And even the way we behave on tour is pretty similar. We're all very conscious of trying to be kind to people. We're kind of all on the same page, which is rare. That just has to be a natural thing.

Cooper's an incredible drummer who makes decisions that I would never make. On all the records I've put out before, I'm playing the drums. I'm not an incredible drummer, but I don't have anything on Cooper. Seeing him play this stuff, I think he just gets to get loose and groove. He makes really clever decisions when they work. And he knows music well enough and knows the same stuff I'm drawn from and that Sean draws from enough to know what's tasteful and what's not. Sean was a bass player first before he was a songwriter, and he was in psych rock bands and stuff, and he just understands the groove. That's the whole thing with this stuff, it's just a ton of groove. Sean opens a lot of the shows, and his music is very good, very deep, finger picky, a lot of it. But when we're all together, it's like we all have this pent up part of us that wants to do this thing, and it's kind of become an outlet for all of us to do it. 

So new music, what's coming? You have your EP out in May, but looking forward, can you kind of give an insight into what’s next?

The Hard Way EP, May. I mean an album's done, it's mixed and mastered. But yeah, we've already got part of another album done, a second album that I've written. I started recording another full solo record that's like really sad breakup music. I think we're sitting on 17 or 18 fully mixed and mastered songs. And then I have 12 for another solo record that I don't know when I'll put that out. But yeah, we've got a ton of stuff. And then Sean, I'm sure he'll have another solo record out next year. He's always writing, and he's got some new songs that are just brilliant. Cooper's about to put out a solo record too. We all have solo records that'll probably come later in the year. This year for sure will have the EP, the full band record, and my solo record out. 

Follow Casper Allen & The Naturals on Spotify, Instagram, and their website. Find their most recent tour dates here.

Photo credit - Caitlyn @ramblincowgirl