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Noah Gundersen

Noah Gunderson is an American singer-songwriter of indie folk music. Born on May 31, 1989, he is the oldest of five biological siblings and three adopted siblings. Born in Olympia Washington, he was part of a family that would later move to Centralia, Washington when he was five years old. Gundersen was raised and homeschooled in an extremely conservative Christian house, but also very musical.

He started taking piano lessons at home at the age of thirteen, a short time later after his father inherits him an electric guitar in 2002, he learned to play the guitar.

At the age of 16, Gundersen found himself playing in local restaurants. And in 2006 his sister Abby, a cellist, violinist, pianist, and harmony singer, began to play with him. The duo began acting as a full band under the name Courage.

Later at the age of 18, Gundersen left his home to pursue a musical career and thus begin playing in bars around Seattle.

While still a teenager, Noah Gundersen formed his first band post-hardcore called Beneath Oceans in 2007. Along with a group of friends from his high school. The band was formed by Gundersen, Michael Porter on the lead guitar, and Keelan O’Hara on the drums.

Career

After Gundersen produced his first EP, Brand New World, very early in his solo career he continued to play in Seattle. Gundersen claims to have been influenced in the musical world by Ryan Adams, Neil Young, and Dashboard Confessional.

While Gundersen was part of the band The Courage. Formed by his friends and his 16-year-old sister, they served as the background band for the performances of songs from the Brand New World album in clubs and bars around Washington State.

The group later recorded the live album, Live at the Triple Door, under the name of Noah Gundersen & The Courage in 2008. In 2008 and 2010 the band performed at the Sisters Folk Festival. Later that year, the group evolved a little more and they managed to record their first debut album called Fearful Bones, under the general name of The Courage in 2010.

However, while Gundersen recorded and played with The Courage, he remained focused on his solo career.

His second EP, Saints & Liars, was out in 2009. A recording of the original EP circulated to the desk of the producer Daniel Mendez, who modified and mixed the EP for a full release.

Mendez later worked with Gundersen to release a follow-up EP to the previous one, Family, in 2011.

Gundersen’s career after the EP, Family, was propelled aggressively toward fame. Also, his song title Family was personally chosen by the producer Kurt Sutter for the famous FX television show Sons of Anarchy.

The song Family also made an appearance on the television series The Vampire Diaries. And the track David was also used for an episode of The Following, a Fox series in 2015.

In 2014, Gundersen self-produced the same debut album, Ledges, at Studios Litho in Seattle, owned by the Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard.

The album includes songs with themes of hope, death, and past relationships. The debut album served to finish propelling Gundersen’s career even further towards the Indie Folk stardom. While touring with his debut album, Gundersen exclusively sold a five-song EP called Twenty-Something. His songs were previously available online through the deluxe version of Ledges.

After his breakthrough in the world of music with Ledges, Gundersen returned to the studio once again to record his second LP, Carry the Ghost, which was released in 2015. The album chronicles the challenges of success, failed relationships, sexuality, and religion. Gundersen said it was inspired by Neil Young’s album, Tonight’s the Night.

Then in 2015, Gundersen helped David Ramirez to produce his album Fables, which was released on August 28.

During a break from the tour itinerary, Gundersen returned to his homeland and reunited with his friends from his high school, Beneath Oceans. Originally, the group got together again and started playing old songs from their early days as a kind of an inside joke.

Gundersen said in an interview, “We reconnected to see if the old songs were still a good thing. They weren’t, so we started writing new songs.”

On December 1, 2015, the group measured their first album, an eponym EP called Young in the City. The album’s release was followed by a series of performances in Seattle and a second EP released on October 7, 2016.

Later in July 2017, Gundersen announced the full release of a new solo album, White Noise. The title was released on September 22, 2017. It was characterized by being different in style from Gundersen’s previous albums, with a much heavier rock-inspired sound.

Finally, on June 21, 2019, the artist announced the prompt release of another solo album called, Lover, which was released on August 23 of the same year. And also the same day, he released a single from the album called Robin Williams.

Noah Gundersen on therapy, mushrooms and his new album, 'Lover ...

Noah Gundersen and the Mushrooms. 

Last year Noah Gundersen had many projects in hand. It was also the year in which he changed his abundant hair to cut it to the skull and changed it from brown to bright yellow.

“It has been a year of many changes,” Gundersen said.

The artist spent most of the 2019 time, writing and recording his fourth album, Lover. On August 23 of that year, Gundersen appeared on Easy Street Records in West Seattle and then embarked on a North America tour that took him to Seattle’s Showbox on November 26.

“I was ready for a drastic change,” Gundersen, 30, said of his new look and new more sensitive sound. “I needed something different. I think in terms of seasons and chapters of things in life, and now in lighter feelings”.

Gundersen was saying in a private room in Canlis, where his record company threw a party to listen to the album Lover, with the help of the artist’s closest friend, chef Brady Williams. At the party, Gundersen was posted in front of one of the restaurant’s large windows, presenting and explaining the origin of each song.

The singer revealed that he wrote Lover, for a week he spent at his parent’s house. He said he was riding his motorcycle from the grocery store thinking about the lyrics and “spinning things around”.    

Gundersen stood that 2018 was a very difficult year for him. “A lot of personal things, things from the career. Financial problems. All that was about to break me. But it all also forced me to lighten a bit the load that I was carrying”

Besides, the singer began attending therapy and eating psilocybin mushrooms for medical purposes.

“The therapy changed my perspective on how I saw things,” he said. “Now I take myself with less seriousness, which as a singer and songwriter is sometimes necessary”

Gundersen recorded Lover at The Crumb studio in Seattle, with his longtime collaborator and producer Andy D. Park. Together, the friends explored themes of love, failure, sex, drugs, age and regrets, and the quest for acceptance and peace.

The first song on the album is titled Robin Williams, which the singer wrote after watching the HBO documentary, Come Inside my Mind, which was about the life of the actor and comedian who died by suicide in August 2014.

Gundersen has been in the world of music for over a decade now. He feels it but welcomes the feeling. He claims that he likes being and feeling older, and really loves the wisdom he adds to his music.

In the latest new, Gundersen said he was about to release a new run of A Raven and A Dove.

“From an artist’s point of view, I’m not a child anymore,” Gundersen pointed. “The way the music world is changing is because people are so young. So I think I am something between a new face and an old friend”