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 the 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.”
With his new single “Years Gone By,” Nagel certainly has a knack for lyrical wordplay and rhythmic passion that pays nods to Gram Parsons and Todd Snider. Glide is premiering this toe-tapping jewel (below) where we learn more about one of the country’s most dexterous singer-songwriters.
“In the studio, we ended up completely recutting “Years Gone By” at the 11th hour, two weeks before the record was sent off to mastering. We decided it was just a little too fast. For the final version, we recorded the song with my acoustic guitar, scratch vocal, and [co-producer] Daniel Groover on drums. For reference, I put on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” to compare tempos, and Jesus it was slow. Way slower than you’d think. But, you know, I wasn’t trying to write a punk-rock record. And even in punk rock—one of my favorite albums is Nevermind the Bollocks, and If you listen to the meter of the songs on that record, it’s about the same as the Stones’ Some Girls. Nevermind the Bollocks has got Rolling Stones meter, and that’s why it’s so damn powerful. Had they rushed it, had they played the songs too fast, I don’t know if the record would have hit that perfect human heartbeat. It really is a rock & roll record more than a punk record,” adds Nagel.
“So we recut “Years Gone By,” and we found the sweet spot. That was a real pleasure. [Co-producer] Diane Coll came in and sang harmony with me. I also added some harmonies and played that first acoustic lead in the middle, and Groover played the second acoustic lead. It was a nice trade-off—there was a lot of fun and camaraderie working on this one.”
