The LukeOnDemand Interview

Nick: I want to ask about that track. What was the specific meaning behind the title, "The Third Funeral?"

Luke: So the song itself is about the death of my friend Daniel, going to his funeral and how saddening and strange that experience was for me. It was the first time in a long time I had seen a bunch of people I used to hang out with and consider myself friends with. Normally, this wouldn't affect me that much, seeing people I used to be around more, but this time it felt different. I live such a different life now than I did when I was closer with these people, so I felt disconnected from them, but at the same time I felt so much love and connection from everyone. It just felt surreal, comforting and scary all at the same time. As for why it's called "The Third Funeral," I have told a few people this before but I have been to a bunch of funerals, but there have only been three funerals in my life that impacted my outlook on life as a whole. The first one was the first funeral I ever went to in which I believe I was 5 years old and it was for my great uncle. The second one was the funeral for my grandmother and the third one would be Daniel's funeral. Each were impactful for different reasons, but Daniel's funeral was impactful to me because it made me realize that friends I have known for a long time may just start dying and disappearing from my life out of nowhere. It's kind of a horrifying thought, but at the end of the day, you continue living. You'll remember the good times you had with that person and then try to move on. That's why that funeral was so impactful to me.

Nick: Why did you decide to go with a gradual build and not have it as the final track?

Luke: So the song kind of has three phases to me and it's almost formatted like a high school paper. The intro, the body paragraphs and the outro. The intro and outro are whatever, but the melody in the middle of the track loops three times. Each time it loops I wanted it to represent each different funeral that has deeply affected me. As for why I had it be a gradual build, I don't know, I just thought it sounded good and created a very vast and dramatic atmosphere which I wanted since I knew what the song was going to be about. As for why it was not the final track,  the order of the tracklist is the order in which I finished each song. So track one was made first, then track two, track three and then track four if that wasn't already obvious. I kind of just did this because I wanted each track to be representative of a certain vibe or feeling I had throughout the year I made the EP.

Nick: How was it like filming the music video for “October 13th?” I know it didn't drop that day.  

Luke: No, infamously it dropped July 21st. I finished the song and was like, “I can't wait three months to drop this!” I worked on that with two of my friends, Spencer Lamb, who directed the music video and then Sydney Malatesta, who I used to work with. Her and Spencer date and so she wanted to be involved with helping. She was the director of photography and even though we have different names of what we did on the music video, really, it was a three-person collaborative process. We all kind of had a hand in doing something. Really what it was was while I was making October 13th, I knew I wanted Spencer to direct the music video and so I just send him the song as it was being made so that he kind of had an idea of what the music video could be and he sent me a notes app of what he wanted to do. The first thing was he wanted there to be a scene of me in the pool, which you can see in the video. The second scene was me eating watermelon with him in a field somewhere, which is in the video. Then his third idea was he wanted a bunch of women to waterboard me. That didn't make the cut because I said it might be a little unsafe, but I thought the idea was funny. So in replacement, I suggested the idea of filming it around the train tracks and neighborhood. I guess this is public at this point, so I can say it, but that song is based around the day I broke up with one of my ex-girlfriends. I thought it would be a cool idea to kind of film around the area where it happened. So that's why you see a lot of train tracks and stuff in that video.