Reisender is the musical endeavor of west-coast songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Paul Conroy. Reisender, meaning “traveler” in German, is currently based in Portland by way of San Francisco. I got to interview Paul about his latest single "Mezzanine Man".

Tell me about who performed on “Mezzanine Man” and the new project overall. How and where did you get together?

Mezzanine man was written & recorded by myself, but we've been performing the song live as a two piece for some time. My cousin Ben Stager and I have been playing together as Reisender around the Pacific Northwest for a year and a half. My good friend Greg Francis, who I met while playing various shows together with his old band Stomacher, mixed and mastered the song. He's been keeping quite busy mixing sound for film, and I thought his experience in that area was a good fit considering the cinematic story-telling component to the song.

Did anything magical or strange happen during the writing or recording process?

I came up with the chorus hook in a writing session with another band I play in. They told me it was too melancholy, so I kept what I had written for myself. I developed the instrumentation- guitar, drums, bass- before heading to Florida to visit family. A hurricane has just blown through and the town was in a sorry state; it rained pretty much the whole time, and the beaches were littered with the driftwood of decks that washed away from piers and beachfront properties. It was a less than ideal scenario for a sunshine state getaway. But the environment had an inspirational effect on me. One grey afternoon in my wife's grandmother's sunroom, while my kids slept, I came up with the lyrics all at once and wrote them down within 30 minutes. They were so creative and descriptive, I never had to revise them. I literally didn't have a guitar, or any instruments with me. Just the demo on a voice memo, but it was enough to write the song to completion. That's when I knew I had something I wanted to finish and share as the next Reisender single.

What would you say are the main influences behind the new single?

New wave always plays a role in what inspires me (eg., Austrian artist Falco and German techno group Kraftwerk), but other artists whose originality I admire and try to learn from include bands like mewithoutYou or Phoenix and songwriters like Paul Simon, Damon Albarn, and Billy Corgan. Inspiration comes in many forms for me~ film is a powerful medium, and often I find myself taking what I see visually in a good film and trying to repackage and express it as music. Examples of films that have inspired me include The American Friend, the Third Man, Wings of Desire, and Blue Velvet.

If you had to pinpoint your favorite lyric in the song, which would it be and why?

Coffee at the diner is just so ritualistic, a ploy to fool himself into thinking he's a mystic.

Is there a particular ethos behind “Mezzanine Man”, and how does that fit into the overarching project concept (band or upcoming ep/lp)?

Mezzanine Man is part of an upcoming album that I plan to announce soon as I'm closer to completing the rest of the music. The album will tell the story of a journey through a chateauesque labyrinth. This song obviously concerns the mezzanine, but there will be other realms and spaces. I don't want to say too much more about it, but I am very excited about what we're working on!

Do you have any notable gigs coming up? Where can we see you next?

In Portland I am playing two shows in the spring. See Calendar. As far as in San Francisco, I really hope to make it down again this year, but nothing to announce just yet!