Jesse Macht of Wild Meridian Interview With Colby

Jesse Macht of Wild Meridian stopped by for a chat to speak about new single, ‘How I Know?’ and life as a musician.

Colby: Hello! How did Wild Meridian, the project that is going to be huge, come to be?

Jesse: I, Jesse, went to the Hotel Café Monday songwriter’s evening. My wife, girlfriend at the time, got on me one night and said I wasn’t being social enough with songwriters like me, and… I agreed! So I went to the social night, I heard Hillary singing like a nightingale and got the courage to blindly ask her to do a writing session! She was so open-hearted and was totally into it not knowing anything about me. I’d performed many times at that same Hotel Café night, but we’d never met… I could have been a serial killer… She showed up at my house a few days later, and we wrote “LIKE I DO” in one day. It was such a great writing experience, that we kept doing it and once we got through about four songs, we knew we had to try and get a whole record of tunes.

Colby: Can you tell me about the new single, ‘How I Know?’ What inspired it?

Jesse: This was actually one of the last songs we wrote in our many writing sessions. We have a knack for writing more heartbreak melancholy tunes, and our hearts and songwriter minds were trying to write something a little more promising, and optimistic. It still came with some drama, narratively, but we loved the idea of love being more than just a feeling. Love is the devotion you give to your person on a day-to-day basis. Love includes the sacrifices and generosity we offer to our people… it’s not just that feeling of it… That was the inspiration for me at least.

Colby: How was it working with WYNNE, the platinum-selling songwriter?

Jesse: Working with Wynne was fantastic. He’s been having such a great few years, and we love his sound so much. He has this constant vibe that he offers all the artists he works with and I knew I just wanted his take on our Nashvillian sound… which was something a touch out of the ordinary for him. He lives more in the pop, r+b songwriter world, and I wanted to see how his sound helped affect a bit more of a Nashvillian thing. Rory (Wynne) is also a very good friend of mine. We have deep conversations into the night, always checking in on each other’s deepest fears, hopes, dreams, stories… In many ways, he feels like a long-lost brother to me and I only wish I could have more time to hang out with him… Having Hilary and Rory together was a dream come true of mine. Marton Bisits who also played the guitar on this record had a lot to do with the sound as well, and Rory was a big fan of his as well. It made the haunting melancholic environment of the record come together organically with the 4 of us.

Colby: You finished your album during the pandemic; did you feel it to be a great time to work on projects you might not have done otherwise?

Jesse: Honestly, the pandemic made this whole thing a lot longer than we think it would have otherwise. Many people got together and wrote wrote wrote, but for us it slowed us down. We were really trucking writing and recording before it hit, and then we just got slogged down in it and had a hard time coming together. The pandemic had some positives and a lot of negatives for all sorts of people, and it was a mixed batch of that as well for us.

Colby: Finally, what else is in store for 2022?

Jesse: Hillary is about to have a baby! And that’s why I’m writing this on my own. So we gotta have this new little baby come into the world along with our record and let it fly! I know as soon this wonderful new light comes into the world, we’ll get to play some shows and hopefully release some other songs soon! Thank you so much for helping us get this heard.