Gunnar Gehl has had his hands in music since he was younger, and made his official live debut in 2018 opening up for PRETTYMUCH on their Funktion Tour. His bond with his fans is as thick as super glue, and now he has a treat for everyone – his debut full length project, One Second of One Day.
We had a chat about the meanings behind this project, keeping your head up during an unpredictable time, and so much more. The tea has been served by Gunnar himself, so if you’re down to savor it, read on!
Let’s kick this off with some *positivity!* I’m wearing my Minnie Mouse ears right now because I feel like I’m on Splash Mountain with how much I’ve been sweating and as a whole, this whole year has been like I’ve been on Space Mountain with the lights turned on and like the cart is going to go off the track.
That’s a great example!
That’s the best example I can think of.
It’s a roller coaster, but not a good one.
Not a good one, but I mean like, you kind of have to had learn some stuff from the experience you know? So, if there’s anything you’ve learned along the way this year, what do you think they’ve been?
Honestly, I’d say I learned patience more than I ever have before. I learned the value of quality time more than I ever have.
Time is precious. I feel like I want to seize every opportunity that I can get once all of this passes. I’m thinking of stuff I could have done and I’m like… it hurts bro. It hurts.
But I mean there’s a lot of stuff you could’ve done during quarantine, and one of the things you did do was release your debut project! It’s One Second Of One Day, and the title in itself makes me think you’re trying to capture one moment in time, you know?
Totally. It was a really cool project from a collective of the last two years. Kind of my favorite songs I’ve written in that time period. I think the importance of this project is it’s my debut, I get to leave it out there. It gets to let the fans and everybody know that it’s time, we’re serious now and give a big group of songs for people to listen to and look back on in a year to really get to know who I am. The title “One Second Of One Day” really just… you kind of just said it. It captures that this is me in the moment, and this is where we are.
There’s so many exciting things to come in the future and we’re just one step of the way.
When you listen to this in a year, or maybe five years from now, you’re going to remember you released this when the world was kind of upside down. We were kind of in quarantine, and all that. But besides that, what is something you really want to look back upon and remember when you’re listening to the music?
I think I will forever remember the emotion behind the songs and the places they came from inside. I think a lot of these songs mean a lot to me and they really show a lot of honesty and vulnerability in some of them. So to have that moving forward and look back at these and go woah, that was a really cool time in my life – like I remember feeling like that and writing “Want Me Back,” or feeling like that and writing “Pleasure & Pain” or whatever. So, it’s really cool. I really hope that that’s what I maintain to feel in the future.
Totally. I feel that, it’s like a time capsule you know?
Exactly.
I feel like everything as a whole puts me in a really good mood. I’m feeling a connection with “Good Enough.” Would you mind diving into that?
“Good Enough,” I feel like when you talk about vulnerability, this song is definitely the most vulnerable that I have that’s out right now. I wrote this song when I was at a point where there were a lot of people involved in my music and project and I just kept getting the same words. Stuff like “keep going, keep writing” and I felt like I had written a lot of good songs and none of them were getting the approval from the people that I needed approval from at that time. So with that emotion, I walked into that session and I wasn’t even prepared to talk about it. It just came out naturally and I started talking about writing about all of these songs, and I feel like they don’t think any of these songs are good enough. Am I good enough?
So I said that song is literally like… if you listen to it with that in mind, it’s literally me writing a song being like, is *THIS* good enough? Is *THIS* song good enough? Is this project good enough? Am I good enough? And a lot of lyrics in that song are very cohesive with what a lot of other people feel.
It’s a very common emotion, and so the fact that I wrote that in a total selfish space of only really talking about my personal thing I had going on and then being receptive by people in their own ways – like “oh this song connects to me because my parents are putting pressure on me about school” “this song connects to me because my friends are being mean” there’s so many things I’ve read… so many messages about it connecting with people and that’s like a perfect example of why I think music is so special.
For sure like, I feel like this year I’ve been left alone in my thoughts quite often. And I know I’m not the only one, especially when you’re alone and you’re not in contact with a lot of people and you’re not… physically there. How have you managed to keep your spirits up through all of this stuff?
It’s been tough for sure. I’ve had a lot of down days, and I think it hit me a lot more in the beginning of this with not really knowing what was to come. I was having one really rough day one time, and it was literally right in the beginning. I was on the phone with one of my managers, and he was like “You just need to go live on Instagram. Go talk to as many people as you can.” I was all pissed, like why do I have to? Like hang the phone up, go live, and talk to as many people as you can.
By doing that, it opened my eyes and helped me see outside of my little bubble of myself and see that this is something everyone’s going through together. It isn’t about me, although I’m like “What about this song that’s supposed to come out?” It’s a lot bigger than that. It’s about us as humanity and as a country and a world. That helped me stay positive a little bit more, being like “Cool. I’m stuck in place, but everyone’s stuck in place too. When we start going again, everyone’s gonna start going again.”
That’s true!
And that helped me during the first half of quarantine. Then as it got longer and longer, I actually got really lucky and started doing the One Second Of One Day episodes which kept me busy and all of those releases kept me busy. That kept my mind in a good place, but yeah. It’s a tough time to stay positive, but me and everybody else, we’re finding our things that help us.
Definitely like… *sighs quickly* I can’t wait until all of this is over and I get to go back to concerts and doing everything I used to do. Hopefully. What are some of the things you’re looking forward to doing once all this passes?
Concerts are definitely a #1 for me. Seeing everybody, doing meet and greets, stuff like that. I think that there’s so much of my career that is in that sector of the industry – in the live performance and face to face type of stuff. A lot of people haven’t seen that side of me because the timing of how everything’s worked out so far. I can’t wait for the time for tours and live shows and for this to be in the past.
For sure! But until then… do you have any other plans… planned out?
Yeah! I have a couple of family vacations coming up. Safe vacations.
Kim Kardashian islands.
Yeah spending quality time. We’ve got a lot of exciting things coming fresh out of the gates in the new year, so I’m really excited about that. Preparing for that, I think we put a lot of time and effort into the last six months with all of the releases we had. Now that this project is out, we’ve been taking a couple of days and less active on social media and really enjoying the fact that we put all of that time and effort in. It’s done, it’s out, and now we’re starting to move forward and onto the next stuff so yeah. Just staying busy.
Until then, we WILL be streaming One Second of One Day! Listen below, and say hi to Gunnar Gehl on Instagram and Twitter @gunnargehl.
