Sound Source: Nat Scholl’s Natural Talent to Create

Daniella Tello-Garzon, Reporter
April 30, 2020

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While he previously played with his former band, Arch Supports, Nat Scholl is starting out as a solo musician. With an album in the works, Scholl talks about his transition between bands and his experience making music at Northwestern.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Daniella Tello-Garzon, and you’re listening to Sound Source, a podcast about the Northwestern music scene. This episode is about SESP junior Nat Scholl, a solo musician who previously played in Arch Supports and is currently in between bands.

NAT SCHOLL: My name is Nat Scholl, and I’m a singer and songwriter, and my old band was Arch Supports. We’re still all jamming together in different forms, but we’re not really, we don’t really play shows anymore. A lot of it was because one of the members graduated. I still play music with my roommate, Layton (Guyton).

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: Nat and his former band members were inspired to start their band at a party for people in WNUR, Northwestern’s student-run radio station.

NAT SCHOLL: I feel like you can’t really go through a rock show or WNUR party without at some point someone being like “Yo, you want to jam at some point?” and you meet to like talk about jamming at an indeterminate time and it usually never happens. And so that didn’t happen a few times. And then it just kind of did happen with the group of people I ended up playing with.

LAYTON GUYTON: We spent a lot of time talking about music, like recommending each other stuff. And then just, just messing around with different songs in my dorm room. I think we both came in with ideas for stuff that we just had written on our own but were hoping to get other people to play with.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: That was Nat’s roommate, McCormick junior Layton Guyton. Freshman year, they lived in the same building and quickly started playing together.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: The members of Arch Supports all were Northwestern students or graduates, so when they based their band name on a twist of words, many people guessed their name had its origins with the University.

NAT SCHOLL: This is a very common misconception that I’d love to clear up. OK, a lot of people think it has stuff to do with Northwestern because apparently there’s like an arch at Northwestern or something like that. But it’s not. It’s because, my roommate came up with it, Layton. It’s because my last name is Scholl. It was originally gonna be called Dr. Scholl and the Arch Supports cause Dr. Scholl is like that foot insole company or whatever. But yeah, nothing to do with Northwestern.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: Arch Supports released a song called “Donuts” back in August of last year. The track can be found on Bandcamp.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: Now, Nat is working on his solo music.

NAT SCHOLL: I’m trying to come out with an album. I’m currently recording some stuff in St. Louis. And that’ll probably not be out for like a year, but there will be some songs out hopefully on Spotify or whatever streaming service you use.

NAT SCHOLL: The music I’m currently making is kind of a cross between like indie rock, but with punk vocals because I can’t really sing. I have some folk influences. And what I really want to start making, I want to start making just pop music. I’m a little bit tired of indie rock and stuff like that. I want to just make kind of weird pop.

LAYTON GUYTON: I’ve definitely heard a ton of different sounds coming out of whatever he’s doing in the living room at any given time. But yeah, I think he’s, he’s gotten a little more ambitious in the genres he’s trying to cover. He writes songs really, really fast, like so quickly. When he’s inspired, he can just like bang them out and they’re all like really, really good. He’s an extremely talented writer and lyricist. I’ve never really been able to understand how he cranks them out so quickly, but it’s really cool.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: On top of being able to write quality songs very quickly, Layton also thinks Nat has another strength.

LAYTON GUYTON: Over the summer we were playing sort of like our first real show at a bar in the city. And there had been a string missing on Nat’s guitar for like weeks that we just hadn’t really got around to fixing. He’s just like, “it’s not important, I can play without it. It’s not like something that I ever really use.” And then like 30 minutes before we’re going to the show, we’re like, “Oh, shit, there’s still the string missing from your guitar.” He’s like, “No, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a big deal. I don’t care,” and I was like, “You’re missing a whole string of your instrument, we can fix that really quick,” and he was like, “It’s cool. It’s not a big deal.” And we ended up throwing it on very quickly, but he’s not super particular about the way that he makes music and what he uses to make art. He can sort of thrive with any materials you give him or any sort of setup he has, he’ll be able to create with that.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: Thanks for listening. This is Daniella Tello-Garzon, and I’ll see you next time.

DANIELLA TELLO-GARZON: This episode was reported and produced by me, Daniella Tello-Garzon. The audio editor of The Daily Northwestern is Molly Lubbers. The digital managing editors are Kalen Luciano and Heena Srivastava, and the editor in chief is Marissa Martinez.

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Twitter: @daniellatgarzon