Drake's Radio 28: Spencer Wells

Spencer Wells is a filmmaker and photographer based in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. We spent a recent weekend on a road trip with him, making our way through the small towns, coastal villages and hippie outposts of Northern California, and he’s made us a playlist to soundtrack that journey. 

Tell us about the playlist you’ve made us…

This playlist started around Willie Nelson’s Hands on the Wheel which has felt more poignant than ever in recent moments. I added a few songs that were in the rotation in the car while we drove up the coast together and some favourites that I played on the jukebox at the bar during that trip. 

Van Morrison’s Higher Than the World is just such a joyous way to start off a playlist, putting that on while you’re driving the coast feels so good. And there’s a geographic tie with that one, Van recorded parts of it in Marin County, where we started our drive. I added in a couple of other local shoutouts too, always feels right to ground a playlist in a location.

What’s the first song you remember really loving?

I remember for a long time it seemed like the only tape my Grandpa had in his car was Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits. I have a pretty early memory of listening to That’ll be the Day in the backseat while driving back from some out of town trip late in the evening. I was quite confident at five or six years old that Buddy Holly was far superior to anything I had listened to at that point, probably thanks to my Grandpa espousing that opinion regularly to anyone who rode in his car.

What was playing in the house when you were growing up?

My parents were on a pretty strict diet of classic rock during my childhood with a little Motown sprinkled in. My maternal grandfather was a drummer in a rock ’n’ roll band in the early 60s and that instilled a pretty strong love of rock music in the family. Everything from The Temptations to Neil Young to The Rolling Stones. But they also let me and my brother choose our own music to listen to at home pretty freely from a young age, they really encouraged us to pursue our creative interests.

Do you think your taste in music and your taste in clothes come from the same place?

I think someone could make an argument that there’s some overarching taste I have spanning music, clothes, photography… but really my taste in clothes came together later on and was more inspired by the people I met and worked with in New York in my mid-twenties. Up until then I was more concerned with what was happening in front of my camera. 

Is there a musician whose style you’ve always admired?

Prince. Not that I necessarily would ever dress like him, because who could even try, but I admire his confidence to pull off such an insane style while making it seem completely natural.

And which era of music do you think had the best style?

I love looking back at photos of jazz musicians from the late 1950s into early 60s. Obviously Miles in that period is incredibly iconic but as a whole those guys were really sharply dressed, but nonchalant about it. 

What’s the soundtrack to your daily routine right now?

These days I listen to a lot of classical music while I’m working at my desk or driving. There’s a good FM station here that I keep on most of the day. My son is obsessed with music and he’s got a rotation of favourite LPs we put on at home, right now it’s mainly the Traveling Wilburys’ Vol. 1.

Is there an artist you’ve come back to repeatedly over the years?

I think the best example is Bob Dylan. I got really into him first as a high school freshman and he made a big impression on me. As the years went on I would listen less frequently for a while, get into other things, but I keep coming back and doing deep dives into records from different periods of his career. You can pull at one thread, have an entry point with one song and with the amount of material between the records, studio outtakes and live recordings, spend a ton of time getting into a specific period. And I just keep doing that over and over, and it’s more rewarding each time. It’s also very inspiring to me as I age to see how Bob reinvented himself and kept creating over so many decades.

If you could sit front row at any concert in history, which would it be?

These are tough questions! I think I have to go with a Grateful Dead show, even picking one of those is nearly impossible, but I’ll say 10/18/74 at Winterland. Iconic hometown venue, peak wall of sound era, you get a Seastones set into Dark Star and then they go right into an epic Morning Dew. Honourable mention would be one of the shows on the Europe ‘72 tour in one of those old halls in Hamburg or London. 

Which musician would you most like to photograph? 

Frank Ocean. I’m a huge fan of his music and style, to me he’s one of the top two or three most influential musicians of the last 20 years or so. He’s famously avoidant of press and photoshoots, so the only way it’s going to happen is in a hypothetical situation like this.

One song you could listen to forever… 

Dionne by The Japanese House

One album that always travels with you…

A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs has gotten me through more late-night drives than I can count.