On November 15, 2024, Cameron Lew of Ginger Root sat with our co-sports Director, Roman Aguilar, for an exclusive interview! With the release of his 2024 album, Shinbangumi, Cameron came to chat about his latest project, life as an artist & tour. Ginger Root went to San Diego and played at the House of Blues back on September 24th but will kick off his European and United Kingdom leg of the tour this week! 

Hey, Cameron, how are you doing? 

Hi, I’m good. How are you?

Good thank you. it’s been good to finally get this going. I think it’s been in the works since I want to say September, so I really appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely happy to chat.

So I just kind of want to take some time to go over asking about your music and just talk about the tour and everything in between that.

Yeah, sounds good.

So I know you’re going to start performing about a week from now, going out of the country to Europe and the UK? Have you had any downtime in between that?

I maybe had 48 hours of downtime before I had to start packing all the equipment and doing some stuff to prep for the show. But those 48 hours were much appreciated. 

I imagine it’s pretty rigorous, as far as touring goes. I know when I got to see you in September when you went to House of Blues here in San Diego, and with the equipment that you’re using, and how you want to have the stage experience, to be where you have i, a cameraman on stage, and you’re recording different camera angles, just what made you want to even kind of go into that direction for a concert experience?

Yeah, I mean all those ideas of the videos on stage, and like the video breaks, and even, like the set dressing, the TVs, and even like the fact that we have some new pieces of gear on stage like I play guitar now, we have more drums on stage. All those ideas kind of came just came organically throughout other tours where I’d be on the road, and we’d be like, and it’d be really cool if we did this, but because we’re on the road, we can’t change anything. So we’re like, okay, for the next tour, we’ll save that idea for the next tour. So a lot of those ideas finally were able to be executed on this past US tour. It’s funny because San Diego was the first show and it definitely got tighter and more streamlined, like a machine as we went on the tour, which is something that just happens when you’re playing 28 shows every night and everything. It’s a very visual project as well as music so I wanted to bring both the visual element and the music together. And the way I thought about doing that was to have live camera feeds and have interactive video breaks and all that type of stuff. 

 I remember during that show you were saying, to the audience, we’re using San Diego as a bit of a guinea pig in terms of just making sure everything’s kind of tight. Just to hit over when you’re performing on stage. Do you feel like yourself, either like extroverted, or introverted, performing on stage as you have to have maybe a bit of a stage experience to help gauge audiences, or is it more so, just to add to the content overall?

Yeah, I think, you know, when I am on stage,I know some of our other artists like to create, like a character and be an artist and everything. I think when I’m up on stage, it’s maybe 90% just like how I am normally. I mean, obviously, you know, I’m playing to the audience, and I’m hyping them up, and I’m trying to get feedback from them, but there’s really no character or mask or facade. I find myself more easily able to connect with the audience if I am just straight up, myself in front of them and everything. Some of the jokes are bits. Some of the jokes are just improv, and that’s my favorite part of performing, too, is just like reading the crowd, seeing if they’re into it, and kind of taking that and running with it, and that’s sometimes my favorite part of the show. If it goes well, when it doesn’t go well, it hurts a lot.

Did it ever take you a while to get to that point? Because, I mean, at some point, early on, you’re having to open shows and open for these bigger bands.

Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, when we were doing our first set of opening tours, we opened for the band Khruangbin. We opened for Durand Jones and the Indications. Poom from Thailand, when we were doing all those opening shows, we learned a lot, not just me, but Matt and Dylan who play with me. We really had to figure out, like okay, these people, as an opener, they don’t care about your music. They don’t really care who you are. They want to hear the people that they came here to see. So we really had to learn how to try to command the attention of the room and be like, hey guys, we’re only playing for 22 minutes. Just give us your attention. And I think that mentality of hey, stay with me. Stay with me and watch the show I think carried over when we started doing our own shows. I only knew what it was like to be an opener. And so when we shifted to being a headliner, that mentality of wanting to try to hold the audience by their collar transferred when we were doing headlining shows and stuff. So it was definitely a learning curve. I’m still learning. I think something that I learned this time throughout the shows is that concert culture is very different. You know, there are a lot of new people who have never been to concerts at our shows, and it’s interesting to try to see how to teach them how to act at a concert, or, honestly, just to get them to pay attention to the show. It’s been a really interesting learning experience. 

I want to go ahead and shift focus to the new album Shinbangumi, off the success following City Slicker. What was your creative approach to the album? And was there anything in the album itself, or the creative writing process or just producing the tracks of it that reflected down to yourself?

Yeah. I mean the City Slicker album was a time period of me just wanting to have fun and experiment to kind of create without rules. That was the case for City Slicker and the other EP, Nisemono, when it came time to write the full album, SHINBANGUMI, felt a bit of confidence in terms of, like, I wanted to write songs that I felt best represented what Ginger Root is now because the project is ever-changing. I think before with other albums and the other EPS, I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted Ginger Root to sound like this, or if I wanted to make this type of music, if I wanted to talk about these types of topics in the songs, but I felt with Shinbangumi. I said, like, kind of, who cares? Like, yeah, just be proud of what the project is right now lean into it, and be unapologetically yourself. But I know that’ll change someday. You know, as the project ever changes, and as a musician, as a creator, I also just go through phases in life. And so I think, yeah, the album definitely reflects a time, the time that I was going through, which was honestly a very good time in my life. And I know sometimes, a lot of people talk about like, yeah, I wrote this album in a really dark place and whatever. But for me, like I was having a lot of fun writing this album, and I was going through a really good point and everything, and so I wanted to celebrate that, and I want that to come across in the music and everything. 

I can say it certainly does. I think the song No Problems Is probably my favorite off that album. Just kind of going from that now, obviously, Loretta was a huge success for you. And then when you have something like that, does it become more, more of a blessing or a curse, where you have such a big song that’s on your discography? How do you ground yourself from that? 

 I will say upfront, it’s a constant battle. There are some times when I’m so grateful that it took off and it’s given me so many opportunities. And then there are some times where I’m like, man, if I have to play that song one more time, or someone in the audience would be there and we finished the second song, and they’re like, play Loretta already, you know? So then it goes two ways. I’m very thankful that it happened because I’ve said this somewhere before, but my mind is like Loretta getting big has brought me so many opportunities to the point where if people only know me by Loretta, that’s fine, but I’m gonna still output and make stuff that I’m really proud of. And for people who are interested in coming along on the ride, they’re more than welcome to join and travel with me on this journey. But if people just want to listen to the one song over and over again. That’s totally fine, too. You know, people can do whatever they want, but for me, as an artist, I think of Loretta as an entry point into how deep the Ginger Root world goes. And my hope is that I’m just still providing an opportunity for the fans and the listeners to come as far into the project as they would like to.

I mean, now in the moment when that song comes out and you get the reception from it, how does it feel to even have that following your album Rikki at that time, which during like a COVID era, doesn’t pan out as much as you would hope it does.

Yeah, it was funny, because Rikki, in full transparency for me, I thought this is the album that’s gonna break Ginger Root. I think we’re gonna really catch the wind and grow our audience with this album. I fully believed that. And then COVID happened, and the album didn’t do well, and it kind of got shelved, or whatever. So then when I made City Slicker, I think it was kind of good that Rikki kind of flopped. In my opinion, I’m still very proud of it. But, like, commercially, it didn’t do well at all. When City Slicker came around, I was like, who cares about that? Just make music that is fun and that you feel proud of, and that’s kind of the epicenter of, really, the whole EP, like all those songs, I had that mentality, and it worked. A lot of people resonated with that, which was awesome. And I think hearing the reception of it, you know me and my manager, who has been with me since the first Ginger album, we’re like, we finally got our flash-in-the-pan moment. How are we going to catch this lightning in the bottle? And we started making the second EP as soon as we could. Then we made the album and kind of wrote it. It’s just crazy. The world is so big. And even though a lot of people know what Loretta is. A lot of people don’t know what Ginger Root is as a result of that, which is totally fine. I’m happy the song did as well as it did, because, like I said, it provides so many new opportunities for people to hear and join me on the new stuff.

From a more branding, promotional kind of perspective. Do you think any of that has to do with a lot of artists like yourself, a lot of people you collaborate with, who are grouped into Spotify playlists and bedroom pop artists, do you think that ever has an effect on how you’re able to be promoted and any kind of music?

Oh, that’s a really good question. I’d say there’s definitely some influence. I know that I’m not a pop act and I’m not like a top 40s person but I’m also not like a really hard to listen to a noise rock band with a niche following, you know. So there’s something to be said that I think the bedroom pop label, and the indie label, is definitely prevalent and definitely something that we get associated with a lot. But honestly, I don’t really feel like that’s a negative because that’s what the project is like at the core basis, it is still like DIY recording. It’s not recorded in a big, fancy studio. I don’t have session musicians, I mix everything myself. So that label doesn’t, fortunately, it doesn’t have a lot of negative connotations, which is interesting. And I think people nowadays really like the genuineness that comes from a bedroom record, rather than an overly shiny produced studio radio record. I think that’s been the case for a little while, and so I’m very happy to be part of that label and that type of genre, if I’m being honest.

interesting, because it’s something that’s crossed my mind because I think it just ends up being categorical, like okay I hear synthesizer. Let me put it in here to how it sounds

I think to address that, like, you’re absolutely right in terms of people just like to categorize things, to categorize things. People want to put labels on things they are familiar with. I think what’s interesting is, like, Ginger Root definitely falls into some of those categories, but then doesn’t fit into really any of them at the same time, and I think that’s what makes it unique. So for me, having that label is kind of like a double-edged sword. But the good part of it is people who are in and more receptive are more likely to become a fan of the project because they’re fans of DIY music or bedroom pop scene or indie pop or whatever, they’ll be in for a treat because it’s a little bit different than than the stereotypical bedroom pop record. Hopefully, we can use that to our advantage to hook new people and get people on board.

As an artist, do you feel like you need to change your presence on social media as well, promoting stories on posts about the songs?

This is especially true for the Shinbangumi cycle, it has been a battle and a back-and-forth between me and social media. One, just like having to be on it and just constantly checking and making things and making content. That’s definitely been something that I’ve been having to do. Then also, the algorithm is so noisy nowadays that I felt like, at some point, people didn’t know that I was doing anything which was very difficult, because that’s my only way to tell people that I’ve got new stuff out, or I’ve got this huge project coming out, and social media kind of like, like, swept it under the rug, sometimes, not all the time, and that was really difficult. Honestly, I still don’t have an answer on why that happened or what to do to fix it. It’s just like the nature of what artists have to go through. I will tell one vexing story I was shooting separate promos, and I was editing everything, and I was shooting it just how I shot, like, movies and stuff and film squads, like shooting all this stuff, all this high-quality stuff were, in my eyes, high-quality stuff. And it performed fine. And then on tour, we did a stupid like, I hope they play hot to go, type of trend thing that was the best performing thing out of everything. And man, I tell you what, it makes me so sad and so upset that I put all this effort into other, like, really tailored pieces of content, where I do behind the scenes, and I break down songs, and I do skits or whatever, and like, that stupid trend thing that I just jumped on did like, five times as better as everything. I hate social media, but it’s just something that, yeah, we have to put up with as musicians nowadays.

Gonna, hop on the trend there on that

I did. I fully hopped on the trend, and I hated that I did it. But it’s funny because the trend wasn’t even talking about anything Ginger Root-related. It’s just because I did it, and there are so many comments on it that are like, whoa. Are you the Loretta guy? I’m like, oh my god.

Well, now you speak about visual media. A lot of the time your songs are coupled with storylines in your music videos, and so that could be a way for your audience to get a companion piece, just talk, about how that helps your music get to a bigger audience with YouTube, and what that’s garnered

I think nowadays, just the song alone won’t grab people’s attention anymore. I feel like I’m using it as an advantage, when a song comes out and there is a story and a video, there’s just another avenue. If audio was just one avenue then video is a second Avenue and story is a third Avenue. Why not try to use all three? I feel like that just increases your chances of people falling in love with the project. I just remember when I was in college and I found some staple bands that really hooked me. It was because they were doing not only music but really built a world for that band, for me to live in. That feeling I felt back then, I want to try to provide that same opportunity, for Ginger Root, that supplementary piece of work, so happens to be storytelling and video and everything. And I don’t know if there’s a lot of bands out there, at least in you know, the indie label, and the bedroom level that’s doing like full narratives alongside their music videos and character building and world building and making you know what has accurately deemed someone called it, like the Ginger Root cinematic universe, as we have unintentionally created that, and I love it, and people who get it also really love it, and that’s what I really, really look forward to.

Logistically, how are you able to pull off these videos, with the actors, the sets, and the storylines? How are you able to manage that?

Thankfully, I majored in film in college, so I do have a background in narrative storytelling. In the earlier works of Ginger Root, there were music videos. I love storytelling, and I think things are more enticing when you tell a story. There was some experience and experimentation with that. We kind of did that with City Slicker, all the music videos are the same world. Then Nisemono, there was kind of like a storyline. As EPS they were a little harder to fit in a bunch of points. So when we had an album, I wanted to make a season of a show, and that’s why the album’s called Shinbangumi. Shinbangumi translates to a new season of a program in Japanese. I wanted the music videos to reflect that, and make a story that follows all these characters. Some characters are previously seen in some music videos. There are definitely some new characters and what’s really cool is the story is going to continue, and every music video is going to have its own episode. The whole B side of the record, all these things are going to happen to drive the story home and everything. So logistically, me and my co-director, David, who is the camera guy on stage, actually, we basically wrote it kind of like episodic television. We’re like, okay, no problems like this is going to happen. And then in better than Monday, it’s episode two. So what would happen in episode two? Oh, I get the team together, you know, and we started really writing this script. And what was really interesting too, is we wrote it not like a movie where everything was finished. We wrote it like a TV show where the third episode would come out, and we’re like, okay, so how does this affect the sixth episode? Like, we haven’t written that yet. So what can we take to really make this plot line, like through and through and everything? We filmed it in a couple of chunks. We filmed it in half in LA and half in Japan, which was a really fun experience. I learned a lot doing that. I definitely wanted to get my film degree’s money worth.

How are you able to balance and be able to appreciate the Japanese culture from that time, from the 90s, without coming off wrong?

Absolutely, that’s a fantastic question. I’ll keep the answer short, but basically, what happened was, that during COVID, I couldn’t tour, I couldn’t work in the film industry. That was, like my freelance job before I did music full-time. So I just started learning Japanese through immersion. I would just watch YouTube videos of all the stuff that is influencing all the videos, so like old dramas from the 80s, or interviews with my favorite bands from Japan in like, the 80s and 90s, and like YouTube videos and creators and all this type of stuff, movies. Then, of course, I watched a ton of anime as well. Because I was learning the language, I was like watching all these very vastly different pieces of content from that time period. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t do what Hollywood does with not just Japanese culture, but with Asian culture in general. Being a Chinese American, I know some people just put Chinese characters on a shirt, or Japanese characters on a shirt, and be like Yeah, it’s cool. I wanted to make sure that I basically wanted to write a thank you letter to Japan, to 80s Japan for really helping me get through COVID. If I didn’t learn Japanese, and occupy my time watching and researching all this stuff, I don’t know what I would have done during that time period, because I couldn’t do anything else. Instead of superficially ripping off something that they made, I wanted to do my own respectful version as a love letter to all those shows and stuff that I was watching to research all this stuff, that is kind of what I want to do, and a byproduct of that, and if I totally just am bragging like it caught wind in Japan in a way that I never thought possible, where, like, now I’m doing interviews in Japanese over there, and I’m on TV, and I’m talking to magazine articles and everything, like I did a press tour there. It’s crazy, and I never would have thought that would happen. And I think it’s because to them over there, they can tell that I’m not just ripping off something of theirs. They can feel that it is something familiar, but also something new. And I think that’s what got them really excited, really interested in the project, and I’m very thankful for that, and I’m so happy that it turned out the way it did.

I wanted to wrap things up here, after this tour, what’s next for Ginger Root as a whole, and maybe settling down, or any kind of upcoming releases, or what you’re working on right now.

Yeah, next year, also this year, during a European tour. Next year, there are a lot of tours not announced yet, but next year, we’re going to be all over the country. So I can’t say who, but I will say we’re going back to being an opening act, but it’s with someone that I admire, and it’s a dream come true. And so if anybody hasn’t seen us on our own tour, stop by next year, we’re literally going to be all across the globe. And so that’s I’m looking forward to that, and there are some festivals in between. And we’re really just wanting to spread the news about the album. The albums are not over yet. There’s a lot of people who haven’t heard it, and I’m hoping by playing these shows, people will introduce, be introduced to it for the first time, and then, you know, hopefully also take some time in between touring to rest up and take a break and think about what I want to do next. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m hoping that the experiences of all the tours coming up and traveling will definitely help bring some new inspiration for what Ginger Root will do.