In 2006, Jeremy Messersmith caught the attention of local listeners with his debut full length The Alcatraz Kid. Lauded for his masterful sixties-styled songwriting and lush arrangements, Jeremy broadened his fanbase with his sophomore album, The Silver City (produced by Semisonic's Dan "Closing Time" Wilson), making several Twin Cities best-of-the-year-lists. I got a chance to sit down with Jeremy and talk about his new job, album plans and why he hates O.A.R.

You teach a class at McNally Smith now, what has that been like for you?

Its a lot of fun, it's basically an introductory songwriting class. I believe its open to all the majors in McNally. So, everyone from composition majors to metal heads to music business majors, that kind of thing. It basically just covers the fundamentals of how to write a song.

Is it weird going from being a relatively new TC songwriter to being put in a more authoritative position?

I guess it could be but I don't really look at it as any sort of authoritative position, ha! Like the first thing we do in class is rearrange the chairs in a circle because the circle is sort of the time-honored songwriting tradition, much like Knights of the Round Table or something. I mean its a way of denoting equality. In class I'm hopefully imparting stuff that I know but at the same time a lot of the people I'm teaching are incredibly talented and really the only thing I have on them is age and that's about it.

What's your relationship with Dan Wilson like?

It's really fantastic. Like one of the first songs I ever learned on guitar was "Closing Time" and every once in a while I have to stop and pinch myself. I remember when I first started making music in the Twin Cities, I thought, If i could have one person in town produce my records it would be Dan Wilson and that was before I ever met him or seen him play a show, i just heard he was kind of in town.

Yeah I think that was even one of the first songs I ever heard as a kid.

Yeah! I mean it's really just an amazing, well written song. So getting to work with him was sort of like... I mean I still have to pinch myself sometimes. I mean I got to play a set with him and be part of the band and play "Secret Smile". So it's like I used to cover in a bar band and now I get to play with Dan Wilson the writer. We've known each other for a few years now, hes just a good friend and an all-around classy guy to be around. If you need stimulating conversation he's definitely the guy to talk to.

What have you been listening to as far as local music?

As far as local music, I've been listening to a lot of Zoo Animal. Birds of Virginia just put out a record. Star Folk also... I think they're all actually playing this Friday so maybe thats why I've been listening to them. I mean people hand me CD's and so I usually listen to them. I've always been a Solid Gold junkie so that's sort of been a go-to record for me as far as local music. Oh, and Mason Jennings new record. I mean he's local but he's pretty national, his new one is really nice tho.

When you're not writing or teaching music what do you like to do?

Well either ride my bike or I've been doing Bikram Yoga which has been interesting. Things everybody else does I guess, play video games, read books. I still try to watch a lot of movies. I'm always looking for any sort of creative inspiration so I constantly try to intake as much information as I can.

Where do you draw inspiration from when it's not music?

Film, I've been watching a lot of Pinky Violence movies from Japan, they were sort of the inspiration for Kill Bill. I found that history inspiring and thats not really musical at all. I mean I cant say they were about Pinky Violence but I mean you get ideas from the characters, the settings, the stories or whatever else. The internet? Can I just say the internet? A lot of stuff is inspired by, this is sort of horrible, but even social networks, like my friends posting weird facebook status's. Once in a while I just ask people what I should write about and a few people will throw me some ideas and one of them was what I thought a really great idea so I just wrote the song.

Any plans for an upcoming album?

Yeah, Ive been writing frantically for the last couple months. I have about 11 or 12 songs written. So I'll be going into a studio in November, so that's the plan for that.

What do you want to do different?

I'm approaching it more like a full band. Normally it would be just me with an acoustic guitar with stuff on top of it. We'll do that on a few tunes but I think it's going to mainly be about a few people in a room playing all in one take which I've never done before. So, I hope the change in the methodology will result in something a little more I guess live or raucous maybe?

Not a lot of bands do it one take nowadays either, do they?

Yeah, not really but I think we're gonna try really hard to keep all the mistakes in the approach. I mean everything is in auto-tune to sound really nice these days so it'd be nice to keep some flubs ya know? It's the only thing that differentiates us from the robots.

So are you striving for another concept album? Would you call The Silver City a concept album?

I always describe it as a loose concept album. One of the things about concept albums is inevitably you end up grasping too far and the songs kind of suffer because you have songs that are there to support the structure of the album. So, I like the idea of having a loose concept album but yeah the new one definitely has a theme and is maybe even more of a concept record than The Silver City but we'll see. It's still pretty early in the development.

If you could be in any band from any time period who would it be?

Well I'm assuming The Beatles are off the table?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean we all want to be Ringo right?

Haha, true.

Were you gonna say The Beatles?

Well I feel like they're sort of everybody's default choice but I would probably pick The Kinks, which is sort of Beatles-ey and then third place would be The Zombies.

Least favorite band ever?

Agh, I hate OAR. I'm sure they're nice guys but creatively I can't stand them.