Interview: Her Leather Jacket On Writing with Aaron Gillespie, Blending Genres, and Playing at When We Were Young

For as long as I can remember, Nashville has been the hot-bed of country music - singer-songwriters, publishers, the biggest stars that the genre has to offer all converge on this city to write, perform, and bring the genre to life. In recent years, other genres have emerged, some birthed out of country, others from a general love of music. After pursuing a career as a “country rock” musician, performer Manny Blu decided to take things in a different direction - one where there wasn’t any kind of genre limitation. He got together with drummer Wes Snyder, and the two formed Her Leather Jacket, an electric new rock act that is blurring the lines of what is and isn’t considered rock.

With moments of heaviness, pop-punk-inspired grooves and melodies, and country twang in the mix, Blu and Snyder are breaking down the boundaries that lie between genres with one goal in mind: writing great music. Shameless sat down with both Blu and Snyder ahead of their performance at this year’s When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, which takes place this Saturday and Sunday. The band talked about how the project came together, their newest song “Madness in My Mind”, and working with Underoath drummer Aaron Gillespie.

Note: Portions of this interview have been edited solely for the purposes of length and clarity.

Your sound is really interesting to me as a band because it's pop punk, but it has elements of pop and a country feel to it. I’m not sure if you guys had moved to Nashville or if you've grown up in Nashville or were born and raised. But would you say that living within the city has influenced the sound of your music and how so, if that's the case?

Manny Blu (vocals, guitar): I think a multitude of ways for myself. I was born and raised in Canada, and I moved to Nashville in 2018 to be a country singer. I had a lot of cool experiences, and then I met Wes, who was playing drums in that project, and then we kind of just turned to wanting to lean over to rock. I think Nashville's a really cool place because there's so many different styles of music - there's so much fusion anyway. So it doesn't really feel like musical fusion unless until you take it outside of Nashville. Because we have tons of friends that are, somewhat Americana, somewhat blues, somewhat pop, and we just go, “Oh, this guy's great.”  So, I think that makes it really cool.

Wes Snyder (drummer): I’m from Chicago. I grew up playing drums. I love the nu metal scene in the 90s. I loved the pop-punk scene in the late 90s-2000s. I got into this weird like 80s hair metal thing when I was like in high school. When I moved to Nashville - my wife is originally from here -  I just wanted to play music, play whatever, play country. I was playing with another guy, and I met Manny and we started playing together and just kind of riffing ideas and wishlists and trading different bands we love. That’s kind of how Her Leather Jacket started - it was like us just putting all of our influences and everything into a blender and just kind of coming out with what we are, you know?

And that's the thing that's so interesting about Nashville as a city. It obviously has roots in country and blues, as many historians and documentaries have highlighted over the years. But everything you could think of musically is in Nashville. I know people who've been to both LA and Nashville, and they say it’s very similar in the sense that there are tons of people [in both places] who are just all trying to make music. It doesn't really matter what the genre is. It all kind of converges and comes together in that sense.

Manny: Yeah, absolutely. And I love that about Nashville, too. I call it a small city or a big town. It feels more like a big town because we have a lot of friends that do multiple, different genres or whatever. We love to go out and support them and and it doesn't really matter what the genre is. It’s just…good music is good music, and that’s always been the idea for us, the people we hang around. So it’s pretty sick.

So with only two of you in the band, how does the writing dynamic work for Her Leather Jacket?

Manny: It changes, I think, from song to song a little bit, but I think predominantly we got to connect with Aaron Gillespie from Underoath here in Nashville. He produced an EP for us. It was a lot of fun - he brought in some songs and then we wrote two, and then he said, “if we're going to keep working together, I want you guys in the room writing.” And having come from a sort of country background, I wasn't really doing that because when I moved, they're like, “hey, we’re just publishers. We’ll just send you some songs. You don't have to worry about it.” And I was like, “Oh, that's cool.”

I said, “I don’t really have that much experience writing,” he said, “just come into the studio and we’ll work on it.” We’d written like six songs before we started. [Aaron] went on tour, and we were just playing around with different styles, what people would call subgenres or whatever, not really with a focus in mind, just kind of getting out the writing process. And I think through that, we kind of naturally find our own place in the room. A lot of it does stem from Aaron being such a phenomenal writer. Personally or together, we can bring in an idea and go, “okay, what’s the angle? What do we want to do? What’s the approach?” And then we kinda go from there.

Wes has, through the process, become really good lyrically, but I think between the two of us, he’s the music guy as well. It’s really fun to sit in a room and hear two drummers talk about whether or not there’s a breakdown, if there’s a groove, things like that.

Wes: It got to a really cool level. I would never consider myself a songwriter. Hooking up with Aaron has been such a blessing. It’s such a hangout. We kinda create this little Megazord of what’s a rippin’ song. We go on in, and he’s like “alright boys, what do we wanna do today?” And then Manny we’ll be like, “I was thinking of this line.” For me, I find myself to be someone who has a lot to say - I talk a lot. Aaron’s really cool because there’s no bad ideas, you have to let everything out in the room, and we just cook. It’s like putting puzzle pieces [together]. I’ll go, “how do we say this, but in a cool way?” And then Aaron will be like “that’s it! That’s the way to say it.”

Anytime that we go and have a new write with Aaron, we keep surprising ourselves. We start the day with something that’s never even existed, and then three hours later, we’ve got this thing that we really love and believe in. It’s really exciting man. It’s really exciting.

Aaron Gillespie is obviously a very talented songwriter and musician - having worked in Underoath and The Almost. How did you three meet and end up working together?

Manny: There was a time when I was doing country, when I was trying to edge it up a little bit. I was trying to do this country-rock, punk-influenced thing. My manager at the time was like, “well, Aaron from Underoath is playing here in Nashville at this acoustic thing. We should go and see what it’s about.” Aaron was selling his own merch. I was wearing a hat - I had a sound at the time that I was calling “country punk” - and my hat said [country punk] on it. He saw it and said, “yo, what the fuck is country punk?” I turned around and was like “Uhhh…” He started grilling me with questions. “Would you say this? Would you say that’s what punk is?” And I was like, “oh my god”. We ended up chit-chatting a little bit, and we were planning to work on a project together that would have been a country-rock-fusion thing. Throughout that process, when Wes and I decided “hey, let’s just make a rock band”, I went to Aaron and said, “I’d love to keep working with you, but I think we’re going to start this rock band fresh.”

I was being called “too rock for country” and “too country for rock”, and then HARDY came out with “BOOTS” first, and I was like “That’s kind of metal.” I guess I was getting frustrated with some of the responses I was getting, which did not feel genuine and said, “you know what? Let’s just have some fun with this.” We just started writing and said, “let the songs be what they are.” We didn’t approach it like, “this song has to be metalcore, this song has to be pop-punk.” We just started writing with Aaron, and I think Aaron has given us a really cool space to be able to explore it.

I moved to Nashville in 2018, and he’s the first guy I’ve worked with that will push it further than I’m even asking for, and then we can decide: “Oh, that’s actually what I meant”, or “No, no, let’s dial this back”. But nobody else I had worked with would say, “Oh really? Are you sure this is what you want?” He’s been a guy that says, “Let’s try it. Let’s see.”

Wes: It’s really cool, too, because getting to know each other really well - even when we were doing Manny’s country project, we were getting burned - band members, management, we were getting burned. We’re just two dudes who want to rip and make cool songs, and I think Aaron saw that in us and had our back like a big brother. That’s what was so cool about how this all started. He wrote a song for us, “Chase”, that was on our The House That Chaos Built EP. He was like, “I wrote this on a plane thinking about you, man!” That’s how it started with us all getting together and writing.

Do you think that country as a genre now has become more of an open genre in that sense? Or do you think there’s still a lot of work to be done? You referenced HARDY earlier with the song “BOOTS”, and he even appeared on a Beartooth album, The Surface a couple years ago.

Manny: I think country is at the place where it is one of the coolest genres now because it has so many different aspects to it. You can get Jelly Roll, you can get Morgan Wallen, and even in one Morgan Wallen record with thirty-five songs on it, there’s so many different genres in there.

Wallen is intimidating to listen to because of the number of songs. I look at the thirty-five song track list and go, “oh my god.”

Manny: (laughs) I know! I put it on in the car whenever we have a long drive. [My wife and I] have a four-month old now. I’m not putting on Bring Me The Horizon on or anything like that (laughs). I put the Wallen record on, my wife likes it, so everybody’s happy.

I think now, country is a lot more open. I think back in 2020-2021, when I wanted to do this and thought, “oh, I think there’s a space here for [country-rock]”, I don’t think I had the right team, or producer, or writers that understood it. I think that’s what’s exciting about Aaron. He does write country, he does write for Underoath and every other style of rock. I think had I done that project now, it wouldn’t have been so frustrating, but we went all in on Her Leather Jacket and got to a point where I thought, “country can do what it does, that’s fine.” There may be some lingering country effects in my vocals and that’s cool, but I think what’s really cool about calling ourselves a rock band is the fact that we have the freedom to explore things sonically, vocally, and lyrically.

Which is so fascinating, because years ago, people would have said the exact opposite thing about rock, that rock is so limiting, how you can only do this or that, and now that mentality seems to be reversing in a weird way.

Wes: That’s something that we always talk about. I am so against the term “genre”. I just say, “we’re a rock band”. Because if we’re a “rock band”, we’re in the tree of rock, and every branch has something [different]. We go, “let’s do a thrashier verse” or “let’s do a pop-punk verse”. I’m not a double kick guy - that’s usually my limit and I’ll go “Manny, we’re getting into metal territory and I can’t do that. I’ve gotta stick with my one [pedal], you know?” (laughs)

Manny: For the record, his one foot is fucking electric. (laughs) It can do the one job of a double kick, no problem.

Wes: If you ever hear anything that sounds like a double-kick, know that I’m a single-kick guy. (laughs)

Let’s talk about the song “Madness In My Mind”. Last year, you released The House That Chaos Built EP, and then that song came out. From listening, it sounds somewhat like a breakup song. How did the song come about? What was the subject when you were writing it?

Manny: That’s a fun one. We wanted to write something fun and with a breakdown. I don’t even remember exactly it came about.

Wes: The day we wrote it, we had a day in the studio where we were going to record drums for six other songs that we had written. Aaron was like, “let’s show up early, let’s write one, let’s get drums out of the way, then let’s do vocals”. We just walked into it like, “hey, let’s write a song”. [Aaron] always walks into the studio, picks up a guitar, messing around with chords, and we’re always chatting while he does it. He’s like, “What are we feelin’, boys?” Manny said, “I either have this lyric or this thought - The Madness In My Mind”. I thought, “oh, there’s so many ways that we can take that.”

“Madness” became something like a song about a toxic couple, about two people who shouldn’t be together, but they’re just so fucking crazy for each other.

It was so cool, and it happened so quickly, too. I forget how we even got to the chorus, but it was so cool. It happened so naturally and so quick. We really dug it - I really love that song. There are acoustic versions of it, but it’s a cool little rock song. With no genre, of course. (laughs)

We’re doing this interview leading up to When We Were Young Festival, which is currently in its fourth iteration. There’s a lot of bands, and a lot of music going on for twelve hours. It’s a pretty crazy experience. What can fans expect when they see your live show, particualry if its the first time they’re going to be experiencing you as a band?

Manny: A lot of fun and energy. I got into music because I love performing. We’re working up our set list, and I think the set’s going to be really, really fun. We perform with a lot of energy. We got to do Warped Tour in June as sort of a “warm-up” to When We Were Young. That was my first experience, for sure, at a really big rock festival. We’re just excited. We have a guitar player and a bass player who can sing as well, so we get to play around with a lot of really cool things. They can expect energy and a lot of fun.

Wes: I think we give something for everybody. If you have more of a pop-punk vibe, we have stuff for that. If you like harder stuff, we throw a couple of harder tunes in. The show is high energy, we’re keeping it busy, hopefully people are jumping. And if everybody’s just completely silent, we just wanna fucking blow people away and have them be like, “What the fuck did we just see?”

Her Leather Jacket will perform at 11:!5 on the Allianz Stage at When We Were Young on Saturday, October 18th and Sunday, October 19th, 2025. You can check out Her Leather Jacket wherever you get your music, and you can follow the band on Instagram at @herleatherjacketofficial.