Hey everyone, my name is Christian, and welcome back to Thruline, the podcast where we try to find the concept in non-concept albums. Well, that's what we normally do, at least. Today, instead, we have a unique program, as I have the special privilege to interview a band who just put out their debut album yesterday, a band who graciously allowed me access to the music to put together a breakdown of their album to share with all of you next Friday. It's Karma and the Killjoys.
Being the first interview for Thruline, and hopefully the first of many, I thought it prudent to lay down a little of the ground rules in terms of my general desire to keep my breakdowns as free of biased or influenced thought as I can possibly muster. And to do so, I've fully written and recorded my entire breakdown, released next week prior to this interview. Anything learned here will not influence my read, though it's possible, but not likely I've influenced the band, as they've read my breakdown already. And really, the biggest round rule of all falls to you.
Go listen to the album. Hellscape released yesterday, December 1st, 2022, on all major streaming platforms, as well as for purchase at similar locations. I want you here with open ears and open hearts as we embark on a journey into the musical minds of, in my self-proclaimed professional opinion, one of the most interesting and musically rich indie bands to debut this year. So really, without further ado, and of course, I've been quite known to adieu.
I'm happy to introduce you all to my special guest this week, the band, Karma and the Kill Joyce. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having us. We're gothier here.
Can you all introduce yourselves and let us know your role? Yes. My name is Michael Blunt, and I play guitar in the band. I'm Tim Marchana, I play bass.
Thomas Vercher, I play drums. I'm Rain Scott Catois, I play piano, and I write in sing. I'm Sydney Myers, and I also write in sing. Awesome.
Well, I think I have my biggest burning question of all right here at the beginning. Who is Karma and who are Kill Joyce? I know. That's classified information.
It's open to interpretation. So we're actually going to need another analysis from you. I want the papers on my desk in the morning. Well, now with the silliness out of the way, I've always wanted this podcast to be about introducing new music to people who otherwise wouldn't have heard it or tried it.
And a massive part of that was getting indie bands in front of people who don't have good recommendation engines for new breakthrough music other than their Discover Weekly or indie radio hour or just local bands. But local bands are often thought of in terms of locations with publicly known musical scenes by Nashville. Now, this is likely just a result of a narrow view of popular musical destinations, but I've never thought of Baton Rouge or Louisiana in the indie rock category. So please prove to me just how wrong I am and tell me a little bit about Baton Rouge and the Louisiana musical scene.
That's right. You're not totally wrong. There's a lot of indie bands, a lot of great bands out of here, but I don't know how many of them maybe received recognition or attention like outside of the area. There's a few that like got out, made it out.
So there's a lot of indie bands, but maybe not many that you have heard of or people have heard of as much. I mean, not specifically Baton Rouge. Right. So I think it's just famous indie bands is from Louisiana, neutral mill hotel.
Yeah, Rustin. That's not far from here at all actually. So they're there. Additionally, we exist.
We're here, but it's just finding our way to the indie stream is the issue. Not an agreement. New Orleans jazz blues. All that is what I heard news for, but Baton Rouge kind of falls to the wayside.
There hasn't been any big indie band. I guess I know some people that blew up and then they changed names and then they got successful at other avenues. But you know, I was going to say that something along the same lines as Michael was like, I feel like a lot of music in Louisiana gets a little bit overshadowed by the like very cultural music here. And that's wonderful because that's such a unique and wonderful thing that we do have here.
It's like, Zydeco and then like blues and jazz and New Orleans and all of that like roots music and all that stuff is like really awesome. But it's kind of funny as an indie band playing a festival. You like go to a festival and every band there is like a Zydeco or like blues country band and you're playing indie music and it's just kind of a funny thing. And I think that's both a challenge and something that's like really cool and unique for the experience, I guess.
Yeah. And it's really kind of on the ground floor of Baton Rouge indie music. Ish. I mean, I feel like after COVID and like the industry itself changed entirely and did 180.
And so everybody's trying to figure it out now and figure out how you make it lasting, you know, machine, but it's not to say we're on the ground floor in the sense that like there are no other bands that have attempted to do that. Like there's always bands that are that will see that the local show that are fantastic. But to get to that next level is tricky, especially now with what music has become and streaming and all that stuff. Yeah.
It's a whole different. It's a whole different animal than it used to be. You know, you get you know, the charts and your gold. Yeah.
And you know, there's like at some point you reach a level where stuff starts being out of your control depending on like what city you're in. Yeah. And you can only kind of get so big. You can only get so far within like Baton Rouge, for example, or a bunch of other cities that don't have a music scene.
Used to be like you shouldn't expect to get big outside of your city unless you can build a community with it. Unless you every show you play has 100 people. You know, when your local hometown loves you, that's when you can expect to do well in other cities. It's not even really the case anymore.
Dixit. Internet and Internet exposure. And content and you know, you have an active like really cool image online versus not but who's music is. You know, it's just a different world.
Did you make a viral TikTok? Exactly. Yeah. I feel like a lot of that can, you know, do a lot of good for you, propel you to a different place.
But also like if you're doing all that and like the product is a good, like your music's not like really dope. Yeah. Then you can only go so far with that. I'll say for this fan though, I have no role in the social media and it's great because then I can just go to the music.
Exactly. Exactly. So because it can be. And that's the idea that what it used to be is that you don't put that role in the musicians because they should be able to focus on the music and that's where the quality music comes about.
So, you know, that's where the managers and all these other things come into play but it all gets intertwined nowadays. And if you don't have somebody inside the band that's doing the content, then you pay for it and you can't pay for it. It's just, I don't know. It's a weird kind of money.
Whole new thing that's like necessary now. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. It's important.
Say in the past like decade, become like the main thing about promotion and everything is your internet online presence. Yeah. But we've just had the, we're just an anomaly. Honestly, like everything you all do does really well.
You all handle it yourselves. It's a good product package and a good way. So you have to have like both. You're making great music but like you're not doing the things that are necessary to put in front of other people, then it's kind of like you're missing half of the ball game.
You can be Einstein but if you don't ever leave the closet, everybody knows your Einstein. So you say Einstein's gay? I read a couple books. But yeah, also like if you're doing the social media thing hardcore and you're doing that really well but it's like when you go to a show or you listen to the album, it's like lacklustre then you're kind of also focusing on the wrong things.
So you have to be ready to and then present yourself really to the music. The music is reasonable but even if it does, if you do not have a presence online, you'll feel kind of more or less. Yeah. So the key part of that digital presence is a consistent brand identity especially in today's world and one of the things I didn't have the time to talk about in the write down was your art style.
The cover, the singles, the band. Yeah, cool thing here. Like when we say everything's done in house, everything is done in house. It's actually kind of insane.
So Sydney, when she's not writing songs and singing and doing something that's so crucial towards the band, she is also the one who's like literally designing everything we have. All of the stuff that the color palettes, all the things that match and look good, the album art itself, that all came from her. So I'm going to let her talk about that. Yeah.
So how do you like, what do you do? I'm going to go into a cryo chamber for hours. That's how I act. I'm literally like a mommy when I'm doing it.
I tend to like, once I'm in the zone in the zone because I am very ADHD but like I think that helps with, you know, being creative and I've always wanted to, even from like the jump, when I ran in and I were like, we didn't have the guys in the band. It was just like us doing our little things. I was creating little fake cover arts for all of our little recordings and stuff. I've always been very interested in capturing, I guess like a song's essence visually and I find that like for a hellscape in particular, the best way to do that was like through not mixed media, but like, you know, the collage of sorts, which for the cover art for hellscape, I took quite a few different clip art pieces that I found off of old, like I think they're like 30s or 40s ads.
I just thought like the idea of these characters, you know, American happiness and American advertisements and like capitalism and stuff really work well when you destroy them a little bit. They really capture, I guess like for me, the essence of hellscape, which is, you know, the idea that things look really pretty and rosy on the outside of like everything's falling apart around you. The American dream. Yeah, the American dream, literally, yeah.
It's a lie. It's not just, not really a lie as much as it is just very, very different than what you think it is as a kid. And I think a lot of like the cover that I've designed over the last like year or two has been a reflection of that idea. For hellscape specifically, I used a lot of those clip art pieces and then also I found a bunch of, I think old postcards from the World's Fair in Chicago from like early 1900s.
I wish I was there. And honestly, yeah, I wouldn't love to have been there. That's another, I guess, commentary on the American dream and the solution of that ideal and the crumbling nature of history. You know, I just wanted to- The crumbling nature of history.
Put that on the wall. I'll say no, I didn't even catch this. You had some images for the handful of songs at the earliest and then the hellscape album itself was a collage of all of those images. I didn't even, like I had a little bit of this.
Michael! All of the images from the songs are all in the one image. Did you have your glasses on? I might not have.
Michael. I had several people tell, well, one in particular and several people tell everybody. No, I had several people tell me that the album artwork is fantastic. And one was like, dude, I love how she took the images from all the singles you all were releasing and then made a collage of it.
Yeah, so that's another thing we can point out is like the art from our first three singles that we released, which are all on the album, of course. They all focus on kind of like one image and they're taken from those ads. And Sydney took those and put those into the album. And you know, for some, that's hard to see, apparently.
It goes over your head, maybe. But no, it's a cool thing. I mean, just wanted to make a kind of cohesive style in that way. Sydney's always really good about making things cohesive.
And like, we wanted the singles to look like the album because the singles for us were never like a single release. They were like the lead up to the album. It was always the lead up to the album. And so we wanted them to match artistically, visually, in that way.
So the font is the same, you know, like the style of the artwork. Those images are the same. And we wanted to make it into a collage because this is where they all come together. This is where those songs come from.
This is like, this is like, this is the big mama. This is the big mama. This is the hellscape. These are all the components of the hellscape.
And this is the world that you're jumping into whenever you was in the album. And I think, you know, the idea of it being like kind of faded and withered away almost distressed is just the perfect encapsulation. I think it worked out really, really well. So like how we used to hit Park that was one down for 40 years?
Yes, absolutely. Bright colors and it looks really fun. But actually it's really creepy. Scaring.
Like Amelia's crying. Exactly. There are a few pieces that I didn't add to it that didn't fit. Like I'd gone through and like created this whole, I had like at least 20 different other like little parts that I didn't add to it that I'm going to probably say for future albums and stuff.
But I really, I tend to get carried away. But I, that's basically how I ended up doing all of the artists. I just got too excited and couldn't put my phone down until I made something. A lot of great art comes from an almost unparalleled obsession.
Yeah. I got to be obsessive. What I thought was super interesting about the album cover is it is very indicative of where you are. Louisiana itself is pretty overgrown looking.
And there is a lot of architecture that's in the cover and the style itself that draws reference to Louisiana in general. Was that an intentional choice or did that just come about because of the style? Well, I just really, really like the color green and I really want to green t-shirts. There you have it.
There you have it. I did. Now you're saying that it absolutely does give Louisiana. I didn't realize it.
But yeah, I guess subconsciously because you live here and you live in the middle of this green all the time. Like it infiltrates. Yep. It almost looks like a state capital in there.
I know it's not. Yeah, it's a Chicago building, but like it does look like a capital. Shout out Louisiana's tallest state capital in the nation of the selection. I always think that the green, to me it looks like this like green storm is happening, which I think even more perpetuates the idea of hellscape.
It's terrifying. I never thought about like this till you just said that, but that's also kind of indicative of Louisiana because we're constantly having hurricanes and flood. So yeah, if you're hard though, those are trees actually. They're trees?
Yeah, they're trees that I, I don't see trees. I don't see trees that I'm able to know. The trunks are hidden. Oh, but it's like a bunch of trees like almost in a circle.
I have like behind everything. I was going for greenery, but the second you said clouds, I was like, yeah, that's why I'm not. I'm leaving. I can't do this anymore.
I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. Absolutely help. The constant discovery is made here.
Clearly none of us have looked at the argon. I mean, Sydney's offended. Honestly, no, not at all. We see what you're saying.
We're having back around to an idea that you brought up earlier with Louisiana having a lot of traditional musical styles already kind of established. There are just as much as the album cover, a lot of old traditional Louisiana musical influences intertwined in your sound. Was this intentional choice or did it come around naturally like the album, a consequence of living in that environment? Well, I think that's going to be a different answer for everyone who contributed for me.
I would absolutely say it's unconscious because I have never really spent a very close time with that sort of music on like some of the people in this band who like do play that music or have played it before. I personally haven't and my parents were like the indie weirdos of their generation. So I grew up listening to like that sort of music. I don't even know, but not necessarily what you think of when you think of Louisiana music.
I have really no familiarity with that except what I hear in passing. So any influence that might have had on me was definitely subconscious. I mean, I think it's like unavoidable to like live in Louisiana, especially like a gigging musician, like if you're playing with a lot of people or playing a lot of different situations, you're kind of like being involved with jazz and blues and solo music and stuff. I think a lot of different influences for everybody in the band.
So it comes from like their own history playing music and also just like their everyone's interests and various types of music. Me personally, I mean, I have played a lot of fleas and music jazz and blues and stuff, but I don't really think of that as much when I'm with playing a carmarish over playing with the band. Yeah, I think like everybody's influenced by what they're surrounded by, obviously, but that's kind of what I think makes this band interesting is that like rain didn't come from like playing Dr. John's.
Exactly. Even though sometimes a little lickier there that sounds a little, you know, maybe like the music. There's no way we are not influenced or you know, the musicians we are. Yeah.
The low part in Water Under the Bridge when you do piano runs. It probably just, someone that maybe came from your subconscious way back there just hearing piano around here your whole like, yeah, it's just a little bit of the tip like some of the piano just like 10 pan alley kind of five, just natural, like magical view and stuff. Yeah, that's just like American piano in general. Yes, it's just tried.
You play some tried and some left hand movement. Yeah. But I think that really does is what creates art style to some degree. Right.
And I didn't even becoming or trying to become a professional musician. But then we also like Johnny. So like now I started teaching Slim Harpo songs, which is a local Louisiana guy, but Johnny's in charge of all of it. Yeah.
And like he was covered by the Reynolds Rolling Stones and all kind of Bam Morrison. All kind of people. That's not like there is some interconnectivity, I think with all of that, just some degree. But I think that's why Johnny is drawn towards us a little bit in the sense that's like we're not doing stuff that's unnatural or inorganic, you know, it's like we're just being ourselves and we're adding this melting pot of everybody's own influences and styles into one room and it is what it is.
And not really intentionally. It's just like that's what you're doing. And it's like getting together with a group of musicians and like several of us are, you know, gigging musicians and when you're like playing for hire and you're taking gigs and stuff and Louisiana, you're naturally going to get called for like a gig. That's very Louisiana-ish.
You have to learn the material. Exactly. And then playing hard becomes what you're hired for. Yeah.
So you kind of win. Right. That experience feels like it's really important to the identity of the band because in general, at least in my experience, the piano in rock has often been kind of a supplementary element, only really occasionally at the forefront. Yeah.
Afterthought, if you will. Oh. I just want to look at me when you said that. No, it can be a pretty big part of rock music, but typically, yeah, it's kind of like...
Yeah, we've talked about that before and that's kind of always something I bring up when people ask me about like the kind of music we write. And like I always say, when people ask, you know, they want a straight answer when you say, well, what kind of music do you play? And so that's like obviously the hardest question ever. Obviously the hardest question ever.
So like I say piano rock, but like I really only say that because if I say anything else, you don't assume that the piano is really going to play or not. Yeah, and you don't get the full picture. You don't get the full picture. But obviously, piano rock doesn't...
You don't get the necessary of the full picture. You still don't. I like to describe it in music like on instrumentation a lot because it gives you an idea. Yeah.
You know, when you say piano rock, you imagine... A rock band with piano. The piano is the center as the kind of the focus, the cornerstone of the sound, but also it's a rock band. So you're imagining drums and guitar hairs and loud vocals.
Yeah. And so like the easiest thing is if people don't know what piano rock is, I'm like, okay, well, I hate to do this, but we're like, we're like, we're like Billy Joel, we're like Queen. Yeah, Ella Johnny Queen and Apple. We're not really it was we're not.
But we're not at the same time. Yeah. And you have to say that to get people to like know what it is because like it's kind of a niche like it really is like it's the most popular music in the world, but it's not the most popular music in the world right now. Yeah.
Yeah, in history. Yeah. I think our songwriter rock. Yeah.
Yeah. I love Queen and then they're like still thrown off when they hear like fun sounds. Yeah. And I'm like, dude, it's really not that far removed from that.
It's not. The only difference is we recorded it in the year 2020. Exactly. But I think labeling it as opposed to any rock as it.
Yeah. Any rock could literally mean anything. I know. Any music could probably be.
It just means it would be better. I'm just entertaining this focus. Like, how did I come in day one and turned all my pedals on one and made this crazy act? Like, and it took over the piano.
Like, that's not what the band is. The band is like a piano song that generally they either started with the rain or sids lyrics or say I want to do guitar and it built from there. But like that, I think as far as priorities, that is what, yeah, what the band is, you know, and keeping that in mind and not trying to. That's kind of a whole purpose of the band is like, yeah, like doing your role.
For me, this has been a big part of the band is like, what, like how far out there do I go or do I just play the chords or do I, you know, support or do I know, it's like, what is my role in the group and piano rock. And kind of thinking about that piano rock. Yeah, I know. It's just in pianism.
It's important. So it cares. For most of the songs, yes, not. I mean, there are songs that guitar leads though, like higher.
Like we still have, we still have songs that are not completely piano led, but most of them, we're looking at it like from a bird's eye view. Yeah. It's a piano rock band and that's the best I can come up with. It's the best.
Yeah. Other than just deep silence. And also like it's something that's not what they normally hear in which people are describing bands and stuff. That's why I always like think of the kind of like piano folk in a way because it's not the piano, but it's together.
And it's the piano and the vocals, the lyrics. Because every time any time me, Tim and Michael get a song, the demo that we get from the girls is a completely finished song that's piano and lyrics or piano and story. And harmony. Yeah.
So I kind of like the idea of piano folk. It's like this piano rock band, but it's always the lyrics-like story. That's really kind of like the song. Yeah, the song.
The heart and soul of it. Yeah. Well, having experienced another band or other musical experiences in general, was there any adjusting period that help accentuate that instrument as opposed to another guitar, like in typical rock music? Absolutely.
For sure. Yeah. So the whole song is written already usually when it gets to us or for the most part. And it's like all of the music kind of like is in the piano part and the vocals.
So we're following that as the other members of the band. Yeah. And I don't know. I'll tell my story with Tony.
Tony DeGill is the man who sound engineered the record. He recorded us and mixed and mastered it. So that's who- That's who- That's who- That's who- That's who- I'll take a look at the music. I'll take a little bit of a word when he's trying to take a little bit of the music.
Yeah. And he is a monster. The man. He really is wide.
He would rip me a new one. Well, I got to the studio for there was one song in particular. It's- That's where two busy. I still have a little bit of resentment towards this.
You know, he thought all my parts didn't work and it was another outside brain that has, again, like multi-grammy, the war-winning recording artist. He just didn't think it worked. And so I just had to rewrite stuff. I had to go back weeks later and with some new parts because it just didn't fit the song and it didn't sit well with piano for me.
That was a tricky thing. And this was early on. Yeah. Yeah.
That was our first time to doxide, I believe. And so like it has absolutely been a learning curve for me. It had to be re-tailored a little bit towards- It was too busy. It was too busy.
Just needed something. You know, you can call it more simple, but just more fitting for what was happening with the song. It's always a- It's always a process for us almost every song to figure out how the guitar and the piano are going to compliment each other. Especially the guitar.
Especially the guitar. Yeah. Because I have an easier job because I like to write the piano for the songs. I don't have any of them in my way.
I just literally write whatever I want to. And then I give it to them and then say, alright, you guys fit your parts around this. So I have the easiest job. But then what we have to do is like, in rehearsal, Michael's like, okay, well normally in a rock band I would be playing what she's playing.
So I need to play something else. And whether that's a little lick or like a lead line or maybe it's just chords or maybe it's something super busy and it works. And you know, it's always a struggle of process. Yeah, it's really intentional about how they're going to compliment each other and not be at the same place at the same time clashing.
Because they very easily could do that. They kind of mid-range instruments. Yeah, they're both mid-range, harmonic instruments, playing a lot of notes at one time or have the ability to. You just have to think differently.
Right. And going off that, I kind of want to single in on a specific song. Amelia was the first single that band put out. But as far as I know, so correct me if I'm wrong.
It was also one of the first songs written and performed in the early days of the band. So how did the sound of that song grow into supporting the full band structure? Yeah. It wasn't the full band.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of our older songs.
A few of the other songs on the album are just as old and we played them before the band. So it's kind of speaking for all of those. I mean, it's strange because even before we had a full band, I think in my mind, I was always hearing them being accompanied by a full band. And so I was writing the piano parts in a way that I knew didn't stand on its own.
And I didn't actually know what the other instruments would be doing because I don't have a strong familiarity with anything other than piano. But I knew that it would be something. And we did use to play some of these songs. I mean, just a few times played them before we had the guys in the band.
So it's just piano and vocals. And it was fine. But I think I was always very unsatisfied with that just because I knew that it needed more. And I knew that I would need some really good musicians who understood their instrument very well to be like, y'all are going to take the reins here and kind of make this grow into something more.
But funnily enough, if we're talking about Amelia, I feel like I always knew or wanted it to sound the way it sounds now, which is funny because whenever I was working on it, there was no prospect of that happening. We didn't know the boys in the band. We didn't know them. We had no prospects of finding them.
It was literally just like, I'm trying to write a piano rock song. And in my head, I heard it like that. And it's really funny because when I first sent the demo to Sydney, she didn't like it. She was like, okay, I mean, I guess it wasn't that she didn't like it.
But she was like, no, it's not that you didn't like it. You're like, okay, yeah, I could see this working. And then when it started to actually come together, you were like, okay, this is really cool or something. The first time you sent the chords that you played for the chorus, but the Amelia, I was like, wait, it's okay, dang, that's what I'm thinking of.
Yeah, no, I loved it immediately. But then I think maybe I was a little bit, not anything about your right. I was, it was for that one. Then I was for the captain.
Yeah, I was like a little bit like, I don't know how this is working. And then as soon as we had other instruments, it's hard to see it. It's hard to see it. Yeah.
Also, I've never been in a band before. Like this is my first time I'm a virgin and I was a virgin. Me as well. I lost my band for candy for this one.
But I had no way of knowing how full the song could sound for other instruments. I didn't have the bigger picture in mind for sure. Yeah. And I think I definitely, it was harder for me.
Like I said, like I'm not versed in other instruments. Oh, so I would have a hard time thinking of what I wanted. Eventually when we did have the guys in the band, I would send them these demos that are just piano and vocals. I'd be like, okay, I want something here.
Like something needs to be here. Like maybe the guitar does something. But that's about the extent of how I'd explain it. And then they'd have to like take that for what it was and be like, all right, let me see what I can do with this.
And most of the time, it was us me and Sydney not knowing really what we want. And then when we heard it, we, us being like, oh, yes, that's it. That's it. It's better now.
We've like evolved in a way that we kind of understand more. Yeah. We understand more of the process and how things are going to add to it. And it's still a process.
Like, you know, but Amelia just happened to be the perfect, like, I guess, pop standard in a way for us to like work from the ground up. I guess with like adding other instruments on it. Yeah. It's a very, I don't say like normal song, but like it's very like straightforward.
It's like a classic pop song. And it's satirical. Also that. But like, it's, you know, it's meant to be that caricature of like a classic pop song, you know, it's nice.
And it works so well. I remember the first time Thomas S the drum take. Yes. And then I went and I used, I, I movie and I added Michaels guitar over it.
And we called it a tramele guitar. Yeah. I was going to say like that one and then play with the two that like those were all audition pieces. Yes.
Audition pieces. Like send the video back, please. I just know John works. Yeah, sure that y'all were like good.
I wish you were in. And then yeah, and then I asked where the longevity comes in is like you begin to know how this person writes and how, you know, just Thomas put, you learn the problems. You're on one every part or not. You know, I'm like, you know, who kind of writes in these styles into the one?
You do it. There's not one right way to do it. Everybody has their own way to like approach something. You just learn everybody's kind of little tendencies and work with it.
It speeds up the being able to hear it. It speeds up the process. From the bare bend. Yeah.
It's like she can write it and she can hear now probably better than she could. So I would do what Michael do, what Thomas could do. Yeah. And they're still the, you know, still up in the air, but you can hear it and they should have done it before a couple of times.
Yeah. Yeah. We had been talking about the beginnings of the band a lot, the roots of the piano and vocal harmonies, but I wanted to get a sense of how the band as a whole kind of came together. Well, Ren and I are both theater performance majors at LSU and we just so happened to be in one too many classes together and just having to become like, you know, inseparable for a little bit and have the same use of taste.
Yeah. And it just became like this almost insufferable urge to just create with one another because knowing somebody who was like a classically trained musician is not something that like, I had ever, I had ever encountered someone who like could do what she does as well as she does. She was like, you know, we should probably, we should be using it. And then like before you know it, like it's, I say this a lot, but like a lot of the reason why like, a lot of the reason why like, man, you would exist is because like, for me, I would have never written had I not had like someone like rain, like encouraging me, telling you what I was writing is good.
It's literally adorable. Yeah. Like, I was like, you've been in a lot of songs though. Yeah.
Right. Like much before that, you know, the same semester. I mean, our first semester of college is when we both started writing, writing songs. Again, I think it's a very for me personally, it was like, I played piano, obviously, but I didn't like write anything.
I just never, I just never did. I don't know. I was very much intimidated by like being original with things. I would have much rather just read music and learn to play that.
And I didn't really have any piano teachers that did that sort of thing. And the few times that mine tried to encourage me to do that, I just said, no. And I was like, can we just go back to playing those? Or whatever?
No. And it literally wasn't like until my senior year of high school right before I graduated that I went to my first like real concert for a band that I liked. And that experience alone just lit something in me that I was like, oh my God, like it was literally life changing. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go home.
And no matter how long it takes me, I'm going to try to write a song, just one song. And such a weird process because I feel like most people would just like give up on a song that they didn't like. But I stuck with it for like months, like one song, like literal months. And I just kept trying because I hated everything I did.
I finally like landed on something. And by the time I finished it, it was my first semester of college. And so it was at that point that I met Sydney and I don't even know how it happened. Just all of a sudden we were just like in one of the practice rooms on campus.
We had such way too much time to film to class. And before I knew it, she was giving me some songs and I was like putting piano behind them and we were singing together. And yeah, I was like, that was it. And so a huge launching point between that version of us and the version of us today is meeting our manager.
So I worked at KLSU Radio, which is the college radio station of LSU. And one day I was working as a DJ and I get a call and usually the calls are just to like put in requests for music. But this call was from Johnny. I didn't know him at the time, obviously.
And he was like, hey, I'm just calling because I'm interested in finding some really good local Baton Rouge bands. Do you know of any? I'm a music producer and manager and I've been in the industry for like so many years now, but I've been looking for... Managed to log into Messina.
Yeah. Slim Harpo. Remember you were talking to your dad? Like you were this guy?
Yeah. I was very skeptical at first because I was like, this is some random man claiming to be... You never know people talk a lot. You never know.
But I saw the opportunity and I was like, I'm not going to give him some other band's name. I'm going to promote myself here. I want to have this chance. I'm like, oh, you called at the right time my guy because I have a band and we write songs.
It's only piano and vocals right now, but it's something. And he was like, oh, it's piano. Well, I have a grand piano at my place. Come over and y'all play for me.
Oh, so could be sketchy. And so I called my dad, like made sure. I didn't. Made sure he was legit.
But we went over there. He loved our music. I don't know what he saw, but he saw something. I know what he saw.
But you know what I mean? Because we were like just a fraction of what we are now. Absolutely. And so, but he saw it.
He really did. And so he was the one who really helped us come to our fullest thing that we are right now. And that's how we like Johnny brought in Michael. Johnny knew Michael and brought him in because he was like, I know Michael's a great guitar player and he would fit in really well.
Yeah, but he called me and was like, hey, do you happen to know any guitar players? I was like, no way. Like you have no, yes sir, Mr. Johnny.
I'll let you know. I'm interested actually. I'm interested. I'm interested.
Johnny said I'll give you a shot. Yeah, but then again, it's COVID. So it's like there was no meeting and it was like, all right, they're gonna send you some stuff. Basically, it all came together after that, you know, everyone knew somebody.
I don't know if I ever heard how you got involved. So my, this is also so, so weird, but I have a distant, not really relative that was in school music, my step step uncle. So I called him up and I was like, do you know any drummers? And the only one he sent me was Thomas.
And that's all we needed. Yeah. Thomas was literally a drum. Yes, perfect for this.
Thank you guys. Yes, it's very interesting. Yeah, so interesting. Like just like happenstance kind of like it was like all these small things led to the next, which led to this banding, I think.
Right. Yeah, we talked a little bit about what happens when the music gets sent to the drum spacing at TARS. But where does that songwriting process begin? Rain.
And Cindy both writes songs separately. So it's kind of two different answers. So for me, songs usually start as just words in melody. It's honestly kind of rare that they start with piano.
They almost never do. I think maybe I'll come up with something on piano and then put that into a song, but like that almost never happens. Now I come up with a feeling I want to convey or a certain story or a certain motif. Yeah.
And all my songs are very much led by the feeling of it. What I want this to feel like or what feeling am I trying to portray? So whether the melody or the lyrics come first, that's kind of up in the air and sometimes they come like in tandem with each other. Oh, so nice when that happens.
But yeah, so it comes along. Once I have like the words and the melody down, I already know how I want the song to feel. And that doesn't always make it extremely easy to come up with the piano parts. Sometimes I know exactly what the piano is supposed to be and sometimes I have no idea.
But what always gets me there is like, I know what I want it to feel like. So that always informs the piano parts. You know, sometimes I really struggle with it. It takes me a while because I want it to fit with the melody or what I'm feeling.
And sometimes it comes right out the hat, just immediate. But once it's said and done, I like to think that the demos definitely lend the boys at least to understand the general feeling that it's supposed to convey. Hopefully. Yeah, I mean, it does though.
Like when Be The Rain or Sydney both have a song that's pretty much all written out and kind of finished on the air. And at least for me, not as much for Michael and guitar, but I feel like for bass and drums, it's a little bit easier for us to find our parts because we literally just listened to the finished product from Rain or Sydney and just fit in where we are naturally going to fit in those parts. The guitar on the other hand is way harder for guitar to find its place. Like bass follows for the most part, the left hand of the piano, the bass and the piano.
And then drums obviously are kind of just following the rhythm, the feel and the hits and stops and stuff like that. And then guitar kind of does a little bit more work to do. And finding out where it fits. And it's just like this business.
And every song I want to say when I get one mix and then I get another one from Thomas with drums behind it, it helps significantly. Okay, so you have a half time feel like the feel and the vibe and I feel like that's the same thing with you. It's like you can come up with the melody and then when you write the words or whatever, it's like then you can envision the vibe of the song. What is the atmosphere that we're trying to hit?
And you convey that to the next guy. When Thomas with drums on it, it really does help me figure out what type of part I'm going to do for it. Because if I don't have that and he puts something different, it could clash or I don't know. It just helps kind of like clear up in my head the route to take where we're going.
And then everybody applies their own creativity and it is what it becomes like. Right now I'm doing this question is particularly difficult because a lot of the songs on the album are kind of older and a lot of like the first things that I ever attempted to write as like an adult. Aside from like, you know, like the things I wrote at like three, four years old that I sang only to my parents. It's different when you're an adult and you've got like actual means to producing something in front of other people and write it down and keep it.
And it's, you know, a lot of my first songs were straightforward. They came out one go. A lot of my songs nowadays are less so that simple. I've noticed I've fallen into the trend of like writing lyrics first lately.
I always say that like I like it best when both come at once. But honestly, my better songs were the lyrics come first and the music comes after. I capture a feeling in a lyrical sense and then I emphasize that through melody. Because those lyrics are going to suggest a melody.
Yeah, they will. But sometimes they suggest wrong. Sometimes it's super cool when the lyrics imply a melody and you ignore it. Because then they seem to counter like contradict each other but create some super fun songs.
Yeah, exactly. The captain for example is really the primary example that we have on the album that I can think of on my head. Rene lyrics gives you one feeling and hearing the song is a completely different one. It's almost sarcastic.
Jovio outlook on a very purple side thing. And I think if I fall into the trap of just grabbing every melody that comes to my head first and using that as the definite like finished product for every song that I write, I miss out on a lot of more experimental and more interesting choices I can make. Really cool to make a song that's like sounds really happy like the captain or something. But it's like really sad.
Yeah. Because then you're like, you're right. I was just doing the this is number one album for us. We're still a lot of like, I couldn't get a solid answer for songwriting method because I'm still trying to figure out what it is.
Because like it's still, once you realize you can like make things and you like get this spark to write and to create like I just went nuts. I wrote like 40 songs in a summer. None of them are good. I'm gonna be like making for reading them all the way.
I'm not sure. I do exactly like 10,000 eggs and only like 10 of them need to live. Exactly. I read something somewhere I can remember who said it like you should write something every day.
You should write something every day because it's a muscle and even if it's not a good, you should exercise that muscle. That might be where I got it from because I do love him. But I just need to you know, kill my heartlings more often I think. We've been talking a lot about melody and flow in specific songs.
But one of the most striking features of the album is the fact that despite coming out in 2022, it functionally has two sides like a vinyl. Words is the slow down track that fades out the first half with keep it to myself being a punch into the backside. How did you come to find the rhythm of the album? It's peaks and valleys.
It was a big argument. It was a bit of a word. It was a text. It was like we talked about this for way too long.
We had to get to get to land on anything. And I think a lot of what actually informed some of our choices that we all agreed on was songs that we ended up playing back to back that we liked. For example, just like you said, words going in to keep it to myself, we did that live one time and we were like, wait, that's actually really funny and also sounds good sonically. It just works.
And so whenever we were coming up with the album order, we were like, okay, we might not know what we're doing, but words should come before keep it to myself because it just feels right. It just feels right. It just feels completely different songs. I think in my head, I don't think I ever say it actually on stage, but it's always like words are like kicking the stomach emotionally.
I think everyone after that song kind of wants to go home. It's just so devastating that it's just fun. It just comedically like somebody walking in the middle of the case. So who's horny and then keep it starts playing.
It's completely changed as the vibe, picked you up from where you've just been kicked down by most of the times. That's kind of like trial and error. That's specific. It is.
I feel like there's a few other cases where that's happened because I know that's not the only one. There was like a few other moments where we were like, okay, these two songs fit really well coming back to back. They work emotionally and silently. Yeah.
I don't know how to say they're being filmed. Yeah. Works emotionally as well. It's so good.
It's so good. It came from playing live and realizing what works together, not just sonically, but lyrically and like story wise, what works together and what kind of needs to be more separate. Very much just trial and error. Yeah.
That's the overall answer. What makes you feel like a progressive story throughout as opposed to like up and down, fast, slow. Oh, another thing I remember bringing up whenever we were trying to decide was amongst, I guess me and Sydney mainly since like there are songs like, does this song feel like the beginning, middle or end of the overall journey? Not necessarily of like the album, but just like, of like an emotion.
Where does this song go in a journey? What does this song go in a movie? Exactly. It was a book.
It was a book. It was an end credit song or is this an open credit? Fade is you was so obviously an opener. Like it's so obviously not the beginning of a journey, whether that's, you know, what kind of journey or who's journey that doesn't really matter.
But it's where it fits in the beginning. It just feels like the beginning. It feels like a beginning. And so that kind of led a lot of the choices we made as well.
It's just where does this song feel in the journey? Did you have an overarching sense of a narrative that developed as you were placing these songs in their emotional order? Honestly, no. Honestly, not really.
I know that's like really disappointing probably. But like it works itself out over time. I mean, it proves that it's not a concept album. So I picked a good album to cover.
Exactly. And I mean, something that makes it like really difficult to do something like that intentionally is the fact that we have two different songwriters and me and Sydney write separately before it comes together. And we write our songs together. So, exactly.
Like a song that's mine comes solely from my brain and my emotions, my experience. And a song that Sydney's is hers. And it's incredible that they both work so well in an album too and in a band together. Which I think is, yeah, it's actually kind of crazy.
Because they're different in a lot of ways, but obviously overlap in so many ways. Yeah. And it works really well for this album specifically because a lot of the times when me and Sydney were writing these songs, we were actually in very similar places in life. Sometimes different.
Sometimes sometimes I feel like, and it was kind of cool that they overlapped in that way. But yeah, it's definitely hard to find a through line, if you will, in the moment, because of that, you know, like we're both going on our own separate journeys and it's cool when they collide and it's cool when they detach, I guess. Well, many of the songs are focused on romance or loss or lack of, but many of them are either differently or simultaneously focused on statements about society. How did this dual nature come about?
I think it just has a lot to do with the time period in which these songs were written. Like being that ran and I were like in college and a lot of these songs were written at the beginning of that college journey. It's like once you're in sex experience, like leaving the nest and looking for love and looking for connection and looking for, you know, all these things even talk to expect. And one of those being, I guess, a different world or a different country than what you got with the 2020 pandemic and subsequent election and stuff.
It's like literally the album kind of encapsulates the play from saying earlier, like the crumbling nature of like your expectations, like the way that like you come into this place as a young adult where you're like expecting love to be one way and it's a completely different way or it, you know, it leads you entirely. And then same thing with when I wrote higher, it was just me having taken a history class and being like, oh, damn, none of this is what I was taught in high school. None of this is at all. I thought I do things are bad.
I don't know this bad. And then they continue to just get worse, which I think is a really well reflected on a Hellscape on 9th Street in particular. Yeah, Hellscape is definitely, I've said this before, it's not about the pandemic by any means, but I did write it during it. And I thought that was going to be part of it.
I think like I think naturally there is an influence of that scenario that, you know, I was writing parts for a band that I had never seen in person. Yeah, that's the crazy thing is we started this thing like at the time, like in quarantine. Yeah. And of course that's going to bleed through.