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You can also follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This podcast is being brought to you by WXAV88.3FM and wxav.com. WXAV bringing the best podcast to you. Hi, it's Peter Creighton from WXAV88.3FM in Chicago, and Happy Ridefest 2022 to each and every one of you.
Ridefest is taking place September 16th through the 18th in Douglas Park here in Chicago, and performing Friday night at 6.30pm is Cloud Nothings. I recently caught up with Dylan Baldy from Cloud Nothings to discuss Ridefest, the 10-year anniversary of Attack of Memory, and what it's like to create music via email. Here's my interview with Dylan Baldy. So next Friday, you're coming to Chicago, playing Ridefest.
Cloud Nothings are playing at 6.30pm on Friday night at Ridefest. How excited are you to be coming back to Chicago and playing one of the premier festivals in the city? I'm excited. I love Chicago.
We have a lot of friends there. I always have. I feel like Chicago is one of the first places that actually likes to spend. So I have a special place in my heart for Chicago.
I always go to Wendy's, always go to reckless records and stuff. To get to that. Which reckless do you usually have? Wicker Park or Lakeview?
I think Wicker Park, I'm pretty sure. It's either one that's across from a bar cave. Yeah, I'm here with him. Yeah, that's the one.
Yeah, no, it's it's so awesome. In fact, I saw a couple of weeks ago, it's been magazine actually named that location, the best record shop in the country. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a great one. Yeah, definitely up there.
It really is. Now, after Ridefest, Cloud Nothings, you guys are hitting the road for a very special tour. It's the 10-year anniversary of Attack on Memory. What's it like for you looking back at that album now 10 years later and kind of knowing, oh man, this record now is 10 years old?
It's weird. It's funny. It's just nice that anyone still cares about it, basically. You know, the fact that we can do a tour and say like, it's the 10-diversity tour of something, you know, that there's still people around 10 years later who care about it, you know, gratifying in some way.
And it's also nice to be able to keep moving beyond that, though. You know, it's nice to know and look at it. We spent the last 10 years like doing a lot of clean notes and spend, too. And it's kind of cool to put things in perspective that way.
Yeah. It's like going right back to the beginning for you. Over the course of the pandemic, Cloud Nothings, you've been very busy. You released two albums.
The first one is the Black Hole Understands, and then you released last year, the Shadow Eye Remember. How would you say like the pandemic and the lockdowns, how would you say that affected or did not affect the creative direction of the band? I mean, it changed things pretty drastically, I guess, because we were kind of just on a cycle of like make a record going to, or make a record going to, or just do that over and over. Basically, we threw it a lot.
And once that was just sort of shut down the way it was, we just had a lot of free time. If you weren't used to having it, I mean, I don't live with everybody anymore. I live in Philadelphia and I still live in Cleveland. So we just started emailing.
I think a couple months went by where we were just sort of like, I don't know what's going on. So let's just wait and see what happens. And then we realized, okay, let's just start making songs online, basically emailing your stuff back and forth. And it's not as fun to me.
He was playing in a room with people, but they got us through the last couple of years, at least. I was going to ask Adam an interesting experience trying to create music and you're not in this goal's space with the people. Yeah, it's just like, basically all I would end up doing is I would make like a whole song by myself and just send it to Jason, our drummer, and he would drum on top of it. And that's like what a couple of those pandemic records are, just the two of us doing it back and forth, because it's kind of hard to, you know, I like kind of just jamming.
I like sitting in a room with people and just kind of like playing and seeing what happens. That's like my favorite way to play music. What I'm not doing that, I think stuff just starts to feel pretty same to me after a while. Yeah, but luckily we're past that time.
We can play together again. Exactly. And you can go back on the road and you can play a great festival like Ridefest, which is taking place here in Chicago. I've Dylan here from Club Nothing's.
They will be playing at 6.30 on Friday night. Will you be able to check out any of the other bands that are playing Ridefest this year? And if so, who would you be excited to go and check out? Well, yeah, we are staying the whole weekend actually, just because I'm in Chicago's bottom.
Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm going to go to all the days of the festival, but I kind of honestly, I don't even know who's playing. I'm a bad artist. I know Nine Ingenails is playing on Sunday and I do love Nine Ingenails ever since I was like a little kid.
So I've only seen them once and it was also at a huge festival. It was pretty incredible. So I'm excited for that. Yeah, Trina always brings it.
He does. It's insane. Yeah, it was like really, really intense and like physical when I saw them play. He could like steal everything.
It was really cool. That's awesome. You know, speaking earlier of Chicago and your connection with the city and everything, you've recorded the shadow I remember with Steve Albani. He's just like working with him and just that huge musical connection he has with like Nirvana and all these other like great bands and everything.
Steve's great. Yeah. I mean, we don't, it's not quite like story time with Steve when you're recording with him. He's kind of just like, he's in the zone if you're in the zone.
He's always working hard on something. Yeah. He's great. He's a great guy.
A couple more questions for you. When did you know that you were on the path for a musical career? Like when did music kind of come calling to you where you're like, this is my passion. This is what I want to do with my life, with my career.
I mean, when I was like a young person, I mean, like, you know, great school and things even I kind of just gravitated towards my parents really into music. So that was like, there was in the house growing up, but I just really liked playing instruments. Basically, I just started learning how to play like everything I could. And you know, maybe it was to, you know, I was a weird little kid.
So maybe I was coming to me for my weirdness by trying to be good at something else. But yeah, it was a, I don't know. It just kind of always seems like a thing that I've been good at sort of, like the thing I feel like I can provide something to the world with. So I've been trying to do it for a long time.
Yeah. That's awesome. Now, WXV were College Radio Station and I'm just kind of curious, you know, what are your thoughts on, on College Radio and how has College Radio impacted the careers and the, you know, the direction of cloud nothings? I mean, I'm the big fan of any radio that doesn't have to adhere to any sort of playlist or anything, you know, College Radio in general.
Most of the ones that I, I'm aware of are pretty free form. You know, I like the ones that are like that. I think it's cool that you can still hear stuff like that on terrestrial radio. But I mean, well, I was going to do a College Radio show actually.
I went to college for like three months in Cleveland. And then I slept through the final exam accidentally and I dropped to the college. So I didn't do a radio show, but I've always liked College Radio. Clearly.
That's awesome. Well, if you ever want to do a College Radio show, you're always welcome to stop by XAV. We'll let you do one. That would be great.
I'll let you know. Awesome. Sounds good. Well, Dylan, thank you so much for spending some time with us.
Again, cloud nothings are playing right first on Friday at 630 PM. You do not want to miss them. Dylan, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. See ya.
Thanks for asking me. And that was my interview with Dylan Baldi. For more information on cloud nothings, check out their website at cloud nothings.com. You can also see them this Friday at 630 PM at RiotFest on the Rebel stage.
For more information, check out RiotFest.org. Peter Kretsen and thanks for listening. Thank you very much for listening to this WXAV 88.3 FM podcast. Be sure to visit our website WXAV.com for more information on your escape from ordinary radio.