This is Sean from So let's just let's get into the mind of a festival director. We need a rock band. We need a rapper. We need something like Poppy and electronicy.
Something old. Something blue. Yeah. So You get you get Wilco as your rock band because it's Chicago.
That's where they're from. Very nice. It's your local draw. Listen, there's a reason I'm not a festival director.
You get you get fired from that job immediately. You get dead or live. Am I programming? Well, I'm dead or live.
Oh, shh. I'll give you any more opportunities. Come on, Steve. This is a Steve question.
I would get Aretha Franklin I should pop. Yeah, yeah, I would get something old. I would get Oh, you need the swap in. Mustard.
What? Okay, Wilco or either Franklin Kanye. This festival sucks. It's horrible.
The Beatles. What the hell? What's dead or live? What is this festival?
I'm the pressure. I crack the rock band. He got the pop in. The rap.
And then he got the Beatles. I feel like I'm a country boy. Yeah, I feel like I didn't give a bunch of a nod to EDM. But that's because I don't really like it.
Yeah, that's the one downside of a special. I don't like it. The EDM stage. All right.
So another question kind of like that. You guys were torn with Jeff Rose and Sock, obviously last year in Tiny Moon Parts. And then Jeff obviously was a part of the music industry. And with that, it was kind of a ton of people, at least from different bands kind of coming together.
So you got to start a punk supergroup. You're obviously the singer. You're the guitarist. You can't pick anyone else in.
Fuck. You guys got to screw you. You guys got to pick drummer guitarist and bassist. Jeff Rose and Sock's band Kevin Heggichian, Mike Huguenor.
Let's go. Kevin from Play's drums. Kevin probably plays drums. We need a bass player.
I would do Morgan. I would also take Ian from my. I'm not a bass ball. Yeah, sure.
He's in nice back. I'm harmony. And he's a goof. I like that guy.
All right. Cool. All right. Well, no, we need.
You know what? And you know who plays the other guitar? And could also sing to get Laura Stevenson to get Laura Stevenson. Yeah, she's cool.
Who was in the original bond? I don't know. I don't know. I've never met her though.
So she better be. I was camping. I was in the middle of the Canadian North, but what was this? Oh, you know, just Jeff played a show.
Jeff and Laura played a show in Toronto a couple weeks ago. And I was bummed to miss it, but I was also deep in the ice. We got very very drunk. The night before the show.
No, come on. Don't talk about that. Hey, you guys are clean. Yeah.
You guys are the family friendly. Yeah. Jamie dropped a hit that you guys are starting some new stuff and to poke at that. So obviously you guys put out the dreamers over last year.
So I mean, the third record, I'm assuming, at least in works, right? What's going on? Yeah, we're pretty deep into it. You know, we're writing.
It's going cool. Yeah, I mean, we're kind of like a we don't like take breaks like this is like you going and camping for a week and me going to the West Coast. Like it's kind of the first time we've taken a break and like to actually take a vacation or I don't know, I was working, but yeah, we were in. Yeah, I mean, you were like, even then you had a guitar with yourself.
So like we're always kind of working. Yeah, and with this, when you're writing it out, do you have any influences in mind? Do you have anything that you're trying to take up or you're building off of something from like the dreamers over or taking something back from the first record? Like, I think I think our attitude has always kind of been like we like what we do.
We like the kind of band that we are. I'm a proud of the songs that we write and we just want to be better at doing that. You know, like, I don't think anybody in this band is like, Oh, I want to go. You know what?
I want to make like a power pop record or I want to make like, you know what? I want to get like really weird and esoteric. Like we all have those kind of elements in our songs, but I think we're all just kind of like stoked on what we're doing. And we just want to be better at it.
Yeah, it's like, I think the thing we always try and do is distill music or things that we listen to that maybe if you wouldn't necessarily associate with the band, if you just heard it, but you distill it and make it in such a way that it fits into this kind of format and what we do. And when you guys are writing, like, do you like do your own stuff and then you guys work out together? Like, do you guys ever come together as a band? Well, usually the way it happens is either I like write a song or I must write a bunch of riffs that work together.
And then we take those kind of demos that we've made individually and we come the four of us together and kind of tear it all apart and rebuild it. And it's a really neurotic process and the songs turn out completely different than, you know, the way I had originally recorded them or the Nestor ad. And it's a cool, weird, interesting process because I feel like a lot of our songs, at least a lot of the songs that I write, if you gave them to like a folk rock band, they're like a lot of folky, alt-country stuff that just become pop songs through destroying and rebuilding and everyone injecting their own influences into the parts and stuff like that. So it's been a cool, it's a very collaborative process and I feel like as we have spent time together and worked on being a band, it's become increasingly collaborative over the years.
And when you guys are putting the stuff together, would you guys, since you said you mentioned that you really don't want to change too much about the band just like the way you sound? So would you go back on stuff from the 2013 record, 2016 record that really didn't fit on that record and maybe more bad? No, no, no, no. We're always like moving forward.
There were songs that we had kicking around that were good but something was missing from them and nobody wants to go back and touch that. The whole thing about us is that we're very motivated to outdo ourselves constantly. And it's like, my biggest fear is being that band that, oh, their second record was awesome and then I lost interest. It's like, I think all of us want every single record to be better.
There's no reason to regress. It's like, get better. If you can't get better, then why are you doing this? There's no point in being a band that barely makes a living if you're not pushing yourself to be better every day.
Well, and one thing with that is you want to talk about getting better. Is there anything specifically from the Dream Is Over or the original record that you are trying to build off of or at least tighten up? Was there any critiques that of your own from the Dream Is Over that you do want to fix? Well, I guess, yeah, you always make records as weird because it's like, you, like, I don't really go back and listen to our old stuff.
You know? It's when you play it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, the only stuff I remember is stuff that I, not, I wouldn't say regret, but that sticks out as like, um, yeah, either I didn't, that idea wasn't really executed or whatever.
But I think like, the stuff that I like from previous records, like riffs and like little guitar solos and melodic things are more just sort of like, those are always going to be sort of building blocks of songwriting. You know what I mean? I'm not going to be like, I really liked how this chord progression worked. Let's try writing another song that has that one.
Like, I think mostly it's a matter of being aware of what you've done in songs previously in an attempt to not repeat yourself. So in that way, I guess we're aware of, you know, a lot of what was done on those last two records, but we're very, very quick in the jam space to be like, what? We've done that already. That's something.
Let's try and move away from that. And then obviously you guys kind of made, you know, the difficult touring kind of obvious with the opener to the dream is over. So how is there one way that you guys kind of just come together more as a band over this, like, you know, year and a half after the record? Is there anything that you guys are kind of noticing that you guys are doing apparently?
Or because you guys just did stuff like Piper's Brewing Company, you guys with the baseball games and everything, you're like just kind of de-distressing you guys are doing on the road or anything? I think you got to do all kinds of stuff like that. I think it's as much like knowing when you go out as a group and when you can go into your own thing. Like, I think if anything, we become more chilled out in the like time between gigs, you know, it's like, oh, if somebody wants to go and have like Vietnamese food for dinner and somebody else doesn't.
Who cares? Well, if you don't want Vietnamese food, you're wrong.