Interview & Photos: Greer

Interview & Photos by Christina Morgan

(J- Josiah, L- Lucas, S-Seth, C- Corbin)

How is your first tour so far?

L- First tour, I love it. I’m so happy- I’m happier than I’ve been in so long.

S- It’s freaking awesome. This is literally like what we have been shooting for, I mean we have only been a band since like last November, but I know that all of us as people who have dreamed of making music for a very long time, have always dreamt of doing this. This is like, I don’t know- our calling. We’re really happy to be doing this

J- It’s really cool. We haven’t had a lot of free time in the city

L- That’s true

S- No, I mean, we have, we had yesterday because we’re in NY.

J- Yeah, yesterday was like our first full free day.

S- It was really nice! It was nice to have a free day, but uh we’re managing for spending hours and hours in the car together

J- Yeah, we’re driving the whole thing.

C- And we haven’t gotten sick of each other.

L- Which is awesome

C- We all were scared that was gonna happen

(mentioned that their show was sold out)

L- Yeah. It’s crazy, really crazy

Who would you love to tour with dead or alive?

S- Any era…

J- Think about good live artists

L- God, that’s a good question. Dude, MGMT would be so sick

C- Yeah, that would be really cool

S- But I wouldn’t choose them if it was any era

J- I feel like MGMT wouldn’t mesh with us.

L- Yeah, that’s true

J- If somebody kind of had our sound..

C- I’d want to talk to them

J- Yeah, I wanna talk to them too

S- Yeah, I wanna talk to them

L-Yeah, I’d just wanna hang out

S- I think regardless of their sound, it would be cool to tour with them

J- Is Weezer good live?

L- Oh dude, Weezer would be so sick!

J- We’d tour with Weezer

S- Weezer for the first two albums, we live for that shit.

C- No no no, I wanna tour with them now, I want to hear them play all their covers

S-anything past the first two albums we wouldn’t tour with them

J- Honestly, I’d still tour with them now

C- I want to hear Rivers Cuomo talk about fortnite.

L- (laughing) Yeah!!!

S- Is that true??

L- He tweets about fortnite all the time, he tweeted ‘Fornite Weezer Album’

S- He has epic style

J- So Weezer

How does the music scene in California compare to that of New York?

S- I feel like it’s more like ‘indie’ as an individual

J- a lot of independent artists

S- a lot more independent artists on the west coast. I myself have delved into a lot of the music scene over in like Orange County and stuff like that and it’s a lot more

L- I feel like west coast is like surf rock

S- the west coast is very surf rock, and also it’s everyone is trying to make music, there are A LOT of people trying to make music. I feel like there’s a lot of people trying to make music over here but it’s like

J- I feel like it might be more exciting over here.

C- I was gonna say like dream pop

L- Dream pop-y like a little bit over here

C- I’d say there’s probably if not more people trying to make music, especially here in New York.

S- In NY, I definitely see a bigger scene, but I’d say that’s the biggest scene out of all of the cities we’ve been to.

J- There wasn’t a hug scene in Durham, NC..didn’t see many bands there.

How would you describe your sound in one word?

L- What was that one thing?

S- Lush

J- Lush???

(like the store?)

S- Yeah, we love that store. I just said that so they could sponsor us

J- I love it, if Lush did sponsor us I would literally- shit…

S- I really want a dragon-egg bath bomb.

L- I really love their bath bombs, their bath bombs are awesome. Angsty yeah

J- I’d say especially for our first EP, yeah it’s very like ‘angst’

L- Punk-pop or whatever?

S- Pop- punk…

J- Would you say pop-punk, I wouldn’t say that

S- I would say pop-punk, on the very indie side

C- I disagree

J- I don’t think it’s pop punk at all

S- - But if anything, I don’t know-

c- Power pop would be a better word

S- Power pop is good, we jump around under a certain umbrella of power pop, that’s like the medium.

J- Yeah, for the first EP especially, but we’re definitely not gonna kinda stay in the same sound for a long time I don’t think.

S- That’s where we’re at right now, we’re definitely moving- with our influences we have very art-rock influences and we’re kind of moving in that direction with the music that we’re currently making or jamming on/writing. Aside from our plans for a record or EP, that’s generally the direction we’re moving in.

C-It’s just whatever comes natural.

What’s your writing process like?

S- We kind of take riffs, each of us will take a riff and say ‘oh I have this cool thing’

L- We’ll bring it to the group, and we’ll be like ‘is this shit or not?’ and then we’ll say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And if it’s not shit, we’ll build on it, and build on it, and it’ll kinda come like organically.

C- We’ll also have moments where we’ll give the song to the band, for people to hear it, and describe whether it’s shit or not. The cool thing is, you could just give the song off to anyone, even if you started it, and don’t feel like I have the capability of finishing it, someone else in the band can do it.

J- It’s cool, I feel the same way because if I start a song and I don’t want to finish it, I would trust anybody in the band, or everybody collectively to kind of finish it if I couldn’t

C- but then we also individually-

L- make whole songs too.

J- We’ll come with finished songs

S- The big thing about us is songwriting wise, is that we’re all songwriters. Each of us I think has like a pretty clear 25% of all of our songs. We are all on top of making a bunch of different riffs. There’s a lot that we leave out, just because we all make so much stuff.

J/L- Yeah, a lot of it is shit,

L- It’s like garbage, it’s all garbage, like ‘what the fuck was I thinking?’

J- If I play something, and nobody reacts to it, I’ll never play it again. Or maybe again, a month later and they’re like ‘oh that’s sick’ it’s like ‘ok, cool.’

What’s next for Greer? (More music, music videos, etc.)

L- Yeah, we are, we want to start working on a music video

J- probably when we get back from tour, or towards the end of the tour.

S- Most importantly, is the EP

J- The EP, we’re working on it, and it’ll come out early 2020, somewhere around there maybe.

S- And then, definitely an album. We have a lot of material that we’re not even using on the EP, so we’re already kind of planning for an album. We’ve had all of these songs, all of them except for one ready for the EP, for a long time. We just haven’t gotten the chance to get into the studio,

C- Except for two.

S- We would have started it, but we didn’t have enough time before tour, to sit in the studio and start working on it, and we’ll only have enough time after so we’re getting started on it right after tour.

J- Right when we get back, like a week after.

S- So hopefully sometime at the end of this year, beginning of next year.

J- I’d say early 2020.

Are there any artists you think people should check out?

S- We’re really really really big fans of Radiohead, we love Wilco, check out Wilco

J- wilco yeah!

S- If you can check out any of the two albums that came out around the 2000s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summer Teeth, those are amazing albums, we take a lot of influence from them. If you like older 70s sounds, a good modern band to listen to is The Lemon Twigs

L- The Lemon Twigs were like our first initial influence, we kind of grew out of it a little bit.

J- And then also I’ve been listening to a shit ton of - it’s not new but Love Angel Music Baby by Gwen Stefani, I would recommend that to anybody. That album is all bangers. It’s amazing. It’s great.

What’s your favorite song/cover to play live?

S- We have one untitled song that we all love to play.

J- yeah we love it

L- That’s out favorite

S- And one song that we have that’s going on the EP that’s called Redwire Ln. we really like to play, though it’s kind of hard

J- It’s fun though.

S- It’s one of our favorite songs

L- And also, ‘In the aeroplane over the sea’ is really fun.

J- Dude, but my favorite cover is – we do a cover of ‘Someday’ by The Strokes, which sounds annoying, but it’s cool. We play it a little different, we just kinda got the idea from Julia Jacklin who did a cover of it on Triple J. We fucking love playing that, It’s sick.

If one of your songs could be included in a tv show or movie which would it be?

J- That’s a hard question.

L- I could see ‘Song for me’ in some like cheesy teen movie

J- In Euphoria?

L- In Euphoria or some shit

J- I could see in like Skins

C- I could see Aeroplane in Grey’s Anatomy

J- Yes! I was about to say Grey’s Anatomy for Aeroplane

S- Fucking Bittersweet in fucking Spongbob, I don’t know.

J- Bittersweet in Spongebob?

L- I could see Paper birds in in some like Wes Anderson movie

S- Oh no. I see fucking aeroplane in some Wes Anderson movie. Paper birds in like some sad show.

L- Like some sad suicide scene in a Wes Anderson movie.

S- Woah. Woah…thanks man

J- Downtown Abbey

L- It’s such a sad song, it’s great though .

J- For Paper Birds, what would mine be? Hold on- hold on lemme think… what would it be?

S- A sad show? HBO? Think of HBO

J- Oh I don’t know

S- Big Little Lies?

L- Like Seinfeld of something??

J- Weeds?

L- Weeds?!?! Man….what the fuck??

J- Weeds I think –

S- Game of Thrones

J- I think maybe Weeds…Weeds, what song though? I could see Aeroplane being at the end of a Weeds episode. (to Corbin) Did you watch Weeds?

C- Not really.

J- I watched all of Weeds twice

S- I’ve never seen Weeds

J- (to corbin) You said Aeroplane on Grey’s Anatomy? That’d fit so well, they’ve literally used so many songs. They’re on like season 25 , dude – they like haven’t gotten cancelled I don’t know how.

C- They haven’t gotten cancelled?

J- No, they’re still going, and it’s, I’m sorry, I hate it.

C- I feel like the moms of the world don’t watch it anymore.

J- Nurse Jackie is a great hospital show, for anybody watching.

Is there anything you want to say to people reading/watching this interview?

S- Stay hydrated

L- Thank you

J- Yeah, drink clear liquids, and thank you.

C- Thank you

J – and check out All or Nothing Magazine!

L- Yeah!

S- Check out the magazine!