Latest / The Dark Stuff Podcast: The Interviews / Interview with SWEEPING PROMISES // Sub Pop, New Music & Live in Concert

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Interview with SWEEPING PROMISES // Sub Pop, New Music & Live in Concert · The Dark Stuff Podcast: The Interviews

• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: Hey everybody, it's me, your buddy Dave, the host of the Dark Stuff channel here on YouTube.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks a lot for checking out my latest video.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: As always, it's much appreciated.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: Folks, in today's video, I'm interviewing a really, really cool new band from Lawrence, Kansas called Sweeping Promises.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: The band has just signed to Stub Pop Records, put out this cool new album, You Say I Romanticized.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: I interviewed them on a Sunday and then I saw them in concert two days later on a Tuesday.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we've got a little interview, we've got a little live uh clips and concert review.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's all here on the dark stuff, I want to uh say hi to um to Alira and Caulfield from the band Sweeping Promises.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm interviewing them today for the dark stuff here.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is their brand new album called You Say I Romanticize, came out pretty recently on the uh subpop label, legendary label.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: They put out still great stuff.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it has the quality level has not decreased in like 35 years of making music.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's really exciting.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: I want to start off the interview by first of all telling you that your cover of uh something I learned today, the whooskard do song that you did on that Maximum Minnesota thing is so cool.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my radio show is New Day Rising, and that's obviously a Hooskurdo album and song.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: So when I saw that, I was like, oh, holy crap! Like, you know, I don't know if you do that one live, but if you feel like throwing it in on Tuesday just for me, I would be super excited about that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: But um, to start off, I I want to clarify something.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd originally read that your band was from the Boston area, but now I'm reading everywhere that says you're from Lawrence, Kansas.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: So could you clarify which it is and why why the move to Kansas?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because in my experience, people usually move to Kansas.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe they were from there and they're moving back, or they're going to graduate school or something.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, why would you go from Boston to Kansas?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: I already went to graduate school.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: We don't need to do more of that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we yeah, we we played in bands in Boston for like a decade.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um and uh during the pandemic, we we had to cocktail and and get out of Dodge.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh our our landlords raised the rent uh when lockdown happened and the city uh uh lost 400,000 uh residents.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and you know, it's kind of funny because we always joke that we're not from anywhere because we've just moved around so much.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, a little bit of background.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So Caulfield and I met in college in Arkansas, where we were both going to Hendrix College, which is um just a small liberal arts school.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started making music there uh nearly 18 years ago.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we moved to to Boston where Caulfield was going to grad school, and then after so many bands together, sweeping promises emerged um in a fit of spontaneity.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I feel like it can only be nominally Boston because the that particular project itself only existed for a few months before lockdown.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then we moved to Austin to uh to basically decamp with his parents during lockdown, and that's when we got signed to subpop and they, you know, signed us on with a really generous advance, which we ended up using for a down payment on a home.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was completely by happenstance that that ended up, that home ended up in Lawrence, Kansas, because we were looking everywhere.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: We we almost bought a hundred-year-old church in Lowellville, Ohio, that we were gonna turn into a studio and ended up backing out of that at the last minute.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But um uh his parents actually went to KU, so there was some familial connection to Lawrence.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then once we found this house with the studio that was already attached to the home, we just thought, like, it can't get any better than this.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And since moving here five years ago almost at the at this point, um, it really it pretty much like from the moment we got here, it felt like home.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So well, that's awesome.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: Lawrence is a cool town.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not uh trying to make make a joke or whatever, because I live in Omaha, it's practically my back, you know, my backyard.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I see shows in Lawrence all the time.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's great.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's just curious why somebody uh it's interesting, I should say, not curious, but why somebody would would come back there.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: So uh you're basically a Lawrence, Kansas band.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: So there's no more need to say, well, used to be Boston, now they're from Lawrence.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like I get it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Plus, being centrally located in Kansas, I would imagine makes it a lot easier for you guys for touring because you could go west, you could go east, you could go north, you could go south, and it's kind of all equidistant.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I I've always thought like bands should uh I used to manage a band that was from San Francisco, and I said, look, you guys should just leave San Francisco, move to Nebraska, because your touring would be so much easier if you're from California going to New York, that's a serious pain in the ass.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's half a pain in the ass if you're starting in you know, Nebraska.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the land of Low Wires.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, how did the band originally come together?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what was the original idea behind the group, and how did you arrive at the sound that we know today?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's such a great sound.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: I want to get more into it when we get a little further along.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, thanks for that.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there was no original idea.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: There was no, yeah.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I think that we uh Sue Me Promises, it's like our 10th band or or more, I don't know.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um lost count.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: We lost count, and it was kind of um happening at a time when we were ducking out of music a little bit.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_04: So uh we were like in well-known bands on the East Coast, I guess, and uh avoiging popularity.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that we were just sort of experiencing that thing that some bands do, like with like a boom and bust cycle.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_04: So whenever we were playing shows is kind of back to being like no one showing up, and we were just like, I don't really know what's next.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_04: And um, and we had kind of at that time, uh uh jobs, like we we were like moving on with like our professional lives and stuff, and so we were kind of like, I don't I don't really know how bands are gonna factor in uh to our lives going forward.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: So we made the Sweeping Promises album kind of in the mindset of like maybe we won't even share it with anyone, and maybe we won't even play live.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_04: I I don't know.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and just uh I mean it we didn't even have uh uh you know name for it for the longest time.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: It just it really literally did just happen spontaneously.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: We wrote what became the first half of the first record on a whim because we were trying to write for the three other projects that we were involved with at the time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there was just, I guess, some kind of spark of inspiration, of you know, uh like songwriting that we just felt like these songs didn't belong to any of those projects.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we wanted to kind of narrow our focus again to just the two of us, um, to be more agile, to be more nimble, to feel like there was less pressure from like other bandmates or even other schedules of playing out and just wanting to do something in the moment.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that resulted in yeah, like the A side of Hunger for a Way Out, including that song.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, then we just kept, we we felt, yeah, we felt the fire, we wrote some more, and that's kind of we can't stop.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And part of it also, too, was just like which you know plays into the how it sounds, is we wanted to capture the space of the room we were in because we just felt like it was so alien, but um, it also spoke to the immediacy of the songwriting in this compelling way that was somewhat shrouded in mystery from the long reverb tale and the nature of being in this, you know, like subterranean concrete bunker turned um gallery space that we were not supposed to be in.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: We were squatted in a laboratory, yeah.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: We were basically just used laboratory, yeah, yeah.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it felt kind of empowering to be kind of it was like it was almost like surveillance, you know.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: We were just like looking up from below.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, I feel like uh an idiot because I did I thought that this album was your debut, and I didn't realize until about a week ago that you have two older albums that I've just started listening to, I've just delved into.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm much more familiar with the new one and just gaining familiarity with the older records.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: And my question is, you know, your music a lot of times it sounds like it could have been recorded in 1981 or something, but it doesn't sound like you're trying to do that, it just sounds like that's the way it is.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: So you get a lot of comparisons to like late 70s, early 80s, post-punk stuff.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: Was that a conscious influence for you guys, or was that just the way it just kind of developed?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: Because I don't know if you're familiar with the band Romeo Void, but they that that was the first thing that popped into my head was like, Oh, it kind of reminds me Romeo Void had saxophone, though, and you guys don't have sax.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I wouldn't advise getting a sax player, but um, is that some sort of a natural thing, or or I mean, were you trying to say, okay, let's we like that era, let's try to do something from that that period.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: There is saxophone on the second record.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: We got this a saxophone over here.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've got we've got a sax.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there we do have a clarinet, but there's no clarinet on Sweeping Promises yet.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_04: One day.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: One day we're working towards, we're working towards all like the whole orchestra in like the scronkiest way possible.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: We love Romeo Void.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and we love all that music, and we're um, I don't know, we're post-punk superheads.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: That pylon pin on my jacket and punk superheads.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: We just listen to that stuff all day long.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's important that we like we're we're not trying to like we don't record on tape, for instance.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like we're we don't like ape the as I don't know, the techniques of that stuff, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think we try to make our own kind of low budget punk techniques, but we definitely reject a lot of uh I think axioms of like modern digital rock recording.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like I said, it was it sounds like it, but it doesn't sound like you're trying to do that, like it just comes off super natural, which is why I I think I connected with the record so strongly.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm old, you know, so I remember those old days of the new wave and the post punk uh period.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Changing, rearranging.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, now your your songs are like they're incredibly economical, like you're talking about with the arrangements and stuff, and there's rarely anything that feels like extraneous or extra or anything like that.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: When you guys are creating, is there something like maybe an unwritten rule or with the band about when a song is sort of overstayed, it's welcome.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like we've done too much.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like, or how do you decide when it when we're finished?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Let's move on.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I feel like especially the simpler the song is, the less weight it can bear.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'll give you like one very concrete example.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the song Cocoon, which is the was that the sixth song on the record?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Open side beat.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: Number seven.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: Number six.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's I don't even know.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that song has actually been in the live rotation for years, and we tried to record it so many ways.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like faster temper, slow, faster tempo, slower tempo.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the version that ended up on the record, like we tried adding, you know, like some kind of contrapuntal vocal harmonies.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: We added some, I think like piano.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think we even did try a sax line on it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we were trying to basically just make it bigger than it needed to be.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we finally just started peeling back away stuff and and just asked ourselves again, you know, what about the song works?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about this like really simple, you know, kind of bass-driven, repetitive um song that feels hypnotic.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: What do we want to capture in that?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And why are we trying to bury that under other stuff just because we feel like it needs it?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we finally just stripped it all away and just was, you know, we're like, we should just have it basically be how we play it live, but with like a little bit of um studio, like very subtle kind of studio flourishes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: Now you uh when you play live, you're you bring in a live drummer, correct?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, okay, so it has that that sort of sound.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: But um, is it the same person who played on the record, or is that is this just a different person separately?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean a machine.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: On you saying romanticize, uh, we have our live drummer Spencer Grala on drums, but the first two records, it's just all us playing everything.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Caulfield uh was taking on not only production and engineering duties, but also um drums and guitar.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I was playing, you know, bass of chorus and then synth and and vocals.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, it was a it was, you know, it was uh a new experience to play these songs, you know, with a live drummer that wasn't Coffield, uh, but it also too kind of like opened up like a more direct approach to the recording and also like allowed you a little bit of distance, much needed distance, so that you weren't like going crazy doing everything.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, so Lyra, your your vocals are such a defining characteristic of the band, and they're so good.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I when I tell people about the band, I'm like, you just have to listen to the vocal melodies, like that they're so unique and so different.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, how did you develop your singing style?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: And are there any vocalists who were your inspiration for for the way you sing, way you come up with stuff?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: That that's really kind of you.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I uh we for the longest time, Coffee and Live, we were in this um kind of dream poppy, very much like informed by Mazzy Star and Cocteau Twins uh Dream Pop Band, where uh one of the explicit rules was to just be like very soft and not and and this was also at a time it was like the the 20 teens, so like 2012 through 2019 when that was very much in vogue.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I had never really explored singing, you know, beyond just kind of like a gauzy um ethereal manner, even though I, you know, really cut my teeth on, you know, like Susie Sue and uh, you know, and Bjork and definitely Romeo Void and Vanessa Briscoe Hey, and all of these like really powerful women, the ladies in B-52s, just like so expressive and so tough.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I it was funny because like I listened to all of that music and ingested it and you know metabolized it, but didn't produce it myself just because I felt like I don't know, like I just never thought to do it, or I thought that I couldn't do it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, as we progressed with like so many other bands um that we were in later, it slowly started to kind of creep out this, I guess, like louder, more aggressive part of myself.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's also certainly informed by just the the decrepitude of living in Boston and just the kind of crumbling infrastructure, both like financially, culturally, um and and just uh financially too, like uh just people not being able to afford to live in this big city and just how all those things can, you know, really take its toll on you emotionally.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's impossible not to, it was impossible to ignore, and it found our way into our songwriting.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like the songs that we were writing needed a different voice, a different vocal expression.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think that when we initially started Sweeping Promises in that that fateful October night when we were just kind of in this zone, and I yeah, just kind of like sang Hunger for a Way Out, and it felt really powerful to just kind of belt something.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: We developed that further.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just we're very melody driven, like we always have been.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think that it's for Sweeping Promises, it's been really uh challenging, but in a good way, in the best way, it's it's been um an invigorating challenge to try to write very melodically while also very sparsely and contained and um you did it, you succeeded.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, yeah, thank you so much.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we, you know, we're all we I feel like we're always trying to write for each other too.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: So well, I you know, I started off on the radio playing accent, that's probably my favorite song on the record.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't, I generally don't care what the single is.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if they be if they give me the whole album, I'm gonna play just cuts from the whole record.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I think I started with Accent and I've been playing Last Man quite a bit, shooting shadows, um, a bunch of them on there.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, it is the vocal melodies that really sort of grab you.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I love the the minimal instrumentation.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I grew up in the 90s on the lo-fi scene.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: I was big into Sebado and guided by voices and all that kind of stuff.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was my sort of musical, you know, era at that time.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Bands, it seems like now they don't want to do that.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: And even though you can record at home, you you can still make it sound slick if you want to.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad that you guys go with the more raw sound.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now, um, take me through your sort of your songwriting.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, does a song usually begin with like a bass line, a guitar rift?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Do you come up with a vocal melody, or how do you guys usually start a song?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Predominantly it starts with Caulfield on the drums, and then me with my bass, and a lot of times with a mic, just in case we want to catch some kind of vocal melody, but we'll just start playing and winding our way through.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a meditation.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: My guitarists on the records are improv usually.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like I just I try not to write or like it stays on like a part.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: By the way, that's something that I really love about lo-fi music and post punk music, is it's that it's process-based as well.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_04: Because oftentimes I think you hear takes where people are just making stuff up.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_04: And that's different than listening to takes where someone has written something beforehand.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like the whole process of guided by voices.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: If you listen to them talk about how they used to make those early records before they did it in the studio, it was in their basement and they were just improvising.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: And if the song ended in 45 seconds because I couldn't think of anything else, it's like, well, okay, then it's over.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: We move on to the next one.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_04: They're really, really great songwriters, but they're also great improvisers.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and that's it, also kind of blurring the lines between what is improv and what is writing.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then further than that, it's like the intuition to know, like, I want to put that on a record, I want to capture that, I want to keep that.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like something that that's what we're trying to cultivate and what we act at least actively try to, especially with when you're writing your guitar parts.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so your music has this kind of interesting contradiction, you know, it's it sounds you know, urgent and anxious, but it's also very fun.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like I enjoy listening to it, you know, it's fun.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that that as a band, you know, you're more sort of optimistic people making nervous music or your pessimistic people making sort of happier or funner dance music or something, you know, something like that.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, where where where do you guys come out on that?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think we're both really bubbly, effervescent people, and life has sort of beats it down over over time.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah, I think we want shows to be fun.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I am bugged by the dourness of the new post punk movement.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_04: I think that it's hard to get people on board if you're if if you're like studied cool and withdrawn and and everything is sort of dry and icy.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh though I love those, I love the aesthetics of uh of um yeah, austerity and stuff, but I think you also need to um yeah, have a sense of like dancing and fun and stuff.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: The most intriguing song title of the year perhaps is My Friends and Entomologist off the New Record.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now, question Do you actually have such a friend?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: Is this a true story?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we did.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I any any folks out there in entomology who want to talk to us about bugs, we're captive audience because we think bugs are cool.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I actually read a distressing headline yesterday about how bees are now officially endangered, which is, I mean, I feel like catastrophic on a you know global level, which I won't get into that because um, you know, we all know that the world is ending.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: But I think it was scholar of swarms.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: You did not necessarily like bugs, but it's sort of about like the phenomenon of like migratory, yeah.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like uh that's really cool.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've heard I've heard similar things, like the the bee's population is like is has been decimated.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's really bad.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: We don't we don't even understand the consequences of this yet.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean some people do, some scientists do, but the general public does not seem to understand about that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, I'm I'm aware of that.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: I just always I love that title, and when I play it, I mean I I'll admit, okay, I'm uh uh I had to look up what an entomologist was.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: I did have to actually Google that word.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know, but I do like the song quite a bit.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just tying into your fascination with bugs, then I guess.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and you know, of course, it's um, you know, not quite literal, but I I also too remember, you know, because Caulfield came up with that line because um I we were like in the midst of writing it, and I had started, you know, writing lyrics for it, and then I was uh I was stumped at the third verse, and then he had this just like amazing one-liner.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh yeah, this like opened up the rest of the song because it's what it's about.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I don't I feel like that was just one of your like dreamy um aha moments.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_04: There were other songs too that we actually cut from the album because it just seems gratuitous that were sort of bug things.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Very about insects.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_04: I was obsessed with the idea of eating bugs.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: I was kind of like, we're all gonna have to eat bugs in the future, and like the bug ecology is collapsing, and and I was kind of obsessed with the idea of the bug man, like someone who accepts that they're gonna eat in the future.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know, it was like this whole thing, and actually I was like writing songs about it, but yeah, I don't know.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I don't know, because it was like 2024 was the double brood cicada year, which we were also, again, like you probably know being in Nebraska.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's like that, it's it's that indispensable um emblematic sound of summer is just deafening in Omaha at night.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's so beautiful, and you know, because we lived again, we were in Boston for so long, but I grew up in Arkansas, and so that sound was very familiar to me too.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we moved back to to, or when we moved, yeah, like back to this part of the country and back to Lawrence, um it just here being in that that soundscape again felt it overwhelmingly um like a return to home in a lot of ways.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I also feel like we're trying to imbue this record and specifically that song with some kind of sense of like a home like revolution as a homecoming, of just people coming together and taking over, you know, a city, or like these protests in Paris, for example, like just basically advocating for a return to self in terms of like or like the cockroaches, the movement that like yeah, uh less well, I don't know.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like roaches are I don't want to well in India, yeah.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, oh the movie, yes, you're right, that's right.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I completely forgot that's what they call themselves.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is the idea of like the brood and yes, or just like this mass that you know kind of is like reclaiming their own territory.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't let out be sound asleep whenever it comes to over the course of the couple years, because I realize now you didn't start last year, you've been uh you built your following through independent releases, touring, word of mouth, etc.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, what have been some of the biggest challenges for you and maybe the most rewarding moments of building your band outside of the mainstream music industry?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's the only way we would have it.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think that the the center of the music industry would have us.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's not gonna be a personality match.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um the biggest challenge, bar none, is that the revenue side of music is stolen uh by uh the digital platforms and streamers.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I've got robber barons.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've talked about this with other artists.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: I said if you want streaming to work out financially, you can't give it to people for ten dollars a month, more like 30 or 40 to make it financially viable so that everyone gets paid.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: You have a per stream price, not some silly pool where they divide it up among AI artists and whatever, and to decide who gets what.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you just don't know.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: So when someone says, Oh, I got a million streams on this thing, it's like, did you really?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's just ones and zeros.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: How do you know that?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I've always thought it was just the way things are going today.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, with the streaming, I I I'm a physical media person.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I have a record collection back here.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't, I will stream, but I mean, I'm just I'm not a fan of it.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: I don't, that's the one thing about this era of music.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like, on the one hand, being able to listen to almost every recorded song that's out there is pretty awesome.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the ability to do that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: If I wanted to hear your old albums, I could, I could do it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, it's just it's not working out for artists.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: And if it doesn't work out for artists, they're not, I mean, and you hear simultaneously people saying, you know, they don't buy albums anymore, and then they bitch about concert prices, and the t-shirt costs so much, and it's like, yeah, but you're not paying for the album anymore.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: So there has to be it has to be made up somewhere.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and the other thing too is that you know, for um video streaming services, you know, Netflix and Hulu and like all of these, you know, TV and movie services, people are paying, you know, upwards of$20 just for one of those.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then so many friends that I know who have multiple of them, like, and so you for some reason the thought of paying, you know, like$60 for basically what was cable, but now is just like all these other services that deal in, you know, film and TV, that is fine.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: You don't blink your eye at that.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then when it comes to music, like asking somebody to pay upwards of$20 for a streaming service just feels so wrong.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it just makes me wonder again about like how completely music has been devalued to the point where you know you have these like hierarchies of your media consumption on streaming, anyway, where like some are given more priority to others because music for some reason is just something that's supposed to be ubiquitous and accessible in a way that um a film can't be right now.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_04: But I think it's important to remember that the executives are billionaires.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the shareholders uh derive exponential value, and also now the consolidation of all of these platforms, too, like politically minded and yeah.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, no, I have a friend that used to work in the mainstream music industry a long time ago, and he says that the major labels in in LA or whatever are making money hand over fist, like it's back to being the 90s when everybody rebought everything on CD and the labels were just raking in money.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, they're having a great time right now.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: Artists are seemingly struggling, they're making virtually nothing, but it does seem like the industry itself is doing quite fine with that's why they're they don't seem to be incentivized to change this because it seems to be working out for them.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're an artist at the level of like a Taylor Swift, you can negotiate your own deals.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, in other words, whatever the deal is for sweeping promises, that's not the deal Taylor Swift operates under.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: She operates under something completely different.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'll get more money per stream, I'll get more money per this, you're gonna do it this way.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it is, I mean, the music industry's never been fair.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, never, and it's never been honest, ever.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: But now it's even harder to challenge than it used to be because it's ones and zeros and it's digital and you just don't know.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: At least if they were manufactured CDs, you manufactured a thousand, you've got 200 left.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you sold 800.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know that it's physical.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, anyways, I'll get off my soapbox on that.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but speaking of the you don't want to exist in the mainstream music industry, you wouldn't.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine though, if you were offered, someone offered you unlimited money, okay, to make your next album, but the catch was you had to record it in a pristine, like state-of-the-art studio with like a famous producer.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Would that be an exciting opportunity for you, or would that be like your worst nightmare?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be so stressful.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we know I don't think I could do it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh we could use the money.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: If we yeah, if we could use the money or like donate it or something, like but um no, we would like an imprint.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that'd be sick.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, by the way, yeah, because someone's like but no, I mean I think like part of it too is just just like we're we're at that point now where I mean I'm not saying that our methods are calcified or anything, but I think that we've got this, you know, we like how we do what we do.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like yeah, I I trust Caulfield like with everything.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that his tastes are inspirational and sublime to me.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I trust his intuition at the board and and also as a songwriting partner.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I wouldn't want necessarily to make sweeping promises with anybody else.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_04: So you don't want like a cop in the studio to be like how you're gonna stream better or yeah, yeah.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, you know, there a lot of producers try to impose their will and try to make, you know, I've always I've never liked producers that have a sound.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, this sounds like so and so.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, how about you try to get the sound out of the artist that's like their sound?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's sort of what I think the better producers do that of like, it's not about making it sound like me, it's about making it sound like them.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess that's trial and error finding the right one to to work with.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, maybe it's something for your future, who knows?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, how has your live show evolved since the band's earliest days?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: Are there are there songs that sort of take on a new character when you're performing them live, and especially now that you have a live drummer with you?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, we've had uh we've been playing with Spencer live for years, um, and he is definitely like an integral part to the live show, like, you know, as it is now, and and we've developed, you know, I think over the course of five years playing together.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't know.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: I every member of this band has been playing shows for way too long.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna you're gonna see people who've been doing the DIY videos for like 20 years.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I don't know.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's a trio, so uh it's definitely in the mode of like uh yeah, power trio.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now, have you played in Omaha before?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we played what, like Maha Festival a couple years ago.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, when was this?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: 2022, maybe.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: I used to work for Maha and I stopped it 2019, it was my last one.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then that explains it 2022.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: That was the year that the Beths were there, too, right?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: Was that the no?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember that?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, maybe the year after.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we would have hung out otherwise.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, yeah.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:26
  unknown: Okay.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, looking ahead, you know, um, where do you see sweeping promises going musically?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: Are there any sounds or approaches that you haven't tried that you're maybe interested in bringing into a future recording?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've been thinking about this, and like, of course, you know, we're restless and always are in songwriting mode.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that we do want to recapture is that initial spontaneity that started this whole thing off in the first place.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think we're we're thinking of maybe trying to access that again and just be a little more um freeform, freeform, spontaneous, uh ritualistic, even some of the news are be more evil.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, and that more evil on the next record.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we're going for.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: More of the dark stuff, yeah, right, right.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so if if you did suddenly become this massive mainstream success, say you didn't change anything, but you just it just I mean, look, the white stripes got really huge and they were a two-piece kind of lo-fi band, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that it could happen.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, say that you guys did become a massive mainstream success.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: What part of being in the band would you want to protect from changing?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: And is there anything about being an independent artist in the current time that you'd happily never deal with again?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_04: I think that we would get a driver.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, yeah, yeah, I think we would get a driver.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_04: We've talked to Times about like adding more members to uh articulate, like, for instance, the synth parts in the recordings, or maybe some vocal harmonies, yeah, vocal harmonies, uh, but uh we always whenever we kind of talk about it more and more, we always like go back to just nah, we just need to be a trio.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, it's too much.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: And there anything about the reality of being an independent band right now that you'd c happily cast aside if uh if if that was if that ended and you were in this other realm.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: An important part of our lives now is that when we're not writing or or recording or touring, we record other bands and produce other bands.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: And we do quite a few albums actually for other people every year from our house.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_04: I think it'd be really cool to uh up the up that that game.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's why I said I kind of would like an imprint.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_04: Like if if we were like in the 90s and like uh sub pop came in and be like, here's a big bag of money.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_04: I think I would I would like to start our own label.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: It could still happen.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um at that at the kind of post-production stage.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and provide like maybe more comfort for the folks while they're here, yeah.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Although our home is really comfy, but maybe make it less like um uh like our lives depend on it, and we're just like you're free to do whatever.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that so you did record this record then in your house at your home studio.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I pretty much that's most of the questions that I had for you.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: I just wanted to do a little introduction for the band.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: I do want to say though that this album, Sweeping Promises, you say I romanticize.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: I've been playing it a lot on the radio.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: If you're not able to listen to the radio show, um, it is definitely going to be in my top five of the year, without question, when we do the ranking video.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: There's no doubt about that.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: It is a powerful indie rock post-punk record, amazing vocals.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's really unique instrumentation.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I I say for people listening, like this is one I'm saying, I'm I'm I'm guaranteeing it.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, if you like the dark stuff, you like the stuff that I play on New Day Rising, then this is going to be absolutely 100% uh up your alley.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I do want to thank, of course, uh Lyra and Caulfield from Sweeping Promises for uh talking to me today and doing this interview.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: It was really great.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I used to I used to ask, I I don't know your age, I guess older than I thought you were because of the the new album, but I used to ask whenever I do interviews, I ask older artists, do you ever wish that the internet didn't exist and you could go back to a time beforehand?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I guess you guys do remember the life before the internet, so I can ask you that.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: What do you do you ever just wish the internet didn't exist and you could go back to the way it used to be?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that the internet from our childhood existed.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: So from like up to MySpace era.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like I like the I like the era just after MySpace.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_04: What the blog times, the blog, yeah, back to the 2010 times.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I just I just thought that was really possible.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but I don't I don't want Facebook to be part of it.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's a terrible platform.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: My space used to be fun.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: You could post, it was easier to work with, it seemed like, you know, but anyways, no, I um I'm one of these people that wishes the internet didn't exist.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, for all the benefits of it, um, and access to all this information and everything, that the negatives I think so far outweigh the positives.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's basically destroyed the music industry, it's um ruined record retail for the most part.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there are still record stores in every town, but there used to be like 10 record stores in every town, and they could all do good business.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't, you know, none of them were struggling, and now it's like one and they're struggle.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: Again, Sweeping Promises on tour now.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: The newest album is called You Say I Romanticize.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: And folks, they have two other albums as well, which I just learned.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: All right, thanks a lot, guys.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'll see you on Tuesday.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you there.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: All right, take care.
• 40:13
  unknown: Bye.