The Fuzz Magazine: First, can you all introduce yourselves and the part you play in the band?

Chris: I am Chris, and I play the drums

Ryan: I play guitar, banjo, and I write songs and sing. 

Andrew: lead guitar and backup vocals.

Conner: bass.

Evan: keys, guitar, and vocals.

The Fuzz Magazine: Can you guys explain the meaning behind the band name? I saw on Instagram that you mentioned it was associated with Bendigo state park. Do you guys have strong ties there?

Ryan: Yeah, that’s like a connection line. My dad is from up there, couple hours north of Pittsburgh, in a really small town in the Allegany National Forrest area, so I've been taking trips there, so it's just been an inspiring place to be in nature and to be kind of untethered from normal life and to be dreaming up there. So, Bendigo just sounded like a fun word… it had a ring to it. 

The Fuzz Magazine: You all kicked off the tour with the backseat lovers last night; how was it? 

Evan: Awesome.

Chris: Yeah, we toured with them for a couple of weeks last year. Right? Like a couple of weeks… a month? 

Evan: Hmm. I think we did like 4 shows.

Chris: Yeah, thats right, it was like a really quick thing. 

Evan: And then yesterday was our first show in a while so it was a big one. Exciting, for sure. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Yeah, I was there last night, and the energy was really there last night.

Ryan: Yeah, I think being outside had something to do with it kind of. Like the summer energy right now. We haven't played any outside shows this year yet before last night, so… It kind of had festival energy to it. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Definitely. At one point, I heard the crowd chanting sugar in the creek, and it was really cool. How does it feel to hear that and receive that sort of response from the crowd? 

Ryan: It was really cool, of course. Anytime someone is asking for a song we made is exciting, so yeah, it's gratifying for sure. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Do you guys have a favorite thing to do live or a favorite part of a live performance? 

Chris: I think the ending is always cool.

(Laughing) 

Andrew: Chris just likes being done. 

(Laughing)

Chris: I like it when you just put on a good show, and you’re just, like, shows over. I mean, it's good during it as well. 

Ryan: We’re working on playing with the setlist. It's always something we try to do, especially early on in the tours to try to get a good flow of what feels right. With 40 minutes, you kind of have a tendency to go go go and make it fluid, and we've been just honing in some transitions and stuff like that. It's stuff that keeps us musically engaged and trying to create moments that flow well. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Do you have a favorite song to play live, and why is that your favorite?

Evan: I love sugar in the creek. He’ll bring the banjo out, and the crowd loves to see a banjo come out. That song is really in our bones now, so it feels good to just dig in, and really try to rip that one.

The Fuzz Magazine:After the show, we talked about how crazy the crowds go for banjos. 

Ryan: We’re noticing with this crowd we’re a little bit older than the backseat guys, of course, but we're wondering what the banjo is. I don't know, I guess they just love seeing the banjo. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Banjos are so cool; everyone loves a banjo.

Evan: It's also usually in the background, so it's a little different in person. 

Ryan: We have a new song, Uncle Mick’s Firework Extravaganza, and it feels like it's three songs in one, which goes from really quiet to as much noise as we can make, and you have to be like fully in it for it to work, so it demands, it’s kind of like a big, I guess the opportunity to try to nail that could go wrong really easily. 

The Fuzz Magazine: I was about to ask about that. The build-up of that song is incredible, and I wanted to know what that was like to play live. 

Ryan: Last night was the first night… and I think it went well. It was kind of hard to hear up there, but yeah, it’s one of those where you just have to trust that even if we can't hear each other all of the time, we just trust that it's all just going outward. 

Chris: The front of house is firing on all cylinders. 

Ryan: Yeah, so it felt pretty good. It has a cool rhythmic moments to settle into together… to really groove. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Yeah, I feel like crowds really like songs that build up like that live, and last night, after I shot, I moved through the crowd a bit, and the crowd was so into your set, and It was really cool to stand back and watch that. 

Ryan: Awesome. 

The Fuzz Magazine: You recently released a new single, Uncle Mick’s Fireworks Extravaganza. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Maybe inspiration? 

Ryan: I’ll do all the talking. 

(Laughing)

Ryan: It kind of came from the same area we were talking about earlier with the band name. My uncle puts on a great firework show every year, and I only actually got to see one of them when I was like 10 cause I don't live up there obviously. I was one of those seminal childhood, summer, magic memories that gave way to other fantasies and ideas. So, Evan Might not remember, but I told you before you sent me the guitar intro part (mimics the intro of Uncle Micks Firework Extravaganza). I had just been playing with that for years and years, trying to find where it was going to go with a song, and it led into that heavy part, and I was like, oh this kind of feels like watching a light show, and it quickly became an homage to summer fireworks. 

The Fuzz Magazine: You talked a little bit about that last night. I actually have an uncle who would do fireworks shows when I was younger, and that song definitely brought me back to my childhood. 

Ryan: Do you think we should play it again? 

The Fuzz Magazine: Yeah!

(Laughing)

Ryan: We cut it for tonight's set. 

(Laughing) 

The Fuzz Magazine: As you have grown as a band, what has been the most important thing you've learned or experienced that allowed that growth? It’s kind of a loaded question. 

Ryan: Yeah, we can answer this in parts cause I’m sure we will all have different answers. For me, I think it's taking sound check seriously. Especially as an opener, you only have like so much time, you start to pick up the order of operations and shaving seconds down when you can cause by the end of the sound check, you’ll often times as the opener, have like 5 minutes to check a song, which is cool and part of going like…rock and roll, but it demands a little bit more of a focused mindset as far as gear preparation, especially for me. Im the most disorganized person that I know, so stuff sprawled everywhere doesn't help. So it’s been a slow process for me of like getting our gear in the right places together and not playing over each other during sound check. Anybody else? 

Chris: Uhm… I guess, like everything. 

(Laughing) 

Chris: It's kind of like you're running a small business and also trying to have fun and be creative. I had never been in a band before, so it’s just sort of like– you learn as you go along too like we didn't make it overnight, so it’s been a slow learning period. The first year we were just playing around randomly, and just having fun, but then you start going on tour, and you have to learn to do that and everything else. Learn how to record, which was probably our first couple of recording sessions could have been better, but… 

Ryan: That's why you do it. 

Chris: Yeah, if we had gone back and done those first sessions over it probably would've been so much better.

Ryan: …Maybe? 

Chris: Compared to what we've done recently.

Conner: : It’s all growth every time. Gotta have balance in your tour life and home life and surviving. 

Andrew: Finding a flexible job. Communication, in general, is like, as he was saying, a small business almost. Just checking in on each other.

Evan: Knowing each other's boundaries We all get along really well, but it’s something to be mindful of too when you’re like a month and a half in, in a van, smelling each other… it’s just something to be mindful of. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Definitely. Being on tour, how do you balance that with home life?

Conner: : It’s hard. Jobs come and go.

(laughing)

Ryan: Gotta find a flexible job, exercise, not drink too much, and keep in touh – Yeah, your sleep schedule is different from everyone back home, too so you capitalize on the hours when you can.

Andrew: Planning out your phone calls. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Back to the writing process a little bit; what was the process like writing and recording? 

Ryan: I have traditionally written the songs – Well, I write the songs, and I bring them to the band most of the time. Our newer release will have a more collaborative songwriting example on it which is really cool to be going in that direction. But yeah, it’s usually… I write a lot. I like to write by myself, and I kind of do that while we are at home obviously. Yeah, I take it to the band, and we’ll workshop it and feel out the moments together that feel right and layer in instruments, and then we will go to the recording studio and maybe do something totally different, but we will have the idea of what the song feels like. Usually, the recording studio is a place where you peel back layers and just let the simplicity of it… see what’s working, and then go from there.

The Fuzz Magazine: Where do you guys – or I guess you take your inspiration from when writing songs? 

Ryan: I guess just like… I’ve learned over the years that I am at my best creatively when I am maintaining a healthy head and just trying to be a good balanced person first, and then the songwriting is the window that opens as a result of trying to, ya know, trying to quell anxiety and the things we deal with. So yeah, being in tune with nature and noticing examples of love and people being funny and people being sad or whatever. Just become more open to recognizing things when things are good. Just try to keep things good, in a personal sense, and then songwriting is usually a function of that. 

The Fuzz Magazine: Yeah, Do you guys feel inspired on the road, particularly when you receive positive responses from the crowd like last night? 

Andrew: Oh yeah. 

Ryan: We walked out, and it was just like (imitating crowd), and it was like, oh, okay, this is what we do. 

Chris: It’s good to be on a tour with a band with fans that like our music too, 'cause sometimes that doesn’t happen. 

Ryan:There is generally just a really supportive energy from The Backseat Lovers fans too. It’s a really special group of fans that come to the shows and they are just there for the moment and to be a part of it, and I felt like that with every one of their shows.