Lowsunday | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: That is yours, so wired. The band is Low Sunday

0:03 Speaker 1: and that is from the Black EP. And we've got

0:06 Speaker 1: the guys Bobby and Shane. Let's see if they are

0:08 Speaker 1: on the phone with us. Hey, guys, welcome to the show.

0:12 Speaker 2: Matt.

0:12 Speaker 3: Hey, it's really nice to be with you.

0:14 Speaker 1: So, uh is this Shane?

0:16 Speaker 2: This is Bobby?

0:17 Speaker 1: Okay, so we got both of you guys.

0:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm saying. And Bobby is right here.

0:22 Speaker 1: Wonderful. So Bobby Spell and Shane, how do you say

0:24 Speaker 1: your last name?

0:26 Speaker 3: My last name is Saheen, so a lot of people

0:29 Speaker 3: call it Shaneye.

0:33 Speaker 1: Okay, all right, very good, very good. So it's like,

0:37 Speaker 1: uh yeah, so I love the project and I'm excited

0:41 Speaker 1: to talk to you guys because you actually have you

0:43 Speaker 1: got some history here, You've been around for a while.

0:46 Speaker 1: But it's really but also too we should establish this

0:49 Speaker 1: so I refer to referred to you as a band.

0:51 Speaker 1: But is it really just the two of you in

0:53 Speaker 1: terms of the studio output? Is it Is it just

0:55 Speaker 1: the two of you who record and produce all of this?

0:59 Speaker 3: Well, yeah, in the last in the last two years, yeah,

1:02 Speaker 3: it's just been the two of us. We sort of

1:04 Speaker 3: reunited and started just just writing and writing and recording. Yeah,

1:08 Speaker 3: and we you know, it was just some of these

1:11 Speaker 3: last two EPs. Previous to that, it was full band stuff,

1:15 Speaker 3: and we're migrating back over to full band stuff again.

1:19 Speaker 3: You know, we're finishing an EP soon and we're getting

1:21 Speaker 3: back into a full band starting to play live stuff.

1:24 Speaker 1: Great, excellent, excellent. In terms of what you've done recently,

1:29 Speaker 1: was it just because obviously you did have and and

1:32 Speaker 1: I do want to get into that why you had

1:34 Speaker 1: had a long break with this project, But in terms

1:36 Speaker 1: of getting back into it, was it easier to just

1:40 Speaker 1: kind of start to wade back into it with only

1:43 Speaker 1: the two of you? Is that is that? Is that

1:45 Speaker 1: kind of why that that played out that way?

1:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, it just it was just pretty natural first off,

1:53 Speaker 3: the two of us. Like I'm repetitive because I say

1:57 Speaker 3: this all the time that the two of us we

1:59 Speaker 3: have such great conversations. And when you're younger, you know,

2:03 Speaker 3: you don't realize that you shouldn't be writing music with people.

2:06 Speaker 3: You can have a conversation with me. It could take

2:09 Speaker 3: four months. It could take four months to write one song,

2:11 Speaker 3: and everybody's burnt out and it doesn't turn out as well,

2:14 Speaker 3: but we're so communicative and yeah, so it was just easy.

2:19 Speaker 3: But really what sort of brought us in Our old

2:22 Speaker 3: label came back and he said, hey, you know, maybe

2:25 Speaker 3: we could start with a twenty fifth anniversary remaster with

2:28 Speaker 3: bonus tracks, and then maybe we'll do the thirtieth anniversary

2:32 Speaker 3: remaster of the other the debut album with bonus tracks.

2:36 Speaker 3: So those bonus tracks is what really got us writing

2:38 Speaker 3: and you know, curating our old material, and it kind

2:42 Speaker 3: of got the studio fired up and the software all

2:45 Speaker 3: updated and the learning curve is pretty crazy.

2:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, but exciting though too, right. I mean

2:54 Speaker 1: I would imagine, you know, after a long break, I mean,

2:57 Speaker 1: did you guys have you each during that? Is it

3:01 Speaker 1: really twenty five years the low Sunday was was dormant?

3:05 Speaker 1: Is that is that true? Is that accurate?

3:09 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's kind of comical. I mean, we

3:12 Speaker 3: played in other bands and did other things, and we

3:14 Speaker 3: were musically active in different ways. But yeah, we just

3:18 Speaker 3: kind of like like Bobby had moved away. He was

3:21 Speaker 3: in Atlanta, and he was in Mississippi, and he was

3:23 Speaker 3: in Tupelow and where he last left off, he was

3:26 Speaker 3: in Memphis. But we've been talking and it was literally,

3:29 Speaker 3: you know, it was the It was within days of

3:34 Speaker 3: us saying, look you got to fly up here. We're

3:36 Speaker 3: just let's just start recording and writing a little bit,

3:38 Speaker 3: that the label got in touch with us, and the

3:41 Speaker 3: timing was just funny, like days after that, the label

3:43 Speaker 3: got in touch and said, hey, we need these bonus tracks.

3:45 Speaker 3: Maybe you could do bonus tracks and do this remaster.

3:48 Speaker 3: But yeah, it was it was that long. I mean,

3:50 Speaker 3: Bobby had been had left Pittsburgh for what twenty years?

3:53 Speaker 2: Twenty one years?

3:54 Speaker 3: Yeah? Wow, Yeah, it's so surreal and we start talking

3:58 Speaker 3: the numbers, it doesn't even make right. That's sort of

4:02 Speaker 3: so abstract.

4:03 Speaker 2: I have since relocated to Pittsburgh, so I'm ok here now,

4:07 Speaker 2: been back for about a year.

4:08 Speaker 1: Oh, excellent, excellent. So do you think so the label

4:12 Speaker 1: when they approached you about these bonus tracks and whatnot,

4:15 Speaker 1: do you think they had an ulterior motive? Like was

4:17 Speaker 1: there somebody at the label going, you know, if we

4:19 Speaker 1: can just get these guys to do these bonus tracks,

4:21 Speaker 1: maybe maybe this will lead to something more.

4:26 Speaker 3: You know, that's kind of funny. We don't really think

4:30 Speaker 3: that way. We always think like one dimensionally that we

4:34 Speaker 3: really don't think that. I mean, in this case, I

4:37 Speaker 3: think he was just saying, hey, look, you're really not

4:40 Speaker 3: representing your catalog. We're Bobby and are both sort of

4:44 Speaker 3: like flash and burn types, you know, where it's like, okay,

4:46 Speaker 3: we're doing that, and like now we're moving on, We're

4:48 Speaker 3: going to do this, and we just believe in the

4:50 Speaker 3: creative aspect of things, and we're saying, you know, whatever,

4:55 Speaker 3: wherever it goes, we can leave it in the dust

4:56 Speaker 3: because we have more songs than us and if no

4:58 Speaker 3: one ever hears that again, right, we have more music

5:02 Speaker 3: in our future. We believe in it, like the abundance

5:05 Speaker 3: of creative ideas. But we were never too connected to anything,

5:09 Speaker 3: you know.

5:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's something well, there's something kind of

5:13 Speaker 1: liberating about Tattoo though, isn't there.

5:17 Speaker 3: Well, the fact that it's not a reality, you know,

5:19 Speaker 3: like it's sort of like a delusional reality.

5:25 Speaker 2: They seem to be much more streamline with the two

5:28 Speaker 2: of us.

5:30 Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

5:30 Speaker 3: Imagine from a writing standpoint, it's you if you're sensitive,

5:37 Speaker 3: you get into real delicate things. You're deep into ideas

5:40 Speaker 3: and you don't want to get into a tug of

5:42 Speaker 3: war over ideas and you know, you have a vision

5:45 Speaker 3: and it's really hard to compromise a vision. And yes,

5:50 Speaker 3: so we do work best that way. But you know

5:52 Speaker 3: we are coming out of the other side of that too,

5:54 Speaker 3: were we have a couple of people playing with us

5:57 Speaker 3: now that are just incredible musicians. They understand what we're doing.

6:02 Speaker 3: They're they're not fighters. There's somebody that understand and just

6:05 Speaker 3: want to make things better. Yeah, So it just takes

6:09 Speaker 3: the right people. It's like anything. The difference between things

6:14 Speaker 3: going great and going terribly is the people that are involved. Oh. Absolutely,

6:22 Speaker 3: Chemistry is everything. I mean, chemistry is everything.

6:25 Speaker 1: Well, and you guys have to be kind of picky

6:26 Speaker 1: too about who you bring into the project, right, because

6:28 Speaker 1: you obviously have such a bond. I mean it sounds

6:30 Speaker 1: like it's it's almost intuitive, right with the two of you.

6:33 Speaker 1: So anybody who you bring in has to be able

6:35 Speaker 1: to not necessarily match that energy, but at the very

6:39 Speaker 1: least not disrupt it either, right.

6:43 Speaker 3: Totally, Yeah, totally. It's very sensitive. It's kind of it's

6:46 Speaker 3: actually kind of scary because we both know we're like, wow,

6:49 Speaker 3: we're so sensitive and these things, you know, you take

6:51 Speaker 3: for granted like you like a momentum or the stability

6:55 Speaker 3: of ideas and direction that we're both so sensitive that

6:59 Speaker 3: you know, you get the wrong ingredient in the mix,

7:04 Speaker 3: and we're like, wow, what if something somebody would try,

7:06 Speaker 3: it could derail us. We're committed to not letting anything

7:10 Speaker 3: like that happen. Yeah, you know, we feel more stable

7:14 Speaker 3: at this point in our lives than probably when we

7:16 Speaker 3: were younger and more sensitive.

7:19 Speaker 2: Sure, we did already have a familiarity with both of

7:22 Speaker 2: these guys we brought in so well that help them

7:25 Speaker 2: for quite a while.

7:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, they're actually old friends and they totally get it.

7:28 Speaker 3: It's it's we've never experienced things opening up and just working,

7:34 Speaker 3: you know, like we're talking about like, oh, it's just

7:36 Speaker 3: the universe provides and all this stuff. It's been actually

7:39 Speaker 3: scary to us how it's just sort of this path

7:42 Speaker 3: keeps opening. We don't understand. I mean, from Shauna, it's

7:45 Speaker 3: shameless that that's been working with us for the last

7:48 Speaker 3: you know, it was last year, just opening these different

7:53 Speaker 3: roads and connections. And when we were younger, we tried

7:56 Speaker 3: so hard and we worked so hard and pushed so hard,

7:59 Speaker 3: and it's it's just different. It's like everything is just

8:02 Speaker 3: falling into place in a way that it feels sort

8:04 Speaker 3: of serendipitous.

8:05 Speaker 1: Yeah. Shout out to Shanna by the way, because she's

8:08 Speaker 1: sends us so many great guests. That's you know, that's

8:11 Speaker 1: how we met you guys through her obviously, and you know,

8:15 Speaker 1: anybody she sends us we automatically will book because she

8:18 Speaker 1: she only works with, you know, really high quality artists,

8:22 Speaker 1: like like you guys, so.

8:24 Speaker 3: Well, thank you. Yeah, she's been amazing, and we said

8:27 Speaker 3: her sis, what are we done to deserve her? You know,

8:30 Speaker 3: she's enriched our lives. I mean just on a personal

8:33 Speaker 3: level too, not just the business, but just connecting with

8:36 Speaker 3: someone who is sharp and who cares, and it's just

8:40 Speaker 3: you feel like you have people going the same direction

8:43 Speaker 3: together and it's kind of you know, you hope that

8:46 Speaker 3: Rising Tide lists all.

8:47 Speaker 1: Boats right right exactly. So, so we talked about how

8:51 Speaker 1: the reunion came about. What was it that caused the

8:55 Speaker 1: band's long absence to begin with. I mean you kind

8:58 Speaker 1: of alluded to it, like you guys are kind of

9:00 Speaker 1: flash and burn types anyway, so maybe you were never

9:02 Speaker 1: that connected to it in the beginning. I don't know,

9:04 Speaker 1: like what because again, that is a long that's a

9:07 Speaker 1: quarter century of no Low Sunday.

9:10 Speaker 3: I know, well, early on we're I mean we're deeply,

9:15 Speaker 3: deeply committed. Early on, I mean we worked very hard,

9:17 Speaker 3: We pushed hard, we tried everything. I mean, we were

9:20 Speaker 3: working and we were going through you know, we had

9:22 Speaker 3: a couple of really stable lineups and things go really well,

9:27 Speaker 3: and then something would fall apart, and then there was

9:30 Speaker 3: like a burnout with that. I think the last thing

9:32 Speaker 3: that kind of we did a record in ninety nine.

9:37 Speaker 3: That record we finished, we went to England and promoted

9:40 Speaker 3: it for like five months. Everything fell apart when we

9:43 Speaker 3: went there. Nothing went right.

9:44 Speaker 1: Oo.

9:45 Speaker 3: We came back from England right before Christmas and we

9:50 Speaker 3: started working. We had been distributing through Projects Darkway's catalog

9:55 Speaker 3: for years with other material, but we finally got signed

9:58 Speaker 3: a project. And project was to re release the same

10:01 Speaker 3: record that we had been promoting and pushing already, So

10:05 Speaker 3: we had to re It's like it would do a

10:07 Speaker 3: round two promoting the same record. Just all those things

10:12 Speaker 3: this led to us kind of just we just got

10:14 Speaker 3: cooked somehow. I don't know what happened. Yeah, in the

10:18 Speaker 3: self preservation, it's always been for the creative, like anything

10:22 Speaker 3: that and where like this now, anything that starts to

10:25 Speaker 3: threaten the creative, the love to do with the desire

10:28 Speaker 3: to do it, anything that does that will run to

10:31 Speaker 3: save the creative. It's like it's like protecting the egg.

10:35 Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense.

10:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, sometimes it's been very self sabotaging. We're

10:41 Speaker 3: trying not to do that. These days, we're more focused

10:43 Speaker 3: and definitely more aligned. Yeah.

10:45 Speaker 1: Well when you talk about thinks, you know, because I

10:47 Speaker 1: love these kind of music industry war stories. When when

10:50 Speaker 1: you talk about you went to England and just everything

10:52 Speaker 1: went wrong, Like like what do you mean, like what

10:54 Speaker 1: kinds of things went wrong? I know you don't want

10:56 Speaker 1: to relive that probably, but just just just give me it,

10:58 Speaker 1: Just give me a little bit.

11:01 Speaker 3: Well, roughly, you know, we got there in the in

11:03 Speaker 3: like the middle of summer after finishing a record in

11:05 Speaker 3: the spring.

11:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, we were.

11:07 Speaker 3: Having We're the record wasn't even pressed yet, it was

11:12 Speaker 3: we had a dat tape that we took to Olympic

11:14 Speaker 3: Olympic studios in London and we're having CDRs made that

11:20 Speaker 3: we were starting to pass out. We're pursuing a manager

11:24 Speaker 3: over there that ended up being in the Bahamas all summer.

11:28 Speaker 3: We thought, we're gonna we're just gonna go to him,

11:30 Speaker 3: We're gonna find him, We're just gonna go there. We're

11:31 Speaker 3: gonna give him our stock. He's going to love us. Yeah,

11:34 Speaker 3: and you know the rest is history. Well, we get there,

11:37 Speaker 3: we call him and yeah, like they said, oh, he's

11:40 Speaker 3: on holiday, Like he won't be back until So he

11:43 Speaker 3: was gone for two months. Then the rest of our

11:45 Speaker 3: lineup couldn't the other band members couldn't come over, and

11:49 Speaker 3: then we're trying to put a band together through the

11:50 Speaker 3: melody Maker. And then with melody Maker, the ad we played,

11:55 Speaker 3: they put the wrong contact information. Oh no, we lost

12:01 Speaker 3: like a month to a typo and melody Maker before

12:04 Speaker 3: we could get that corrected, and then we just it

12:06 Speaker 3: was just it was pure chaos. You know, we didn't

12:09 Speaker 3: have we were trying to find a place to live.

12:11 Speaker 3: And if you didn't, if you weren't there at eight

12:14 Speaker 3: thirty in the morning to see an apartment, it was

12:16 Speaker 3: gone by nine o'clock. And we're living an upside down life,

12:20 Speaker 3: you know, we're out all night so to go look

12:23 Speaker 3: for an apartment. So it was just everything just kind

12:26 Speaker 3: of went wrong. Yeah, and it cost of living was crazy.

12:30 Speaker 3: So yeah, we just it kind of fell. It was

12:32 Speaker 3: a great experience. We got to hang out with the

12:36 Speaker 3: late Nick Marsh from flush Fululu. That was probably the

12:39 Speaker 3: highlight of our whole trip. We were hanging out in

12:42 Speaker 3: Camden with some of the old old timers like that.

12:46 Speaker 3: Everything else went completely wrong.

12:49 Speaker 1: And you know, just for context too, for people who

12:51 Speaker 1: don't realize, this was at a time when I mean,

12:53 Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't pre internet, but it was certainly

12:57 Speaker 1: pre certainly pre social media, and so in terms of

13:01 Speaker 1: communicating with people and logistics and all of it, it

13:05 Speaker 1: still was much tougher than what we have today in

13:08 Speaker 1: that regard.

13:09 Speaker 3: So yeah, oh yeah, totally. Yeah, you're like you're dealing

13:14 Speaker 3: like cell phones were starting to come up a little bit,

13:16 Speaker 3: they're improving, Yeah, but you'd have being in another country

13:19 Speaker 3: you have a burner phone, even the burner phones, like

13:24 Speaker 3: I could talk about things going around the burner phones.

13:25 Speaker 3: It was like their advertised you would buy like an

13:28 Speaker 3: eighty dollars prepaid thing and it was supposed to be

13:31 Speaker 3: for one pence a minute, you know for international phone calls.

13:36 Speaker 3: They were so scammy that you would be on the

13:37 Speaker 3: phone for ten minutes and it would use up your

13:39 Speaker 3: eighty pounds yard that.

13:41 Speaker 2: You just bought.

13:41 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like just all these things just kept getting.

13:45 Speaker 3: It was just kind of funny. It was all our

13:47 Speaker 3: fault for just being naive. You know.

13:49 Speaker 1: Well you were young and you know, yeah that a

13:52 Speaker 1: lot going on, you know, but but you guys so

13:56 Speaker 1: so after it stopped though, I mean you guys both

13:58 Speaker 1: went on to you you wouldn't play it in another band.

14:01 Speaker 1: So it's not like you guys left the music industry, right,

14:04 Speaker 1: I mean you both stayed there.

14:05 Speaker 2: Not at all.

14:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, not at all.

14:07 Speaker 1: That's good.

14:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe at least for a good ten years After that,

14:11 Speaker 3: we were heavily active in different projects and you know,

14:15 Speaker 3: just just pushing in different directions, you know, creatively, when

14:21 Speaker 3: you do what you do naturally, you start to creatively

14:25 Speaker 3: you start saying, well, am I just doing? Am I

14:26 Speaker 3: being creatively lazy? Like? Can I can I write? Like

14:30 Speaker 3: we do all this atmosphere atmosphere crazy delay and echoing stuff,

14:34 Speaker 3: and it's it's dark and it's dreamy and it's all

14:36 Speaker 3: this stuff like pushing ourselves. Like for me, it was

14:40 Speaker 3: like getting back to more like the punk rock roots

14:43 Speaker 3: I grew up with like saying, you know, these songs

14:44 Speaker 3: are really straight? Can I write a straight song without

14:47 Speaker 3: hiding behind fog machines and effects and all this kind

14:52 Speaker 3: of stuff? You want to creatively challenge yourself, you know,

14:55 Speaker 3: right right now?

14:56 Speaker 1: I'm curious too, for both of you, when when you

15:00 Speaker 1: put Low Sunday aside, you know, after your terrible experience

15:05 Speaker 1: and all of that, was it was it kind of

15:07 Speaker 1: like at the time, did you think, Okay, so this

15:10 Speaker 1: is in the rear view mirror, now now we're just

15:12 Speaker 1: each going to go forward? Or was it? Was it

15:16 Speaker 1: always and you know, you both might have to completely

15:18 Speaker 1: different answers, so I'm curious, or or was it always

15:22 Speaker 1: kind of in the backs of your minds that you know,

15:24 Speaker 1: we will probably revisit this someday.

15:29 Speaker 3: Bobby, do you have a.

15:32 Speaker 2: Shane and I? Even after I moved away, Shane and

15:36 Speaker 2: I continued to discuss music and share ideas. Yeah, so

15:43 Speaker 2: I think there was always sort of a dream that

15:45 Speaker 2: maybe we would come back together at a point. Yeah,

15:49 Speaker 2: didn't really have an idea of the reality of that

15:52 Speaker 2: or not, but I think it on some level we

15:55 Speaker 2: viewed it as a possibility. As things lined up properly.

15:59 Speaker 3: And for me, I mean, like listen the ghost Machine

16:03 Speaker 3: that was that was sort of for me. That was

16:05 Speaker 3: like a coming of age man. That's where you know,

16:08 Speaker 3: you go through the teenage stuff. You go through like

16:10 Speaker 3: we go through the punk rock, you go through like

16:13 Speaker 3: the first heartbreak stuff, and then you know, I find

16:16 Speaker 3: myself in my early twenties and you know, like I'm

16:20 Speaker 3: hearing these songs, these heartbreak songs, like I remember my

16:22 Speaker 3: sister playing like all these new wave kind of classics,

16:25 Speaker 3: like she was always deep into all this other, this

16:28 Speaker 3: whole other side of things, and you kind of go

16:31 Speaker 3: through that dark period. And so when I came out

16:33 Speaker 3: and all that stuff, I sort of felt sort of

16:35 Speaker 3: forced with that sort of that background. And so this

16:40 Speaker 3: project is always felt like like my first like sort

16:44 Speaker 3: of a baby too, like where you say, this is

16:47 Speaker 3: who I am and this is what I do and

16:48 Speaker 3: this is where I'm comfortable. Yeah. I never wanted to

16:52 Speaker 3: abandon it so much, and we always were maybe thinking

16:54 Speaker 3: of an opportunity to get back. You know, I felt

16:57 Speaker 3: like it would never go away. It was just like

17:00 Speaker 3: when will our heads be in the right space to

17:03 Speaker 3: to elaborate on those ideas. More deeply.

17:07 Speaker 1: Okay, No, that makes sense. I feel like too, that

17:10 Speaker 1: the sound you guys have is sort of timeless that

17:12 Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel about these labels, and

17:14 Speaker 1: I'm curious to know, like shoegaze and dark wave, but

17:17 Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like the sound that you

17:21 Speaker 1: have is timeless and that you know it. We listen

17:24 Speaker 1: to something like You're So Wired. It sounds current, but

17:27 Speaker 1: it also sounds like it could have come out in

17:28 Speaker 1: the nineties, you know what I mean? Uh, And I

17:32 Speaker 1: feel like that, And I feel like these these genres

17:34 Speaker 1: like shoe gave dark, shoegaze, dark wave, they kind of

17:37 Speaker 1: lend themselves to that. There's a certain timelessness to that

17:40 Speaker 1: whole that whole sort of vibe and that production style

17:43 Speaker 1: and all of that. But I mean, how do you

17:45 Speaker 1: how do you guys feel about those labels? I mean,

17:47 Speaker 1: do you do you call yourselves shoegaze? Do you call

17:50 Speaker 1: yourselves dark wave? Do do you care about that? Or

17:53 Speaker 1: do you let other people just kind of decide what

17:56 Speaker 1: to call you or.

17:58 Speaker 3: Well It's it's funny because it's like, just as you're saying,

18:02 Speaker 3: like the Internet was kind of weak at that point. Yeah,

18:05 Speaker 3: So a lot of the genre genre banding stuff was

18:08 Speaker 3: also weak. So there's people that you know when early on,

18:12 Speaker 3: people didn't know how to what to call us, you know,

18:14 Speaker 3: we like we were like, what is it? Gloom pop?

18:17 Speaker 3: Is it? Is it synth wave? Is it? It was

18:21 Speaker 3: post punk, but there wasn't a real heavy label, even

18:24 Speaker 3: shoe gets. There wasn't a hardcore like hard term really

18:28 Speaker 3: for that. I mean it was maybe in a really

18:30 Speaker 3: small circles, but broadly there wasn't. Right, we don't mind

18:34 Speaker 3: all the labels. It's funny like now with all the

18:36 Speaker 3: sublet we've found ourselves, we're looking back, we're saying we

18:39 Speaker 3: were a gloom waves band from the beginning, and it

18:43 Speaker 3: was a genre that over the years it starts to

18:45 Speaker 3: come to life, and we're saying we're like archetypal gloom

18:48 Speaker 3: waves and didn't didn't know it, you know. And it's

18:52 Speaker 3: it's sort of like retroactively you're able to label things

18:56 Speaker 3: more easily. But we don't mind the labels. We like

18:59 Speaker 3: it well, I mean, the dark wave stuff we relate to.

19:04 Speaker 3: Even our first real good distribution in the mid nineties

19:08 Speaker 3: was through Project Project Has. It had a distribution catalog

19:11 Speaker 3: called the dark Wave catalog and we're distributing through dark Waves.

19:16 Speaker 3: So that was sort of our definition of that. We

19:18 Speaker 3: just thought it was, you know what it is exactly.

19:20 Speaker 3: I don't I still can't define, right, But no, we

19:23 Speaker 3: don't mind. We don't mind the labels. It's it's all good, Okay.

19:26 Speaker 3: We feel like we never fit exactly in the one yeah,

19:28 Speaker 3: which is challenging.

19:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's yeah, it's funny because when you and

19:34 Speaker 1: the way the industry works, it's it's helpful in a

19:37 Speaker 1: marketing sense if you're if you can be categorized and

19:41 Speaker 1: sort of labeled and but but creatively, I think it's

19:45 Speaker 1: probably more fulfilling if it's hard to label you and

19:48 Speaker 1: categorizing you know what I mean, because then you feel yeah, yeah,

19:52 Speaker 1: you know you're doing something truly interesting. If it's hard

19:55 Speaker 1: for people to put a label on.

19:56 Speaker 3: It, well, what's funny. Early on, you know, like someone

20:01 Speaker 3: would someone would pin us to say, oh, you're a

20:02 Speaker 3: goss band, and we would do We did the same

20:05 Speaker 3: thing that we grew up watching The bow House and

20:07 Speaker 3: echoing the Bunnymen and the Cure. You watch all these

20:10 Speaker 3: other people they're like, no, we're not No, we're not

20:13 Speaker 3: like we you. I think the best thing we could

20:15 Speaker 3: do is anytime you just deny, you think you keep

20:19 Speaker 3: this den eyeing saying well, no, I don't think we're that.

20:21 Speaker 3: I don't think you know, we denied ourselves sort of

20:23 Speaker 3: into like obsolescence, right, We're not that, We're nothing. We're not.

20:32 Speaker 1: I'm curious who about the name? So originally, so when

20:34 Speaker 1: you formed in nineteen ninety four, it was Low Sunday

20:36 Speaker 1: Ghost Machine. Correct, yeah, yes, and then and then it

20:41 Speaker 1: became and eventually just low Sunday as one word. But

20:44 Speaker 1: but where does the name come from? What? What is

20:46 Speaker 1: the meaning of that? Uh?

20:50 Speaker 3: The Sunny Ghost Machine is Actually it was a combination.

20:53 Speaker 3: It was partly a rip off. At the time. One

20:56 Speaker 3: of my favorite bands in the world was The Bend

20:58 Speaker 3: Low Life. Low I thought were like it should rule

21:02 Speaker 3: the planet, and like I connected with them. It's like, oh,

21:07 Speaker 3: love is a great word, loads a great really good word,

21:10 Speaker 3: like a strong word. And then I went through a

21:13 Speaker 3: series of things. It's hard to describe it. I would

21:19 Speaker 3: maybe just say like emotional low points where it felt

21:23 Speaker 3: like this I was like, wow, there's like this almost

21:25 Speaker 3: like a systematic punishing sort of thing, and why it

21:31 Speaker 3: always feels like it's like Sundays and it's like Sunday night,

21:34 Speaker 3: and like could you end up in the clink? You know,

21:36 Speaker 3: like what is this whole oppressive force? And it was

21:43 Speaker 3: sort of out of that, you know that we just

21:44 Speaker 3: sort of spun this thing. And then what's funny is

21:47 Speaker 3: the music was sort of like almost an extension of

21:49 Speaker 3: that and that like we used a lot of fog machines.

21:52 Speaker 3: There was like this this big, swirly kind of message.

21:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was.

21:57 Speaker 3: Almost captured the emotion of the feeling that that was

22:01 Speaker 3: actually the origin of the whole project.

22:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that uh, that makes sense. It's cool,

22:07 Speaker 1: dude to have a name that makes people curious. But

22:10 Speaker 1: when you so when you shortened it, when you shortened

22:12 Speaker 1: it to low Sunday, was that was that the label

22:15 Speaker 1: wanting that?

22:16 Speaker 3: Or it was in nineteen Uh, it was like nineteen

22:22 Speaker 3: ninety seven. We had we had just played with the

22:26 Speaker 3: band Klana's Imox. We had just done a show with

22:28 Speaker 3: them in Pittsburgh. It was like a highly publicized show.

22:31 Speaker 3: It was the best show we'd ever played.

22:32 Speaker 1: Yeah.

22:33 Speaker 3: They were on a record label at the time called Test.

22:35 Speaker 3: Test was like a dream pop label from Santa Barbara.

22:40 Speaker 3: The main guy in his band was this Ascension, and

22:44 Speaker 3: this Ascension was you know, they had already been to

22:46 Speaker 3: them really well in that world. They had signed Clana's Imox,

22:50 Speaker 3: who was killing it at the time, and so we

22:54 Speaker 3: had we had opened for Clana's Imox. You know, we

22:57 Speaker 3: get on their busts after the show and we got

22:59 Speaker 3: offered direct deal right there. We signed it. I don't

23:03 Speaker 3: know whatever happened. It completely fell through one years later.

23:06 Speaker 3: I thought, what happened. It was the biggest disappointment of

23:09 Speaker 3: our lives because we're like, oh, you know, Zyemox was

23:12 Speaker 3: working with the same producers as The Cure, and they're

23:15 Speaker 3: getting their records mixed by you know, John Rivers or

23:18 Speaker 3: you know all this David al and all these crazy people,

23:22 Speaker 3: and we were like just again naives. But at the

23:26 Speaker 3: same time, talking to the label, it was like, you know,

23:29 Speaker 3: it might be better to just to shorten the name

23:30 Speaker 3: would be much easier. I still regret it because I

23:33 Speaker 3: like the long name better. Oh really, which is why

23:35 Speaker 3: we keep tagging it into Yeah, I love the long name.

23:38 Speaker 3: And again talking about like pre Internet and all that stuff,

23:41 Speaker 3: I was tired of typing that name. Yeah, it was.

23:44 Speaker 3: It was like so many letters and words that I thought, yeah,

23:48 Speaker 3: if we can shorten it, let's shorten it, you know,

23:50 Speaker 3: like I'm sick of typing the word or all the

23:52 Speaker 3: word the name, you know.

23:53 Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm also curious to ask you about the

23:57 Speaker 1: video for your So Wired. It's pretty cool, like how

24:03 Speaker 1: did did you collaborate with somebody on this? Or was

24:05 Speaker 1: this diiy or I mean it really fits the vibe

24:09 Speaker 1: of the song. I like the black and white aesthetic

24:12 Speaker 1: of it. I like everything about this And I encourage

24:15 Speaker 1: people not right now, stay with us for now, but

24:17 Speaker 1: after the show, please everyone go to YouTube and look

24:20 Speaker 1: up low Sunday You're So Wired and check out this video.

24:23 Speaker 1: But yeah, thank you. What can you tell us about

24:27 Speaker 1: this video?

24:28 Speaker 3: Well, the video it's pretty interesting because we've done a

24:31 Speaker 3: whole series of videos over the last year. Yeah, he

24:35 Speaker 3: actually was a close friend originally from with Bobby and

24:40 Speaker 3: you might eat his name's Jar Herring and Jar Herring.

24:43 Speaker 3: Like he had a lot of music success too, Like

24:45 Speaker 3: he was in the Van Dink. If you remember the

24:46 Speaker 3: Van Dink Okay, nineteen nineties, they hosted like one hundred

24:51 Speaker 3: twenty minutes and they had done really well there on Capitol.

24:53 Speaker 3: They were doing all this crazy stuff and really talented.

24:56 Speaker 3: But Jared started getting into doing videos and him and

25:00 Speaker 3: Bobby had stayed in touch, but jar with each video

25:04 Speaker 3: that he does for us, we sort of let go

25:05 Speaker 3: a little bit more and just he kind of leads

25:07 Speaker 3: us into a direction. He wants the lyrics, he wants

25:11 Speaker 3: to know what's going, you know, with the songs roughly

25:15 Speaker 3: about and then he just sort of interprets it in

25:17 Speaker 3: a way and then we sort of collaborate a little

25:19 Speaker 3: bit just to tweak it. But he's just he's been

25:21 Speaker 3: nailing it for us and he captured something in the

25:25 Speaker 3: last one. But yeah, in the aesthetic, the black and

25:27 Speaker 3: white aesthetic is something that we really you know, we're

25:30 Speaker 3: really kind of clinging to a black and white aesthetic

25:32 Speaker 3: right now, and I think it goes for the timeless

25:34 Speaker 3: thing that you're talking about. Just it's something it's less uh,

25:39 Speaker 3: you know, let's you can't really read it. You don't

25:41 Speaker 3: know when, when or where it was.

25:43 Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, No, it's it's very cool. Like I said,

25:46 Speaker 1: I encourage people to check it out. And the other

25:48 Speaker 1: thing too that you know, we haven't talked about that.

25:49 Speaker 1: I want to touch on is you know, the concept

25:52 Speaker 1: of the black EP and the White EP. Very curious

25:56 Speaker 1: about that obviously, that's you know, that's that's an interesting approach.

26:00 Speaker 1: Was that your idea was that the label like, like,

26:03 Speaker 1: who who came up with that? Because it's very interesting?

26:07 Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that was something we wanted to do. First off,

26:12 Speaker 3: we wanted to we like the more immediate gratification of

26:16 Speaker 3: the EPs, you know where you're because we had found

26:19 Speaker 3: you know, like even even with the remasters, you know,

26:22 Speaker 3: by the time you had a twelve song album and

26:25 Speaker 3: five remixes or old material that we had added in

26:30 Speaker 3: like bonus tracks, we felt like a lot of stuff

26:32 Speaker 3: was just getting kind of falling between the tracks. Yeah,

26:34 Speaker 3: more thing, you know, let's just put out five strong

26:37 Speaker 3: songs and they'll be out quickly, they'll be heard, you know,

26:42 Speaker 3: it's like paying attention to five things instead of seventeen things,

26:45 Speaker 3: right right. But yeah, but the White and the Black

26:49 Speaker 3: where it became. The first idea was like, Okay, these records,

26:53 Speaker 3: it's going to be the two covers are part of

26:55 Speaker 3: one bigger picture. It's going to be a vertical post.

26:58 Speaker 3: When you put the one on top of the other. It'll

27:00 Speaker 3: up and it's like this brutalist image, this artwork, and

27:03 Speaker 3: it starts lighter, the white ep is it's blown out

27:06 Speaker 3: a little more, and as it goes into the black

27:07 Speaker 3: epe that covers even darker. It just has a gradient

27:11 Speaker 3: that sort of captured the feel. So we knew there's

27:14 Speaker 3: gonna be two EPs. We also knew that we're sort

27:20 Speaker 3: of so excited getting in the studio that we knew

27:22 Speaker 3: that like sort of the manic aspect where you first

27:25 Speaker 3: get in and you're excited and you're you're pumping out

27:28 Speaker 3: this this stuff that shows all this enthusiasm and excitement,

27:31 Speaker 3: we knew that was going to settle down and you know,

27:35 Speaker 3: you come back to your real self, which might be

27:37 Speaker 3: not quite as peaked out. Sure, and so the lackupe

27:41 Speaker 3: we knew. We kind of thought it would kind of

27:44 Speaker 3: go that direction, and we kind of wanted to push

27:46 Speaker 3: it that way too, to get back to some of

27:48 Speaker 3: our darker roots and see how far we could go

27:51 Speaker 3: that direction.

27:51 Speaker 1: Also, yeah, yeah, no, I like it. It's a great content.

27:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, I say, yeah. It was just fun. It was

27:57 Speaker 3: like one of those things that it wasn't super planned

27:59 Speaker 3: out it's just all sort of made sense on a

28:01 Speaker 3: real it was probably a five minute discussion.

28:04 Speaker 1: Well, it's an interesting uh, you know, because it it

28:07 Speaker 1: kind of addresses an interesting conundrum that exists in twenty

28:12 Speaker 1: twenty six that did not exist in the late nineties

28:14 Speaker 1: or mid to late nineties, you know, in that how

28:19 Speaker 1: do you you know, what do you do? There's so

28:21 Speaker 1: many different ways to release music now. You could release

28:23 Speaker 1: an album, you could release EPs, you could release a

28:25 Speaker 1: series of singles. You know, a lot of artists now

28:28 Speaker 1: kind of do the inverse of what used to be

28:30 Speaker 1: the model where they release a series of singles that

28:33 Speaker 1: eventually coalesce into an EP or an album, you know.

28:38 Speaker 3: And that's totally Yeah.

28:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum because you know, you got

28:42 Speaker 1: to feed that machine, you know, in terms of algorithms,

28:45 Speaker 1: you have to think about that and social media and

28:47 Speaker 1: all of it. So yeah, so I think doing.

28:50 Speaker 3: The EPs makes attention. The attention thing has shifted, you

28:53 Speaker 3: know to even our own you know, where people are

28:56 Speaker 3: content with you know, ten second clips. You know, like

28:59 Speaker 3: I you could almost see a future where your whole

29:03 Speaker 3: album is ten seconds so right, and people just swipe it,

29:07 Speaker 3: swipe it swipe it and you're like, and you know

29:09 Speaker 3: forty seconds later like that was a great album.

29:14 Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, well, listen, guys, this has been wonderful. Shannon Bobby,

29:19 Speaker 1: I really appreciate you both joining us today on the show.

29:24 Speaker 1: In a couple of moments, sure, absolutely, In a couple

29:27 Speaker 1: of moments, we're gonna play We're going to end our

29:29 Speaker 1: conversation with another great track that I love, This is

29:32 Speaker 1: Not Heaven. Anything, anything you can tell us about this one,

29:36 Speaker 1: anything we should know before we play it.

29:40 Speaker 3: We've thoroughly enjoyed recording that song, just as it started

29:45 Speaker 3: to come started to come to life. It was very angular,

29:52 Speaker 3: like the conjecting, the like the sort of the grally

29:55 Speaker 3: kind of sense stuff and to the choruses. It was

29:59 Speaker 3: one of the and it was kind of fun to

30:00 Speaker 3: do it as an understatement, you know, like it's sort

30:02 Speaker 3: of understated. It's like a real calm sort of like

30:06 Speaker 3: like a subtle like this is not Heaven, you know,

30:08 Speaker 3: like in other words, like this is how right right?

30:11 Speaker 3: But it was fun just to creatively do something with

30:15 Speaker 3: like that's just a huge understatement of a situation.

30:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I like it a lot. This is

30:20 Speaker 1: a really good track and before we do that too,

30:22 Speaker 1: and before we let you guys go, where's the best

30:25 Speaker 1: place to go online to keep up with everything that

30:27 Speaker 1: Low Sunday is doing.

30:30 Speaker 3: We tend Instagram. We're really focused. That seems to be

30:35 Speaker 3: our most comfortable outlet, you know, where we seem to

30:39 Speaker 3: be the most active. It does trickle off into Facebook

30:43 Speaker 3: and even on a lesteral level like TikTok.

30:46 Speaker 1: Sure.

30:47 Speaker 3: But yeah, but our main two hubs would be either

30:51 Speaker 3: of our band camp, like for instance, our label Project Project.

30:56 Speaker 3: They're really band camp centered. Like everything it's on Project

31:01 Speaker 3: as a Project's band camp. That's where you buy all

31:03 Speaker 3: our records or our t shirts. You can buy their

31:07 Speaker 3: whole catalog is there. It's been a really interesting platform. Yeah. Yeah,

31:10 Speaker 3: so band camp and Instagram, those are the two big

31:13 Speaker 3: ones for us.

31:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a big I'm glad you mentioned band camp.

31:16 Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of band camp. And if Shauna

31:19 Speaker 1: happens to me, if she happens to be listening, I'm

31:21 Speaker 1: sure she's heard me say this a thousand times. But

31:23 Speaker 1: what a lot of people don't realize about band camp

31:25 Speaker 1: too is if you get the music from there, you

31:27 Speaker 1: get a higher quality file. Then you do. If you're

31:30 Speaker 1: just say streaming it from YouTube or in some instances

31:33 Speaker 1: perhaps even Spotify. Like with band camp, you get a

31:36 Speaker 1: high quality file, which is important.

31:39 Speaker 3: It's such a nice platform. It's such a nice platform,

31:42 Speaker 3: and it's just it's like a dashboard that makes managing

31:46 Speaker 3: the whole deal like really really easy. And I say

31:49 Speaker 3: that as if I know what I'm talking about. That

31:51 Speaker 3: from what I hear, it's amazing.

31:53 Speaker 1: No, it's true, it's true. It's very artist friendly, and yeah,

31:57 Speaker 1: it's an incredible platform. So we're big. We're big, you know,

32:00 Speaker 1: and they don't they don't pay us. We're not they

32:02 Speaker 1: don't sponsor the show or anything. I just say that

32:04 Speaker 1: because I think band Camp is amazing, and I'm always

32:06 Speaker 1: I'm actually to be honest.

32:08 Speaker 3: Oh go ahead, I know, yeah, we say it the

32:11 Speaker 3: same way as you. It's like, what's amazing. It's such

32:14 Speaker 3: a such a strong platform, and there's no catch, right,

32:17 Speaker 3: It's not like, well, well here's where they get you.

32:19 Speaker 3: You know they're going to try to it's just it

32:21 Speaker 3: works so well, it's so tied together. I mean, it

32:24 Speaker 3: couldn't be a more perfect platform. You hope nobody comes

32:26 Speaker 3: along and ruins it.

32:27 Speaker 1: Oh, I know. Yeah, I was gonna say. I'm always

32:29 Speaker 1: surprised when I encounter artists who are not on band camp.

32:32 Speaker 1: It's like, you know, what are you doing? Like why

32:34 Speaker 1: aren't you? Yeah, encounter a surprising number of artists who

32:39 Speaker 1: are not, but but they should be.

32:41 Speaker 3: Well, you're a musician too, right, Yes, yes, I thought

32:45 Speaker 3: that was my understanding. You're a musician too.

32:47 Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I'm a bass player. I don't I'm not

32:50 Speaker 1: currently active because, as you know, it's a it's a

32:52 Speaker 1: lot of work.

32:54 Speaker 3: But yeah, you have to really fit it into your space.

32:58 Speaker 3: That's cool too. Yeah, we love we're both huge bass fans.

33:01 Speaker 1: Oh nice, nice, outstanding, outstanding. Well, listen, we'll let you

33:05 Speaker 1: guys go. We're gonna hit this track this is not

33:07 Speaker 1: Heaven but again, thank you so much Shane and Bobby

33:11 Speaker 1: from Low Sunday, and we'll definitely do this again in

33:13 Speaker 1: the future. Sounds like you guys got a lot going on,

33:16 Speaker 1: so we look forward to more more music from you,

33:18 Speaker 1: and you know, we'll definitely have you back.

33:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we'll see you in Manchester nearby sometime. We're

33:24 Speaker 3: going to start playing some shows, so we'll see we

33:27 Speaker 3: ever get up that way we'll let.

33:28 Speaker 1: You know, keep us posted absolutely absolutely all right, sounds good,

33:33 Speaker 1: all right, thanks so much. All right, you got it, guys,

33:36 Speaker 1: you got it anytime. Thank you.

33:37 Speaker 3: Take care, great meeting, careful, bye bye bye.

33:41 Speaker 1: All right. That is Shane and Bobby from Low Sunday

33:44 Speaker 1: And let's go ahead and hit this track, another great

33:47 Speaker 1: track from the Black EP. I really like this a lot.

33:50 Speaker 1: This is called This Is Not Heaven