They Are Gutting a Body of Water and the Comfort of Degradation /  by William Green

There’s a particular restraint to the way TAGABOW work, a refusal to inflate feeling or posture above it, which gives the album its weight. Nothing is dressed up, nothing is framed as larger than life, and that choice feels deliberate. Spending time with Douglas and the band made it clear how closely that approach is tied to survival, humility, and the ongoing work of understanding oneself. The answers don’t resolve neatly, they wander, double back, contradict themselves in productive ways.

In conversation with Douglas Dulgarian of Tagabow,

When I spend time with LOTTO, not just as individual tracks but as a complete environment, it feels connected to a very particular chapter in your life. It has this sense of a moment when your thoughts, your routines, your physical state, and the way you moved through the world were all pressing in at the same time. 

I find myself wondering what it felt like for you to be inside that moment while making the record. Did the process of writing and recording bring you face to face with parts of yourself that you had not fully acknowledged before, and if that happened, how did it affect the choices you made from day to day in the studio. 

I am also curious about the version of yourself who walked away from the finished album. Did you feel transformed by the work, or did the act of creating LOTTO simply clarify the person you already were, almost like the album held up a mirror you had not looked into quite that closely until then.

Douglas: These are some fucking amazing questions. I guess the whole purpose of art in my life is to figure out who I am constantly, or maybe like, to create some idealized form of myself that supplements my core basic beliefs about myself. And then try it on. See if it fits. With LOTTO, it was kind of a weird time starting out, because in writing it I had just relapsed on opiates for the sixth major time in my life, and I guess the idea of the record was like; “how would it feel to strip back all of the idealized forms of myself I have built, and wear that one?” And in some way, I suppose, that is an idealized form of myself as well. When I walked away I can say that the main feeling that I had was that of being too naked. Sometimes it’s nice to hide behind some sort of mask, some persona. I think that’s like the “rock star” thing to do. I wanted to be anti rock star. I guess the weird part of that is there’s no coming back from that stance. Once you’ve shown your hand everybody knows. And I think that’s honestly healthier for me. I’m a person, with problems. Remaining humble in basically way is really the only way I will ever stay clean I think. My life is not some movie. It’s a mixture of a ton of real life moments. 

You once said you never want to "feel better or worse than anybody else" in life or in art. How does that belief shape the way you write songs, especially songs that focus on despair or isolation or the loneliness of daily routines, How did that shape Lotto?

Douglas: I think a better way of saying that is “I don’t want to position myself as better or worse than anybody else”, because at the end of the day I have literally lived in nearly every format of available lifrstyles for myself, and all of those formats are still available to me at any time. An even better way of framing that is: “I am still all of those things, constantly, and we all are.”Homeless and strung out, struggling but having a roof over my head, or doing very well financially; enough to just spend in stupid ways. I’m not entirely sure how that belief helps me write songs, but it does open the door for me to be like; “I too can be a musician as well”. Especially initially. I still struggle with imposter syndrome. And that’s something I talk about in the music too I think. It translates in a lot of ways- I really try and relate to people as opposed to compare to them.


When you perform live now, especially songs from LOTTO, does the energy from the crowd, the spaces you play, or the people you meet shift how those songs feel to you?

Douglas: I cannot tell as I am turned around. Hahaha

Do you think uncertainty and precarity are essential ingredients for writing songs like yours, or is there a way to carry the same emotional weight from stability?

Douglas: holy shit, what a question. I used to believe that all art came from pain. I now know that’s simply not true. A genuine sense of safety and security allows for you to explore, and that’s necessary for growth, for finding new pathways. It’s impossible to talk about places you’ve never been. It’s hard to put your finger on things while you’re in a moment. But it’s very easy to talk about places you’ve been when you’re no longer there. Everything in retrospect makes sense, usually. Hindsight is always 20/20. Have you ever been so mad that you just leave a conversation? Nothing helps more than some time to let it all sink in. That’s life. Emotions are bigger than reality. Experience is just the right size. 

We have talked before about a shared love for VHS. The way older formats seem to breathe in a way digital images never quite do. VHS and other older formats deteriorate over time, which means the images will eventually fade & degrade. Does that idea of impermanence feel important to you. When you choose a format that is already unstable, are you expressing a belief about how art should age, or are you exploring the idea that certain memories or moods are not meant to stay crisp

Douglas: I was thinking about this yesterday. I used to believe that everything was impermanent. But now I think that everything is kind of permanent, really. And let me explain myself: everything has some sort of effect, and that effect creates more effects, so on and so forth. Everything is important. And maybe that’s what makes the degradation of something like a video format so comforting. That the past fades away.

The name RL Stine carries a certain cultural weight, stories about fear, horror & mystery, things that feel familiar but also slightly unreal. Your song of the same name is grounded in a real person moving through the horrors of life. The title adds another layer that changes how the listener approaches it. What made that name feel right for this song, and once you chose it, did it shift the way you understood what the song was actually revealing to you or about you.

Douglas: So you nailed it with the meaning, haha. But also I love zeitgeists. I love things that are culturally significant. It’s fascinating to me. If there’s some massive blockbuster that everybody is talking about, I will go to the theater and watch it. And I try to reference those things, especially in song titles. Jadakiss was a whole ass cultural movement where I grew up. Diamond Dallas Page and WWE as well. I think that’s a thing too, I always try to draw from childhood.

So much of your work blends sound and image and fragments of daily life that might fade with time. If you could choose one feeling or one idea that you want listeners to hold long after the visuals have degraded and the songs have settled into memory, what would that be. And why that one above everything else

Douglas: You’re a teenager. You and two friends have biked though the woods to explore an abandoned psychiatric center. It’s the summer and the sun is starting to go down, and the very idea of the cool air is refreshing to think about. Your t shirt is stuck to your body, wet. As you walk around the back of the building, paint can in your hand, ready to try your best among the other profanities on the wall that faces the woods, you notice long snakes of some type of black substance across the broken asphalt, strands of grass interrupting the jagged purpleish bulbous ground here and there. Plastic cups and bodega bags are scattered here and there, but the snakes really grab your attention the most. Alien looking. Maybe these black things are long seeds of some kind? Maybe more pieces of plastic? You walk over to them and touch one, and it degrades in your hand. Long tentacles of ash from fireworks, you realize; those shitty cheap fireworks that leave more than they start with. And then you realize, they had to have been set off before the last rainfall, and was that only two days ago? Yeah. People have been here recently. Exploring this shitty place. Painting dicks on the wall

Inside Marietta’s Return: A Look Behind the Scenes of A Reunion /  by William Green

I spent the day with Marietta through the slow hours before their reunion show at Warsaw in New York City, watching soundcheck drift into dinner at a sports bar a few blocks away and then into the long, quiet stretch before doors opened. All afternoon we wondered what the crowd would be like, and the answer came the moment the band stepped onstage, the room erupting instantly.

I spent the night moving through the venue with a handful of cameras, capturing a behind the scenes look of the day while putting together questions for the guys, thinking about how strange and rare it is to watch a band return to something that once meant everything to so many people. Almost a decade later, their return feels less about starting again and more about facing the passage of time and the versions of ourselves that grew in its wake.

You emerged in the scene right as the so called emo revival wave was cresting and collapsing at the same time. Did that tension affect how you understood yourselves as a band, or how you imagined the future of what you were making?

ETHAN: Not really, to be honest. From the time I was introduced to emo, I wanted to be in a band. I was aware of the emo genre having a boom at the time that Marietta formed, but that was mostly a byproduct of being in a band and living and breathing the scene.

EVAN: I think to some extent - our predecessors, including bands like Algernon Cadwallader, Snowing, Hightide Hotel, Street Smart Cyclist, Glocca Morra, etc. - informed how we wrote our music, but our contemporaries, the bands we were frequently playing in basements with, (Girl Scouts, Nicknames, Sovereignties) played a role as well. I had begun to conceptualize Marietta as a “party emo” band, because I think our venues for performance led to certain aspects of our songwriting - i.e., anthems, breakdowns, dance-y parts, moshy parts. As far as the future of Marietta during that time - all I knew was that I wanted to keep playing and writing, and I was definitely interested in leaning more into a “pop” sound, in an effort to make it more palatable to new listeners. I think you can hear this on As it Were.

The Philly DIY era you came up in has been mythologized from every angle. If you strip away the nostalgia and the lore, what was the private reality of that time, the part of the story that never made it into the version people tell now?

ETHAN: I think the version that folks represent now is pretty darn accurate – and a lot of those sentiments continue to be true today. The Philly scene has always been incredibly welcoming, warm, and full of some of the most talented people I have ever met. The scene allowed me to play a show where I met my wife and found my best friends, and that is a situation and circumstance that is not at all unique to me. There are so many similar stories I’ve heard throughout the years, so many people that decided to move to Philly on a whim because they heard about the scene and stayed here, so many bands we toured with that said the Philly shows were the best ones. There is something really special about the scene in Philly and its ability to lift people up and allow them to make cool art.

However, I don’t want to in any way devalue other scenes or places. Wherever you can find your people and can do what you want to do in a safe and supported way, that fuckin’ rocks. Philly just happens to be where I found my place

ANDREW: When I first came to philly I was still mostly listening to pop punk and ska and 90s boom bap. I was kind of oblivious to the importance of a lot of the bands that were swirling all around the Philadelphia scene. To me, the part that I think I lot of people overlook is I think a lot of us packed out these house shows just because they were good hangs. I just wanted to sit on a couch and drink 40s and try to meet people, and house shows were a great place to do that. I didnt want to play in a twinkly emo band. I didnt know what the hell that meant. What I did know was that damn near every friday night there was a rowhome basementfull of 20-somethings screaming along to every word that Stinky Smelly sang- and I wanted to feel that too.

Being in your early twenties is hard, and if I take off the rose glasses I remember a lot of social anxiety in that scene. There were a lot people that I thought for years were cold or too cool or stand-offish, that I later learned were just uncomfortable in their own skin like I was. It’s easy (and fun!) to glamorize it now, but there was plenty of awkwardness & letdown in that era too. I mean- most of us in that scene gravitated towards emo for a reason. 

If you look back at the internal world you were writing from during the early days, would you describe it as hopeful, chaotic, fragile, searching, or something more complicated? And when you play those songs now, does the emotional center feel familiar or has it shifted with time?

ETHAN: As I mentioned before, my life now is much different than it was 10 years ago, so there are some lyrics that I can still absolutely tap into what I was experiencing emotionally at the time, and others where I can recognize where I was coming from, but do not feel as emotionally resonant as when I wrote them. At the time, I was broke, my mental health was in a place where I didn’t have the tools to help get through it in a healthy way, I had not met my wife yet or it was during the time when my wife was across the country so I missed her a ton. 

Now, I am married to the love of my life, I have regular therapy sessions and take medication for my OCD and anxiety, and I have a stable job that allows me to pursue the creative outlets I enjoy. There are certain lyrics that are very specific to the time where I can identify what I was going through and empathize for that younger version of myself, they just feel more distant thansome of the other stuff I’ve written.


EVAN: Speaking mostly on the songs I wrote for Marietta, I think “searching” is an apt description of my internal world. I wrote those songs between the ages of 19-21, and the term searching can be applied to all aspects of the music I made during that period of time. Lyrically, I was focused on relationships, growing up, and life transitions in general. Musically, I felt like I was learning as I went - how to play in alternate tunings, how to write “emo” music, and how to structure a song according to the “rules” of emo. Prior to Marietta, I don’t think I had a strong musical identity - I was malleable and receptive to any style, and it just so happens that Ethan motivated me to write in the style of emo. If I had never met Ethan, it’s quite possible that my trajectory as a musician would have led me to a different style or scene. Playing the songs now, as I’ve mentioned before, actually helps me to better understand both my history and my aspirations as a musician. And having seen the significant increase in listeners to Marietta, I think I’ve finally accepted what made these songs so impactful for so many people. So, the emotional center of these songs feels very familiar to me - the things I was writing about and the way I wrote songs are part of the broader story of my life as a musician. I certainly spoke from a younger and more impulsive heart, though. 

When the band ended in 2015, it felt abrupt from the outside. As you reunited, did any emotional loose ends from that period resurface, and did revisiting the songs force you to confront versions of yourselves you had not thought about in years?

ETHAN: Speaking only for myself, I think there was a degree of insecurity and guilt on my end, both of which are residual feelings from when I left the band. When I decided to leave the band, I wanted the boys to keep going – I didn’t want them to stop just because I wanted to stop. But they (very nicely) didn’t want to move forward without me, so Marietta came to end. Even though I know I made the right decision for myself, I can’t help but feel guilty about that. With that said, once we started practicing again, all those feelings quickly fell away.

EVAN: The reunion of Marietta was a no-brainer for me, but I don’t think it could’ve happened any sooner than this year. Though our disbandment in 2015 was not as abrupt as it felt to our fans, as we had decided to call it quits probably about 4-5 months prior to the announcement, it did feel a little bit like the rug was pulled out from under me. Following Marietta’s breakup, myself, Andrew, and Ben went on to form Narra, which was a punk-influenced departure from the emo sound of Marietta. After Narra broke up in 2018, I was musically adrift for awhile, and I honestly had to do some internal work to kind of rekindle my relationship with performing and songwriting. As some may know, over the past approximately 6 years, I’ve been working on material by myself, and spent the better half of 2025 recording an album which will be released under the name Home Star this coming January. I think if it weren’t for my immersion in Home Star’s music, I would have been less open to a Marietta reunion. It took me some time to integrate that chapter of my musical life into the broader self-view of myself as a “musician” or “artist.” Now though, I am proud of Marietta’s work and value it in the story of me and my guitar.

Coming back to this material after nearly a decade, do the songs feel like they still belong to you, or do they feel like artifacts from another life? Was there a moment in early rehearsals when something clicked and reminded you why Marietta existed in the first place?

ETHAN: They certainly feel like they still belong to me in the sense that I wrote them and I am proud of them, but singing the lyrics again for the first time in 10 years gave me a ton of perspective I was not expecting. I wrote those songs between the age of 20 – 25, so when I sing those lyrics at 35, I realize just how young I was. There are certain aspects of my lyrics that are evergreen to me personally – a decent chunk of the material stems from my mental health, which will always be applicable to my life – but then there are lines that are extremely specific to a place and time. Which is not to say that they don’t resonate with me anymore, it’s just difficult for me to relate to them because so much has changed in my life. 

Practicing again felt natural. When we first started practicing again, I felt self-conscious because I have not played in front of other people in 10 years. But then we started joking around and being our usual insufferable selves and things started falling into place quickly. These boys are some of the people I feel most comfortable with in my life, so it was easy to remind myself that when I started playing again.

EVAN: Because it’s been so long since I’ve played or sang these songs, I did feel a certain amount of distance from them initially. Not to mention that most Marietta songs are written in alternate tunings, when I picked up the guitar to relearn the songs, it quite literally felt like speaking another language for some time. Since 2015, every song I’ve written has been in standard tuning - so to return to these old tunings was a really concrete way of returning to an older version of myself as a musician. All of this being said, when we began rehearsing together earlier this year, it felt like we didn’t skip a beat and it all came back to me rather quickly. Being in a basement with my boys playing music together was the reminder I didn’t need, but very much valued, of why Marietta exists at all.

When an old song suddenly feels foreign, do you try to honor the emotional urgency it carried when you first wrote it, or do you allow your current selves to reinterpret its tone and meaning in a way that reflects who you are today?

ETHAN: Just because a song or lyric doesn’t carry the same impact for me that it did before doesn’t mean that is true for everyone else, which is something that has been so damn cool to see over time as more people have found Marietta. For whatever reason – be it streaming, social media, luck – we now have so many more fans than we ever had before, which has introduced a huge amount of people to listen to the songs for the first time and interpret them for themselves. It has been so cool to talk to all the fans and hear their stories and what the band means to them. That has allowed me to look at the songs from new perspectives.

EVAN: Personally, I sink right back into the feeling and emotion of the songs when I play them. Certain songs, musical passages, or lyrics really transport me to a place and time that feels really comfortable. I don’t feel a tension between my past and present self. 

ANDREW: It’s a bit of both. The physicality of drumming has always provided a release for me which inherently stirs some emotion. So coming back to these songs it's been pretty easy for me to latch on to some of that and really ride it back to 2013. On the other hand, I'm doing a lot more singing during our live performances now than I ever was able to do back then, and for that element of it I'm definitely drawing from a fresher well. "Look at me, Ma! I'm 32 years old and still in emotional turmoil!"

Now that the reunion shows in October have had time to settle, what were the biggest takeaways for you as a band, either emotionally or creatively, and how are those experiences shaping what Marietta might look like for fans next year?

ETHAN: A big thing I wanted to address going into these shows with Marietta was my confidence level as a musician. Prior to late 2024, I had zero formal training or lessons with guitar. I started playing when I was about 16 and taught myself. I am lucky in that two of my lifelong best friends are unbelievably talented musicians (which are referenced at the end of “Dantooine”), so I was able to learn a lot from them by osmosis. Other than that, I learned on my own – which is not meant to be a brag! It’s to illustrate how much I did not know. I knew some chord shapes, but that was from memorization and guitar tabs, not because I knew music theory. I played in open tunings mostly because they are super pretty and it was easier for me to write riffs to. I never fully felt like a capital M, “Musician”. A lot of that was imposter syndrome, but some of that is because I did not have a fundamental understanding of my instrument. 

So, late last year, I started taking guitar lessons for the first time in my life, and not only do I have a better understanding of music in general, but gosh darnit if it didn’t make me fall back in love with guitar. Now I know what each note on fret board is, I know what a triad is, I can do all the scales, I am comfortable with complex chord shapes, I am learning songs that I previously would have cowered from because I didn’t think I could do it. That was a big personal hurdle in terms of doing these shows. I am really happy that I decided to take lessons. Walking up on those stages felt a little less daunting because of it. Which, again, is not required for you to write music! There are so many self-taught musicians that are utterly bonkers at music. This was an obstacle that was important to me to get through, as well as something I always wanted to do. 

My transformation in my confidence level as a musician was a big takeaway for me. Going from feeling like I had no right to be playing music to other people to feeling like I belong. That will certainly go a long way for whatever comes next with the band and whatever shape that takes. 

EVAN: I’m mostly just filled with gratitude for the opportunity to have played for so many fans who care about Marietta, and really thrilled to have been performing again. It’s a really important part of who I am that I let fall by the wayside for many years as I tended to other important areas of my life, but a part that I intend on honoring going forward. 

ANDREW: Our crowds have been so overwhelmingly positive and kind and active as hell. We got in this game to scream gang vocals at & with our friends back in 2012 and it’s heartwarming to hear people at these shows belting our lyrics along with us in the year of our lord 2025. 

A Day With bloodsports: An Interview on Anything Can Be a Hammer /  by William Green

There’s a pulse at the center of bloodsports’ music, something quiet and restless that expands without warning. Their debut album “anything can be a hammer” leans into that tension. I met the band at Union Pool on the afternoon of their release show and followed the day as it unfolded, photobooth strips, monitors buzzing, the stillness before people pour in.

When the room eventually filled and the energy peaked, it was clear the record had hit a nerve.

After the show I asked them about the record and the instincts that guide their work.

(Left to Right) Sam, Liv, Scott, Jeremy

I’ve spent time with you at your practice space, and there’s this playfulness to the way you interact, a room full of inside jokes and easy laughter. How do you preserve that original impulse of a song as it moves through rehearsals, shows, and finally recording, without sanding off the edges that make it feel alive?

[Jeremy] I think for me, I tend to think of recording and performing both sort of like acting. At some random show on some random Tuesday night where you just came from work, there is no way that you are going to feel the intensity of emotion that maybe made a song interesting at first. There has to be a conscious effort to maintain and try and recreate those same feelings and moments. We are all very good friends and have spent a lot of time together. We really encourage each other to be vulnerable in the music we write, and I think that being such good friends allows that to happen in an organic way. 

[Scott] I feel like the writing process is where I feel the most liberal in terms of risk taking. This leads to the occasional “a-ha” moment as I’m working through my parts for songs as we put them together in the rehearsal space. Those moments typically feel pretty special, and I try to preserve some of that impulse as we play the songs over and over, whether in practice, on stage, or in the studio. 

[Liv] I hold the belief that music is kinda pointless if it doesn’t hold emotion - so why would I want someone to pay money to see us, and experience nothing at all? I’m emotional all the time so maybe that has something to do with it haha 

There’s a breath in your arrangements, the way a guitar line lingers a second too long or a vocal slips just under the mix. Are those choices intentional upfront, or do they come from intuition in the room as you work through takes?

[Jeremy] Going into the studio, we placed a lot of emphasis on dynamics. I think for me personally I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my music at the time we recorded this. I remember second guessing absolutely everything, and there really wasn’t much left to chance. I anticipate the next record to be a bit different, and I think there will be more room for intuition and for moments to just happen. 

[Scott] Ditto to what Jeremy said about dynamics. A lot of times I try to practice restraint in my drumming, which serves to emphasize those lingering guitar lines and vocal slips because I’m not taking up too much space in the mix. I’m bringing a lot of my jazz instincts in moments like those, trying to play my drums in conversation with the rest of the band. 

[Sam] Yeah definitely intentional, I think less is more a lot of times. Also just never doing more thant what the song calls for I think is a mantra of sorts that we say a lot

[Liv] This album is intentional from front to back. Every single bit. To the point where it almost drove me nuts. 

When you’re playing live, what’s the moment where everything shifts from performance into something more out of body? During the release show, especially in “Rot,” there was a point where it felt like the song was taking over both Jeremy and Sam. What does that moment feel like internally?

[Jeremy] I get very nervous before shows, even after playing hundreds of them the feeling has never really gone away. I think at a certain point that I can’t remember, I began to channel that into the performance instead of trying to hide it. All the leg shaking and wiggling that I do on stage isn’t really a stylistic thing, it is actually just me being really nervous. I think as far as Rot goes and what that feels like to play live, it feels really good. I think it is a much needed release for all of us. We are all high strung people. 

[Scott] I’d like to say I lose myself at some point during the course of playing a song live, but that wouldn’t be completely true. I definitely feed off the energy that the rest of the band brings to a performance, though. When moments like that happen, especially during Rot, I’m hitting the drums harder to match that energy, but I’m also very cognizant of the fact that I need to hold it down in a predictable way so that Sam can do his thing. 

[Sam] Yeah I’m usually really nervous before shows, but once I’m on stage a lot of it just fades away because I can focus on the task at hand. I think on rot it’s usually the first time during the set that we can really let loose so all the pent-up nervous energy from the whole day just explodes. After that song it becomes a lot easier to block everything out because all my cards are already on the table so to speak.

[Liv] Once we finish ‘Come, Dog’ I can enjoy myself. I get horribly nervous playing that song, but thankfully Scott keeps me in the pocket every time. The ending of the title track is my favorite because I can fall into Sam’s direction - it’s this sense that I’m completely surrendering. You can see it in all of our eyes that we just meld together, it makes me happy and I feel proud of that ending.

How do you negotiate the tension between precision and chaos in a live setting, deciding when to hold back and when to let things unravel?

[Jeremy] I have been leaning more into just going for things recently. I remember growing up listening to the band Iceage and being really inspired by them. They were always messy but there was just so much emotion behind it and you could tell that they really meant it. 

[Scott] As the process of performing these songs has become more comfortable, I’m taking the opportunity to go for things more often. I’m drawing from some of the same logic and thought processes I explained in my last answer in these moments as well. A song like Rot requires a lot of precision during the first half, but more recently I’ve been letting the drums breathe a bit more in certain moments. 

[Liv] I think a lot of these decisions are not based solely on our musical ideas, but also our actual personalities. The way Jeremy plays guitar is the way Jeremy is. And even more than that, the way Sam sings is the way Sam is. Same with Scott and same with me. When we have a fun night out or a huge argument, it literally sounds like verbal versions of the music. We have a funny and slightly dramatic dynamic as a group, and I’d say that affects the way we handle dynamics in the music.

“Anything Can Be a Hammer” was produced by Hayden Ticehurst, someone known for pulling honest, unforced performances out of artists. What stood out to you about being in the studio with him?

[Jeremy] He is a silly guy, a true meme lord. A fellow gooner. 

[Scott] He’s someone who just gets it. What stood out for me the most is his ability to pick up a lot without us having to explain. I think his strongest suit is just being able to anticipate the type of sound a band is going for and allowing that to materialize more or less organically over the course of the sessions. He’s very smart.  

[Liv] I think it is awesome that he will not laugh at something he does not think is funny. He will make you sit with your bad joke. It’s hilarious and commendable. Obviously, his insane talent stands out - but at this point people should already know that about him.

Hayden’s mixes often leave space and texture intact rather than compressing everything into a wall of sound. How did that shape your approach to recording this record?

[Sam] I think Hayden was so much more familiar with the studio and the ways in which you can use instruments, we would attempt to describe a sound we wanted and Hayden would come up with something like blowing out a vintage reel to reel and plugging a guitar into it, or adding an unholy amount of distortion to a mellotron.

[Scott] He definitely knew how we could get the sounds we were looking for on this record. As with what Sam said, his familiarity with the studio and all of the gear in there made it a lot easier. I don’t think we had much of a set in stone plan outside of the arrangements — we were open to playing with how those arrangements came across in a recorded medium. I think his experience as an engineer and his overall skill/attention to detail allowed him to suggest ideas without ever coming across as challenging. 

[Liv] Hayden is an insane talent. He’s a master of his craft but also of the spaces in which he exists - I’m not sure there’s a single piece of gear or instrument he doesn’t know everything about.

So Close, So Far: An Interview w/ Stateside /  by William Green

For Stateside, clarity comes from facing things head-on. Their debut full-length, “Where You Found Me”, released two weeks ago on Pure Noise Records, doesn’t shy away from emotional heaviness, it leans into it. The California band lets themes like longing, guilt, and distance shape the album’s core, giving them as much presence as the guitars & choruses they sit beneath.

This is a record made of aftermaths, the kind that don’t come with clean endings. It’s about the moments that linger, that follow you into your day, into your bedroom, into your next relationship. Through songs like “Stay Sweet” and “Aly’s Song,” Stateside reckons with emotional proximity and emotional restraint, asking: What do we owe to those we’ve lost touch with? How do we carry the people we can’t talk to anymore? And where does clarity actually begin?

In this conversation, the band reflects on writing the record, what it means to be “found” in the first place, and how their creative instincts evolved as they stepped into their first full-length release. The Polaroids that accompany this interview were taken after a show in New York, right after grabbing Taco Bell and just before catching the train. I had one pack of film left so we had no second chances, that unrepeatable quality feels like the right backdrop for this conversation, an honest snapshot of where things were, right before they moved on.

Your debut album "Where You Found Me" has been described as “a culmination of all of the experiences and emotions, both negative and positive, that the band have been through”. Can you share some of the key experiences and sacrifices that inspired this record, and how they shaped its overall narrative?

Erik - The emotional context of the record is framed within sidelining careers we’d gone to school and dedicated time for, putting personal relationships on hold, juxtaposed with the unique experience of touring as much as possible. Sacrificing the ‘normal life’ for the uphill battle of growing a band from nothing to something. 

The lead single “Stay Sweet (feat. Knuckle Puck)” explores the theme of “losing that feeling of being invincible”. What personal moments or stories led you to write this song? How did the collaboration with Joe Taylor of Knuckle Puck come about, and how did his input influence the track?

Lemus - Stay Sweet is informed by the first time someone showed me The Smashing Pumpkins, and thinking back to the context of life at that moment. How easy and simple things were back then (and childhood in general), compared to the adult troubles of now. When we tracked the vocals for the outro, we all thought it would make a great feature. We were talking about how we could hear Joe’s voice over it, so we asked and he was down! He tracked his part and sent it over, it was all pretty simple thankfully.

The album title “Where You Found Me” is intriguing and suggests a sense of place or self-discovery. What does this title mean to you personally, and how does it tie together the themes and emotions of the album? Do you see the album as more about being discovered or rediscovering yourself?

Alex - I felt like I was missing life events of my friends and family to tour and do this band. I felt like I was letting my friends down by just not being around to experience these important moments, because I wanted to ‘follow my dreams’ in music. The line “leave me where you found me” has a more negative, self-deprecating vibe, but “where you found me” became a positive take on it. Referencing how the life I chose is somewhere in between.

If someone only had time to listen to one song on "Where You Found Me", which would you choose and why? What do you think that song reveals about where you’re at right now?

Ben - Aly’s Song for sure. Both thematically and sonically, it nicely sums up some of the key points from across the record. “So Close, So Far” could be seen as a subtitle for the whole album really.

Now that you’re launching a full-length debut with Pure Noise Records, what are your goals for Stateside’s future? Are there new themes, sounds, or collaborations you’re eager to explore in the future? What do you want fans to remember most about Where You Found Me as you look ahead to the next chapter of your career?

Erik - Where You Found Me feels like a solid foundation for us to jump off on to bigger things, and I hope that people remember it that way. We honestly don’t really have specific sonic plans other than making more songs true to what we’re feeling and what we’re about. 

Now that the album is out in the world, has your relationship to it changed? Do any songs feel heavier, or lighter, now that people are singing them back to you?

Erik - It’s always interesting to see other people’s takes and interpretations on the songs.  Aly’s Song feels more impactful now for sure, people have been connecting specifically with that track. There was one guy at the New York show who was screaming the lyrics back, he was really into the moment and it was apparent they were impactful to him. Those moments always feel validating for us.

If this album is a snapshot of who you were in this moment, what do you think will surprise you about it when you look back in ten years?

Erik - I’m curious about if the stresses and worries in our lives that went into this record will seem insignificant 10 years down the line. It’s obviously expected for the viewpoint to change with age and time, but some experiences of being in a band are just universal. 

In recording this album, what did you learn about your own creative instincts, either as an individual or as a collective? Did anything about the process surprise you or challenge your assumptions?

Erik - My instincts are to play it safe and do things that are already comfortable. Working on this LP definitely pushed us to experiment and expand.

Alex - I was anxious about how writing was going to go, since this was my first record with Stateside. Fortunately, the songs came together smoothly and naturally. 

Ben - I’m pretty surprised on the final tracklist that made the record. We came in with about 15 demos in varying stages of completion, but most of them were upbeat rock songs. I wasn’t expecting the slower, more emo jams to make the record but I’m happy with how everything came out. I think we needed some of that to open our heads to influences we wouldn’t normally include on Stateside songs.

In regard to Aly’s song, the opening lyrics are “I take your picture where I go / And every night you call my phone when you’re feeling so alone.” There’s something fragile about that gesture, preserving someone’s presence through a photo, trying to bridge distance. What emotional weight did that image carry for you? Was it an act of care, of holding on, or something closer to guilt?

Lemus - In my old wallet I kept a ton of photos with friends and people I care about. Like 10 years worth of photo booth strips. That’s just a way I would keep people with me when I was far from home. The line is referring to that, but also the irony in the way I have their photos with me but I’m still getting calls from those people. I’m the one missing from the equation.


“All the words that I had said, and were they ever meant?” There’s a quiet unraveling in that line, a questioning of your own sincerity, or maybe your ability to communicate at all. Were there things left unsaid in real life that found their way into this song? Did writing it feel like a confrontation with how you’ve used, or misused, your voice?

Lemus - Yes questioning sincerity is correct - realizing I’m making promises I can’t keep. It’s reflection of asking myself, do I actually intend to follow through with these, or is it just easy because I’m thousands of miles and weeks away?

Behind The Scenes w/ Grayscale @ Pier 17 /  by William Green

Yesterday It was absolutely pouring rain at Pier 17, the kind of sideways rain that makes you question every life choice involving outdoor shows. I brought my little handycam and a Polaroid, both immediately fighting for their lives under my jacket while I tried to catch anything that wasn’t just water.

Grayscale didn’t flinch. Even soaked, they were joking around, warming up, wiping off guitars with whatever semi-dry cloth existed. The skyline disappeared into fog, the stage was slick, and somehow that made it all the more fun.

Behind The Scenes w/ Gatecreeper /  by William Green

I recently spent two nights with Gatecreeper during their New York shows opening for Deafheaven, the first at Irving Plaza, then the second at Warsaw in Brooklyn. I brought my Polaroid, some fried 35mm in my Contax and video camera to document a little behind the scenes.

Behind The Scenes w/ Aaron Heard of Jesus Piece /  by William Green

I spent the day with Aaron Heard of Jesus Piece, a frontman who has built his name on intensity, discipline, and the kind of presence that turns a room chaotic before the first note even lands. He grew up in the Philadelphia hardcore world, carrying that scene’s grit and community-first mindset into everything he touches.

We had planned to meet up when he got into New York for Jesus Piece’s show at Elsewhere, and that was the plan when I went to sleep the night before. By morning I woke up to a message that he had been arrested at the border, no clear updates, no confirmation he would even make the show. Hours passed without knowing what direction the day would go.

He did end up making it into the city, tired but grounded, and we finally sat down to talk about it all. We filmed a clip of him explaining exactly what happened at the border, and then drifted into the other parts of his life people rarely hear him speak about. At one point he laughed and said a bunch of badass girls were driving up from Philly to make sure the crowd moshed properly.

This is a look into that day, the chaos & the arrival of an artist who carries more than his stage presence lets on.

Inside The Wonder Years’ Emotional Legacy: An Interview with Dan Campbell /  by William Green

I met Dan Campbell about a year ago when he walked into the shop where I was working. It was a slow afternoon, and we ended up chatting and he mentioned he had a show that night and that I should come out. I’ve wanted to have a proper conversation with him ever since. Now, with The Wonder Years set to play a show just blocks from my apartment, we finally connected before the show over email to talk about survival, grief, faith, and the strange comfort of keeping old songs alive.

The Wonder Years have made a career of setting that tension to music, albums that catalog grief without glamorizing it, that interrogate faith and failure, and that carry the same weight into questions of loss and belief as they once did into old wounds, and the stubborn ache of growing up. For a band that came up in pop punk’s most emotionally fraught era, they’ve managed something rare, aging with self-awareness, and without flattening the urgency that defined them.

You’ve described early albums as survival documents. When did you feel like your writing started to shift from surviving to unpacking? Do you ever worry about losing that urgency, or has growth just made the questions deeper? 

I kind of still view them as survival documents. I think that, when you are afflicted the way that I am, and the way that a lot of our listenership is, the darkness is kind of always around a corner. That was, in a way, the major through-line of THGOF. That the low hum of sadness is always present, it just changes in volume. I am still here, so I am still surviving. I don't think it will ever be "survived."


There’s an ongoing tension in your lyrics between sincerity and self-deprecation, as if you’re apologizing for how much you feel. Where do you think that impulse comes from? Is it about humility, defensiveness, fear of sentimentality?

I'm not sure it's any of the three, honestly. It's more about making space in the lyrics for the full breadth of my humanity. I want to make honest songs, that are truly reflective of who I am, and self-deprecating is just a part of that whole. I don't always like me. I don't know anyone who does like themself all of the time. And so I think being open about that is part of what makes our songs ours. And yea, there's a little gallows humor in it too. And maybe that is in some ways a mechanism, but less for me and more for the audience. I think if anything, I'm trying to make it less uncomfortable to watch or to listen to.


Do you ever write lines for past versions of yourself? What do you think those younger selves would say if they could hear “The Hum Goes on Forever”?

I think my younger self would be proud that I am still here. And I think he'd be very excited about the music we're making now. Hum, to me, is the most fully realized version of The Wonder Years. It's everything I always wanted it to be and the only album of ours that I look back at and don't have at least some regrets about. And I do want the songs to always be in dialogue with one another. They're a document of my life, and so it's logical to me to think about old songs when writing new ones, and to consider the ways that my life and viewpoints have shifted.


Is there a song that still hurts to play, not because of the audience or the performance, but because you haven’t fully walked out of it yet?

The creation of the songs is for me. That's, largely, where I find the catharsis and process the trauma. Once they're written and recorded, I've often moved to a point of understanding with them. The live performance is more for the audience. It's meant to help illicit that same cathartic moment for them. And so, my focus is usually on playing the hell out of the song rather than on what went into building it. That said, yea, every once and awhile, there's a crack in that wall, and I find a song really difficult to play.

Sometimes it's on an anniversary, or at a specific venue. Sometimes though, it just hits me out of nowhere.

You’ve wrestled openly with faith, not always with belief, but with God as a metaphor for absence, loss, and blame. How has your understanding of faith changed, especially since becoming a father?

I'm a little less abrasive about it now. My beliefs haven't changed much, if at all, but I don't see a lot of value in shoehorning them into conversations. I do still see religion being used as a tool of colonialism, a tool of oppression, but I also recognize that it brings a sense of peace to a lot of folks, and peace is hard to come by right now, so I am not interested in taking that from anyone.

Is there a line or a song you almost didn’t release because it hurt too much? If so, what one and could you expand on the feeling surrounding it. 

There's an original draft of Cigarettes and Saints with a line that I eventually had to change. It was written out of anger, and I knew that anger would eventually wash into sadness and then maybe even pity, and so I knew I couldn't leave it in the song. The song is forever and the feeling wasn't.

You’ve written about people you couldn’t save, but also people you never met, the funeral in “Cardinals,” the kid in “Cigarettes & Saints.” Where does your sense of responsibility to the dead come from? Is songwriting a way to hold vigil?

Mostly it's a way for me to process grief. I understand myself better when I write songs and I needed to write those songs to move toward closure. And also, it feels nice, performing a song every night that keeps someone's memory alive.

This Is What It Sounds Like to Survive Yourself: Interview w/ VS SELF /  by William Green

There’s a kind of quiet power in telling the truth before you fully understand it.


Vs Self writes from that edge, where memory collapses into meaning, and sound becomes a way to carry things too sharp to hold alone. Their work traces a personal geography: blackout years, self-erasure, the slow uncovering of identity.

On Everything Seems Better Now, the title misleads with purpose. It’s not resolution, it’s resistance. The refusal to pretend healing looks like a clean break. What follows are songs that name joy without choking on it. Songs that hold anger without apology.

Each track is a breadcrumb, a confession, a signal flare.

I sat down with Kyle Schlenker (guitar/vocals, they/them) of Vs Self to talk about the emotional scaffolding behind the band.

"Between the Knumears split and your newer work, have you noticed a shift in the kind of sadness you’re writing about? Was there something that triggered that change?"

Desert Pt. II and Frances were written during the same time period as the songs on the split. Desert pt. II is about feeling the need for a change of surroundings to match the changes in my life. 

Frances is a fully positive song in my eyes. It only hits on sadness to highlight the joy and belonging I’ve found by listening to other peoples’ music. It’s named after Frances Quinlan from Hop Along. They’re my favorite song writer of all time. They came out as Non-Binary around the same time I was figuring out my own gender identity. It made me feel as if I must have been drawn to their music and lyrics because there was something in them that I recognized, even if I didn’t know what it was at the time. It was oddly validating in a very awkward time for me. 

I’d say I honestly notice a bigger shift after Everything Seems Better Now. I was still drinking when we wrote that album and was at the lowest point in my life. Despair is the perfect transition song in my opinion with the lyrics fully focusing on how deep of an alcoholic pit I was living in. 

Tide & Swell was written a bit more recently and is about finding myself and my gender identity and how that was the missing piece that finally allowed me to get sober. I guess the shift I see is that in the older material I was writing about current sadness, while in the newer material I’m talking about how I finally got past most of it. LJP.HTPaPSTLBM for instance is about friendship. The title as well as one of the verses is a reference to friends’ bands I’ve had some small hand in, whether it be a few practices, a single show, or recording on a song or two. The bands I’m referencing are Littlest John, place., How To Paint a Picture, sunspot, and Travis Lees Beat Movement. 

In “Leave Everything” there's this exhausted kind of anger simmering under the surface, almost like the anger is pointed inward as much as outward. Was there a specific event that fed into that double-edged feeling?

Yeah I’d say that the anger in this song is 100% pointed inward. The lyrics are kind of switching perspective between my own thoughts and how I think my ex must have felt, so any outward resentment in the song is still aimed at me. It’s about the longest relationship I’ve ever been in coming to an end because I couldn’t stop drinking. It got to the point where I had broken my promises to get my drinking under control that I just stopped making them. I felt completely powerless.

The title "Yesterday by The Beatles or: Imagine by Yoko Ono as Sung by John Lennon" feels like it's mourning something Why did you frame the song title around two of the most iconic songs about memory and hope? 

This song is mourning the time I wasted blacked out and the friendships my drunken/drug fueled paranoia ruined. The title is actually a cop out. The first title I thought of was “Yesterday”, but there must be a million songs with that title. The second title I thought of was “Imagined” so I just gave up. 


On the Knumears split, the songs feel like they are grappling with the concept of "home" not just a place but a version of yourself. Was that intentional, or did that sneak up on you after the fact?

The home as place aspect was completely intentional, but the home as a version of myself aspect snuck up on me. I was traveling for work at the time of writing those songs and would spend 6-9 months out of every year living in hotel rooms all up and down the west coast and in Nevada and Arizona. It was a very lonesome experience and I often felt that I had no home. I was also discovering a very different and better version of myself at the time. 

Is there a "sleeper" song in your catalog, one you personally feel is one of your most important, even if fans don’t talk about it as much?

Maybe Maudlin. I wrote the lyrics while hanging out with my friends one day. We were watching live videos of Amy Winehouse and the topic of her dying after a relapse came up. We ended up looking up statistics on how often people relapse and how likely they are to die if they do.

How much of "Everything Seems Better Now" was written during a time when things actually felt "better," versus looking back at harder moments?

Everything Seems Better Now was 100% written during hard moments. Greg and I wrote all of our own lyrics on that album and “Everything Seems Better Now” was his line. I don’t know if this was his intention or not, but to me it always felt like a lie, not only to the person the line is being delivered to, but to the speaker as well. I suggested we use the line as the album title because it affected me so much. 

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 9 - Rutherford /  by William Green

We stayed the night with Josh’s friend Bryan, truly one of the kindest people we’ve ever met. He welcomed us into his beautiful home and treated us to a special breakfast the next morning. Before we hit the road, he gave us a quick tour of the local campus and showed us around town.

Our next stop was the venue in Rutherford, NJ, a gorgeous old theater that hadn’t been open in years. Backstage, Oli played piano for a bit, and we spent the rest of the afternoon unwinding and getting ready for the show.

I did not take many Digicam photos this stop since I was burning through some film.

This was my last stop with the boys, which made the night feel bittersweet. They’re a rare group, genuine, funny, and deeply special to me, but it’s time for me to head back to New York.

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 8 - Philadelphia /  by William Green

We stayed at an Airbnb in Port Deposit, a small town that reminded me a lot of where I grew up. It was nice seeing a quiet Main Street again. We started the morning with a great breakfast at a little café downtown. With plenty of time to spare before the Philly show, we explored the town for a bit, then drove into the city to kill some more time. We got to Foto Club early and hung out until the venue opened.

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 7 - Washington, DC /  by William Green

We woke up in Richmond, where we’d crashed for the night, and met up with the guys from Tarantula who dropped off the drum kit at our Airbnb so we could load it into the van. On the way out, we made a Walmart stop, Tom grabbed some Magic The Gathering cards that Bert later cracked open at the venue.

The drive to Union Stage in DC was a short one. After loading in, we took a walk around the city, checking out monuments and talking about how surreal it all feels, especially hearing about it from someone who's not from the U.S.

We eventually made our way back to the venue. As the guys were getting ready to play, the guy handling lights came up and asked Bert and me how we felt about strobes and haze. We told him to have fun with it.

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 6 - Raleigh /  by William Green

Woke up, Packed the van, and rolled out of the Airbnb by noon.

Spent the afternoon in Fayetteville doing laundry and making a pit stop at Guitar Center to grab a new mixer. The guys were just hanging around, throwing a football in the lot while the clothes spun. A couple employees from Family Dollar recognized them and came out for a photo with them, small world.

We made it to Raleigh and hit a Subway for a bite to eat before load-in. I messaged a photographer friend I’d met online to see if he was still down to link up and shoot the set.

During some downtime, I slipped out for a slice with a few of the guys from Dull Mourning, then headed back to Kings.

The crowd tonight reminded me why southern shows hit different—loud, locked in, and just really there with you. Felt like the room was breathing with us.

Songs that feel like prayers: Interview w/ Dogwood tales /  by William Green

On April 17th, I spent the day with Dogwood Tales as they prepared for their set at TV Eye. Hailing from Virginia, the band blends warm, harmony-driven folk with a slow-burning, emotional pull that lingers long after the last note. We wandered around Ridgewood, grabbed pizza and coffee, and I convinced them to squeeze into a photobooth before they hit the stage. Somewhere in the middle of all that I had some questions for them, This is that interview.

When you’re writing, do you ever feel like you’re channeling something rather than crafting it? What does that feel like?

I often feel like the goal of making music or art is to feel like you’re channeling something rather than working to piece it together. I think when you gather with your best friends and really focus in on what you’re making, its hard not to feel like you’re channeling something. The sounds on our upcoming album, and on sending feel very naturally acquired. They feel like they compliment the songs and make them what they are. Rather than crafted, a-lot of the sounds/ moments/ songs feel tapped into, or channeled. Looking back on my favorite music i’ve made i can say all of it seems like so.

- Ben 

What’s a mistake or accident that led to something you couldn’t have planned and kept in the final version?

Drivers side fantasy and dream are both tracks that were recorded by Kyle and I. they both are full of “mistakes” or just poor audio engineering, but i think that’s what makes them cool. The intro of drivers side fantasy is really abrupt, when normally there’s a second before a song starts, but with this recording it just starts and you’re immediately hit with that blaring blown out guitar. It wasn’t very intentional for it to start like that, and even that guitar part was added last minute. -

- Ben 

“sending” feels intimate and introspective. Was there a particular moment or experience that catalyzed the creation of this EP?

We recorded our upcoming album in February of 2024. Sending feels like an in between to our upcoming album or a link between our old music and new music. It is compiled of old and new demos. Kyle and i made “drivers side fantasy “ at my old house in harrisonburg in about a half hour. He had the song idea and it just came together very naturally.

- Ben 

In “Dream,” there's a delicate balance between melancholy and hope. Can you share the inspiration behind this track and how it came together?

“Dream” is simply about having a dream about dying and waking up and being grateful for what you have. It’s about being grateful for your life and getting through some hard times and personal battles. It’s a very simple song lyrically, but it means a lot to me. It is about finally feeling like you’re where you need to be. Finally being present.

- Ben

“I saw angels” features Terry Fang. How did this collaboration come about, and what did Terry bring to the song's atmosphere.

This collaboration came about very naturally. Terry Fang also known as Travis Legg is an amazing local artist and friend. We often make music together.. He is also the main driver for what we do visually. We love his art style and drawings. This song came about from a demo that travis and kyle made together. Travis is making beautiful sounds on his Juno 106, as he often does. Travis always brings a beautiful layer of lush, atmospheric synth or keys that carries you back to when you were a child.

- Ben

The EP was recorded in your home studio. How did this environment impact the recording process and the overall feel of the EP?

All of the Ep except for “Mt Jackson” was recorded by Kyle and I, on my laptop in GarageBand.

I think that it came together the way it did because the intentions of these recordings were to be demos, not to release them. With the help of Danny Gibney ( our bass player and engineer ) we were able to clean these songs up and give them a proper mix into what they are now. I think you can hear the demo-ness of these tracks, but they also live on, on their own.

- Ben

“Mt Jackson” was produced and engineered by Erik Romero. How did his involvement influence the track's direction and sound?

Erik engineered and produced our upcoming album, and “Mt Jackson” is a part of that group of songs. I think he did a great job helping create the space that the song now has. This song took a long time for us to figure out how to play live. Developing this song in the studio really helped it take on a new life. Erik played a huge role in helping to create the sounds on our up and coming album.

- Ben

The EP is described as “a sending, a prayer.” What emotions or messages were you hoping to convey or release through this collection of songs? What does prayer mean?

The idea for calling the EP “sending” came from a religious practice in Final Fantasy X which was a deeply impactful game from my childhood.

A “sending” is a ceremony performed to send the soul of someone that is no longer alive to the afterlife where it can be unbothered and not at risk of reincarnating as something evil. My uncle had passed away in September of 2023 and the grief was really getting to me. The day after he passed I made a little guitar recording on my tascam that got turned into our track “sending”. It was improvised and was a snippet of a longer recording. I just remember thinking of him while I played it and imagining him leaving life in peace after a lot of complications in his later years. Making the recording that day felt like my own ceremony of acceptance of his passing and a belief that it was all as it had to be, in spite of the pain my family was feeling. I am grateful to call the EP “sending” and to have that recording because it feels like a peaceful place now to feel that grief and relief all at once.  

- Kyle

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 4 - Orlando /  by William Green

Florida has always held a special place in my heart, and today made it even more special, getting to spend it here with these guys after being away for so long.

We kicked off the day swimming at Daytona Beach before heading to Orlando for the show. Naturally, when it was time to leave, we got the van stuck in the sand thanks to all the gear weighing it down. But in true Florida fashion, a guy with a winch on his Jeep came by and pulled us out.

Once we made it to Will’s Pub, it was a quick load-in so the guys could soundcheck before doors. The venue was awesome, a real community hub, the kind of place I wish I’d had when I was living in the South.

The crowd was incredible. Southern pits always go off, there’s not much else to do down here, so when people show up, they give it everything they've got. It's always so refreshing to see a room explode like that.

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 3 - Atlanta /  by William Green

Running late getting into Atlanta from Kentucky. The guys had a show at The Masquerade opening for Silverstein—a makeup date from the tour that got canceled due to severe weather.

It was 4:02 PM, doors at 5:30, and still about an hour left on the drive.

We hit Atlanta traffic right around 5 and didn’t pull up till like 15 minutes after doors. As soon as we loaded in, me and Oli ran straight to merch. I started folding down all the shirts into size runs to make it less chaotic, and we managed to sell a few right away.

Once the boys hit the stage, I started running around trying to catch a few different angles. Kids were moshing in the middle of the room, so I ran down from the balcony to try and get in it, but by the time I made it, the pit had closed and the crowd surfers were out. Started filming that instead.

At one point, this tall dude tapped me and was like, “You wanna get on my shoulders to film?” I told him if he could lift me, just launch me to the front. He picked me up and next thing I know, I’m crowd surfing with my camera in the air, filming the whole ride.

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y-T_QlqDAs

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 2 - Louisville (LDB Fest) /  by William Green

We were on the road by 10 a.m, making the three-hour drive from Columbus to Louisville for LDB Fest. The guys spent most of the ride trying to piece together a setlist, since they only had 20 minutes to play.

As soon as we crossed into Kentucky, the rain started coming down hard, then easing up, then slamming again all the way to the venue.

Once we got there, we set up the merch table next to a band called Big Ass Truck. Bert immediately hit it off with them, matching drinks like old friends.

The festival flew by, and before we knew it, we were back in the van, inching closer to tomorrow’s destination: Atlanta. After about an hour, we pulled off for Waffle House and found a spot to crash for the night.

Split Chain: Tour Diary - Day 1 - Pittsburgh /  by William Green

Today kicks off the first day of tour with Split Chain, I’ll be tagging along through May 2nd, documenting the ride as we make our way down the East Coast.

Caught a train to Hoboken to meet up with the guys and load into the van with our driver, Josh, a Canadian from Windsor who honestly could moonlight as a stand-up comic with how funny he is. Once we hit the road, I spent most of the ride with my back on the dash, filming and chatting about music and whatever else came up, usually random tangents.

We looked into booking a cabin for after the show, but quickly realized it didn’t have a bathroom, which, with seven people, was a no go.

Eventually made it to Preserving Underground in Pittsburgh. Such an amazing spot, really felt like a true community hub, with all kinds of people, young and old, coming together. After the show, we packed up, hit a Walmart for food, and drove on to Ohio to crash so tomorrow’s haul to LDB Fest won’t be as brutal.

Writing this from the van en route to a Days Inn somewhere in Columbus, Ohio, it's 1:28AM, but there's a Waffle House across the street, so I’m not complaining. I brought about 40 rolls of film for the trip, but for these end of day posts, I’ll be sharing snapshots from my little Contax digicam.

Just woke up at 6:40AM and found out the Waffle House is to go orders only (horrible).

I was planning to sit there and work on this post, but looks like Waffle House will have to wait for another day.

Behind The Scenes w/ Penny and Sparrow & Field Guide /  by William Green

I met up with Penny and Sparrow & Field Guide outside Irving Plaza, and it felt less like an introduction and more like stepping back into a conversation with old friends. Inside, the venue buzzed like a broken television. Cables curled like snakes. Someone hummed an old gospel tune. We slipped out after soundcheck and ended up at a place up the street to eat oysters off cold plates & sip martinis sharp as glass. Every guy at the table next to us had a Patek showing, all gleaming on their wrists, while I sat in tattered clothes, stained in paint feeling like a misplaced extra. But at our table, I felt like I belonged in the film we were making together.