Sorry, No Refunds Q&A: The Whole Band

Q: Tell me about how you started as a group.

Connor, Guitarist/Vox: Trey and I have known each other for a very long time. It was more or so a DIY project at the start. Actually our first few songs and first EP Wilted was just us two in the studio trying to make a record. We are pretty proud of how it turned out.

Kian, Drummer: I was looking to join a group that was serious and sounded good. I was pretty selective with what groups I joined. I saw a post on Facebook that was looking for a drummer so I messaged them and it turned out to be these guys. We had a practice and we all just really clicked. I had listened to their album and I was really impressed with the quality. I wanted to be in their group and since joining these guys have really become family.

Kyle, Bassist: My story is kind of similar. I joined back in November, Connor had put a post on that same page (DFW Musicians) that Kian was talking about. I've never been in a band before, but I kind of always wanted to do it. When I actually listened to their music and I thought it was really good. At the time, I thought It all sounded really natural and it was really awesome. I ended up learning a lot of their stuff over the course of a few days. I would just play the songs over and over again. So when we got together, we actually could play for the first time, it was like a nice template. Our personalities really meshed well together.

Connor: We were all shocked that he had ever been in a band before.

Kyle: All of my friends in high school were in bands, but I was never in that kind of position. It's been really awesome.

Kian: He's amazing. Like, just this last practice, I came up with this idea for a song. When we get to practice, I’ll show them and it will have weird time signatures and polyrhythms and he just clamps onto it like that.

Q: Your latest release is a song titled, “Disintegrate”, is this a sneak peek into another album?

Connor, singer/guitarist: Yes, absolutely it is. We made a really cool connection between the works. When I was growing up, one of my favorite bands to listen to was All Get Out. They're not huge, but they've definitely been a huge inspiration for me. I was able to get in contact with their frontman Nathan Hussey who produces all of their music. So they're a huge inspiration for me, but his work on “Disintegrate” was really good. We're super excited about the new music that we've been working on because I think our first EP Wilted was our first shot in the dark. We’ve been learning as we go, but this is like, we're ready to take it seriously. We love Wilted, but I think it's just up from there.

Q: What does your songwriting process look like as a group?

Kian, Drummer: I think we all could answer that differently. Because ideas have spawned from each one of us, and then we all kind of bring our own influences into that idea. For example, you know, I do some of the writing myself. I’m pretty familiar with synthesizers and pianos- I'm not the greatest at playing, but I try to hash out an idea for a song and then show them. From there, we work it into our group style. Today, I came up with a chord progression that I feel is pretty cool. I just had a general idea, but we might not use it for this album since we already have the songs written down, but maybe for album three. So we've got a whole file folder of just ideas and snippets of songs for you another album or for other singles in the future. We just kind of come up with things, and we'll jam on them when we're practicing. We did that a couple of weeks ago and basically just wrote a song during practice. That one will go on the next album after this one. To me, that's really how it kind of works. I think it's a group effort, bringing our own styles into it.

Connor: Yeah, I agree. I think our process has really evolved as we've grown and it seems to be really effective. As for me, I just love to play the guitar. So whenever I have free time in the evening, I'll just try to write stuff and I’ll bring my ideas to the group and we just start cranking out those ditties.

Kian: Yeah, I would say that this kind of works this way with really every band, you know? Albums get better and better and more intense. Each piece of work kind of starts to really make a strong progression as we get tighter and as our ideas develop. As we grow we also become more knowledgeable about actual music theory and stuff like that. I've really been trying to learn more just to make our work more unique and have progressions that don't sound like other things. We're talking about experimenting with time signatures and stuff. As we play together we become better musicians.

Q: So what are some common themes that you find yourself writing about?

Trey, singer/guitarist: You know, lyrics always kind of come last for us. To be honest, it's kind of weird, but, usually, we'll come up with a song and melodies come to us pretty quickly, so I'll just like makeup words. I just like to try to make up sentences as I'm playing and then things kind of stick. That's kind of the process… there are actually a lot of times that we’ll play new songs at a show that are hammered down orchestration wise but I’ll be making up 40% of the lyrics on the spot because they're not written down yet.

Connor: For last time's album Wilted, most of those songs, if not all, were written on the fly.

Trey: Funny enough, we did kind of mess up on our lyric in “Find My Peace” there’s a double negative.

Kian: I will definitely say that on this upcoming album, things are a little more planned out than the last one. We do have songs written about specific things and then things about the world, you know, just subtle stuff. I think as we progress, our music is gonna get more intense and unique. I've been writing lyrics and I give them ideas, and we kind of try to talk about those sorts of things as well.

Trey: Yeah, a lot of sad boy stuff. A lot of teenage angst, even though I'm 26.

Q: The first song I found of yours actually was the song “Find My Peace”. I think that’s your most popular song right now. It really hit me when I heard it the song reminds me of the metaphor “pushing your boat through the sand”. The idea behind it is that you push your boat through the sand to get to the shore and then it's easy sailing from there. Your song reminds me of what it's like when you can't find the silver lining, even though you know you're gonna get to the shore. It makes you feel and appreciate the moment of rigor until things start to get easy. And that's kind of what that song reminds means to me.

Connor: That's beautiful. It's, it's awesome. That's the exact meaning of the song. You just need to put that in writing.

Kian: Well, that's the beautiful thing about music, you know? It's just up for interpretation. Yeah, it's not like they're just making it up in the sense we all tend to write from a subconscious place. They know what they're saying in their minds. When we combine it does have meaning when put together.

Q: What would you say is the most challenging part of pursuing music as a group?

Connor: I think just finding time to dedicate more to music. My job can get extremely busy, especially during the summer. It's the same for all of us. So it's just balancing time. I mean, if we had time, we'd be constantly putting out content, and I think our rate of growth would be a lot faster. So I think that's what we've run into lately. Another thing is probably budgeting. We're all kind of on individual life budgets, so figuring out how to afford to create merchandise, etc. There are different qualities to invest in and we don’t want something too cheap. We're not really looking to make a profit we are just trying to get our group exposure.

Kian: As far as like, time goes, I would say I kind of have the “most of it'“. I’m an Uber/Lyft driver- that's kind of my gig. I get to schedule my own hours doing that. So since joining this band have made it my goal to make music a priority. Besides my family and my kids, music has always been my passion, and I am going to make a career out of it, whatever it takes. I've been learning Logic Pro, and we got some really nice computers now. I do all of the mixing for practices, and other demo tracks. As new albums progress, I will mix them and we will listen to them to see what we need to change. I'm not nearly at the level that Nathan, but I have really put in a ton of time to try to progress the band at a faster rate than what probably would have been before.

Connor: That's been a huge value, a big help.

Q: Do you guys have any traditions or signature looks?

Connor: Do you have any suggestions for one that we can start?

BlueGirlHours, Interviewer: Well the sunglasses thing is very The Cars.

Trey: Yeah, we always say we need a look. Something like what Topline Addicts do. Maybe we should wear suits like them but ours can be blue.

Kian: The bands that I pay attention to have a classic look like black T-shirts and jeans. I usually wear shorts because I found that I used to play drums in a little band and I’d wear long pants and my kick drum pedal would get stuck so I don't do that anymore. I only wear shorts.

Q: You guys all seem to be really great friends, does your chemistry as a group really show on stage? How would you describe your stage presence?

Connor: So Trey has an incredible stage presence, and I think the rest of us are trying to work on finding what feels good. I try to move around, but I have a hard to loosen up because I need to lose some weight. So I still have my mobility. Yeah, but Trey will like to get on his knees and start to roll around.

Trey: How can you enjoy your music if you do not physically enjoy it?

Connor: I kind of swing back and forth and smile.

Kian: I think the last show we did was in Dallas at Poor David’s Pub. I thought that was one of the tightest, most expressive shows. We had a lot of energy. In the end, we performed “Disintegrate” which is so heavy. It was just a wild ending where you just put everything out there.