Sun Valley Scarlet Q&A: The Whole Band

Q: So Sun Valley Scarlet was originally a solo project. What made you (Clayton) want to turn your solo project into a band?

Clayton, Lead Vox & Bassist: It’s a bit of a roundabout story. I had originally wanted to be in a band with Joey. We went to the same high school together and I’ve known him for about nine years, but he moved to Kentucky with his parents for a bit. He ended up moving back here to Denton, and I had a solo project I’d written. bunch of stuff for, so we ended up starting a group.

Joey, Lead Guitarist: Yeah, back in 2015 we were just like messing around in our rooms jamming out. We didn’t take anything seriously, but when I moved back we decided that we would be in a band together at some point.

Clayton: That was around September 2021. At the time, another friend of mine I was doing a project with was looking for a guitarist. I ended up bringing on Joey. So one day during practice, Joey and I just got really bored of what the other guy wanted us to do.

Joey: He was trying to explain something that Clayton wasn't really into it. The project overall wasn’t really the style that we were really wanting to do. I'm just sitting on the couch with a guitar just super dejected and uninvolved, I had played a little bit of a riff and Clayton turns to me and gets excited. He asked me to, '“Do that again”, and then we just jammed for the next 30 minutes. We left with a rough recording.

Clayton: On our way home I was talking to Joey about how I didn’t want to be in this project anymore that’s when we decided to take Sun Valley Scarlet and turn it into a band.

Q: How did you find the rest of your members?

Clayton: That was the hard part. I’ve known Maude (Rhythm Guitarist) for about five years. We met in college; we were both a part of a competitive Super Smash Bros. Club. We were all a part of this Discord server and I sent a message that said, “Hey, my friend Joey and I are starting a band and we are looking for a guitar player, does anyone play guitar?”

Maude, Rhythm Guitarist: I said yes as a joke, okay. Personally, I wanted to be one of those people that answered even though I knew I didn't meet any of the criteria, but I'm going to respond anyway. I thought it was funny. I didn’t think they would take it seriously. So, I ended up learning how to play the guitar.

Clayton: The three of us kept going to shows trying desperately to find a drummer. We were having a hard time keeping a drummer. Joey ended up posting on his TikTok a show at Rubber Gloves, where someone got a drill and like held it up to their guitar pickup.

Joey: Yeah it was just like a funny video. Well, I have like a pretty decent following on there. I guess I had in my bio looking for a drummer in Denton, Texas. Please DM me on Twitter. You know, the next like day in the afternoon, I get a DM on Twitter. “Hey, were are you at Rubber Gloves? I think I recognize you from something. I saw your bio.” Immediately I text Clayton and we ended up meeting 20 minutes later.

Ethan, Drummer: I got off work at six and then drove over to RG Burger to talk to people I had never met before. I knew nothing about them, but it was a great time.

Clayton: It's really crazy because we've known Ethan since July and I couldn't imagine life without him.

Joey: We were talking about this earlier. We literally hang out every day. This entire group is in the same room almost every single day.

Q: SVS is for sure a brotherhood. Would you say this chemistry aids your songwriting? Is your process collaborative or do you have a sole songwriter?

Clayton: It's kind of hard to say right now because all the stuff we did before was stuff I had written before we were a group. Recently, we've definitely been more collaborative.

Ethan: Yeah, everything we’re writing is extremely collaborative. It’s just us in a room experimenting with our instruments.

Clayton: Some of the tracks on the new EP are older songs that I had already written all of the other songs were completely collaborative.

Joey: We would split up into our own little sections and then mold our parts together.

Clayton: The best examples of that in this EP would be Shopping Cart Blues and Candlelight. For SCB, we decided to split up. Maude and I went to a different room to write a song. Ethan and Joey were in another and working on a song. Jokingly, we were going to call them the faction songs. Maude and I ended up with some lyrics and all the rhythms. Joey and Ethan ended up winging Candlelight.

Joey: We literally just improvised for about three minutes.

Q: So with your new EP Drowning in the Metaphors, is it more or so a collection of songs that just fit together, or is it a concept album?

Clayton: I wouldn’t say it’s a concept album. It's definitely got some pieces that are connected/related. Weirdly this is the project I'm most proud of. Just because I've never been a great lyricist. If you go back and listen to the first album… there's some stuff there but I think this is really good stuff. Yeah, some are really good lyrically. The album summarizes a bunch of things that make you feel like you're drowning in all of these feelings that you can't quite explain.

Joey: All of the songs kind of have an underlying theme of being reminiscent of entrapment and trying to figure stuff out afterward. It’s a lot of soul-searching if you will.

Maude: At least some of the songs are. It's definitely not in a positive light.

Clayton: The writing is very reflective. It definitely shows a lot of growth.

Q: Use three words to describe this album.

Joey: Introspective, for one.

Clayton: Introspective, 100%. Some of the songs are kind of angry. I think spiteful would be a better word choice.

Joey: We could throw accepting in there. I think there could be a case.

Clayton: Good questions. I didn’t think we’d have to think this hard.

Joey: How about vivacious?

Maude: No.. lol.

Joey: I need to grab a thesaurus...

Clayton: Introspective, spiteful… and sinister.

Q: Who designed the cover art? Is there symbolism behind it or is it just a cool design?

Clayton: I designed it at work. I wasn’t doing anything, so I designed an album cover. I drew this circle with fish in the water.

Joey: The original art that he sent us was so funny because it was like a drunk picture on a napkin. and there's like water with a single fish in it and a stick figure on a raft. I was like wait a minute this is gonna be pretty good.

Clayton: I thought it was really cool because it captures the isolation I feel from anything political. I feel like you can't really win which is why there’s a white flag. There’s also a party of fish- it’s all symbolic. There's even a little candle that we decided to put on there after we got the title of “Candlelight”. So we thought it would be a full circle kind of thing.

Q: What has been your favorite new song to perform?

Ethan: For me, playing “Shopping Cart Blues” is so satisfying. When we get to that chorus, it hits me every time. I'm like, “This is this song rips! It's awesome!” I don't know, it activates something primal in me when I just drum the hell out of it.

Maude: That's how I originally wanted the song to be.

Joey: On stage, we’re all feeling a lot of emotion. So being able to let that out makes it that much more of a charged performance. At the end of the song, Clayton and I just scream. We really just let out everything.

Clayton: So my favorite song on the EP is “What If We're Wrong”, but I'd be lying if I said that's my favorite to perform live. I think my favorite to perform live is “Drowning in the Metaphor”. It’s just such a fun track.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in creating your latest project?

Ethan: Recording the drums.

Joey: Recording the drums.

Clayton: We do everything DIY. We don't go to a studio because, frankly, we just don't want to spend the money on it. I had never recorded live drums before everything before this EP are programmed drums. So I'm used to just letting the computer do all of the work. We needed a quiet room, a bunch of mics, and an audio interface that can handle a bunch of mics. So just to record the drums, I think we ended up spending a few hundred dollars. Yeah, but it's still cheaper than getting one song in the studio. After we got the equipment, we realized we didn’t have a padded room to record these drums. Thankfully, it was laundry day, so we just hung all my dirty clothes up on the wall.

Joey: We got these pushpins and we just put them on like every inch of the wall and just hanging stuff. It didn't work very well so we had to improvise. So we got a drum set right in the middle of the room and did our best.

Q: So what are some of your goals now that you've released this album? Are you going to be playing more shows?

Maude: We have a lot of ideas for new stuff. I’ve been working on a few myself.

Clayton: We are workaholics so we will for sure be playing shows but also working on more music.

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