The Ends Q&A: The Whole Band

Q: How did you all meet?

Santiago, Vox/Guitarist: We actually all went to school together. I met Carlos in middle school. We had started a little garage band for a while and then we just kind of stopped playing and hadn’t talked for a few years after that. Then I met Jackson in high school, and he and I started talking about forming a band. We needed a drummer and I remembered Carlos played. So that’s pretty much the gist of it.

Carlos, Drummer: You know, we were like 11 or 12 just in my garage playing like ACDC and like covers. That was pretty fun.

Santiago: The good old days.

Jackson, Vox/Bassist: I think I met Santee in construction class or something. We had another class in Junior year, and that's when we became really good friends. I had wanted to start a band and he was like, “I know this drummer.” We ended up all meeting up and when we all got together I realized that I already knew Carlos, he was my friend's friend. And then it just kind of went from there.

Carlos:  I kind of knew everyone that they knew, and we were already all kinds of friends so everything just kind of came together pretty nicely.

Q: It’s cool that you guys have stuck together since high school. Has your band name always been The Ends or have you changed it?

Jackson: We have tried to change it, but we quickly realized that none of the names were gonna work. We even had a list of all of these crazy names, but just ended up tossing the ideas.

Santiago: Yeah, we had tried to change it after we had already released something under our band name, so the possibility grew smaller. The idea of changing our name has always been kind of a conflict.

Jackson: I know some groups have done that, but we just didn't want to do it. The only thing is our name is also a Travis Scott song. So anytime people look up our band name that song populates first. For that reason, I wish our name was anything else to get away from that. Apart from that, I like the name. I don't even know who presented it, but it was an option on a list we had.

Santiago: I do remember seeing that there's another band called The Ends from Austin, Texas, but they're inactive. I’ve always just thought that we could have done more research on that.

Jackson: Yeah, but with all of the work we’ve put out, I almost feel like, right now, it's almost egotistical to change our name. I feel like if we were a bigger group we could get away with it, but since we are small right now it kind of shoots us in the foot. As I said, I'm not mad about it. People say they like the name all the time. So I like to go by others’ opinions more than mine sometimes.

Q: There can be a lot of misconceptions about the Texas music scene that I feel like deter groups from playing music they want to play. When you started your band were you worried that your music would not be well-received or were you just making music without that sort of fear? 

Carlos: We just wrote whatever. Our first five to 10 songs were just the first ideas that we ever came up with. We just wrote the music and weren’t really worried about whether it was good or not. Our first introduction to the Dallas music scene was through my neighbor, John. We are super grateful to John because if it weren’t for him we probably wouldn’t be playing shows. Unfortunately, he passed away a couple of years ago. He was a promoter in Deep Ellum and he kind of introduced us to live performances. So it was super different because we hadn’t established the style we have now.

Jackson: Yeah, it's not like we were self-conscious about what we were writing but in a weird way those styles like country and blues and stuff kind of imbued themselves in our sound at first. I still find myself listening to certain things that Santee will play and I'm like, “Oh, that's a blues thing”. We're not reinventing anything but I'll find us like, like reusing styles and other bits as we go. In the beginning, it was more or so like, “let's play a punk song” because we thought people were gonna like that. We had been introduced to the scene and started playing at metal club shows in Dallas. I guess that's what people wanted, which was pretty cool.

Santiago: I remember the first few shows we played live weren't necessarily focusing on a certain genre. A lot of the songs we wrote were based on our influences at the time, but we didn't really have a certain direction or sound we were going for. It’s funny that we would play at metal bars when we started.

Carlos: Every other band would just be like these old guys kind of playing metal or hardcore. We would come up and we'd be just like these kids basically like 17 and 18 playing “softer” music by comparison. So I guess that was a little weird, but we were never insecure about it. I think we developed a style pretty quickly after that.

Jackson: The hard part was in our hometown, McKinney. In Dallas, our sound worked well because there's a music scene, but the venues in McKinney just consist of wine bars. The only opportunities we found were like acoustic nights and at most, you get straight-up blues or other stereotypical Texas music styles like at a pizza place or something. So there just wasn't a place to play for us. So I think that we actually were comforted by styles that weren't traditional.

Q: The first song that I heard of yours was “Kick Downstream”. The vibe I got from it reminded me a lot of My Bloody Valentine and Tiny Moving Parts. Who would you say are your inspirations as a group?

Carlos: It's so hard to say because we all like different stuff. As a group we all like Sonic Youth. That's one of the big ones. Modest Mouse is another one.  What do you guys think?

Jackson: I'm trying to think it's stuff we all like. I know Carlos and I identify with hard rock like Deftones. It's like it's weird. We all have different influences. We like 90s rock music a lot. We like Stereolab- they’re a classic. Personally, I really enjoy rap, specifically the rhythms. I like really noisy rock music.

Santiago: I have a lot of influences. When I was younger, I would listen to a lot of reggae and world music. My family is from Colombia so I was around a lot of that.  We just listened to a lot of different types of music there. In terms of the band, noise rock and 90s rock are where I draw inspiration from. Groups like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur. I’m also heavily influenced by Slash. Over anything My Bloody Valentine is the biggest influence in my opinion. Their sound and even the equipment they use have influenced me. I like to see the kind of equipment other groups use to make their sound.

Jackson: Yeah, not even like in a corny way, but I feel like MBV (My Bloody Valentine) kind of made us want to start a band. They put so much time into their work, and that’s been a huge influence on us. We want to create music that has been thought out and not rushed. For example, I think the composition of our song “Kick Downstream” was written to be more interpretive and artistic, the sound is really important to the feel. Sometimes the sound means more than what you're saying. We also get a lot of metal and slow-core music influences. We sort of draw from really slow tempos and then we can get really noisy and slam math rock licks onto the piece. We want to be a little bit different.

Santiago: We want to have a range as a group; we just kind of make music our own way. Sometimes certain elements stick out at certain times and that's kind of how “Kick Downstream” is because it has positive-sounding elements. The introduction sounds positive and jumpy, but then it will go to a quieter part that's calmer, leading the song to a dreamy ending.

Carlos: I think what's funny about that song, in particular, is that we were talking about our influences and then that song doesn't even fit. You know what I mean? I feel like that song sounds so different, so distinct from all our other songs, and just like other music in general. I'm really proud of that one.

Q: You just released a four track EP titled Forfeiture, what inspired it? Is the album a concept piece?

Carlos: The songs “Honeycomb” and “For You” were already concepts before the album. We had writing “Kick Downstream” and “Allen Iverson”. We felt the songs were pretty cohesive together and felt like they were ready to drop as a collection. “Kick Downstream” had this lyric that had the word forfeiture in it. We had been thinking of a name and thought that would be cool. I’d say that’s what inspired the work as a whole.

Jackson: Honestly, dropping the EP was not even out of passion. It was out of necessity. We needed to get something out.

Santiago: It was long overdue.

Jackson: Yeah, a lot of our first album was a compilation of songs we had been sitting on, even some of our first ideas. They were all sort of just experimental pieces, we were trying to figure out our flow as a group. Afterward we hit a point where we were writing songs that we will probably never release. We might record them if we hit another lull. I don’t know. We would perform them, but when would we go to record it just wouldn't work out. So the EP was kind of like, “Okay, finally these four will work”. They are all very moody pieces. They go together. They work where they are. We wanted to get it out as soon as possible. I remember there was a delay in the release. I remember being so mad, but it’s part of the process.

Q: Is the album cover a photograph or is it artwork?

Jackson: It's a photograph by my longtime friend and our band photographer, Trey John DeAngelo Williams. That's his real last name. I don't know what his stage name is. We asked him to send us photos that would fit the music. He ended up sending us some light leaks. This is when the camera has to interpret a low-light scenario so it makes stuff up. So we ended up cropping the photograph and focusing on the light leak. I don't know if I'm describing that right but it turned out really cool. The way we cropped it kind of looks like outer space, very dark. It’s a very moody piece so I think it works well with the music.

Carlos: I had wanted something that wasn't really like a really thought-out concept because it's just an EP. The songs fit pretty well together, but there's not an overarching sort of concept or idea for the album. A cool-looking image fits the vibe perfectly.

Q: Your song “For You” is one of my personal favorites. To whoever wrote it, what does that song mean to you?

Santiago: I wrote the lyrics for “For You”. The majority of the song really talked about the opportunity of finding someone you love. If you're compatible with them there are things you're willing to do for that relationship to protect it. I was basically trying to write a song for my girlfriend because I wanted to express how I felt about everything because she's been through a lot in the past five years. I remember writing that and I didn't really expect it to go in that direction. I'm not a creative writer, so I'm pretty proud of it.

Q: When can we expect new music?

Carlos: Right after we dropped Forfeiture we immediately had this new song called “Quilter” that we're maybe thinking about dropping as a single. I think this is the craziest song ever for us. It’s my favorite song that we've written. It just sounds super good. So that might be the next thing. We're definitely gonna record that next. What do you guys think?

Santiago: I could see that as like a single as well. Whenever we started playing that song we just started jamming to it. That was the first thing that we’ve made that makes my head bob super hard. I can see that as kind of like being single in the future for sure. I think people would really like it.

Jackson: We're just going to record and just figure it out from there. We're recording a new song that we've played live before. I would say a single will come out hopefully within this year. I would love just to keep the train rolling.

Be prepared to be struck by the raw power and emotion they bring to their music. The combination of moody, brooding melodies and heavy, driving rhythms creates an incredible sonic landscape that's both haunting and exhilarating.

-BlueGirlHours