Wish Kit Q&A: Fisher Mays

Shot by Will Mecca @insects_in_every_hole

Q: Was Wish Kit a group prior to 2021?

Fisher mays, Lead Vo & Guitarist: That's always an interesting one. So Wish Kit wasn't necessarily a group prior. So before this project, I was in a band called Ulcers; it was me and some other people. It was kind of similar stylistically to Wish Kit. A couple of our songs were originally from Ulcers. That group kind of fell off and Wish Kit was established. I didn't really want to go through making another Instagram account so I reused the same account. The members in Wish Kit weren’t in Ulcers, they were actually in a group called Genius Christ. We were actually all roommates, and when COVID hit and everything shut down, we all got really bored and decided to start a project together. So, Wish Kit was a new group I just recycled that Instagram account. Current members in the group are our guitar player Riley, our drummer Brock and our bass player, Josh.

Q: What does your band name mean? How did you guys come up with Wish Kit?

Fisher: When anyone asks me this question I'm always tempted to just try to think of a story just because the actual story is so stupid. Since we started during COVID, we were really in no rush. So we wrote songs for maybe six or seven months without a name and that whole time we were constantly trying to think of one. At one point we were going by the name Ouch. Apparently there are quite a few groups with that name, so we decided to go with something else. Our guitarist at the time came up with it. He saw this post of someone on the internet that talked about how the word wish kit is the name for that thing you have in a pizza box that keeps the pizza box from going flat. It’s that little circular thing. We thought that was an interesting word, and we didn't find any other bands under it. So we stuck with that. A month went by and we couldn't find that post or anything online that says that device was called a wish kit. One thing about naming bands that is always interesting is you never know what issues you're going to encounter later. Well. what we didn't realize is that Wish Kit is also the name of a Warrior Cats character. So we get followed by a lot of Warrior Cats accounts sometimes, and if you ever try to search the name up there's a lot of fan art… so we didn't realize that was going to be a thing.

Q: So you mentioned that before you even had a name you were writing a bunch of music, did most of those songs make it on your EP, Hot Gold?

Fisher: To a degree, yes. When we first started we wanted to make like an alt-country band or something like that. So we wrote a couple songs that were in that kind of vein and we remade a couple of older songs from Ulcers. We kind of countrified them, if you will, and we tried that for a little bit. We didn't really love the direction it was going. We wrote a couple more songs and we really liked them and they fit well with the others. Our EP Hot Gold really came out of those songs. There are a couple ones that didn't make it through the cut, but once we hit a certain stride most of those all made it on the EP.

Q: What song are you most proud of from your EP?

Fisher: Hard to say because it changes often. I really like that EP even though it turned into something different than I originally planned. The single off that EP was “Miller Lite” most people know that one. The original single off of that album was supposed to be “Eagle Mountain”. That song is about the death of my grandmother and my childhood best friend, so that song is very special to me in terms of lyrics. The song “Talk” was actually a song I wrote way before Wish Kit was a band. Our group took it and ran. It’s cool to be able to see it in its final form. I know that's not a really good answer, but the answer is I do like a lot of the songs. Our next EP is gonna sound a little different from this EP, but I think Hot Gold was a really good starting place for our sound.

Q: What should we be anticipating about your next album?

Fisher: So September of 2022, we went to record a song for our split with the artist Mo Troper, gnawing, and New You which is released so check it out! Well, at the time, we also recorded four other songs. Those songs were originally going to be the first half of our album we were going to be recording. We have now decided that we're going to release those four as an EP which will be out later this year. The songs on this EP will be a little louder. It's more rockier than some of our other work. I think the songs are better. I know that's what everyone says about their new stuff, but I think if you liked the old stuff, I think there's still something in it for you. I don't think we've changed our sound that much.

Q: You are featured on a project called Rock Against Bush which appears to be a compilation album of songs by different artists. You wrote a song called “Buhd” featured on it. How did this project come about?

Fisher: About two years ago, I met Mo when he was touring in a band called Floating Room, and they played as an opener for two other groups in Dallas. We would host touring bands at my house, and we were asked to host that band for the night. We became really good friends with Mo Troper and Keegan Bradford, who plays in the band Camp Trash. They ended up adding me to a group chat with a bunch of other bands. That's how I ended up meeting John from gnawing and Blake from New You. Well we wanted to put out another song before this new album came out, but we didn't know if we should just drop a single. We decided that we wanted to do a split with a band meaning that we would release a song with another band. So I messaged John and was really into the idea, but Blake from New You had already messaged me and wanted to collab too. So at that point we had three, but we couldn’t do it without Mo, so that’s kind of how it came to be. The title Rock Against Bush was a joke. I don't really know how it came about. I love all of those bands, and I was happy to put that song out with them.

Q: You had your EP Hold Gold taped on cassette early last year. How cool was it to be able to have a physical version of your work? Do you plan to do so with future projects?

Fisher: I'm a big collector of physical media; I own a lot of records and tapes, so I’ve always liked having music in its’ physical format. That has always been important to me. So I’ve always wanted to have that option for our listeners. Our label Chillwavve Records handles all of that. Robert is a great friend of mine and I’ve never felt like I couldn’t ask him for something. We actually sold out! I don't know if we'll ever do a repress of this EP, but the next EP is gonna be put out on tape. There's also been talk that we might do a compilation of our EPs on vinyl, so that might be coming in the next year too

Q: How did you make your music video for “Miller Lite”?

Fisher: I actually made that all myself. As I mentioned before, the original single for the EP was supposed to be “Eagle Mountain'', and we had someone who was going to do a music video for that. That ended up falling through unexpectedly, so weren’t going to do that video anymore. We still wanted to do a video, but I didn’t know anything about video editing. Well, I had these old VHS cameras so I used those to shoot some footage and tried to make a music video. Somehow, I did and that's my one and only video project I've ever done. I don't know if I'll ever do it again, but I think the fact that it’s amateurish kind of adds to the charm.

**Wish Kit creates a musical atmosphere that evokes a warm, nostalgic embrace with folk and alternative roots. They’re simply, unapologetically themselves.**

-BlueGirlHours

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