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Live at the Caledonia Lounge. February 24, 2018
Loud and sad.
Robert Wilson (pictured right) told me it was his dream “for [his] whole 28 years” to be involved in the Athens, GA music scene. Sometime about five years ago, he was 25 and moving to Atlanta to use his degree. One night while I was visiting, we crammed four people into a tiny basement room and improvised "Didn't Wanna Know". It sparked an idea, but seemed like spontaneity that wasn't useful after he moved back to Athens.
Then we got the chance to put it together as an opener early this year. Kicking off Emo Nite, a bunch of friends hopped on the Caledonia stage to play music together and scream about stuff that keeps us awake at night.
It's honest, it's energetic; it's whispering, it's shouting.
DIY or Not At All.
The first set of recordings we made, Basement Full of Ghosts, was actually a bit of a miracle. The Roberts lived in Atlanta and Athens, Wilson moving back to Atlanta after graduating in 2019. I was still living in Beaufort, SC working full time. We all knew how the basic songs went, but rarely got to play together, mostly just before—and during—shows we managed to book in and around Athens, GA. To get some practice in before one, we elected to cram all our gear into my tiny home studio on a weekend in spring of 2019, and while we were there, we recorded a small amount of guitars and vocals as demo material.
In the studio, I put together some scratch tracks, and from them grew an ambition to complete an actual EP of our music. We’d finally schedule a couple days for recording in the early spring of 2020, and did everything from guitars to live drums in my room. “Clean” was rewritten entirely over the phone and an Audiomovers session a couple months later.
All told, nothing particularly special was used, the drums were Robert’s, the guitars were mine, and we sang the songs in few takes. I mixed the entire thing at home on a laptop and ended up mastering it myself. It’s just the three of us.
Live at the Caledonia Lounge, April 4, 2019
Passion, not Product
To echo frontman Robert Wilson, we don’t really give a fuck what people think. This is the aggregation of what we want to do and how we feel, and that should be evident. We make what we want, not what we think will do well.
Songs about existential dread and people we would like to have forgotten are things we as people need to process, and music is a great platform for that. We put that next to music that is fun for us to play and hear, and funnel all that energy into something we can express and expel. If that means it’s hard for you to listen to, who cares? We’re just doing our best to use our voices, and that’s all that really matters.
But also, who knows. You might relate.