​Trio Nothing New has been purging feelings of dread in the form of cheerful music in the basements of Kalamazoo since 2015. They just put out a new single called Scrapbeak, and are about to release a new EP. Its members are Matt Jett, Griffin Bucheit and Al Craig. 

 

[G] Hi I’m Griffin, I’m 25 about to turn 26 and I play the drums.

 

[A] My name is Alec Craig, I’m 25 years old and I play the bass in Nothing New.

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[M] My name is Mathew Jett, I'm 26 years old. I play guitar and lead vocals for Nothing New.

 

Griff and Al met in marching band in 2012.

 

[A] Griff and I, we went to high school together and he’s a grade older than me so he went to college first to Western and he met Matt in the dorms.

 

[G] We lived in the same hall.

 

[M] Griff would walk down to my dorm and sneak up on me when I was playing videogames or whatever.

 

[G] He was always playing video games. 

 

[M] And Griff always had a big vape, so I could smell him. He had one of those big mods.

 

[G] I worked at a vape shop.

 

[M] Yo listen I had one, I had one too, but I knew Griff was there because I would just like ‘oh its fruity’ and I’d look back and there he is like ‘sup’ because we left our door open, but we would always fantasize about playing when we got a place out of there.

 

[G] The next year we moved onto Kendall, and we just happened to be like what 10 feet away from each other…

 

[M] And we were like okay so this was supposed to happen, and we were gonna do it. So we set up in Griffin’s little ten by ten room that he had in his five-person townhome.

 

[G] I had to make a mock drum set, I didn’t have my drums at the time. 

 

[M] We were so cramped.

 

[G] So he comes over with the song Good Try, the first song. We never even recorded it but still it’s iconic to us. And I loved it and he was like we should do this and so I strapped a book to my leg on my desk, I had my kick pedal and then I set up a drum pad on another book so I just had high hat, snare, kick.

 

[M] It was perfect, this little desk.

 

[G] That was the origin story, and then we got Al pretty soon after that. 

 

[M] yeah, not more than like a week later Griff was just like, yeah my friend Al plays bass.

 

[A] I brought a bass to the dorm room because, I don’t know, I can't bring a drum set to the dorms.

 

[M] So we hopped into the basement…

 

[A] We wrote Good Try and that other one. I remember we had that little part there where I do a bass run and I did this like slapping thing, that was the first day then the second day we came back and you were like, 'Griff and I were talking uh, we don’t want you to slap the bass. It’s not really what we’re going for.'

 

[M] Well you said you thought that you weren’t even in the band, like you thought you were just playing a show. 

 

[A] Well I didn’t want to be in a band! You were like, ‘we're not in a band we're just going to play this one show.’

 

[M] It was just one show, one marching band show. All we did was play for marching band kids for a whole year. 

 

[A] They are wild, man.

 

[M] They are wild people, those kids. But they would have a party every weekend after their 13 hour shift on the field and then they’d go and party and just get slammed and they’d listen to us all night.

 

[A] Remember our band name for that first show?

 

[M] No.

 

[A] Summer for Sarah

 

[M] Summer for Sarah! 

 

[A] That was our band name for that show! 

 

[M] Oh god, we were gonna be like a boy band. We were gonna be like Big Time Rush. 

 

[A] Is that right?

 

[M] That’s what that sounds like.

 

[A] That wasn’t my goal.

 

[G] The Swamp. 

 

[M] The Swamp, that was the name of the house, the Swamp. 

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[A] But then after that they’d put a DJ up there and it’d be EDM. 

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[M] We would play and then they’d bring out the DJ guy to just round it out after everyone was really blitzed. 

 

[A] Those shows would start at midnight, which is bonkers now because we played a show last night that started at 7.

 

[M] They didn’t care, we could play for as long as we wanted.

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Good Try was the first song they pieced together. 

 

[A] It didn’t make the cut for the first album. 

 

[M] We still keep it dear to our hearts

[Clip of Good Try] 

 

[A] It’s a banger. 

 

[M] It’s a good song. It’s a lot of Front Bottoms and a lot of Modern Baseball. 

 

As for the rest of their discography…

 

[A] Yeah 2018, well that was the first time we got on Spotify, 2018, in like November, Lettuce Etc., and then last year we released our first album that wasn’t ever on Spotify, we put it on Spotify last year, and that came out in 2017.

 

[M] Next Week was the first, and that was just like a drop in the bucket. 

 

[A] It was probably about 6 or 7 Sundays we went to this church

 

[G] I used to play drums at this church in high school so they let us use the space to record the first album, and my buddy Brad knew some stuff about audio so he recorded it. We knew nothing at the time. 

 

[All] The album is in mono.

 

[M] It doesn’t really have a big sound because we just beat the sound down, but we were just fighting this giant church sound for our three piece band taking up this whole thing. 

 

When they finished recording Next Week they burned CDs to release it.

 

[A] Every album was individually different, like we’d take sharpies and write on these little pieces of album covers and we would sell them for two bucks a piece. It was hilarious. But the first show after we started selling them, people were singing lyrics to So Says My Heart and You're in My Head. It blew my mind, I mean like three days later and they know all the words. We sold I think 500 of those. 

 

[M] And we made every one of them. I mean I didn’t make a lot, I burned a lot of CDs. I didn’t have an artistic hand, so I did a couple of CD covers and I’m sure someone out there has them and you can definitely tell they’re mine.

 

[G] Al made some badass ones. 

 

[M] We just chugged those things out. People wanted em. My mom would just come to me and be like give me twenty, give me forty. She wouldn’t even care she would just give them to her friends. At the end we were like mom, I don’t want to make any more, I love you but I just don’t want to burn anymore CD’s, that was by the time when we were starting to push for Lettuce to come out…

 

[A] We were playing those songs live for two and a half years before it came out, which is another horrible thing because you get so tired of a song that you’re working on. 

 

[M] Lettuce was a big long process I mean we were all going to school, working, trying to balance a band at the same time, playing shows, which shows can just become an obsession and you just want to play every single one that gets thrown at you and it’s like man we don’t have any time to record or finish up this thing and you start to get so far away from the songs and people that you’re playing them for aren’t because they only hear them when you come to play them, but you’re like dude I hear these songs everyday. 

 

[M] Moving forward off of that we wanted to be more consistent, I think. It's like why did we put ourselves through all that trauma to release this one big album when we could have been releasing songs here and there. 

 

Listening to Nothing New for the first time, I was first introduced to two songs off of Lettuce Etc., End and Pout. 

 

[M] End and Pout? Never expected that. We don’t play those ones a lot.

 

[A] We’ve only played End live once. It was a song that we never wrote because it was just like an idea I had, like we needed a bookends feel to the album. I was like we need to take the riff from this part and do that and it’s like what, and I was like this is what it’s going to sound like. And then Griff and I sat down and were like it’s going to be this many times for this and then we played the drums and then I had Matt come into my room and then we recorded the stuff and I did the reverse shit at the end so it was a song that was never written. 

 

[M] It was a real Brian Wilson moment, wrote the song all in the box, you know, me and Griff were not really ready to grasp the concepts but Al was like no. It was a medley really in my mind. 

 

I do remember, I did not like it while we were recording it, I was just like, Al this is stupid. Why are we doing this, we just layered a lot of guitar over and over and over again but now I go back and listen to it and I’m like this really ties it all together, it makes it a concept album almost it makes it feel like a whole piece. 

 

[A] It puts the album at forty minutes, that’s why it’s there. 

 

As for Pout…

 

[M] Pout, Shout and Out 

 

[A] They were going to be on Next Week. We have recordings of them to be on Next Week and they suck so they weren’t. 

 

[M] But what about the Gout EP?

 

[A] The Gout EP!

 

[M] Yeah we had a concept for the Gout EP, everything was going to be out-themed. You don’t want to see the cover art that we came up with for that one. 

 

[A] I had an album cover for the EP as a picture of someone’s foot that was inflamed with Gout. 

 

So Pout, Out and Shout were released on Lettuce etc. instead. 

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[A] I recorded Lettuce and I hate the bass tone so much on Lettuce etc. it haunts me. It’s just so big, I’m not doing anything crazy, I'm DI-ing and I think micing and making a cab. Now when I record bass I think you got to cut out so much low end, it’s counterintuitive but you gotta cut out so much lows. So that's another thing when I play live, I’ll try to take out low mids. 

 

Al explains what else he does to achieve his bass tone.

 

[A] I want to say the number one thing is that I’m smashing the strings with my fingers so I think that’s the biggest part of the tone. I learned how to play the first five albums of Rush on the bass, like Getty Lee is my bass hero so just smashing the string with your fingers, so that's the number one thing on the tone, other than that little bit of overdrive, I don’t know, not any crazy science going on.

 

[M] Used the same head for 6 years or 7 years. 

 

[A] I just switched last night. My rig, I used a Schecter SGR, a hundred dollar bass for so long but I just got a P bass recently and I love the tone of that. 

 

[A] I went no peals for four years and then I did a tube screamer and then I did a Klon and a tube screamer and now I don’t use either of those I use a sans amp, I use the drive on the sans amp, but no one says hey you sound different now, I think it’s literally just the fact that I am smashing the string
 

[A] I get asked about my bass tone a lot, which is funny because I listen to Saturdays at Your Place and I am so envious of his bass tone and he’s playing with a pick and it’s just like when I record especially, just that pick sound is so much easier to record, it’s so much cleaner sounding and I just wish I could play with a pick, but I’m not that good at playing with a pick and also I just feel like it’s not right if I just start playing with a pick now. I don’t know. 

 

They reminisced about some of their favorite performance memories, starting with their first at the Swamp. 

 

[A] We played you’re in my head first, I know that for positive because, I was in my head. I remember being pretty nervous but I remember only being nervous for one song and that was really awesome. 

 

[G] I remember my shitty ass drum kit. It was cringy to play, all the cymbals were like broken. 

 

[A] I remember my fingers cramping up so bad in both hands, and just realizing how much fatigue is a factor in shows

 

[M] Shows are a marathon

 

[A] And then learning how to play while you’re sweaty and your fretboard is sweaty

 

[M] you're dripping on your guitar

 

[A] which is funny now because this is so disgusting when my fretboard is all sweaty and it’s just sweat everywhere I feel like I’m in the zone

 

[M] I’m greased up

 

[A] I’m greased up I’m ready to fucking go I can play so fast and shit

 

[G] My hair goes in my mouth and it tastes like salt

 

[M] Ewww these are weird things

 

[A] The fatigue just isn't a factor anymore, I think you just got to keep on doing it

 

[M] Nothing prepares you for it, before the first time you do it

 

[G] I would get like dizzy and sick because I used to party all the time back then, so dehydrated in a hot basement and I’d be like I’m gonna pass out

 

[M] It still can get that way, you got to be mindful, you got to meter out your stamina and know when you want to use your energy and when you don't. 

 

[A] If I danced to how hard I feel it in my body, like if I kept on jumping the whole thing I would not realize how fucking tired I’m getting and I would pass out I feel like. Something just kind of takes over sometimes. 

 

As for other memorable shows…

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[G] Shakes was awesome

 

[M] Shakes was the best place

 

[G] We miss Shakespeare’s a lot.

 

[A] What was your favorite show memory?

 

[G] Halloween show at Mute City. We were the Stray Cats for Halloween one year. We threw a show at Mute City, our venue that we lived at for like three years and all the bands were supposed to dress up like the cover sets they were doing and we were the stray cats and we pulled it off so good. Slicked back hair, high pants, patches, jean coat

 

[M] I still got the coat with the patch on in

 

[G] the drummer for stray cats, he stands up when he drums so I stood up for that set and it was hard as fuck. 

 

[M] I bleached my hair

 

[G] That was definitely one of my favorite shows. 

 

[M] To me when you see a band do something like that the main thing that matters is if they can do the songs 

 

[A] I think we did good, especially because you got the Gretch and shit. 

 

[M] Everyone told us we did a pretty great job. I think we nailed the aesthetic. The whole thing spawned just because I have the guitar that Brian Setzer uses, the Gretsch with the same color and anything and we were also just all big fans of stray cats. 

 

[A] We would play Stray Cat Strut in shows quite a bit before that too, I love that song.

 

[G] The thing is, my favorite show that we ever played was last Friday at the pyramid scheme. 

 

[M] Pyramid scheme when you say that I'm like man, last friday at the pyramid scheme but it's right there fresh in my head. 

 

[A] One of my favorites is like 2018 or 17 it might have been, we played at Rupert’s and we sold like 36 CDs so that sticks in my head. The place was fucking packed and we played the sweatiest gig ever. 

 

[G] I remember they had that hole in the wall the open door so I’d be playing and I’d see cops pulling people over and shit

 

[M] Rupert’s was the first place that we played that wasn’t the marching band basement. We started doing open mics at Ruperts. Ruperts was always good to us. 

 

[A] They told us the third time we played their open mic they said you guys shouldn't do this anymore, you’re too good. You should just book a show somewhere.

 

Matt says they have some serious stage anxiety.  

 

[M] We like to play and play and play and try not to stop and talk as little as we can. When we’re in Kalamazoo I think we kind of kick back a lot more, but we’ll cram as many songs as we can into our forty five minute set. 

 

Which is why one might hear some “tuning jokes” during a Nothing New set. 

 

[G] We’ll either do tuning jokes or Matt’s tuning, which is just me and Al jamming

 

[A] We came up with that before we did Battle of the Bands, because we had two different tunings and we had to come up with a 15 minute set and we wanted to fill up the whole time so Griffin and I did some kind of beat and then the beat would stop and we’d go, Matt’s tuning! Because we were trying to fill dead air.

 

[M] I hate tuning but I love using alternate tunings, it’s just a curse and I know everyone’s thinking about it. I mean a lot of people probably aren't even realizing what I’m doing but I start talking about it because I just can’t help it, I’m just like I’m tuning guys, I hate it, it’s awkward and I can never not say it so they figured out something to cover that up for me. 

 

Nothing New describes their sound as…

 

[A] What I tell people is I say we’re emo or midwest emo, but that’s always questioned with what the fuck is that? Like if I’m talking to people at work they have no idea. So then I say I’m punk but if you talk to someone over the age of 35 punk means bashing, punching fucking kicking and shit and we’re not like that at all like were not heavy. So like you can’t say punk either, but it’s like modern punk which is a little more toned back. 

 

[A] The other part about it is why I say punk is there’s a vernacular in song writing of drums, you play, you go to half time stuff like that, there’s that vernacular of punk, pop punk of the early 2000s and that vernacular applied to different sounds I think is what makes us up. When we’re writing a song we do breakdowns the way a punk band would do a breakdown, a pop punk band would do. Like everyone stops, it's just the vocals, like that’s a punk thing to do. 

 

Matt said he’s not a trained vocalist but that plays into the sound that the band strives for. According to Al, 

 

[A] We have the vibe of hey we’re in a basement writing a song and it’s just that rawness that we're leaning into, I don’t want it to sound bad but we want it to have the rawness. 

 

[M] Regional dialect is something that we have. We have a sound that is kind of local to Kalamazoo. It’s in the dialect of emo, for certain. 

 

[G] It’s tight, it’s bright.

 

Matt said the lyric content plays a role in making it emo.

 

[M] For me personally, there's a lot of focus on dread of some sort. 

 

[A] And then, vowels, I think it comes down to vowel sounds too. It’s the subtle things that make genres.

 

[M] I always wanted it to be really cheerful, really exciting music with just the most dead lyrics. I use a lot of disposition and wordplay to not give people an easy way into the lyrics unless you really want to do that. If you just want to be happy and listen to the music and melodies it’s fun and it's a good time. 

 

[G] I love emo because usually the lyrics are sad but the instrumentation can be so happy and you can hear the release, we’re talking about our struggles but this is the release of that.

 

[A] One thing I want to add to the lyrics is that it’s so shitty that it’s funny. Saturdays is perfect at that where they say something super sad but it’s just funny. My friends don’t like me…

 

[G] And I don’t like me too. 

 

[A] It’s funny you know but it's pretty sad. 

 

Saturdays at Your Place is another local band that plays on a lot of the same bills as Nothing New. 

 

[M] I like to think of them as our band boyfriends nowadays because we’re just like in love with each other. I first met Esdon from Saturdays years ago. We got this old polaroid of Esdon chilling at a Mute City Show. He was a big fan of Nothing New and he came up to me, he introduced himself and told me that he wants to be in a band like nothing New one day, or he just wants to be in a band in general. When they started playing together and I recognized who he was it was amazing. They just kind of took off around here and it all came back to me at once like, that’s that guy. There was one person I feel like I kind of had an impact on. 

 

[A] The first time I saw Saturdays was at Lucky 38 in the basement, we had played on a bill together, I didn’t even know who they were and they played like second or third and I’m watching them play and I was like guys we can’t follow these people

 

[M] This was a monumental moment because I was outside and Al comes out and looks kind of shaken which doesnt happen very much and he’s not fucked up or anything. He comes outside and he’s like dude I haven't been nervous like to go next in a long time

 

[A] Probably like three times 

 

[M] Like we’ve been playing here forever, and we know a lot of the people and we’ve just been around for a long time, so we have our bearings and then to have some other band pop up…

 

[A] Play music really close to ours and then it feels like a personal attack when they just step on your throat and they say we can do it better than you so it was pretty jarring, so if you can’t beat them, join them. 

 

[M] It’s a huge benefit, we’ve reduced our set up on stage so that we’re using like pretty much the same thing. We still have very distinct sounds but we can go just like that. 

In fact some of their favorite performances to witness have been Saturdays at Your Place shows.

 

[A] I’ve been to two proper concerts I guess and everything else is just house shows or bar shows. I don’t want to keep on smooching on them but Saturdays at Your Place, I don’t know my favorite one, maybe at the Glowhouse or something like that they played a show and it’s just I don't know. The funny thing about them I mean I’m not shitting on them, but they are kinda just standing there the whole time they’re playing, it’s not like they're jumping up and down but for some reason their music is just so powerful live. 

 

[M] It is so dissonant to listen to the songs vs being at the show and how I’m kind of hearing it in my head because I am so hyped up. Esdon he’s a bored kind of guy, he doesn't have a lot of space to move around there because he’s singing and playing the bass, I totally understand his conundrum so that energy

 

[A] That’s also just Esdon too. He’ll be moshing with the crowd and then he gets up after the song and says thank you guys, that was really nice, thank you. 

 

[M] I mean they’re midwest emo, you know that is a midwest emo kind of thing. The nerdier these guys get the harder they are going to fuck. They are going to just shred your face off. 

 

[M] I hate it when they go first before us because I got to chill, I will hurt myself. 

 

[G] I got a concussion watching Saturdays, I almost passed out last time I watched Saturdays, they get me going. And when you make eye contact with one of them and you’re singing the words they’re just like you know, you know what I’m feeling right now. 

 

[A] We do the same thing when they are in the audience too, we always make eye contact with them. 

 

[M] They are my anchors out there. The thing is I never went to a lot of shows until I started performing them, I don't mean to separate myself from people or anything but I have never really been a show goer, I’ve always wanted to play them and it is a lot different being at a show and being a performer. 

 

[A] I think that is what it is with Saturdays. The Ghost Bunnies do the same thing too, like somehow you are an interactive part of the show. As a musician I always feel like I want to be interactive in music and I always didn’t like that watching a show I feel like I’m just standing there watching them play music and I want to be playing music, but like the Ghost Bunnies and Saturdays at Your Place where it's just like everybody’s a part of the song. 

 

[M] It’s a feeling that comes from playing in basements I think because there is no stage, there is no difference in level between you and the musicians, they are a touch away, you could punch them if you wanted to, if you really hated their music that much, you could interject. And I’m always down for people to do that, I want to be heckled, I want you to help me with my stage bits, whatever yeah beat me up I’m really kind of a masochist. 

 

[M] It’s about having a different kind of approach to going to shows, never really having an idea of what shows are supposed to be like, just a couple here and there, and then just doing it and hoping that it goes well. 

 

Since they’ve been living in Kalamazoo since college they have had access to house shows at their fingertips for years. 

 

[M] We’ve been here for a long time, and we’ve seen some changes. Obviously we’ve just got to address the thing like Covid happened. 

 

[A] There was always a carryover between venues until Covid and then every venue stopped and then new venues come up, so then it was kind of a clean slate thing

 

[M] Kalamazoo is a great scene, music is just kind of ingrained here. It is just small enough of a town that it has this, I’m gonna speak for our area of expertise, midwest emo, it has a real home for that. When I say regional dialect that’s the kind of thing I think comes out of Kalamazoo a lot, with great respect to all the other awesome music that comes out of Kalamazoo. Sometimes we don’t get on a bill because there are too many punk bands or too many emo bands already playing it because that’s just kind of the lay of the land. 

 

Al said he thinks the scene has shifted towards being more accepting as of recently. 

 

[A] I feel like the old scene, every band hated each other I feel like. I felt like there was competition in a really destructive way where there's this underlying fear to be poppy, there was a fear to make lyrics that were catchy. There was this huge push to make music junkier and junkier and junkier. Then after Covid it was just like we’re here to entertain people and we're here to have a good time and that's the thing about Saturdays that really opened my eyes, it’s like you can just make the music that you want to make and we want to make music to sound like a pop song. They go to their mixing guy and they go we want you to mix this song like a pop song and I feel like three years ago, you would be, not kicked out of the scene but people were gonna judge you for that. 

 

[M] While I’m saying that emo is a lot of the dialect around here there was also a lot of pressure to maintain that almost you know and have every act be in that vein or go down that vein. There was a lot of cultural restraint in making our music before for sure. 

 

[G] One more thing I’ll say about the Kalamazoo music scene is when we play with bands in other towns and cities a lot of them want to play Kalamazoo, there’s something attractive about it and it goes out to the surrounding areas, so it’s got a glow to it. 

 

[M] We do have a big reputation, and still get bands that come through like we played with Bugsy a little while back and they told us we heard great things about the Kalamazoo house scene and we want to come out here and it’s crazy to me after two years of Covid after nothing going on that someone is still hearing that reputation.

 

[M] When we were running Mute City we probably threw 150 shows maybe, 200. I’m just ballparking here. It was a lot, we were running five shows a week, four shows a week, three shows a week and I never ever once reached out to a touring band. It was all hearsay, they would come to us, we heard about your venue we got pushed here, can we play. The craziest one was that band from the UK the Runup, they played our house. It’s like how? They’re just like we heard Kalamazoo has a good scene. You know, it's the people, the people who come to the shows are great, they love to get down. We have that tradition that is growing and growing of making sure these musicians can get to where they need to go and get to the next place, whether that’s through donations or buying merch or by doing whatever, people want to support bands that come through here. Plus we have a giant pick of the litter of any band you want to play with, and lots of different kinds of bands and if you can’t find the one band that you're looking for then this band can maybe find the other band that you are looking for, so it’s just a good network. 

 

Nothing New spoke on some of their musical influences. 

 

[M] I’ll find a song, I’ll show it to Griff

 

[G] like 70 percent of my music comes from Matt

 

[M] It’s this kind of economy because I show him one song that I like and he goes and listens to everything they’ve ever written and every band that every member of the band had ever been in and he comes back and he’s like you don’t know all these? I’m like no

 

[G] I remember when I was in college and met Matt, it was right around when we started the band he showed me a band called Queen Moo and that just broke a barrier for me because I didn’t know much midwest punk stuff and ever since then I’ve just been addicted to it like he shows me these bands and I’ll find bands that they are influenced by or similar to and then I just go on deep dives so lately it’s been Feed Me Jack, Truth Club, Origami Angel that kind of stuff.

 

[M] We’re into a lot of emo bands from the early 2010s that didn’t quite make it. I would say the big ones are There, There, There, Glocamora, and Aldranon. 

 

[A] We’ve never had really the same influences all of us

 

[G] Which is a good thing I think, brings new stuff to the table

 

[A] I think now, we have the ability to be like this song right here, let's try to kind of make it sound like that, like for Scrapbeak it was kind of like, There, There, Therapy I feel like. Where it’s just like it's going to sound like this, where we make a song with that kind of palette, and I think that was helpful a lot. 

 

Originally, Matt wrote most of the songs, now it’s more of a collaborative effort.

 

[M] Oftentimes I just sit and strum for hours and hours and hours until I get something I like. 

 

[A] He’ll come up with something, usually vocals and like one section on guitar going into another and that’s usually the nugget and then he'll come to us with it and we’ll just jam it out. I feel like I’m the band asshole when writing a song

 

[M] Al’s the stickler

 

[A] I am the one who’s like not good enough, not good enough, uh two more times there, played that too long

 

[G] It’s annoying sometimes but we need it

 

[M] It’s really good for me because I hate writing by myself. I really love being in a band. I feel partially responsible for getting that seed out there, at least I have before. It gives me a little bit of relief to be like I know they can interpret this in some way and pick up the pieces for me. 

 

[G] I think it’s crazy how Matt writes the lyrics and everytime he sings them to us 

 

[A] They go right to your soul

 

[G] Like I am going through the exact same thing, so I think through our music and our friendship we have become very similar people in some ways and we go through similar things and it comes out

 

[A] That is something to mention, we’ll write a song and Matt will be shouting over the guitar and bass and the drums and we never hear the lyrics and then we’ll be sitting there recording it and I’m like that’s what you fucking say, and then the next time I’m playing it live I’m like, these are too fucking emotional to me. 

 

[M] I don’t usually write down lyrics or anything I just keep them in my head and people will get mad at me especially after we record songs and I still haven't written them down and I’m just like changing them still and they're like what do you say there, do you say faster or louder which one is it in pop or something, and I’m like I don’t remember and I don’t really care they both work. 

 

[G] Me and Al will sometimes do a lot of separate stuff where we just go and dig deep into the parts and fine tune everything

 

[A] Griff and I go through every drum fill all that kind of stuff so I know what he’s going to play so I can play my bass around it and we’ll do that to every song, we’ll go back to songs we wrote six years ago and do it too. It’s just making sure that we’re on the same page when it comes to the in between, the fills, and the vibe and how loud we are in a section and that kind of stuff. 

 

[G] You’d be surprised by how much that little stuff affects it, one time Al mentioned to me like hey you got to try and match the vocals here like the rhythm of the stuff Matt’s singing, and that was so eye opening to me. 

 

[M] They majorly function as a section

 

[G] Since marching band

 

[M] and then they’ll just say to me, Matt, you just play what you’ve been playing. They write around me, I’m spoiled like that.

 

[A] We write it on the basis that you’re going to play the same thing everytime. 

 

[M] I can get so behind because I’ll come in and they have a whole lingo that goes back to marching band. You know, their own kind of music theory. I don’t know what they are talking about, 

 

[A] It’s not just us! All three of us, we’ll have that lingo and I love the lingo so much just because we’ve been doing it for so long together. But we’ll be like I think this is a cock. Big cock. We just have that kind of lingo for a lot of things

 

[M] I was gonna say we as a band greater we have our own lingo too and I think every band kind of ends up developing their own one. It was kind of resistant at first just because we had to learn how to talk to each other and I came in, I had been playing with myself for years and years and I just wanted to speak in theoretical terms but it kind of molded into what we have now. 

 

They described their backgrounds in music theory.

 

[A] I started out with listening to metal and stuff like that and Metallica was my big thing and what I loved the most was like what Griffin and I work on all the time is just the little things, like the cymbals matching the vocals and stuff like that so that’s my first stuff. 

 

[A] Every KISS song, there’s two verses, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar solo, verse. chorus, I always thought that was the coolest thing that you could deconstruct something, so I thought that was music theory for so long was that stuff that they actually don’t talk about in music theory. 

 

[A] And then when Matt and I get in a band together, he blew my mind on chords and that you could be like this is in the key of C that means that there’s F and theres G and D minor like that stuff opened my eyes on proper theory, or I guess it’s jazz theory to be honest, but chord names and stuff like that then just experimenting and just sitting there and trying stuff out like I would plot electronic music in high school just on midi and stuff like that and just plot midi and just testing out chords and stuff like that. And I always have crackpot theories on this would work with that chord because of this reason, then he’d try it out and it doesn’t work and he’d go aw shit nevermind. And then he’d go well how about because of this reason and it works, and then he’d go well if that’s true then I can do this to this chord and that chord and then I just do that constantly and that’s my hobby I guess. 

 

[G] I didn’t start thinking theoretically til later on, like I learned rhythm theory in marching band but I didn’t learn about tonal stuff til I minored in music in college so I learned some there but it really confused me still, but these guys they should write a fucking book like they know so much and so I’ve learned most of my theory from them.

 

[M] I started piano lessons when I was about five years old, honestly for the first five years of lessons I didn’t really get any theory at all but then I was switched over to a teacher who taught me about blues and that just opened up a whole door of like how you can just talk about music without actually having to play it which is the main tool the main reason that we use theory. 

 

Though they have had their ebbs and flows with song writing…

 

[A] One thing to mention is we went four years without writing a song or one that would stick at least so there’s a big gap of time like we're done writing all the Lettuce songs, except for two of them, when Next Week came out. And so now we're working on an EP, were recording it all in my basement and were trying to be a little more smart about how it's going, and me as an audio engineer now I'm a lot more in tune with you know getting my ears mixed up, like you can’t work on a mix for too long, stuff like that. Just being smart about mixing. 

 

[A] And Scrapbeak came out two weeks ago, like oh my god I drove myself crazy again but you know I think it's just going to happen every time I’m just embracing it now. There’s just always going to be a moment where I’m on my knees in tears like it’s not going to work. 

 

[M] We came back together after Covid and I had scrapbeak kind of starting then, I had been moving into a new place and I had been just not really in a home that I felt at home at. So I just kept all my stuff in boxes it was just like a transitory place, so I wrote this big song about moving and having all your stuff stored away and never taking it out and a year later here we are I’m moving in again and the song comes out. In the interim of that though, Al brings up failing. I don’t know when you started writing that song but

 

[A] When did I start writing that song? The day I sent it to you guys. 

 

[M] Yeah he’ll start writing a song and it will be like that he wont sit on it for very long if it’s going to be a nothing new song. If it’s not going to be a nothing new song then it will be an Al Craig song. 

 

[A] If I wait to show it to them then I will write all the parts and then it's too baked and then I don’t want to show it to them because then I’m sitting there going no play the bass drum right there, that kind of stuff because I thought of everything at that point so I try to go as little baked as possible. 

 

[M] You did bake Failing, failing was pretty fleshed out. 

 

[A] Just an intro verse chorus and then some ideas on what to do. 

 

[M] Yeah I guess it was just like the verse and chorus, the thing that’s funny, I just want to mention that Al’s been doing lately with his writing is he’ll write a lot of that stuff and he’ll do a whole demo where he’s playing the drums he’s playing the bass, he’s got the guitar and he’s mumbling or just like moaning something, and he’ll send it to me, like with failing he sent it to me, and I listened to it over and over again and I was just having hallucinations about what I thought he was saying

 

[A] Everytime, dude, does this have any lyrics?

 

[M] I’m like are you sure you're not saying something there because I’m hearing things. But those things that I heard that I swore he was saying or implying some of them ended up becoming the permanent lyrics

 

[A] That’s how I write lyrics, because that’s meant to be the lyrics then. 

 

[M] Then we have the third track tired which that song was written years ago. 

 

[M] We just want to release stuff while we're playing it so we can have people singing the words while we're still in love with the song and we haven't moved on and written new parts for ourselves. 

 

[G] I can say that on this EP I feel like I’m playing the music I want to play. Not that I didn’t feel that way during the other projects but between each one we’ve evolved and I really like what we’ve evolved into and I can pour myself into it more. Like with the first two projects I really was thinking about what I was playing the whole time and getting really technical because I was still learning a lot of stuff and this one I’m way more comfortable so it's more like I want to show this emotion I don’t just want to think about structure and the technicality but I want to show what I’ve been feeling for the past few months in these drum beat, like the way I can feel it when I listen to my favorite drummers. Like they are trying to tell me something and I kind of know what that is. 

 

[M] With this EP in the process of making right now we’re a lot closer together on our influences

 

[A] To me, Next Week and Lettuce etc. are so different. They are just completely different ways of writing a song but the people I talk to I don’t think they feel the same way. I think they hear what we are in both of them. So I sit here thinking how different scrapbeak is from anything on Lettuce etc. and I don’t think other people think that, I think they go oh it’s nothing new doing nothing new, which I think is good, but it feels different from a theoretical standpoint, I think music theory standpoint. 

 

[M] When somebody finds us, and they listen to all of our stuff it's timeless and it exists in that bubble and it’s like okay this is everything and this is what they are, but for us it exists in all these different time spaces. This new stuff makes me think of 2019 to now. 

 

Some of their goals as a band have changed over time as well. 

 

[A] If we’re talking six years ago, I just wanted to play music that was fun. I do remember having a goal, we were playing for a few months and I was like I want to play at fucking Bronco Bash and then we played at Bronco Bash like the next year, which is funny like peaking early I guess. 

 

[M] We were like sophomores in college we were like man Bronco Bash would be awesome they’d probably give us money. I just wanted to play, I just had always wanted to be in a band, and I had been a performer before that but it was all public school kind of things and talents shows and whatever, not what I wanted. All I cared about was playing in front of people and playing music that I wrote or I had a hand in writing. 

 

[G] My goal has always been to play like the drummers that I listen to, and get as close to them as I can and to just stick around with these guys. 

 

[A] I’d say right now my goals are to just have passion projects, like lettuce etc. destroyed me as a person, just the stress and shit and I guess that’s just what I want at all times is just to be destroyed by some project that I’m working on 

 

[M] It feels good, yeah. 

 

[A] And just having the feeling of playing it live for the first time and being like, we’re done, and moving on to the next thing, that’s what I want. 

 

[M] I was just saying to Griff the other day, I don’t ever feel like we need to make it or be anywhere because as long as were struggling over what were doing and then coming out with something at the end and feeling good about it it’s always a reward no matter where you are in the food chain. 

 

[A] I like thinking about what I would think about this time in the future too a lot, and the thought of what will i feel about lettuce etc when I’m fifty, and then I see Esdon at guitar center he’s like hey I got the mixes back from our EP and then we listen to them in the car and I just think oh I’m going to remember this forever. 

 

[M] As long as we’re struggling over something. It’s kind of a dim way to look at it but we’re making emo but it’s a struggle and the exciting part is when we get through the struggle. If we were just making the same stuff and just settling on a formula and we were just wanting to make money off of it there is an avenue to do that, and we do want some of that because we want to make enough money to do this and support ourselves, but at the same time is the important thing is not about getting anywhere in particular. It’s just about overcoming the mountain, playing the pyramid scheme, having 250 people there, selling out on shirts, it doesn’t matter where we are at, we can do that at any point and that will always feel good. All of our friends were there, it was so awesome. We’ve been playing for seven years and this year we left town for the first time really, we played one or two shows maybe out of town before in our six years together before that, 

 

When asked about origin of the name Nothing New…

 

[A] People ask about it. We spit around a lot of names for like a year, we could never land on something and the funniest thing about nothing new is that it's the first name that nobody had a comment on. I can’t remember who came up with it. 

 

[M] I think it was me, I heard it in a song.

[A] It's in so many songs. My favorite is psychosocial, this is nothing new, who needs another mess.

 

[M] I wrote a very early song and nothing new was a lyric in it, I need help but that is nothing new. I don’t know I just like the alliteration of it, after we had been going over so much stuff it was always just a matter of yeah, it’s not a matter of if everybody likes it it’s if nobody doesn’t like it. 

 

[A] It was the first one where we were all like yeah okay. All the other ones were like ah no, then it makes me sound short and I’m not short. 

 

[M] One man short, Lake inferior, I was fond of that but it was already taken and we felt insecure

 

[A] I hated Lake inferior

 

[M] There was always some dissonance and then Nothing New was just like yeah. Rolls right off the tongue it’s kind of funny, when you talk about your music its like yeah, were nothing new

 

[G] It relates to my life. I do the same things, I work, I play music, I eat, I sleep, I do it again. It just relates.

 

It looks as though Nothing New will continue creating music for the foreseeable future.

 

[M] We started October 2015. We have taken a couple of breaks and there’s ebbs and flows here and there but for the most part I couldn’t consider a reason why I wouldn’t do it in the future. 

 

But here is where the interview ends because...

 

[M] We’re tired, I’m tired right now, we partied last night. 

 

[A] You did? I didn’t. I had an omelet then fell asleep on the couch. 

 

[M] Al makes the best omelets

 

[A] I had a duck omelet this morning!

[M] We want the people to know that Al had a duck omelet this morning and also listen to copacetic by alec craig, listen to the new alec craig single Junk. Listen to Scrapbeak, check out the cool music video with our awesome friends at Mother House Music that we did. And then we did our own little silly music video that you would also really like of us sitting on a couch just in this fashion. And look forward to more stuff coming out, we’ve got recordings ready to go real soon, we just got to get it just right.