Why don't we start with your guys' name?

 

[G] Via Ferrata [laughter] 

 

We're here with Jimbo and Gordie. Via Ferrata, how'd you come up with that name?

 

[G] We didn't. It was actually... It's August Body. Body?

 

[J] Bady.

 

[G] Bady.

 

[J] A band called Via Ferrata was some hair-brained idea that we had when we were like 12.

 

[G] Yeah.

 

[J] And then we just had like six of our friends, like the only people we knew who wrote music and we just put them all in the same room. August happened to be in a mountain climbing and knew of a climbing technique called Via Ferrata, which I guess this is like super destructive. I guess they drill iron bars into the face of mountains and destroy them so that novices can scale the Italian peaks or whatever. Makes a pretty minimal sense, but it's nice because it doesn't really... because we have no attachment to it. 

 

[G] It's not our fault

 

[J] Yeah, it's good because it's not our fault. We have no attachment to it. That helps.

 

What does it help?

 

[J] I already tend to kind of get fixated on ideas and expectations. That's something I have to mitigate constantly, and I think having a name that doesn't really have any significance to us, it's just some random...shit that our buddy knew about. It reduces those expectations and preconceived notions. 

 

[G] Originally too, we were trying to be anonymous... for a second.

 

[J] We were so wee.

 

[G] Yeah, it was really weird. We covered our faces and everything. We did like a Twitch livestream show for the Velvet Cowboy.

 

[J] Which Eve set up actually.

 

[G] Yeah.

 

[G] And at that point it was like, well, our entire bodies are on the internet so...

 

[J] But even that, at that time, you know, we would have been 13 or 14.

 

So when did you guys start collaborating with each other?

 

[G] Fucked. Fucked. 

 

[J] We must have been 10. 

 

[G] I think I was eight and Jimbo was nine or ten.

 

[J] Yeah, I would have been nine.

 

[G] And we met through the Kalamazoo Academy of Rock.

 

[J] Which at the time was run by Jeff Mitchell, who we love dearly and still keep in touch with. We were just students of his who would get together in a room and play whatever cover songs we wanted to and it was great for us.

 

How are you guys doing?

 

[J&G] Great, how are you?

​

Alright, thank you.

 

For context for the listener... We're recording this interview on the porch of Doom City. It's about, probably like, 9:20 on a Monday night.

 

[J] We've got wildlife and wind and blokes abound.

 

And Wyattlife.

 

[W] And me, bruh, lurking in the shadows.

 

It's a breezy night. You hear the trees rustling. It sounds like there's more people involved in Via Ferrata's initial stages.

 

[G] Via Ferrata, the original thing, it never really went anywhere or did anything. We were just kids trying to have a spot to make music or whatever. We only knew each other because of the Kalamazoo Academy Rock. After a while, that just sort of fizzled out a couple of years before COVID...

 

[J] A year, probably.

 

[G] A year before COVID, and when COVID happened, me and Jimbo worked together in his basement every day, pretty much and just took that name back and so it was like a completely different thing when it came back to just me and Jimbo.

 

[J] Gordie had sent me this synth piece that they put together on their little KORG and asked me to play drums to it and then the next time we saw each other, we spat out this really kind of jubilant, harsh noise album in a couple of days that we released on Bandcamp and called it Saturated Angel and the Trail Mix Salesman with some bizarre picture of my 14 year old abdomen as the front cover.

 

[G] Oh my goodness.

 

There's like a Polaroid on it too and it's like two heads bowing. 

 

[J] That's right. I found that on the side of the road.

 

[G] Yup. It's like a tornado safety manual.

 

[J] It was a tornado safety manual from some business and I found it.

 

[G] It was that. I liked that a lot.

 

[J] That's a great picture.

 

[G] And then actually the final thing was made by our friend Jackie.

 

[J] Yeah. Jackie pushed the words over it.

 

[G] She put words on it, it was very cool. That was just like fucking around in the basement.

 

[J] Yeah. 

 

[G] With little Snowball Yeti, Yeti Snowball, I said them backwards. It was like in the middle of the room and Audacity because neither of us had any of the idea what the fuck we were up to.

 

[J] All of the music we currently have released kind of falls in line with that. It's kind of just like scattered, fragmented ideas that we half-hazardly recorded in my basement.

 

So do you guys remember meeting each other in the Academy of Rock?

 

[J] Yeah, because Gordie was put into my little session band. This was like the thing that really solidified a musical connection. We were learning Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads, the version of it from Stop Making Sense. We were trying to kind of replicate that and when the song ended, Gordie and I were just playing still and the rest of the band was kind of trying to jam with us and they eventually kind of fell off and didn't want to do it anymore and they were annoyed with us, but we played for another like five minutes. We weren't playing anything that even seemed closely related to the original motif. It was one of the first times that I really got to improvise with somebody else like in a truly spontaneous and musical way. I think after that, what if we just did that all the time?

 

They would pair you with random people?

 

[J] People who were in your same skill area, because the idea was musicians aged eight to ten, and you kind of got into a point where you learned kind of the technical fundamentals of your instrument, and then they'd put you in a band with other people who were like you and then the way that you grew from there was learning these songs together and learning how to play with other musicians was the whole goal.

 

[G] Yeah. Covid actually interrupted it and made it... like it was fucked for me because they tried to implement some online Zoom band practice or whatever, and I could not fuck with it in any way.

 

[J] Yeah, I don't think we liked that as much.

 

[G] And that just kind of threw everything off, no fault to anybody. It's just, you know, what happened and then like I was saying, that led to me and Jimbo in the basement after a couple months.

 

[J] Yeah. Ultimately, that was a really good thing.

 

[G] Right. Yeah, it forced us to do something else, do something more really because you do hit a ceiling in a program.

 

[J] I would add that you say hitting a ceiling, but really like the way I feel about it is we got out of it what we were supposed to. Like we got what we needed to get from it. The progression then was that we would just continue doing it on our own.

 

Was it mainly covers and stuff that you would do?

 

[J] Yeah. I think I brought in a couple songs that I wrote and it never really went anywhere. When we started making music in the basement, it was like, oh wait, we can do this on our own and we can do whatever we want.

 

[G] I would say if you're looking for like a moment of realization, it would probably be in the basement.

 

So were you consistently playing keyboards and synths and KAR?

 

[G] When I was a kid, I hated piano lessons or whatever because they just took me to a church and it was just old lady and it was fucked. I hated it. They made me dance with people. It was really weird. I did not like it. I like faked sick not to go a lot. But then, after a while my mom found Jeff Mitchell and I just had piano lessons with him and he didn't give a fuck about the books or whatever. The learning sheet music and just taught me like Jerry Lee Lewis tunes or whatever. I was super into that because that's fun. You know, he lights the piano and fire in the movies. That's sick, but since he owned KAR he just put me in a band. I was super into the keyboards because of Jeff Mitchell. Shout out to Jeff.

 

So you guys have been playing together for like upwards of 10 years then?

 

[J] Yes, that's accurate.

 

Do you feel like you guys have a decent amount of intuition between each other and kind of knows what the other one's putting out?

 

[J] Dude, it's crazy.

 

[G] It frightens me a little bit.

 

[J] We were- Yeah, last night, last night actually we were at K college in one of the rehearsal rooms with a couple of our friends and there was a piano and this little shitty drum set. I recorded this strange free jazz jam we did and there are moments in there as there are in our live sets where there is no time, there is no harmonic structure in place and we play the exact same phrases over each other at the same time and if we're really in the spot, these things happen sometimes for minutes on end where we completely sync up. I know exactly where Gordie's going to stop. We can have these extended moments of silence and be in total fluid conversation. 

 

[G] It is conversation yeah. 

 

[J] Like I completely, I feel like when we're playing, I completely understand Gordie's phrasing tendencies and the way that they'll pause for a second or the places they want to put some emphasis and I understand exactly how to weave through and around that without ever having to really think about it.  We've only noticed lately how much of a consistent theme that's been. 

 

[G] Yeah and it feels crazy. 

 

[J] It feels insane. The instruments we're playing couldn't be more different especially when Gordie is performing with a synthesizer, a monophonic synthesizer and I have drums and things happen to line up in that way is really kind of magical.

 

[G] Yeah and I feel like doing the bullshit in the basement, like that first thing.

 

[J] Yeah if you listen to that recording that's still up. That's really all it was was us kind of establishing our musical identities through one another and that's what it continues to be. We still make loud noise and basements and we still sometimes record it.

 

[G] We kind of go through cycles of really not having a plan at all when we're going to play a show, like not talking about it or doing anything until we show up and then playing just trying to scare everyone and people do go away and people don't like it and then some people come and they scream too.

 

[J] It's spectrum of structure and the set may fall on any point in that spectrum kind of like to keep it dynamic and fluid and spontaneous that way. When we choose to go into a show with no musical objective other than to play until someone tells us to stop, it's just as much preparation in that we come in carrying with us our ten years of friendship and musical partnership and anything that's happened to us that day and it all just kind of once we kind of tap in and we're in a kind of improvisational headspace it all just sort of flows out at once, and like Gordie's saying about people's reactions like I think maybe Gordie you'd agree that I'm not discouraged when people leave. We've had shows where there was 30 people in the basement and by the time we end our set, we have five people there and those five people fucking loved it. Those five people were in it the whole time and really happy to hear what we were doing and the other 25 they'll be back to see in the next band or whatever, and that's okay. It elicits a reaction in people that some people want to dance, some people want to scream, some people want to throw themselves into the pole and lie on the floor and some people want to not be in that room anymore. It's every bit as dynamic for the audiences as it is for us I guess is the objective and if we can accomplish that that's good.

 

[G] There's points where I want to don't want to be there anymore either. There's some of the noises that we've made that just really fucked up to hear.

 

[J] Yes. Even though we're the ones doing it. Like occasionally. Jesus Christ. This is terrorism.

 

[G] Like the speaker's right in my fucking face and I'm doing it to myself.

 

[J] It's like a kind of masochistic experience.

 

That's what I was wondering about.

 

[G] And it was the Greet Death show, like after that my nose was bleeding so fucking hard, because of how much I was just exhausted crying from it. I don't know why.

 

[J] For context, we made an album which is fully recorded and we are in the process of mixing right now which hopefully we can have out in early March, although I shouldn't be saying that because things change, but we made this album last year. We made it with our friend Wolfgang who's a guitarist and really good at like texture-based ambience stuff and we made it with Maggie Heron at La Luna who is brilliant and we love her to death, and then we played these songs from our album at our live shows for three or four months. We were booked to play The Runoff with Greet Death. We were excited like that's a bigger band and we played our... We played those songs the best we had ever played them by far and then as soon as we finished, I remember hitting the last note and Gordie and I both froze into this ball and like I was just tweaking and we had simultaneous panic attacks. Gordie left the stage immediately. I couldn't find them I had no idea where they went. They went home. You went home I think. That was fucked and I was like trying to pack up my shit and Greet Death all the people are really tall and I was intimidated by them because they're cool and they opened for Liturgy or whatever the fuck and I was just like... I was tweaking out. It was like we dumped out all of the emotional baggage that came with these songs from the album and after that show it just never sounded the same. It was never as fun. It was never as challenging. Every subsequent execution of those songs just felt more and more trite and unnecessary. That was kind of the breaking point.

 

Is that where the kind of improvisational noise sets came from?

 

[J] 100% more free form sets with less musical objective because then we don't go into it for this stress and emotional baggage about how the song is supposed to be and if we don't do this shit right and it doesn't work and not have so much unnecessary attachment to the end results. We can come as ourselves and do what feels right and true for us and the rest kind of just falls in place if we really have pure intentions. The lyrical content of those songs, like when I write lyrics I think a lot about it and it's really strenuous and taxing and emotionally draining for me to do and I like to think that the stuff on the album is well-written, and maybe it is, but doing that in front of people repeatedly and frequently feels in some of these cases it feels re-traumatizing. It can be a very triggering experience like the last song we played at that Greet Death set is about self-harm and I was just sharing it with all these people and then it ended and I was like, I can't cope with this. We just freaked out. I was trying to smoke a cigarette. I couldn't find my mouth. It was fucked. It didn't work. Nothing worked anymore.

 

[G] We'll probably play a show when it comes out to play the album and then-

 

[J] That'll be the last time we ever tucking touch those songs for fucks sake. That's why it's taken so long really. We got so sick of interfacing with these past versions of ourselves that mixing it was just such a chore. It's like we can't be stewing on this any longer. 

 

It sounds like it doesn't come from necessarily an irritation of the songs, it's more so about the feeling it provokes?

 

[J] Yeah I mean, it's some of both but I would say it's mostly the latter. Sorry, I'm talking a lot.

 

No it's good.

 

[J] I feel like I just like unspooled a thread and fucked up your line of questioning.

 

No!

 

[J] No! Wrong! Dick!

 

Do you remember anything about the first thing that you guys made together?

 

[G] It was Duo Trio.

 

[J] Oh, that's right.

 

[G] Duo trio? One night, I don't know what was going on, Jimbo had to not be at his house.

 

[J] I think my parents were out of town and I was twelve and they needed me a place to stay.

 

[G] So he stayed over at my house and I had this Hammond B2 organ that my grandparents had found at a church for 300 bucks so we went and got it with the U-Haul just a couple of months earlier and then Jimbo brought his little guitar and we recorded like an EP with my phone on GarageBand with the guitar and tapping on the table sounds and it's called Duo trio and you could probably still find it on SoundCloud somewhere, but that's the first piece of music we ever put out and put together. It was like in the summer of 2019. We were just little guys.

 

[J] 18.

 

[G] 18. That covers actually just fucking insane.

 

[J] There's songs about Gordie's cat and- Oh my god, and that day, it was at your dad's house and your dad was having the furnace serviced because the furnace wasn't working. Come to find out in the middle of our recording-

 

[G] He was in there. He was like- he was doing himself- just him banging around. 

 

[J] Yeah. And yeah we heard all this like hammer noise and he came up the stairs with the guy that was with him and they were like fuck! This is ridiculous! They were just like tweaking out and come to find out there was a dead possum that had crawled into a ventilation hole and melted. So we had a song called "Jelatinous Possum Funeral" which was like our processional march for this dead possum. I would say, if you're looking for the time that we decided we could make music together a lot, it probably would have been then. I mean we weren't super tight even at that time. At that time, we had only really been seeing each other at band practices. It was like, you know this is your buddy who makes music with you like you might as well just go stay there, and I was like nervous it was two o'clock. I was like ugh, my mom dropped me off. 

 

Seems a little bit like divine intervention in a way. Like you guys just got put in each other's path and consistently had that happen.

 

[J] Yeah.

 

And just connected through music over the years.

 

[J] Yeah things like that tend to just work out.

 

Were people in your family musicians as well?

 

[G] My dad was not a musician but he is extremely into electronic experimental shit. That's really mainly where I got my interest in music was from his playing techno in the car on the way to school or whatever. 

 

[J] He had a WIDR show for a while. 

 

[G] He was on WIDR. He was-

 

[J] Might still be.

 

[G] Well I don't think he is on WIDR anymore, but he said the show called Strange Attractor. Yeah, he was just really into that kind of shit and so my weird came from his being around and all that shit.

 

You said more techno kind of music?

 

[G] He loves electronic music and like he constantly buying Bandcamp records of these obscure like German producers I've never heard about. And then I come over and he's playing it and I'm like fuck you got to send me this shit man? It's just insane. I love it. I don't know. Yeah he's really into it. Really into all that.

 

[J] My dad played drums a little bit growing up. He had like bar bands and cover bands and stuff like that. I was about seven when he got his drums out of storage and it was the first time I got to play a real drum set and I really took to it. I was never very good at the guitar and I found that I could hit the drums and there was this like immediate acoustic response, this resonance that I was obsessed with. For me being seven, you know, I was like I can hit this as hard as I want and there are no consequences for my actions and I can just play and I can do anything, make all this racket and all my little silly little seven year old ideas I could make them happen in real time. Anything I was hearing on the radio or hearing my dad do in the basement with his friends, I could replicate these sounds exactly if I really put my mind to it. I wanted to sound just like whatever metal band I had just gotten into or I wanted to sound just like Elvin Jones or whatever jazz somebody like Keith Hall would later put me on and it felt so tactile and achievable. All these ideas were so possible and accessible to me. It was the first time I felt that way, like being able to just like flail your arm and have an immediate resonant response that had like some kind of musical consequence and making tons of noise in places where noise typically is not, made me feel like I had something important to do.

 

Do you feel like it's important to have a natural built-in rhythm or do you think that's something that can be built over time?

 

[J] I think any kind of pre-existing aptitude, talent especially is one that people talk about a lot, I think it's all just kind of illusory that feels like a construct, that feels like a barrier produced to stop people from doing cool shit. I don't believe in that at all. I think if the idea is in your head, then you have the ability to execute it.

 

Why do you think that barrier exists?

 

[J] I think that everybody in some way is kind of discouraged in some way at some time and made to feel like they're not worthy of their own ideas or the beauty that can come from executing those ideas. I think that's something that is really hurtful and it's easy for people to carry that with them their entire lives. We meet a lot of those people who carry that feeling forever and that's all they know and they teach that to their children. It's a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. It's something my uncle taught me when I was pretty young but a fixed mindset is the idea that things are and must necessarily remain this one certain way for the purpose of some kind of stability or security or necessity that will keep things in balance. It's a coping mechanism for getting the world to make sense to you and a growth mindset is a choice to engage in a kind of modularity, a more challenging approach to learning that allows you to kind of interface with aspects of self or surroundings that might otherwise be uncomfortable. For that reason, finding those places where you can choose to slide your brain in and check out what's possible. Music has always been a means by which I can do that and my parents encouraged that, like a lot of parents wouldn't, but it's so necessary. A true state of play that fluid inconsequential, or I guess it's very consequential, but obsession, is a really magical way to learn and music happened to be the first means by which I was able to access some of that.

 

That's something I intended to ask you guys about is whether music was your first form of self or creative expression or if it started some place else?

 

[G] Well yeah actually my dad is like insane artist or cartoonist. He loves to draw all sorts of weird shit and all my life he'd draw with me, so I don't know I just love to draw and all that. That was the first bit of creative expression I guess that I had and I still have. Some of the covers or art you can see with Via Ferrata is my drawing.

 

Did you draw the quirky funny looking dog?

​

[G] Yeah.

 

[J] Haha Abe. That dog is real. He's a dick. He hates me. His name's Abe. 

 

He hates you?

 

[J] Yeah, he's an asshole. We were best buddies for the first like 

 

[G] Yeah like, day.

 

[J] I don't know. It felt like a full month that he was with you guys after you adopted him and Abe was my guy and then the pandemic and I didn't see him for a little while and by the time I came back, he fucking hated me man. It was heartbreaking. Remains so.

 

[G] He's still an asshole to everyone.

 

He's an asshole to everyone?

 

[G] He's a chihuahua. I don't really know why this is such a surprise. 

 

[J] You saw the dog on the sticker like it's pretty clear this guy fucking sucks.

 

[G] I mean he's pretty gorgeous, but he's like a rat.

 

[J] I love him to death. I love him. He hates me. It's a good balance.

 

[G] Drawing. I'm hoping to do a lot more with that all the time.

 

It seems pretty cool that your dad's in the techno and drawing and he got you into that.

 

[G] Well he's incredible. Most of getting into synthesizers and all that was really like, well I don't know, he loves that shit and he never really did any of it and so I was like oh fuck it I'll do it. I will do it. So like I would learn a new thing with a synthesizer. I started with GarageBand on my phone with Jimbo like I said and got Logic like the little trial version on my Macbook and I eventually bought it and every time I learned something new with anything like that I would tell him and be like dad, you gotta check this out. He fucked with that. I mean that's what he likes, and sometimes he would like dumb it down and he was like that's cool but I knew he fucked with it. Yeah and so every time I eventually got into Ableton because of Jimbo for the longest time I did not I was not trusting that. It looked funky and I was an apple head, you know. 

 

[J] Apple head, apple head!

 

[G] I don't have to pay for updates and all that, you know, but then Jimbo let me... There's some kind of like...

 

[J] There's some glitch, you can put two computers on your Ableton license.

 

[G] So I'm sharing just Ableton license and have for a couple of years now. I have like a little solo thing that I do which is all electronic music and techno, which I am in love with pretty much because of him, I guess, definitely because of him. He played that shit all the time, along with all sorts of other stuff. He loves music so much you know, which is pretty much I think why I do as well. And it was kind of the reason you don't really have to have any paper in front of you that tells you what to do, like you just do it. That's why I liked what he was drawing or whatever because he would just do it and no sketching and whatever. Yeah. Yeah, definitely shout out dad.

 

I love that idea of like the excitement over not having an outline, whether that be for drawing or for music.

 

[G] Even if you don't really like it at first, if you just keep doing it all the time every day, you learn something new every time you do it and then you can use that knowledge and you don't have to think about it. You just can sit down and then you have a canvas it's very nice. 

 

Do you feel like inspiration to create new music and art in general, I guess, does that like come intermittently for you or is that something that you find yourself being disciplined about setting a specific allotment of time for?

 

[G] It used to come in waves just like I would spend so much focus on making an album or project and get really into it and meticulously do everything and then eventually get fucking sick of it and just kind of have people in the room with me while I'm making music on my own and give me ideas and I'll play things when I'll record them, specifically Maggie who makes music under the name Prismer. I haven't burned out once when there's someone else in the room.

 

[J] Yeah. That's super real.

 

[G] Because they can say something or play something. Maggie is also incredibly talented at just idea starting.

[J] Yeah, you're got to talk about that guy.

 

[G] Yeah, you do. Oh, that should be another Void interview, Prismer. Check them out because his discography is insane and he's actually extremely successful on Bandcamp for Bandcamp standards. I am insanely proud of this guy, but he has also just like expanded the way I think about making music and I guess just like the burnout is gone for me at least for the time being, knock on wood, because like just having someone there is just there's a reason to do it too, like also I'm not going to just fuck off and watch Better Call Saul. I'm going to do this shit. I'm going to make music. 

 

[J] I watch Better Call Saul and I'm done! 

 

[G] Fuck yeah. 

 

[J] Inspiration is a word that I've cut out of my vocabulary. I find it to be unhelpful means of measuring my will or want to do something. If I'm trying to measure my will or want to do the thing that I already want to do, then by that point it's already gone. If I'm thinking too hard about what I want to do or how much I want to do it or how I'm going to allocate my time, it's like then nothing ever gets done. I just need to sit down and do it. *Burps* Oh my God. Fuck!

​

[J] We recorded that um, good. This fucking lemon beverage um anyway, Limonàde. Yeah, I've definitely had a lot of issues with it in the past being just really depressed and not feeling like my ideas were worth the time that I would put into them, but I've come to understand that writer's block, I guess as it's commonly called, is just a failure to recognize the value and intrinsic beauty in the state you're already occupying. For me, the way I think about it is any emotional state or otherwise personal means by which I'm approaching the thing I'm doing like that state alone is valuable enough to document. If I can just state it, then that alone is special and worth the energy and consideration that it takes to do it. I used to write songs kind of meticulously and think really hard about every detail and how things tied together and that's how we made that aforementioned album was like, I had this big idea and I wrote it all down and we rehearsed it and it's just like- 

 

Which album are you talking about?

 

[J] The one that's not out yet. It'll be called Blue Nectar Hospital, if that helps, but that's the way that those seeds kind of germinated and it was so draining. It took a year, I was pissed the whole time. It took longer than a year, it took a year to write, it took a year to record, it's taken a year to mix, fuck! It's that fixation, it's that obsession, that kind of unhealthy obsession. It's not obsession, it's attachment. It's the attachment to a perfect state or precise definition of self that I think is just so destructive. 

 

[G] That whole process is fucked, but it's so fun.

 

[J] It was really fun, but the parts of it that were fun, were the parts of it when we were in the room doing the shit together.

 

[G] That's what I mean. Really making the songs. 

 

[J] But, for me that wasn't most of it. That's not really the memory that I have of this project. I decided that for my mental health, if nothing else, I needed to let go of that. Which is the best decision I've ever made because now I make things all the time and I'm fascinated by the sounds that I make. If I've got the balance right, then my art should be just a byproduct of my existence. It just happens alongside everything else. It's just a way of being, it's a way of filtering out the excess and continuing forward. It's a pump and dump scheme, it's all crypto. Fuck, what does that mean? Just the act of routinely and frequently engaging with your own ideas, it's a form of tactile metacognition that you can't really get from other things. It's a necessity for me at least.

 

I feel my happiest when I realize that I'm just naturally involving creation as a part of my everyday life. I like talking to people and seeing if that's similar to them and then figuring out how to work through those slumps and I think we're kind of answering that right now. It's just to work through it, pour it into something and honoring the state that you're in, but also not deterring yourself from creating while you're in that state.

 

[J] Yes, right. There's a degree to which you suspend your disbelief. For any idea, there is a stage at which the thing is kind of formless and maybe it sounds like shit, ya know. It sucks for a second, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it sounds like. It just matters that you did it. You don't even have to like it. If you did it, then it happened for a reason and that is enough for it to be good art. It's only cool if it happens. The only difference between an artist and a non-artist is that an artist chooses to do the thing. Emotion is the base motivator of all human behavior. Choosing to appreciate how you're feeling for long enough to express is necessary. Everybody needs that. It doesn't even have to be art, but I think if you're really doing it with intention, then it almost always is. Is that true? I don't know. Who cares?

 

I find some truth in that. My brain went to gardening for some reason.

 

[J] Sure. Yeah. Exactly. What's it matter?

 

It may not be like an innately creative endeavor, but you can make it that way.

 

[J] But it is! You're growing shit. You're making plants happen. It's amazing! Just do that. Why wouldn't you do that? Like you told me the other day about how you were kicking the shit out of this crockpot. Like, I don't know why you wanted to do that. You might not know why you wanted to do that, but you did! It doesn't matter why, it just matters that it happened, like that was a choice you made based on how you were feeling and that's awesome. Like why can't everybody get this in on a crockpot when they want to do it?

 

I think that's the biggest thing is so many people live in a state of hesitancy.

 

[J] Yeah. I mean, I've definitely been that person. I was definitely 15, 16 and jealous that Gordie could make music by themselves. Like, well, the fuck am I supposed to do. It's like, how about you just do anything at all ever?

 

It's kind of cool to hear from people who have been doing and pursuing music for so long and as a younger person, you have less of that inner voice telling you to stop doing what you're doing.

 

[G] You also don't really have to know why you're doing it in the first place. I knew I liked what I was doing, but also it started something I really didn't want to do I just had to do because it would be either that or soccer and I knew I fucking hated soccer. The lesser of the the two evils, getting forced to dance and then, I don't know, like as a kid everything is really very simple.

 

[J] Everything's colors and shapes... It still is. 

 

[G] You have to go where your parents drop you off. You got to be with a trusted adult, you know? All that shit is important and you don't really have to know about it or care about it, but it's just like, I'm at the band room. I'm going to play some Santana songs.

 

[J] I'm here I might as well play Soul Sacrifice for 45 minutes.

 

[G] Yeah. I know I'm having fun because this is great. You know, like it's just really simple. Now, just being not a child, you know, life isn't simple, but that still is... 

 

[J] It remains pure. 

 

[G] I don't have to think about anything. I don't really don't have to think about it at all, but Jimbo hits me up and I'm not doing anything where I'm going to probably go play music, make music.

 

[J] That's what I was going to say is we don't burn out together anymore at all.

 

[G] Yeah.

 

[J] But it's like, when somebody else acknowledges the sanctity of what you're doing, suddenly it doesn't matter if you thought it was good or whatever. If I didn't have Gordie, I, wouldn't have gotten to that point, probably wouldn't have made through some of the more difficult times where I felt incapable of doing anything. Our friendship and musical connection has been the thing that keeps a lot of that momentum up for me. I never liked school very much. It was kind of easy for me to go to school and just kind of check out and do nothing, feel nothing all day. When I discovered that there was a domain of play in which I could endlessly learn and experiment without ever being told I was wrong, there was something about that that was just like, and remains kind of endlessly gratifying. Like for me personally, it's just a need. It's only music because it always has been, because it was the first thing and I got obsessed, and I remained obsessed. I wouldn't say it's a choice.

 

What would you say some of the goals for this project is?

 

[G] Making stuff, making stuff all the time. It's a great that we have this platform to do it because well it's what we do. We make stuff all the time.

 

[J] Make music, make friends.

 

[G] Make music, make friends, make art, make shows happen.

 

[J] I wouldn't say there's a specific goal in mind. We just feel like we need to do it and it's just what we do and it's what we've always done and so it just keeps happening. I go to work. I make money. That's fine. It's not tremendously important to me, but it's, it's just like I do that so that I can keep making music and I want to make more music and I want to make more friends and I want to do it more frequently. The only goal is just to keep going and these opportunities are opening up for us to do more. You know, really like, we don't need to have tons of people at our shows. We haven't thought about money in years. Like for, for the longest we were donating, you know, the meager sums of whatever house show donations we would get, we were donating that to Food Not Bombs. We've been playing house shows with touring bands, they get all the money, as they should. We don't, we don't even get anything anymore. It doesn't matter. The only reason for any of that to be on our minds, the only reason it has been on our minds at all lately is just so that we can we can have these opportunities to do it again. I made music today, I worked on my songs today for the same reason that I needed to eat or sleep, it was just so that I could get up and do it again tomorrow. You know, but that's the only reason we would ever want to get in front of more people. You know, it's just so that like if more people are seeing it, that means we have more opportunities to do it. That same uncle that told me about the growth mindset idea said to me when I was a little that if results are the goal, then the process isn't pure, and that blew my mind for a while.

 

I wanted to talk a little bit about the Kalamazoo DIY scene and your connection to it. What do you appreciate about it?

 

[J] Sure.

 

And maybe on the flip side too, what do you think could be different for the better?

 

[J] Yes. People like us, there's a lot of them, there's a lot of us and we need a place to showcase a work in progress and meet people who are like us to learn from and support one another. That opportunity to do that is about as valuable as anything can be. The things that I would like to see improved in the Kalamazoo scene are the things that inhibit that and stop it from happening as organically or as peacefully as it otherwise would. I go to shows because I want to know what other people think, how other people feel and I like to see that shake out in real time. I went to a show at Recreation Collective the other day, which is a new space on the second floor of the Park Trades Center, which is lovely. It's incredible. I hope we get in there sometime and it was the perfect version of that. It was three great bands, one of which was from out of town they were called Luckplunge from Grand Rapids, really cool people. You'd love that band, you should check em out, but it was the perfect execution of that. The people who were there, who bothered to get to the fucking Park Trade Center, who found a place to fucking park on West Kalamazoo Avenue and asked somebody what was going on and where to get in, are the people who wanted to see that and many of them were not musicians and many of them were and some of them are artists and some of them were just there because they heard that there was music in a building. I felt like it was a very comfortable space full of really genuine, kind hearted people and after each of those three sets I felt like I better understood the wants and needs and intentions of the people performing. Art is fundamentally and intrinsically good. There's very little you can do to fuck that up. I mean people do it, people do it a lot. There's abusers there's shitty people in the scene, there's people that get into the scene to do creepy shit and prey on others and fuck those people all of them, right, like we want those people out you know that's why the address is private, you're not welcome here. This is an inclusive space for people who wish to engage their empathy to see the beauty in someone else's world, you know. That's what it's for. What fucks up the scene is when people want something other than that. When people are worried about money, when people expect to get a cut of the donations, all those donations should be going to Food Not Bombs or they should be paying for some band from out of town to fucking eat that night. 

 

[G] Originally when we started actually going to houses and playing shows, I was still like 14 or so and I didn't really feel like I was supposed to be there extended. I just sort of showed up in Jimbo's car and played then went home. Before I was just a nervous little guy, didn't want to stay, didn't want to talk to anybody really, just kind of did my thing then got out of there, but yeah now through Graham and other wonderful people that we've met and played with, I really do see how it is flourishing at this very moment, like people are having lots of fun. People are showing up and it's great. I love it. 

 

[J] The bands that played at that Recreation show, for the record, were Happy Day, incredible. People are sleeping on them. They don't get to play enough. More people in town need to see what they're doing. They're one of my favorites right now. Happy Day, Luckplunge was from Grand Rapids, and Katy Needs a Life. That was the perfect storm I felt like everybody there was there because they wanted to give and to receive. It was a perfect balance of that. Rory from, well Rory has been in tons of bands but currently they're in Memory Cell, also one of the best bands in town. Rory explained it really well. They said that the basement shows exist on a spectrum of house party to music venue. The intentions of those spaces are different, right? Sometimes people just want to muck about and have fun and get high and that's cool, you know and then sometimes people are really dedicated to creating a space where people can share things and be together and build a community and I would say the ladder is the kind of the space that we're really trying to engage with. Not that there's anything wrong with having a party. The fun of it comes from when I feel like I'm really experiencing somebody else's ideas in a really true and uninhibited way and it feels like I'm afforded this opportunity to engage my empathy and find new ways to relate to people and that's the kind of personal growth through community that is very rare and we're lucky to be in a place where there happens to be a lot of people who are interested in that. 

 

When I listen to your guys' music I think things that really stand out to me are, like especially in the recordings more so is like sampling and texture. 

 

[J] Sure.

 

I don't know if you guys want to speak on that kind of stuff at all. Where you like to pull sampling from? 

 

[G] I think the big idea for High Crimes and Misdemeanors was like... it was all samples pretty much. 

 

[J] That was the plenderphonics exercise from 2 years ago. 

 

[G] Stealing and theft. 

 

[J] Yeah, the whole idea was like the two of us are pillaging the internet. We were both feeling pretty unsettled and unwell and it was a means of reclaiming our surroundings and feeling a sense of autonomy when it felt kind of inaccessible. Sampling can be a way of introducing aspects of our familiar and average surroundings and manipulating them to feel like something else. 

 

[G] I feel like it doesn't even matter what it is, like what it is you're sampling. The reason for sampling at least for me is like, messing with samples can give you so many different sounds you can't get from any instrument or any synthesizer and it's like if you use those sounds combined with those synthesizers and drums or whatever, makes crazy shit. With Object, that one I'm sure you can just google what it is and figure it out because they're just kind of-

 

[J] Tossed in there, yeah.

 

[G] That was just pretty much me and I was just getting my feet wet with it, you know. That to High Crimes and what we're doing now and what were planning to do after this album, is kind of like in that thing where we're using it as instruments really. 

 

[J] That's the other thing about not overanalyzing our intentions is like the track I worked on today, I sampled Sade like a lot, the song Feel No Pain. I sampled that song because I love that song I feel drawn to it for some reason. While it's happening, it's not terribly important why it's happening. If you feel a connection to a piece of audio then because of that connection by virtue of that feeling that thing is then yours, you know?

 

[G] I think another thing, Prismer Maggie put me onto this super heavy, but he showed me like he has like terabytes of recordings of just him walking around with his phone and recording cars and people talking. He puts that into the music and because of me learning that now I do it as well and it's in a lot of what we're working on. It's like cars vrooming past or like sirens or whatever like its that's what I live in already, we go outside, gotta bike everywhere cause my car drowned, so I've been outside everyday you know and that's what I live in so why not put it in as a place to build everything else off of. 

 

[J] That is just as real a connection to your aural environment.

 

[G] Sure and you can fuck up that audio as much as you want, or as little as you want. It's just useful, everything. You can use it all. 

 

[J] And the part you mentioned about texture, something that helps for me when I'm working on that kind of thing, I think about the unspoken aim is kind of creating a world that couldn't exist without your input, because that's where we live anyway, you know? We already live everyday in a world that wouldn't be exactly the same without your input. So using familiar pieces of audio to accomplish that sonically, it's like you can give the impression that you're in a wholly different space. 

 

[G] My favorite thing recently is a thing that Maggie showed me is he recorded the walking signals downtown like the 'Wait' you know that thing? Like you hear that all the time, you don't really think about it but it's so familiar and you hear that in a song or somewhere your brain immediately snaps to it like holy fuck what the hell that's like you know. That was great. I heard it in a song he used and I was like that is brilliant especially if the street was like Lovell or something that's just cool it's just part of where you are. You can take anything you ever wanted with sampling you know, steal it all. 

 

[J] Of course and it's a means of engaging all your senses, it can make your experience more tactile and weird and squishy and powerful. Squishy and powerful is good. You have the ability to build something from scratch that changes your perception of your existing surroundings, which is really good. Sampling is good.

 

[G&J] Sampling is good.

 

[J] Sampling is good. I don't own any synthesizers that are able to do the things that Gordy can do with synths or the things that I want. Like I can't access these sounds with an instrument. So it's not uncommon for me to take like 20 different samples of shit I found outside or me playing playing guitar or piano or vibraphone or drums and create some kind of gigantic texture synthesizer out of that just in my -- in the Ableton project and using effects in various audio routing and manipulations to build something that is, I guess, synth-like or allows you to access sounds that aren't otherwise possible. Yeah, so some of that -- some of the manipulations are pretty heavy. Make things unrecognizable.

 

I think that it would be good to just talk a little bit about, you know, what's to come for you guys.

 

[G] We're working on -- like, every -- almost every night we worked on a bunch of -- just insane sample electronic craziness. Jimbo is so talented at making like shit feel like it's attacking you from everywhere and very glitchy and clicky, but yeah

 

[J] Wait for that Boobah mix to drop! BOOBAH!

 

[G] That was all Jimbo's programming that I just sequenced it, he played the drums, but he made all those sounds. Like, that is Jimbo's craziness -- once this album is done -- like, I'm excited to put that out there because it is, like, very different from -- 

 

[J] The album we're shooting for early next year. We have a project going on with the Dormouse Theater, which I'll tell you about later, but that's exciting, too, that'll take some time. Then, the idea is that -- we're working on these tracks in the background. We want to keep playing shows. Like, the last show we did was at Brendan's House, the Abyss, Brendan Infante's a hero, and we had the stems from our Boobah mix. The Boobah remix, we had it on Gordy's computer, which they were remixing with effects and different transitions in real time, while we improvised against it and that was the whole set that took 30 minutes, and we want to keep doing things like that with the tracks we're making now and then once we've got enough of it, it's short mix tapes. You know, we want to put out little smaller chunks of this shit just like -- as we're like, offloading our old stuff because we have a lot of catching up to do. We haven't released any new music, recorded new music since 2021, September of 2021 and that hasn't been the focus for us in a long time. 

 

[G] Except for this album coming out.

 

[J] Except the album coming out so-

 

[G] And the thing with sampling is like all this new stuff we can then --

 

[J] Yeah, then we can sample that. We have the stems. We have all the stems.

 

[G] And remix all that live-- so like, if you were to come to a show and see Via Ferrata, you would hear the remixed track of whatever played. And you know, that's an experience.

 

[J] Yeah and if you were at that Abyss show, you've seen that already.

 

[G] Yeah. You go and you look it up and then the songs are there in a more structured fashion and you can recognize that from what you just heard, but it's not the same, like, that's kind of the idea

 

[J] Yup.

 

[G] There's not really familiarity right now. Like, you can't go to a Via Ferrata show and then go look us up-

 

[J] And be like, oh, that's the same band I saw last night. This album that's coming out is going to be like, this is what we were up to for the two years that we didn't release any music on to the next thing. Like, fucking finally. We want to move on pretty quick. 

 

[G] Yeah. That's the goal. And yeah, it's fun.

 

[J] Yeah, and it's fun.

 

[G] Good point, man.

 

[J] If I have anything to say to people, it's definitely that what we were talking about, about encouragement and being energized to create things like that really feels like the most urgent path. And it stems from -- it stems from self-love and necessity. What I'm excited for is seeing the scene, the individuals in it, and then also the rest of the factors informing the great art that we're seeing come out of town, like seeing that kind of shaping around the basic -- that basic premise of like, we're doing it because it's good and necessary and helpful for ourselves and for each other, it's a special thing and it makes us better people, too. It's so cool.

 

[G] Yeah, I like when people have a good time at the show and I understand when they don't have a good time.

 

[J] Yeah.

 

[G] Because I, like I said, sometimes we fuck it up. We just have a fun time playing. There you go.

 

[J] Yeah.

 

[G] Yeah.

 

[J] Do it now, do it more.

 

I also just -- before I forget, like I want to reiterate that meeting people like you guys creates a space for people like me to feel safer creating and to share that with people.

 

[J] That's the whole shit.

 

That's something that I recognize in you pretty immediately. I could just tell there is like a stirred up kind of energy. You got to move. I see your little bursts. And it just has always like energized me and made me want to curate something out of that same kind of energy that I do feel too.  I just hope you know how appreciative I am of both of you

 

[G] Thank you. You too. 

 

I am excited to exist in this realm with you guys and you know, curate a healthy environment of sharing and collaboration.

 

[J] Yes. That's the whole thing. That is the whole thing. You're so right. And I'm so glad you said that. Yeah, that's real. It happens because it has to.You know, I think we all kind of need it.