Interview with Stray Fossa
Interview with Stray Fossa
On self-producing, the recording process, the joys and pitfalls of touring, and the definition of “sound”.
Since 2018, Charlottesville indie group Stray Fossa, comprised of guitarist Nick Evans, drummer Will Evans, and bassist Zach Blount, have been creating mature, intricate dream pop that transcends their traditional three-piece arrangement. Lately, they’ve been busy in the studio: September saw the release of Laridae, the band’s second EP, and the follow up single “It’s Nothing” hit streaming services earlier today.
Between regional tours, recording sessions, and local shows, Zack Holden was able to sit down with Nick, Will, and Zach to discuss self-producing, the recording process, the joys and pitfalls of touring, and the definition of “sound”.
Zack Holden: So, you guys live together and work together in the same space. Do you feel that this arrangement helps or hinders your creative process, that is always being together and living and working in the same place?
Nick Evans: So, I think that we have realized that there are different creative processes that we just like in terms of song creation. And, sometimes it’s good to have individual spaces, and in our previous house we didn’t really have that luxury because we were all kinda sharing one living room where we recorded everything, and the bedrooms revolved around it. And so there’s wasn’t much escape from that space. Now, we’re in a building where there’s an upstairs sorta attic that has our studio set up in it, so downstairs is a bit more isolated from that. And, because of that, it allows us as a band to be more productive just by virtue of having closed off space. But, I think we’re still trying to figure out how best to finish songs depending on how they originate. So, if one of us has an idea that we put together in our bedrooms, sometimes that idea gets really fleshed out ahead of time, sometimes it doesn’t get fleshed out at all, and often times the songs that are more bare minimum from the beginning come out better because the band has more stake in putting it together in the studio. So, it just depends on how a song originates, but the space is really important for that I think.
Will Evans: I would maybe add just one thing that I think that in general it’s a huge advantage because we hear from bands all the time about how hard it is to schedule things, and living together that’s pretty easy because we can just like “Hey, can we do this now?” Or “Hey, I have an idea.” And that in and of itself is an advantage. That was one of the things we thought of when we started this project back up. [We figured] we should just live together to make things easier on that front.
Zach Blount: And when we were moving to Charlottesville, we needed roommates and we were like, “Hey, that’ll work.”
ZH: One thing that really impresses me about your music is your professional production quality, especially for being an indie outfit and doing it all in your own space. So, how would you say that you achieve such a high quality self-producing in your attic studio?
Nick: Well, Will produces everything, and mixes everything, and engineers everything technically. I guess we kinda spend time there. Like if we’re doing a session where it’s just bass or just guitar Will’s not necessarily always present. So, I guess then we’re kinda engineering ourselves. Other than that do you [Will] want to take it in terms of “How did you do it?”
Zach: It’s been incredibly valuable because Will can do everything. We’re not spending money. Will can produce on his own time.
Nick: Will can produce in the car. A lot of stuff is done in the box, so Will is producing on tour.
Will: I sense that a lot of people think that you need a lot of fancy gear and a lot of fancy equipment. The longer we’ve been doing it, I’ve found that it’s often better to work with less. We’ve had the same interface that we’ve been working with since we were twelve; we’ve had the same set of mics and drums that I’ve been working with since I was fourteen.
Nick: We did get a new computer recently, though, that had to happen.
Will: Yeah we got a new computer. [Laughing] It was running kinda slow. Off a 2008 laptop. Get more than ten tracks on there and it’s not working….I think we all, as a band, we’re all really into the sound and how different textures can add or take away from a song. So, because we’ve all been working on training our ears for that our whole lives, so it does feel like there are multiple stages of production to make sure that songs don’t come across as sounding like half-baked or demo-ey or over-polished. Yeah, that’s a cool thing. For our last EP [Laridae], some of the better sounding songs, we sort of felt rushed to release, and we thought initially that they were not finished. But then we realized that that kinda added to the rawness of the song. And then the ones that we thought were gonna be really good ended up being overproduced in our opinion.
Nick: I like what you said about how we’ve been working with the same gear, at least for recording purposes. So, you just kinda get to know what you have, and you get to know the tools at your disposal and how to use them the best. Versus having everything at your disposal, it’s like having too many options in a grocery store, and it’s like, “What do you pick?” I like that point; I think that was a really good point. We’ve gotten really good at using the just kinda adequate, I mean, pretty standard gear that I guess any major studio would have—
Zach: Because we set our own schedules and we’re not paying ourselves hourly for studio time or anything, we have plenty of time to find those textures and things that we’re really working on. It’s certainly a luxury, and we’re very lucky.
Nick: It is absolutely a luxury, but it can also be very paralyzing if you get so bogged down in the weeds about something really [minor]. That was just to your point that some of the songs we put that we tend to like the best now in retrospect tend to be some of the ones that were the least worked on.
Will: It does get back to your first question about how does living together help you because having a setup that is ready at any moment is really important for just getting stuff out there ‘cuz if you have to set up a drum set and set up the microphones by that point you’re hungry and you want to quit. You know, you just wanna get your idea down. But if you have it all ready to go…
ZH: You guys have gone on some pretty substantial Southeast and Northeast tours now. What would you say are some of your favorite and least favorite things about going on tour?
Zach: Well, I love going on tour because we’re usually hitting cities where we all know people from high school or college, and it’s always great to—
Nick: It’s crazy.
Zach: It’s a wild time because you’re trying to get there you know meet new people and spread the music and all that, but it’s always nice. I always feel like I’m coming home to a new city because I can see people that I’ve been missing, and we’re lucky to be able to travel to work essentially. So, that’s definitely a pro. A con is that we eat a lot of peanut butter and sandwiches in the car.
Nick: I get sick most tours. About halfway through these past two winter tours I got sick.
Will: Yeah, eating healthy is really key.
Zach: I don’t get sick, so it’s great for me.
Nick: [Laughing] Salads.
Will: We’ve talked a lot about the touring thing because we’re a really small band. So, for us, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, we’ve been realizing, to go on extended tours to new markets where we know there’s no one going to be waiting there for our music. But, it does make sense to have done that in the past, where you have to get started somewhere, and you have to have a history of playing, and you’ve gotta get that experience because otherwise you’re gonna suck playing live. So, there’s a bit of a chicken or egg situation there. Nowadays, we’ve realized that we can probably afford ourselves a little less time playing on the road, or when we’re on the road just making sure those plays are more worthwhile. So, NY, DC, Richmond are always good. Midwest, we just did that one, and it was a new market so…
Nick: It’s always hard going to a new place, you know, that you’ve never played before. NY has always been good to us, and DC is always fun. We started touring pretty much off the bat, probably prematurely. We started a tour within months of starting to play together again. It was the idea — and rightfully so — I think musicians feel like if they’re not on tour then they’re not doing their job or their not doing it real.
Zach: Spend thousands of dollars, and they come back in debt.
Nick: I think there’s something to be said for, you know, it’s a lot of work to put a tour together. We’ve recently been working with a booking agent, which helps a lot, like a huge amount. But, even still. We’re having to help find support acts, and it just takes a lot out of you. It’s a lot of time that you could spend in the studio or writing. I think that, while there is definitely something to be said for going on tour to gain your chops up, I still think we need to do it. There’s also something to be said for just kinda during these short bursts, these kinda quick things regionally. Because regionally is what your building, regionally is who listens to your music and who appreciates it.
ZH: In terms of your recording process, is it common that you try something live before you record it?
Zach: We’ve kinda always done that.
Will: No it goes both ways. A lot of our songs are also demos that become final releases.
Nick: Sometimes we’ll do so much in the studio in terms of production and adding. Because, as a three-person band, ninety percent of the time we think about how we’re gonna play it live. And that definitely informs the writing process. But, I would say sometimes it kinda gets away from us, and then we have to rethink how we’re actually gonna play it live. And sometimes those songs get done, and then we have to think, “Oh, how are we gonna do it?” And so it’ll be tracks and sampling.
Zach: We have the underlying structure down, which settles live, and then we have to bring it back to Earth.
Will: We’re working on a new song right now that was a pretty fleshed out demo. By the end of it, we’ll probably redo the vocals. Nick just redid the main guitar. And that’s an example of a song where maybe a year ago we may have released it before playing it live for a bit. Like we released a song called “Commotion”, and we had never played that song live once. We just released it. But this song we have kinda played off and on for the past two months to month-and-a-half, and that has informed the creative decision going forward on it. We probably do that more often nowadays than we did in the past, which is probably for the better. Sitting on songs live is different from just sitting on a release, which really stales and you just wanna revisit it. But if you’re playing it live, it takes on new energy. It takes on new things that you get excited about, and that’s good.
Zach: I forgot that “Commotion” was like that. That was a frustrating process because we put out the song, and we really liked the studio version. Then, we started playing it live, and it was awful. It sounded so bad. It took us a while to nail it down and make it sound fleshed out.
Nick: As always, our biggest struggle is just that the minute you add one other element, we just have to figure out how to do it.
Will: But, we have started playing with tracks, which helps a little bit. We try to keep it pretty minimal, but it does help.
Nick: Sometimes it can be these teeny little things that just help take it. Just those teeny little elements that were done in the box or the studio that just help it.
ZH: What specifically — just out of curiosity because “Commotion” is one of my favorite songs by you guys — was it that was difficult taking it from the studio to the live version?
Zach: Well, there is an underlying acoustic guitar part that kind of gives it a lot of meat and texture.
Nick: Yeah, it’s there from the very beginning and never stops.
Zach: So, live it doesn’t have the acoustic, so we thought that something was missing for a long time. Maybe something still is, but we’ve kinda worked around it.
Nick: You also just have to accept the fact that it’s gonna be slightly different live, and that’s okay because it is the live version of a song. And I think that people go to — I would hope that people go — I go to concerts to see not exactly what’s on a record. Or I want to see it done live. I think also live people are much more forgiving, and since they don’t want to hear exactly what’s on the record, they're not gonna miss if one little thing is gone. But, as the musicians who put it together — and certainly as the producer who put it together — if you then play it live, and then you listen back (we record a lot of our rehearsal sessions) and think, “That just doesn’t sound like what’s on the record.” [Laughing]
Will: I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re a small, poor band who can’t afford in-ear monitoring. So, if we could all hear all of our vocals during our sets, then it would sound way better, ‘cuz then we could sing on-pitch. Like that’s a song where it’s like in the track there’s two of my vocals and then one of Nick’s vocals and Zach harmonies occasionally. And it’s all tight and locked in, but it’s doubled. So, because it’s doubled anything that’s off comes across so obviously to a lot of the audience. So, when we play it live, we don’t necessarily know if we’re singing it right.
Zach: We all sing lead for that song technically.
Nick: Which is somehow harder. I don’t understand the physics of it. It is harder than singing harmony, and I will never get that. Anyway, we’ve drilled that one, because it is one that we wanted to make sure that we could get live. And so we drilled it, and rehearsed it, rehearsed it, rehearsed it. We even figured out how to augment it using a track.
Zach: It works better now.
Nick: It’s funny how some songs are also really tempo sensitive, and so, you know as you have a new song and you get better playing it live or whatever on tour, it’ll settle into a certain tempo. And it’ll be more or less close to what you have recorded. But, that’s one song to where if it’s just slightly off it can totally mess up — at least you feel from your perspective — the entire performance of it. And the audience doesn’t really know why they’re not into it. But, if it’s too slow, they’re not into it. If it’s too fast, it’s a little bit too much. And so it’s funny.
Will: And I find that some nights I’m really into that song and some nights I’m not.
Zach: Depends on what we had for dinner that night. Or what mood you’re in.
ZH: On a final note, how do you feel you guys have grown since getting back together and releasing your debut EP in 2018, and where do you see yourselves going in the future?
Will: We have a lot of material, and I don’t know if we really have a direction yet...if that will ever come. [Laughing]
Nick: I think that one thing that we have started… When we first started, and as with any band that first starts, you feel that you have this need to find your sound and hone your sound. Whatever your sound means. And you say that we have a sound, which I think is really cool. One thing that we were always really struggling with because we have three different people with three different tastes — and we really are all writing — it kind of seems like there are so many different sounds. But I guess when it comes together in the end, it’s all been done by the same three people in the same studio, so maybe it is good to say that. I think we’ve come to terms with that it isn’t super necessary to have a very “one sound”, which is gonna happen if it’s one songwriter. They’re gonna have their workflow, their formula, their process, which works for them. But, three different people it’s gonna be three different processes, formulas, workflows.
Will: So, we’re never gonna get there. [Laughing]
Nick: So, we’re always gonna feel like if Will comes with a tune, I’m gonna be like, “Well, that’s not my sound.” [Laughing] That’s gonna be converted to the band’s sound, but I wouldn’t have thought about it that way. But that’s just part of the process and part of what makes it a band effort. And I think that it’s something that we will only become more comfortable with in the future, as we figure the collaborative aspect of it.
Zach: That’s the beauty and great struggle of this entire project has been trying to figure that out… And then just accepting that we won’t figure that out. And that’s okay. [Laughing]
Nick: I think it’s just that for better or for worse outlets want to see bands kind of hone this sound and on the record have this mature, cohesive thing. I think a cohesive message is important, but I don’t know… Listening to [the Beatles’] Revolver recently, that jumps around all over the place.
Will: Also, album cohesiveness doesn’t matter nowadays as much as it did back then. People only have the attention span for one song, and then they switch on to the next.
Nick: I think it’s important to follow the creative process and let it go take you where it’s going.
Will: It’s almost better to be in a band with multiple different sounds and songwriters because then you’re just more productive. And that’s what you need. You really need that.
Zach: There’s always something else to grasp onto and carry you to the next thing.
Will: Even if it’s something totally out there and not at all what you were planning.
Nick: To get back to your question about where we see ourselves going, I think that as we get more comfortable with that, it’ll become a more eclectic mish-mash of different sounds, whereas with the first EP for sure, we were trying to focus it on one kinda thing.
Will: But even then, not really. Like, “Sleeper Strip” and “Bear the Waves” are two really different songs.
Zach: The first EP we really just needed something online.
Nick: It was a learning process.
Zach: It’s hard to book shows if you don’t have anything to show for yourself.
Nick: We were also like, “Let’s try to figure out this whole home-recording thing.” So, that was our first home-recording project.
Zach: But, as Will said, we have a lot of songs in the works right now, so the short-term game is just to continue to get into the studio and get them out there. Also, tour when we can.
Will: I think that we’re excited about the new songs.
Nick: Absolutely. We’re revisiting some old ones maybe to re-release in a different way, and then we have some very new things. It’d be great to do a full length album, but the question is whether or not that makes sense nowadays. The question you have to ask yourself is “How much do I have to say at any given time, and do the songs all make sense together? Do they all kinda come from the same place?” Because throwing songs on just to hit that ten song minimum just makes no sense. And we have the mentality that as long as we have the song and we’re comfortable with it, we should release it.
Will: If there’s ever a point when there’s an audience who wants more, then you should put an album out… There’s no point in releasing a full-length album unless there’s an audience who wants to listen.
Nick: Or unless you feel that you have something to say. You’re of course doing it for yourself, too.
Zach: You don’t want to force it either way.
Be sure to check out Laridae and “It’s Nothing” on all available streaming services, and stay tuned for updates about future tours and releases.