Livestream with My Cousin’s Girlfriend’s House

https://linktr.ee/mycousinsgirlfriendshouse

Transcript

take two that was my fault uh yeah we’re going to start the live stream with a little tune

here everone a chance to jump [Music]

in all right we’re live on Instagram cool

all right there’s Angel thanks for

joining all right let’s get started here hello and welcome to the B weather rual live stream where we discuss music the local Lehigh Valley PA scene and Beyond bands social media and more today is Tuesday July 9th my name is Mike and I’m the guitarist and vocalist of bwe ritual I hope you had a great week and just a reminder to please like And subscribe if you like what we do here and a reminder to please go support uh local musicians by going out to see their shows speaking of we have a show this Friday at Bethlehem soals with nid Aran husbandry and tonight’s guest my cousin’s girlfriend’s house uh yeah so tonight our guests are Pete and Andrew of my cousin’s girlfriend’s house mcgh is a pop punk alternative band Out of Philly that mixes influences like Blink 182 Fu Fighters hot Mulligan and Transit they EP All for Love and all for nothing is out fully on August 7th but their third single is is due out next Wednesday and we’ll talk about all that and more Pete and Andrew welcome to the stream how you doing hey doing well thanks for having us yeah thank you for sitting through that and getting through that Tech issue there anything you want to plug right off the top just let people know where they can find you and of course I know you got a show coming up on Friday but if there’s any other shows too you want to plug go for it yes so we got uh I mean you can hear us any excuse me you can hear us anywhere that uh music is streamed pretty much uh band camp is cool too because there’s the option to to purchase it if you’d like um but anywhere you want to listen is cool and uh yeah so we got our our new single coming out next Wednesday but first we got the show on Friday where we we will be playing the new single for the first time live so we’ll see how that goes yeah uh and then we got uh the 19th in Harrisburg at love drafts micro Brey I believe here yet nah this is gonna be our first time out in Harrisburg so very excited for that yeah Mainland Harrisburg first time uh we played at um a place called hmac out there that was really awesome but I heard great things about love drafts to we haven’t played there yet so hmx big isn’t it that’s pretty yeah well we put there’s like a side stage oh okay but it’s still a decent size uh video screen lights awesome sound guide yeah it was a really great show so that was that was super cool I’m telling you Central PA is really kind of um coming up with their scene I think they have um they have a cool uh I think it’s Lancaster has Santander um uh something Bank venue but they they get like decent Siz acts to come through so I’m really starting to think that’s like I mean obviously there’s a scene there too but I feel like that’s really kind of played into helping them build up their scene out there have you um do you have any like kind of hot spots you found uh in your travels or places that really you resonate with the audience more than

others Andrew you got anything uh particular places I mean I obviously like if you don’t count Philly uh but we always have good times playing uh House shows up in Philly but uh our home away from home is definitely Long Island um we’ve met so many incredible bands at we’ve become like great friends with and um that’s yeah that’s that’s home away from home for us and we always love going back up there to play awesome uh let me just see uh here we got a

comment Michael C says the boys thanks oh man wait did I do that myself did whoa that was awesome that that’s wild yeah also I also want to thank um I I can’t I need my glasses so I’m sorry if I can’t read all your uh uh handles but uh CRS riffs J Project sorry Michael tumble weed uh photographer and uh um Chelsea thank you for joining Chelsea is part of narian heck yeah who will also be there Friday so yeah let us know if you’re gonna be playing any new tunes for the first time on Friday let’s talk a little bit about that um yeah so this is just you’re ready in the in the in the release cycle to finally unleash it on the world here and oh yeah we’ve been we’ve been practicing it for a decent while now I think we’ve been practicing kind of all the songs off the EP except for one that’s heavily like acoustic we have we need to start working on that one before we throw it into the rotation but we did a live session in Philly at a place called cart sessions um they they do a ton of bands but shout out cart yeah we kind of had to get it prepped for that and uh that was a that was a fun time but yeah I think we’re finally settling into it and ready to ready to rip it yeah we’re excited to finally play this song I think this like of all the EP songs this the one we’ve practiced like the longest so it’ll be good to finally get it out there uh I just want to throw up another uh comment here Michael C says wow New Jersey I’m sorry but that’s a no-brainer love you New Jersey it’s all right get right into it I love it beef uh okay so how about like let’s talk a little bit about because we’re um trying to get ready to ramp up to release anep as well uh you just want to talk a little about your process and when did you start [Music] um and then yeah just you know you’re so close now how that whole process is unfolded in what you learned along the way I would say we started well over a year ago like we were recording this EP last summer yeah in by June which means we were Pro I mean I remember writing stuff Pro what was last year 2023 so 2022 probably some of these ideas were starting to become uh ideas and we actually did two singles before we started working on this EP and there was thoughts at some point that we might be able to spin them all together into like an eight song EP record thing but that didn’t work out which was all for the best we’re glad we got those two singles out but I think all the ideas we kind of have everybody comes in with a couple ideas and we we kind of fleshed them out and I don’t know how to describe the process other than we jam it out in a room all together for for a while and then once we feel kind of confident that it’s coming together pretty well we’ll go to my basement and uh kind of demo it out on on Protools and and get it down and really start fleshing out like specific parts and different harmonies and stuff and um uh we record with our our friend Matt um who comes in and he does a little bit of pre-production too so once like we might demo it or even before we demo he’ll come into the live room and work with us to kind of just structural changes if be and kind of getting a fresh set of ears on demos that we’ve been or songs that only we’ve been working on one particular way so it’s nice to have like a fresh set of ears to kind of tell you if you’re like hanging on to something that you should cut or just any sort of fresh idea and um yeah then from there we kind of get into the studio and rip it out and it’s been a really long process but we’re really excited to have these uh coming out and I know everybody kind of operates differently in terms of writing and then recording so I’m interested do you guys do it kind of the same way or do you have a different process for your stuff um so when we started we’re like let’s just put out singles as we write them not as we write them but like as we feel like they they’re completed and we’ve recorded them good enough to to be like all right this one’s done let’s just try to evenly space out releasing singles and then we’ll wrap it up into an EP at the end and kind of release it as EP and we got through that point which was cool but then we kind of got behind [Music] um re-recording some things like I got stuck in that trap a little bit so then we recorded the new EP at the top of the year like we took two days our drummer had access to a studio he’s a um recording engineer so we jumped up there for two days and recorded four songs and then he mixed them like kind of on his own and uh yeah writing it was weird because uh you know we get been together for about two and a half years but um this band is like completely different than how it started like peoplewise music wise all that kind of stuff so it’s always interesting when you release a record like how it’s kind of a time stamp of not even who you are right now like who you were at that time and I don’t know if you feel the same way about that oh absolutely it’s definitely I mean Andrew you got anything anything to add yeah I the it’s just so funny listening back to yeah this I mean this current or this EP that we’re going to release and then um even just yeah going back and listening to our first EP and stuff like at the time we were like man like with the first DP like man these songs are so like difficult and um it’s the best we’ve ever the best songs we’ve ever written and then like we you know we got to practicing them and like we can play like songs with like our eyes closed like getting to practice this EP and writing this EP we’re like man like these are like so much more um intricate and I think that like it’s just our I think it’s our best batch of songs and like it just shows how like how far we’ve come as a uh songwriting group and how like oh how more complex the songs have gotten um um so it’s only uh uh only up from here so um and is that something you’re like um well how about this let’s go back to the top here I kind of skipped ahead uh because we kind of got on another um tangent there but um yeah let’s just quick jump back to the top are you both originally from the area or did you move in from somewhere else so I am from Bethlehem technically technically my mailing address is Bethlehem but I would I’m closer to like Center Valley uh went like Copperhead grilled the sales area yeah yeah yeah so I lived uh there you know my entire childhood and then I went to school at Temple in Philly and that’s where I met Andrew in the kind of kind of the basement scene there are two bands uh met at the time and long roundout journey somehow we I moved to North Carolina then I came back and we started this band but I still uh regularly go to my parents and honestly have gotten much more ingrained and like closer to the Lehigh Valley Music Scene since returning and and coming back and because like back in in high school and stuff I was not in Bethlehem as much as like kind of hang hanging over in Center Valley we would do some shows at a fire hall there and would play some shows at Planet trog every now and then but um really cool to get involved in in the Bethlehem seen and all the different venues and uh you know people there so I I we might have said Long Island’s our second home but like at least to me Bethlehem is definitely my first home but at this point in life it’s still my second home and got a lot of really good friends there uh yeah I would say be’s a second home to me now uh but uh to answer your question uh I’m from uh delare County so you know a little bit south of uh Philly but um yeah like like Pete said we met in college uh when my band was playing a show up at Temple and then he happened to come to the show and uh music brings everybody together I love it oh my God we were just talking about that the other day like uh um just by putting yourself out there and like here this this is what I like this is who I am you find these other crazy other people not crazy in a bad way like mindblowing awesome other people um yeah can you maybe just talk talk a little bit more about that because that’s such a good point um and well to even Branch it out to the other two uh members in our band who are not in the Stream Nate and Brian uh well Nate and Brian they they met like in grade school um so they didn’t meet through like the scene like that but uh Brian is a guy who I met through like other friends in high school after right after I graduated high school but we really stayed connected because we were both musicians and like both saw that like each other played and stuff and um we kept and I kept in contact with Brian since then and then um I played my other band played his his and Nate’s uh other band’s first show um together so we we’ve just been ingrained with uh by music from the start at least like from me and then of course you know meeting Pete through the scene and then uh I think I introduced you guys yeah I I know Brian was playing a show at the fire with oh yeah uh just The Architects I think so I don’t know if you were there or not Dre but I know that’s the first time I met Brian but uh kind of just bouncing off what Andrew is saying I go to this show it turned out so I was gonna go to another show that got capped so I had to go to this other show and Andrew’s band is playing there and it just so happened that their drummer Joe uh was going to school in Pittsburgh so they were having trouble getting gigs and stuff and we ended up talking and I ended up being like the fill-in drummer for you know Joe’s college career where I would play Whenever Joe couldn’t make it so that made our two bands and like my band at the time and his band uh really close to the I don’t know it just kind of a a really prime example of how music can bring everyone together because then you meet Brian through that and how countless other people that we’ve met just through this specific scene and then you Branch out with the internet too you we have we have friends all over the country who like some of like I just went to a show in Virginia the other day and met a band from Florida that we know just from online so it’s kind of cool how like yeah you find these people who get what you’re doing and connect you you connect with and then whether it’s online communication or in person it’s like wild but awesome feels like a home for sure yeah it is crazy how like like you’re saying how connected you can become with people without ever really like meeting them in person and and it’s cool that you can finally do that and put that face to you know all that um I don’t know just it’s a cool experience for sure I just want to shout out a couple people who jumped into the uh stream over on Instagram nitty giant thank you for jumping in again we always appreciate it when you’re on here stage devil and skywards we fly all joined thank you if you have questions for the guys at any point you can drop them in the comments and we will share them uh just like Michael C here who says that um this is mcg’s best work yet and the scene is not prepared so very cool Michael’s got that [Laughter] leak got those download codes uh so when you’re releasing like let’s talk about that a little bit um actually yeah because you covered how the band started already without me even asking you which is my next question which awesome um where was I going with that one uh yeah so like your release strategy for this so you’re like you go through recording all that stuff you write you record you’re getting ready to release it how do you go about deciding how you’re going to do that it sounds like you’re like three three singles in um the whole thing yeah coming out so yeah can you talk about that a little bit uh it was definitely you know weeks of getting get all getting together and uh figuring out the like appropriate amount of time we want to spend like promoting each single and um uh we definitely moved we moved around a lot yeah go ahead beat well yeah CU so we had uh we had hit up this record label heading east record so we ended up getting to work with and and put it we’re putting it out on on the label but we had we had hit them up and uh the guy Fred who runs the label was out on tour a lot so he he got back to us at one point where we were like all right this is a possibility and then we he was out on a long tour so we didn’t hear back from him and we were like all right we gotta we gotta just put these songs out so we like got a plan in motion we were ready and I think we are probably less than a month we were definitely less than a month out because I had uploaded all the songs on to Dro kid and then we got like the final confirmation that he was down to work with us and it was like all right scrap that plan let’s get some new dates we still kind of operate on on the same schedule of like try like six to eight weeks in between singles uh with six songs we decided to do three singles to I mean it’s weird because in probably sound old saying this but in this day and age like singles really are King over everything else in terms of like getting streams and some people only do singles and don’t do the EPS but uh I Know Myself personally and I think us collectively right in the form of like a batch of songs together is gon to be the batch of songs for the most part there singles here and there but um finding the best way to like Max how how to say it without sounding busy but like Maxim your you know work and investment in that absolutely you want more than just one single to get heard you hope that every that people who check it out are going to dive deeper and listen to the whole EP but by putting out three singles we don’t give away everything but we give away a lot in terms of like yeah putting more songs out there and um another thing like involved with our this particular Le cycle was like how we love all the songs on here so it was hard for us to pick what singles to use or like what singles to even go for like we you know we we’re like any of these could be singles but we ended up actually like effectively like crowdsourcing which songs became the singles we we set the demos to I don’t even know if we were I guess we were I think we were even still recording the actual EP but we had the demos and we just sent them out to like a bunch of our friends and like we basically just did a poll and we just tallied up all the numbers we asked everybody to like yo what single should we have and then for the top these were the top three yeah little crowdsourcing I like that it’s cool yeah and like they were like I felt like they definitely even differed from like our personal opinions on on them like oh let’s do it then yeah we definitely had one song that we were as a unit uh dead set on releasing as the first single and then through some feedback from friends and uh Matt as well who records us kind of was like uh yeah may maybe that one’s a little it’s got some time signature stuff going on and it’s just like a little bit confusing so he was like maybe we don’t do that as the first single tot and ended up not even it’s gonna just come out with it’s not one of the three singles but still probably one of my favorites if not my favorite outfit but I think with any release like it’s it’s tough because you kind of have to take your uh bias glasses off like obviously we love all of these songs we’re like every one of these songs is incredible but like you know that’s because we have so much connection to it and you know from writing to recording all of this like this was a really memorable experience uh so I think that’s why we’re so kind of connected to these songs but by kind of you know sourcing it out to some friends and that that gave us a non-biased opinion as to like which ones of these songs are going going to perform better as singles yeah I love that I mean it’s weird because um I don’t know who mentioned it before but it didn’t want to sound too busy it’s like no that’s kind of what I like to dive into here because it’s not um you know I don’t I want I don’t know it’s fun it’s definitely fun to talk about music but it’s also I want to do exactly that like try to give people information that they can go that that you’ve tried that I’ve tried you know what works for each of us and what maybe they can glean from it and um yeah it’s always really super interesting to hear what how people decide to kind of tackle it so very cool um yeah would you do it uh what I’d love too that you were talking about we’re just talking about this too you’re like pitching labels so how do you decide first of all how do you decide who to pitch to are you just like just getting a list somewhere finding something or do you have like this is definitely where we should be kind of idea when you’re doing that thing I want to say we did some research on that but I know heading so heading east records a friend of ours uh a band called Amora from Lansdale Pennsylvania is on that label and I’ve been friends with them for like since my last B way back so uh really close to them and then another one of our friends uh from Connecticut Mighty Tortuga is also on that label yeah so it just felt like um and it’s not a label where we signed away any rights or anything it’s a it’s a really supportive really artist friendly uh label so I think that’s where we had looked at some other labels you can always pitch but there was absolutely it was just throwing darts at emails kind of kind of thing but heading east was the one where we had the connection it seemed feasible and it was it’s not like uh you know signing away all of your songs and owning nothing it’s kind of like a support system to help with with the release so I like that you brought that up because I feel like there is this like um us vers them mentality maybe or something like that but all the bands that I see who do anything are like signed legit signed bands like that you need that other arm of it to really help you get to the next level so yeah it’s I don’t know no I agree with that too and it’s kind of like you it’s got to be like the perfect storm right you got to find the right label that’s going to do enough for you to get somewhere without completely losing everything and you know uh because there’s a there’s just so many labels out there so you there’s a you know a handful that are the most uh notable I guess right and it depends what your genre is what your level of expectation is but I know at least in like pop punk there’s you know Hopeless Records Fearless records uh wax Bodega records there’s a couple others but like those are like the m major players and then from there it’s kind of if you can’t hit one of those without completely giving away everything you got to be really selective and really uh do your do your research and make sure it’s a good fit and and uh you know this isn’t coming from a ton of experience the the one label that we connected with was a good fit but just from hearing stories from other people and just kind of navigating the process that’s how we even looked at pitching labels was like all right we can’t just I know I said we were throwing darts at emails but it wasn’t just like every record label we found we hit up it was like kind of looking into it more and yeah and trying to figure it out I think that knee-jerk reaction is like yeah send it to everybody and then it’s like all right this is getting nowhere it’s like your point and then yeah and especially in this day and I mean I know that a lot of larger bands are on record labels and stuff but it is not impossible to grow that’s true and sustain yourself with all the technology and and kind of the power the positive power of the internet there’s two sides to it but like part of the positive power is that you can find more of a niche audience who really connects with you and your message and your personalities where you don’t have to put on as much of an act if you will I don’t know every band’s different but we’re not really a band that’s like gonna be super serious and and like put on a major image so like it’s not nice that the internet the way it exists today and uh finding the people who connect with us the way we are allows us to kind of be genuine sorry I’m kind of rambling right now oh no that’s great please do uh let me just take a minute to shout out some people in the Instagram chat uh the real mk23 thank you for joining the real zel zel thank you for joining and Hansen goons thank you for joining uh yeah I can drop those questions in chat if you have any for them Michael C has one it’s kind of um I want to say mean but um we have this debate sometimes in the band here he asks ask Andrew and Pete if they had to delete one mcgh song from their discography what would it

be that’s what I mean I think it’s a actually legit interesting question but uh yeah it’s tough too because I got mine right off the top of my head I want to hear Andrew do you have yours uh I might have to think about it I would cut don’t stop Dudley off of our first EP I feel like say that what’s up I feel I felt like you were gonna say that yeah it was uh it’s like the last song off the very first EP we did which was like weirdly recorded over covid when it was like first happening in in different stints and it was just a song that we came into completely not completely but relatively unprepared and kind of just wanged it uh in the studio and it came out all right but it was it was definitely not uh the proudest moment and like the song that I really felt most passionate about um that yeah definitely the well we’ve yeah we’ve never played that song Live it’s the only song in our discography we’ve never played live um and uh I remember it it was just oddly like we practiced it like a good amount when we wrote it but it was just one of the songs that was like weirdly hard for us to play as well and uh it was also like a mix at the time a mix of wanting since we didn’t have enough original songs to for a full like set we wanted to add some covers as well and I guess at that we’re like well let’s just play covers instead but uh it uh it’s a song that didn’t have a chance I don’t think but maybe um maybe for the 20y year anniversary of the EP yeah stay tuned on that but uh I I don’t to get back to your question I I don’t uh I don’t feel as strongly about of any song um as Pete does uh but uh I definitely think that as we get further into discography um and like developing our own discography we are definitely phasing out uh old one old songs and um yeah at this point currently in our live set we only have one song from our first EP that we still play uh consistently live so um it’s just uh fun seeing the band evolve but uh yeah I I don’t think I would delete any uh but uh it’s fun yeah getting into new stuff I also have to say to Michael he commented rip dud so the song was named after my dog Dudley who is alive and well and very energetic upstairs so he’s doing all right it’s just the song that’s going away uh we should at least name another new song Don’t Stop Dudley so we can have uh two active songs about both of our dogs yeah I think that’s a better idea honor him and maybe next DP I don’t know got be all about your dogs we’ll bring back our first EP we we just named all the songs after random names and two of them were our dogs and this is just I don’t even know why we did it but every song was had a it was like a sentence not even a sentence but it was just like a phrase that ended with somebody’s name it was very interesting choice on our part but two of them were were our dogs yeah I remember at one point we weren’t sure if that was going to be like our stick for like song titles yeah forever I think we we then decided that that was just going to be that EP and then we would uh get our act together you really got to commit at that point yeah it’s early to be committing to something like that right that’d be a long

career oh let’s see here

um oh let’s see we releasing singles uh talk to me a little bit about how you put together like um do you have an idea of when you’re writing um do you like to have like a theme when you go into it is it like a riff that kind of Sparks an idea that you’re like all I think I’m gonna write lyrics about this is there um is it all over the place kind of

thing it definitely all over the place uh from the different uh when I think about the different uh like beginnings of all of these songs uh like how they started and where they ended up um and I think that uh yeah it’s just every kind of way it’ll be like a chord progression or a riff or just like a melody to a verse or a Melody to A Chorus and um I think our big like songwriting technique or the question we ask to each other is well how can we like make it way more difficult ult than it has to be um that’s just kind of like that’s kept this band afloat really because I think about um our song house in the home and like how I remember it was I think it was just that you just came a p you just came with the chords basically I don’t even think you had um Melo like the vocal melody or anything um but it was it started with like no it was just like the straight chords pretty much and then we sat down and uh figured out how to like let’s add this accent here and what we add like a riff over top of it and then combining with other ideas like the um the bridge how the bridge Rift goes and um yeah I I don’t think there’s any specific way but uh if you have anything else Pete no I think definitely every song starts differently and I think uh we each kind of bring songs to the table they’re all coming to the table in different stages I would say Brian when he comes with an idea there’s usually a vocal Melody of some sort in there I’d say that’s kind of how he writes I know for me I’m big on just diving really deep into the instrumental and then kind of writing the melody and the vocals uh lyrics from there uh but yeah every song’s kind of different and and it definitely is something that we do whether it’s conscious or not somebody in the band is always think how can we make this not too predictable so that it’s not always Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge chorus even if it is it’s like maybe verse two is gonna completely go into left field or like we’ll we’ll quick do like like in our song uh the first single we dropped that was all for love and all for nothing in the second verse we just go into like a really aggressive rock and roll I think it’s like one bar of seven4 or something it’s it’s a really weird transition but it’s like how do you transition between this part and the next part and it’s just always trying to think outside the box to not have it be too like Cookie Cutter without getting like too stupid like there’s a happy medium between like all right that idea is absurd and I mean no no idea is absurd but we yeah yeah try and not get too far out there I don’t know do you do you talk about this at all or do you even think about this at all because I kind of tend to find myself doing this and I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing but like uh well what what would someone who’s not a musician think or like what would our audience think of this and um yeah let’s just start there and I’ll kind of expand into that do you think about that at all I don’t know if I I mean I don’t know if I ever really do no I I I I want to think I I want to say that like when we get together as a band there might and and this kind of uh shows how how good my memory is like I can’t think on the spot what we’re like when we’re writing together but I have to think at times somebody within the group will be like all right maybe we should do it this way uh you know to kind of stay in this Lane but I know at least for myself when I’m writing it’s usually just like what am I feeling what am I liking uh you know not too of like like decisions like Transitions and stuff I think those are probably the opposite of what would the listener think it’s almost like how can we do something different that the listener won’t think is coming yeah um but I guess with that saying that out loud that’s having the listener in mind just not uh trying too hard to pan I don’t want to say that but you know what I’m saying it’s like your expectations occasionally yeah yeah yeah but uh I’m sure that there’s that there’s occasions where we have done stuff like that so I can’t say definitively that it’s something we’ve never done and honestly right now as you know I sat down with Brian and Nate the other day and we’re we’re just messing around with L really small ideas because you know we’re putting out this EP and as music goes you have to have new stuff in the works and we work so hard on this stuff and whether whether it’s as good as we think it is or not we feel really really uh happy about how these songs have come out so now there’s that kind of like weird pressure on ourselves of like all right we can’t just put out any song and we gotta we got to find a way to progress as a band while keeping the sound that I think we have but also not really knowing what that is just a whole lot of uh stress about like oh gosh we’re really proud of these six songs how do we do something after and I’m sure we’ll get to it it’s it’s I’m sure you know it’s tough when you’re like putting songs out to even think about you’re putting them out you’re playing shows you’re trying to learn how to play them live uh it’s really hard to think about writing the next batch but I’m sure we all have ideas in our heads and I’m sorry I took this question so far into left field again but great that’s kind of where right now I think we’re feeling a little bit of the I don’t know if it’s so much the audience as ourselves being like how do we how do we keep a sound that is us going while progressing while not just playing any song and coming up with these ideas so that is kind of my next question and I also want to ask too because when you have a group of people who are doing a collaborative art project together there’s always some kind of compromise somewhere and you know that question earlier about like the s i I know the song I would cut immediately and I think a lot of the other people in our band agree with it and it’s weird because it’s like we’re going to release it anyway very soon nobody’s like just bury it bro just just get rid of it we’re not gonna play it live probably anymore um but yeah do you find yourself kind of I I feel like oh what’s so hard about making like a 10 out of ten Banger record like you just put you just string them all together and like was so hard about that and then it’s like now that I went through the process it’s like oh I get it and you understand why great records are really great because it’s hard to do [Music]

yeah the compromises are yeah it’s definitely something you at the time you’re like oh yeah I don’t know about that like I’m really into my idea but then like even like with like CH like if we’re you talking to um yeah our producer Matt and he’ll you have suggest that like oh we should do a song like this or this and then at first we’re a little like oh like okay yeah we we’ll give that a shot and then like now going back I couldn’t even imagine these songs without these like the CH those changes um so it’s definitely like like humbling remembering that like you’re not like you don’t have to be the know at all you’re allowed to right it’s like a collaborative like um um musical like Collective being in the band so you don’t have to wor having the right answer every time so yeah and I kind of have two two separate thoughts the first thought was regarding like the great albums like it really makes you appreciate them that much more you know yes exactly because I think some of like my favorite songs that I’ve written and our favorite songs that we’ve written like I If somebody asked me like what did you do to write that song like it just happened like I don’t know how how people write 12 out of 12 song records where every song hits cuz like they write like 500 songs basically right and then they just boil it down to the 12 that are amazing like I mean one of my favorite records is American Idiot by Green Day whoa big surprise but uh just front to back it’s such a strong record and it’s like how did you put together 12 songs that were that strong including two eight minute songs that don’t lose my attention like yeah very admirable so yeah that that that definitely uh it makes you appreciate the the records that you consider great front to back and then in terms of compromise I think it’s really hard to be in a band with with a lot of people and I think that’s why a lot of people will opt for solo projects or or just not or bands fall apart because they can’t figure it out but something that we’re pretty we we’ve grown to be pretty good at just like stating our opinion whether it’s writing whether it’s a promotional idea whether it’s what time we should meet for practice but if there’s you know there’s definitely not tense moments but just disagreements where well who two people or whatever sides are both really pitching their case and I I know I’m I’m guilty of it a lot where I’ll be really strong about my opinion and then I’ll sit back and think about it and be like [ __ ] Brian was right his idea is right and it’s like that’s the kind of compromises that we make is like we’re never going to die on the hill of like oh you know I will quit the band if we don’t do this but like we have these discussions and then take a breather before we make a decision and that usually has some uh Clarity with it that that leads to a a decision that we all agree with uh yeah it’s a great way to handle it and um finding like it’s weird because you get to a band because you love to play music and you want to do that as much as possible and then all these other things you have to learn just like kind of on the Fly too you know just by doing it and uh trial and error a lot it’s just crazy yeah there’s there’s definitely so much more to it than just the music and it’s a lot of a lot of times uh not difficult but like sometimes it can it can beat you down that it’s not just about the music at the end of the day it’s it’s about the music but you can’t survive just off the music well

put her favorite quote being in a band is that playing music is like five% of it yeah if you’re lucky yeah and it’s like all this other random stuff you don’t want to do uh you had mentioned uh talking about finding your sound before I always love to hear about this because this is something um we talk about constantly and not struggle with but it’s like we um have you had has it been the the same band the whole time where you had people come in and come out um how that work so the band uh well from from the start it’s been me Pete and Brian and then it has been quite the revolving door uh we’ve never had an Nate Nate’s been the only official drummer uh in the band but uh it started off as us three and then Pete record has recorded the drums in the studio um and then but Pete also has recorded the guitar in a lot of the vocals so it was definitely um evident that we needed a drummer and uh it was a I I don’t know how many drummers we’ve had in between seven and 11 I believe yeah there’s always one there’s always one role that’s like that I don’t know what it is but there’s yeah and it it was to it was totally uh you know when you when you talk about there’s more to do than just the music when we were playing shows it was like the big I mean I I oh is Andrew trying D Andrew you’re a little bit Cy outy right

now out yeah I’ll have to get a little closer just real quick I want to shout out um chire and Steve couch who just jumped in on uh Instagram he just opened up a or he’s gonna open up a venue down in North Carolina so oh heck yeah yeah so we’ll all uh line up to come on down all right I’m sorry I didn’t mean to cut you off there go oh yeah no uh what was what was I saying uh we were talking about F we’ll have to get HRA back in yeah I’ll get him on that yeah yeah the the drummer issue it was an issue it’s it’s cool because we have a lot of friends that do play drums and we had a couple steady steady feelings for a while but it was we would take shows not knowing who the drummer was going to be and then if we couldn’t find one we would threepiece it and I was playing drums and singing and all the guitar parts were missing on my end so it was like it was fun to be able to play with a bunch of different people and we have a lot of talented friends who helped us out big time um but but having having Nate in the Band full time uh and he was he was kind of the most steady fill in for six months leading up to him being in the band but yeah he was the perfect fit personality-wise and he’s rips at at drums so it was it was a massive blessing to have him and it feels like even though he hasn’t been in the studio with us for any of the songs we’ve written he feels a part of it and he he kind of puts his own stamp on it live so um so I guess a long-winded answer would be we kind of have been the same band the whole time and Nate’s been there with us for a good part of us really really getting things going that’s awesome and I love when that um that’s I do think that’s probably the hardest thing is finding the people the right people that you can put that combination together and really make it work and um put the time and effort to doing that um let’s see so I was I was trying to get back to like finding your sound what we’re struggling with oh we lost him again Andrew it’s that connection we’ll get him there he is we’ll get him back in here uh but it’s always um a struggle [ __ ] where was I with that one finding your sound I think you’re saying thank you because um we we’ve had some awesome people come through the band but for various reasons in life and stuff they had the move on to other things so we’ve recently from the very beginning to now had like pretty much everyone cycle out to somebody else so it’s literally a whole new like different band so from what we have released to what we’re doing now is is so different it’s it’s kind of weird in one regard so yeah I’m always curious to hear about other um bands and how they handle things no I think that’s uh I mean I even just in having the same band members uh you know from our first from our first EP to now it’s like it is such a different sound and like those S those previous songs were so I I I know what you mean when you’re saying like the songs that we have out do not reflect how we sound now and it’s kind of that that stress of like let’s get this new stuff out but also I don’t know about you Andrew but like it’s really hard to decide like what is your like even with this record like something that we tried to do whether we succeed or not I don’t know but is like make every song in a release sound different like so that each song is notable and it’s not two songs that are kind of like ah these two sound so similar that they could be the same song um which again when you get into like thinking about longer albums even like bigger bands there’s those moments where it’s like well this one record had like four songs with a similar Vibe and I’m sure when you’re writing 12 songs it’s harder not to do that but you know as we go forward from these songs to the next batch whatever we do that’s another thing where it’s like I don’t know what the sound is completely like there’s there’s certain things that are in there there’s like really loud guitars there’s banging drums there’s trying to be dynamic and have some softer Parts but like it it’s tough to to pinpoint like what is somebody’s sound yeah and this is something we discuss all the time because it’s it’s it kind of feeds back into that marketing side and I hate to I don’t hate to do it because it’s good to do but like pulling that business back in it it’s like how are you gonna explain what you are or who you are why people should even listen to you in the first place um you know if you can’t boil it down and give them something like here’s uh here’s the idea of it or you know here’s our here’s what we think our sounded or here’s what you know what’s been great H listening to other people like if we play a show or other bands or people are at they’re like oh we heard like this this and this I’m like oh that’s cool could use that as like to you know put in your bio or to try to um get people into that sound but yeah to your point it’s kind of always an interesting thing it is a kind of a journey but at the same time I don’t know for me I think I would ra I don’t know I was in a band before who jumped kind of genres not a whole lot but you know it would kind of song to song would be kind of significantly different and it kind of splintered in a way that was like it probably should have been two bands and um it’s different now than like the playlist era right we’re in like talk that before where it’s like it’s just kind of Rand almost random like it could be any anyone can like anything and um yeah you got to go find those people out out there in Internet land yeah and it is funny I think it’s a it’s a nice surprise when somebody comes up to you after set and says you sound like a band that you’re either not expecting yeah or like isn’t the usual batch of four or five because like you know with so much music out there I don’t think anybody I mean I’m sure that there are bands out there that are 100% unique but like we’re all working off of something right it’s not nobody is 100 L to this bands yeah but but it is like for us I know something that’s at least uh you know been following me my entire music career is like pop punk pop punk Blink 182 and trying to like the roots are there obviously it comes from pop punk but trying to and I guess that kind of is the sound right is trying to blend a more alternative with some of the Midwest emo with some of the you know softer Indie and not just like the biggest compliment for me at this point in my life is if somebody doesn’t say I sound like Blink 182 or Green Day like I love both those bands to death but to not be compared to them is nice yeah yeah yeah it kind of doesn’t mean anything to be to be like yeah you sound like BL 1882 like uh feel like you know it’s a everyone’s got that starting point and then I think um too I found PE people are pretty forgiving as long as they see you’re improving um they’re forgiving on like sound quality on performance uh they’re still you’ll still make fans that way and as long as you keep as long as they feel like you’re keeping making better stuff they’ll be in it with you so um yeah it’s very cool let’s see here well I’ll just take a couple more and then we’ll wrap up here because we’re just about in an hour um let’s see Angels at a high five I can’t see um let’s uh okay so Michael C’s got one more question question here uh we’ll we’ll cap it off with this um when is mcgh going to do an insant cover so do you do anything like that would you consider everything anything the closest I think we have gotten to an instant cover is I’d say like once every few practices we talk about how we should all get the microphones that hook up to the ears um because it would make running around a lot easier especially with Brian because Brian is the last place he wants to be is behind the microphone if you come to our shows he’s consistently running all over the place and we’re like dude it’ just be so much easier if we could all get those microphones and we because I mean all of us just love to run around uh can you talk about that a little bit because I have this problem too um sing and play and there’s almost always something I have to do and I it’s hard there’s hard to have time stretches where you can just enjoy it and like do those

things um it’s yeah especially with well I will say with one of the songs off of this new EP that’s coming out we notic that it’s like this is like the one song where like none of us can breathe we all have to like be extremely focused yeah because there’s the vocals go back and forth so often um with the mix of like Pete and Brian mainly switch switch between the lead vocals throughout the entire song and is pretty much like every other line just for the like the the like the height or like the highness of the vocal line so it’s uh yeah Pete and Brian consistently going back and forth but never long enough to where they can leave the microphone and then I’m just as often doing uh Harmony switch between the harmonies over or under Pete and Brian so um it’s just in that song particularly there’s just never a gap long enough to where like we can just sit back and relax and play the guitar part uh it’s just pure chaos but yeah I will say though I do admire like some some of the larger artists who are able to play their guitar even if it’s just power cords like sprinting across a catwalk or like when Dave Gro like they have that extent like I couldn’t run and play man I can like I I catch myself you know I’m probably the least moving of everybody in the band uh you know playing some leads and stuff but even playing chords it’s like I don’t you know I do one too many moves and my finger all of a sudden on the wrong fret and it’s like oh [ __ ] but yeah you know admire the people who are back and forth back and forth across that stage yeah um I mean do you think about that uh I want to we’re just about an hour so I do want to try to wrap it up but there’s we’re getting some really interesting things that I really enjoyed like um when you write do you try to uh if you’re singing and playing at the same time do you try to give yourself a break and just like all right when I’m singing a verse I’ll kind of back off a little bit let someone else maybe run with it or you like doing something or doing both things pretty much all the time I think you want go Andrew oh no you go ahead beat I was going to say I think at least in my opinion we’ve gotten a lot better at this because uh we tend to write in a setting that isn’t all like once we really get demoing we’re throwing layers of harmonies and you know oh my you write a lead guitar part over a lead vocal part that you’re playing and all of a sudden you go to play it and you’re like yeah what what have I done to myself and you know used for some older songs you know we could sub at like Brian will sing a line that I sang on record but I think we’ve gotten better at like catching it early enough before we’re recording it to be like wait a second yeah that guitar part sounds hard are you sure you want to sing the lead vocal there and then someone else will take it or switch the guitar part because like that’s the danger of of getting into demoing in Pro Tools where you have the ability to sit there and be like oh this sounds awesome and then you’re like wait a second I can’t play that all the way through and yeah and that’s that’s been the hard one of the hardest things is getting the studio and the live performance closer to sounding the same like when you’re putting that energy into the live performance you’re willing to give some of the uh not sound quality but just like you’re going to be a little out of breath if you’re jumping around and and running around and like there there’s going to be some mess ups but like it helps if you don’t you know have a really difficult lead guitar part over over a lead vocal part that’s border line out of your range yeah definitely yeah we’re we’ve been better at uh like solving that issue early but we still write music the with not that with with that not in mind really because it’s just kind of like all right this gonna be really hard to play live I guess we’ll just start we see we get

practice all right very cool well I think that’s a good spot to wrap it up we’re just at about an hour um why don’t you just plug everything one more time what you got coming out coming up where people can find you and follow you and yeah listen to your music yeah we are you want to go ahead Andrew I was gonna say on the streaming sites we’re we’re my cousin’s girlfriend’s house uh on all of them but across the social media we are on mildly different names on all of them uh Pete do you remember can you keep that straight I can’t but if you type my cousin’s girlfriend’s house into the search bar you’ll find it because nobody else does that right yeah that’s like Google type it in where the first ones and then you’ll find all of our profiles there but uh yeah we’re on all the all the streaming platforms most of the social medias um we’re playing at the soals on Friday we got Harrisburg on the 19th Wildwood on the 20th Philly on the 25th at milk booy and then we have our EP release show on the 17th of August at philam Moka in Philly um yeah that’s that’s kind of it for us but we appreciate you having us and really looking forward to Friday it’s going to be a fun time yes absolutely yeah so I just want to thank Pete and Andrew from my cousin’s girlfriend’s house again for coming on and as always thank you for uh jumping in on Instagram and for Michael C for jumping in with the all the chat questions we appreciate that yeah Michael yeah and yeah we I’ll see you guys Friday and we definitely think you you know we should all uh come join us at soals I know that’s been bouncing around all over the place but I think it did end at a really great spot so very much looking forward to it and yeah we’ll see you all on Friday have a good night if I can do it again uh