DAYS N DAZE

INTERVIEW WITH JESSE SENDEJAS AND WHITNEY FLYNN BY JOSHUA MARANHAS

n the current world where concerts and shows are nonexistent and record stores are nonessential businesses, Days

N’ Daze are holing up in quarantine while their record is set to release at the beginning of May. Show Me The Blueprints. is the first record by the Houston based four-piece released on Fat Wreck Chords. Also, this is the intensely DIY band’s first true studio release.

Guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and singer Jesse Sendejas and singer, trumpeter and ukulele player Whitney Flynn - along with “gutbucket” washtub bass player Geoff Bell and washboard player Meagan Melancon - began preproduction and recording at the now- closed Motor Studios in California, with Fat Mike himself.

“We met up with Fat Mike and Baz, this dude that was helping with the NOFX musical,” Sendejas says. “We've never been in a studio. So, we were super overwhelmed. They're really patient. They just had us come out, check out the studio. He laid down a couple of tracks of which we ended up using, some of which we scrapped, but just to kind of like get us comfortable with the setting. And that's how we got started.” identify as “trashgrass.” To Sendejas, this is what that means and how it all started.

“Whitney and I do all the writing,” he says. “We wanted to start a punk band since [we were] kids, but we didn’t have money to buy the amps and drums and stuff. We saw bands like Blackbird Raum. They were like a pretty big influence on us. That's where we first saw a gutbucket. We're like, ‘we don’t need to spend, you know, a bill on a bass and like another two on an amp, we could just spend 20 bucks on a bucket, a stick and a string, and there we go.’ Same with the washboard, that was our substitute for a drum kit. So, it’s out of necessity a little bit. And then we liked how it sounded. So, we just stuck to that, I suppose.”

The frenetic feeling of Show Me The Blueprints. is matched by unsettled lyrics that are looking to create inclusion. Sendejas says the most important thing to both songwriters is the gravity of the words in which they write.

“The lyrics are super introspective,” he says. “And it deals a lot with our mental health issues, with addiction and depression. And it's nice to be able to just write your feelings and your thoughts down to the void, and then have them echo back at you, and, you know, kind of open up a dialogue with someone that might listen time zones away, but might be going through the same thing that you're going through right now.”

Flynn explains the depth of the sixth track “Rewind,” one of her favorite songs she’s written, “I call it my manic letter to myself, I am bipolar, so I just branched off from [it], through the root of [it], and through my addictions — that processing. At the end of the song, it’s like ‘I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna make today count.’ We don't have to worry about the past, but right now, it will be okay eventually.”

In conclusion, Sendejas considers the reality of recording their first Fat Wreck Chords album. “Sum everything up in one word, it is just ‘surreal,’” he says. “I mean, we were in a major car accident a few years back, right outside of Roswell. Our car crossed the highway traffic and flipped twice, going 70. Everyone walked away just totally fine. I still feel like there's this like lingering thought in the back of my mind, ‘maybe we all perished in that terrible car wreck and this is all just like some crazy DMT trip.’ Whitney and I just started writing dumb songs on acoustic instruments when we were 16 and 15 and never thought that any kind of shit like this would ever happen. It's just so bizarre. But so welcome at same time.” ��