The13th AÑO: 4 | NÚMERO 40
UNA R E VISTA IMA GINARIA
68CREEP IT’S DEFINITELY AN EVOLUTION
[ Interview with Patrick Casey from 68creep by Benjamín York. Translation: Rodrigo Debernardis. ]
IT’S DEFINITELY AN EVOLUTION
We always try to give space to new bands, such as 68creep, a band from Brooklyn who are about to launch their debut album “Goodnight, Sweet Betty” on September 22nd through the Kiss/Kill/Repeat label. The creation of the band itself seems like something from a David Lynch film, who is a constant source of inspiration for them. Surely they must even dream that Lynch himself would one day direct one of their videos. Could this be true or is it just my imagination running away with itself? We could ask and see what they say. Beyond Lynch, we also spoke with 68creep’s Patrick Casey about the band’s history, beginnings and the future. Hi Patrick! Thanks for chatting with us today about 68creep. Sure! Thanks for having me. To begin with, tell us about that events that brought you together with fellow band founder John McRandle, triggering the formation of 68creep? When and how did this come about? Well, John and I were working at the same NYC ad agency, but hadn’t met. He’s an art director and I write copy. The agency specifically chose us to work on a campaign selling medication to schizophrenics. It involved producing videos that created a virtual reality of the voices, hallucinations, and even the smells experienced by those with schizophrenia. When I met John, I thought he was a pretty strange guy. Maybe he felt the same about me. And come to think of it, maybe that’s why the agency paired us up in the first place. I read about your attraction to David Lynch’s work. How important, for you, is the ambience that he achieves in his films? I’m asking because if we read the labels you use on Bandcamp to describe your music, the director`s name appears there. It’s a challenge to try to write heavy music that doesn’t fall into certain clichés. David Lynch achieves a perfect balance, keeping things dark and heavy, but also wonderfully weird, awkward and, of course, creepy. His vibe is also somewhat tongue in cheek. That’s tough to do. It’s what we aspire to at least get close to. It’s nice to have a cinematic inspiration, and not just musical ones. Whenever we’re stuck creatively, I actually ask myself “What would David do?”
How did the other band members – Colyn Hunt and Kimberly Seewald – end up joining the band? I met our bassist Colyn 12 years ago. It was the first week I arrived in NY. We were dancing to 60’s and 70’s rock n roll at a dive bar and became fast friends when she warned me that a girl I had recently befriended was…a little bit dangerous. And not in a good way! Once when I was hanging out at Colyn’s apartment she picked up a bass and ripped through a killer version of “I Want You Back” from the Jackson 5. I didn’t even know she played. I was blown away! She ended the song and then said, ‘That’s the only song I know…” Years later I decided I wanted her in my new band. If mostly, just to have a friend by my side. But she still only knew that one song! So I figured for the first six months, when we played live, that she’d just mime songs on bass, looking like her cool self on stage. She wouldn’t even plug in. Hopefully after that much time, she’d be able to learn and eventually play the songs for real. So what does she do? She came to the very first practice and nailed every song in the set. She leaned over to me once we were done and whispered, “I just took all of the stickers that showed me where the notes are, off the neck of my bass before practice.” She had been secretly cramming for the last two weeks to learn the set. She loved the songs that much. That was a very good day. I sometimes think the line in Taxi Driver about “a walking contradiction” best describes our singer, Kim. She’s generally pretty soft-spoken, extremely easy to work with, and has no real interest in much self-promotion or things like social media. She’s definitely not the cliché lead vocalist diva type, some people might expect. You know, the kind with LSD – lead singer disease. Kim also has a different kind of stage fright. With her, it’s literal! She prefers to play gigs with no stage at all, where the band sets up on the floor, with the Creep’s fans at eye level. She goes from being a soft-spoken person to being barely audible when doing what little talking she does onstage. Which is very little! But when this girl opens her mouth to sing, the force can pin your body to the back wall. With prior singers that we tried out, our sound would just swallow them up. They really didn’t stand a chance, even when the band tried to hold back. But Kim was up for it. She’s as
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loud as we are. Along with the pure power she’s still able to sing softly and delicately when ours songs call for it. We get raves about her all the time. And to think we found her in an online musician’s ad! What does the name of the band means and how did you come up with it? Well, it’s basically an inside joke. Early on, we overheard a conversation at a bar in Brooklyn. A girl was talking about her disappointing sex life to her friend. She was describing one of her boyfriend’s moves. I guess he couldn’t quite get it together. So she asked him right in the middle of it, “What the hell are you doing?” He said, “What’s wrong with you? It’s a 69.” After hearing that, she blurted, out “Not quite. That’s more like a 68, you creep!” We couldn’t stop laughing. It became a go-to line for
“The Rumors are True” was edited in May 2016. This is your first EP. Although not much time has passed since that release, can you share some of your memories about that time when recording that release? Most of the memories are about the songs themselves, which are some of the first I ever wrote. The lead track, “Kiss or Kill” opens with a pretty wicked tribal type beat with some really sick, eerie guitar and accordion sounds. The intro sounds like some sort of jungle death march! That song had what John likes to call “a difficult birth”. It wasn’t easy to learn or record but we finally got it out. Following the intro, the song starts to sound a bit like a demented carousel, which pretty much describes the relationship that inspired the lyrics – a bit of heaven and hell. It’s about me and my ex girlfriend. She lived
the band that always got a laugh between us. And oddly enough, when it came time to try to come up with a band name, the more we thought about it, the more it kind of worked as a name to describe our music. When we first got together, a lot of our songs were in a 6/8 time signature. And the groove was heavy with hooks, while it just kind of crept along. 68creep became the name. Problem solved.
in Russia until she was five, where her dad owned a circus. So she had quite an upbringing. I guess the notso-merry go round sound of that song is a fitting soundtrack for our time together. Another song that springs to mind from the first EP is “Nobody Home”. It has a nice rolling circular bass groove, and lines like “I worship madness, while you feed the machine.” It describes people with very tradi-
tional beliefs who are basically just attracted to you for their own entertainment. Which ends up making you feel like you’re just a monkey in a zoo. They believe in a traditional scorekeeper in the sky who brings wrath upon the misfits who don’t fit society’s structured roles. They may spend their time kneeling to that kind of god, but as the song says, nobody’s home. Then there’s “Pet”, which was a band favorite. It’s got a strong, heavy foundation. A mid-tempo guitar riff you could build a house on. But then it transitions into a sweet, ethereal chorus. I think it’s got my favorite lyrics so far. But I don’t think I can repeat any of them here!
You don’t always know what’s directly influencing you. I find myself just going for the sound in my head. Since I’m a drummer, and I don’t play anything else, I write songs by humming and singing the parts to our guitarist. John’s amazing at being able to interpret my “head sounds”. It’s strange to have the drummer as the main songwriter in a band, and it’s kind of a strange way to compose, but, hey, it’s our process, so we’re going with it.
We can talk plenty about your influences, and in each song we tend to place ourselves in different band names. In fact, there are some covers on the album. But for you, which are biggest influences shaping your sound?
What did your band get up to between the release of “The Rumors Are True” until this debut album was recorded? Lots of shows! We played some big ones where we knew we killed it. But we were still really humbled by the huge crowd response. Back then, the adulation after certain songs was a bit of a shock. But honestly, the most interesting shows at that time
I really like what Dead Weather does. And of course, David Lynch. Some of The Kills stuff. I like Lykke Li’s sound and the feel of Beach House. And to reach back, a bit of 45 Grave, and The Cramps. Maybe even some “Love” era Cult, and Cocteau Twins. It’s kind of tough to say since I don’t think of all of these bands as strongly influencing the sound. But I’m sure they do to a certain extent subconsciously. We definitely strive for a certain sound and atmosphere. The idea is to create an environment.
were the smaller gigs in dive bars. Which we love to play. That being said, there are always the places that end up being such broken-down, decaying rat holes that we just have to laugh and ask “OK, who booked us here?!” The answer to that was our manager, Tracey, when we played a show at a now defunct club on the lower east side of Manhattan that will remain nameless. The first thing John said to Tracey that night after walking into the place was “Urine big trouble!”
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The place reeked of piss, although ironically, the bathroom smelled great. The owners tried to pass the smell off as "dead rats in the wall", as though that was somehow better. Our friends in the crowd had to resort to rubbing Vick's VapoRub under their noses, as seen in Silence of the Lambs, to kill the stench. To top it off, I had to play behind a Plexiglass wall which is where the club banished (punished?) loud, heavy-hitting drummers. I was totally separated from the rest of the band. It was lonely back there! My bandmates made sure that everyone knew not to tap on the glass or feed me. When did you begin to record “Goodnight, Sweet Betty” and how long did the sessions take? I guess we started recording about six months before the release date. But we were playing shows as well, getting the new songs in shape, so the recording itself didn’t really take that long. Kiss/Kill/Repeat Records knows how we like to work so they really let us do our thing in a way that works for us. We like to hammer out the backing tracks as a band, so that we get a good cohesive, live sound. We pret-
ty much go old school. No Pro Tools. We have to nail the entire take or do it again. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but the energy and vibe have to fit the emotion of the song. Then, of course, as always, we bathed it in reverb! Today, when you are ready to launch your first album, what do you see as the main differences between “The Rumors Are True” and “Goodnight, Sweet Betty”? We got creepier! Mostly it was an evolution. Some of the songs I wrote on “The Rumors Are True” were written in earlier bands with a different lineup before we formed 68creep. So just about everything on “Goodnight, Sweet Betty” was written by the Creep, for the Creep, and nobody but the Creep. I’ve certainly read that the album title comes from Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (2001). What can you tell us about that work and why did it become the album’s name? John and Colyn are both freaks for the original Twin Peaks. I’m a big fan of the films Wild at Heart and Blue
Velvet. But that quote from Mulholland Drive seemed to fit the album best. It’s from a great scene in the film. But besides, that, there’s something peaceful, sexy, dark, and maybe most importantly, final, about it. It’s a reminder that nothing is permanent. Everything changes. Everything dies. But that can be something to celebrate. I think our music does that.
enough to move the hair on your arms. And everywhere else. The songs have some huge hooks, and are faster overall, but still have the 68creep vibe. It’s definitely an evolution from “Goodnight Sweet Betty”. I think fans of that album will like the direction. Our friends who’ve heard the new stuff love to say it’s gonna wake the dead! Sounds good to us!
Two remixes are included on the album. Why didn’t you release the original versions of those songs, “Sarina Said” and “Watch Your Fall”? Those two songs aren’t actually remixes. They were just recorded in a different session, at the Bushwick Manor, as we jokingly call it. So we decided to include that in the track listing. There are no manors in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (At least at the moment. But I’m sure it won’t be long.) What we did have there was an awful tiny, cramped, shithole recording space that we
Why do you think our readers should listen to 68creep? Your listeners are curious about new, indie music. So if any of what we do sounds intriguing, they should definitely check us out. I love hearing fans’ interpretations of our songs, more than what my own intent was when I wrote them. It’s always a different take. That’s so cool to me. Art is interactive and takes on a life of its own based on
could all barely fit in. But who cares when it gives you that pretty, dark, gritty, twisted and sweet sound you’re going for? Thanks Bushwick Manor!
how it hits the person looking or listening to it. To me, that interaction is the best part of creating something. And the best part of being in this band.
Which is the band planning for this 2017? We’re playing a couple of big gigs around New York, but mostly working on our next album we’re really excited about. We’re adding some odd, eerie, fresh, keyboard to the mix. We’re talking keys that are heavy
To end this interview, I thank you for your time. Do you have anything else you’d like to share with our readers? Hit us up! We’d love to hear from you!
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The13th U NA R EVISTA IMA GINA RIA