[00:00:00] Speaker A: It was born on a Saturday in 73 in the park. Right. Music on the pink guitar with the shortwick radio.
It's motherfucking Andy calling.
Look at Motherfucker cup, here we come. Andy calling, wearing his orange.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome to unsigned five one eight. I am here with rich and stubby of head sound. How's it going? It's going good.
[00:00:34] Speaker C: Glad to be here.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: And I'm just going to start right off by saying, you brought over.
Is it a liqueur? Is it just a liquor? It's some swedish whatever. And it's hard to describe, but, like dill pickle into caraway seed is what I'm getting. Or something with a.
[00:00:55] Speaker D: That's like savory. It's called aquavit.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Aquavit, yeah. Well, whatever it is, it may make for an extra interesting episode. By the time we're done, who knows? So we're here, we want to talk about, like I was saying before we get going, there's no real questions other than kind of how the band came together. If you want to go back to separate musical inspirations, how it came together, how it came to be, or whatever, kind of just the story of head sound and how you formed.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Yeah, well, Stevie, why don't you take it away? Because you started it, didn't you?
[00:01:36] Speaker D: Kind of.
Well, I've been playing music for a pretty long time.
When I was younger, like in my early twenty s, I would write songs, and they were often just alone in my room. And they were basically folk songs for a very long time. And then I started playing those out for people.
And Richard started helping with that.
But I realized one time when I was playing these songs, it was acoustic and it was at an art gallery. And one of my uncles came and he was, I don't know, probably on drugs or something. He was basically heckling me as I was playing and singing very loud. And I think he might have asked me to play freebird and stuff.
It was hard. So it was really difficult to keep playing under those circumstances. And I decided that I wouldn't play anymore unless I could be extensively louder than the audience. So Richard started helping, and it's been, I think, four to five years of just kind of developing our live sound. And it's turned into a band. And now we're playing pretty loud shoegaze and dream pop. And it's maybe even too loud at this point, but no, never too loud.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: So the band itself, how long has the band itself been.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: We've been calling ourselves head sound, I guess, for. It's got to be three years at this point, but we started playing together probably. Yeah, like you said, four or five years ago. And I just came on bringing a sound system, essentially just helping stubby kind of be heard at some small venues and whatnot. And he was like, hey, if you want to play guitar with me, you can go ahead and play guitar with me. And I've always loved Stubby's writing and his songwriting and his style, and it's very unique. And I've enjoyed just getting to kind of put my little bits of flavor into his songs. And eventually, over time, we just synced up and decided we kind of want to go a different direction. We want to do something else. And Stubby showed me a bunch of bands that have been really influential to him. My bloody Valentine slow dive. And I just immediately fell in love when I heard this music. Honestly, for the first time, I'm very new to the genre, and I just fell in love with it. And we've kind of know.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Speaking of falling in love, it looks like Calvin's falling in love with you, Rich.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: Yes, I'm falling in love with this dog.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: I'm gonna have to take a video of that because I always say that Calvin's got several different know, because there's so many podcast guests coming in every week. He's got a couple different levels. One of the levels is just pure ignore. He'll just walk out and you won't see him at all. Sometimes he'll come in and he'll know if he likes someone. He'll get close and maybe sleep on the floor. But the level that we're seeing right.
[00:04:43] Speaker D: Now is this is profound love, intimate.
[00:04:47] Speaker C: This is intimacy.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: All right, I'm going to put this on. You're. Well, if you're listening, I guess go back and check out the Instagram, and you can see Calvin sleeping on your lap.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I might fall asleep, too, honestly. He's so snugly.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And he just showed right up and just there it was. All right, well, I guess now that we talk about Calvin sleeping, what did you say 2021 ish was when?
[00:05:19] Speaker D: Yeah, I think we did a couple of Christmas songs.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: We did.
[00:05:23] Speaker D: And we needed a name, so we just came up with head sound from my bloody Valentine song.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Yeah, we're doing Christmas show. Somebody asked us to do a Christmas songs. We were like, well, we don't want to just play dumb Christmas music. Let's actually bring our sound to this. So stupid. And I were like, why don't we write a couple of Christmas songs and make them shoe gaze and depressing and weird, and it was so fun. And we're like, well, what name do we release this under? And like Stubby said, he pulled this name out of my blood of Valentine's song that we still cover almost every show.
That's where headsound came from.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:05:56] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: And so when did the first recorded head sound songs start popping up?
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Well, we realized we wanted to start playing shows as head sound, and we thought we would need to show case, to a degree, what we would sound like. So we released an album of demos a couple of years ago. So I think that was our first release of non Christmas songs.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: 2022, I think. Yeah, we pulled the Christmas songs. We don't know if we'll ever release those again.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: We did a Christmas song.
[00:06:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: I mean, kind of. We just did a cover of Jingle Bell rock. There you go.
Because we were like, I don't want to write one. We'll just take one that's already written.
[00:06:43] Speaker D: We'll probably redo them someday.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: We probably will.
[00:06:45] Speaker D: Christmas songs. Christmas is cool.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Christmas song. It's fun.
You've got recorded stuff. When I saw on Spotify, you went, the demo stuff is up there into the regular stuff. And I actually love that when bands do that, leave the demo version up, because I'm someone that, personally, I love the progress of a song.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: Me, too.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: You know what I mean? And I love hearing several stages of it, and I keep everything that we've ever done that I have demos of. I keep it all for that same reason, and I'm like, I love the evolution of it. So the demo stuff, did you guys do that all yourself?
[00:07:29] Speaker D: Yeah.
Me and Richard both have very different approaches to demos.
Mine is basically just my voice and a guitar, and that's what you'll hear on that demos album. And then Richard goes ahead and does a demo, and you'll hear every single instrument, and it almost sounds like the album version by the time he's done with different approaches, but, yeah, I think.
I don't even know what I was talking about.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: No, it's cool.
I think our process is a little different.
When I'm writing a song, I'm also arranging all the parts at the same time. I'm writing the lyrics at the same time. I'm kind of envisioning it far off. And so when I feel like a song is done, I go in there as quick as I can, and I lay down the bass track until it's right. I lay down the guitars until they're right. I lay down, like, the drums. I do all of my drums by Midi, and I just tap out every single point and click with my mouse every single drum hit and make sure it's right. And only then can I feel like, okay, somebody's going to understand what I'm going for in this song. And I send it out to my band. They're like, oh, yeah, this is, like, the easiest thing to learn because you already did it all. And so that's just like, I don't know. It's my approach because I think about all the parts at the same time. I'm thinking about the words and the melody. What is the song going to do? Not just, like, what do I want to say or what kind of guitar tone do I want? It's all happening kind of simultaneously.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: That's such an interesting way, because having all these musicians on the show and I. Songwriter, whatever, I write songs, but I don't consider myself a great songwriter. I'm just like, whatever. But hearing everybody's the way they do it. Some people start with the lyrics and then write everything around. Some people start with a simple bass line or a simple guitar thing or whatever. And I love how each individual style all get the same dope product. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter how you approach songwriting. There's no, hey, this is how you do it, because there's a million different ways.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: And you would never know by listening to a song.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:46] Speaker C: What the process was like.
[00:09:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And I've listened to trying to find inspiration. I was listening to some like, hey, here's how you write song things. And I found myself getting really discouraged.
I'm like, I'm not doing that.
But there's just so many different ways to do it. I think the writing the song basically all at once is a pretty unique way of doing it. Usually it's a little slower, I guess, in that process.
So do we want to, at this point, play a. Yeah, I think that'd be great.
[00:10:22] Speaker D: Oh, this is cool, too, because we both have songs that we wrote separately and then brought it to the band and created it. So the first one is one of Richard's songs within headsound, and it's called like a painting.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Okay. Do you want anything you want to say about the tune before we play it?
[00:10:42] Speaker C: Like a painting was my experiment of trying to figure out what shoegaze is. So Stubby sent me my bloody Valentine's loveless. I listened to it for the first time, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I think I understand this music. I think I love it. I think I was made to make it. And so, as kind of just, I was playing around with my guitar one day, like, literally a week after I had heard this record for the first time, I was playing around with my guitar, and I got inspired by sound, and stuff started flowing. I started hearing all these different elements, and within 45 minutes, I grabbed an old poem I had written, and I tried to put it to music, and I sent it to stubby the next day, putting basically a full demo track. And I was like, hey, is this shoegaze?
And he texted me back. I was so surprised. I thought he was going to hate it. I was like, no, man, you're getting there. Still work at it, though. Listen to this album now. But he was like, dang it, I've been trying to write that song for 20 years. He was like, yeah, that's shoegaze. It's like a great shoe gaze. And I was like, oh, cool. I had no idea. So it's so funny now to see it going out and people are listening to it. I never thought anything would come of it. I thought it was just an experiment for me.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Nice. And what's the name of it?
[00:11:59] Speaker C: It's called, like, a painting.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Like a painting? All right, well, let's check out, like, a painting head sound, and then we'll be right back. Tacoric and Stewie.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: With this way is overwhelming.
I think that it's race by us.
And.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: So that was, like, a painting head sound. And clearly, it's not just the two of you. Or, I mean, I guess it could be in today's day and age, but it sounds like there's more than just the two of you in the band. So who are we missing here today?
[00:16:53] Speaker C: Well, our drummer. We have a drummer and a bass player. It's the four of us that makes up head sound. Our drummer is named Phil Albanese. He's a good friend. And our bass player is Aidan Gower. They're great guys. I've been playing music with them for almost ten years at this point. And, yeah, we've played at church together for a while. And when Headsound wanted to expand for our live shows and have more of a full band kind of sound, I thought about these guys and asked them to join us for just the summer of, I believe it was 2022. It's like, hey, guys, would you play three or four shows with us this summer? And they were like, yeah, that sounds like fun. We can do that. We'll learn the material. And it was so encouraging because they very quickly got back to me after listening to some of our songs, and we're just like, we love this music. And so what happened? What I thought was just going to be the summer of 2022 became. I mean, they're our band. They're just as much a part of this as we are. It's like, I can't imagine headsound without them. And thank God, I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon, so. We love you, Aiden. We love you, Phil.
[00:18:04] Speaker D: I think Aiden just started a song for us.
[00:18:07] Speaker C: Yeah, Aiden's, like, writing songs for the band now, which is.
[00:18:14] Speaker D: Have there was.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: The demos and what we just heard. Is there anything else planned to record? Are you writing? Is there anything coming up?
[00:18:26] Speaker D: Yeah, well, a song that'll play soon in this podcast called Optimistic is released, and we also are working on a full album. We have, I think it's like eight songs.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it's eight songs. Couple interlude tracks.
[00:18:45] Speaker D: Interlude.
[00:18:45] Speaker C: It'll be a ten track album.
[00:18:47] Speaker D: Yeah, we're mixing it and we're working hard on mixing and mastering that. Richard's doing all the mixing and mastering, and I'm coming in and helping him when I can usually critiquing everything.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Yeah, well, stupid's got the vision and the ears for it, and he knows exactly what we should be going.
[00:19:08] Speaker D: But, yeah, that'll come out in a few months, I think you're thinking around April, right?
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm hoping to finish it by late April, like, the mixing and mastering portion, because I'm having a kid in May, so I probably won't have much time in May to mix. So I'm hoping that we'll be done with mixing, mastering at end of April, and then we'll send it on for distribution, hopefully sometime in May.
[00:19:34] Speaker D: And it's the best thing I feel like I've ever worked on in my whole life. I'm so proud of it. It's pretty cool. So, yeah, stay tuned for that. And also, we have a show in April with a band I think, you know, called Season Atlantis.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Great prince.
[00:19:56] Speaker D: So we're going to play with them. I think we're going to open for them. I hope so. I always get embarrassed when bands suggest it the other way, but, yeah, hopefully we'll open for them. They're very high energy, so I think we'll play pretty high energy. That night, we actually created some fake bands to open and close for our band. So we have an Americana dream pop band, and we have, like, a post rocky kind of weird psychedelic band. And we gave them different names and stuff. So I think we'll channel our more kind of weird experimental side at that night. And we usually wear like astronaut helmets and stuff for that. It's really fun.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: You're ridiculous.
[00:20:29] Speaker D: Yeah, I love it.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:20:31] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that'll be a great show. Single cut. I think it's maybe April 6 or something. I don't know.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Oh, nice. Yeah, single cut is great. That's where I had my 50th birthday party bash at. Single cut with a bunch of bands. And I'm actually playing with seas Atlantis this weekend.
[00:20:48] Speaker D: Come on.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: I mean, as this airs, it will be two weeks ago, but still. Yeah, I'm playing with them this weekend at a benefit show in Albany. Doesn't matter because it's already happened.
[00:21:00] Speaker D: You can't and you better not have missed it.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: And you either were there and it was super cool or you are lame.
So album coming out sometime like late spring. And obviously that's a lot of work that goes into it. And are you aspiring to do tours at all? Like any regional tours or do you like staying local?
What are the plans?
[00:21:30] Speaker D: Great question. And it's something we have talked a lot about, but I think we're all on the same page. We don't want to do any touring.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: We.
[00:21:44] Speaker D: Want to stay local and have normal lives and normal jobs. And I think three out of four of us are married. And I'm going to start trying to produce an offspring pretty soon.
Going to unsheath myself.
[00:22:01] Speaker C: Yikes.
[00:22:05] Speaker D: So, yeah, but, yeah, just start families. But we want longevity and to have a good, healthy life where we can keep writing into our seventy s and eighty s if possible.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Totally.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: And that's like the best thing about this local scene is that everybody's.
We're all here. It's not like a big competition to get out of here. Whereas I feel like some of the smaller market scenes, it kind of feels like that, where it's like this big competition to get out of here, but everybody here is just like, no. And you said it perfect. I want to have a normal life and I want this to be fun and be like. And it's great for people that do tour and can tour, but it must be so fun.
Maybe, but it's a cost. Yeah, it's got to be a cost. It's got to take such a toll. And I even think of myself when we go on vacation. If I spend like 20 minutes too long in an airport waiting room, I'm like, this sucks. What is going on here? I can't even imagine being on a bus or something.
I don't know.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: Your mom's minivan rough?
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be wicked rough, especially at my age. I'm like, no, thank you.
So I guess at this point, let's listen to another tune.
You said the first one was a rich tune.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Yeah, the first one was like a painting. I wrote that one. The second one is maybe my favorite headsound song. It's called Optimistics to be wrote it.
[00:23:45] Speaker D: My favorite is, like a painting.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: I know, it's so weird how that works, but, yeah, I'm a huge fan of this song.
I'm really proud of it. I'm proud of how it sounded. There's probably 17 or 18 mixed revisions that we went through before we nailed it, and I think we nailed it. So optimistic.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Optimistic. All right, well, let's listen to optimistic head sound and then we'll be right back to wrap it up with rich and Stewie.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Sa.
I just got it. Just like how she shall say I wish I started out I could break down I just like the sun how she shining night rain I gotta be she tells me that she love smile she tell me she misses I wanna be like I wanna be like sad I wish.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: All right, so that was optimistic. Head sound and rich and stubby. I want to thank you so much for coming out and getting me buzed on scandinavian liquor. It was pretty nice. Anyway, before we go, like I do with all my guests, I just want to give you the chance to say what I call your gratitude. So, rich, start with you.
[00:28:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, first of all, want to thank you, Andy, for having us here. This has been just such a blast. It's been a great time in your studio here and just talking.
Yeah, I think I would be remiss if I didn't first, thank Jesus because we're Christians and we love the Lord and, yeah, that's what we do. And second, most important, thankfulness. Gratitude is to my wife, Lauren, for letting me play in a band. And it's a lot of work and she's been super supportive of. So, of course, want to thank bandmates stubby for inviting me to play with him all those years ago and help me become a better songwriter, better musician, and feel like giving me an opportunity to do something really fun. And, of course, thanks to Aidan and Phil for being a part of this band and for loving the music and practicing so hard and just being just ten times better musicians than me and Stubi are. So thank you, guys. And then lastly, I'll just thank maybe not lastly, penultimately. Second to lastly, I'll thank, obviously, all of your wives, Dana and Chris, and thanks whoever Aiden's future wife is going to be. I don't know. We don't know yet.
[00:30:16] Speaker D: I bet she'll be hot and cool.
[00:30:18] Speaker C: Probably, to be honest.
[00:30:19] Speaker D: And smart.
[00:30:20] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely smart. Thank you.
[00:30:22] Speaker D: And she'll let him play music for sure.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: And lastly, I actually want to do a special thanks to Rick Albanese, Phil's dad, who has offered up his basement to us to rehearse in and to also, we recorded the whole album there. We recorded everything live. We live tracked everything. And it was a lot of fun. We just brought a bunch of gear, spent a couple days there. And so thank you, Rick, for giving us the opportunity to record our album in your basement.
[00:30:50] Speaker D: Thanks, Rick.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: Those are all my gratitudes.
[00:30:52] Speaker D: Those are good ones. I'd like to thank Charlie.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Calvin.
The dog's name is Calvin.
[00:31:02] Speaker D: Well, I don't mean the.
[00:31:04] Speaker C: You're touching the dog.
[00:31:08] Speaker D: My friend Charlie, you don't know him.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Has nothing to do with Calvin.
[00:31:12] Speaker D: I'd like to thank my friend Charlie. You guys don't know him. He's really cool.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: He lives in Canada.
[00:31:15] Speaker D: Yeah.
I'd also like to thank Calvin, too. He's such a good boy.
I'd like to thank Kevin Shields, if you're listening. I love you, and I want to be friends with you. Give me a call.
Email me if you want my number.
I'd like to thank my wife, who, Dana, who actually, the last song was about and is so unique and loves me so well.
Love you, budy. Thanks for letting me make our house noisy sometimes.
Okay, what else?
So is this, like, thanks or grateful?
[00:32:00] Speaker B: I think it's whatever.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: Pretty close to the same thing.
[00:32:05] Speaker D: I'm also grateful for burritos.
They're just great food. You can pack just about anything in there. I love burritos, and I basically live on them.
And I'm also thankful for you. Thank you for having us, Andy, and for aquavi. It's delicious, and I think that's about it.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: I'm sorry.
[00:32:34] Speaker D: Cool. All right.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Right on. Well, rich and stubby of headsound, I am Andy Scullen. This is unsigned five one eight. I'll see you on the road.
Unsigned five one eight is produced and hosted by me, Andy Scullen. New episodes are available every week wherever you stream podcasts. If you'd like to help support the show, please like and subscribe wherever you are listening. Or you could buy me a
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