BEEN STELLAR — ON THE ROAD

Photography COLIN LANE | Interview ALEX KONSCHUH

Nearly 25 years after The Strokes rocked the New York scene, the city couldn't look more different. Still, the sound of indie rock prevails with fresh acts like Been Stellar representing the next generation of artists. On the heels of a new album and ahead of their East Coast tour, Been Stellar spoke with fellow NYC songwriter Malice K from on the road, discussing opening for Fontaines D.C., band dynamics, and touring the West Coast.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

ALEX KONSCHUH: What weather inspires you to write the most?

SAM SLOCUM: Okay. That's a good question. For the new stuff we've been writing, we've been talking a lot about really intense sun and especially like when you're driving and it's really beautiful and there's like not a cloud in the sky, but it's almost sort of menacing how much sun there is.

AK: Sounds like summer

SKYLAR KNAPP: Yeah, I guess summer. I feel like most of the music we've made in the past to me always sounds really kind of cold. Like cold weather sort of music. I think if you're writing from that sort of place or like cloudy and cold gloomy, especially like New York, it sort of tends to drive your music one way. So we've been really trying to make stuff that sounds kind of like it's written in the sun sort of.

AK: I was definitely getting some fall sense from the, from the newest album when I was listening to it. I mean… "Pumpkin.” [laughs]

SS: I would say the same to you with “Halloween”.

AK: Hey man, careful… just kidding. But, yeah, sweet. Some clear skies, some sunny weather. I like that. So just from your album, what movie would you want to see, as a soundtrack? Like for what movie and what song would you choose off of your projects?

SS: Oh, I don't know. I can see “Can’t Look Away” and like Black Hawk Down or something.

AK: Black Hawk Down? [Laughs] That makes sense.

SK: I can see “Takedown” in like, 50 First Dates or Love Actually or something.

SS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could see that.

SK: You ever see the movie Her? The Spike Jonze movie? He’s like, in love with his phone.

AK: Is that Joaquin Phoenix? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could see that song in that movie. I think I always like the last song on the record. I kind of want it to be like a climactic track for a movie, but I can't think of a movie without it being really funny now. But yeah, I think I feel like “Takedown” could be in a vibey romance movie. What's that Will Smith movie… he's like the love coach or whatever? He's like the ladies man. What's that movie called?

SS: Oh, it's Hitch. Hitch, yeah.

AK: [laughs] Yeah we were trying to watch it the other day and like, it was insane. It was completely crazy. Will Smith was talking to one of his clients and he was like, “Yeah, if a woman says she's got a boyfriend or if she's busy, she's lying. She's lying to you.”

SS: [laughing]

AK: But that's like the biggest lie ever…All right. So, getting sidetracked.

SS: That movie always makes me think of, uh, Dinner for Schmucks for some reason. The two of those movies are paired in my head.

AK: Both genius works of art.

SS: Perfect. Perfect double feature.

AK: [laughing] That’s so psycho for a movie night. But I’d go. Alright. How well do you guys get along as a band? Like outside of like practice and stuff. You guys tight?

SK: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'd say so I'd say it's definitely like, now that like, this is kind of more of our jobs where we're around each other mostly in the context of the band. I think there was definitely a period where it kind of became like, “Oh shit, are we colleagues now? Are we like work buddies moreso than just hanging out?” Me and Sam live together, so we're always hanging in one capacity or the next. It'll probably be more clear, once we actually have downtime and, kind of like resettle back into work vibes or whatever, but yeah, we're always tight. We're always hanging.

AK: That's good. So you feel that doing the music in a career format is bringing you closer, it's not pulling you apart?

SK: I mean, yes and no. I'd say again, it's just kind of like new terrain. There definitely is a new layer. Now that there are business decisions and stuff like that. You have to sort of have those two sides to your brain when you're around each other. But I don't know. I think we generally get through those pretty quickly, and when we're just kind of in the van going somewhere like hanging out before or after the show, it's just like hanging with with homies. So I would say so.

AK: That's good. I love that.

SS: I definitely agree. It is definitely weird, though. I'll echo the point of… when things do get really busy, like they're really busy right now, and you kind of are together all the time, you sort of need to acknowledge that. It’s usually when you come out of one of these periods you're just gonna be like, let's go get a drink, let's go do this or that, you're kind of like, “Oh wait, we're not working on the main thing right now.” It's kind of like if a couple is in a joint artistic or business venture where you are tied in this way. Sky and I have been like best friends for eleven years or something like that and there is always this underlying love and appreciation there for the other person but then it is important to have moments where you can just let that be completely separate from the, you know, the venture.

SK: Yeah, you almost have to… like, there'll be like a couple of months, at least with Sam and I, where it's like, “Fuck, we've only been talking about music”

SS: And then we'll have a breakdown. Like, someone kind of freaks out. And then, we have to talk to each other and be like, “I feel really weird.” Like,  I feel like there's tension or it's uncomfortable and then we just talk about it and then like, get food or something and then everything's totally fine.

SK: Yeah, we go on food ventures to, uh, to dispel if there's an awkward vibe, we'll go eat, somewhere we haven't been to.

AK: Yeah that stuff… that can be rough. I feel like they're just little hurdles that as long as you take care of it as soon as it happens… and there's different things of like, you know,  because there's money involved, or if you owe percentages to somebody for playing on a record or for doing this or doing that, it's best to just not take anything personally.

SK: Yeah.

SS: I mean, the other way that we've gone about that is we split everything equally. Like 20 percent per member. So that helps.

AK: That's a good way to do it, because yeah, people would definitely get resentful for sure.

SK: And it's also like, even if someone doesn't write a lot on a song, I see it as like they're still giving their entire life to this thing. They're still there recording it or they’re still there on the road with us.

AK: Like your core members.

SK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, writing, actually coming up with the riff or whatever, almost like, doesn't even feel like work to me. That's not something where it's like, “I did that.” You know what I mean? What actually feels like work is like, you know, sitting in a studio, putting it together or like sitting in a van for like a month. I could kind of care less about where the initial like… spark originated from as far as divvying up percentages. Totally.

AK: You're… you're not energetically superior.

SK: That's right. Yeah. Not yet. I'm getting there though. [laughs]

AK: Because people will do that with things where they'll have these hierarchies of payment where it's like, “Oh, well I wrote this song or I wrote the music” and stuff and it's like, it's really just better to split it. It's such an abstract way to determine the value. because it's like, the point of the thing is that, if there was no drums, this band would suck. If there's no bass, it would suck. It would be nothing.

SS: Yeah. My ex girlfriend, she worked at a company, she had access to this database of all the splits through, I think it must've been through, ASCAP or whatever the other one is, BMI, and you could type in all the splits. Almost any artist or band from any period of time and see the splits on the songs. And it was so crazy looking at it. I had a lot of fun with it one day, looking up everybody from Lou Reed to bands that we know that we're friends with. And it was just kind of a trip to see, cause not everybody splits it equally. And sometimes it'd be getting down to like the decimal point of like this person's got 12. 5 percent of this song and just like thinking, “Oh yeah well they had that one riff you know we got to give them like the 0.5 for that,” or something. I don't know, it's just crazy.

AK: Yeah it’s crazy. I think sometimes people foresee a certain song becoming more popular than others and then feel like, “I wrote a higher percentage of this song.” Even if you worked equally as hard on a separate song that you just think didn't go as well. It's really weird stuff. It's hard to put a percentage on an energy exchange.

SK: Yeah, totally, totally.

AK: But let's move on….What's been your worst moment on tour

SK: So we had like a college show that we played in Maine. And then from there, we drove out like four days straight to Seattle to start this tour.

SS: We're like all absolutely fucking exhausted. And then the morning of our first show, like we're all hyped. It got canceled cause Grian [Chatten] from Fontaines [DC]’s voice was fucked. And so we're like, “Oh shit. Okay.” And then it was, we ended up like putting something together last minute, like a free show. So we were optimistic. Okay, we got over this hump. And then the next day it was like, the next two shows are canceled and we're talking with our manager and it's like, yeah, you guys are losing this much money. We put together another last minute show in Portland, and it was like a cool show but the vibe was pretty fucking brutal like no one was really talking to one another. I don't know like when you're kind of mentally geared up, you've just put out an album and you've reached a next level as a band, and it felt like three steps back into regression. It was really hard.

AK: I saw you like panhandling for venues. I was like, what happened? On Instagram being like, “Does anybody have a basement or anything?”

SS: Yeah, it felt like having flashbacks to the first US tour we did three or four years ago. Reaching out to the venues and being like, “Can anybody like put us up?” It was just like, “Oh man, has no time gone by?” We're doing the same exact thing again. Yeah, but that was kind of rough. I think it was really hard because it's like, you kind of have in your head, “Oh, if you're going on this big tour, then you must be like, really killing it as a band,” or whatever. And then all of a sudden, we would play it like in Seattle, there was, we played maybe like 50 people or something like that in, Portland, like 20 people. And there were shows that were announced like the day of, granted, but still there was something psychologically that really fucked with me about it where it it felt like no progress had been made. So I think that was way harder than I thought it would be but I've gotten over it.

AK: It seemed like you guys got hooked up with a lot of venues pretty quickly though. It seemed like you filled in all the shows. People came through.

SS: Yeah, definitely. The DIY communities in those cities were super strong. So that was really cool. But yeah, I'd say that was pretty tough. I also hate playing in LA, so that was my low point.

AK: Every, every time?

SS: Every time. Yeah, I’ve yet to play a show that I enjoy there.

AK: Is it the people, or is it the venues themselves?

SS: I don't really know if it's the people, I just think that there's like kind of a feeling I get each time. I don't think it's the same every time, I think I just sort of get in my head. The label's always at the LA show, and so that's just like a kind of added layer of, it's not like stressful, but like you're just saying hi to a bunch of people, and they're introducing you to people. LA always feels like, less about the music and more about the spectacle of putting on this show. I think the other thing is like being the opening band especially on a tour like this. It's definitely an honor and we're really happy to be doing it. But when you're the opening band, I don't know, playing in a place like LA, because it's so about the spectacle, you kind of just feel a little bit like a loser or like a deadbeat. But then you like get into like Omaha or something and it's like everybody there's just like raring to see a show and they don't really give a fuck how they're being seen or whatever. And LA you know, there's a whole other thing, like Billy Idol's backstage. Like Arctic Monkeys and stuff and there's just kind of this feeling of, “Oh man, this is cool,” but it's just a little bit crazy. And it kind of left me with a bad feeling.

SK: Yeah, and it's also like because we're so far from seeing that level of celebrity or whatever. It's a little alienating, a little soul crushing. I kind of feel like you shouldn't really ever peek under the hood and actually see what that crazy level of success is like because it seems like an absolutely impossible feat. It's kind of a cliche, you know, a band from New York hating LA, but it's just… man, I always feel this weird sense of doom every time I'm there. And I think partially, logistically, whenever we're there, uh, Layla and Nico both live in LA, so we kind of always end up splitting up, like Layla will go stay at her house and Nico will go stay at his house. And then it's usually me and Sam or whoever else are on our own. So we're kind of like in this really sort of foreign place that we don't identify with on our own. We've got a lot of really great friends out there and everything, but like, I don't know it’s hard to explain.

AK: They're like, “Hey, we're going to stay here. Where are you staying?”

SK: [laughs] Exactly.

AK: I guess my last question is how do you guys feel about the way that the album is being received? Not necessarily like the metrics of how it's doing or what it means to the label, but more of… are people feeling it the way that you want people to be feeling it?

SS: It seems like it.

SK: It seems like it, yeah. Again, it's really tough to say, cause we haven't really done much of our own proper touring since the album’s come out, but I've been really surprised that there's been people at these shows who are singing the songs from the new record. And, just, yeah, feedback in general has been positive and the most consistent thing I'm seeing is that it's like a progression from the EP. And I think that's kind of really all we were trying to do with this. I feel like the way we work there's never a point where I'm like, okay, now this is the big album or whatever. For me, it's just always being a couple steps ahead of myself. And it seems like people are receiving that record in that way. But I don't know, man, I never really think about it, because like, I'm very much of the camp that you're only as good as your next album, the one that's not out yet. So I feel like we in general haven't really taken time to take stock of that. Like how are people receiving it or whatever. It's kind of just more of a practical thing. Like, okay, it's out. Cool. Let's shift our focus on what's next. Overall I feel good with it.

AK: Yeah. That's good. You're already onto the next thing. So it's like, no one can tell you shit.

SK: Yeah, exactly. I think any criticisms don't really mean anything to me because I've already fucking told them to myself or, you know, that's myself from a year ago. So I don't know that guy anymore.

AK: You're speaking to a dead man.

SK: Right.