Catch up with The Well Reds to see what they had to say about the release of their debut album, Volume, and head to Loudfund now to help them raise the money to share the new album.
What's the best response you've heard since releasing Volume?
Torin: I think the general response that we've gotten has just been that people really appreciate where we've come, how far we've come. There were elements that definitely worked in the music that we put out before and I think people get that, but some of the songs on the record are kind of a massive revolution of what we've done before and some of them are completely left of center and so it's really cool to see that those songs that were a massive revolution of what we've done before and songs that were really left of center to be songs that are hitting people the right way. That's kind of nice too that we can stretch and people still dig it. People are really enjoying the diversity of the record
Jeremy: I agree with that. It's hard for me to pinpoint one thing; we've gotten a lot of really good feedback, even just yesterday somebody was raving about the record. It's hard to talk about hat without feeling like you're blowing up your own ego, but this guy just said he loved every track; I was doing this session for an engineer yesterday and he had gone and bought the album and was just raving about it so that was kind of cool. It's always fun to have people love your work. That's been the best thing about this is just that people love it, we haven't gotten the whole 'well you guys are pretty close, this is a good record, it's a good effort,' you know, it's more of a 'wow, this is amazing' kind of reaction so that's been pretty amazing.
Is there a track from the album you're just really satisfied with?
Jeremy: I'm pretty satisfied with all of them, to be completely honest. I'm excited about just about every track. The ones that we collaborated on are my favorites and there's a lot of collaboration. Torin is one of the main writers in our band but he's very generous in the way that we all approach it; he's able to kind of take himself out of the process and let us come in and make some big changes to the songs and one of the ones that we kind of did a lot of work on was "Carousels" and then, you know, he made a lot of changes to "BPM" and the evolution of "Do You Still Love Me" was a lot of fun, too. That was kind of a different sounding song when we walked in the studio but we were able to do some really fun stuff with it with the 8-bit kind of approach and the lo-fi drums and everything, literally using a Casio keyboard for drum sounds and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun.
Rex: "Do You Still Love Me" is probably one of my favorites on the album; just the energy of the song. It's pretty unique and not like a lot of other stuff out there right now.
How would you describe the sound on the album?
Jeremy: Our sound, as a band, we've described it as melodic, you know, it's obviously lyric focused, hook focused, and a lot of very pop-y and catchy melodies. The album, as a whole, is really - we've kind of talked about it in these words: it's a playlist, really. We don't cross genres but we don't really land in any..
Torin: We touch on all these different places. It's a playlist for what you would hear on a modern pop station because there's nothing acoustic, this stuff is very electronic. There's this home base element, specifically harmonies between Jeremy's and Sean's voices, we have a lot of pretty aggressive rhythm section parts so there's usually little nuggets to try and tie everything together. On the song to song basis, specifically with the producer we were working with, we tried our best to really dial in the sound for that song. So, again, while there are elements that are very consistent throughout, there are specific sounds on specific songs that might only pop up once or twice.
Jeremy: Right, and it's interesting, going back to your first question, one of the things that's been talked about is that, even though there's a lot of diversity, the album is very much of the band. There's a consistency there and that's cool to hear: that when you touch up on a bunch of genres, you're still able to produce a whole work that sounds like the band.
Where do your ideas come from while writing?
Torin: So, Jeremy, Sean, and I write and I think that, in some ways, we probably all come from very different places. We've been really fortunate to get to travel a lot the past couple years to represent one of the top college booking agencies in the country so we've toured pretty extensively and I think, when you're on the road that much, you get to collect a lot of really cool life experiences. I think this record, in particular, kind of catalogs some of the really cool stuff that we got to experience on the road, and also some of the maybe not so good stuff that we got to experience, and I think, as a band, we try to be really, really honest with what we're experiencing because I think that allows the listener to take whatever they will from it, from a really pure place.
Jeremy: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that we do all kind of come from different places and we have this process of kind of bringing songs to the band, ideas to the band - sometimes they're completed songs or almost completed - and then the process from there is picking our favorite ideas. It takes a little while to kind of land in a place, at least on this last record, it took us a few minutes to get a track list that we were comfortable with, but I think that this kind of democratic process that we have may take a little longer, but it resulted in a really great record so, yeah, I think it's really good. I think it's interesting to have different perspectives in a band: different writers coming together with different ideas and they way they see things and then, once a song is brought to the table, we cut it up and we change things, and, unless the writer is pretty adamant that it stays the way it is, it's open to the scalpel.
Do you guys have any traditions or rituals you go through before performing?
Torin: With a lot of the college stuff, we have a pretty intensive set up with production, so by the time - hour and a half, two hours - of setting all that stuff up, usually we're just chilling out, taking a nap, trying to get some food.
Jeremy: I have some pretty interesting sounding vocal warm-ups I'm sure the guys are tired of hearing; there's some videos on Instagram. I think we just, kind of, do our own thing and then, when we take the stage, that's when we're kind of coming together.
Rex: Some reading. Trying to find food. Normal stuff.
Torin: Trying to find free food.
What's the best part about performing?
Torin: Getting out of the difficulties of the day. It's a very in the moment type process.
Jeremy: Yeah, I think, for me, it's crowd interaction. I love kind of the relationship between the performer and the crowd and just, I feel like, trying to get people to jump out of this place.. People generally are very self conscious in the audience and trying to bring them to a place where they're not self conscious, just get them moving and get them up and into the music; when a crowd is really responding to your efforts to bring them into your world, I think that's when amazing things can happen.
Rex: Similar to Jeremy's. I enjoy just, people being excited about what you're doing and it's energizing to be doing something that other people enjoy.
What type of tracks are you guys listening to right now?
Jeremy: I'm pretty stuck on St. Lucia; I'm loving their new record. I listen to a lot of James Blake, Tegan and Sara - I love their albums - and, yeah, I'm kind of in that world; in between the pop and more experimental.
Rex: Mostly, I've been listening to just the new Maroon 5 album.
What do you want people to take away from your music?
Torin: I think the general idea that we've always been open to is that we're trying to inspire people to think and we don't really want to tell them what to think about. The ideas that we have, we have collected a lot of these really cool experiences and we've pulled a lot of it and they mean a lot to us and we feel like there are pieces of that that will speak to people. So, it's a little like, this song's for this person and that song's for that person, but I think there's little pieces that will speak in a very personal way and that's exciting.