Dreams of Vertigo

Catch up with pop/punk rockers Dreams of Vertigo's Doug Ferguson, watch the new video for"Blakey's Goldfinger", and look for Reject University Part 2 to be released later this year.

What brought the band together?

Doug Ferguson: It's actually funny, we call ourselves - the piracy of our own practice - the Craigslist band. I started the band in early 2012 around February/March and we ended up finding our guitarist through Craigslist. We started as an acoustic project but we knew that we wanted to branch out and do some more full band stuff, so that's when I started to put out the ads. I put out the ad for another guitarist, found another guitarist and then he found a bass player, probably two years later - it took us a long time to find a bass player - but we found a bass player through Craigslist and, eventually, found a drummer and parted ways with him and then we got another drummer, again, through Craigslist [laughs]; you can see the trend. Then actually what happened is our other guitarist, Devon, he ended up moving to the East coast and so we needed another lead guitarist and we ended up finding a guy named Joe, who is our bass players really good friend and he was actually a singer in one of his other bands. That's how it started and we've been doing that since about 2013/2014.

Where does your name, Dreams of Vertigo, come from?

I've always been absolutely fascinated with dreams. I've always been the type of guy that has these very interesting dreams and I've always been - even as a kid - been like, okay, what in my mind led me to have a dream such as whatever it was? I kept having these vertigo dreams and, if you're not familiar, I tell people it's like, [laughs] when I was sleeping in class in high school, I would drift away and then I would feel like I was falling, and those are called vertigo dreams. I started looking some stuff up about vertigo dreams and basically you tend to get those when you're under a tremendous amount of stress, going through lifestyle changes, et cetera, et cetera. At the time there was a lot going on: I was in a really bad car accident, I had broken up with my girlfriend, I had moved out of my house, I'd had a really big argument with my best friend, and there was all this stress and pain and drama going on in my life at the time and I kept having these vertigo dreams. One day I was at work and I worked security at a concert venue and we were up on the roof and I looked down and I got this vertigo and I literally just looked to one of my co-workers and I was like, 'hey, I should start a band called Dreams of Vertigo,' and that's how it started. 

Which bands or artists have you been influenced by?

Honestly, we're influenced by a lot of bands, whether they're influencing us musically or just in how they carry themselves. Musically, we're definitely influenced by bands like Green Day, Metz, Blink-182 and NoFX, those type of bands, because we grew up in the So-Cal punk scene and are influenced by a lot of those bands. We're also influenced by bands like Avenged Sevenfold - who don't really sound anything like us in any way - but bands like Avenged Sevenfold are bands that do things on their own terms, they make music just basically, I don't want to say in a selfish way, but they make music that they enjoy listening to, without any so-called labels, as far as genres go. They don't sit there and write, 'let's write a punk song' or 'let's write a pop song' or 'let's write an acoustic song' or whatever, and we really look up to bands like that because they've done things on their own terms and that's very much how we are. We're a very DIY band and everything that we've accomplished we've worked our asses off to get so we have a lot of respect for bands like that, too. We listen to them too, obviously we love their music, but I wouldn't say that people that listen to Avenged Sevenfold also listen to Dreams of Vertigo [laughs].

Who's in your playlist now?

I'm into a lot of local bands. I've been working in the music industry for awhile, doing artist development and I'm a music producer, so I like a lot of local bands. There's bands like Assuming We Survive and Haster - who are just absolutely amazing musicians and they've helped us out. But I would say, as far as bigger artists, if you went on my Spotify playlist, it's literally everything from The Beach Boys to Green Day to Metz to Avenged Sevenfold; [laughs] it's all over the place. I just love music in general and I love artists that are completely honest with themselves, so that's what I gravitate towards. And a band with a good melody, I like that, too.

What words would you use to describe your sound?

We joke around and tell people that we're sell-out punk [laughs] but we're a punk pop/alternative band, I would say. Like I said, most people that enjoy us also like the So-Cal punk scene and the '90s rock scene and bands like Green Day, NoFX, and Metz, and stuff like that. But, like, right now, we're working on a new record and it's completely different from the last record, so it's really hard to, quote unquote, pigeonhole Dreams of Vertigo into a distinct sound because we're forever changing. I grew up in the So-Cal punk scene and our drummer's a hip hop drummer, so really, genre is a 4-letter word in the band [laughs].

What was the inspiration for your song and new skate video for "Blakey's Goldfinger"?

"Blakey's Goldfinger" was one of those songs that we wrote that we never really had any intention of releasing. It was a song that we would jam out to. I just came up with this ska/punk riff one day at practice and we just went with it and then we placed it on the back burner because we had a lot of shows coming up and we were doing a whole bunch of other stuff and we just weren't really focusing on working on new material, at the time. Then, our guitarist, Devon, who we called Blakey - his middle name was Blake, so we all called him Blakey - he sent us all a message on Facebook and said that he was moving to the East coast and he was going to have to leave the band, which was definitely a huge step back for us, because he wasn't just the guitarist for us, he was our brother, he was one of the founding members of the band, so it was definitely a big shock for us. We did a couple shows on our own, just as a three piece, but it just wasn't the same and my friend, Paul Miner, approached me and he's worked with Thrice and New Found Glory and a bunch of really cool bands that we're really influenced by and he said, 'hey, do you guys have any new songs you wanna record, I wanna start recording some new bands and I really like your sound,' and I was like, 'okay' [laughs]. He ended up going on tour for about a month and a half so we were sitting in there, doing some pre-production, trying to figure out what song to do, and we just kept going back to "Blakey's Goldfinger".

I think at the end, we decided to record it because we looked at it as a transition song, because it's not really related at all to the new record that we're working on. It's something totally different that we've never done before and, lyrically, it was one of those songs where I had every intention of writing it about something else, but every time I looked at the lyrics, I was writing it about my bandmate, about my brother that had left the band and how it affected us all. It was really a natural process but, at the same time, we didn't have any intention of ever showing it to anybody. And, the obvious influence of goldfinger is in there, with the title, and we all skate and enjoy going out and having fun, so the idea of having a video with a skater was completely natural. This is what we'd be doing anyway, if a band released a song and we liked it, we'd be skating to it so it was just a natural process like, 'hey, let's release a video where there's a skater and jam along to it,' so it was a really fun process to film the video.

Can you tell us anything about Reject University Part 2?

Right now, we're basically in the recording process of it. We had practice yesterday and we have a ton of songs that are pretty much ready and it's pretty much done musically, it's just a matter of getting into the studio and making the time to go in there and actually record the songs. As of right now, we're hoping to have Reject University Part 2 done and out by the end of Summer/early Fall.

What do you want your listeners and fans to take from your music?

Honestly, our fans are amazing. They've stuck by us since day one and I think one of the things that we want our fans to know is that we definitely appreciate that loyalty, but every record that we release is going to be different. Reject University Part 2 is going to be totally different than Reject University Part 1, and I'm assuming Reject University Part 3 is going to be completely different from Part 2, so we honestly just want to create the best music that we're capable of making and continuously challenging each other, as musicians and as individuals, to create better music and we hope that our fans stick around and enjoy what we're making.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Just that our fans really are - as cliché as it sounds - our fans really are our world. I started this band as an acoustic project in 2012 and, literally, there were three people watching our shows and, to be able to come from that, go through all of the stuff that we went through, both good and bad, opening up for bands like Eve 6 and losing Devon as our guitarist, our fans have stayed so loyal it's so amazing. I can't even put into words how much I appreciate all the love and support that our fans have given us and they've saved us, as musicians and as people in general; to know that there's someone out there, even if it's one person that you see that's singing your lyrics to the song that you're on, it's just the most amazing feeling and we absolutely, 100% appreciate all of the support.

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Of Clocks And Clouds

Catch up with Joe Salgo and Ross Procaccio of alternative rock duo Of Clocks and Clouds and listen to their new single, "Another Life", off their forthcoming album, Better Off, due out later this year.

What brought you two together?

Joe: A couple years ago I started making songs in a solo electronic project. I made a bunch of songs with a friend of mine who's an audio engineer and we played one show and some guys came to see us play and I went to see their band play the next weekend and Ross was playing drums with them and I hung out with everybody afterwards and Ross and I talked and figured out that we were both born and raised in Brooklyn which, in New York City these days, it's a very rare thing to find people that are actually from Brooklyn.

Ross: Right now, everybody's from Brooklyn, but nobody's actually from Brooklyn.

Joe: We had a lot of people in common and the next day I hit him up and he actually didn't remember me, 'cause I guess he'd had too much to drink the night before, but we rehashed and I asked if he knew any drummers and he said, yes, himself.

Ross: I was not too happy with what I was doing at the time with the band, that's why I had to drink and that's why I didn't remember Joe the next day. I had a message on Facebook when I woke up and Joe was like, 'hey man, great talking to you and hanging out, had a really good time last night, hope to talk to you about some drummers,' and I was like, 'who the fuck are you,' and he's like, 'dude, we talked last night for two hours,' and I was like, 'oh shit,' but then we talked it out and it just so happened to be that I was looking to move on from where I was at, musically, and try something new and be a part of something else and Joe was looking for somebody and we were both at the right place at the right time.

Where does your name, Of Clocks and Clouds, come from?

Joe: I was reading Wired magazine a couple years ago while I was working on some songs and I read this little blurb about this German scientific philosopher, Karl Popper, who wrote about different types of metrical events - a little cerebral, I know - but he wrote that the world was broken down into two types of events: things that are clocks which are precise and constant and easily measured, and clouds which are more amorphous and always changing and difficult to contain or measure, and so that became the statement for the music.

Ross: The motto of our band.

Joe: Yeah, we have something that's rigid and then we have these more ethereal layers where every time we play the song, it would be a little different.

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

Ross: We both come from different musical backgrounds but, at the same time, we both come from very similar backgrounds. I grew up on a lot of Led Zeppelin. When I was in high school and I would drive to school, I had Led Zeppelin 1 in my car and, one day, my CD player broke and I couldn't eject the CD so it was either really bad radio or Zeppelin and so, by chance, I was forced to study Led Zeppelin 1. And I also played a lot of jazz in high school and college, too. 

Joe: For me, I come from a classic rock background. My dad always was playing records when I was a kid, like Dire Straits and The Beatles and there are so many other things, but I think the things you'll hear in the roots of our songs is like Pink Floyd, for sure, and that classic rock/psychedelic feel. More recently, bands like Tame Impala and The Flaming Lips and stuff like that, people that are just trying to push the envelope and take things to a different place. I've also been influenced recently by more jam music which, moving forward, is sort of the goal for us, not that we're ever going to be a jam band, but to have elements of improvisation during our live show; maybe we'll break off into some sort of jam. Jam music is not what we're trying to do. but there are certain things that happen in it that we're heading towards.

Ross: When we first started out, a lot of our music was more rigid and dictated by a computer, where Joe set up these tracks and we'd play along to them and, not to knock what we were doing in the beginning, but it was almost karaoke-esque, where we were letting the computer run the show and we were just accenting and creating stuff around it whereas, now, our music is blossoming and doing its own thing and that's where Joe's going with the jam thing. It's developing its own shape and form and we're relying less on the computer and letting the music speak for itself.

How would you describe your sound?

Joe: I've been telling people that I play psychedelic alternative blues rock, which is a lot of things [laughs]. We're a little all over the place. At the end of the day, we're a rock band.

Ross: For our new record, we're pulling from rock influences, we've got some heavy rock and roll influences and, essentially, we're all over the place but, at the end of the day, we definitely are a rock band.

What was the inspiration behind your new single, "Another Life"?

Joe: The two of us both went through pretty heavy breakups while we were writing new material and "Another Life" is a song about being with someone day in and day out and then, the next thing you know, they're gone and you never see them again. That's something that a lot of people have dealt with or will deal with or continue to deal with and that's what influenced this song. It's a little snarky in a sense, because the song has an upbeat feel but it's pretty sad at the same time, so it's a juxtaposition of those two things.

That's off your forthcoming, self-produced album, Better Off, could you tell us more about that?

Ross: It's kind of a breakup record. The title track, "Better Off", is pretty much about breakups and all the songs are very emotional songs, but we try to do these little twists on all of them; like "Another Life", if you cut the lyrics out, it sounds like the fun, pop-y, beach-y, jam-y kind of track and the song is upbeat but, when you listen to the lyrics, you're like, 'oh shit, this is dark and really, really sad,' and a lot of the other songs on the record are like that.

Joe: I would say that the overall arc of the record is like going through the initial breakup with anger and then dealing with the pain and then moving forward and then acceptance. That's sort of how it's been plotted out, in terms of the songs.

Is there a song off the album you're most excited for your fans to hear?

Joe: I'm excited for them to hear all of them. "Another Life" is, strangely enough, the one that I'm least excited about, not to put that forward first, but I think the other songs are a little darker and a little more vibe-y.

Ross: "Another Life" is a poppier one; it's a little more accessible in terms of a general audience where the other ones go a little bit deeper and have a lot of different elements. 

Joe: We have a song that sounds like Queens of the Stone Age meets Muse sort of and it sounds pretty cool; I'm really happy with that one.

What do you want your listeners to take away from your music?

Joe: For me, I just want people to be able to pop on our tunes and disappear for a little while and have some sort of experience with it within themselves and their own minds and feel what we went through and have a good time with it.

Ross: I'd like to think that it's relatable. We've all gone through that shitty breakup in one way or another and we've all gone through heartbreak, whether it's family, friends, relationships, boyfriend or girlfriend, we've all done it and it's something that can relate to everybody.

Joe: We also want people to come see us play the songs because it's a whole different experience when it's live in front of you.

Ross: It's a very back and forth experience in terms of the energy at our live shows. Our recordings are very thought out and planned and a lot of work has been done with it, but with our live show, one of the most important things for me, and for the both of us, is to have a good crowd. If we have a good crowd in front of us it definitely affects the feel; if we have a bad show and we don't have a lot of people there and there's no energy in the room, it kills it.

Joe: That doesn't happen anymore, luckily.

Ross: Yeah, thank god, but we've all had those shows.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Joe: Thank you for taking the time to even listen to our music. There's so much out there today that everyone's inundated with the latest whatever in the top 40s or all the indie stuff and you can get lost in it, so if you're reading this, I just want to say thank you for taking the time and taking an interest in what we're doing. We can't do it without everybody else. Without our fans, we're just two dudes making music for each other.

Ross: It would be fun regardless, but we'd like to share it with other people, too.

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William Caleb Parker

Catch up with LA-based singer-songwriter William Caleb Parker and watch the acoustic video for his single, "Full Moon Rising", off his Marie EP, out now.

What got you interested in music and songwriting?

William Caleb Parker: I played in bands in high school and junior high and I wrote some terrible, awful music, like everybody does in junior high and high school, with exceptions and those people are very lucky. I grew up listening to a lot of the music that I try to emulate, to some degree, now. A lot of James Taylor, Paul Simon, Sting, Nickel Creek, and just a really wide variety of different things, but I was mostly writing rock stuff in high school because I was listening to a lot of Radiohead and Muse and things that were cool back then - they're still cool, but I'm just not working with that. Late in college, I realized that in folk songwriting you're telling stories but you're also conveying things. The thing I really like about folk writing is that, a lot of times, the stories have a deeper meaning with them, so on the surface they're about one thing but then when you dig into it, it's a little deeper; really it's a social commentary or it's a look into a single person's life or a look at what it feels like to be hurt by somebody or to get revenge or any of those number of things and that was just really appealing to me and I thought that I would try my hand at it. Plus, that's what I was listening to anyways, so it was an easy sell. 

Do you remember the first song you wrote?

I didn't really take record of that stuff very well.. I have an EP of a band that I was in and I wrote all of it and I have no idea what the first song was, but it was probably on that record somewhere. [Laughs] But, yeah, it just didn't go well; I don't let anybody have those recordings. It's pretty bad [laughs].

You've already mentioned a few of them, but which other musicians have you been influenced by?

I haven't actually said this a whole lot but, recently, I've just been realizing, I have a ton of Radiohead in the back of my brain. I got into them when In Rainbows came out and I worked through their catalog backwards and I really am influenced by that record and also Kid A by them, which I don't think any of my music sounds like them, but just some of their structures and harmonies and the sounds that they go for are familiar sounding to me. And, a lot of classic rock too, so The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Police. I was really into Styx for awhile as well which, I don't know, I feel like I'm a little too young to be into Styx, ever, but I was super into Styx for a long time.

Is there a current artist you're hooked on now?

Yeah, totally. I've been listening to Aoife O'Donovan a whole ton. Honestly, I think that she is my favorite artist at the moment. The record that she just put out has a song on it - it's pretty popular right now - called "The King of All Birds" and it's just fascinating to me. Every time I listen to it I'm blown away. The ideas on there are just ridiculous and I cannot figure out how, from a production standpoint, they came up with the combination of instruments that they did, because it's definitely a folk rock song, but it has a string quartet in it and a horn section and the arranging is just phenomenal and really far out of the box. It's definitely not the most accessible thing that I've ever heard, but it's inspiring to me and I really love it.

How would you describe your own sound?

If I was being really honest and not wanting to be cool, I would probably say soft rock [laughs] but that's not really a neat thing to say. Most of my songs are pretty lyric and story based and really melody driven, so it's maybe less of a feel and groove thing and is more so melody music. I listen to a lot of music - that I like, I'm not talking down on stuff at all - but it seems pretty popular right now to have melodies that are pretty static, so maybe they're using combinations of three or four or five notes and that can be super interesting and I actually really like a lot of music that's coming out right now, like I listen to The 1975 and St. Lucia and all that electronic pop and things like that and I think it's great; but that being said, a lot of it isn't particularly complicated, as far as melodies go, and I think that my brain naturally goes to longer melodies where the line does something, where there's a rise and fall to it and it's not totally dependent on what's going on with the drums or the bass or anything like that.

The video for "Full Moon Rising" was just released, what was the inspiration for that song and why choose to release it in this acoustic format?

I read a book called Gilead by an author, Marilynne Robinson, a while ago and that song, in particular, is special to me because it set off a chain of songs because I realized that, when I didn't have good ideas for what to write about, other people might have good ideas. So, looking in other literature, magazines, whatever I'm reading, seeing a story on T.V., or even reading an article on the internet that's being passed around - whether it's true or not doesn't really matter - but there's tons of stories floating around. There was a particular story in Gilead that stuck out to me that, honestly, I don't really need to describe a whole lot because I pretty much just tell the story in the song. It's a story about a father and son whose grandfather had run off and - we don't know a lot of the details but it was a tumultuous relationship - and they loved him but they also thought he was crazy so, when he left, it wasn't really a surprise, but they find out that he died and it's the story of a father and son going to bury their grandfather and pay him their last respects. The thing that I liked about it was that you learn a lot about the father, but you also learn a lot about the son learning the father's lessons, so it's one of those things where it's pulled from the son's perspective and he's learning things about his father that he never would have otherwise, and I just thought it was a really fascinating, beautiful story and would be a great subject for a song and that's where that came from.

As far as why do an acoustic video for that, it actually is pretty simple. I just had some good feedback about that song in particular and I only had the means to do three videos, mostly it was a time thing, at the moment, and that one just popped out as, 'oh, yeah, I think this one would be good'. And, when you're taking songs off an EP and there's only six options, I mean, [laughs] three of them are gonna make it and three of them aren't.

Could you sum up your EP, Marie, in one sentence?

I could do it in a run on sentence [laughs]. Marie is a collection of story songs, for the most part, that cover a really wide variety of thoughts and emotions and sounds and textures using the same instruments over all of it.

What do you hope that your listeners are able to take away from your music?

I always hope that there's a connecting point in them. A lot of times when I'm writing lyrics I'm really sticking to things that are interesting to me, maybe because they're funny or maybe because they're thought provoking, but my hope would be that some of those ideas that I've had and some of the thoughts that writing the lyrics and the process of songwriting has brought up, might be brought up in other people and, honestly, a lot of the music is done in such a way that I'm hoping to stir some of those same thoughts and ideas in other people. It's a little artsy and it probably doesn't happen super often [laughs] but that would be the hope.

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Dirty Revival

Get caught up with lead singer Sarah Clarke of Portland's soul-funk band Dirty Revival and watch the new video for their single, "Lay Me Down", off their debut album, out now.

How did Dirty Revival meet?

Sarah Clarke: Actually, a lot of us attended high school together and we've known each other for several years through that way. Terry Drysdale, our drummer, Chris Hardin, our saxophone player, Evan Simko, our guitarist, and Karl Ludwigsen, who plays the keys most frequently, they were all in band together at Grant High School in Portland, Oregon; different years, I think there's a three year difference with some of the members in the band, but at one point we were all there together and I was in the choir there and knew most of the band players just by default, both our circles were intertwining.

I didn't really do much in the music scene after high school and everyone went their separate ways, just trying to figure their life out and everything like that and, about three years ago, Terry got in touch with me because he was living with Evan at the time and they were just messing around in their basement, playing music, and it was just a thing they wanted to do and they thought about me and called me over and we started jamming and from there we just added anyone that was really interested in playing, honestly. We had a show and Chris saw us and was like, 'hey, can I jam with you guys?' and we'd already added Karl and our friend and trumpet player Jon Clay, so it was all these winding little threads that connected us all and brought us together.

Which bands or artists have you been influenced by?

It's funny, we listen to so much. I think, probably sitting in the van and listening to what we hear when we drive is kind of a good indicative of what we're influenced by. Although, there's also a lot of individuals in this band and we all have our different tastes. I know for me, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin and some of those big soul greats are very important to me and some of the newer people too that influence RnB today, like Frederik Hauritz and Robert Glasper and other neo-soul artists like Erykah Badu. But, again, our trombone player listens to metal [laughs] and has his own influences there, which is funny because we cover a lot of rock and roll covers and when we're choosing our music we try to do something that we think everyone in the band's going to enjoy playing. Our bass player is a really great jazz bassist as well, so everyone has a different background and history when it comes to music and different things that really speak to them there. I know, for me personally, those artists that I mentioned are really high on my list, as far as influences.

How would you describe your own sound?

I think it's different. We call ourselves soul and we say things like soul RnB, hip hop, and funk because there are elements of all of that in what we do, but I don't think that it sounds like any other band. You couldn't put us side by side, necessarily, with a group like Houston's The Suffers and say that we sound exactly the same, because they're different than we are; they just have a more classic sound. Because of all the different influences in the group and the different people and the different personalities coming into play, we tend to have a different sound and I'd say that there's as much soul and funk as a lot of rock and it's really hard to compare it to something in my mind because I honestly believe that it's unique.

The video for "Lay Me Down" was just released, what was the inspiration behind that song and video?

A lot of stuff there. It's really interesting how that song came into play. Karl actually wrote the majority of the music for that and that's something we do anyways when we're writing songs, we'll have one person that comes up with the main idea and then the entire band arranges it and I'll write the lyrics; 90% of the time that's how it works out. With this one in particular, I'd asked him directly to write me a soul song; I wanted something that maybe Sharon Jones or Charles Bradley would sing to and he brought me something that was totally amazing and really beautiful, but it spoke to me in a different way than that standard soul sound. At the time I'd been really focused on what's happening in the city that we come from in Portland, Oregon; there is a huge homeless epidemic and a lot of drug use and it really hits close to home. I mean, people that you had gone to high school with and had grown up with, you might run into them on the street and not really recognize them because of the path they've had and the things they've had to deal with. I feel a lot of empathy there and I think everyone that I know feels that as well and part of the challenge is maybe looking at those people and realizing that there's a story behind every scenario and part of that is trying to see beyond the things that maybe freak us out or turn us off about drug use or homelessness; that there was a person there at one point with a family and a life and you are not always 100% in control of the things that happen to you and maybe it's important for us to try to be a little bit more human towards each other.

That was the inspiration behind writing the song and the video. The song itself, I definitely felt that there were things close to home that made me feel the need to discuss it at the time and, now, as I see that the same problems are just being exacerbated in Portland as homelessness is spiraling out of control and we don't have anything really set up for people with mental health issues and drug abuse issues and our system is really just rigged against people that need it the most. That is a problem and that is a problem all over the country, so that's something we felt we wanted to talk about.

Could you tell us more about your debut self-titled album?

We were looking for an identity as a band and, in some ways, struggling with that. There's so many people, so many ideas, and so much talent in the group that finding a direction has actually turned out to be more difficult than you could imagine, so we were just getting our feet wet at the time with this album; what do we want to sound like, who do we want to be, and what does Dirty Revival mean to us? We were musically trying to answer that question through each track and I think that the funny part about that is every player has their favorites. I definitely have my favorites and I definitely think that we were able to figure out the sound that we are the most comfortable with that defines us best through trial and error and we just took everyone with us on that ride.

You said everyone has their favorites, what's your favorite to perform live?

Definitely "Lay Me Down" is probably one of my favorite songs on the album. "She Can't Wait" is another favorite of mine and they're both really, really similar. I think that's just my personal aesthetic, that gritty, dirty, soul sound. I think what's cool about the album and definitely about our live performances is that each song has the ability to speak to different people for different reasons and any given night we'll have feedback from audience members that they felt attached to this one particular song for this particular reason or another song for a different reason, and so it's cool to know that, as we were going through this journey ourselves, that we were able to take people there with us and that they're also feeling attached to the music the same way we were when we recorded it.

Your music offers a pretty good explanation on its own, but how did you come up with your name Dirty Revival?

It's funny, because we actually came up with the name of the band before we came up with the music that we were going to be playing [laughs]. I don't know how that happened, it was a happy circumstance. We really just liked the name and we knew we wanted to do something with soul music and that was the 'revival' aspect of it and we knew we wanted to put our own spin on it, which is where the 'dirty' aspect of the name came from. Truly, the name was defined over the course of maybe just the last year, being in the studio and honing in on our live sound and on our studio sound and who we actually are. We picked a band name that we then had to live up to, which wasn't hard considering. For us, Dirty Revival is almost a genre of music now, for us, it's not so much the name of a band.

What do you want your listeners and fans to be able to take away from your music when they hear it?

I think it's super important for anyone that listens to music or involves themselves in music in any way that everyone has their own way of doing it, there's no right and wrong about what you take from it or how you feel about it, as long as you really take the time to try and take something and feel something. For us, again, we are very attached to a lot of our music and there are tears and things that go into it when you're writing about things you really care about and people you care about and I think that just listening with an open mind and an open heart and open ears is a really helpful way to enjoy the message, whether it be the message that I'm hoping you enjoy or the message you take from it, because that's just how you feel. Either way, just being very open minded is really important, I think, for listeners and for us.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

We're really having a great time. We've been on the road now for about three weeks and we'll be going home next Monday, which is really exciting because I have a four year old that I miss a lot [laughs]. For us, getting out here and just doing it has been really, tremendously helpful and the feedback and the positivity and the new friends we've made has just been a lovely and very important experience for us. For the people that did show up to our shows and the people that are considering coming next time, we can't do any of this without that support and I think that's the big driving thing behind independent musicians, is that it's truly the people and their love and support that actually helps us do what we want to do and we love to do and, for that, we couldn't be more grateful.

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