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pleasantmag · 4 years

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flipturn is “something you needed”

Interview by Tess Culbreath and Ally Tori // Photos by Ally Tori

Fernandina Beach’s flipturn is made of four friends who came together their senior year of high school to play music. The flipturn roll call is Dillon Basse (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Tristan Duncan (lead guitar), Madeline Jarman (bass), and Adrian Walker (drums). The four musicians began to play music in Madeline’s garage at her parent’s house – and still do.

Flipturn’s first single, “Cartoon Head”, was released in September of 2016, followed by their debut EP, Heavy Colors, in March of 2017. On April 20, 2018 the band released their critically acclaimed sophomore EP, Citrona and its accompanying single, “Churches.” In 2019, the band released two singles, “Eleanor,” and “Darling.” On February 7, 2020, flipturn released their third EP, Something You Needed, which they are touring on throughout the rest of this year. The record consists of five tracks, “Savannah”, “Something You Needed”, “Poppies”, “Glistening”, and “Did I Love You (Like I Promised To).”

After the release of Something You Needed, we caught up with flipturn in Tallahassee, Fl outside of The Wilbury on February 21, 2020 to talk about their new record, their upcoming tour, and the future of flipturn.

flipturn from left to right: Mitch (Touring member, Synth), Dillon (Vocalist, Guitar), Madeline (Bass, Vocalist), Tristan (Guitar, Keys), and Adrian (Drums)

Who do we have the pleasure of speaking with today? Please introduce yourselves and state what your role is in the band.

Dillon: My name is Dillon. I sing, and I play guitar.

Madeline: I’m Madeline and I play the bass.

Adrian: Hi, I’m Adrian and I play the drums.

Tristian: Hi, I’m Tristian and I play guitar.

Mitch: I’m Mitch and I play the keys.

Who is flipturn as a whole? How did y’all get started? Why did you choose the name flipturn?

Madeline: We started in high school our senior year, Dylan, me, Adrian, and Tristian. We started out just jamming in my garage at home. We still do that now. We were all musicians and lived in a really small town, so we didn’t know anyone else who played instruments, well, played instruments, but also played in a rock band.

Dillon: Yeah, nobody was really playing, and nobody had really started a band in our town, before we did, so we didn’t really have anybody to follow. So, it started out kind of corny, kind of like “what the hell are we doing?”.

Do you have any trouble being from a small town? Do you think that hurts or helps you?

Dillon: I think it helps a lot.

Madeline: I think it helps. We have a really strong community that really supports us. It’s really awesome. We’ll walk around; we went to a restaurant for lunch and order man was like “Hey, Flipturn!” and we were like “Yeeepp.” But yeah, the community is super nice and has helped us a lot.

Dillon: Yeah, for sure, they’ve helped us a lot.

Madeline: Especially when we were first starting out. We played at a lot of really smaller shows, but with three-hour sets.

Dillon: It kind of has that Key West type feel to it, so it’s that bar scene

Madeline: It’s the same three bars

Dillon: Yeah and they’ll have music sectioned off for like four hours; we did a few of those

Madeline: Any of our friends that saw us play those three hours shows, they’d still come. They’re in college and we’ll see them in Athens or Gainesville and stuff so, really supportive and continue to be supportive.

Do you guys jam together? Do y’all have any other hobbies you guys do as friends? What is the group dynamic outside of the band?

Dillon: Star Wars, I think I definitely bring that up every day.

Adrian: There’s nothing wrong with that

Madeline: We like playing Mario Kart

Dillon: We have three Switches. I don’t have a Switch, but they do. What else?

Madeline: We like getting food. Shout out to Taco Bell—feed us.

What is your writing process like?

Madeline: We jam and be like “this is cool” and then we go with that. That’s been our typical go-to. I don’t think we’ve really written in any other way.

Dillon: No, we really haven’t. Usually it’ll start with one tiny idea that somebody will bring to the band and in the garage that we practice in and we just build off of that. And then we keep honing and polishing it. I think with the last check especially, we tried to be a little more experimental with the writing process. So, we tried to add a bunch of different new instruments, rather than taking our core instruments that we were used to playing. We were like “what if we wrote a riff on a piano?”; Tristian started this cord thing on the piano and we had never really gone off of something based off of a piano before. We then created the song “Poppies” off of that. I think we were being a little more experimental recently and I think that’s how we want the writing process to go. It’s not just trying to stay in that guitar heavy base, which there can be some great stuff, like there’s some heavy guitar stuff, but I think we’re just trying to push it in that direction more.

Lyrically, is it based on real events in your lives or is narratives y’all would like to tell?

Dillon: I think a little both actually. A lot of it is inspired by real life events that we witness and things that have affected us. But, I also don’t like when lyrics are so straightforward that there is no room for interpretation. I think lyrically there is, I mean, I like when people can interpret it for themselves. If it’s completely different than what the lyrics are actually about, then that’s totally fine. It’s up to the audience.

Since you’re touring on your new record, your third EP, how would you say it’s different than your first two [Heavy Colors and Citrona] and the growth of your band from the beginning?

Madeline: It’s really different.

Dillon: Tristian, do you want to talk?

Tristian: We took this one a lot slower in the sense that when we approached the writing process it was still a lot of jamming, but what we’d do is that we would jam for a five second interval and throughout we’d be like “Hey, we don’t like this part, we wanna do this kind of thing”. It was a lot more detail oriented in how we tried to approach building the songs from ground up. I think that paid off because it feels much more mature in that sense.

We saw that y’all have some singles that you’ve released and you’re on your third EP, do you guys have any plans for a full length in your future?

Dillon: Yes, actually. That would be after we’re done with the tour. I think that is the next big thing. We’re just going to really hone in and just try to write as much music as possible because I like putting out these little projects, this little EP projects, but I think that the next thing in our career, the next step is to put out a full length album. I think we’re ready to do that now. Maybe when we first got started we weren’t, but now I feel like we can create something really fucking cool.

Would you be hoping to self-release or sign with somebody?

Adrian: It would be nice to sign with somebody.

Dillon: I mean it would be nice to sign with somebody cause of how much exposure it can give you, but I think the reason that we haven’t put one out [self-release] is because we’ve always been like “oh, we need a label” and then I think the more we’ve been in the music business and the more we’ve seen, we’ve realized that you don’t want to rely on that. You don’t want that to just stop you from pursuing music and so we’re just like…

Madeline: If we’re writing and it gets picked up, then it gets picked up.

Dillon: Yeah, exactly. If it gets picked up, it gets picked up and that’s great. If it doesn’t, I’m hoping we’re just going to be super fucking proud of it, no matter what it is, and I know we will be. So, I don’t want to write something just to get picked up by a label cause that’s when music gets altered. And that’s when some of your favorite artists, you just go “what did they do? What the hell, you know?”. This past EP is definitely different than some of our other stuff but I’m really, really happy that it is.

Madeline: It wasn’t intentionally different either.

Dillon: No, it wasn’t. It was just the direction we were going.

Do you guys have any influences, either musically or creatively, that influenced this latest EP?

Dillon: I will shout out some guys, some friends of ours, that we went on tour with in the fall and I think we saw how they didn’t care what they did with their songs. They weren’t trying to fit a certain structure or anything. Their names are Brazen Youth—truly amazing songwriters and I think we just saw some of that and were like, “Damn, that’s really cool that they just do whatever they want to their songs and create whatever they want.” I think we tried to write in that headspace a little more.

Madeline: Yeah, I think they definitely inspired us.

Dillon: That’s very recent though. I didn’t grow up listening to those guys—we just met them last fall, so that [inspiration] is more recent. But long term…

Madeline: We did a writing trip up in the mountains in September and we rented an Air BnB for a week in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina—we went there to just write and to get into a creative headspace cause our last three EP’s have just been written in my garage. Which, there’s nothing wrong with that, but we just wanted to try something different.

Do you have any plans like for your full length—to do another type of writing retreat?

Adrian: That would be ideal.

Dillon: I think so.

Madeline: That would be cool. We really liked that, and it was nice to get away as much as we could.

Dillon: It was an escape from reality

Adrian: And that’s the soul focus there.

Madeline: I mean, you wake up, eat, and then you write.

Dillon: You get a little bit of legitimate cabin fever, like literal cabin fever, but it’s a lot of fun. One of the best things we’ve ever done [for Flipturn] was that for sure.

Is flipturn your full-time gig or do you guys still have to work to support yourselves?

Adrian: Oh, yeah. We work.

Madeline: I’m finishing up school right now—I’m graduating in May. But yeah, it’s pretty much all flipturn for all of us though. It’s also hard to find part-time jobs that are like “oh, you’re okay with me leaving for two months.” And especially since Dillon and I are still in school, so after that, we really do have a lot of time. But it’s our life.

Dillon: There was definitely a time, about a year ago, we made this decision to put this in the forefront of our lives. I don’t think we would all be doing this, if we hadn’t have done that. We were just like “We’re all pretty confident in what we’re doing and how it’s going and this what we want to do for the rest of our lives, so why not take the risk?”. A lot of us dropped out of school, went to online school, we all moved back home, living with our families—I was living with my mom. I’m still living at home until I graduate and definitely making some sacrifices and stuff like that, but so far, it’s been absolutely worth it because we get to come and do this—meet new people and play music that we love in front of people, so I think that’s pretty cool.

Y’all have a US tour coming up, do y’all have any cities you’re excited to go play in?

Dillon: Yeah, huge. That’s another thing, anywhere in California, Colorado...

Tristian: Texas too.

Dillon: Yeah, Texas is going to be cool.

Note: Before the interview, Pleasant Mag posted on our Twitter account asking if any fans of flipturn had any questions for the band. We picked out a couple of these questions to ask during the interview.

What is the inspiration for your song “Darling”?

Dillon: Oh, so that was kind of what we just talked about, the whole hook of the line “Will you still love me?”—it was written about the time we were all thinking of making this huge risk, commitment, and the line is “I’m bound to fall, I’m bound to fail, but will you still be there for me?”. And that’s talking about whether that be family or can be anybody. It can be a girlfriend, boyfriend, family member, friends, will you, even if I’m taking this risk, if I fail, will you be there? That’s what that whole song is about—chasing a dream.

What is your favorite song you’ve made and why?

Dillon: I think it varies, but at the same time, I don’t know, what is y’all’s favorite?

Adrian: Right now, mine is probably “Did I Love You” just because that song is…

Dillon: Serengeti, man.

Adrian: We called it [Did I Love You] Serengeti because that’s what we first named it when we wrote it in the cabin.

Madeline: We were like “What do name this in the voice memo?”.

Dillon: So, it stuck, but we can’t call it this because it sounds stupid, but we’ll still call it that on the side.

Madeline: For me, I guess “Glistening” was really cool. I just really liked how that came together in the studio, especially with the horns, because when we first wrote it, that wasn’t initially a part of that, and in the studio, it really came together.

Dillon: Ironically, when we wrote “Glistening”, not that we didn’t love it, but we were like “This needs more”, and then we went back and tried to mess with it, and now it’s our most played off of the EP—it’s pretty cool.

Dillon: My favorite, as of now, it’s either between “Did I Love You” or “Poppies”. “Poppies”, we wrote it of how we would kind of just jam. How a band first starts writing sometimes, like just jamming, that’s how we left it. We didn’t really polish the structure of it and I liked that we did that—we just left it as it is and there’s some really cool parts to “Poppies” from that.

Madeline: We wrote that right before we went into the studio.

Dillon: Yeah, that was days before we went into the studio, that we wrote that. It also just has this angsty, moody, noir feel to it and that’s another song that we added strings, piano, acoustic guitars—it’s definitely one of the weirder ones and definitely one of my favorites.

What does flipturn plan for the future?

Madeline: Working on a full length—we’ll be spending a lot of time writing, touring more…

Dillon: Pretty much, after the six weeks of crazy touring, we’re just going to hone in on writing and maybe once in a while playing some one-off shows, you know weekend shows depending where it is and stuff like that, but most of the time, we’re just going to be writing. Hopefully by next year, we’ll have this project.

Madeline: In May, we’re playing a couple shows with Mount Joy, it’s not part of the tour but we’re really excited.

Are there any other bands you’re hoping to tour with?

Dillon: Depends who’s going on tour. We have a booking agent we work with now [Caleb at Atlas Touring] and he just looks for and talks to people, kind of shop us around and see who we fit with—and I mean, hey, I’m down to tour with anybody, as long as I like their music.

Any shout out’s you’d like to mention?

Madeline: Shout to the new Animal Crossings coming out.

Dillon: Oh my god, Mad.

Madeline: That’s all I could think about.

Dillon: You can’t just end this interview on Animal Crossings. Mitch has never known what Animal Crossings was and trying to explain it was the most lame thing ever, so what do you do?

Adrian: Hey, you just live your life, you exist with some friendly little critters, use racoon money…

Madeline: It is the most wholesome.

Dillon: Shout out to Animal Crossings.

Check out some live photos of flipturn at their sold out show at The Wilbury, taken on February 21, 2020 by Ally Tori below.

filpturn’s 2020 tour dates:

3/11 - New Orleans, LA - Gasa Gasa 3/13 - Dallas, TX - Sundown at Granada 3/15 - San Antonio, TX - Sam's Burger Joint Music Hall 3/24 - Phoenix, AZ - Last Exit Live $ 3/25 - San Diego, CA - Soda Bar $ 3/26 - Costa Mesa, CA - The Wayfarer $ 3/28 - San Francisco, CA - Milk Bar $ 3/29 - Sacramento, CA - Goldfield $ 4/02 - Denver, CO - Lost Lake 4/03 - Cheyenne, WY - Fridays in the Asher 4/04 - Fort Collins, CO - Avogadro's Number 4/08 - Madison, WI - The Venue on Winnebago St. 4/09 - Milwaukee, WI - The Cooperage > 4/10 - Chicago, IL - Cubby Bear Wrigleyville > 4/11 - Columbus, OH - Rumba Cafe 4/15 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's ^ 4/16 - Boston, MA - Thunder Road Music Club 4/17 - Brooklyn, NY - Rough Trade NYC ^ 4/18 - Washington DC - Pie Shop DC ^ 4/19 - Richmond, VA - The Camel # 4/22 - Raleigh, NC - The Pour House Music Hall & Record Shop 4/23 - Charlotte, NC - The Evening Muse / 4/24 - Knoxville, TN - Open Chord / All Things Music + 4/25 - Nashville, TN - The High Watt +

$ - Dan And Drum ^ - The Brazen Youth # - Kid Brother / - Deaf Andrews + - Blonde Bones

flipturn will be opening for Mt. Joy on their run of Florida dates in May 💫 tickets are available now! go snag em! more info: flipturn.band/tour

05.19 - Tampa, FL The RITZ Ybor 05.21 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL Revolution Live 05.22 - Orlando, FL House of Blues Orlando

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