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[electricdazemag]

Hello, I’m Sorry: Interview

by Tasha Bielaga

The sadboy party rock genre you’ve been missing is finally found, thank god. Seattle based indie pop/trash band Hello, I’m Sorry has been stirring up the Washington DIY scene for a little over 2 years. Songs like Good’s Not Great feature that panning of guitar lines between speakers, you know, the one’s that make your brain feel like it’s spinning when you listen to it with headphones. Vocalist Seth Little, drummer Paul Rhoads, and bassist Cam Richardson all live in Bellingham, WA, where their daily antics are filled with schoolwork and pestering their guitarist Alexander Henness, who lives south of Seattle, to come work on music. The band’s fuzz pop feels reminiscent of warm summer nights full of friends and basement gigs. It’s the embodiment of what goes on in most youth’s heads, set to a tune you can dance, or mosh, to. We talk about saying goodbye to Seth’s beloved 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the best cassettes printed to date, and their janky mic set ups, the epitome of DIY.

Electric Daze: How do you balance making music, working, and going to school?

Paul: School is the only reason I live in Bellingham actually, I’m from California. As much as I would love to just do music 100%, I’m paying a lot of money in tuition and I know what I’m studying, so a lot of my life is based around school. I always make time for music on the weekends though.

Seth: Music is the funnest thing for me, it’s what I enjoy doing the most. But, I am paying a lot of money to be here and should probably be putting more work into school. Whenever I have down time I always try to write something or be productive with my music.

Alex: I think it’s definitely worth it to find a good balance between everything. Since I drive up here all the time to play shows and hang with these guys, music is the most important thing that I want to spend my time doing when I’m not working.

ED: What was the first DIY house show you played that really pushed you to get into this scene?

Seth: We played the Karate Church in Bellingham with Roar Shack back in February of last year! It’s this church that, I don’t want to say renovated because it just looks like half of it got torn down on one side, but you know. There’s this basement part that has a dirt floor. That was definitely the first show where I was like “this is tight, this is such a cool DIY scene”

ED: You guys have obviously played a lot of different shows, from bars to house to dirt floor basements. What makes you want to keep pursuing the house show scene vs. a different approach?

It’s sweatier, they’re more fun! I’m a huge fan of the DIY scene. All the music we’ve recorded has been on laptops, and the DIY part just seems like people are always there more for the music. It’s a lot more intimate.

Are there any songs you particularly like to play live?

Bodies, Sleep by the Phone, Little Plan. People go wild to those. We played a house show with the band Cruise, and it got really crazy really fast. Somebody spilled FOUR LOKO on Alexander’s pedal board, SO sticky man. And then I was worried for the foundation of the house, I felt like I had to be a dad about it you know like “Yo! Let’s be safe out there!” and then give a thumbs up and play the next song.

You do so much releasing on cassettes, which is super tight! I saw there was a mini zine that came with one of them, what was the inspiration for that?

Our good friend Mimi Jaffe actually did those! She also did the cover art for Consolation Party, she’s one of my favorite artists in Bellingham. She did a page for each song and I printed them for the cassettes.

How was working on the Z-Tapes cassette compilation? How’d you get in on that and why’d you pick that song to cover?

Filip from Z-Tapes hit me up and originally wanted to put out some of our tapes, but he had a lot back ordered. I ended up putting ours out ourselves. Anyway, he asked if we wanted to cover a theme song to be included on this cover compilation, and I thought that was tight so we did. I originally wanted to do (Theme from) The Monkees, but it was taken. So I really dug deep and found this mini 70’s tv series that used a Sex Pistol’s cover of Eddie Cochran’s Somethin’ Else, and I thought ehh that technically works, so we covered it!

What’s your favorite cassette that you own?

Alex: There’s this rapper on Stone Throw Records named Koreatown Oddity, and he made a mixtape that’s him rapping from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air's perspective with these really late 90’s beats on it. It’s a 1/100 copy.

Seth: I’m really into The Replacements, but I’m not huge on the album “Don’t Tell A Soul”, but that album has a song titled “Asking Me Lies” that is Paul Westerberg’s attempt at a pop song and it’s SO awful and amazing at the same time, especially on cassette, so that’s my favorite right now.

Paul: When I was a little kid I had a cassette of The Lovin’ Spoonful that I used to listen to in the car, that’s probably my favorite.

ED: You guys did a west coast tour back in August. How do you feel the cities music scenes vary?

Well LA was hands down the best city we played it. They were very receptive to new music that they probably hadn’t heard before. We ended up meeting with mutual friends in most cities, which made the whole tour very cohesive, and not vary a lot surprisingly.

ED: Do you have a wild story from your tour?

OH! We bought a new car! This tour was very very DIY, we didn’t even rent a van. We had Paul’s 2009 Scion xB Box Car, that he just loves, and Seth’s 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. On the way back up it was so cramped in the jeep, the engine light was flashing, and the gauges would go all the way up and then all the way back down, and we’re just thinking something’s wrong, something is terribly wrong. So we pulled over on the side off the road in Weed, California, and Seth found a dealership that would trade straight across. We get a 1999 Volvo cross country, and that car, was the worst car, in the entire world. It had a coolant leak, so we pulled over every 45 min from northern CA to Seattle, WA, to pour coolant in. At one point one of the covers for the headlights just flew straight off while we driving, and there was a huge semi truck that had exploded, so the drive just took forever.  We got into bed at 7am the next day.

ED: You guys have accomplished so many cool things in 2016, like playing with Together Pangea, playing EMP Sound Off, and more recently you played with TV Girl. What goals do you hope to accomplish this year?

Playing with bands that we really like is always a goal of ours. We also really want to play a festival this year. We’d love to do, you know, like, Coachella, hahaha. Touring again and more shows! We have to figure out how our summer’s going to look individually and then work around that.

ED: Good’s Not Great has 20,000 views on YouTube, and 107.7 has been spinning it lately, which is so cool. Were you expecting that song to kinda be your single and the one people listed to the most?

Seth: Honestly, no. When I recorded it, I recorded all the instrumentals and I was super hyped on it. Then I recorded the vocals and it just sounded fucking awful, I was like this song is the worst thing I’ve ever made in my entire life. I remember going “holy fuck, these vocals suck, I forgot that I can’t sing” and I was super depressed for like two days. And then I went in and redid the vocals and went “alright these are better, this song is passable now”.

ED: Do you have a specific writing process? I know you do a lot of half done demos, what’s the process for that like?

Seth: Yeah! I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total tool, but recording for me is part of my writing process. I normally have a half baked idea and I go in, record it and work with it. I send a lot of small ideas to the rest of the guys and they’ll give me feedback on whether I should continue it or not, and that’s what drives my song writing.

ED: Do you do most of the song writing yourself then?

Seth: Yeah, I do almost all of the writing and recording. We always rework the song live though, and sometimes they end up having a completely different energy which I’m a huge fan of. What I’m trying to new with the new album is make demos and then play them and work through them as a band, and then re-record them to match what we do as a band.

ED: What’s your mic set up like? I know small bands always have the coolest (shittiest) mics.

Seth: The jankiest for sure! I have two mics that I use for recording, one’s a Sennheiser condenser mic, and I think the other is an Audio Technica that I use for vocals and drums, sometimes everything. Sometimes when we practice, I take a 1950’s ribbon mic and run it through a solid state 80’s fender amp with chorus on it for a while, because I didn’t have an amp that could take the xlr input. That was probably the jankiest situation.

Paul: Sometimes when I’d use a vocal mic, we’d string it over the rafters in the basement because we didn’t have another mic stand. So it would just kinda dangle in front of my face.

ED: How do you guys feel about music videos? Any plans to do some soon?

We’re doing a live recording of our set today with Bellingham Sound Check actually! That’ll be nice to have a video of how our songs sound live vs. what Seth records. As far as our own music videos, we’d like to do one for Good’s Not Great. We like to sit around and talk about what would be a cool video for each song.

ED: Is anyone a different kind of artist? Obviously you’re all musicians but is anyone acquainted with other forms of art?

Seth: I am definitely NOT.

Alex: I play soccer, and I think Soccer’s an art.

Paul: Well I’m in a jazz band! Which is still music, but a different kind.

Cam: I have a friend who lives in Texas who asks me for beats that he can rap over. So I send him some terrible beats to rap over.

ED: Would you ever make beats for Hello, I’m Sorry, maybe less lofi more terrible rap? If you had to cover a rap song, what would it be?

I feel like we could rap. We could cover Gangsta Gangsta, or definitely Rap Snitch Knishes. Maybe Mathematics by Mos Def but it would be hard. We could take a stab at it though! We’ll make a bad demo and follow up.

photo by Emma Hatwell

Connect with Hello, I’m Sorry on Instagram at @hello.imsorry and on Facebook here.

You can listen to their music on bandcamp at helloimsorry.bancamp.com and on Spotify here.

The cassette with the mini zine can be found here, and the ZTapes compilation here!

This is the first installment of features on Seattle based bands. Check back here soon to read the rest!

Check out Tasha’s work for the magazine here. 

#tashabielaga #interviews #washingtondiy #hello im sorry #helloimsorry