INTERVIEW: Courier Club
By EJ Jolly
Photo by Kevin Condon
“We all want to be there!” That’s how pretty much everybody is feeling about 2020 so far. With live shows on a seemingly indefinite delay, it’s no wonder that music fans are starting to get stir crazy. But never fear: Courier Club is here. And they’ve been working on something that’s wholey brand new: Block By Blockwest, a music festival being hosted in Minecraft.
You heard that right; a virtual festival taking place within the block-y best-selling video game of all time. The fest is set to have performances from some indie music darlings (HUNNY, Grandson, Sir Sly, and Cherry Glazerr, to name a few. Excited yet?) with all proceeds going to the Corona Virus Emergency Response fund.
Hailing from the suburbs of Philadelphia, the club’s roster consists of singer/guitarist Timothy Waldron, guitarist Ryan Conway, bassist Michael Silverglade and drummer Jack Kessler. The dance-punk quartet was set to go on tour before the world got rocky, but quickly changed gears to organize the blocky event. Between promoting the EP and perfecting Block by Blockwest, I got the chance to sit down and chat with Tim and Michael, as well as their manager DJ:
Tim: DJ plays the emails.
DJ: (laughs) I play the keyboard.
Tim: A computer keyboard. (laughs)
So here’s a quick icebreaker to get things started. I was reading your interview with Impose Magazine, where the writer described your sound as “early 2000's sports video game soundtrack”. But what games do you all think your music embodies the most?
Tim: Oo.
Michael: Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
Tim: Yeah, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, a little bit of Burnout 3. That's more on the emo side, I would say.
Michael: Good game, though.
Tim: I think for some reason baseball games have really good soundtracks. Not a fan of baseball at all but your friend always had a baseball game in their house. (laughs) Or maybe SSX. A blend of all those together.
I’ve never played a Tony Hawk game, but that's totally what it sounds like to me.
Tim: That's what we're going for. (laughs)
So how are you guys holding up? You've got a “show” coming up, put out an EP... what else is going on?
Tim: Honestly, the day the quarantine officially started for us, it was the day we had started working on [Block By Blockwest]. So we've just been keeping our heads down in the work of putting [it together]. It's just starting to set in, like "Oh, we're probably gonna be here for a while." But working towards this goal has definitely kept us sane being in our houses all day.
Michael: We were supposed to be playing a bunch of shows, but obviously that's not happening. So we’re just going the virtual route, which has been taking up a lot of my time in a good way.
Tim: It's been nice to have it, as something to occupy our head with.
Your EP (Drive Like Your Kids Here) really gives me the vibe of suburbia. You all grew up in the suburbs of Philly, right?. How did that kind of influence what you're trying to say with your EP?
Tim: I would say the biggest concept that it touches on is - even though we grew up at a time where there was the ability to go on the internet and information was really accessible, there was still a delay. And living in the suburbs growing up, you are never the epicenter of culture. You're never at the epicenter of the newest bands, the newest art scene, all that stuff. You have to wait until it all travels to you. It's like a weird telephone game.
I feel like that was what the EP was trying to touch on. Soundscape 1992 in particular is a song romanticizing the 90's, but is actually about 2011. We were just consuming all this stuff and being like "this is a cool little thing here, and this is an interesting thing over here." You're just blending this all together into this weird- like this mass.
I totally understand; that was pretty much my experience growing up as well.
Tim: (laughs) yeah. And that's like what we want to touch on. There's this line by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem: "too old to be new, too new to be classic." Like taking influences. And I feel like right now, everyone has been referencing the 80's, the 90's, and now everyone is starting to reference the early 2000's. But we all grew up in the mid-2000's, you know? I think that one thing we wanna start trying to do is explore that, rather than try and act like we were actually influenced by 80's bands. Which- I guess we are, but we're inspired by bands that were inspired by 80's bands. (laughs)
It feels like the struggle trying to form an identity in your 20's, in the face of all this newness and oldness.
Photo by Kevin Condon
Tim: You can tap into anything now. You have the ability to say, "I'm only influenced by things from the 70's,” and a mix of this little niche from 2004. You have this whole catalog, and it's not tied down to what city you're from or what country you're from. It's like every niche is a thing in a cloud, not bound to any location.
What's the weirdest thing you’ve kind of drawn inspiration from in that way?
Tim: We've gotten pretty niche with it.
Michael: Yeah. I feel like I used to be inspired by- when I first started playing music, it was all classic rock and alternative. Super basic stuff that like every 14 year old kid is into.
Tim: I had this one video game growing up that I got at a yard sale. It was called Dune 2000. For some reason that just stuck with me. Every time I think of that time period, just those graphics. That influence has kind of made its way through a lot of the things we've been creating. We made a fake video game for Soundscape 1992, and that was based on that. I just recreated the world from it, all of the sand dunes and everything. I feel like that game was very under the radar, and I don't think it was a good game either. It was like, in a trash bin. That's been my niche-st thing I would say.
Michael: Yeah, that's pretty niche.
You said you guys had just started making plans for Block by Blockwest. Were you all going to play at South by Southwest? Mainly, how did you all get involved with going virtual?
Tim: As a joke, one day we were just like, “Hey, if our tour gets canceled, we're going to host the show on Minecraft”. Then when our shows got canceled, we were like, “can we do this”? We started doing some research, and saw that it [hadn’t been done] before. And then it started scaling up. There was interest from a lot of other bands. We thought since South-by got canceled, Block By Block West was like the home run with the name. We weren't scheduled to play or anything. I think at first we were planning on maybe designating the donations to something Austin-related, but as the situation grew in scale, that’s when we switched it over to the CDC itself. Luckily bands have been really into the idea and really helpful. It’s a really cool experience to see like all these bands that I listened to growing up, wanting to play this thing.
Have you all had any chances to experiment with other creative outlets?
Tim: I've been getting into 3D printing. There's a pretty big shortage of effective masks right now, and so I've just been diving into the 3D printing world [to] see what we can do with that. It's something that I've been interested in for a while but now I’m like, “oh this is the perfect time”. And I can at least maybe help push the ball forward in some ways. And we're also trying to write like more songs.
Michael: Since I'm not with any of the other guys, I've just been experimenting with how to make recordings on my own- which is never really something I did. But since I have really nothing else, every night I’ve been seeing what I can come up with and recording it no matter what comes out. And just trying to [do] something I like wouldn't ordinarily do if I was with the other guys. Just developing my style differently more than I normally would.
That's one thing. The other thing- I feel like the building in Minecraft for the server actually requires a lot of design and planning out the buildings. Even taking a whole night just to build a castle that has a stage in it ,and pushing myself to think, “how do make this actually look cool? It's something I’ve always liked to do, but you never really have time to play Minecraft for like 5 hours straight- until now. It's been fun just to like get more into that and be creative in that way.
That's definitely been kind of the weirdest part of this whole situation: everyone has so much time.
Michael: Which is kind of nice in some ways.
But it’s a double-edged sword.
Michael: I definitely think that by the end of this - when we start playing music together again - I feel like it will be different than if this hadn't had happened. We've all had so much time to think about different genres and try new things without having that constant schedule and pressure. You kind of find there's more opportunity to find new sounds and try new things. I think it will be cool when we get back into the writing together.
Tim: Also, everything is broken. It’s like there's not many- especially in music, there's not many rules right now on how to release a song, [or] how to make a song. And when to put it out, how to imagine what exactly it should sound like. There's not really access to- you can't get a full band in the studio right now.
I see Charlie XCX right now just putting out songs every week it seems like. And the music video she made for it, you can just tell it's just phone videos modge-podged together. I'm seeing [it’s] going to create a movement from it. And like I probably, it's going to be a movement people reference years from now. Um as like an influence, but like I don't know. That was like, it just happened because of this, I don't know it's just interesting to see that stuff play out.
It's insane to think that we’re living in a historical event.
Tim: Yeah, everyone says, "oh, I want to be a part of history." But now- I didn't expect it to be this quiet.
Do you have anything you kind of want to leave the readers with? Any secrets?
Tim: I don't think we have any secrets right now (laughs) DJ, is there anything else we should say?
DJ: We're just pushing the EP right now, [we’re] super proud of it and we're excited that we can bring so many people together. Gates open at 3 PM Eastern Standard. Next Saturday [May 16th].
Tim: One last thing: If there are people reading this who would want to get involved in creating these online event spaces, please let us know. We're definitely- after Block By Block West is done- we're looking to create our own platform to host these virtual festivals. And that's going to take collaboration from a massive group of people to make it happen. I'm literally just trying to recruit anyone who's like, "I can help you," or "I'm interested in this". Please send them my way!”(laughs)
Links to Courier Club
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1jyJA9muMVWh1cJGskOVuf
https://www.facebook.com/courierclub/