SWIMMING INTERVIEW
Who are Swimming & how did this charming band come about?
Thanks. You’re pretty charming yourself. When Jared and I decided to forego our weekly scuba diving lessons and pick up guitars and write watery jams instead we knew we had reached new places where scuba diving just couldn’t take us. An inquisitive room mate Neil overheard the noise and grabbed a spatula and a spoon (for lack of drum sticks) to bang on a drum for some tasty rhythm. This was a little over a year ago now. After playing a few shows as a three-piece, we picked up a bass player to get us lower into the musical abyss. We haven’t gone to scuba practice since.
As simple as it sounds, the name Swimming seems to go hand in hand with your sound, how did it come about?
It was between Swimming and Swim Team actually. Brian vs. Neil. I always thought it was a smoother word and captured the attitude of the music a bit better…sorry Neil.
When swimming ourselves we’re a big fan of the breast stroke, do you have a particular favourite swimming technique or any tips?
I invented a new stroke last week actually. I’m not sure what to call it though. You start with a back stroke and when you bring your hand over your head you then spin your body around so now you’re on your stomach during your standard stroke. However, when you move ahead with the next arm, you spin once more so you’ve returned to the back stroke. So you’re constantly spinning in one direction and utilising two strokes at once. It’s terribly dizzying and is not for the pragmatist. I still don’t know what to call it…maybe “The Sinking Dreidel”.
How would you guys describe your sound in an adjective filled sentence?
Agreeable, happy, lively, relieved, silly, thankful, “charming”—that’s a quote from you—accessible, fun, and why the hell not: juicy.
Has it been a conscience decision to release your music during the summer, it might be raining here in England but your music is a perfect summer soundtrack.
Y’know, not really. When we first got started it was just turning into Spring and we wanted to record the few songs we had right away and that became EP. I wanted to release something this past winter (Feel Not Bad) but we didn’t get a chance to record until December and we just holed up in a lake house for a couple weeks to do that. But the mixing process has taken longer than expected and we’ve been having to make some decisions about the release that is keeping us from letting it out into the world.
We first heard your music with the wonderful self titled EP released last July & you’re now ready to release your album “Feel Not Bad” almost a year later. Do you think you’re sound has changed at all in this time? What’s the album all about?
Unfortunately Feel Not Bad is having to be pushed back quite a while for reasons big and small but we will be releasing a demo of 5-tracks that will be on Feel Not Bad when it finally does arrive. Regardless, the sound has definitely changed. It’s a higher quality of production, and the songs are all more focused.
“Sex,drugs,and Rock n Roll” has long been a cliche within music,what three words would you guys use to describe your music careers so far?
Failure…disappointment….sadness.
Or maybe just Good-Golly Ms. Molly. It’s hyphenated—does that still work?
Are there any new bands that are inspiring you at the moment,or any that have been the soundtrack to your days as growing musicians?
Well booking this tour gave me an opportunity to listen to some fantastic bands that we’ll get to play with here soon enough, and still some that we won’t be performing with but I’ve definitely fallen in love with their sound. The N’ere Dowells (youneredowells.bandcamp.com) from Brooklyn, NY are fantastic and their demo is awesome. Spook Houses (spookhouses.bandcamp.com) from New Jersey are very good, pretty much any band I’ve heard on Evil Weevil Records—check out Hooking Up (hookingup.bandcamp.com) for sure. Then there’s Glass Pennies (glasspennies.bandcamp.com) from Norfolk who are great, Coastal Vision (coastalvision.bandcamp.com) and many others that we’ll have the privilege of playing with this tour. It’s going to be really fun.
We heard you’ve recently won Best Music Video at the Little Rock Film Festival for the wonderful “Some Dreams Come True”, how are you guys feeling about that?
Couldn’t be happier. Alex Penrose did a great job both filming and editing it and now he’s out traveling the country doing what he does best and we wish him the best of luck. He did us a real favor and he was the one who won it, we couldn’t be more proud of our little man.
You’re just about to embark on quite a crazy string of dates for your tour too, is this the most amount of shows you’ve ever done in succession? Any you’re particularly looking forward to?
As a band, yes, this will be our longest string of dates by far. For me, I’m looking forward to the house shows we have scattered along the way. Those performances always feel the best afterwards and people seem to really get into the experience when they’re at a house party rather than a bar. That being said we’ll be playing some killer venues as well and we’re all very happy to have the opportunity. The bands we’ll be playing with are all very nice people who are helping us out immensely. We’ll have fun where ever we are.
Finally, if you could each create anything,for personal or worldwide benefit,what would it be and why?
I’m going to set the bar high and safe by saying enough food to end world hunger for obvious reasons. Joel says a teleporter—a lot of good that’ll do starving children—for space exploration. Joe says a happiness ray gun. Such idealists. Jared says he’d create a massive pizza machine that supplies pizza to the masses.
