Hello! 90.5 FM, this is DJ Evil coming from WUOG! I am here with…
Chris Casey.
So, you just had another show. Tell us how you think it went.
I think that was the best show I’ve ever done, like hands down the best set. The crowd was great, I really felt confident with the set and the music so yeah. I think that was the best I’ve ever done.
Alright cool. So, you’ve been doing shows for a while now…
A little bit, yeah.
What’s something you would like to incorporate into your shows moving forward?
I think, I guess the only way I can say this is like more gimmicks with the songs. Also, I have kind of done this a little bit, but I want to get more bands on the bills for sure. I mean this show had two bands. I did a show back in February with Beneath Trees which is a band from Savannah. I just want to do that more, but definitely having more showmanship/gimmicks in the songs like today where I had everyone crouch during “Public Safety.” I’ve never done that before so I was really nervous, because it’s like, if it fails it will be embarrassing… But I mean people f*cked with it. So yeah, more of that.
Yeah that’s cool, because most of the times I’ve seen you perform you have had some rock band with you. I think it’s cool how you are able to mesh what you’re doing with other local acts.
Of course!
Well, I guess tell us about the album!
The album is called HEAD HIGH, it came out May 24th which is three weeks ago. It’s really awesome, I think they’re some of the best songs I have out. I started making it last summer and it was really awesome because I had just come off the heels of my last album: all good here, thank you. I didn’t really know what I wanted to make after that so I was like, I’m just going to chill and do whatever. Slowly the demos started being made, I made like two demos and then I did the third demo which was the intro for the album which is “I Hope You Blow Up Dude.” From that was just like every other song was being made. The production process was really smooth. It was way more rock forward than anything else I have ever made. Has a ton of features on it, and it just feels really robust and really explosive and I really love it. I think that’s like the best thing I have out right now.
Which song was your favorite one to make?
To make? That’s tough. So “Duster” is my favorite one off of the whole thing. I wrote the first or second bar “Between jacksh*t and f*ck all I’ve been busy with a lot,” I thought that was a funny thing to say. I also don’t really swear in my music too often, so I thought that would just be like, a fun thing to have in there. I also think that song has a ton of character and sense of humor, and when I added in the phone call bit which came a bit later, which afterwards I was like “This is so sick.” I was just really playing with the lyrics and the structure and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun.
That’s cool, my favorite song was “Dog.”
A lot of people said their favorite was “Dog,” I was not anticipating that to be honest.
Yeah that one is really cool, and the Wazmo feature took me by surprise. It was cool to see that come together, how did that come about.
Yeah so “Dog” was a really easy song to make overall. I kind of made all of it in a really short amount of time. But when I did the outro I was like, I really want these to be a drop and everything is distorted and the drums pick up. I wanted the chorus to be at the end but I was like “I can’t do this the way that I want to,” so I ended up on fiverr.com and I ordered a female vocalist. She was in the band, which was like a metal band straight up. Those were just the vocals that I wanted to put in there. It turned out really crazy. I listen to that part of the song and I think it’s crazy that my name is attached to it because it sounds unlike anything I’ve ever made. That’s why I like it so much, that’s how that all happened.
What artist or albums were you listening to during the making of this album?
So most of the album was made in June/July (2023) that’s when everything was kind of laid out and then it was just developing after that. That summer, Girl with Fish by feeble little horse came out. That was like, my album of the year last year. “Pocket” was the single for that, or one of the singles, and like I found them off that. Dominic Fikes’ Sunburn came out, and the second single was “Ant Pile”. The intro of “Ant Pile,” where it’s just like the lead guitar, was really cool to me and that directly influenced “I Hope You Blow Up Dude,” the intro for that. King Krule, even though that doesn’t really come through, but I was listening to a lot of King Krules’ album. Paris Texas’s album MID AIR that came out in July. I made “Public Safety” the day after it came out. I was like I just have to make a song like that. So yeah, just like a lot of random rock/indie stuff I was getting into. My friend MARSHALL BENTON dropped his album, I was listening to that. Just a lot of guitar-forward music.
I really like to hear what artists think about the creative process. What is something you have learned in the making of this album that you think you will apply to the making of future projects? What did you take away from this album?
Usually I don’t have an answer for creative process questions but I definitely have an answer this time. The writing process for this album… Coming off the last one it was super personal, I was pulling from all these specific memories and all that… sad and whatever. I think this album, I was doing more concepts and ideas like, “What if I wrote a song about this?” I would write about stuff that I might not have had personal experience with because I just wanted to see if I could write it. So a lot of the songs came about that way. That was a lot of fun. Heavy” was written off that concept along with “Too Happy,” “Dog,” “Pro Boxing.” A lot of really fun lyrics that still evoke that emotion that I wanted to go for, just without being attached to those words I’m saying. So more like concept writing and just like trying to get more creative with what I am writing about, that was a big thing.
Alright well, this is the last question: is there anything coming in the future that you would like to tease or let people know about?
Yeah, I’m making a lot of beats right now. I’ve been listening to a sh*t-ton of like, FearDorian and POLO PERKS <3 <3 <3, everything from that Run Along Forever collective. Really like their style, I want to make more stuff like that. So I have been making simple sample beats with the drums over it. Some of them have vocals, some of them don’t. I’m either going to do an EP of all of those or just drop them as singles throughout the rest of the year. Not sure what I want to do yet. That’s been a lot of fun because I feel like with HEAD HIGH each song had something behind it, so it’s fun to make stuff that’s just fun to make and sounds cool.
Well this is 90.5 FM, DJ EVIL coming from WUOG after the HEAD HIGH release show and I am here with…
CHRIS CASEY.
Interview by Jonas Broom
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