Talking about the music of Gash with the guitarist from Gash

 

At the Little Red Library, 10/1/23

I was wearing a mask, so no one could tell, but I spent the entire set grinning uncontrollably. It was Sunday, October 1, and I was at the Little Red Library, watching a set from Gash. After a last minute solo set from The Ricos’ Joe Purcell, I hung around, and headed back in for the other act I didn’t know. And they promptly knocked my block off. Too slow to be math rock, too apathetic to be noise rock, and too deafening to be slowcore.The song structures were incomprehensible, the guitars were droptuned to hell and back, the vocals were sparse and showed up at random. I filed out, bought a cassette, and rode the afterglow for the rest of the evening, buoyed by excellent, but anticipated, sets from Pulsr and MENU. Fast forward to January, and Gash released a new single, Shenanigans. And with a cd of theirs, Pulsr, and MENU's sets from that show coming out next month, I sat down with their Guitarist, Logan, to talk about their music.

Introduce yourself

Logan: My name’s Logan, I play guitar in Gash, I use he/him. I do vocals sometimes too, and I write a lot of the songs.

How did Gash get started?

Logan: Gash came about in, like, 2015 or 2016. I was living in Oakland, CA, and I started it as some garage band, recording stuff. I was trying to find a band out there, that’s kind of why I moved to the west coast. I just couldn’t really find anyone to play with that was seeing the stuff I was trying to do. I’m from Eau Claire, WI, so I moved back right before 2017 started. I had a couple friends who do music, I kind of just linked up with them, and started working on some songs I had on Garageband. I was actually listening to some of it a couple weeks ago, and it's crazy how different it sounds compared to now. It was a lot more garage punk jazz kind of stuff.

Is there any reason for the band name beyond it sounding cool?

Logan: Yeah, I think it sounds cool, that was definitely a part of it. I don’t know, I like bands where the name has implications towards the sound. I always thought that if we could sound like Gash that would be a cool sound. For a while I was not super about the name, but I think a lot of the new stuff we’re working on now is making its way back around.

You put out a single, Shenanigans, pretty recently, how much time passed between you writing it and your first album, Leftern?

Logan: Probably a lot. We recorded Leftern in September 2020, so like 6 months into COVID, it was still kind of weird. We released that in May of next year, and we had already started working on our next album. Our new album’s already recorded and mixed, and pretty much done, just needs to get mastered. But Shenanigans, we wrote that after we had been done recording our new album. It's just been taking a lot longer than we anticipated it to, so we were like “we should just record this ourselves and have something to put out”. We actually finished writing it last month, I know we played it on tour, but we tweaked it a little before we recorded. So quite a while.

WC: You basically wrote an entire different album between the two.

Logan: Yeah. Before this new year started, we got a good setup in our studio for recording ourselves. We talked about that we should start recording more of our own music. So I think Shenanigans was kind of the test run for that. We tried recording it before, and it didn’t really work out. We were trying to cue it up to a metronome and record to the click, and that wasn’t doing that song justice. So we had to more or less do it live, and then do overdubs. It was kind of a learning process.

Why are there so many dialog samples on Shenanigans?

Logan: There’s a loose concept behind the song about this night. I don’t know if I’ll share the whole story, but more or less, me and my friend were harassing this cop that was trying to arrest our friend. And then my friend ended up getting arrested, and the lyrics are kind of about that. Shenanigans is the name of a bar that's notoriously like a college dance bar that’s right down the street from where he got arrested. For that question, there’s a sample of Kim Gordon talking right before the big riff at the end. I remember before we finished the song, I couldn’t figure out how to tie that part together. I don’t know, I found that sample and was trying to place it into the song somewhere, and I thought that worked really well. And then, at the end, there’s a clip of Louis Black, he has some joke about getting drunk in Wisconsin. And I thought that kind of tied everything together really nicely. I feel like Gash as it is now is a lot more instrumental. I don’t like to focus on the lyrics as much, I think the instruments come first. And then if I’m compelled to, or I have an idea for vocals that’s when they get added. So I think using audio samples or clips to get a point across, I think I find that a lot more interesting

WC: It’s sort of a hardcore trick in a non hardcore context

Logan: Yeah, I like a lot of bands that do that. Definitely a lot of hardcore bands, or, like, Spirit of the Beehive, they’ll use a lot of random audio samples. I’m a big fan of that, I think in the right context it can add a certain emotion to the song that wasn’t there before.

Gash has an uncommonly linear approach to songwriting, did that take time to hone, or was it more of a conscious decision?

Logan: Like I was saying before, early versions of Gash were a lot more poppy, more verse/chorus. A lot of our songs start out with a simpler idea, and then the more we practice it and add different parts, the parts that repeat become less interesting. It’s funny, a part that maybe seems like it’ll be the main part turns itself into a transition. Instead of a main part that repeats multiple times, it’ll play one time, and then lead into a different part. And that also leads into another part, like a domino effect. I don’t think there was any communication behind that. I think it’s just we’re trying to keep ourselves interested in the song. I think it’s just how we become satisfied with the song, when there’s enough parts. And eventually it gets to the point where it's like “ok, there’s too many parts, some of these parts don’t even make sense together”. So we have to cut it down. Sometimes songs can take a long time, like Shenanigans, it took a while to finally be brought down to what it was. I think it used to be like a three and a half minute song, there used to be a long ending to it. And I wasn’t really rocking with it after a while, and then it turned into a song that has like 50 riffs in it that don't repeat. I guess there wasn’t really any conversation behind it.

youth fascination with loud guitars

What are some of your favorite artists?

Logan: Polvo’s definitely a big one, Palm too. Slint, Sonic Youth… It shouldn’t be a tough question, but it kind of is. I mean, we all listen to all different genres, we like electronic music and country music and all that. But I think bands that influence our sound are more the modern proggy and experimental bands. And I think there’s a lot of cool bands that are coming out not that have a similar vibe to that. Like, MENU, and Pulsr, and stuff like that, a lot of stuff in Philadelphia. I think Polvo’s probably the main one, that’s the one we get a lot after we’re done playing shows. People say “oh, you sound a lot like Polvo or Slint”. People say Hella too, sometimes.

What guitar tunings do you use?

Logan: For Leftern I used this open A# tuning. Like, drop A#, and then the bottom strings are drop D standard, and then the top strings are A# and F#. It’s weird, I don’t really remember how I came about that tuning. For our new album it’s like drop C and drop B, Shenanigans is in drop B. And then we have a lot of new stuff we’re working on right now. Like I said, we’re trying to record a lot of our own stuff, I think we’re trying to set a goal to record at least one song a month this year. A lot of the new stuff I’m working on is in AEAEAC#, kind of weird drop A tuning.

WC: That’s certainly something.

Logan: Yeah, it’s kind of difficult. I had to buy another guitar, just ‘cause it’s tough to drastically change in the lower tunings all the time. I’m always experimenting with new tunings. ‘Cause once I get used to a tuning I’ll start playing in the same frets and the same chord shapes. It’s an easy trick to get yourself to play different stuff.

Neck, middle, or bridge pickup?

Logan: Well, on my strat I put a lipstick pickup on the neck. I really like the sound of that a lot more than any other pickup on my guitar. But when we’re playing live, it’s just to bassy, and gets lost in the mix, so I have to use the bridge pickup. But recording I’ll definitely use the neck pickup a lot more, just ‘cause it has that nice jazzy warmth.

What’s your favorite riff to play in a Gash song?

Logan: That’s tough, because there are a lot of riffs (laughs). Shenanigans, that's a fun one to play. We haven’t actually practiced it in a while, just ‘cause we’ve been focusing on recording. And a new song we have that we were going to put out on our album. It was the first song we played at all our shows on tour. There’s this really heavy open-note breakdown at the end that goes for a long time. That’s a favorite part of mine.

How did your upcoming live cd come about?

Logan: On our tour before that tour, we brought a Zoom mic with us, and recorded most of the shows. And we put out a live tape from a show we did in Michigan. I think that stuff’s kind of cool, I really like when bands put out bootleg stuff. Like Sonic Youth does that, their Bandcamp’s full of bootleg live shows, and you can get tapes and cds from that. And I think that shit’s really cool, so I figured we should try to do that, try to find a good show. I thought the MENU and Pulsr show would be a good one to try it out for. Just ‘cause all those bands are in our sound-sphere, I guess, and they were down.

WC: Did you know the members of those bands prior to that tour?

Logan: I had talked to Jake from Pulsr before. We played in Connecticut in, like, 2019, and I think Jake said he was at that show. I actually hadn’t met Jake, but he had been following us since then. I don’t remember how this came about, but he told me if we ever came out there again, we should hit him up, and we’d play a couple shows. So I did when I was booking our last tour, we met up, and all those dudes were super awesome. I met Drew, their bass player, he’s in Sundots as well. We played with Sundots and Joyer in Minneapolis a couple months before we went on tour. I throw this festival every year here in Eau Claire called Rash Fest, where I try to get a bunch of bands I really like from around the midwest to come play. We’ve been in talks, hopefully MENU and Pulsr make it out this year, it’s going to be around October.

What’s the scene like in Eau Claire?

Logan: The scene in Eau Claire has a lot of ebbs and flows. I remember when I first graduated high school, I was hanging out with a lot of people who were doing house shows. Every band had their own house, and they would do shows at their house, and they would all play at each other’s houses. There was experimental hip hop, weird soft indie, some electronic weird stuff, punk stuff. And all these bands would bring people they knew from around the country to Eau Claire, it was pretty booming for a while. I had my own house when I moved back from California, and we did a lot of shows there. That’s where I met a lot of people that I know in music. Like everybody in, do you know Crag Mask?

WC: No.

Logan: They’re from Connecticut. Zack from Crag Mask, he plays bass in Vundabar now, I believe. But I met them, and they kind of clicked with us. And then we played with them, in Connecticut, we played with them and, do you know Waveform*?

WC: I’m aware of them.

Logan: But I guess going back to Eau Claire. It isn’t really that big of a city, but all these people were bringing in a lot of bands from around the country. People were making connections, it felt like Eau Claire was sprawling out a lot. Ever since COVID, there hasn’t really been a lot of new music. We practice in this band that’s all other bands practicing. It’s a lot of older dudes playing really fuckin' wild metal music, and Iron Maiden cover bands, stuff like that. Not really a lot of interesting stuff going on, Eau Claire’s kind of dead right now. There’s not really anywhere cool to play, either. We’re really close to Minneapolis, so we play there a lot. It can be kind of tough because we aren’t considered a Minneapolis band. So a lot of the shows that I feel like we should be playing, or bands we should be opening for, we don’t get asked to play. So it’s been kind of hard for us to break into that scene. I don’t know, I would always try to bring bands to Eau Claire, but now there’s not really anything going on.

WC: I’m not the person to speak to the deadness of the Eau Claire scene, but I also had never heard of the city before I heard Gash. So I guess you’re functioning as cultural ambassadors.

Logan: (laughs) Maybe. Bon Iver is from Eau Claire, too. Actually, the guy who’s recording the album, my friend Brian. He recorded Bon Iver’s self titled album that won a Grammy, so he’s a Grammy award winning producer. Yeah, it’s pretty much us and Bon Iver at this point.

Do you have anything to plug/shoutout?

Logan: No, I don’t think so. But yeah, Gash has a new album coming out hopefully at some point. It’s been taking so long to get down, that I just kind of want to put it out, hopefully as soon as it’s done. And then this summer, do another tour hopefully. I don’t know where we wanna go, it would be nice to go back to the east coast again.

You can listen to Shenanigans here, and order the discussed live cd here.