(FROM THE STAIRS AT WHITE OAK MUSIC HALL)
Rachel:
This is KTRU Radio, we’re with Vansire…
Vansire, all at once:
(Hey)
(Hi)
(Thanks for having us)
(Go KTRU)
Casey:
Real quick, can we get a brief history of Vansire?
Sam:
So it started, me and Josh were .. One day we were like, ‘Hey wanna start a band?’ and started dicking around in the basement, recording some stuff on this iPad… Started making some tunes and it was pretty fun, so we kept it up and it kept on growing and growing. Hopefully we can keep going with it.
Casey:
So I know you guys are college students—I think you just graduated, right?
Sam:
We still have another year left.
Casey:
Architecture?
Sam:
Architecture, yeah.
Casey:
And you’re from Oakland College, right?
Josh:
Yep, yep.
Casey:
As a student myself, I find it interesting that you’re able to balance a music career and an academic career, so I wanted to know how your music career as Vansire has influenced your studies.
Josh:
I’m pretty lucky, in that I’m doing this double degree thing where I’m working on a Bachelor’s of Music and a Bachelors of Arts at the same time in the conservatory… So to a certain extent a lot of what I can pursue is project-based musical pursuits. I’ve kind of been able to spin a lot of that into Vansire-related things. I think for Sam it’s a little trickier pursuing architecture, but even the academic ethos of what you’re pursuing kind of ties in to what we do. I think we think about songs in an architectural context sometimes, as weird as that sounds. And for me, with the music and film classes I’m taking, it plays into it pretty directly I think. But workload-wise it’s tricky, y’know, it’s hard to get a lot of music out there… And during the summer we just sort of do what we can. It’s been weird, watching it get bigger from our dorm rooms, y’know, ‘cause we don’t tour a lot.
Rachel:
Can you talk to us about the name of the band?
Sam:
Yeah there’s really not much to it; we were kind of struggling finding a name so we kind of left it up to chance and we found a random word-generator. We were just going through it and generating random words, and we found ‘vansire,’ and then… We thought, “That’s catchy, I don’t think anyone’s used it… Let’s go for it.”
Josh:
Yeeeah… I wish there was a cooler story but it’s kind of just like this obscure term that wasn’t taken, so now… now we’re sort of locked into it for better or worse. We tried to like concoct stories for a while but now we’re just telling the truth.
Hania:
That in itself is kind of a decision, right?
Josh:
I suppose so, yeah, that’s true. It rolled off the tongue decently. I don’t know if it’s so great that anyone would be like, “That’s a great band name,” but it’s distinctive I guess. It comes up first on Google when you search it so that’s great.
Casey:
Can you describe what the Midwest is like, for someone who’s never been?
Isaac:
Well it’s pretty blue most of the time, like feeling-wise… There’s not too much, growth in the winters, the winters are really long. And the seasons are probably the best thing for me. That makes me feel the best.
Sam:
It does move pretty slow…
Isaac:
It’s kind of like the Shire. At least where we’re from.
Josh:
There is a temporal aspect that’s really comforting about it, the changing—well, that’s not taking into account global warming’s impact on shifting weather patterns, but there’s usually a pretty succinct, hard to describe in words feeling of change with each season, and the things that happen in your lifetime during those periods of time… The smells, and the lights, and the feeling of the wind—that’s so contrived of me to say, but…
Sam:
Haha, yeah.
Josh:
But it’s a really beautiful area of the country that a lot of people don’t know about.
Rachel:
So you guys spoke out against how major streaming services were appealing a court ruling of a copyright royalty, which would mandate that they need to pay songwriters under a compulsory license—why did you decide to speak out against it?
Josh:
I mean I don’t think anyone knows how bad it is, y’know. We all use Spotify, cause it’s cheap and it’s great and you can get all the music you need, but I think it’s important to speak out because of the number of artists I know who have to work really shitty second jobs because they can’t make it off their music alone. But there’s this big disconnect between how people view someone of that status as having ‘made it’ as an artist, thinking they can just live off that, but in reality it’s not nearly enough to financially sustain yourself. The only way maybe, would be to sell your soul to a label, give up all your masters, and then maybe you stand a chance at making a little bit more… But that really compromises artistic integrity in my opinion. I think it’s important to note because these streaming services position themselves as like ‘friends of the artist,’ but in actuality they’re kinda ripping everyone off.
Sam:
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. It’s just an inequal distribution of wealth, essentially.
Rachel:
You posted about a quote from Moses Sumney, I’ll read the quote: “Black artists who are actively dismantling genres are still given these R+B titles, where artists who are also dismantling genres are also getting credit.” And you were pretty much saying, it’s great that [Vansire has] all these compliments, but it’s a disservice to these great artist—that you’ve worked with—including Chester Watson, who was one of the collaborators for your album Angel Youth… Can you talk about why this is important to talk about?
Josh:
Yeah, it’s important to talk about because in sometimes insidious ways, white artists get so much more credit for doing something like that in every regard, and we’ve kind of watched that play out. That collaboration was such a shared mutual thing, just like a shared respect of the art each other is making, and for Chester to just, hop on a track was just, it was really cool. It was really touching. But I think with the nature of a feature… The music industry has functioned for a very long time on the systemic and continued exploitation of artists of color. You see it in a lot of ways, like billboard charts, and labelling of music and distribution services and the way Black artists and other artists of color have a lot more trouble ‘breaking out’ of certain genre bounds. Like when we dropped that first track, people were like “Woah, this is a little odd, this is a bit unusual.” But now, like a year and a half on, it’s not unusual to see playlists like Spotify’s Pollen if you listen to that one, where it’s like, all these hip-hop-leaning things, dreampop-leaning things all jumbled in there together. And I think it was striking, the way we receive so much credit for those hip-hop collaborations being a new thing when in reality just as much or more credit should go to the artists who were willing to work with us and, fucked with the music and were down for the cause. And I felt the Moses Sumney quote captured that quite succinctly.
Rachel:
Can you talk about the shift from your first album, Reflections and Reveries, and Angel Youth?
Josh:
Oh. Well, probably mostly recording quality, because the first album was just poorly recorded all around.
Sam:
We just got way better, and… got a DI box.
Josh:
We started with just an ipad, and then had one USB microphone, and now we use a DI box. We didn’t even realize that was a thing until like… We were like WOAH. You can like, talk while you’re recording cause there’s no mic out. I think that’s the big thing, now we can make the music we really wanna make. Once you can overcome those technical barriers. Sonically it’s just a reflection of whatever we’re interested in at the moment, but the technical musical aspect is the biggest thing. I’m embarrassed to listen to those first songs now, we cringe so hard, but I guess people still like them so that’s good, but…
Rachel:
That’s kind of interesting, because for your music videos, to me it’s kind of like what lo-fi would look like, visually. What made you decide to go for this DIY style?
Josh:
Well, I think we just thought that it would be kinda funny. We were like ‘What if we just do a really stupid-looking dance, but like try really hard and be really serious about it.’
Sam:
And functionally, we’re just pretty… cheap. We don’t wanna shell out, 5 grand for a polished music video.
Josh:
Yeah, like, holy shit. I don’t think people realize how expensive a nice-looking music video is. When you’ve got Rex Orange County’s and Gus Dapperton’s dropping music videos with budgets probably in the ten thousand range, there’s not much you can do to compete with that. So we kind of just lean into it as heavily as we can because we don’t have those financial resources.
Rachel:
So on social media, you’re very memey… So for one of your meme videos, I’m gonna play the audio from it.
So, the only question I wanted to ask…
Vansire:
[LOL]
Rachel:
How did you come up with so many fake names that sounded like ‘Vansire’?
Josh:
Those are mostly real—no one knows—you say “Vansire,” there’s just a series of… The number of ways people are able to say it wrong is just astounding. I don’t think it’s that complicated; I don’t think it’s that hard to say but no one’s ever able to get it on the first try.
Sam:
It’s the ‘v.’ ‘V’ Throws everyone off.
Josh:
Yeah, “Vanshhhhire.” Once somebody told us in the Instagram dm’s “hey maybe you should try pronouncing it ‘Vanshire.’” And we were like “What—you’re saying we should pronounce it like that?” And they were like “Yeah you could give that a try.” It was like, what are you talking about dude? It’s weird. And then that video, it’s like a real conversation where someone’s like “Do you think pop’s really boring?” and I kind of feel like I have to be apologetic. I don’t know, I think being self-deprecating is the move. People seem to like that on social media. So, you can’t take yourself too seriously.
Hania:
What is the most memorable dream that you had lately?
Isaac:
Yeah I had one—Josh was in it, Sam wasn’t—
Josh:
Wait I think he was?
Isaac:
Oh right, yeah. I was on a train, we were going through, Poland or something, World War II or two or something, and it was like a war kinda scene, I don’t know. But it was like, really run-down, and we were on this train, and all hadn’t eaten in weeks. And then I got off the train and went into this church, and I was like “Woah! I haven’t seen you guys in three years!” And then Josh was like, “I’ve been here for four years!” And yeah that’s all I remember.
Josh:
Damn.
Sam:
I had the Phish one—I was on stage, and it was with—I had to play all these Phish songs, y’know like the jam band, and like Trey Anastasio was there, and he’s like, “Dude, you’ve gotta get out there and play these songs.” And I was like “Dude, I don’t know any of these songs.” And then I went out there, and I started playing them and they’re like, “WE DON’T WANNA HEAR COVERS OF PHISH,” and I was like, we—we are Phish, and so… That’s it.
Josh:
I had one—do you know the channel David Dean Burkhart? You know like TheLazyLazyMe videos? There was just this anonymous YouTuber I was driving around trying to find, and I was somewhere in Ohio, but it was the name on an interstate in Colorado, and I was like “I gotta find Davey, gotta find Davey,” and then I just got pulled over and—it wasn’t actually a very good dream.
Hania:
If you weren’t doing Vansire right now, how would you be spending your time outside of school?
Josh:
…Probably trying to find an internship unsuccessfully.
Isaac:
I would be fly-fishing.
Sam:
I’d be… Looking for an internship, probably. Or starting another music project.
Rachel:
Shhhhh, don’t talk about that (sarcasm).
Josh:
We were washing dishes last summer.
Sam:
Ah, yeah…
Josh:
It sucked.
Sam:
Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Hania:
If you could make one unimportant thing free for everyone, what would it be?
Sam:
…(D)rugs.
Rachel:
What kind of drugs?
Sam:
No, rugs.
Everyone:
:0
Sam:
Like nice, thick rugs that you put down, they’re really vibey… I love, I love rugs.
Isaac:
Oh, uh.
Josh:
Yeah I don’t know.
Isaac:
Like. Door handles?
Hania:
Does that include installation?
Sam:
No you gotta but the screws, you gotta buy the screwdriver…
Josh:
I don’t think I could top those two. I think those are pretty important.
Isaac:
Door handles, [looking around venue] exit signs…
Josh:
Exit signs, yeah yeah yeah. Nice.
Hania:
If you had to enter a food-eating contest, what kind of food would it be?
Isaac:
[Hot] Dogs.
Hania:
Right, classic.
Sam:
Salad.
Josh:
Ooh.
Sam:
Kale.
Hania:
How big would the salads be?
Sam:
Two.
Rachel:
Are you counting by the number of leaves, or the size of the bowl, or..?
Sam:
By… the amount of fun you’re having.
Josh:
I’d… I’d do anything, I eat super fast. Yesterday I was just, on the road, and I got a cheeseburger, and he secretly timed it—he didn’t tell me—and then I started eating it, and I finished, and he was like, “One minute.” So I could win one of these food-eating competitions. No preference. Not to brag, but…
Sam:
Pretty quick.
Hania:
Scenario: the three of you are trapped on a desert island with no food; who do you eat first, and why?
Isaac:
That’s easy—I’ve got girthy hips, I’m beefy.
Josh:
Dude we’re eating Isaac all the way.
Sam:
Isaac’s first.
Josh:
100%, he’s the meatiest.
Isaac:
I’m the meatiest.
Josh & Sam:
For the cause.
Isaac:
Yeah, for the cause.
Hania:
Unanimous, wow.
Josh:
No thought on that one.