Alice Mercy— How did Been Stellar form?
Skyler Knapp— Sam and I were making music together in high school, we made an album when we were seniors. Then we both got into NYU, so we came to New York and wanted to re-assemble a band. I signed us up for an NYU Facebook group. Someone was doing a DIY show and they were looking for people to play. I said “yeah my band will play,” but we didn’t have a band - it was just me and Sam. We needed a bassist, we needed drums. Nico just said “I have a bass,” not “I’m a bassist,” but that was good enough for us. After our record came out last year, two people left. We got back from the Fontaines D.C. tour and had a month before our first headline tour in Europe, so our goal was to find a drummer. I put up a Craigslist ad and didn’t get many bites. The bites I did get were wild - mostly 40 year-olds. By the grace of god right before leaving for tour, we found Gigi.
Gigi Giobbi— Because drummers are so hard to find, they can't usually commit to one project. I was on millions of sidequests. It was perfect timing, they were starting to be desperate for a drummer and I was craving actually being part of a band - a process.
SK— That’s what we needed - somebody who’s creative and talented, and also just cool - in the sense of… a good person. In a band, you’re only doing music for a small fraction of the time you’re spending together. The rest of the time you’re coexisting in a van or a hotel room, so meeting somebody you spiritually connect with is important. It felt like divine intervention to me.
AM— Where do you write music?
SK— Our friends were in a band called The Britanys. Sam and I really looked up to them when we moved to New York. To be a band and all share an apartment, have the studio there… it felt like the dream. Anyway, [The Britanys] gave it to us after they broke up. So we have an apartment in Bushwick. In the basement there’s a live room where we do all the writing, and a little control room where we’re able to record. That’s where we wrote all of the last album, that’s where we’re writing this album. We are going about it a little differently this time. We’re not writing everything down there because it’s a really dingy basement, it’s always hot down there.
GG— No windows…
Sam Slocum— No windows.
SK— We’ve been doing writing retreats. We did one in Belgium when we were there on tour. We did one in LA. We’ll rent out an Airbnb, bring all of our equipment, and use it as a studio.
AM— What does collaboration look like for you?
Nico Brunstein— Usually it starts with an idea one of us has and we’ll build off that. It’s nice having Gigi because before, Sam would be on the drums… or he wouldn’t be - it was fragmented. We were just working on the idea of a song that would never be finished until we had our drummer in town. Now, we’re finishing songs in real time.
SK— Sometimes someone brings in a fully written song and we don’t need to do much to it. Other times you’ll have what you think is something, but by playing it with other people, the end product doesn’t sound anything like the original riff. It’s interesting because that’s when there’s no one person who wrote the song and you can’t tell what it is that made the song. That’s what kind of feels like magic to me.
AM— Is it hard to share a framework with three other people? Do you feel truly fed?
SK— I rely on the band to make an idea into something that’s Been Stellar. I always leave space, some preciousness, to be filled in by other people. It’s extremely hard because if you have something you’re proud of, you don’t want anyone to touch it. But you have to trust in the people you’re working with, that they’ll take it seriously, that they’re trying to make it better. It’s tough. It’s more mental than musical. You’re trying to put your ego aside at all times - that’s a muscle we’ve been training. The hardest part of our creative relationship over the past eight years has been getting to a point where we have that trust. It used to be frustrating. We’d be working on a song and someone would storm out of the room, that would happen all the time - which I understand… usually that someone is me or Sam.
SS— I just remember doing laps around the block wondering “did we lose it... can we still write music?”
GG— This is my first time being in a real band and writing songs. Which is crazy because I’ve been touring for three years. Before, I was playing someone else’s music. I play guitar and I have musical ideas, but I’m not nearly good enough - -
SK— - you wrote one of the best songs on the new album…
GG— I wrote the riff for it - but that’s the thing, I had this riff I liked, but if I didn't have three other creative outlets to kind of (laughs) shoot the shit with, then I’d just be eternally frustrated. I’d have this great thing that would sit there and slowly die.
