Interview: Grumpster on 'Fever Dream', Songwriting Growth, and Letting Go
In 2016, only a few years after this outlet became started to take off and my life was evolving, I ended up taking a job at a Guitar Center in the Bay Area to pay my bills. During my tenure with the company, I met three people: Donnie Walsh and Lalo Gonzalez Deetz (who both worked in guitars) and Noel Agtane (who worked in the Operations department). All three of them would go on to form the East Bay outfit Grumpster. I felt like I was lucky enough to see this band come together, even if it was only in glimpses.
Years later, they have two full-length albums under their belt including this year’s Fever Dream, a high-speed East Bay punk thrill ride that melds modern pop-punk with the visceral nature of 90s alternative rock and deeply personal lyrics. There are only ten tracks on Fever Dream, and the album barely come in at a half-hour, but this is a band that puts everything out on the table. You can hear it in their music, and you can see it in their live performances. Ahead of their show tomorrow at Berkeley’s UC Theatre with Descendents and Circle Jerks, Shameless SF spoke with all three members of the band about the composition of Fever Dream, the experience of bringing a producer into the mix and the concept of “letting go”.
Note: Portions of this interview have been edited and condensed, solely for the purposes of clarity and length.
It’s so good to talk to you all. It’s weird to do this interview with you three because we all worked in Guitar Center at the exact same time. I saw this band come to be when we were working there. The one thing we had in common was how much we all fucking hated working at Guitar Center. [laughs]
Donnie Walsh [vocalist, bassist]: We were all just talking about that the other day!
But you’ve made it out of Guitar Center. You have a new album. You’re on Pure Noise Records. The last time I think we talked about the band was probably the end of 2019 when I saw you in San Jose at the Art Boutiki. How long from that show to now was Fever Dream in the works? Had you been working on these since 2016, or was this an entirely new batch of songs?
Lalo Deetz [guitarist]: This was an entirely new batch of songs! We just had Underwhelmed come out at the end of 2019. By then, we weren’t really planning on writing any new songs; we had tour lined up. Basically, the entire summer of 2020 was booked. But then obviously, everything got shut down. We were just like, “Well, what else are we gonna do? Might as well write some songs”. We just started writing a bunch of songs because we really didn’t have anything else to do.
A lot of records got written during COVID. All I could think was, “whenever this ends, every band is going to go on tour, every band is going to have something because it can all be done remotely now”. It helps to record in a physical studio, but if you need to get something done, you can record remotely. How did approach recording for this, given that it was during COVID?
Walsh: Honestly, we see each other so much that we’re just practicing the entire time.
Noel Agtane [drummer]: We actually went in right when the vaccines became available, and our engineer got vaccinated a few days before our [recording] time. It was kind of our first little glimpse of, I guess you could say, a post-COVID world.
How long did it take to track everything, mixing notwithstanding?
Agtane: I think we about ten days booked solid, and then I think we tracked for seven and mixed for three. We were in there, and we didn’t leave until the record was done. It was pretty quick.
Where did you guys record?
Agtane: District Recording, San Jose, California!
Was there anything that you felt on Fever Dream that was different in terms of writing? Was there any song where you felt like you needed to get out of the comfort zone of trying to write a traditional pop-punk song?
Deetz: For me, I wanted to embellish on parts of Underwhelmed that I really liked. We wanted to make more songs like that. We were working with a producer on this one, and I think that was the most challenging part. Not that it was hard, but that it was very new to us. It was a totally different process with [a producer]. As far as different style, I think that “Vicious” (our acoustic song on there) was very different, but not challenging. We knew what we wanted it to sound like, and it came out exactly as we were hoping it would. It was definitely fun to switch it up and have a new approach with things that we don’t normally do.
Agtane: At first, “Spiders” was a completely different song. It was way faster and we couldn’t really figure it out. Someone suggested that I slow down on the drum meter, and then the speed came down and it became what it is now. To piggyback on the whole producer thing, it’s not that we weren’t good at collaborating on underwhelmed, but I feel like we had figured each other out a lot more [on Fever Dream]. The collaborative process was a lot more open, and that shows. It’s not as straightforward as Underwhelmed was.
Who was the producer on Fever Dream, and what did they bring to the table as far as collaboration and working together? You also mentioned that having a producer was a new challenge; what was the biggest element that you had to get used to when introducing another person into the mix?
Deetz: The producer was Chris #2 from Anti-Flag. We were already supposed to go on tour with them and already in contact with them. Chris commented on a livestream that me and Donnie were doing, and he said, “hey, let me produce your record!” And we were like, “Oh! Really?”. He said, “Yeah, totally!” We started talking from that point forward. That’s when we were really like, “okay, we have to start writing some songs,” so that we could really get this album going.
As far as the challenging parts? You know, you’re used to writing music with two other people, maximum. When you add in another person who you’ve never written with before, it’s interesting, you know? There would be points where I’d be like, “Oh, I wanna have it sound the way that we originally had it,” but then after hearing him I’d say, “This sounds way cooler than what I was originally thinking”. Writing with a new person is new to us.
Agtane: Yeah, to expand on that, it’s about trusting the producer to be on the same page as you. You’re testing the waters and seeing how the dynamic is going to be. Obviously it’s super personal; it’s our music. Finally, we were like, “Oh, yeah, we’re all on the same page here”. It was easy after that.
Walsh: A lot of it is letting go of your version of the song and being open to letting someone else decide what’ll work best. Changing what you wrote to fit that is a learning curve.
Deetz: Yeah, hearing someone say they wanna change it, you go, “I don’t know about that”, and then you hear it and go, “Oh, okay I see.”
Yeah, there’s always that fear that if you let go something, somebody’s going to take what you had and change it completely. Then you start to realize that if it’s the right person, then it will actually be okay because they want the same end result that you want.
Lalo: Exactly, and I think Chris definitely saw the vision and one-hundred percent executed what we were trying to go for.
On the song “Mirrors”, there are no vocals except for maybe the last twenty seconds. I find it fascinating when bands drop an instrumental song in the middle of their album. How did that song come about?
Agtane: The three of us all had this concept, in the very early stages of creating the album, that we were going to call it “Mirrors”. The first side was going to be one thing thematically, the second side was going to be the other thing thematically, and “Mirrors” was supposed to be the middle track. It was going to build and then go out the same way that it came it. The outro was going to be the intro, but flipped. They literally “mirror” each other.
Once we let go of that idea specifically and just started writing the songs for Fever Dream, that’s the version of “Mirrors” that we got.
You’re obviously on the road right now. Fever Dream is out now. Where can people check out the new music, keep up to date on tour dates and whatever else you have coming up?
Deetz: You can definitely check out our Instagram, which is where we post the most. Our Twitter is the same handle. Those are definitely the two best places to follow us. For music, you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, all that.
Grumpster’s new album Fever Dream is available now via Pure Noise Records. The band are also gearing up to hit the road to support Lagwagon, with dates kicking off on September 10th in Asbury Park, NY. Get tickets here.
Grumpster
grumpster.bandcamp.com
www.facebook.com/grumpsterCA
Twitter: @GrumpsterCA
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