WURST FEST with SONNY FALLS
We met up with SONNY FALLS at Wurst Music and Beer Fest before their set to talk about their new record, pet some dogs, and eat some sausages.
Emulsion: Is this your first year playing Wurst Fest?
Calvin: Yeah, I think this is Wurst Fest's first year of existence.
Anthony: The "first Wurst".
Emulsion: The first is always the worst, right?
Jeff: Haha, that's why we're playing.
Emulsion: Haha, please. You guys aren't all from Chicago originally if i'm not mistaken?
Ryan: Yeah, none of us are actually. I grew up around NW Indiana, kinda like the New Jersey of Chicago or something like that.
Calvin: I'm also from NW Indiana, known this guy for... what, 10 years? Been jamming together pretty much that whole time.
Our new friend Dodger. A good boy indeed.
Emulsion: You guys have had bands together in the past, right?
Calvin: Yeah two other bands, Deathbed Conversion and Shiloh.
Emulsion: Yeah that's what I thought. I actually followed Shiloh for a long time, you aren't really playing anymore right?
Ryan: No. Alex was the other singer in Shiloh though and a couple of us are in a new band with him actually. The ghost of Shiloh is still alive.
Jeff: Shiloh just became like four different bands hahaha.
Ryan: If you want to listen to a Shiloh record, just listen to Alex's new band's record and ours and mix up the tracks or something. There's probably a hidden Shiloh record in there somewhere.
Emulsion: What've you been up to this summer? Writing? Touring? A bit of both?
Anthony: All of that actually. We went to the east coast and the south a little bit a month or so back. My parent's drove to New York to see us, it was pretty awesome. Me and my dad drank a bunch of beer in the van.
Ryan: We did that for like, 10 days and then we've just been writing a new record. We've got a full length coming out.
Jeff: Yeah, we're getting ready to record that at the end of the month.
Emulsion: What's the writing process been like? What's the recording process going to be like?
Ryan: The writing process has been super collaborative, which has been really cool. I think maybe about half of it I brought in the main structure that we worked off of together. The other half is pretty much all just us making sounds in a room and trying to form songs around that. I wrote most the lyrics after the fact, which is something I've never really done before.
Anthony: Haha we finally have a 6-minute song, go figure.
Ryan: It's been really fun though, I'm used to building progressions alone and now we're doing it all together.
Emulsion: That's awesome. Jeff, I think you told me before you're going to be recording in a couple different locations?
Jeff: Yeah we're doing drums at SHIRK and then I think the idea is to track everything else at Pallet Sound. Michael Mac's recording us so he's kind of in charge of what he thinks is going to sound best. He did the EP and we love how that turned out.
Calvin: We trust Michael with all of our stuff. Always have.
Ryan: Since I was like 19, he's been a part of every record I've done. He's awesome, he's kind of the invisible 5th member except not really invisible because you can actually hear him.
Jeff: You can see him too! Hahaha
Ryan: Well actually he's in New Orleans right now so maybe not today.
Emulsion: When's the record supposed to come out?
Ryan: I'm not sure yet. Still figuring things out but we're talking to some labels, y'know, we've got Sony on there, we've got Warner Brothers...
Jeff: Capitol's interested, I think Atlantic...
Ryan: Haha we're really just trying to make sure it doesn't just get thrown up on Bandcamp when it's done.
Calvin: We want people to hear about it before they hear it. For once.
Ryan: We've just thrown stuff out there too much and we'd rather just wait a bit this time. We're definitely shooting for early next year.
Keep a look out for SONNY FALLS new record early next year!