Honky Tonkin' ft. Cigarettes @ Sunset

0:14 Maxwell, I'm feeling a bit country. Sure, Sam. Uh ma'am. Ma'am. Yay. How? Uh we're slowly dabbling in a bit more country this year. We've dabbled, yeah. Parker McCollum. Uh Kip Moore. Started the year with white flores. White Flores. And now we've got Cigarettes at Sunset. Oh, damn. Here on their debut Australian Not really tour, they're playing Strummingbird Festival at the moment.

0:39 And we had a chat with Garrett and Wells from the band about All Things Australia. We talked about their new singles, and they've been a very busy Appalachian Possum Rock band. Appalachian Possum Rock. Yeah. Self uh self-coined term. So we dive into all things possum rock. We talk about the new singles and the new and debut album on the way.

1:04 Okay. Which for those that don't know Cigarettes at Sunset, they combine like grungier southern rock sounds with country and their sound. That's why they go by Possum Rock, because they're not defined by a certain genre. So we we do a lot of uh we chat a lot about that, we chat a lot about Australian crowds in the community they built in North Carolina as well.

1:26 Yep. Um and just if you haven't heard Cigarettes at Sunset, one of the uh coolest vocal uh delivery styles that I've ever heard. Like it just suits the music so well. Well they described it on the show as if hot mulligan went country. You know what? I can say that. Yeah, and they've done a lot of touring with Dexter and the Moon Rocks who combine sort of like punk and country.

1:46 Yep. Um so there's a lot of crossover if you are in if you are into the heavier sound. Yep. Um so yeah, I it was a great chat. It was good to get to know the boys. You were busy. I was a busy boy. He was busy. But on that note, Sam, here's you talking to Cigarettes at Sunset. All right, joining us on their debut Australian appearance at Strumming Bird Festival.

2:06 We are joined by Gareth and Wells from Cigarettes at Sunset. Welcome to the show, lads. Thanks for having us. What's up? We were just chatting off air. You guys have had a bit of time to acclimatize, and it seems like I guess the jet lag's not a thing anymore.

2:20 Um, yeah, we we've maybe we've just gotten lucky, but we've been doing all right.

2:25 Everyone's still very sleepy, but yeah, we'd we'd we timed everything pretty good on the flight over here. So we were we were the first thing we did when we landed was we we went bird watching. So we've got it figured out.

2:39 I mean, let's talk about that because I've seen you've been out and about. What were some of the first things you wanted to do in Australia?

2:46 Um, I don't know. I think wildlife was a big one. We obviously being uh ambassadors of Possum Rock, we love little critters of all shapes and sizes. So I'm getting to see some wildlife was high on the list.

2:59 Yeah, and usually we just like when we get to the hotel or the Airbnb or whatever, we usually the first thing everyone does is we'll take like a little group walk or something. We'll just walk a couple blocks around wherever we're staying and try to get a look. Um, and we always find coffee, so yeah.

3:15 Well, if Australia's known for one thing, it's animals and coffee, so it's a good place to start. That's probably a big problem.

3:20 Y'all y'all have delivered pretty fantastically. There's been great coffee and lots of creatures.

3:25 Hell yeah. Have you held a koala yet? Have you, you know, fed a kangaroo?

3:29 Um, we saw both, we have not interacted with either.

3:32 All right. Well, you're coming up to the sunny coast. There's a few little sanctuaries that I reckon you can have a little pit stop and have a cuddle. Yeah, we're down with that. Look, let's dive into the music. And before we talk about the Cigarettes at Sunset singles, we start the show the same way with all our guests, and that's just to get an understanding of what you're spinning in your playlist lately.

3:56 Oh, okay.

3:58 Ooh. Um, well, uh uh artist we love named Timmy Skelly, he's got a band called The Mud as well, and they just dropped their first album and it is fantastic.

4:09 Uh, Ethan Reagan, he's from North Carolina. He just put out a deluxe version of his album, and it like it made the album so much better. It's so crazy. Like, you just you never think it'll do it.

4:20 One of my favorite artists, Slim Dan, just put out his second album, which is also incredible. Listen to that on the way down here.

4:26 Oh, and I've been obsessed with Sylvanesso. They just put out a new album called Owl Infinity, and it's really good. Alright, it's a good story. We like music, man. We'll just talk to you about other people.

4:36 We albums, we love when albums come out. That's all we do in the van.

4:41 I'll tell you what, there's nothing better than like a new release radar when a bunch of artists drop albums on the same day. It's heaven. It's like Christmas has come early.

4:49 I know, man. I know.

4:52 Well, look, unfortunately, we can't spend all this time talking about other artists because our fans want to hear from you. So you said off the bat that you guys are Possum Rock, and it's a coin, uh sorry, a coin, a term you've coined. Um Appollution Possum Rock, you guys have made it famous. But for for our listeners who might not know what it actually is, how would you describe it to, I guess, the layman?

5:16 Um, it's a mess. You can yeah, it's messy. It's it's messy. It's five friends who were delusional enough for a couple years to think that they could make music work, and they were playing really, really bad shows to zero people. And luckily, at one of those bad shows that was actually a pretty good one when we went and played.

5:38 We were in Charleston, South Carolina, and Wells and our drummer Ethan were selling merch, and we have this t-shirt that our friend made us, and it was a possum breathing fire, but it was like it looked big like Godzilla. Um, and so we always just had that shirt, and that dude walked up to to talk to Wells and Ethan, and he was like, Do you guys play possum rock?

6:03 And Wells was like, Absolutely, we do now.

6:05 And then we Googled as much as we could to make sure no one else had taken it. But sound wise, I think it's just like if you want to break it down, it's the alternative with a fiddle, but I think it's just like the five of us having very different musical backgrounds and um playing them all at once, and it didn't work for a long time, but it is distilled down into something a little more concrete, which is hopefully what the singles sound like now.

6:29 Yeah. I mean, alternative with a fiddle, I feel like it's the perfect description of it. I mean, for you two individually, what were some of your early influences that you've brought to the the cigarettes at Sunset sound?

6:42 Um, I grew up on like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, but I think when you know we started making music together, it was like I was listening to um I don't know, you know, a little bit of Steven Wilson Jr. or like uh Zach Ryan, just like a little bit more country-driven music at that point. And I think that's where we found this little because I would have never thought we'd like be classified sometimes as country music, but like we did end up finding this little pocket that made sense where it was almost like punk for us to be a little bit country.

7:19 Yeah, okay. And then if it's ever louder or faster, that's my fault. It's just like I listened to a lot of Blink 182 and Green Day, which thankfully turned into like Hop Mulligan and Maxiel and a lot of bands like that.

7:30 Look, when I first came across your band, it it did strike me. I was like, oh, it's like if Hot Mulligan went a little bit country. So I can see where it all kind of comes together, and that's not that's a compliment because Hot Mulligan are killing it at the moment.

7:44 Dude, that was like the one of the first bands Wells really showed me when we started hanging out, and I like got really obsessed with Hot Mulligan.

7:52 Yeah, they're so cool. I think the fact that they can be so funny but so talented at the same time, it's yeah, but look, you've dropped three singles so far this year, and I guess the possum rock sound is as clear as day throughout all three of them, but each has its own unique style and sound and and probably pulls from all these different influences that you guys are talking about.

8:14 Was it intentional to have you know all these singles have their own vibe and presence, or were they kind of just you know a happy coincidence that they all turned out a bit different?

8:25 It it was pretty intentional. I mean, I remember we made the album, and that's the funny thing is like Possum Rock is hard to define, and especially now that we have it, like all the songs still sound so different. And um, they're like we get in some songs we get more country than we usually do on this album, and some songs we got just grungier or rockier, and we wanted to make sure when we were dropping the singles, we didn't just do like three country tracks and then surprise people with the record or the inverse with all of our loud songs and then have the rest of them be yeah, uh, you know, honky talking.

9:00 So we're trying to like show that with every release we can go back and forth, we can do both. We just don't, I don't think we ever just want to be one thing.

9:08 And I think uh like another reason why we were intentional about it is because we wanted the challenge of like I don't know, there's just there's the the country music is so broad now, and I think for us to try to poke our heads in a little bit to be a five-piece band that everyone knows is just possum rock, I I like the idea because that's how we all grew up.

9:30 Like we just grew up in Appalachia, and like takes me 40 minutes to get to a grocery store, or like half of our roads are just gravel. And um, I just wanted to like bring some awareness to people like us who are a little bit country, but we also really, really like to rock out. And that's where we get the blink 182 from Wells and his his crazy shit that he brings to the table.

9:56 I love it. I'm keen to chat about the upcoming album in a little bit more depth. But before I do, I want to chat gasoline because it was the song that you know sort of pricked my ears up the most listening through the newer stuff, and it's it's heavy and it borderlines that borderlines that sort of punk sound in its aggression and its grunginess.

10:16 The reception to it's been crazy strong. But I'd love to know from your perspective, what's the evolution of your fans look like coming to shows? Because I can imagine you're now drawing a mixture of like country and alternative fans at the same time.

10:30 Yeah. I don't know. Our fans have always been pretty uniquely ours, or just unique, I think is the word. Um, and you know, we started acquiring the like very beginnings of what you'd call a base, I guess, in um 24 when we were just like we were driving around, Garrett booked, I think it was like 93 shows all himself that year, emailing venues, and we were playing to 14 dudes a night.

10:58 But the really cool thing about touring in a like small region is the more you do it, the better it does get. Like you can build a fan base that way. And we were I think the cool defining characteristic of our fan base is like we have a lot of people who still love going to really small shows because that's where they found us.

11:21 Yeah. Um, anyone who like anyone who's down to go to a 20-person show at the weird bar in town is a friend of mine. And we just got lucky in finding lots of those people. And I think people who do that love all music, they just love the set and they love the sound, and we are so lucky to have them on our team.

11:43 And the tag on that, I think, is another thing is like I think people can be a little confused by the back and forth of the country and the rock thing if they haven't seen the show. But like I just like we pride ourselves so much on our show, and I think once people come and see it, they understand what it's about, you know.

12:01 Like from the outside, it's very two different worlds. But once you see us and once you meet us and you know, hear it live, it's like, no, it's just it's what we're meant to do. And I think our fans understand that and trust us to like put out good music, hopefully. And if they don't, well then we'll try again on album two.

12:22 Well, yeah, to that point, I feel like people have this general misconception that country music is all honky tonks and you know, my tractor, my farm, all this stuff. But you've got you know, you guys have been on tour with bands like Dexter and the Moon Rocks, and the the blend between country and rock is so much closer than I feel people realize, you know.

12:42 I I think that's also just a thing with genre right now is like it's almost useless to classify things, like all the lines are so blurry, and I think that's so so cool. Like music is so easy to consume, and I think everyone loves so many genres, and everyone is hearing so much because we're all on Instagram, and um you know, everything sounds more and more like everything, and just you I don't even think you can stop it.

13:11 And I think like to touch on Dexter, like they got their big start because they did Western Space Crunch, and like they found a way to like bring people into the fold. And I remember talking to Fox, and like that's what he constantly told us before we figured out the Possum Rock thing was like, you guys gotta find a way to like bring people in and like not not brand yourself, but in a way, brand yourself to where people want to feel a part of it.

13:36 Absolutely. And look, I'm really keen to keep diving into this, and I'm I'm sort of slowly in the background doing some research to talk about this album as well because I'm keen to dive headfirst into it. But I need to talk about Carolina Shakedown because it's the the latest piece of music that your fans have gotten, and it is a complete 180 from the last one, and it feels on the surface, it feels fun and upbeat and two-steppy.

14:05 But when I listen to it, I'm like, there's something there that's like bittersweet and melancholy, and I just can't put my finger on it. Am I on the money? Like, can you talk a bit about the process of that track and where the inspo stemmed from?

14:17 I think I think it is a little, but not I, you know, I the verses are very like the first verse. I we were touring and we were literally just really doing the Carolinas at that point, and we went from I think we really did go from Charleston to Wilmington. And then I stayed a couple days back with my uh with my girlfriend, and we hung out at the beach and she had to work or something.

14:42 And I was just sitting there at the guitar and I wrote the first verse, and I got to the chorus, I got a little stumped on the chorus, but the second verse is like, you know, it's just talking about being on the road and like what comes with that, and not being around the people you love, but being around strangers every night.

14:59 And then with that, I think comes a lot of reflecting on like, oh, but I love these parts of home and I love feeling comfortable here. Um and then put all that shit aside, the chorus is supposed to be really fun. And when I wrote the original chorus, it was kind of not very good. We only had like the like a little bit of it, and then I brought it to Wells, and Wells did his thing where he didn't talk to me for 30 minutes after I asked him to help.

15:25 And then he popped out and was like, boom, chorus is done. And it was this beautiful, like I don't know. It was the first time me and him too got really stoked about a song together. Like, usually we have to kind of get each other hyped up, but we were both just like, this feels like us, and hopefully, people understand that.

15:44 Very much so. Are you guys perfectionists when it comes to songwriting? Then it sounds like you guys have a clear vision and you'll just keep reiterating and doing different versions until you hit that that vision.

15:55 He nodded, but I would say not even close. We uh are like in the end, we certainly are, but I think like one of the hard parts with songwriting, especially, like we tour so much now, you can't always just sit down and record and record and record and write and write and write. And like you have to be very firm with where you want a song to end up, but I think we also in this stage have to be pretty loose with how we get there and what parts we let each other write, and what like when we when we bring the song to the whole band.

16:28 Um, and especially getting into this album, we never before had we like been recording songs, we hadn't played a bunch. It was always like we start working on a song, you bring it to practice, you bring it live, and if it still feels good and people seem to like it, then we can go in and record it, and we'd be so well rehearsed with those songs, yeah.

16:48 Um, that it we kind of know exactly what it was gonna sound like, but this was the first time we just like we'd have demos and we some of them we'd talk about, and some of them we'd got into play as a band, and some of them we wrote the day before we recorded them.

17:02 Yeah.

17:02 Um, and there was it was scary because we couldn't, I don't think we could force things to be perfect. And we've always said like things don't have to be perfect, they just have to feel perfect. And as long as we got there during the recording process um and made it on the album, and it felt really good.

17:20 And I do feel like it is now perfect in the end. But there is a while there where it could have gone either way.

17:26 We have we have some control issues in the studio, but usually at the end of the day, we're just like, all right, let's shut the fuck up and let it sit for a day and see if we like it tomorrow.

17:40 I mean, let's chat recording in the studio because by everything you're saying, the debut album isn't too far away. Look, they say you've got a lifetime to write a debut album, but you guys have decided we'll put an ad an EP, we'll put out a bunch of singles, and then we'll drop an album. Like, what was that timeline like?

17:59 Because it seems intense.

18:02 I like that it takes a lifetime to write a debut album, by the way. That's a fun way to think about it. Um, the EP does not, none of the EP is goes into the album or anything, by the way. Like the EP. Like it's a separate thing. The album is like a completely new version of ourselves.

18:20 The album is so uh funny because like some songs are super old, and I think some songs have a whole lot of meaning, and there's some that are just for fun, and uh it is um, you know, it is the timeline of it all is very funny. Yeah, it was there were two songs we were scared about, and we're kind of bummed we were putting them on the album, and then we wrote two more songs we loved, like the week before we went in to finish tracking it, and it just truly, I don't think like the timing was anything but things kind of falling into place.

19:00 We do good under pressure, yeah. We're we're a we're a really good band under pressure, and I think it's because we don't put it on ourselves a lot unless it's from outside things, and like there the I think there's two favorite songs pretty across the board for everybody that they like how they turned out, and one of them I wrote in like 2021, and then the other one we wrote at the same day while we were recording a different song at the studio, and I think that's why I like the It Takes a Lifetime thing to make a debut album because there are parts of that that are older and um even come from me like before I met all these guys and they changed my life, and we were in this band, you know, and

19:42 it it's really cool to see some songs that I wrote and I never really knew what to do with them, and then I bring it to Wells and Sarah and Ryland and Ethan, and they know exactly what to do. And it's almost because they like know me better than I know myself a little bit, and it's this intuition they have because we spend so much damn time together in the van and being on the road, and it's really cool.

20:05 And I'll ramble about this album, man, because I'm really proud of it, and I I think I love it more than than I realize. And every time we talk about it, I get really stoked about it.

20:15 I mean, that's how it's meant to be, right? It'd be it'd be shit if you're like, oh yeah, yeah, right. I guess.

20:23 I'm nervous, don't get me wrong. Like, I'm nervous, but gosh, we we worked really hard on it, and me and Wells, I think, and everybody have been like waiting our whole lives to do something like this, and um and we want to be really proud of it. And it's you know, it's I think it paints a really good picture of who we are, but it also paints a great picture of like where we come from and how we grew up in Appalachian Bossum Rock.

20:46 I love it. And you said earlier that it blends, I mean, it's a bit of a picture of the the three singles that we've got so far. It's blending the heavier sounds and the country sounds. Is that sort of just it's a a cluster of all things that make up the cigarette sound?

21:02 Yeah, and it I I don't know, I think it's a bummer as a songwriter to feel like you have to write one thing, or just like you realize people expect one sound from you, and then you're like, okay, I have to make that song a couple of times. And we were very gracious with ourselves and just kind of did what we wanted, and we wrote the songs we wrote and we chose the ones we liked, and like they do span pretty widely in um you know how they sound, but I think that also makes the album like a roller coaster, and yeah, it it has highs and lows, and it's just it's the songs we love the most.

21:42 Yeah, it's weird though. I mean, there is a change in like I think we were really excited about gasoline, and we didn't expect for people to love it as much as they did, and so now there is this like we like there's like this uh not an expectation, but like you know, you're you kind of want to be like, ooh.

22:00 Can we make another one like that? Um, but you can't do that, you know? It has to be natural. And like the way we wrote that song was so unnatural for us at the time. And so we kind of got to lean into different aspects of that stuff so we can like make the best art we can.

22:16 I mean, can I just ask on that? You said it feels unnatural, or it was unnatural. What does what did that writing process look like?

22:24 That was our first co-write ever. Um, so like we uh got introduced to dudes Michael Whitworth and Andrew Bayliss, and um they really helped us put that song together, and it was near the end of the album.

22:39 And we thought the album was done, by the way.

22:41 Like we were in playing the song on the album. But it did, we were in the position where since we kind of thought it was done, at least I was thinking about like it was the first time I've ever gotten to be like, well, what could it use? Like the alb does the is the album missing anything for me or for G?

22:59 And we we felt like it needed uh um another rock song, yeah. And that's kind of just like the mentality we had, and we sat down and we just gelled with the two dudes so good, and um the song it came together really fast, and we found the riff pretty quick after sitting down. And Gary pulled out some old lyrics to start the verse, and it just it unfolded in front of us.

23:23 And as soon as it was done, we were like, Okay, well, it's gotta be on the album.

23:30 We showed our tour manager as soon as we left the session, and he was like, That's pretty good. And he usually doesn't say that, so we were like, fuck.

23:37 Um it's funny now thinking about it. We we really did think the album was done um the day we tracked gasoline, and I think we still wrote two or three songs that ended up on the album after that as well.

23:52 It's we talk to a lot of bands, and it seems to be the way like the songs that blow up or have a lot of popularity are always the ones that just like come from nowhere, they just appear in front of you, and they're always at the end of a project. Like it's a weird sort of world that it loses in there.

24:10 But yeah, I mean, let's talk strummy bird actually before we do anything else, because you guys are one show down already. You've had your you know, you've dusted the cobwebs of a long flight off, you've played an Aussie stage. How did the crowd match your expectations? Did they give plenty of energy?

24:28 There was way more people there than we thought it would be, and there was way more people that were singing songs than we thought there would be. It was crazy.

24:37 Australia media blew our wildest expectations out of the water. We couldn't believe it.

24:41 Love Australia. It was such a like also. Well, I want to say this like the best thing about Australia so far has been the people, and like everyone is so nice, they're so kind, they kind of have like everyone here kind of acts like people do where we live in North Carolina, where it's like you just have manners and you say hello, and you might talk to somebody at a coffee counter or whatever for 10 minutes, and you don't need to be talking, but you get on the subject of tea pain and things keep moving, you know what I'm saying?

25:13 And people have just been so nice here. And I think for us being so far away, it really helps to like be able to talk to people and chill, and the fans have been so kind, just like going to the barricade and handing them stuff. They're all saying the sweetest things and meeting them after the show. It's been really cool, dude.

25:31 Like, and we just spent so much of our career wondering if we were ever gonna get to play in like parts of our own country. Um, and we would have been excited to play awful shows in parts of our country. But the fact that we're on the other side of the world and people are like singing along and came for us and having fun, it's it's really indescribable how thankful we are.

25:51 It was crazy.

25:52 I love that, and I guess, yeah, the country community well, community is the key word, I guess, to to describe it. It feels like everyone's a tight-knit group, they support each other. And you know, back home where you guys are, it seems to be what makes the scene so special. Because in Australia, these smaller regional towns where you know Strummy Bad takes place, it's really appreciated when live music comes to you know their town.

26:17 For you guys, it seems to be the norm, you know, where you're playing all the time.

26:21 That I mean that's been huge for us is playing in smaller towns. And we especially earlier on, we'd pull up the places and we'd be like, Are there people around to come to the show? But then they would be like some of the most fun shows we'd have. And it's because, like, in places where people don't have tons to do, I think they care even more about music or are more appreciative of you coming to their town, and um especially in the country music scene, there's just so many people who you know build up these careers from the ground up, and we've met so many other bands and people who you know are working towards the same goals, and we tell each other where we're to go and what venues we've had

27:00 success at and what communities are supportive, and it's just like it's teamwork all the way up.

27:06 Love that. And two shows left on the Strumming Bird run. You're coming to New South Wales and Queensland, and the crowds are gonna be much the same that you experienced. I'm sure they're gonna get all around you. For people that haven't seen a cigarettes at Sunset show yet, what what's the expectation?

27:24 Like, what uh what should we look forward to?

27:28 Just come and have some fun. Like it's it's there's there's no pressure. There's you can be as involved as you want to, but our show is like to double down on the word, it's all about teamwork, and like we just want to have fun with you, and it's been our dream to do this thing, and the fact that these people show up and pay for the ticket, like that means that we're gonna work 110% harder to give them the best show we possibly can.

27:56 Love that, I love that mentality. Well, for everyone listening, make sure to go and stream Cigarettes at Sunsets, new single Carolina Shakedown, anywhere you get music, and keep your eyes peeled for their debut album coming very soon. Garrett Wells, thanks so much for taking the time to have a chat. Thanks, man.

28:11 I appreciate it.