The first thing I want to ask about is what is this cartoon that is on the cover of all the singles? And what is this progression, why is it ascending?
Joe: It's from the 7th brother. It's an 80's animated movie. Kylie watched it a bunch as a child so I think it just holds a particular nostalgia about it. It came up on our YouTube and we just saw the image of him being a devil and we were like, alright, that's it. That's the album cover.
Does nostalgia play into your songwriting practice in any way? Is that something you're really thinking about when you're writing songs?
Kylie: Yeah, definitely. I was just saying earlier that a lot of our stuff is an homage to things that made me want to do music and art as a kid, like 2010s rock. I feel like nostalgia is a really strong feeling to tap into. Everyone feels it. I remember seeing the images as a kid. It's kind of scary. The movie's kind of scary. It lowkey scarred me, but I just think the image is so hard. The bunny into the devil. But the angel, we made that up. That's not in the movie.
Going off of that, I want to talk about your music videos too because they also kind of play into nostalgia a lot with the visuals especially for the Miracle (Without U) video. But also the new one almost has a Blair Witch feel to it. What were the behind the scenes like for those videos and how did the concepts come to be?
Austyn: I think it's like a shared love for Analog Core. It's the same person that produced both of those videos, our friend Frank. It's been cool to see how the vibe shift happens, but they still feel very together. And replicating that kind of imagery from the technology in the videos ties into that nostalgia feel I think.
Zach: Yeah, we very much have a point A to point B where we want to get the video, but then a lot of it is kind of like improv on the fly. We’ll have an idea and then we're just kind of goofing around and not taking ourselves too seriously.
Is the visual aspect of the song something you have in mind from the get go when you're writing or is that something that comes later?
K: No, yeah, I usually just write the song and then–it really is completely separate. Like this song was made far before the music video.
A: The song just takes the vibe.
What's the songwriting process like for everyone?
Z: It’s mostly Kylie.
K: Yeah, I write all the songs and the chords and the structure of the songs and then we'll come together and they're pretty good at–I mean they're all very intuitive musicians. So, you know, they can just play anything by ear pretty much or just hop on any song and then add their own swag to it. Then from there we can kind of just direct it. All the lyrics and melodies and chords and structure, I just write the whole thing and bring it in.
When did you start writing songs? When was that something you were consciously doing?
K: I was really young, probably like eight years old. I grew up in church, so a lot of the music I was surrounded by was worship music, which is really easy to write. So I would just sit with my babysitter or whatever and we would just write little Christian songs. But it's kind of good practice for a kid because it's the same chord progressions like one four six five. So you can kind of tune your ear to it. Now they weren't good. I mean they were cute because I was a little kid. But you know, I got serious about it probably when I was like 16 or 17…We all were in high school together. But not Zach– sorry. We all had a class where we had to write and record our own music. It was supposed to be a music theory class, I think, but it just turned into a making music class, which is great.
J: And that teacher ended up just recording all of our stuff.
K: Yeah, he records all of our music. He mixes our stuff.
So then you guys are all from Louisiana, but [Kylie] spent some time in Australia? What were you doing there?
K: I went to school there, for college. I majored in songwriting, so, I got good and I learned about it. I just learned a lot. You have to educate yourself on what objectively makes a good song. Not that any music is objectively good or bad, but you know, like, inherently true to you, inherently true to me. Like what I think is objectively a good song–
Z: –and genres too!
K: Yeah, and I trust my own taste enough to know what I'm writing, if I like it and think that it's good enough to put out, you know.
How did going to school for songwriting affect your music–if you had to be very educational about the songwriting process, how do you separate what you were being taught from your own innate artist feeling?
K: For a while after I graduated, it was just really hard to listen to music because it was all just what I learned like how does this chord progression work? How does the melody play with the thing? What is the production value of the song? Anywhere I would go, if there was music playing, it was in the back of my head just like analyze the song, analyze the song… and then COVID slowed me down in that way where I was kind of forced to just stay home, not really hyper focus on the music around me, the people playing music. Because right when you finish music school, you can be pretty jaded in the scene. It's just bogged down with music like all the time. I don't remember who told me about it–but now I'm just like… write music that you like, because you have to. If you write music that you think is bad or even if you say your music is bad, which I'll still say it, don't get me wrong, I'll still say songs are bad. It's just normal after the fact you're not always confident in your art. But if you think that it's good enough to teach to your band, it's definitely worth something. I think intuitively I'm big on the ear so if you're hearing something, it should click when it's right. The right vowel with the right chord, you know, the way it resonates the right chord on top of a different chord. The way the drums are playing, it should just click and we'll try things until something clicks. Sometimes we'll play something for months before it clicks. Sometimes we'll record a whole song and release it and it doesn't click until a year later. But you know, you just really have to trust your intuition and your ear, mainly your ear.
[Do the rest of you] feel the same way?
Z: Absolutely. If it feels good right away, you should try to trust that.
J: I feel like you get in the Cashier world easier using alternate tunings and you kind of have to turn your brain off because your brain's always trying to put structure to something, but you can't really find the earworm if you're searching for it. You kind of just have to watch TV mindlessly for hours. You’ll happen to find something and you'll just know that it's the thing you should pursue and then you can get analytical.
Z: And just playing the same song over and over again, just trying different things, knowing that's not going to work, or that works, and then just going with the flow.
Did Cashier start when you came back from school or was it something that you've been working on?
K: It was pretty shortly after, so I came back in May of 2019 and Cashier had a different iteration. It was kind of like an indie Alex G-esque project, you know how we all were back then. Then someone had asked if I could play a gig and I didn't have any band created and I didn't even have any songs. They just knew I went to school for songwriting. So I said yes, because why not? And it was in November of that same year. So I got four or five songs down. We only play one of them still. Fear of the past.
J: Was that even? That didn’t even exist–
K: Did it even exist? No. So no song that we currently play is from that era, which is fine. Some of them have a certain thing about them, a certain charm, but I would never play them again. But yeah, that iteration was very different. I think the next year we had to write Fear of the Past for this compilation that we were a part of, a local thing. It was for a deadline. I wrote it two weeks before and we were actually the first ones to finish the deadline. Everybody else took like another two months. I was like, oh, I could have sat on this one. That old version of Fear of the Past is dog water. It's horrible. Then my other two members stepped away just because they had other stuff, they had other projects. But yeah, this iteration is way closer to the vision that I had and now it's just accessible. But I mean, we've really only been active like this for like two years.
I know most of you guys met in high school, but how did this iteration of Cashier come to be all those years later?
Z: Just playing music in town. In Lafayette!
K: Yeah, it's a small town.
J: Me and Austyn played in a band together before. So we needed a new bass player.
Z: And then [Kylie] DM’d me on Instagram.
K: Yeah, Zach was my only choice–If he didn't say yes, we would have been cooked.
Z: I was like, sure! Especially after COVID, I was itching to just be more active and play in as many bands as I could in town.
K: Yeah. And you know how drummers…drummers are like in everyone's bands, like seven plus bands. So I was scared he wouldn't say yes because he's in everybody's band.
Playing music in Lafayette– what's the scene like there and how has it affected your songwriting?
A: I mean, there's like the inherent pool that is Cajun music and Zydeco and things like that. There's already a pretext of music being played there frequently, even if it doesn't line up genre-wise. There's a culture there of being out and listening to music and drinking and dancing together.
Z: It's cool, it's not a small scene per se, but it is a tight scene. Everybody knows everybody. We know people that play metal bands, people that play Cajun music. It's super cool. Everyone is actively like, yeah, you should play music.
K: Everybody knows New Orleans for music. Lafayette, the university has a big, heavy focus on music. But it is mostly Cajun music and Zydeco music, which is awesome. It's just a very cultural area. So, you know, there's not a huge rock scene. I mean, we definitely have a hardcore scene, Louisiana has a lot of punk music and hardcore music, but it's not booming per se. I don't know how it's particularly affected the songwriting, but it definitely made me think if a random person off the street in Lafayette, Louisiana, like a country bah, was walking down the street, would he get this song? And how can we make music accessible for people like that and real heads who are into rock and you know, kind of just allowing easier listening. Not that it's like easy listening, but you know what I mean? Like making the music accessible for everyone.
You've been touring a lot recently away from Louisiana. How has it been to see other people's reactions to your music?
Z: Literally so incredible. That's been probably the craziest thing. It's one thing in town when all your friends are there and they're like, yeah, that was awesome. But then to go to a whole new city with complete strangers and they’re singing along–
K: And when they know your music. So crazy. Still bizarre for sure. We didn't have any gauge. This is actually our second big tour. We did a Texas run. So it's technically our third, but our first like real one was just in July with World's Worst. And yeah, just to be in LA and everyone is there singing Cashier songs and then you get run through at the merch table. It was just very shocking because to me we're just a small town little band and every show was just popping off. It was very validating honestly to see that people like the music.
What are you guys looking forward to and what's coming next for the band?
Z: The show tonight at Bowery Electric. Yeah. Super stoked. It’s very cool to be in New York to play music.
K: Love New York. Yeah, we're going to release an album next year. I'm very excited about that because I feel like a lot of people want an album like everyone asked for an album. So I'm really excited to finish writing it and I don't know, just get it out and then tour the album. Come back here. Go back to Philly, go back everywhere. I'm really excited just to pop off. Let's pop off. Trying to get to Japan. European summer tour. Yeah.
Cashier worldwide!
