• How fun was it to make an angry Christmas song?
We had so much fun making it. We didn’t even plan on it being a holiday song, but we get a good laugh of the idea of this being a great song for the holidays, if you hate your family that is.
• We enjoyed the angry garage/90s rock sound, was it a conscious decision to create such a nostalgic rock sound?
None of the ideas we ever tackle are ever pre-planned, it’s all very spontaneous.
Even our monthly releases can change totally, within a few weeks of putting it out. But our combined taste is old school at its core, so I think just the soaking in of older music nonstop can’t help but make its way into our playing.
• What was the inspiration behind “B!tch”?
Initially I’d say it came from my job. Just rude, useless employees or anybody at work who was annoying in general. But honestly my never ending bad mood and constant annoyance with just about everyone, really wrote the song for me. It’s like I was gonna burst if I didn’t make it, so it only took me 15 minutes all together to write it out.
• You mentioned that you were influenced by 60s pop music as well as hardcore and death metal, how does that play into creating “B!tch”?
I think the beauty and bouncy pop of the 60s made the song fun to listen to, while the anger and the blunt and direct attitude of things like death metal as far as I see it. It’s fun to move to, but the moving is still pretty aggressive. At times we’re banging on our instruments within an inch of their lives when we play this song.
• How do you think the role of art plays in making people utilize it for self-expression?
Art almost forces people to use it to express what they feel. It’s really the only means to be able to put new love, or a chaotic anger, into something tangible.
Whether you listen to it like music, or see it like paintings, the role of art is almost the only route someone can take to express themselves.
• How does the unique nature of Sioux Falls influence your music?
Sioux Falls, as im sure most places are, has parts of it that are constantly innovating and making its way towards the future. While lots of it is still very stuck in the past, and not necessarily always in a bad way. Whether that’s technology or state of mind or what have you. Without even realizing it, that’s almost what Red Maker is, it calls back to a lot of our roots in music while trying to make its way towards the sound of something youthful and new.
• Your lead guitar sounds like it has a life of its own, how hard has that been to master?
You know if you ignore teachers, ignore theory or any reasonable approach to playing guitar and then pulled half hearted attempts at trying to sound like your heroes, then you too can also make your guitar playing sound as bad as mine.
• How has COVID impacted your artistic journey?
Covid allowed us to sit with our ideas and let them really come to life, if there’s any positive thing I could say that came from it. It also gave us a hunger for things to come. Shows weren’t happening so it made us really desire and prepare for our the future.
• What are your upcoming projects?
We have touring in the books come spring and summer, as well putting out an album early next year! We’re really excited for all of that. What the immediate future holds is more monthly singles, we just put our last song Hey Katie and its received good responses so far.
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Jaylan Salah
