On December 13, 2024, Easy Sleeper hopped on a Zoom meeting with our Sports director Roman Aguilar, for an exclusive interview! With their debut album, “A Sacred Way of Living”, the band chatted about their latest project, the band’s move to LA, and how to grow as a band in a social media landscape. Joined in the interview are David Poznansky (vocals/bass), Michael Caddigan (guitar), and Alex Lubeck (drums) minus Doug Guttenberger (vocals/guitar).

I’m Roman. Nice to meet you. I’m part of the college radio station for San Diego State. I just want to go over the new music that’s been out, the creative process and writing, and all things music.

Michael:  Very cool. We’re excited.

I want to get started talking about the general background of the band, talking about the move from Washington to go to LA. I mean, what inspired that? Did you find more of a community going to LA with the music around, and how was that transition?

Alex: Totally. So we started in 2018 together. It was David Doug and myself, and then we moved to LA in 2019. I mean, DC has a really cool scene. There are really talented people there, and good bars and indie venues and stuff like that. We just wanted more of that, you know, and to have an even bigger community. I think we definitely accomplished that. We met Mike. Mike joined the band in 2022 and yeah, absolutely, we’ve met a ton of other people. There are way more venues than anywhere else, and just a ton of music-minded people. So, yeah, we’re loving it.

What parts of culture with DIY music, how much has played a role in your journey, as far as the band being together and being able to have an audience from that?

Alex: Yeah, well, the three of us that started in DC were all in different bands at the time, and so we met each other through that scene. I mean, pretty much all of our tours out here on the West Coast and going east from here have been DIY, all the other bands we’ve played with, it’s all been DIY. So it’s pretty much everything we’ve done so far is all from that kind of culture and community.

So has that made it easier to connect with the fans that way?

Alex: Yeah, exactly, yeah. It’s such a huge scene that it’s not like everyone knows each other exactly, but everyone knows someone who knows someone else. There’s a lot of common ground from that.

Michael: Important especially in somewhere like LA, to have a really close sense of community. It goes a lot further than you might think.

How would you describe your music to people who aren’t familiar with it?

David: I would say it’s like kaleidoscopic rock. It’s got influences from all different parts of the rock world.

Talking about the new album, was that recorded in the studio or at home, and what were the limitations when it comes to facing an album like that? Were those songs that you guys were playing live for years and put them together?

Alex: Yeah, totally. When we were writing the songs, it wasn’t necessarily intended to be an album. We knew we wanted to make an album at some point. But we didn’t sit down and say, okay, let’s write songs for an album. These more came from us, jamming, writing songs, and bringing them to the group, and then we would play them live and tweak things. We played all these songs on multiple tours before we even started recording. I really like doing that. But now with the second album, we’re taking a different approach, which is also really fun. Sorry, I forget the rest of the question,

Just the more creative process behind the album, how the songs came about, and then just recording?

Alex: Yeah, well we did it all ourselves, the recording and the vast majority of the mixing. I really like doing that too, because we all are heavy music lovers and have kind of ideas about what type of mix it should be. Doing it ourselves gives us the freedom and the time to make sure that what it ends up being matches our idea for our vision of it. We definitely took our time doing that. I think studios are great, but it’s so expensive and when you’re paying by the hour, you think oh, we got to move this thing along, rather than, hey, let’s take all the time. We need to make sure it’s exactly what we want it to be. So I think we are going to continue doing that

Talking about how that fits doing the things on your own, in terms of the music-making process. Do you feel like it’s a bit harder, in the music landscape, to promote yourselves as artists through social media and different platforms?

Michael: Good question.

David: Yeah, that’s thought-provoking. Can you elaborate on that?

I often think about a lot of artists who are in a muddle of Spotify artists and different Instagram artists trying to promote themselves. How does that affect you guys as a group?

David: Yeah, I mean, I think obviously we want to put our music out there. In a particular way, when we were rolling out the singles, we were pretty thoughtful about how we presented them with different skits, or different avenues, or creative like music video type stuff, but putting the music, like, kind of front and center, in front of people, and then we’ve also just tried to, like, showcase a bit of our personality, like through our podcast and through other avenues and sharing stuff from the road and everything, so people can kind of connect with who we are, as people, individuals, as well as the spirit of the band.

Michael: We’re definitely music first. We like making fun skits and stuff. But I would say one important thing is that just the songs always come first, and then we figure out how to promote them afterwards. We really want to put our time into the music over anything else. It’s fun to get creative. David has some really good ideas and just one thing I want to mention, we always try to mention our buddy, Zach Huber, who helps shoot videos and do some creative ideas for us. So he’s been really involved in the last year or so with trying to get creative with the videos, because it can be really stale. To have someone like him that really can help with editing and stuff that goes a long way. 

David: To execute a vision that we have and like, collaborate and bounce ideas off each other. I think we have a lot of fun with that as well.

Alex:  I think when we’re posting stuff that isn’t just straightforward, here’s our music that we work really hard on. We generally try to not take ourselves too seriously, and we try to play up our sense of humor. Zach has been a really, really great partner with that because we’re minded to music. We’re not so much thinking about how can we make videos that show ourselves out there and make people want to listen to our music. So Zach has been awesome with not only executing but also coming up with ideas of how we can present ourselves, be silly, have fun, and be authentic on camera because I think that’s what people have responded to the most.

Michael: Yeah, having someone cover the technical and a lot of the creative stuff, leads us to just have fun and and try to make it seem as natural as we can, let him handle that stuff.

With the podcast part of it, was that something you had preconceived notions of it going to help and stand out from the rest of the bunch? Also, like, because you have the episodes of the podcast where they would coincide with the single release, do you think that’s something maybe other artists should be trying out as a way to kind of get to their audience?

Alex: The podcast in a way, is kind of a why not thing, we already have all the equipment. We’re already all together. The idea for the podcast was we’ve made all these connections with people who like our music, like seeing us perform, and we got to talk to like, once or twice at whatever show we played. People who really want to get to know us better as people will have this avenue for them as well. It’s really just kind of It started out as an idea just for really engaged listeners, people. Anyone who wanted to get to know us better as people. So it started for that, but we realized that even someone who maybe is not a huge fan of our music yet, but they just have checked out a song or two and they’re like, oh, this is cool. You know, I want to know more about these people. Then they check out the podcast and they’re like, Oh, they’re fun people to hang out with. I actually want to listen to them even more now and understand more about their music and maybe go see them live because I like them as people. I think it’s been hugely beneficial. Honestly, we have fun doing it. I would totally recommend it to other artists, if it’s a strength, if you enjoy yapping like we do.

Now going back to some of the music, David, can you talk a little bit more about the maybe the meaning behind the song, pleasure thrills, and just kind of what that meant?

David: Oh, pleasure, thrills. I think Doug took the lead on that, but it’s about, a lack of ambiguity in our art and popular media these days about how everything has to be so black and white with who the particular person you’re cheering on is for.

Alex: Yeah, it’s hard to answer that one without Doug being here. He is the main vocalist and lyricist on that and one thing that he says a lot is that he never wants to tell someone what the song means, what the song is about. He also generally writes in kind of a less straightforward way. There’s a lot of metaphor, and I think that the purpose of that is partially so that any listener can get their own meaning from it. Of course, there’s an intended meaning that he means when he’s writing it, but it can always change over time what a song means to you. We wouldn’t want to tell a listener who has an idea of what that song means to them that they’re wrong so really, whatever it means to any listener is correct.

Is that how you all think about songwriting, in terms of when you guys collaborate, to think how the audience perceives it that way?

Michael: Definitely.

David: I mean, once you put something out into the world, it becomes part of that experience of being connected to the individual. Be that myself, someone listening, the collective, if we’re seeing it at a show, or whatever, people are singing it back. It’s the interaction of all those elements. It can be fun to be intentional, too. In the writing process, about lyrics and sitting down, if you’re struck a particular way, it flows out, you just start kind of writing something. I think sometimes maybe it’s good as well to listen to what the ideas that want to emerge are, but they’re not definitive.

Alex: It necessarily depends on song to song. I think that the songs that David writes lyrics for tend to be somewhat more direct, and maybe more listeners would understand the intended message. Whereas Doug’s songs are less direct. When you write a song, there’s an inspiration, there’s an idea, there’s themes. Then once you put it out into the world, it takes on so many other lives, in the lives of other people. If it has a different life that has a different meaning, well, that’s not wrong. It’s just in a different life.

What has been the reception from fans and people at the live shows from the album and the music in general, in terms of how they react?

David: We did a release show. We did a single release show at one venue called Permanent Records Roadhouse, and then a couple with a great bill of artists, and then a couple of months later, we did the album release show, and we did, obviously, the tour associated with that. We’ve been a band for a long time. This is our first album, and tried to build some cool, like ceremony around it. So we played the album in full. We were dressed as monks. We had an interactive portion to the evening. We had a recorded audio message that played before, like a narrator, an Easy Sleeper narrator. I feel like I saw people laughing and smiling. It was, it was Doug’s dry tone. You give that man a script, and he turns it into freaking Quentin Tarantino. He knows what to do, but yeah, it was, a lot of cool ceremonies and moments with it, and I think that helped really make it a special kind of launch in LA and the road as well. That’s pretty irreplaceable. If I see the streams, like, pop up, X amount, that’s cool, but when someone reflects back about something specific with the record they connected with. That’s pretty immeasurable.

Alex:  The album has only been out for a couple of months which is kind of crazy. I don’t know we’ve been working on it so long. It doesn’t feel so brand new still, but it is technically in the world. It’s been like David said, it’s been awesome to hear people’s favorite songs. A lot of people tell us, I really love this one or that one, and that’s always cool to hear on a technical level. I’ve been really happy with people’s responses too. We recorded and mixed it for the most part ourselves, and so having people, other bands in LA, come up to us and say, hey, what studio did you guys go to to produce this? It sounds amazing. That’s a really great feeling. We’re able to do this ourselves on the technical level. So that element of it has been really cool.

Michael: People at the shows who are willing to participate in our skits and ideas are really nice. To get that engagement, especially on the road, and having it with all our friends in LA at the release show was fun to get people involved in stuff. There’s something really comforting I think about being in another town, and there are people that might not know you, that are there for another band, but they’re willing to participate in your show and come on stage and be part of it. You’re asking about feedback, and that’s one thing that really stood out to me. The people on the road just being willing to accept the album and how we play it. That was really cool

Was that what you wanted people to take away from the album itself? The overall feeling they get from the album and listening to it?

Michael: The little skit thing we did was pretty open ended, and we let people come up with their own things they wanted to share on the microphone without giving them too much of a framework. It really left people to give us a pretty wide variety of responses. Some were really funny, some were kind of sad, but I think that was like to the point that Alex and David made earlier about Doug wanting people to get out of songs whatever relates to them. That kind of made that clear to me. We left a pretty open ended question and got all kinds of responses. So it’s really nice to see people actually participate.

Alex:  As far as a message from the album goes, if you were to ask any of us four band members, you’d get a different answer. I would say a lot of the album is reflecting on a lot of the dark things that are happening in our time. The isolation, and the anxiety, a lot of people are having that shared experience right now. Our proposed solution to it is to find your sacred way of living. For us, a big part of that is getting people together in the room and playing music for them. Appreciating music together, being together. When we had people come on stage and share something dark that’s happened to them in life, and then everyone in the room laughs about it together, not at the person, but having those shared experiences is really, really cool and feels very special,

Michael: Even on a micro version, if they’re not sharing something verbally, just seeing someone dance is, so exciting to me. If we’re playing somewhere and people are actually grooving. There was one person who was singing lyrics at one of the shows, and it was awesome to see that they found the album and they came out to see us because they liked it. Even just seeing someone tap their foot, like knowing that the music we put ourselves into is getting someone to feel good or feel camaraderie or community is really cool.

What were some of your influences not just on the album, but for music generally that you have?

David: It changes every day. That’s a tough one.

Michael:  If Doug were here, and this is where the Beatles would get brought up. So, Alex, you’re lucky he’s not here right now.

Alex:   Yeah, you’re right. I am. Yeah, this is a tough one Roman, because I guess we could just say what kind of artists are our main influences, you know? But I think the real answer is just everyday life, you paying attention to the world around you and trying to stay in touch with people and hear people’s stories and relate them to your own life. Through some process that all gets converted into music and lyrics. I couldn’t tell you exactly what that process is, but, but that’s my best answer to your question,

Yeah. I mean, that’s a great answer. It’s better than just naming an album, it speaks to just how universal, music can be. How it can just affect how you feel listening to a song or album on the go, you know. I want to start ending things off. What does the future of Easy Sleeper look like? Does this album get you excited to work on the second album now, and what you’re hoping to kind of build off of that?

Michael: Yeah, we’re working on new music right now. We’re trying to get a bunch of new stuff together that we’re writing and rehearsing. So I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m really stoked to be working on new stuff and to get some good reception on the first album. It’s really motivating to just keep the ball rolling and crank out some new music. We want to play shows, but I think we kind of agreed, for the time being, we want to focus on getting some new stuff together. So that’s one thing to note.

David: Yeah, it’d be cool to debut a whole new show the same way maybe a comedian comes up with a different hour every year or whatever. If they’re really going after it it’d be cool to present something that’s really reflective of where we are at the point in time when we’re ready to put it out.

Michael: Well, we kind of slid one or two songs in sets as we go. So I can’t remember the last time where we played like five plus new songs that nobody’s heard

Okay, great. Is there anything else you’d like to add to any interview?

Michael: Stream the music and come out and see us if we’re in town.