SHURE Hi Sam. How's it going? It's nice to actually meet you (sort of)…

BUCK I mean, we've been Twitter friends for a minute…

SHURE Instagram friends even — I think I actually walked by you at the Eagle in LA one time. But it was before we were really twitter, instagram friends.

BUCK What?! Well, I'm pissed. Actually, I’m a huge fan.

SHURE Of the LA Eagle or me?

BUCK Of you!

SHURE Haha. It’s mutual.

BUCK I've been a huge fan of your band [Charly Bliss] since your first album came out. There is just something about that genre of music you play that is absolutely for me. The voice, everything. I've always been obsessed.

SHURE Oh, thank you. It's mutual, too. I think your music is awesome. Hopefully we can play a show or something together. Or, you know, start our supergroup.

BUCK: Wait, did you once go on tour with Leah Wellbaum’s band, Slothrust?

SHURE: Oh, yes! We didn't tour with them but we played a show or two.

BUCK: Those were the good old days. 

SHURE: And you are also featured in one of my favorite films, which is Rachel by John [Early], Kate [Berlant] and Andrew DeYoung.

BUCK: Oh, yeah!

SHURE: I have a question. Were you there the night that the film was based on? 

BUCK: I was absolutely there. It was… it pretty much went down exactly like that, but just a little bit different.

SHURE: Kate is out of control in that - she is so fucking funny.

BUCK: You know what's funny is that Kate wasn't there. So she kind of got to, you know, build that character, raw. But, that footage at the end is real. 

SHURE: Oh, my god. *quoting Rachel* “You’re in the band. But, you’ve heard the band.”

BUCK: *laughs* I think basically [Rachel] was just walking around and heard us talking and just kind of thought it was a party. And then when she walked in, it was just like six of us, but it was six people and none of us really knew each other that well. So, this girl just walked in and sat down. We were just like, well, that's someone's friend and no one could account for whose friend it was. And then at a certain point, I had to ask, “Sorry, whose friend is that?”

SHURE: *laughs*

BUCK: And now I feel bad. Like, a part of me feels like we should have just let her stay. 

SHURE: Yeah, I don't know. I feel like the arc of the film, at least, was right. So I don't know if we needed more from her. *laughs*

BUCK: Yeah, I mean, people just sort of vilify… if we were in Europe, for instance, I think Rachel would have stayed and perhaps we would have become great friends, you know?

SHURE: Absolutely.

BUCK: But in this country, you know…

SHURE: What have you been working on during all this time? I know you paint as well and you sell your paintings, but you have like a job that's not music?

BUCK: Um, well, you know, my classic job since I was 20 years old is that… I’m a maid.

SHURE: That's awesome! You need to do an album cover in a sexy maid outfit.

BUCK: Oh, shit. I mean… believe me, I tried. 

SHURE: Like bondage-leathery, of course.

BUCK: I mean, I tried to do sexy maid, IRL, and no one ever took me up on it. *laughter* I tried putting that out there and the closest I ever got was someone messaging saying “I don't need you to clean my house, but would you want to wrestle?”

SHURE: Ah, that like, wrestle thing. 

BUCK: Do I want a total stranger to put me in a headlock? I don't know…

SHURE: Yeah, I don't know about that.

BUCK: So, I have been a maid since I was, like, 20, and then at the beginning of quarantine, I sort of took it as an opportunity to just tell all my clients to lose my number. I may be retiring from the cleaning game, but you know, we'll see what it comes to down the road.

SHURE: I had kind of stopped bartending like a couple years ago, or at least, like given up having a regular shift, but then they opened a gay bar two blocks from my house. 

BUCK: I feel like you would be an extremely lovable bartender.

SHURE: I don't know about that. 

BUCK: Are you like, mean or what's your vibe?

SHURE: I'm not mean. It's just, you know, there's the phrase, something like “bartender as a therapist” …it’s hard for me to be fake with people. It’s worse in a way now because it's table service. So it's not just a transaction where I give someone a drink. I have to be like, “Hey, how's it going?”

BUCK: I'm pretty good at “the smiling-waiter-buffoon thing.” Before I moved to LA I lived in Provincetown for a couple years. I was good at that. I can serve a burger with a smile. But in a sales context, I feel like I cannot be fake either. If someone's trying on a dress or something, and you have to be like, “that looks amazing!” I just can't say anything. *laughs*

SHURE: I've also just been shocked at the way people have been behaving during the pandemic. 

BUCK: Oh, and the bartending game, it can be especially fucked up because someone can be posted up. And you're giving them table service for four hours. And then they're like, “Yeah, I got four drinks, so here's $4”

SHURE: If touring starts again, I don't know how long I'm gonna be bartending. Not the worst problem to have.

BUCK: Do you guys have new stuff?

SHURE: We have a lot of new music coming! Oh, my god, it just feels so good to be doing press again! *chuckles*

BUCK: *laughs*

SHURE: But yeah, we're working on new music and we want to put stuff out as soon as possible. I've also been trying to make music for myself for the first time in a while. I've written like five songs about my new dog. So, there's the seeds of a solo album at some point.

BUCK: Alright! What kind of dog?

SHURE: It’s a French Bulldog… here. *Raises Chico into frame*

BUCK: Oh, damn. Oh, shit! Careful. You got one of those dogs that you can get, you know, killed for. Especially when they figure out what band you're in!

SHURE: Oh, yeah, exactly. I've wanted one for like, 10 years. It’s one of those things where I had to pull the trigger. I'm home constantly. It's been almost a year since I've had him and I'm still obsessed with him. So, that's probably a good sign.

BUCK: Most of my friends who had been wanting pets for the entire pandemic just kind of finally pulled the trigger and none of them seem to have any regrets. 

SHURE: Yeah, there's definitely going to be a lot of pets going through separation anxiety when the pandemics over and people are working again. 

BUCK: My toxic, insane meth head downstairs neighbors have this really cute Chihuahua. I feel like the Chihuahua is really fucking psyched for them to get out of the house. You know what I mean? I feel like a lot of pets are like “this is just too much time together,” you know?

SHURE: You have meth head neighbors downstairs…

BUCK: Um, I just have kind of, I don't know. It's probably something that shouldn't be put in writing but I have, like, an iconic white trash, toxic couple downstairs. The guy's rail thin in a scary way; a scraggly haired bouncer at a club and the girl just stays home all day and accuses him of cheating every night.

SHURE: Oh man. You can hear their conversations?

BUCK: Oh, yeah, because they do it publicly. They're on the porch and she's like, “Was it little titty night at The Echo?! Did you titty-fuck some girls at The Echo tonight?!?” She calls it out for us all to hear. It's a performance.

SHURE: Is this where you are right now?

BUCK: My partner lives in Echo Park and we lived there together for five years. I just got a place in Topanga. *laughs* We've been together for, like 12 years.

SHURE: That’s legit.

BUCK: That's off the record! This is all off the record, by the way. 

SHURE: Doesn’t your partner also play in your band with you? You’re usually a two piece. 

BUCK: Yeah, the last time I played with a band was like seven years ago. And then when I started this project, in 2015, we were living in Western Mass after Provincetown for the Winter.

SHURE: North Hampton?

BUCK: We went to North Hampton.

SHURE: That's it. Yeah. That makes sense.

BUCK: Yeah, we went to North Hampton, we rented a house in a little, like, hippie commune cul-de-sac.

SHURE: When we recorded our first album, we did it in North Hampton...and then we re-recorded it. North Hampton is cool.

BUCK: I've done the “re-record an album” thing. *laughs* I know that well. My partner is kind of like a choir gay. I think he was in choir in middle school or something because he's always like, screaming harmonies in the car, along to the music. He's a good harmonist and basically I was just like, ‘this is great. This is just a band that I don't have to pay all the time.’

SHURE: Were you not in choir in middle school?

BUCK: No, I was, um, this is a curveball — I was in the percussion ensemble.

SHURE: Oh, that's cool.

BUCK: Yeah, actually, my first musical memory, the most viscerally joyful experience I ever got was playing our first huge percussion ensemble performance. And I was playing those bells that have one smaller bell and one larger bell.

SHURE: Yeah, I have no idea what those are called.

BUCK: Like “ding dongs” or whatever. 

SHURE: *hysterical*

BUCK: Oh, agogo! Agogo Bell! I was just going *mimics overly simple chiming*. I still remember just the joy of the percussion ensemble, my first live performance.

SHURE: Oh, yeah. I mean, I was in the choir chorus. I think I did jazz band at one point. I was in musical theater, obviously, but I'm still not that good at musical theory. *laughs* But, I would be like your boyfriend, always screaming harmonies. My favorite thing to do on tour is to sing harmonies that, like, ruin a song. Technically they're not incorrect; the notes technically could work, but they just ruin the vibe. I love doing that. 

BUCK: My biggest pet peeve is when the backup singer on like, a PJ Harvey song, is too loud. When a middle aged man starts singing backup too loud, on an iconic woman’s song... 

SHURE: Yeah. I feel like a lot of the time the live version of one of our songs will be the boys of the band singing harmonies but on the record we're like, “Eva, it would probably sound better if you sing these ones.”

BUCK: *laughs* You guys have very tasteful man harmonies, but she honestly has one of my favorite voices of any band.

SHURE: Oh, that’s sweet. I'll let her know.

BUCK: But [my partner] Sam started playing in the band with me starting five years ago and he does the MPC, our sequencer, live. He also is an insane dancer. Some people are fans of him. Some people are fans of me, you know?

SHURE: And you're both named Sam.

BUCK: Yeah, exactly. 

SHURE: Sam, squared.

BUCK: Every show.

SHURE: That's cool. What's next for you? Your last EP was in 2018, right?

BUCK: I'm just insanely slow, but I have a ton of stuff that's nearly done. And then this newer stuff I've been working on is something I could imagine producing with a band. In the past, I've kind of felt like the drum machine and the loops are basically part of the sound. It’s also just in terms of playing live, as you know, splitting like $200 between four people and between two people can make a huge difference. 

SHURE: For sure. Sometimes we'll see a band with like, eight members. I guess having that many people on tour, you’re either crashing at someone's house or buying three hotel rooms.

BUCK: I think people think that musicians make money from touring because that was how it was 10 years ago. So when you talk to someone who's not a musician, they think, ‘oh, you make all your money from touring, right?’ And it's like – oh, no, actually, you lose money on touring now.

SHURE: Yeah, it depends, but there are a lot of expenses that you don't anticipate.

BUCK: Mostly it’s finding a place to sleep if you don’t want to crash. 

SHURE: Yeah, we did that. We did that for years. You know, seeing who's friend of a friend we know in Nashville and we ended up staying with some cop.

BUCK: Yeah, someone's like, cop dad. *laughs*

BUCK: *breaking the fourth wall* Okay, I'm looking at our prompts. Some of these get a little blue. Do you smoke?

SHURE: That's funny. I forgot that this magazine was about that. I was a huge stoner. I don't really smoke anymore. Freshman year of college, I got an award called the ‘big fucking stoner award.’

BUCK: Congrats!

SHURE: Then I stopped smoking weed and now it just affects me very differently. I get very anxious. I try to avoid it but occasionally, you know, dabble and it goes fine.

BUCK: I was gonna say, I feel like no one smokes weed anymore. I am always the only person I know that’s smoking. I feel like I'm always sitting in a room, smoking a joint, offering it to a group of people and everyone says ‘no, I'm good. I don't smoke anymore.” It’s funny. 

SHURE: I feel like back in the day if a joint came out it would disappear in like five seconds because everyone would just keep smoking and now I feel like the weed is stronger. We take one hit, we’re like ‘I’m good, dude.’

BUCK: All the people I know who smoked a ton in high school, no longer smoke. I feel like I was always looking for weed in high school. My friend group would be like, “We're gonna drive over to John's older brother's house because he could maybe sell us weed.” But then we would just wait outside and call him and he wouldn’t pick up. *laughs* We were losers, I guess. 

SHURE: What's your method now? Joints?

BUCK: Yeah, I'm always like smoking a fucking tiny joint. I always have just a little messy joint tucked behind my ear. People are always like, ‘what is on your ear right now?’

SHURE: We played this show at SXSW and in the green room, they gave us these PAX, the ones you put the whole ‘nug’ in, not oil or whatever. I was looking at it like, I wish I could use this without getting freaky.

BUCK: The thing about weed for me, is that the effects of the drug are just ‘opposite day.’ If I'm feeling too good, it's what makes me feel bad. If I'm feeling bad, it's what makes me feel good. If I'm feeling stressed, it makes me feel chill and if I'm feeling chill, it makes me feel stressed. *laughs*

SHURE: That's interesting. I bet if I was already feeling stressed and shitty, I would probably feel better if I smoked weed. I'll try that. 

BUCK: Yeah!

SHURE: Maybe I’ll get back into weed.

BUCK: Yeah, I have that effect on people. *laughs* Basically, if I'm in a bad mood, it's usually what makes me feel like okay, I can just chill. But then at the same time, every person who smokes weed everyday wakes up every day and thinks, ‘I need to quit.’

SHURE: It’s a little like drinking. I’m not drinking tonight but I would love to have a drink after this.

BUCK: Oh, yeah, and with weed, if I were to take a night off, it would be a huge production. *laughs* It would be me, like, hemming and hawing and pacing. I can drink sometimes, but I had Lyme disease five years ago and now my stomach can't tolerate alcohol.

SHURE: I think you're better off being addicted to weed than to alcohol.

BUCK: So you might think, but...

SHURE: *laughs* I think we’ll be fine. 

BUCK: What was the last concert you played?

SHURE: Right after Christmas, we did two shows in Chicago where we co-headlined with Cherry Glazerr at Lincoln Hall. Chicago was one of our first ‘big cities’ where it felt like people knew who we were.

BUCK: I think Chicago is fun. I could see Chicago really loving you guys.

SHURE: What was the last show you played?

BUCK: I was doing this monthly show in LA. It was a curated country music karaoke show. 

SHURE: Oh yeah, I think I saw your posters for that.

BUCK: Yeah, the concept confused people to no end, but it was basically just a show that I’d invite about 10 people to pick a country song and then they just sang over a karaoke track, but they had to learn it because there was no screen. But people would come in constantly and ask ‘can I sing Madonna?!?’

SHURE: *laughs*

BUCK: It was a really nice way to experience and carry the joy, the highs of karaoke, and cut out, you know, the fat, which is what we all know the experience of being at a karaoke bar can be like. There were some amazing performances. 

SHURE: Normally when I've done karaoke, it's been in the private rooms but I have done it twice at gay bars. Usher’s ‘There Goes My Baby’ is a good standby for me, or ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet, but they're like, kind of goofy songs, you know?

BUCK: Yeah. I think, if you're a gay musician, trying to do karaoke at a gay bar, there's nothing scarier because you just revert back to middle school theater, like, “I want to be the best and I haven’t practiced my runs!” I remember the first time I ever did karaoke was at this gay bar in Providence, the Dark Lady. I did Sheryl Crow's “All I Wanna Do” and that was my first experience realizing that every song has a key and every voice has a range. 

SHURE: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: That was me just picking a song that I knew, and then thinking ‘oh, this fucking sucks.’ *laughs*

SHURE: Exactly. It’s like, I'm not taking this seriously at all... but I also want to sound really good.

BUCK: My karaoke show was really scary. People would be so nervous and I understand why. 

SHURE: You'll start that up again, once it's not a pandemic?

BUCK: I mean, I hope the venue will still exist when it opens, but I'm not sure if it will. So, we shall see. 

SHURE: Should we do some rapid fire questions?

BUCK: Ok. Do you like psychedelics?

SHURE: Umm. *laughs* Not really.

BUCK: Yeah, when I was 20 I lived with someone who wrote about drugs for Vice and he had a fridge full of every psychedelic under the sun. *laughs* That was enough for me. I haven’t tripped in many years. 

SHURE: I have a friend who likes to tell me, “I don't really drink or smoke weed anymore, I  just do acid.” 

BUCK: *laughs*

SHURE: What's the gayest album you own?

BUCK: Hrm…. I don't know. It's like, they're all pretty gay. Do you have one that comes to mind? 

SHURE: I don't have that much vinyl but probably the gayest vinyl I have would be...Ariana Grande’s Sweetener. Or maybe Janet Jackson’s Control.

BUCK: Oh my god, Sweetener, I feel would sound so good on vinyl.

SHURE: I love that record.

BUCK: Actually, one of the single pieces of vinyl I own, which is incredibly gay and my dad gave me for Christmas, is Taylor Swift Red on vinyl.

SHURE: Well, are you a Taylor fan?

BUCK: I um...I was...um, I am.

SHURE: I'm not putting you on the spot!

BUCK: No, no. I will cosign Taylor up through Red and then... and then I'm good...and that quote is too hot to use. 

SHURE: Well, I mean, everyone's got opinions about Taylor, but I think she's good, ultimately.

BUCK: I like songs from later Taylor. But you know, I was in all the way, for country Taylor and then she lost me.

SHURE: I can understand that. I didn't for a long time. I used to think ‘popular music is bad,’ but I think that take is kind of boring. I think it's way cooler to be like, ‘a lot of pop music is bad,’ but like, song by song, a song could be really good.

BUCK: Wait, so you came on for Taylor for 1989?

SHURE: Yeah, but, I didn't know…

BUCK: Sacrilege!

*Call drops*