"Shaped By Sound" combines performance and conversation to capture the depth of the North Carolina music scene.

For Justin and Avery our deeply complex relationship with nature formed the foundation of their band's identity.

Today on "Shaped By Sound", from Durham North Carolina.

We're in conversation with, Sluice - So we have Justin and Avery from Sluice.

You all are from Durham, North Carolina, is that right?

- We all live in Durham, I'm from Winston-Salem.

- Yeah, and I grew up in Cary, so all Piedmont folks.

- Oh.

- Mm-hmm.

- Wait, where in Cary?

'Cause I live in Cary now.

- Oh, near Green Hope High School.

- Oh, okay.

- In West Cary.

- See, I've kind of committed to the Cary High School Amps ... - Oh.

- So go Amps.

Yeah, go Amps.

[Participants laughing] - Yeah.

Solid, solid program over there.

- So interesting.

So I wanted to talk to you all about growing up in North Carolina, 'cause I grew up in North Carolina, as well, I'm originally from Greensboro, North Carolina.

- Nice.

- And sort of how did that influence you all as musicians?

- It definitely did, I'm sure in ways that we aren't even aware of.

But yeah, I guess on one level, there's, yeah, there's been like a big tradition of great music here for a long time.

There've been, I mean like Doc Watson, and stuff for a long time.

There've been amazing folk musicians, and then I remember being really inspired about the like Chapel Hill scene in the 80s and 90s, and learning about music as I was getting older, and feeling like that was so cool that that happened just down the road, and yeah.

Cool to be a part of that lineage in some manner.

- Definitely.

Yeah, I feel like growing, like when I was younger, it was always, I would go to Raleigh for everything, and had just like, what I was interested in, you know, was just rock music, and that scene, and indie rock, and there was great waves of that happening.

- Yeah.

- And it's kind of timely, 'cause we're coming off of Hopscotch Festival right now, and that, I mean, I've been going every year for whatever, how long it's been, 14 years?

- Right.

- And so, I mean, that was just highly influential, and ... - For sure.

- You know, uniting North Carolina musicians, and giving opportunities to emerging bands that we were playing in when we were younger.

So, yeah.

- Do you feel like there's some sort of like, I guess, kind of what I was asking too is also like, do you feel like there's some sort of like identity within North Carolina, like something that's sort of like out there, like when I was growing up, I feel like there just seemed to be a lot of really cool like alt indie rock that was coming through here.

Like when you're starting to see that and be like, "Oh, like this is close to me, and like, it feels like I can kind of relate to them in a bit.

Were you seeing that too, or is it just me?"

- No, I don't know.

I have a hard time like speaking to an identity, while being inside of it in some level, I feel like.

Yeah.

I briefly lived outside, I lived outside of North Carolina for like 11 months, and I feel like the time that I was away was the most that I felt like I was from North Carolina, and like had all these pieces about me and stuff.

- Interesting.

- Now that I'm back, it's hard to parse what's what.

- Yeah, why do you think that is, like, why do you think that was?

- I think just getting distance from something that you've known your whole life is really helpful, and like, being around people that have different perspectives.

I love like backpacking, and camping and that kind of thing, and I was working in a coffee shop in New York, and I remember telling a friend about a trip that I was planning to go do that, and he was just like, flabbergasted.

He was like, "How do you get water?

Like where do you go to the bathroom?"

Oh, okay, not everybody does this.

It's helpful to know.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Your own, yeah, interests can be more exaggerated.

- Definitely.

Yeah, and were in, we lived with each other in New York for yeah, our most, I think, yeah, your time there, and I was there just like an extra year and change or something, but that granted major perspective I think on how special North Carolina is, and yeah, just getting a chance to get some distance, I think re-validated, there's, "Oh, this is the thriving music community", and like its identity as like a place that people will come through on tour, I had not fully appreciated, I think.

- Yeah.

One of those things, I'm kind of curious too, 'cause I had a very similar journey where I was living here for most of my life, and then I moved to New York for a little bit, and yeah, I started realizing like, "Wow, like this, I'm like super proud to be from this place for reasons I never really thought of before", and it could have ranged from like yeah, like you were saying, like, "Gosh, like we have like the mountains and the ocean, I can just go wherever I want, it's so open and ..." To like, you know, talking about college basketball, and like, people from New York just didn't really care about that, and I was like, "How do you not care?"

And it just being like, "Oh, this is a thing that we have that's like uniquely ours sort of in a way", as you were doing that, is that where like, so is that where like the foundations of Sluice started to kind of take shape?

- For sure.

Yeah.

I think Sluice started as like a songwriting outlet for myself, I'd played in a band through college that after I moved, and yeah, life happening, we'd kind of stopped playing together, and was trying to look for an outlet for recording some songs, and was living with Avery in New York, and we had a very interesting character of a landlord, who kind of like scared everyone else away in the building, and then we realized after a couple months that we were the only people in the brownstone, and so we just started like using the floors that weren't occupied anymore to record, and we had a really amazing New Year's Eve DJ party, that was very fun, [Justin chuckling] but yeah, in that environment, Avery and I started playing together, and recorded that music very amateurly, and that was kind of how the band started.

- Yeah, so you had sort of like a fun house, like a creative, just like open fun house.

- It was pretty rare for that area.

It was a lot of fun.

- Yeah.

A fun house for two pretty depressed guys at the time.

[Participants laughing] It was like, yeah, 'cause we had, which was awesome, I mean, yeah, you were working on the songs, and would ask me to come in and like, put drums on 'em, or I'd hear you re-amping things to get different, like reverb on these stems, and we'd just be in this basement record, I've got pictures, right, it sounded horrible, there's no sound treatments, it's all reflective, like concrete, and there's pictures of us just looking incredibly gaunt, [James laughing] and like exhausted and it's, yeah, crazy to look back on, 'cause when you're in that, it's like, "Yeah, we were just like, everything's fine, we're making music."

But things are much better now.

- Things were really bad then.

- Now that we're home.

- Yeah.

[Participants laughing] - Yeah, well, so beyond just being gaunt, and, you know, not having the resources, money, time, effort, I guess, to really kind of dip in, and keep going in New York, what kind of brought you back home?

- I guess, for me, I just had really had a hard time up there most of the whole time ... [Justin laughing] And was up there, and felt like I needed to push through, and try being in this big place, and maybe this would be a good thing for me, and just had a series of situations that the best situation was living with Avery, and our friendship developing, and that was really beautiful, but yeah, had a job that fell apart, and yeah, just had a couple things, and I had a flight booked to go visit my family for something, and I got home from that, and I was like, "I just don't, I'm not going back.

I'm just not gonna do it."

So it wasn't too conscious of a thought, but just being back home felt really, really warm, and it was like, "Okay, I need to restart here, this feels right."

- Yeah.

- Do you feel like you sort of like needed that time away?

Like, I mean, you kind of touched on that a little bit, but like, it seems like if, like you would just like dip into something that was like new, and fresh, and creative.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I don't know what our lives would be like if we hadn't had that time, and specifically for this relationship, which I really value, it seemed really solidified in that time, and yeah, I think like we were talking about just that perspective gained from being in a really different place, it made me really grateful to be back home.

Yeah, I grew up in Winston, and I remember coming back, and like being in the community college parking lot in Winston-Salem, and looking at the trees, and just being like, "This is the most beautiful place in the world" that I'd never thought like when I lived there but you know, when you're living in New York, and it's all just a matter of perspective, and yeah, it felt really good to come back home.

- Yeah.

What about you Avery?

- Yes.

[Participants laughing] Let me tie it back.

What was our question?

- Well, I feel like, it seems like you really needed this like, hyper-specific time to kind of be creative, or at least like find something, maybe a thread of something, it seemed like you were kind of jamming together, and getting a lot of momentum, you feel like you actually really needed that time together, and sort of be coming back.

- Yeah, it was crucial for us, and I don't know exact, I think Sluice might well exist, ah, but it would be very different if that didn't happen.

But yeah, I don't know, I went to New York in hopes of pursuing music more intensely, and it ended up just, yeah, I don't know, being, I mean, it was important, we met, and that gave us an outlet, and we were also working on the early Fust stuff, which we both play in, and so that was crucial, but other than that, which all these were North Carolina connections anyway, it was like nothing, nothing substantial happened, I didn't have a good sense of community, other than those like intimate friends, and so it, yeah, it just became apparent that North Carolina was more fertile ground for yeah, just quality of life, good relationships, and making music.

- Mm.

- For sure.

I definitely wanna get back to sort of that community here in North Carolina, and you all playing in different bands and everything, but I wanna circle back to Sluice for a second.

- Yeah.

- Can you kind of speak to the name Sluice?

- Totally.

Yeah.

I first was made aware of that term on a family trip.

My family would rent a house in Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, every summer, and we'd go and water ski, and swim around and have a good time.

I can't remember which highway it is, but driving North from Winston, there's a little historical marker on the side of the road for something called the Slink Shoal Sluice, which was a particular sluice, and I just remember being a kid and seeing that and being like, " That is the craziest combinations of words."

- Yeah, say that three times fast.

- Yeah, it's ... [Justin imitating words] I can't do it.

And yeah.

And then I started reading about the history of that, and understanding what a sluice is conceptually, and I think it's on the Dan River maybe ...

But it just spoke to this like, kind of hidden world of history that I didn't know anything about, being on, you know, like a small highway, where a Wendy's is and stuff, like, oh there was a major like thoroughfare here, where like boats would cross, and there was a lot of commerce and trapping, like all of this stuff was happening.

So yeah, I was just kind of fascinated by that.

And then yeah, in trying to come up with a name for this project, that name just kept coming back, and I really like it as an image for the concept of like washing something with water, and like purifying, and cleansing, but also sort of a futile attempt to like control the behemoth of nature with industrial things.

- Hmm.

- And like, I guess, yeah, I like the name, [Justin laughing] there are a lot of pieces of it, but it being like a pressure release also kind of felt like how I felt about my creative output, like if I was opening the sluice gate of my emotions to write music, it lowered the internal pressure of my ailing mental health if I was able to do that.

- Yeah.

Wow, that's incredibly interesting, 'cause I was just gonna ask you like how does the name specifically kind of influence the music that you're making?

- Mm.

I don't know if it does, I feel like I think more of the inverse of that maybe of the music we make can then have a label on it, and yeah, sometimes it's funky, you end up with a name, and then you're ...

I don't know, I feel more passionately about the actual output than, I don't think it's affected by the name, but I think the name is a good indicator for it, 'cause we, yeah, the nature industry thing is a through line in a lot of the songs.

- Right.

Yeah, and I'm ... 'Cause it seems like, you know, you have like, so just as you were describing it, it just seems like you're, you know, talking about this like, the things that are influencing you, the specifics of what a sluice is, and I'm wondering too, like how much of your creative process is like, kind of like that flow of water, like turning it on, turning it off, like diverting it, like how does that, is that sort of happening for you?

- Yeah, I think that's right on.

Yeah, at least my like, creative process of writing, I usually go through periods of not writing much, and then turn a switch, and then it's time to do it, in great succession.

So yeah, that definitely works as an image for that.

- Is that an easy switch to turn?

- No, and I'm very inspired hearing about people that have all these very dedicated creative routines, so they'll wake up at 5:00 AM, and write four pages or whatever, and throw it away and that's fine, but yeah, it doesn't feel like a conscious switch for me at this point in my life, it feels like something that just kind of happens when it's emotionally necessary.

So that's how it's been for me up to now.

- Wanna talk a little bit about "Radial Gate"?

Is that a Bob Ross painting on the cover?

[Participants laughing] - Our friend, Sasha, would be really, really ... - Oh no, I'm so sorry, Sasha.

- No, Sasha would be very complimented by that.

- I think so too.

- Yeah.

Our dear friend, Sasha, painted that.

- Cool.

- Yeah.

- I was looking at it the other day, I was like, "Man, those look like happy little trees."

- They are happy little trees.

- I'd say so, yeah.

- And a happy little landscape.

So "Radial Gate" is another kind of Sluice.

- Yep.

- You guys, you really -- - It goes all the way to the top.

[Participants laughing] - So what was sort of the, when you were like writing the songs together for "Radial Gate", like what was the intention there?

- I guess, just as a band, that very much felt like we were still in our infancy of figuring that stuff out, 'cause I had been working on those songs for a long time, yeah, many years for some of them, and how did it come together?

We, yeah, I think we kind of put together a band, because we got booked to play the festival for the Eno.

- Mm.

- And brought along our friend, Oliver Child-Lanning, to see if he wanted to play with us, and yeah, kind of worked on fleshing out those songs, and we weren't really in a state of "Let's really do the band thing, let's do it", I'd kind of like abandoned that idea of being a big part of my life, at that point, and ended up, yeah, playing that set of the festival for the Eno, and our dear friend, Alli Rogers, who's our engineer and producer for this stuff, was in attendance of that show, and she had just started working at her studio, Betty's, it's Nick and Amelia's studio from Soul Vanessa.

- Awesome.

- And she's the House Engineer there.

And she saw us play, and she was like, "You have to come, I'll make sure the studio time can happen, like let's record this."

And I remember being like, "Ah, I don't know if we're ready for that, that seems like kind of a push."

But yeah, just coming together for that show, and then we ended up taking her up on that and doing that, and once we were in there, recording together, it felt more real of like, "Oh, okay, yeah, this is good.

Let's try really hard on this."

- Hmm.

And how long did that take?

- I think we recorded it in like two days.

- We recorded it really quickly, but yeah, to your point, I mean these have been simmering for like years.

- Many years, yeah.

- Like even the last show with your previous band we were playing, "Centurion", at least and some other ones, and then like COVID got in the way, of course, and so I remember you sending me like a demo for "Mill", and like I was in my shed, and like kind of drummed over it, we worked out arrangements, then finally got to record it, in whatever year that was, 2021.

- I think so.

- But yeah, I feel like the session was like three days or something.

- Yeah, it was a really quick session, and then I took like a year of fiddling on the little digital stuff for it to finally come out, and then realized that I should never be allowed to do that ever again.

[Justin laughing] - It's one of those things that you feel like will never have an ending?

- Yeah, oh, completely.

Yeah, I will just completely tear my hair out, yeah.

Much prefer to just give it to somebody I trust, and "Okay, make it happen."

- So when it wasn't to "Radial Gate" in that record, it's beautiful record, by the way.

- Thank you.

- It just feels like I'm floating, sort of.

What is that kind of, what is the tone that you wanted to create with that record?

It feels like there's like tension, and then this release, and then kind of back and forth?

- Yeah, all those things.

Yeah, I think there's some songs in that record that are very much speaking to the tension side of life, and yeah, the things that I felt in my early 20s of yeah, just being really bummed about everything, and just being like, nothing's gonna get better for the state of the world, or for me, personally.

Yeah, I remember a conversation that I had with Missy Thangs, who's a great producer and musician here, we were working on a, I assistant engineered on a Heather McIntyre record, and we were playing music in the control room, getting set up, and I put on an Elliott Smith record, and she loves Elliott Smith, and made some comment of like, "Man, this music's so good, I wish he just held on a little longer, like he could see that stuff would get better", and I remember her saying that and being like that "You're full of crap, that's, yeah, that's maybe for you, but no, like, this is the real state of being is suffering, and if you're correctly paying attention to the world, you will suffer."

And then I reached a point through a lot of hard work, and beautiful relationships of feeling that relief, and some of that ... Yeah, the like beauty of living.

And that was pretty flabbergasting to me of like, "Oh, she's right.

Yeah.

Like you can reach that point", and yeah, I think the record has both of those halves existing of the really intense suffering, and this realization of, "Oh no, okay, there's some relief to be had", and that those sort of competing against each other, I think, is what I was writing about.

- And I'm wondering how that kind of comes back to just, 'cause it feels like there's so many like natural elements that you reference and talk about, and also sort of like the human impact on nature, and how that can be this sort of like suffering, and just tragedy in ways, but at times, there's also this beauty, right?

Is that also kind of what it was happening on this record too, you were just kind of seeing yourself in both of those spaces?

- Absolutely, yeah, and I think a coping mechanism that I've had for a long time is to go be outside, and go look at beautiful things, and go swim in really cold mountain streams, and that, yeah, in times of really feeling bad, those were the few places, where I felt like, "Okay, this is good."

- Hmm.

- So yeah, that definitely showed up as a heavy character in those songs.

- I wanna kind of go into the set inspiration for this show.

When we asked you all about the aesthetic for the show, and sort of the theme, you kind of both immediately said "Spooky woods."

[James chuckling] Can we kind of dip into that a little bit?

Why did you all choose that?

- What do you think, Avery?

I feel like I've been talking a lot.

- Yeah, I know, but this is your forte.

[Participants laughing] I don't know.

I mean, it was apparent, like I, you know, even joined ahead of the band on one of those calls, it was like, "I know we're gonna wanna you know, like reference North Carolina nature", which is varied and vast and familiar to us, and so yeah, I mean in combination with everything you were saying about the record, and I think some of your ways of feeling at place or finding relief, I think we commissioned y'all to document some of these places across the Piedmont, and Western North Carolina to use, but yeah, also in terms of just the darkness wrestling with the hopefulness I think is maybe where the spooky comes in, and the supernatural, a little bit.

- Yeah.

- And we love Twin Peaks.

- Mm.

- It felt easy.

[Participants laughing] - It's intriguing, 'cause like when I think about, like, I feel like when I'm thinking about the woods, right?

I feel like I'm always like driving or something, and it's just like being on the side of the highway, and you're looking out, and you're just like, see like endless woods.

And I'm like, "I wonder who was walking through there.

Like, I wonder how long ago that was."

Like for some weird reason, I also go like, "I wonder what like revolutionary people were doing out there."

- Totally.

- And I'm just thinking like, do you associate sort of like histories, and like stories, and themes at the woods?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean I think it has like a, I don't know, like what's his name?

Like Grimm, like the fairytale collector guy.

- Yeah.

- Like the, yeah, it's like -- - The Brothers Grimm.

- Yeah, it's just very elemental to human, I don't know, someone like some Jungian analyst could have a good analysis of what's actually going on there, but yeah, that's the dark, and the out there is, yeah, it's very impactful to think about, and so many stories involve the deep dark wood and all that.

It's cool.

And even last night, we were, yeah, last night, we were talking about like the violence of roads, like ... - Oh yeah.

History of roads, and yeah, our friend Oliver's like one of the smartest people that I know, and grew up outside of Chapel Hill and yeah, was just telling us about like sections of 70 that used to be like Occaneechi trading paths that then became like, I'm gonna confuse all the history, but that's where Cornwallis marched for Pier, and now that's the highway.

And through all of those, you know, the palimpsest of all of the history on top of each other, that's now where you drive to go to the Sheetz or whatever, and that's hilarious, and terrifying, and sad, and beautiful, weird, all the adjectives.

- Yeah.

I wanna kind of jump into the community aspect of what we were talking about a little bit earlier.

Do you find that your storytelling kind of resonates with like specific locations?

- I love making specific references, and I love music, and art that makes really specific references, and it's been really relieving to me that I can make very specific references that people that have no connection to those references will still feel emotionally impacted by, which feels really good.

So yeah, I think so.

- And why do you think that's important?

I think you said that it makes you, like that it makes people feel good, but you know, for what reason?

- Yeah, I wonder if there's something unconscious about, like if I'm trying to write about something, and the emotion I'm trying to convey is a sense of connection, or like deep embarrassment, or guilt about something, you can kind of bypass maybe defense mechanisms if instead of saying, "Oh, I'm feeling guilty about this", or "Oh, I'm so in love with this person", you can just be very descriptive, and allow the listener to kind of fill that in for themselves, and at least in my experience of consuming poetry or music, it's more impactful when I can bring that emotional reaction to the thing without the person needing to tell me what I need to feel.

- Yeah, and that drew me into your songwriting, like early on, I think is just, it's, yeah, because it's often like specific and literal, it's like very raw, or something, like it, I don't know, it feels like there's no mediation or barrier between like your lived experience, and what I am getting from, yeah, and from what you're telling me.

And I think that's just very powerful.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And there's, within your songwriting, there's little to no chorus, like within the songs, which feels very like stream of consciousness, but also I feel like I can identify with you, and I just get into this soundscape that you're creating.

Is that tough, or do you feel like, I mean, when I mean tough, like is it hard for you to try and create that space, or do you feel like that stream of consciousness is just a way of you kind of turning on that sluice button?

- Yeah, I think more the latter, it feels most natural for me to write that way, and I'm envious of people like our friend, Aaron, who writes the songs for Fust, the band that we also play in is an amazing chorus writer, and can use traditional song forms to make just absolutely gorgeous music, and I'm much more comfortable being through composed, and yeah, doing the stream of consciousness thing, and that's just how I write songs.

- So kind of talking about Fust, so I feel like everyone including you two, everybody in your band, sort of plays in a different band, which is super cool.

What's it like to kind of be surrounded by music, and musicians, and kind of just being creative together?

- It's one of the purest joys I've ever known.

[Avery chuckling] It's just so special.

I feel like it's just been this snowballing effect, and yeah, slowly, like me and Justin were working on things, me and Aaron we're working on things, Libby, who's also in the band has played with all sorts of artists, Oliver's had his own pocket, and we finally get to meet each other, and it's like you add a year, or two years, and all of a sudden everything's like intermixed, and yeah, just due to proximity, and I think just the desire to make things we all get to create something entirely new.

- It's so good, I don't think I would ever release anything if I didn't have a good community of people to play with, because I would be too harsh on myself, and not ever be able to see anything through, and it's so nice to have people that I really trust, and really love their thoughts on things to say, "Hey, will you come in and play on this?"

And then they can bring their own spin, and it's a really beautiful thing.

- Totally.

- So just to follow up with that, like, I'm wondering too, like, do you get sort of confused sometimes with like, "This is a Fust song, and I can't remember if it was this, that, or the other, or this is a Sluice song and like, we did this like", and did it sort of like cross streams every now and then?

- They, at least for me, and for now they feel pretty separate.

- Okay.

- Especially with, yeah, like I write the words for Sluice and Aaron writes the words and the songs for Fust, and yeah, that can feel like they're in their own camps, and I really enjoy that, and love playing in Fust to kind of get out of my head as front person, and help augment a different project, instead of, you know, demanding attention on me feels really good.

- Yeah.

- I bet.

- I think it's wild we all play in both at this time, 'cause they are just totally different, which yeah, it's super exciting and satisfying, I think it just helps make us better musicians.

- Yeah.

So you're musicians, but at the same time, like you have to sort of pick up, and be able to pay your bills, and do all this stuff.

Gosh, what's it like to have two jobs at the same time, and play music, and how are you able to balance a lot of that, and does that sort of feed into your music, as well, like that kind of back and forth?

- It's definitely fed into my music and it's tricky, it's, I feel super lucky to be doing what we're doing, but it is kind of tricky to sustain.

Yeah, I looked at the calendar recently, and I quit my regular good, solid job a little over a year ago, and I remember quitting it being like, "All right, maybe I can do two months of touring, and then I'll get something else."

And I haven't since then, which feels amazing, but I have, you know, been working really hard, picking up odd jobs, and doing stuff here and there consistently through then, the work that I've been doing primarily has been carpentry, and kind of handyman stuff, which I really enjoy, and has definitely very literally made its way into the music, if you're doing woodworking every day, that's, I'll write about that.

- Hmm.

- So that's made it in.

But yeah, Avery's had a little bit of a different experience.

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean I've been in and out of just contracting work, like more at home computer stuff, which takes its own toll, but ... [Avery laughing] But yeah, I don't know, I feel like we come back from tour, and it's kinda like those last few days, everyone's kind of like re-racking, just like, "Okay, what am I gonna do, like what are we picking up?"

Like I reached out to this person, it's like, okay, everyone's kind of like trying to get their ducks in a row.

Yeah, which I see the stress, and the toll it takes on everyone, I think, but what it allows you is just an overall reorganization of your priorities, I think, which is super special, because it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like no one is in any careerist position, and we're just making the most time we can for music and creative endeavors, and I think that has opened us up to finding everyone across the state and beyond, that also is doing that, and so that just collective power is really inspiring.

- So a question I wanted to ask you both is kind of tying back into our show here, we're, you know, we're thinking about like how music influences who we are as people, and communities, and in what ways do you feel like you're shaped by sound?

- I think it's the most important thing in my life, listening to music, I love listening to recorded music, I love the community aspect of going to see shows, but I feel like music's most impactful to me when I'm alone, and listening on a good pair of headphones, and hear a record that, yeah, just speaks to emotions, that I don't necessarily pull up voluntarily, and music, for me, is a way to get in touch with myself more, and it's the most efficient and powerful way to feel through other people that I know.

- I, yeah, totally agree with all of that.

I think, yeah, I don't know, I grew up, just listen, like I would never listen to lyrics at all, like I was really just concerned with melody, and like bands, and it was fine and fun, and like I wanted to play music.

But over the last few years, it's just gotten so much more, I mean, serious isn't the right word, it's just like severe, like it's just become so important.

And getting, especially I think knowing people like Justin, and being closer to the songwriting process, I think I had just listened to a lot of music, where there was a lot of defenses up, or it was like people were trying to be cool, when I was in high school or whatever, and that I was just seeing concerts that seemed flashy, but what has just overwhelmed me lately is just the importance of song, and how it makes space for your emotions, and for you to feel things to connect to people you've never even met.

And yeah, I lean on it, as a significant part of support, I think, for anything I'm going through.

- Yeah, kind of going back what you were talking about with in that moment in your life, where you're just like in a really tough spot, and you're listening to that Elliott Smith record, right?

Like how much that can just influence just who you are, like mental health, or anything like that, I feel like that's an incredible thing, and yeah, like how you were saying we could just identify with these people we don't even know, and feel some sense of like universal like togetherness.

I think I'm wondering too, you know, we talked about this a little bit, but how, like specifically do, like does the environment here impact your sound?

How does that like shape what you're making right now?

- In North Carolina, in this area?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, music is funny, it's like magical and ethereal and spiritual, but you also need a place, where you can plug in a bunch of loud crap, and people aren't gonna get mad at you, so there's some like very logistical concerns, and logistical pieces that will influence what you can do.

And me and Oliver, and my partner, Sarah, and his wife, Uri, rented a house out in Hillsborough for two or three years, I guess, that had a couple of outbuildings in it, and was far enough from neighbors that we could make noise, and those years being there, where we could leave stuff plugged in, and we weren't bothering anybody if we could rehearse, or we could, Oliver could string up a tape loop with old tape machine, and do some weird experiments, and yeah, just very logistically, where and how can we do this, I feel like has influenced a lot of the kind of music that we can make.

And we definitely struggled with that in the city, just in New York, trying to find a practice space, and taking public transit with a bunch of heavy gear, and it's really different when you can breathe a little bit.

So I think, yeah, that's a huge impact.

- I'd like to kinda go through the set list for the show, and kind of talk through some of the songs, and sort of what attracted you to putting that on the set list.

So I know the first song that we have is "4th of July."

Do you wanna kinda speak to "4th of July" a little bit?

- Sure.

Yeah, well, I guess for all of these songs, we've been touring a lot, and most of these, we've been testing on the road for a long time, and it's felt really good to develop new versions of them, and to feel comfortable playing them live, and embellishing them.

But I've really enjoyed starting sets with "4th of July", because it's a little more gentle, there's some drone aspects of it, and I feel like it gives the listener a taste of what we're working with without beating somebody over the head with anything too harsh.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And you all were gonna play "Ostern", and then you're playing into "Centurion."

Talk to us a little bit about that, 'cause I mean, what is the sort of the buildup there, like how does that work for you all, and what are you kind of thinking when you're playing that?

- That's a great moment for Oliver to shine.

I'm sad that he's not in here with the studio, in the studio right now, but yeah, that's a really fun moment for us in the set to ...

It becomes kind of a Weirs moment, I feel like, yeah, me and Oliver have a project called Weirs, that's more, it's all traditional folk music with non-traditional arrangements of things, and there's a lot of instrumental pieces, and big drone element, and tone is very important, and so yeah, "Ostern" and the "Centurion", it feels like a playground for us a little bit to just be pretty weird.

- Yeah.

And I feel like "Ostern" is usually pretty early in the set as well, which is always just very grounding, it's like, it feels like kind of we can get our space created, and you know, get ready to play in our little universe.

- Yeah.

That repeating Ostinato guitar can kinda lull you into feeling comfortable, where you're playing, and then we just kind of explode, and usually audiences like that, and if they don't like that, they're not gonna like the rest of set and they can leave and that's great.

And yeah, it's a fun, fun way for us to get started.

- Yeah.

- So it feels like it's a place for you all to kind of take off a little bit.

Can you talk to us a little bit about "Overhead"?

- Yeah, that's a new one, we, yeah, we've got a new record in the can, which is exciting, and that's on the new record, that's one of my favorite of the newer songs, and it's been really nice to play that live, I think people have received it well.

But yeah, that's, I guess, yeah, lyrically a lot of it takes place at Smith Mountain Lake, with seeing my family, and talking, and thinking about death, but also thinking about love, and being very much alive, and accepting mortality.

- And "New Lester."

So "New Lester" is a, I mean, it's in here in North Carolina, it's in the mountains, what is it, what are you trying to channel there with "New Lester"?

- I wrote that song about going back to the mountains, and being in Asheville, and seeing a bunch of old friends that I hadn't seen in a long time in a very darker, a much darker time in my life, I went to college up there, and felt like I had a really beautiful community, and then it felt like everybody kind of scattered to the wind, myself included, and it really, I had a hard time being back there, and feeling disconnected, and feeling like I wasn't rooted in other places, and it really, yeah, felt sharp in my heart to be around those beautiful areas, and not really feel like I belonged there, or belonged with certain people anymore, but also being just kind of overcome by the beauty of that area, and the beauty of that community that was still there, even if I wasn't a part of it.

That's a lot of what I'm talking about.

- And "Mill".

"Mill" was one I feel like I really connected with in a way.

It seems like one of the things you talked about early on was just combination of industrial and nature.

Can you kinda speak to that one a little bit too?

- Yeah, definitely.

That's a very much a triangle song, I wrote that one after being on the trails at Occaneechi Mountain outside of Hillsborough, and yeah, there's a very, there's a little rain-stained plaque there that explains why there's glass everywhere, it's kind of a treacherous trail if you're not wearing good shoes, because there's glass all over the trail, but a lot of that area was a garbage dump for the mill houses that were there.

And all those mill houses got moved to, I think, West Hillsborough, and you can still, yeah, you can still see those houses now, but yeah, it was just kind of bizarre to be in this very beautiful area, and be reminded that, "Oh, it actually used to be a place of industry, and a place where people lived, and this is a byproduct of people living here, and now when you're walking here, you might get cut."

And as far as like a physical image, and a physical threat of the past interacting with the present, that just felt like a good image to write about.

- Now the next one, I don't know if I'll be able to say the name 'cause we're on public television, but it's called "What the ..." Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

- Sure.

- That's a new song, as well.

- It's a new recording, we actually recorded that for the first Sluice record, Avery and I played that together in that apartment in New York.

I think we called it "Super Blood Wolf Moon" on the first release.

- Yeah, very different name.

- Yeah.

[Justin laughing] But it's essentially the same song reworked with the live arrangement, and I feel like that one really came alive with Libby Rodenbough singing and playing with us on the record, doing kind of a like dirty projectors vocal reference there maybe, which also is maybe kind of like a, we all really love that record by the Bulgarian State Television women's choir, the Mystere des Voix, where they're just singing all these weird, really tight harmonies, just totally belting through their noses.

So that's been a lot of fun to play live, where we can all just kinda scream for a little bit.

But yeah, that's an older song of feeling pretty hopeless about the future, personally, and yeah, in general.

- And "Ratchet Trap", that's also a new one.

- Yeah, that's a new one, that one's definitely influenced by working in carpentry, and it's all from the perspective of a two-by-four.

So it's, yeah, the journey of a two-by-four, feeling emo.

[Participants laughing] That's that one.

- And I asked you all if you could play "Zillow" for us.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I wanted to know a little bit about "Zillow," I think it's so interesting, because of our communities now.

I've lived in North Carolina for a very long time, and I really identified with "Zillow," because it feels like that's sort of a, you say the line like "Where will you live?"

And I think about that a lot, not just for me, but for so many other people in this state.

Can you kind of talk about that song a little bit?

- Totally.

I mean, yeah, we love this state so much, and this interview is us talking about how good this state is, other people are getting hit to that, and more people are moving here, and cost of living is crazy everywhere, but yeah, you definitely see that here.

And we're not local to Durham by any means, but found a really beautiful community there, and it was pretty heartbreaking, that house that we rented in Hillsborough, our landlord sold it, very understandable, but trying to figure out, "Oh my God, what are we gonna do after this?"

And I don't wanna have to leave all these people.

But yeah, that song is about how do you make a nice life for yourself when capitalism is trying to destroy that for you.

- Yeah.

- And yeah, there are also pieces of carpentry and working on houses, working on very expensive, beautiful houses, while I felt like I couldn't have a place to live, it felt unfair.

But yeah, so that song is written about that time of rootlessness, of not knowing where we can be, and then the beautiful cherry on top of all of that is I found a house right next to Avery, and played that song for the person that I bought the house from, and he loved it, and I felt like we had a special connection, and he gave me a deal on the house that allowed me to live in Durham with my friends, as a musician, which was amazing.

Didn't think that that would happen.

Michael Kates, thank you so much.

- Wherever you are now.

I think he's an Ecuador, but we love you.

- Wow.

Well, that's all the questions I have for me.

Is there anything you all would like to kind of say, or is there anything else that you'd like to maybe leave us with?

- Just thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, we were so astonished when we first had the Zoom call and there were like 10 people on the Zoom call asking us about stuff that we liked, and we would say what seems like stupid crap, and they would be like, "Oh yeah, great idea."

[Avery laughing] And now, yeah, we have this beautiful stage, and yeah, we're really excited to be here.

- Well, thank you so much for coming.

- Thank you.

- Thanks.

- [James] Thanks for joining us on The Shaped by Sound podcast, if you'd like to hear some of the songs we discussed today, you can find them on our website at pbsnc.org/shapedbysound, or find us on the PBS North Carolina YouTube page.

Thanks for listening.