stellastarr

Totally psyched. We haven’t done it in a while. We haven’t really toured in about a year, so it’s about time now. We’re getting the bug.

We’re crossing our fingers because we’re about to find out. It’s hard to really guess what’s its going to be like before it happens. It seems like everything’s going really well. We’ll see when the album comes out as well. Right now there are still a lot of new ears to entire thing. Every time we do a show, half the crowd has never heard of us before. But they seem really responsive so I imagine it’s just going to be even bigger and wider than last time.

We’re definitely trying to do that. Not only do we have songs from the first album and songs from this album, but we’re also traveling with a light rig and we’re talking about trying to do a big set design and things like that. We want to up the ante as best as we can.

It was cool and a very interesting learning experience. You’re never actually alone because you’ve got six people that are constantly around you and within arms reach.

We get along pretty well, yeah. But whenever you’re that close with people, like literally eating every meal with six other people or something, there will be tiffs, there will be tension at points but in general we get along very well.

Yeah, stupid little arguments. Like somebody’s mad at somebody because they said something wrong to them. Then since you’re sitting in the same van as them there’s this weird quiet between them. You can’t do anything about it; they have to make up for themselves, though in general we get along pretty well.

It was fun to open up for a band and see if any of their audience would like us and it seems to turn out really well actually.

The first one was with Longwave. They’re good guys and then we went on a couple of tours with the Ravonettes. It was a good time. We toured with some good bands so they kind of showed us the ropes so to speak.

There are a few things I imagine but I’m not sure it would be easy to explain. When we first finished touring, we took time off to write the new record because we felt it was time to change direction. Musically we started thinking about ways to go down other avenues. A band is like dating three other people at once. You’ve just got to keep them happy so it does require effort on everyone’s part.

I’m going to have to say Mandy just because she doesn’t have stubble.

Basically whoever sings it writes it. Often Shawn writes his melodies first then he kicks out these lyrics. It’s pretty interesting watching the songs slowly fall together. He grabs the melody very early. Mandy writes whatever she thinks, sometimes it coincides with Shawn and sometimes it doesn’t. Then I’ll do some back up and I write whatever I think as well.

We do it very democratically because mostly the words and melodies are written individually. The majority of the music is created all together in the band. It will start with someone’s guitar riff or a vocal melody then from there we just keep checking at it. So we really do put it all together with everyone throwing in their two cents.

We watch a lot of movies on laptops. Right now we’re actually traveling in a van; we only got to travel in a bus once. We actually chose to travel in a van this time and I’m not sure if it was the wisest decision.

Shawn isn’t very fond of buses. I’m not sure exactly why but they are a little difficult to sleep on. There’s constant noise and churning so I can imagine maybe he just didn’t feel rested during that tour.

That’s hard to say. I think a couple of us need a little care.

I’ve become a lot more durable than I thought I was. I’m starting to become a little more I think the mediator of the entire situation. In other bands I was probably the one that needed the most care, now I’m like “Alright if it makes your life easier let’s do that.” So I’m pretty easy going when it comes to that.

Shawn is in Queens, everyone else is in Brooklyn.

But I grew up in Philadelphia and it’s a great town with great people but nobody pays attention to what anyone’s doing. There are so many artists and musicians there but no one writes about them. There’s no attention paid so it’s like watching good bands die, so I decided I had to get out of there.

I was only in New York for about a year or two when stellastar was formed. I somehow lucked into it.

Unbelievable. That is literally the thing you fight for your entire life and, you sit there at your day job sitting there going “If that happened, I could quit right now. Just stand up and quit.” You prepare all this mentally in your head. It actually went a lot smoothly than that for me. I had a day job but my boss totally knew about the band so he helped me out. He was glad to see the band take off.

I worked at a corporate office for a drug store chain.

Yeah, kind of. I was the assistant to the head buyer which basically meant I was the gate keeper. If someone wanted to sell him some products or show him some samples they have to get through me first.

Exactly. Right there I really tried to make it sound as good as I could make it sound. Because what it comes down to at the end of the day it’s like “more samples huh, great. I’ll set up an appointment.” That’s more what it was like.

It’s funny. It’s a slightly different angle on everything. Each little thing is slightly obscured. The record label actually is very supportive to us on creative things. But they do pull on us in different ways. We have a new video for the song, Sweet Troubled Soul, which we think is really rad but it’s a little experimental. There are probably less clear shots of us than a major label would want. I think there’re still going to let us do it which is awesome. We have creative control so we can say “We’re doing this anyway” and they’ll support us.

This girl named Adria Petty. We just worked with her on a bunch of ideas and came out with this really cool thing. It’s like half miniatures and stop animation so it’s pretty crazy. She really started kicking out some great ideas that we were just traded back and forth on each other.

It’s a website. I know that they throw parties every once in a while and that girls dance in very small outfits. I haven’t been to one yet.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck