INTERVIEW: Weathers chats current tour with Dreamers, debut record and goals for these next few months!
Last Sunday, I set out to Brighton Music Hall in Boston to chat with Los Angeles’s Weathers when they opened as main support for fellow LA men Dreamers! Chatting to ¾ of the guys just an hour or two before the band took the stage, we chatted how they found their sound, the debut album as well as some focuses for the band!
Post interview, the band came out on stage to a crowd singing the words from the second the band jumped into their first song of the night, ‘I’m Not Ok’. The crowd continued to bob their heads and sing along to pretty much every track. Weathers’ set as well as Morgxn’s before them was the energy and scene I always pictured and dreamed of for bands of the past like 2AM Club and Down with Webster. So at least it’s finally happening for other bands! This genre is finally picking up and I think the latter two bands were just a little early to the party. Standouts were ‘Shallow Water’ and ‘1983’, which I’m still jamming pretty hard today. Find our chat below and keep your eyes peeled for this talented quartet!
The band has only been together for a few years, kind of waiting on the debut album for a while. You released it earlier this summer. You teased it a bit with releasing the two EP’s. How long were these songs in the making for Weathers? Were they all written pretty fresh, were some of them songs that you had from the past?
Cameron Boyer: I’d say for the most part pretty fresh. We spent maybe a year and a half just writing songs. We just kind of wrote music for a really long time and wrote over fifty songs or something crazy like that. Then narrowed it down to the eleven that are on the album. So yeah, pretty fresh I would say. If you don’t consider a year to be a long time.
Cole Carson: We ended up doing the recording and everything in about a year and a half. So we had some stuff but we thought we could do better. So we ended up calling a scratch. We had an album kind of ready to go but we thought we could beat it, that kind of thing.
CB: We all had changed a lot too.
CC: Yeah we kind of wanted a different sound to come out.
CB: It was interesting really because, like Cole said, we had a lot of music ready to go already but once that music was ready to go, we all really felt like we were changing and had become different people. There was a lot of stuff changing internally and we were just kind of like why don’t we wait and really take the time to write a full album that we really feel proud about. We really took our time, really wanted to do it right.
Perfect then from covering them as well in the past, I know Dreamers had a pretty similar route where they really teased out that music and really took their time in putting out that first record. They’ve had that natural progression. I think this is their first proper headlining run. How has this tour been for you as main support? How have you been planning these sets out?
Brennan Bates: It’s been going great honestly. All three groups, we vibe really well together and I think it’s a good fit. We’re lucky to be on this tour.
CB: Yeah everyone’s been nice and Dreamers have been treating us really well. All super rad dudes and Morgxn and his whole crew are really great guys as well.
BB: It’s really been like a family on the road.
CC: I think it’s the exact demographic that all of us wanted to hit too. We all have similar fans. For our fans it’s a great show to come see because we all play off one another really well. We’re three totally different groups with three totally different fan groups. So we each bring in fans that like the same kind of stuff then I think they walk away liking everybody which is pretty cool. Everyone sticks around for the whole thing.
CB: Yeah definitely, and this is actually our first major tour that we’ve done that really hits our demographic as well.
Yeah because you had like Saint Motel and Nothing but Thieves.
CB: Nothing but Thieves was really cool.
CC: Yeah they were great. It was a really short tour.
CB: Like four dates, something like that.
CC: With Lollapalooza in the middle.
CB: Saint Motel was a really great tour too. The only thing is that it wasn’t totally our demographic.
BB: Still a really great experience. That was our first one ever.
Then how have you been planning these sets? Obviously the album is still so new but these songs are songs that you’ve had for a while. I’m sure you’re even thinking about the new or are working on something right now. In these sets are you road testing any new songs, are you trying to play through the album? You do have the main support slot you’re not up there for twenty minutes. You do have a sizable set.
CB: We’re up there playing about nine songs.
CC: I think almost the full album.
CB: Almost the full album yeah. We’re still playing ‘Happy Pills’ of course.
That song gave you so much early success, makes sense.
CB: I think it’s eight off the new album. And we’re going to play those same songs through the end of the tour and stuff too. We’ve definitely been thinking about what we want to do next year and stuff already in terms of songs and songwriting but we haven’t hit the ground running with that quite yet. So we’re sticking with the songs we got for sure.
Ride the wave, you just put it out. It’s only been out for what three months now?
CB: Yeah exactly.
CC: Yeah we’re still focusing on getting out there and just playing as much as possible and just letting people know what we’ve got. I mean we’re all brainstorming I’m sure. I know I’ve been and I’ve been talking to these two about some song ideas and stuff but the main focus is just getting out there and putting a good show on.
Perfect, then when it comes to the writing, I know it’s officially 2015 that the band started but I’m sure you knew each other before then and were planning what was going to go on with this band and who was going to be in this band and that kind of thing. How do you go about the writing process? There are four of you. Is it something where it’s one main person, do you all collaborate? Do you all kind of bring your own parts? How does Weathers really approach the writing?
CB: All four of us write songs and stuff. With this album, Olsen (Cameron Olsen) and I did a lot of the writing together and we wrote with a lot of friends of ours, other songwriters and stuff. But we all like to get together and write as well.
CC: Recording the album with Tim, everyone definitely brings their own things to the table because of course we’re all I guess experts on our own instruments. Production wise, Tim is amazing but he let us throw a lot of ideas in to it. It didn’t feel like he was just ‘Go play this’. He was like ‘What do you think?’
CB: Yeah our producer is awesome.
CC: I think he always had a vision but he would let us figure it out with him. It wasn’t already set in stone and be like ‘Just go play this part.’ It was like ‘Let’s see what this sounds like in this section’. It was really cool.
BB: I feel like there were times where he’d just say ‘Go crazy’. And we’d just play whatever the heck we wanted to. Sometimes it sounded good, sometimes it didn’t. But when it was good, it ended up in the final piece.
CB: What was really cool was that we all had songs written and when we all came together to record it, that’s when the sound really came together. That’s when we were all getting our hands dirty together and our producer Tim was so awesome. He would push us to the brink. When we were recording, it’s kind of repetitive, but that was when you really heard it, like ‘Oh shit!’
Like this is what Weathers is going to be.
CB: Exactly.
CC: The creativity didn’t stop when we went in to record.
CB: Definitely, it kept going all the way to the end.
CC: It kept changing, it was rad.
CB: Even when it was all done and recorded, we were still making tweaks and mix notes, all that sort of thing. We were all doing that together which was really cool.
That’s great! And I know he worked with Walk the Moon as well.
CB: Yeah and like Neon Trees.
CC: Dreamers too.
Dreamers as well?
CB: Yeah he wrote a few songs with Dreamers.
CC: ‘Demons’ that just came out on the EP. He produced that song.
CB: ‘Drugs’. He did that one with them and there was one other one too.
Oh that’s cool so he’s built a rapport with bands. Stays with a band and obviously all those bands have had big journeys too. Long careers.
CB: We’ve definitely hit the ground running pretty hard from a young age which I think helps a lot.
You knew what you wanted to do. You already had this figured out kind of right of the bat.
CB: And we’re also, no pun intended, but we’re all pretty big dreamers as people and we definitely reach high. We have high expectations for the band. We don’t quit.
Perfect then to maybe end it off, you still have quite a long time with Dreamers.
CB: Four weeks. October 27th is the last show.
Great, so with the album being so new, maybe some focuses or goals for these next few months? Not necessarily plans, like I’m sure you can’t say much about tours and that kind of thing, but maybe focuses or goals for these next few months? For Weathers a band?
CB: Definitely the main goal right now is engaging with fans. Getting new fans and just building that fan base is definitely the number one focus. Then also another big focus is merch actually. Coming up with new merch ideas and building a brand for Weathers and really building up the face.
It’s part of it, as much as you don’t want to think so, it’s part of it.
BB: We’re all very into fashion. We don’t want to just make merch that’s just oh it’s that band. Like you said it’s a brand. We want people to see it and be like ‘Holy shit! That’s a cool whatever clothing item’.
Not just like the name of the band on a T-shirt.
CB: Right, I mean we have that. It’s great. But we definitely want to build a brand. A big inspiration is The 1975.
I feel like they’re the guidebook for a lot of bands right now, not in a bad way, they just have such a good brand.
CB: They set the bar.
Yeah they set the bar for bands to come because their image is so great and they’ve stuck to it.
CB: Yeah and I definitely think we have the potential. Like Brennan was saying, we’re all really into fashion. I literally bought this jacket like thirty minutes ago.
Where’d you go?
CB: Buffalo Exchange.
Buffalo? Yeah good choice.
CB: I was going to wear a suit jacket to match my pants but got this.
CC: Yeah I got a black denim jacket as well. Needed one!
CB: Yeah, we all love art and stuff too so we just want to get into merch and dive deep into that. Create a brand and stuff. That’s also really long term as well but definitely the number one goal is the fan base. Building fans. In terms of other tours or radio, there’s nothing we can really say about that yet.
Of course!
CC: We did just drop a new music video yesterday.
CB: Oh yeah, duh, thank you.
CC: Yeah the video for ‘The Night is Calling’ just came out so we’re going to be pushing that quite a bit. Cameron directed it and it turned out great. He killed it. So, check it out!
CB: Yeah I don’t know how I missed saying that. Literally dropped yesterday. Yeah we are a big content band.
Well it’s part of making a brand too. Having videos that are eye-catching or tell a story.
CB: And I directed it with one of my buddies who I go way back with, who’s obviously not in the band. We co-directed it together. We directed the ‘1983’ and ‘Problems’ videos as well. Like I said, we’re a very content heavy band. We release a lot of videos and things for fans to look at. The whole purpose of that and the merch ideas is to engage, again our number one goal, the fans. Get the fans excited because from our knowledge and what we’ve seen, what we’ve been told and all that, is our fans are the most important thing. And we’ve definitely all experienced that first hand. And that’s more important then literally anything else.
BB: And we do! We’re lucky to have the fans that we do have. We have people making signs for us, making neon signs.
CB: Yeah you should check it out! Actually at our merch table, we have a neon Weathers sign that a fan actually made for us.
BB: We’ve gotten fan art. Covers all the time. We’re really lucky to have all these fans that really care about us.
So it is really serious. It’s developing, it’s happening.
CB: We’re starting to develop a really dedicated fan base. And that’s something that we really want to hold on to. Honestly, it’s not even just for us, it’s for them too. It’s really fun for everyone. The whole point of getting on stage and playing live isn’t so we can get on stage and play live. It’s so that everyone can enjoy the moment together.
BB: Experience it together.
CB: It’s what you live for.