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Gawshock: Creature of Habit
words : Gracelyn Moore
Gracelyn: How long has Unless If been out? It's been a month or two?
David: Yeah. Came out at the end of March. So two months?
Gracelyn: I was thinking about the name Gawshock. I saw it and thought, “Oh this is gonna be a really cool punk band” and I played your music and it was entirely different, but something I really enjoyed.
David: That's funny to hear that it gives punk connotations, I like that. As a kid growing up, I liked a lot of punk and hardcore stuff.
Gracelyn: What are some of your influences while making this album?
David: I'm kind of a creature of habit with my listening. I feel like I listen to the same shit all the time, and it's always 90’s indie rock. The stuff that I am inspired by is from that era.
So Silver Jews, Pavement, Built to Spill, that kind of music from back when college radio and grunge and rock were all in the mainstream. That’s the stuff I really like. I've made references in lyrics to some of those bands before too, like little Easter eggs here and there.
Gracelyn: What are some themes or emotions that you had through the making of this album?
David: It was kind of mixed. It's just life events that happened and just sort of my gut reaction to them. I like to write - I don't know - it just kind of helps me to deal with stuff that's going on in my life.
Gracelyn: Do you write first or do you have instrumentals first?
David: I always start instrumentally...It's kind of like a stream of consciousness, I'll start writing lyrics as I'm recording to fit a vocal melody I hear in my head. I won't set out to be writing things about like a certain feeling or a memory or something.
Somehow it all aligns and ends up encapsulating how I'm feeling at that moment just by not thinking about it too hard.
It's interesting that it works out that way most of the time.
Gracelyn: On the Bandcamp most of the credits went to you, like you made a lot of this by yourself?
David: Gawshock is a solo thing. Specifically like from the recording standpoint. I have a live band and have a few really awesome friends who help me play live shows. But, I kind of wanted it to be that way [being a solo act]. All of the recording, writing, the production, I wanted to take on myself. That's how it's been for the last few releases.
Gracelyn: This is interesting because it seems like you're very multi-disciplinary in that way. Like there’s full-on piano solos and such on this album.
It has this kind of almost atmospheric, like soundscape feeling. I was talking to a friend about how this album feels like sitting around a fire with camp chairs under the stars. That’s the feeling I was getting.
David: That's cool. The piano stuff is new to me. I don't have any idea what I'm doing on a piano, I just recently happened upon one. My grandparents passed it down to me, so I thought I may as well try and record some with it. So, I'm taking a shot at it. I'm not quite good yet, but I'm getting there.
David: Yeah. When I was a kid, my dad made me start taking guitar lessons. He played guitar and was in bluegrass bands in college, and then kind of fell out of it when he got older. But it was a big thing that he wanted me to play an instrument. I was not interested in it at first, but I started playing. I took lessons for a year when I was ten and liked it a lot. I played guitar until I was early in high school, and then I just stepped away from it for a long time. I came back to it when I started undergrad.
Gracelyn: What made you go back to it?
David: I think it just kind of like, happened…There were people around me that were interested in music. I got back into guitar music at the end of high school through a lot of punk stuff and hardcore. Like Title Fight, one of my favorite bands ever.
I saw some Title Fight shows before they broke up, and then from there got into more traditional hardcore. From there I was like, oh, I may as well pick up the guitar again.
Gracelyn: Having an album, from my perception, feels like a birth. You're spending all this time making this thing, and then it's out in the world. Then you’re waiting to see what people's perceptions are.
David: I definitely feel that way. I think it's amplified if you do it as a solo act and you're going through every step. Especially if you're doing production, at least this has been my experience. You spend so much time with every song in the mixing process. Listening to it over and over again and trying to get little details right that, ultimately, you're the only one that's listening in that amount of depth.
Gracelyn: You did your mastering too?
David: Yeah, I did for this round. My first EP and my self-titled, I paid a guy to master it because I was so sick of the songs. I just didn't want to deal with it. It's been a learning process. In each album I kind of like pick up new stuff here and there. But yeah, I feel I've been improving at it so I'm glad that comes across.
It is just such an effort. It's like by the end of it you spend so much time with it that they don't even -
It's like when you say a word 100 times and it doesn't sound like a word anymore. That's what the songs feel like at a certain point.
You're like, “I don't even know if this is good anymore, I don't know if I like this”, but you just got to throw it out there anyway.Gracelyn: I mean you've played a few shows here and there.
David: We just started playing live a little less than a year ago. I never anticipated this would be a live thing at all. I always just sort of thought it was going to be me making silly songs in my room. The stars aligned, and some bands were coming through a spot in Birmingham, it's called Saturn. It's one of my favorite venues I've ever been to. Bedlocked had reached out to me and asked if I was up for a show. It was never planned, but that kind of came up and I was like, well I’d love to play that venue. I was asking friends and people I had met online, like, “do you guys want to try and do a one-off thing?” and from there I just kind of ended up with a more permanent live band.
So it's been fun.
Gracelyn: Do you have any like plans to do any shows anytime soon?
David: Yeah, we have some more stuff lined up in July. We have two back-to-back, which should be fun. One on the first and the second [July]. So Hillview 73, Rain Recordings, and Camping In Alaska are playing a show with us in Huntsville here on the first. Then on the second, we go back down to Saturn in Birmingham.
We're playing with Oldstar and Kan-Kan. I'm super stoked to play with them.
Gracelyn: I keep hearing about Kan Kan [laughs].
David: Yeah, they're so sick. They're like hidden gems. They're just rock and roll, like pure rock and roll, and it's awesome. Zane from Oldstar says they’re the best rock band in the world. That's what they call them. I'm really not convinced that they're wrong at this point. They're really, really solid.
Gracelyn: That's going to be a cool show.
David: I'm excited for that one. Then we got some other shows. I play drums too, but my live drummer is Peyton from Taygaloo Cat which is another Alabama indie rock band. He makes some of the best music I've ever heard. Straight up one of my favorite current artists. So he plays drums for me. I play drums for him live. We have a Taygaloo Cat show coming up on July 13th.
Gracelyn: How do you go about creating - the only word I can come up with is the vibe - with your music?
David: I like atmospheric stuff, so I think it comes through a little bit in my production.
I like layers. That's my big thing when I record. I have to have like 100 guitar parts going on at once. Not literally,
but a lot of them and all this little textural stuff in the background, like synth drones and all that.That's kind of what I was playing with a lot on the new album. That's a sound that I think I've put myself into, like this little lane of doing that. It's starting to feel like it's sort of like “my thing” and I like it. I'll probably explore that some more. We'll see.
Gracelyn: What does space kind of intermingle with you being a musician? Like how does this other part of yourself influence your music work?
David: So there's actually a lot related between the two. On the production side, I find that engineering and audio engineering and production have a ton in common. Way more than I thought there would be. If you're looking at it from a signal processing perspective - for example, analyzing engineering data on a spacecraft and processing or filtering those signals - it's similar to working with an EQ in Ableton or Reaper. Those concepts seem kind of separate, but they're the same thing. You can carry stuff from one discipline to the other. That's something that I've thought about as I've been learning this whole music production thing.
Music can be technical, but it’s also obviously a creative endeavor, and engineering is the same thing.
People think it's all math and science, but you can be creative about how you solve problems and stuff. They complement each other.Gracelyn: You're in Huntsville Alabama. Where in Alabama is it and what's the music scene like there?
David: So it's in the northern part of Alabama. It's an hour and a half south of Nashville, Tennessee. The music scene is very hardcore-oriented. There are a ton of hardcore bands that come through here. The same with Birmingham, which is about an hour and a half south of here. That's sort of the artsy music-centered spot of Alabama.
But there are some other bigger name bands- like Camping In Alaska is from here. They're a pretty well-known pop-punk band that I've gotten to know and are really cool people. They're really fun to play shows with. They're different from what I make music-wise. When we play shows together the vibe is completely different, but the reception of us playing shows together has been pretty good.
Gracelyn: I love mixed bills.
Gracelyn: What’s your summer vibe report?
David: Musically, it's my friends in the South. I always love to plug in my friends. I feel fortunate that my favorite current artists are all people that I can call my close friends, I never would have imagined that would be the case. Oldstar is one of the best acts out right now. Memory card, Henry, is the coolest dude ever too. Makes amazing music and is also from Alabama. and then Peyton from Taygaloo Cat who I mentioned before. Those three are all awesome. There's a bunch more- Benny Benji is great too.
Gracelyn: Benny Benji was on your album, right?
David: Yeah. This whole group of us have just sort of met through the power of the internet and become friends through Discord and stuff. That's kind of how that came about with me and Benny. It's cool that music can form these little communities. It is a small world. That's how me and Zane [Oldstar] became friends, too. I started as an Oldstar fanboy in 2021. I found the self-titled and my friend and I back home were messaging back and forth about how good it was. I then messaged Zane a couple of times on Instagram about music gear and stuff and then we just ran into each other at shows.
Gracelyn: There's the whole theory that you meet somebody twice.
David: So this is like a fun little factoid…I did college radio in Virginia where I went to school at the University of Virginia, and that's the same college radio station and school that David Berman, Steve Malkmus, and Robert Nastanovich all went to. So the Silver Jews and Pavement lore runs like, very high.
Gracelyn: That’s crazy. Does everyone still enjoy and talk about them or did they kinda forget?
David: A lot of people didn't really care. In some circles, they did care. The guys in my band that I played with in college put me on to them.
Gracelyn: I loved college radio. It was awesome.
David: I miss it! It was a lot of fun. I took it for granted while I was doing it too. A lot of sessions I was like, oh, I don't want to broadcast right now, which is so lame for me to say that. If I could go back, I would never skip or half-ass a single show. I wish I could do it again.
Gracelyn: If you would like to say hi to anyone, any final words?
David: I want to shout out the Gawshock live band guys. My friends Hill Duggan, Tyler Redman, and Peyton Watts, who I already talked about. Those three guys are awesome. They're really great musicians and good friends. I appreciate them greatly. I'm glad that they're willing to be Gawshock with me now and then.
So thanks to them. I'm sure I didn't hit everybody that I would like to shout out. It's hard to remember all the names at once. Shout out to my dad for Father's Day.
Gracelyn: Oh, yeah, Happy Father's Day!
David: Happy Father's Day to the dads out there! When I was getting back into all those bands in high school he - of course - didn't give a shit about Title Fight and stuff. But, he would drive me across state lines with my friends to go see shows.
I wouldn’t be making music if it weren’t for him. So shout out to my dad.
Gracelyn: Shout out to dads!