Catalina Perez
University student, coffee addict, and freelance music journalist hailing from Austin, Texas. In my spare time you can find me perusing record stores for CDs.
On Day 5 of SXSW, we decided to sit down with Ben, Luke, and Ross of Chalk to discuss their latest EP “Conditions II” and talk about what the future holds for them
Being exhausted from staying out late the night before and just the overall festival’s wear and tear on our stamina, we scheduled a few interviews on Friday, March 15th. One of those interview being the Irish trio, Chalk, whom we had the pleasure of talking to outdoors in the slightly cooler weather, after a rainy night before.
Catalina: This is your first time at SXSW and the United States, how monumental is this trip for you from a musical and personal perspective?
Luke: From a music perspective, obviously, you know, we haven’t been playing, so it’s been unusual and so we were really excited that we were going to play but due to circumstances we’re not playing. And so fortunately we’ve just been enjoying our time, relaxing, exploring the city. A few of the guys’ girlfriends are here, so we’ve just been taking it easy, and it’s been nice and relaxing in that regard but with a different context behind it.
Ben: It’s always definitely a dream to go to America as a band. So you know, it feels like a big important milestone for us, 100%.
Ross: Yeah, Austin’s a great place. Looking forward to coming back at some point but yeah, even America, that’s a big moment for us as a band just to get invited.
Catalina: What are you most excited to check out here in the US and in Austin, if you haven’t already checked out some cool stuff.
Ross: I think we said Barton Springs—our girlfriends kind of did a bit of research in Austin about where to go and some of the food as well. So we’ve all just been taking in a lot of the culture and there’s some cool bands as well. We’ve sort of just stayed out and about.
Luke: Enjoying the weather because back home in Ireland it’s so cold. So it’s a nice to get a bit of heat, that’s been a relaxing aspect for us.
Catalina: Are there any bands that you’re excited to see or any exciting bands that you’ve seen?
Ross: Well, we’ve seen an act called Artless Jab. It was like their first ever show. I’m not too sure where they’re from. They were really cool.
Luke: Mei Semones from New York. Really cool, we just stumbled upon that.
Ben: Wandered in and around—
Luke: Tweedys, we just like appeared there and there was a show happening, it was like indie rock meets bossa nova, it was really cool. That was Mei Semones from New York.
Ben: Yeah that was really cool.
Luke: We haven’t been to shows really, it’s just been spending time with each other really.
Catalina: So not only are you here for the first time in the United States, but your new EP “Conditions II” just dropped on March 1. You’ve described your writing process in the past as “Opening up Logic and creating sounds with bass guitar synth, and not necessarily making it a goal to write a new song.” Was that the same process that you used for Conditions II?
Ross: Yeah, I think it just carried over from that first writing session, we’ve learned so much along the way. So employing new techniques and some new processes as well. Yeah, that’s normally how we work and how the songs start.
Luke: Yeah except with “Conditions II” this time we have the context of live shows, cause when we wrote the first one, we’d never played any live shows or anything so we were writing that not really knowing how the audience would perceive it. This time, we had songs on Conditions II that we’ve been playing live so we could kind of tailor if we needed to and Ross could work on that based on the responses live. So that was the one big difference from EP I to EP II.
Catalina: You’ve described this EP as four songs about pressure, loss, nostalgia and love; what are the inspirations behind the EP [Conditions II]?
Ross: Just experiences like any sort of material or any sort of inspiration for any song. We’ve just sort of taken our surroundings and those sort of feelings is something that we’ve just went through in the last year. And we’ve sort of just taken them in as three units and the filter within ourselves has kind of produced these four tracks. Even though a lot of the lyrics kind of came quite late and the music had been sitting for some time. I don’t know I just felt like for this one, to just sort of say, this is what these tracks are about to us, just for us it’s what makes more sense.
Listen to Chalk’ KEXP session here:
Catalina: After you’re finished up here, you head back to the UK to do a headlining tour, as you mentioned. Following the release of Conditions II, how does it feel going back home to perform after coming to the US for the first time?
Luke: We’re just anxious to play some shows back in the UK cause we haven’t played any out here. We’re all really keen to connect with live audiences again.
Ben: It’s our first kind of our proper full UK run, so that’d be nice. It’s always nice. I mean, festivals and showcases are always great cause you’re playing to new people that necessarily don’t know your music so it is always nice to go play your headline shows because even if there aren’t loads people there, they are still all there to see you. You know and it’s nice and we love kind of interacting with our audiences and stuff like that, and it’s great you get to play venues you’ve never played before and kind of make some new fans along the way, so we’re very excited for it.
Catalina: What’s your message to everyone here at the festival and everyone back home?
Ben: Love each other and love music and just try to be nice.
Luke: And also just like a big thank you to everyone so far that’s responded to the EP and who’s like bought a ticket to the live show. The support means so much to us, we’ve seen a real growth in the past year as a band, and we’ve grown as people and people along for the ride with us and that feels amazing so we just can’t wait to bring our new music to the live show and meet everybody and be there to chat with people and connect with people. So a big thank you to everyone that’s supported so far and come to a live show, talk about us, tweet about us, whatever it may be. Yeah, it’s just been really great for us being out here, even if we haven’t played, just being out here, realizing how big a dream that was for us, being out here feels amazing. We can’t wait to get back and play some live shows and connect with people, so, very soon.
Catalina: What can we expect from Chalk in the future?
Ross: I think we’re going to just continue, we’re going to record some new music in June and we’ve got some cool shows lined up with some acts that we absolutely love this year so we’re just gonna keep going and hopefully just take it to the next step every time.
Luke: We’ve got a really big festival schedule this year which is so exciting for us so yeah, super excited to see some new places, meet some new people and stay tuned for new music out as well. There’s a lot in store this year.
Ross, Ben & Luke: Keep your ears open. And your eyes open as well.
Catalina: Cool! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today!
Ross, Ben & Luke: Thanks for your time.
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