Whittling, Not Willing: Catching Up with Terry Malts

Terry Malts are on a perpetual tour of California. They pop up at punk shows in LA and the Bay Area almost ceaselessly and after running into them three times in five months, I’m almost convinced they’re inescapable (not that that’s a bad thing by any stretch). When Hookworms had to cancel a string of shows with Disappears in April, Terry Malts made a heroic last-minute jump onto the bill at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop. In June, they showed up to headline Deathstock, a small festival just outside the Bay Area outpost of Guerneville. When I talked to Terry Malts in late August, the band had just played in a tiny wooden shack in Santa Rosa. This doesn’t sound impressive unless you already know that the three members of the band are hardly next-door neighbors: drummer Nathan Sweatt lives in the Bay Area, guitarist Corey Cunningham lives in LA, and singer and bassist Phil Benson has hopped between the two locations. But for having 400 miles of separation between members, Terry Malts do an admirable job keeping up their band — and friendship.

At the time of this interview, the band had one day left to finish the recordings for their as-yet untitled third album. Considering the fatigue that can settle in after a week of studio time, it’s striking to see how much energy Phil, Corey, and Nathan generate when they’re in the same room. From the half-hour we spent talking, it’s clear that they really, really like spending time together. Terry Malts released their first recordings in 2010, but all three members have been playing music together for more than a decade. They used to be in the guitar-pop band Magic Bullets, and they’d been meeting up at shows in the West Bay much earlier than that. Terry Malts is the latest and most refined chapter in a long rock ‘n’ roll friendship that ten hours of distance hasn’t diluted. I talked to Phil, Corey, and Nathan about their upcoming album, their origin story, and their time living in the Bay Area and LA.

How’s the album recording going? Are you done at this point?
Phil: Close. It’s going really well though. We’re going to do vocals tomorrow, but everything else is done, and it sounds really good. It’s the first time…well, the last thing we recorded was [Author’s Note: the Insides EP], and we recorded it with the same guy that we’re recording with, but this time we’re taking an entire week, as opposed to a couple of days.

Corey: And it’s our first time doing an album in the studio, because we’ve self-recorded the other two things. This is a totally different way of thinking for us.

Is there anything about it that makes the process easier or harder?
Corey: It’s definitely easier, because I don’t have to set up mics and all that stuff, all the technical things. But it also gives us a chance to focus on the songwriting more. You know what I mean? Like, me and Phil spent a year at least kinda whittling things and shaping them into songs…

Phil: Whittling. Just wanted to say “whittling” was the word he used, not “willing.” We didn’t will anything into existence. We “whittle.” Well, I guess we kind of did. That just sounds so like…we willed it! And it became.

Corey: So it’s given us a chance to focus on that stuff more. Whereas when we recorded it ourselves, it was kind of a gamble if the quality was going to be any good. Like with the second album, I don’t know if we came out on the winning side of that gamble.

Phil: I think we all agree that we did not come out on the winning side.

Was there anything in particular that made you feel that way?
Corey: Well it was kind of rushed, because I was moving away literally the next weekend to LA, and I think we just felt a sense of urgency. Like, keep momentum going. And I don’t know if the recording quality suffered because of that, but it was a different mindset for that record. I don’t want to throw it under the bus. It’s a great record. But the recording quality…

Nathan: The guy we’re recording with [Monte Vallier at Ruminator Audio], we all trust his ear a lot, and it’s good to get another voice in there. He totally knows what he’s doing and understands what we’re trying to do. So it makes it a lot easier, having another person there too.

Corey: Also, he’s from the same area that Phil and Nathan grew up. He’s a West Bay guy, so you can trust he’s got some West Bay roots, which is good for us. And he’s played in some great bands that I like a lot. Like Half Church, Swell. Jet Black Crayon…you ever listen to that stuff?

No, I should check that out.
Corey: That’s good stuff too. He’s a good guy. And he understands so much about music because he’s played in so many different kinds of bands, and he was a part of the San Francisco scene for so long, like in the 80s and the 90s. His points of reference are so deep, you could almost throw anything at him and he’d be like, “Oh yeah, you’re talking about this kind of reverb with that kind of guitar.” He knows exactly how to get different sounds.

When did you decide you were ready to book studio time?
Corey: I would say when we got to about eight songs, we kind of felt like, “Yeah, we have enough in the process that if we just keep working, by the time we can get studio time, we’ll have enough.” And that’s kind of how it worked out. Because obviously it’s not like we’re The Beatles and we go to Abbey Road any time. We just kind of have to say, “Hey Monte, three months, is there anything in three months?” And that gave us enough lead-in time to finish it out. And we were writing up until last weekend, weekend-before-last. One of the songs on the record, which I think is one of the best ones we have, was one that just kind of came out of nowhere, right before we went into the studio. “I Do” [from Killing Time] was like that as well. “I Do” was like right before we went in to track. We just kind of came up with something.

Were there any songs where the “whittling” process was especially difficult? Where you were working on a song and you thought, “This doesn’t sound like I want it to sound?”
Corey: Some stuff went through different incarnations. We have a new song called “Come Back,” which I think was probably at least two or three different riffs from other things that we’d worked on. And we just kind of reshaped them and changed the chord progressions and turned it in to what it became now. I wouldn’t say it was painful. Actually, it was a lot of fun editing ourselves.

Working at it until you get the thing and say, “Yes, this is what we were going for?”
Corey: Yeah, it was cool. I really liked it. I think the songs are maybe better for that.

Was there anything you consciously wanted to make different about this third album?
Phil: We didn’t want to make the same record again. We made Killing Time. And then we made Nobody Realizes This Is Nowhere, and that was meant to be what it was — really negative, depressing-sounding.

Corey: It’s a dark record.

Phil: And this new one, we went into thinking, “Hey, let’s get out of that funk.” Also it had to do with personal mindsets.

So Corey, you’re in LA now. Nathan and Phil, are both of you still in the Bay Area?
Phil: Yeah, I was in LA for a little bit. We wrote the bulk of the record in LA together, and then I moved back in April, and then we’ve just been fleshing out the rest since.

For being spread across so much space, I’m really amazed how many shows you play. How do you keep making that work? For any band involving people who are in different places at different times, would you have any advice for keeping momentum going and staying in touch?
Phil: For us, Megabus has been a great tool.

Corey: And if you use the offer code “Terry Malts” on the Megabus webpage, you’ll get a 10% discount on your tickets.

Phil: As far as making it work, we were already making things work for so long that it just makes sense that we’re making it work still.

Corey: I guess it’s a testament to how long we’ve been playing together. It’s easy for us to not practice. We hardly ever practice. Leading up to this album’s probably been the most we’ve practiced in a long time. Me and Phil have been playing together since 2001. Phil, me, and Nathan have been playing together since we started Magic Bullets in 2004. So the three of us were playing together since then.

Phil: Just in different kinds of bands.

Corey: And it’s a testament to the simplicity of Terry Malts. We designed it to be really simple. We didn’t want anything overly wrought. You know what I mean? It would be complicated to rehearse. Magic Bullets took a little bit more construction in that sense.

Phil: In that vein, though, the new record kind of has aspects of that. We were thinking about it a lot more than we have with past Terry Malts stuff. It’s kind of like a marriage with Magic Bullets’ thought process…though it definitely doesn’t sounds like Magic Bullets at all. But definitely like…actually sitting down with things and thinking them out. The lyrics are a little more…I hate the word “complex,” but…”involved?” That works for me.

Nathan: I thought it was a little more concentrated too. It was kinda cool because when they were both in LA and I was still in San Francisco, I would come down there, and we would practice, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything else. Like, I don’t have to go anywhere, I’m hanging out with them for the weekend — just focusing on that. And it was really, really cool. So I think it made everybody get on the ball more with stuff. For me, it was like, I get to go down to LA for a weekend. Have a vacation.

Phil: Actually work on something.

Nathan: Yeah! It’s like, I don’t have to worry about where I’ll go afterwards. We’re going drinking.

Corey: That’s not to say the way we used to write was wrong. It was intentionally the way it was. It was meant to be a little less thought out. The quote was that we wanted to tap into our inner Trogg. Make it really simple and easy, and not so cerebral like Magic Bullets was.

When Magic Bullets turned into Terry Malts, was there any big impetus for saying, “We want to do a clean break and try something really different?”
Corey: It was a side project at first, Terry Malts was.

Phil: It was kind of a joke.

Corey: Yeah, it was meant to be totally not serious.

Phil: We were like, “How many beers can we drink and still write a song and remember it?”

Corey: And there was a lot of freedom in that, especially coming from Magic Bullets, where things were a lot more… I guess focused would be the word. It was serious in a different kind of way. We needed something cathartic where you could just go in and bash out some songs. As easy as possible. Just turn on our distortion pedals and just plow through something. Right? Wouldn’t you say?

Nathan: Yeah, totally. Magic Bullets just ran its course, and it didn’t seem worthwhile to keep chugging away at it when this was going on. It’s like, “We’re already having fun doing this. Might as well just keep doing it.”

Corey: Just refining.

Phil: And at this point we’ve been doing it together so long that, even though the new songs are a little more involved than Killing Time songs, we’re still able to have that freedom of losing our minds. It’s kind of like getting in a car and knowing where you’re going and just driving and then — I’m talking about driving sober — and driving and then showing up where you are and being like, “Whoa! I have no recollection of the drive.” Because you just know how to get there, so you just go there and you end up there and it’s fine. What’s that… motor?

Corey: The Autobahn?

Phil: It’s like the Kraftwerks! It’s like the fun fun fun. I can’t remember the name for it. Just being able to do something without thinking about it.

Corey: Mental muscle memory.

Phil: “Mental muscle memory” is great.

Corey: That’s the name of the new record. No, that’s not a good one. That sounds like it’d be an Andrew WK album or something.

Is there a list of titles you’ve been throwing around? Any favorites right now?
Corey: There’s a couple. I don’t think we’re going to use any of them. One of them was Are We Having Fun Yet?

Phil: Life (comma) But How to Ditch It?

Before ‘Killing Time’ came out, I was checking out Words on Music (one of Magic Bullets’ labels) because I was having a big For Against phase, and so I heard a couple Magic Bullets songs that way. What was it like to work with Words on Music?
Corey: Those dudes are really cool.

Phil: You know what? Thank you to them for ever even listening to us and wanting to do anything with us, for sure. Otherwise, before that, we were like, “What do we even do?” We were putting out our own records as our band previous to that. Just putting out our own CDs. And it’s like, “Oh, a label wants to put something out by us? Weird!”

Corey: And we thought For Against were really cool. But it was interesting because it was back in the Myspace days. A label might find you on Myspace randomly and not know you or have heard of you. That was kind of a brief window when that kind of thing would happen. I think they wrote us and they were like, “We see that you like The Teardrop Explodes and we listened to your songs,” which we didn’t sound like The Teardrop Explodes. But we put — we were so pretentious — we just put all these bands we like on this thing.

The 500-name list on Myspace Music.
Corey: Yeah, and they thought it was interesting enough to listen, and they liked it, so it was cool. And I’d actually known of them because there’s a band called Lorna on that label that I used to record stuff with in the 90s. English band.

So when did you meet up, and where in the Bay did you grow up?
Nathan: I’ve known Phil since we were 15 or 16, just from going to shows.

Phil: Playing in different bands…

Nathan: Yeah, he used to play in bands and I used to play in bands, and everybody has mutual friends, and you just always are going to shows every weekend.

Phil: The scene wasn’t big, so the bill would be like a hardcore band, and emo band, a ska band. Just like any…well, I assume anywhere…maybe not anywhere. Maybe we were really privileged to be in the Bay Area and have that thing going on. Well, it was going on. I don’t know what people do nowadays.

Nathan: Even now, I still feel like there’s this network of people that I know from back then that don’t live around here anymore, but…you still see them. Everybody was interconnected, I felt like. And there were so many shows going on back then. It was really fun. So that’s how I know Phil.

Corey: And I literally took all the money I had that my grandparents had given me for college — their bonds or something — I cashed them in and I took a bus to a train and got off at Palo Alto. I’d never been there before. I was like, “This is where I want to be.” I thought it was a city, so I was like, “Where are the buildings?” I got off at the California Avenue station, and I was like, “What is this place?” And then I just lived in hotels for a while until I found a job. And the job I ended up getting was where I met Phil. This place called Country Sun, it’s like a little natural food place.

Where are you from originally?
Corey: I grew up in the South, and I just didn’t want to be in the South anymore. I was just so desperate to go as far away as possible. Palo Alto was good enough for me.

What made you decide to go to Palo Alto?
Corey: There was a girl I liked, actually, that lived there. I’d met her at shows just visiting San Francisco. I was just wandering around that time in my life. And I knew she lived in Palo Alto. I was like, “I want to hang out with this girl. Palo Alto seems alright to me.” I literally just got off and stayed.

What do you think of living in LA now? Is there anything you like more? Is there anything you miss?
Corey: I don’t think it has a cohesive scene. It’s just such a big place that it’s impossible to have a cohesive scene. But a lot of that stuff is dying anyway in places like San Francisco, sadly. Or in places like Brooklyn and Portland. That stuff just comes and goes so fast, and maybe there’s a black hole with no scene for a little bit. I feel like there might be something starting again in San Francisco. But that’s the only thing I don’t like about LA: it doesn’t have that cohesion. But the rent being cheaper makes it easier for artists to live there. I like the different vibe there. It’s all kinds of people. It’s not just techies and the people servicing the techies. So it’s cool. I like it. It’s a nice change.

So Phil, since you’re still in the Bay Area, what’s your outlook on the future of music in the Bay?
Phil: Well, since I moved back, I’ve just been getting really amped on bands that are existing here. I hate to pigeonhole stuff, but everybody was down on Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall moving to LA. It’s like, “Oh man, that’s it. San Francisco’s over!” But there are so many good bands here now. Playing Deathstock, like we did in Guerneville, that was really cool, and so many good bands played that. It was just such a good time, and I realized how much good talent there is. I don’t know. Maybe it existed before, but I just wasn’t super in tune to it, for whatever reason. I’ve just been discovering a lot of new bands that I really like. I don’t really listen to a lot of new music, but when I do, it’s mainly San Francisco, Oakland, Bay Area bands. Which is funny to say. I feel like I’ve never said that before. I mean, since I was a teenager or whatever.

Corey: I think it’s turning into a new thing.

Phil: For whatever reason. People are like, “We have to hold onto this thing because it’s going away. Let’s fucking do this.” I don’t know.

I guess it’s just the ebb and flow of things. Last year, when it was like, “Oh no, art is dead in San Francisco,” I kind of bought into that like a lot of people. But now I’m discovering all this other music I hadn’t heard about before.
Phil: For sure. I feel like the naysayers kind of made room for people to expand a little. It’s cool, it’s interesting, and it’s exciting. All the bands I like, I really like. Legitimately.

If you decided to go into politics, what kind of platform would you run on? What would you want to talk about most?
Corey: Definitely my main talking point would be world destruction. Just closing the whole thing down. Shutting it down. Blowing the world up is what I think we need to do.

Phil: Corey would say blowing the world up. I would say… well, it’s hard. I was going to say, “Don’t take yourself so seriously,” but… take yourself very seriously. Because you don’t want people to step on you.

Nathan: I’d say…

Corey: Green Party? God’s Green Party?

Nathan: No. I would run on a platform of no religion-based politics ever again.

Corey: Oooh…

Phil: He’s actually bringing it to the table right now.

Nathan: When they finally made gay marriage legal, you’d see so many people saying, “They’re attacking out faith.” No one’s attacking your faith. You can still believe in whatever you want to believe. Keep it out of politics.

Corey: Vote for this guy.

Phil: Nathan Sweatt 2016.

Nathan: And I would say… I would hope every politician has a background in science, that they can understanding global warming or whatever the case is. You watch these debates with people, and it’s like, “How the fuck are you denying this?” Every scientist you talk to says global warming’s happening. “I don’t have enough evidence for it.” Don’t play that card anymore. You can’t do that shit. You’re totally in it for the wrong reasons if that’s the case. But you can’t get away from that because everybody’s in it for the wrong reasons.

I was just curious about that question because…
Phil: Now we want to fight you!

…I was curious because lately I keep thinking about how much music is being made, and how a lot of it is really good, but so often it gets marketed as revolutionary or audacious. And sometimes it’s hard to tell how much music can do in terms of social advancement, and how much is us making more for the fun of it. How to not mix up the two to the point where we’re all being self-serious about something that amounts to a hype machine.
Corey: That’s a big misconception that music can change things, which it can’t. It definitely can’t. But music can enlighten people. Whenever people tell you that music can change the world or something, they’re selling you a bill of goods, man. That ain’t real. Punk didn’t change anything. The people in the sixties didn’t change anything.

Phil: It was more what they stood for, though.

Corey: Yeah, and I think what they stood for ended up enlightening people. That’s the good thing you can do. So you can’t be too serious about it, but you can’t sell it short either, I don’t think. You have to live in the middle there.

Anything I haven’t covered that you think deserved mentioned? Shout-outs to people?
Corey: Shout-out to KZSU, KFJC, the people at KALX. These stations are still doing it.

Phil: Keep the list going.

Corey: KEXP, WFMU, Jake Sprecher and KZFR. Any freeform station. Independent radio, that’s where it’s at.

[Header image is Terry Malts, photographed by Gina Clyne.]