You can’t separate politics from entertainment, especially when both are so intertwined in culture. A couple weeks back I had the chance to talk to lead singer and lead guitarist Luis Vera and sound mixer Tanner Freeman about their definition of the “American pipe dream”, the creation of their band and debut EP Sunhaüs, and the meaning behind their songs.
Interview edited down for clarity
I saw that caption of your first Instagram post that the band was “something we’ve been building and brewing over the summer.” I was wondering what sparked the idea to create the band? And, what pushed you to actually create it?
Me and the bass player, Alex Bierman, he was the drummer and I was still the singer guitar player for another band called Corporate Dreamboat. That project was a lot of fun, but it had to come to a halt because one of our members had to leave for personal reasons. I just wanted to do something new instead of trying to redo the band. Alex was interested in playing bass because he plays drums in two other bands so he didn’t want to do that anymore. So we called up John Kelly-Kiefer who is very very talented and he was down to jam with us.
For our first gig we played as Corporate Dreamboat. When we were practicing for that gig we wrote a couple songs that made it to the record and one that didn’t. “Orange Tree”, which is why it has that Corporate Dreamboat feature, was originally for that band but we never recorded it. We changed the key and we added a bunch of things. That gig went really well, so we decided to keep going as a band. We went through a lot of name iterations like Pipe Dream because it was a nice follow-up to Corporate, and then we found out that there’s like a lot of bands that have that name.
The reason we named the band Paper Native… because even Corporate Dreamboat, the imagery with paper skulls was always rooted in a cultural thing for me. When we were coming up with names I wanted something that would really speak to – a lot of the songs were written by me, and if they’re not a lot of the lyrics are at least. I really like bands like bands like Chicano Batman who are making music who are accessible for a large, diverse group of people. I want to do the same thing, but, just like them, they still retain like a nod or a direct connection to their own cultural backgrounds or personal struggles. Regardless if I’m in a band or playing within a genre that isn’t necessarily immediately associated with my culture, I still want to have a connection to it that speaks out that I’m not just going to be assimilated, I guess. The reason we settled on Paper Native comes from my interest in the aesthetic of cowboys. John and Alex are plastic cowboys. So it was like, what’s the opposite of that? Our name was supposed to be longer like Paper Native and the Plastic Cowboys, but we decided to keep it short.
I was reading the about section of your Spotify account and it said that you write songs about “escapism, identity, and the American pipe dream”. I’d love to know your definition of what an “American pipe dream” is.
People always call it the American dream. But, with the amount of time that phrase was first coined to now it’s become more of a pipe dream. The American dream is that you can come into this country and you could be whoever you want to be and you can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish as long as you’re passionate and work hard. America loves an Underdog Story. I call it the pipe dream because as much progress as it seems we made, there’s still this continuing altering whether its laws or changing the structure, there’re so many things that inhibit that dream.
There used to be the Bracero Program which would legally bring people to work, especially during the world wars. It was like you can come to America as a Bracero, work and make money, go back, and like a better life. But now, even if you’re not an immigrant you’re still labeled as one or seen as one. There’s stuff that happens not just in this administration like the cages and detainment centers. Those were around here since the Obama Administration. These things are holding people captive. Regardless of your legal situation and your own personal identity you’re still lumped into then you might as well say something about it.
Was there a song on Sunhaüs that explicitly talked about that?
The two most energetic tracks on the record directly talk about that which is “Cut Me Down” and “Sow”. “Sow” specifically was written around the time it was first broadcast that children were being detained by I.C.E. The chorus is “Commentate/ Dissertate/ Annotate what you see/ Decimate/ Decapitate? Incapacitate those rich fiends/ Resuscitate/ Liberate/ Bring back those in need”. And the second verse is like, “It’s plain to see the fear in those eyes/ and it’s plain to see the way you’ve colored me out out be/You’re subliminal, invisible alien thief”. It’s all oriented in fear, the fear of loss of power, the fear of losing control of a system that put these people in margins. The song’s about not forgetting what happened and to say something about the situation. Don’t leave those that are falling to continue falling, keep reaching your hand out to each other and hold each other up.
“Cut Me Down” is a little more open. “I don’t want to be another one of those brown folks slain by your son/ Keep your cold hands off my throat/ It’s plain to see who’s in control” When I first wrote this song, a lot of the lyrics were about a really abusive relationship I was in. The power constructs it that exists when you’re in a relationship like that. The way that you cut down and feel lesser than you are in order to stay in that person’s control. This song was also an older song from a band Alex and I were in but never got released. Partner abuse and domestic relationship abuse is a very serious thing to discuss. It’s no lesser of a topic, but I wanted to open it up a bit more instead of it just being my personal experience to make a discussion about systemic abuse. The chorus is, “Cut me down/ Light me up/ put me down and you’re burning pyre/ cut me down/ build me up/ hold me down with your burning desire”. It’s also like a reference to witch hunts like burning witches at the stake because when you have something to say, they usually try to take care of you in the most violent way possible.
I saw that you all were playing a lot of gigs even before your EP was released. Was it unnerving to play your new songs without people hearing them beforehand?
I think Tanner can attest to how nerve wracking that was. Especially because I was ad-libbing a lot of the lyrics. I knew what the chorus was going to be, but with the verses it was different every night. Tanner would be sound boarding the gigs, and I couldn’t see his face because of the lighting. He tracked all of our stuff so he would know what certain things were supposed to be said and he would just be like are they gonna fuck it up?
Back to your question, it was unnerving for a lot of different reasons too because with Corporate Dreamboat, the project was kind of a drop in the pan as well. We dropped an EP before starting to perform huge gigs back-to-back where we were playing to full rooms. There were aspirations writing a full album and we were having these things lined up. And then all of a sudden I’m without a band. My co-writer is who plays guitar sometimes with Paper Native for live things and did play some Rhythm tracks, Kenny Wagner. He had a lot of things piled up for the summer so I don’t have someone to bounce ideas off of.
When we were first playing shows at first as Corporate Dreamboat and then transitioning to Paper Native, there’s this expectation, especially with campus shows, where people that knew Corporate Dreamboat expected that kind of sound. The way Tanner puts it, we were set back to 0. We’re completely brand new. Nobody cares about us, nobody knows who we are, so we have to start from the ground up again.
Your first single was “Sow”. How did you feel when it was first released?
Luis- So Tanner and I went nuts because we had this deadline and the song wasn’t done and we didn’t know how to master it at the time because we thought we had to do it ourselves. That week Tanner was booked for something so I was like, I guess I have to do it myself. I was in the studio for 8-6 hours a day. The thing about mastering is that you have to listen to the song all the way through, so I probably listened to “Sow” like a million times. You get ear blindness when you mix and master too long. I sent Tanner a mix or two that we sort of liked and he was like this is the one, but could you shorten the beginning just a bit because there was four seconds of empty space. When I went back to change it, the whole mix completely changed. We went back and used Audacity.
Tanner- Just because Luis was mixing it so much and because of what happened it was losing what it had. So I literally just was like hey, you know what? I don’t even care anymore at this point. Just throw it into Audacity, chop it like here, and then we’re done and as long as it doesn’t do it again we’re cool.
L- And after that I put it back into our original program and nothing changed so I was like great we’re done. Now to do that with six other songs. I know for the most part we were worried about writing and recording, but in the back of our heads we were like “mastering is waiting”. It’s a massive relief and a lot of people that at least I felt like are people that I admired within our scene that our peers really liked the EP.
Where did the introduction with the piano come from? Was it a sample?
L – If there’s anything to know about the Plastic Cowboys is that they love to mess around.
T – We would be in the studio, I would run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off trying to get things moving as fast as possible and either John or Alex would play on the grand piano. John, I would say, is one of the best piano players I know. He knows how to make things sound perfect. He would just hop on and play, and Alex would get on the drums or get on old school analog organs. And they would play loud as I’m trying to focus and get the mics to work.
L – In hindsight it’s pretty hilarious and innocuous too because it’s not like they’re trying to be a hassle or anything, they just really live and breathe music. They’re just trying to jam. But, listen, I don’t want to hear your rendition of “American Idiot” right now. But one of those sessions John started playing this beautiful, elaborate piano piece. When we were doing our first session of recording I was saying that “Sow” should have an air raid siren in the beginning. And someone said we should have a piano at the beginning. So we asked John to record the piano part, and then he added the rain and the thunder without even being asked. It was perfect. I chopped up the siren so it would fit over more and chopped up the rain so it would bleed into the guitar at the beginning.
I noticed that there was a grunge influence in your music. Does that kind of sound help give your message more of an impact?
What I have personally set out and what inevitably bled out into this band is that I want to be part of the greatest 90s band that never happened. Everything after ‘94 that was any way influenced by grunge was terrible. Alex and I have a shared love for Alice In Chains, John has an appreciation for songwriting in general. Me, personally, I study quiet heavily in the school of Nirvana.
I’m so glad you picked that up because grunge is such a non-genre. It’s a mixed genre like Alice In Chains is thrash metal mixed with grunge, Nirvana is punk with grunge. I’d like to think that we’re grunge in a sense because we’re very punk, but we’re very indie influenced. One thing that we incorporated from Nirvana, which they coined from the Pixies, is the loud-soft-loud thing, because of the dynamics and trying to capture sensitivity. It’s not like we’re trying to be a post-grunge band, it’s the emotion that we’re trying to capture.
Where did the name Sunhaüs come from?
When I started in college I stayed in a dorm. This year was my first year actually renting a house in like living off campus. I was very last minute invited to live at add a shared house would like a few people that I didn’t really know. I sort of knew them from the music scene but I didn’t really know them. They said they need somebody else to live with them and asked if I was interested. It’s the house that’s on the album cover. It has these giant glass panes in the front and a sun room. After band practice you can find any one of us in there asleep on the couch because it was peak sun hours. I’ve always called that place “sun house”.
I also lived as an exchange student for about two months in Sweden. I recorded a record over there with a few friends. I forgot what the first two words were, but it translated to “the teenager house”. The “u” in house had an umlaut over it, as a lot of Swedish does. Sunhaüs was this amalgamation of things that I love. As an idea itself, sunhaüs was the concept of “the grass is greener”. You set things up to fail basically, because you build this idea up and it’s cut down by reality. It’s like America. It’s always been seen as the land of opportunity. But that’s undercut by systematic oppression and black labor and Indigenous blood.
The thing with “Sunhaüs”, the song, is that with these fantasies and reality and adulthood coming into play, how you cope and react to them.. the lyrics are “I went down to the sun house/ To find a place to hideaway”. Initially the song is like you’re stretching yourself thin to do all these things for other people, so I’m gonna go down to the sun house and be safe and not deal with people. Now you’re in a room with your thoughts and coming to this realization that you have to go out and interact with people again and cope with yourself. The second verse deals with believing in the fantasy of the sun house. That was quarantine for me because I had a lot of responsibility before it hit and then they all got cancelled. I was like I don’t have to go to work or talk to people or do anything. The reality is you have to go back and deal with people.
“Orange Tree” is the next step. It’s a song that’s gone through a lot, and was influenced by a lot of people. It was looking at these relationships and giving your all but they still want more. The first verse alludes to The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. The tree’s constantly gives more and more of itself even as the person’s aging. Eventually the kid cuts the tree down and sails across the sea. It’s describing these relationships where you give all of yourself to a point where it’s self-destructive. I change the gendered words before each of those like pre-choruses because it’s something we all do. We want those relationships that are fulfilling where we love each other regardless of what we’re going through.
Paper Native
