Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And this is your man, Hollywood Mike, on a fantastic Wednesday evening.

Really? No echo this week? No echo, no echo. Okay, why is it fantastic? Do you hear an echo? I don't hear an echo. No, but usually it's Hollywood Mike, Mike.

Oh, Mike, Mike. I don't know, I'm doing fine right now. I don't know, yeah.

Just ecstatic? Ecstatic, maybe. Excited to be here? You know, it's just a good day. How can I, you know, I can't complain.

I don't know why I'm in such a good mood. That's kind of against me. For a Wednesday.

I'm taking a vacation from grumpy old man. Are you? Yeah, so, I don't know, whatever. I'm on permanent vacation from grumpy old man.

Are you really? Yeah, I'm just old man. Yeah, you just don't give a shit about anything anymore. I really don't give a shit about anything.

That's right. The older I get, the less shit I give. Yeah.

So, tell us how you feel, Ray. How's it going? How's life? Life is good. Yeah? Life is good so far.

Yeah. How's the pool coming along? Is it all set and ready to go? The pool's good. I just got a new robotic vacuum.

A robotic vacuum. Just throw that baby in there and he walks around. And when he's done, he comes right back to where I threw him in.

And I just pull him out of the water. Wow. And all the stuff's in there and I just clean it.

You know what freaked me out? I took the dog for a walk the other day and went by the ball fields. There were two unmanned mowers. And when I say mower, I mean a lawn tractor, like somebody could get on it if they wanted to.

But there was one guy that was mowing part of the fields and he must've had the controller or something like that on his machine. And the other two were just going nuts with like nobody driving them. Yeah.

I think you could program them. You gotta be kidding me. You could program them to go up and down in whatever ways.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

You can replace people. And apparently out in Arizona, they have unmanned taxi cabs from the airport. Do they? Yeah.

I'm sorry. If a taxi cab pulled up to the airport and I said, take me wherever I need to go and there's nobody driving. I'm like, nope, sorry.

I'm not trusting that one bit. And from what I was told is drivers will mess the thing up. Like if you get right up next to it and do a quick swerve, these things slam on their brakes.

So the people that are in it end up in the front seat. You know what I mean? Well, so just figuratively say, you got into one of these unmanned taxi cabs and you took it for a ride to here, to the museum tonight. Right.

Who would you be seeing? I would be seeing a band called Riplock. Well, welcome Riplock. Wrong one.

Oh, that's kind of cool and funky. What is that effect going on there? I don't know, but somebody changed. That's really cool.

We got to turn that off now. I really liked that. That was cool.

You got to check here to make sure you got the right one. Yeah, Rick did it. That was kind of cool.

But that was cool. That was like a stone temple pilots megaphone effect. Didn't he, he, he yelled into the, what was it? A recording that I am smelling.

Yeah. It was like a megaphone into the mic or something. It was.

Yeah. That's exactly what it was. Oh my God.

That's cool. We have to do that now. No, it was a guitar pickup.

I think I'm remembering it now. He just yelled as loud as possible in a guitar pickup and it gave it that effect. Yeah.

That's really cool. That's good. So how are you guys doing? Good yourself.

Thanks for having us out today. Good. Good.

I think I'm going to shut up and let these guys talk. I have a feeling we're not going to have, we're not going to have a hard job here. I don't think so.

So why don't you tell everybody who you are and what you do in the band. All right. Well, we are Riplock.

What is going on Chicago? Doing great. Well, uh, my, my name's Elijah Sumlock. My name is Matt Ripsch.

And, uh, yeah. I wonder how they got the name of the band. I was wondering, dude, it usually takes people a couple of months.

When you're running on a tight schedule and they're like, Hey, you got to figure out this name in like a week. And we go, Oh. Oh, we had a band in here a year or two ago.

They all met at a school of rock, put a band together. And they decided to put a band together and say, okay, now we need a name. And what should we call ourselves? And the guy sitting on a couch or says, don't matter to me.

They're like, that's how they get their name. Yeah. We're friends with them.

They were, they were, they were my first interview on the podcast. Is it really? Yeah. Wow.

That was long ago. Yeah. I knew all those guys like, like pre COVID.

I knew them when, uh, I knew them when they were all in high school. Wow. Yeah.

The, the original lineup and members of that band all met in high school, except for their lead singers. She was the older sister of the, of their bass player. So she was, I think she was out of high school like a year, but everybody else was still in high school.

I met them all at Uptown and Plainfield one day. That's exactly where it happened. I used to, I used to be in the house band.

They're hosting the open. No way they showed up. And I might've been there when I was like 13.

You may have. Yeah. And they're still going.

So yeah, they're really good doing, doing real well. We saw them the other week. Yeah.

Susie's in Yorkville. That's another cool place. I hear we did sound sound for them in Nashvigas.

And I was running. So on a occasional days off, we, we do a little bit of sound engineering, I guess you'd call it, you know, just flip invaders. Yeah.

Yeah. And yeah, yeah, no, we, uh, they're great. You know, they're, they're around and they're young, energetic.

Oh my gosh. They're so good. So if anybody from Susie's or Nashvigas is listening to this, we're looking for sponsors, podcasts.

Yeah. We just gave you a pretty damn good plug. That's right.

Great venues. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. So how'd this all start for you guys? So take us, take us back. I mean, they're like, they look like they're 12 years old right now.

So take us way back to like last month when you started. We just got our driver's license. Yeah.

Actually, no flip those two. That's how old we are. 21.

Oh man. 21. Freshly turned.

I have underwear older than these guys. He's a, so, so the day we came up with our name was kind of the day we started, which was like a week before a big event. We had to, we had crunch.

It was crunch time. It was crunch time. But dude, even before that, um, we're just hanging out.

Yeah, no. So we, we met, uh, through my buddy, Evan. Uh, Matt was playing a wedding in Florida, um, for his, uh, uncles.

And, um, he was like, Hey, you know, you're playing at the wedding. Hey, I got this buddy back home. Grew up with him.

I mean, we go way back and he was like, hit him up. And he's like, all right, well, I got an Instagram DM. He's like, Hey dude, see you around.

You know, let's hang out. I'm like, all right, cool. You know, when, where I'm, I'm there.

And somehow I never heard of him, which is crazy. Cause we live like 20 minutes away from each other. We're both in the music scene and I don't know how I never met him anywhere.

He went to our football games in Yorkville. I never met him. Yeah.

And his friend, Evan was like, hit him up. Yeah. I was more low down though.

I was doing a lot of like higher gun stuff. So I did like work with, uh, Ethan Bell, um, Alika Arlen, um, few others in the mix. Like I've done some stuff with, uh, I think Anna Kay, Tim Gleason, just different people in the area.

Yeah. Um, and so there was nothing like self debuted or anything where I was, you know, fronting for. And so, yeah, it was kind of just like, it was kind of nice.

I'm just like this dude, I just get hired in and like undercover undercover when, where I'm there. Yeah. So you guys both sing kind of like cool, cool lead singers.

You both play guitar. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, uh, it's just kind of, it's fluid. Honestly, we have a band, you know, sometimes I'm on bass.

Um, we have different drummers, different basis. We play with a lot and we kind of just roll with it. Yeah.

It's a consistent roster. You know, it's, um, until we get something like seriously established, it's hard having solid guys, but it's kind of a nod to like the, the, I guess the Nashville way of doing things that it's, you know, your front guys and then whoever's backing you up, everyone's got schedules, people got to eat. So, you know, whoever is offering gigs first is like, they're, they're saying yes to, so, you know, you might not get to them in time.

So you gotta have a couple of guys lined up and that keeps us working too as well. Right, right, right. Because, you know, if it's four of us in a band minimum, you know, and one dude's like, oh, you know, well, my brother's getting married this weekend, can't make it, but we got a big opportunity.

It kind of makes it tough. So now we've narrowed it down to just two factors here. Yeah.

So, and so the story behind how it started was we were just like, yeah, let's jam and practice. And we never did that. So we would hang out for like two months.

It was the summer of last, no wait, 24, summer of 24. Yeah. And we would just hang out and then we'd be in my basement and we'd be just like doing random stuff.

And they'd be like, should we jam a song? And we're like, maybe. And then we jam two songs and then go home and then we'd be like, all right, cool. And then one week in the end of August.

Yeah, we, we got just. We got a text message. They were like, Hey, do you want to, do you want to play at the sandwich fair opening for Riley green? And we were like, shit, we better put a set list together.

Yeah. We didn't have a name. We were just playing in a basement, you know, luck or divine intervention.

Right. But, um, no, it just, one of those things, right place, right time. And, uh.

Named it Riplock. Yeah. And we're just like, could have named it playing in the basement.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We just couldn't think of anything. And we're like, all right, we'll just combine our names. Yeah.

And then we did that and then it was rolling. Yeah. So we started off and that, that was like one of our earliest shows was playing, uh, the sandwich fair.

It's our second show, I believe. Your second show was playing the sandwich. Yeah.

Yeah. Together again. It's right place, right time.

And before, before that we were just jamming in the basement, but we didn't really, we weren't productive. So we were like, yeah, we played maybe five songs together and we were like, oh no. Just jamming covers.

Yeah. Pretty much all you were doing. Yeah.

You know, just, and granted, like we played a lot of music and a lot of the stuff we do is like to form. So it's like, if we had to play a show or if we want to play a show, it's, you know, the song to form. Yeah.

We figure it out. And then it's just. Figure it out.

So, so all, is it all covers or you do original music? What are you guys working on? So now we got original music. We're doing it. We're kind of like throwing it into the covers.

It's like a mixture of the two. But at first it was just covers for about a year, maybe. Yeah.

Just about a year. Yeah. You know, well, we started probably like, you know, working with the original stuff.

What was that? October. I believe it was October. Yeah.

When we started. So we, we went and recorded with our friend, John Curry up at DePaul. Okay.

Yeah. And had some friends that we were playing with. And we were like, Hey, you know, like, let's just try and get a song going.

And he had some projects for school. So we recorded there and that was our first single that was just released. We were kind of sitting on it for a while.

You know, a lot of this is, you know, just building up enough marketing tools and everything else and capturing enough content to really push this song out. You know, you can spend a fortune on the production of a song, but it doesn't meet the market. People don't know what it is.

Right. Good luck. Yeah.

Need some video ads. So what kind of influences do you guys bring to this project here? I have an idea from listening to the stuff that I've heard you guys play, but take us back to like, you've decided, okay, I'm going to play guitar. And so like, like what's on your playlist or what was the thing that you tried to play to the first? I mean, we started when we were kids.

Yeah. I'm trying to think. Whole, whole six months ago.

Well, when did you learn guitar? So yeah, I got my first guitar when I was 10. I don't know really why, you know, I was really big in a journey when I was a kid. Like separate ways.

I heard that when I was, I was watching, I was watching Tron Legacy and he goes into the game room and man, I thought that movie was so cool. It's still as cool. But it's kind of a corny thing.

Right. But no, it's really cool. Hey, you know what? You can pick a, you can pick a, you can pick worse bands to, uh, to be influenced by.

Oh no, I'm not saying that necessarily. I'm just talking about that. Like I wanted to play guitar because, because I heard separate ways in the Tron game room.

Yeah, that's all right. I mean, you know how many people are inspired by the songs you hear in Guitar Hero? You know? No, so that, that, that totally works. The first, uh, the first rock album I ever bought for myself.

And I, I say album because it was on vinyl was, it was, um, Escape Journey. So that, that was the album right before Frontiers that Separate Ways was on. So that's going, that's going backwards.

I was in fifth grade when, when that album was out, people don't realize that I was in fifth grade when Don't Stop Believing was the number one song on the radio. It wasn't just popular because you hear it at every Cubs or Sox game. Yeah, it's everywhere.

You mentioned Guitar Hero. Yeah. That was harder for me to play than the regular guitar.

Oh, of course it was too. It's just the weirdest thing. I'm a guitar player and my, my, at the time, my 10 year old and 11 year olds would kick my ass in Guitar Hero.

Right. But you know, the other side of the coin, you know, was the funny thing about it was all these people were fantastic at Guitar Hero and they're like, oh, I'm just going to go play real guitar. And they go on, they buy a real guitar and they go, fuck.

Yeah, this is nothing like Guitar Hero. And so now everybody's got Fender Squires sitting in the corner of their bedroom. Yeah, I'm the world's worst Guitar Hero player.

They bust it out of a party. I leave. I'm the worst player.

I get ridiculed. I'm horrible. Going on that though, my, uh, my dad got me with the, with that Squire guitar, got me Rocksmiths on my PlayStation 4. And that's what I kind of like started playing.

No way. Yeah. Yeah.

So like, you know, and they had everything on there. Um. They got Aerosmith.

Yeah, they had. Oh yes. Every Guitar Hero had Aerosmith.

Yeah, they had Aerosmith. They actually had like Monty Monkeys, which. They did.

They did. They got Mott the Hoople. Mott the Hoople became popular all over again because of, of Guitar Hero.

Wow. And most people don't even know who Mott the Hoople is. I do.

I do. Who came from Mott the Hoople? What's that? What famous guy came from Mott the Hoople? That's a good question. I should know that.

I know I should know that. As soon as, as soon as you tell me, I'm going to know the answer. Peter Frampton.

Oh, that's right. Well, you know what? That is true. I always, I always think of him from Humble Pie.

Yeah. Humble Pie. Using, using Mott the Hoople too.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So excellent.

I, you know, we normally don't do this as early, but I want to hear these guys. I have a feeling, I have a feeling they're going to play a few songs for us tonight and we're going to have fun listening to them and people are going to just love what they do. All righty.

Well then we're going to take a break. Yeah, we're going to take a real quick break. We'll be right back.

You're listening to the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Your Sunday nights just got a whole lot bluesier. Get ready for the Bus Stop Blues, a show that takes you deep into the soul of the blues with classic hits, road stories, and live jam sessions.

Hosted by blues man Kevin Purcell and me, the one and only Road Bill. The Bus Stop Blues is two hours of nonstop blues, banter, and badassery. Check out the Bus Stop Blues podcast at thebusstopblues.com where you can listen on Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, or any other major podcast platform.

Hop on board the Bus Stop Blues where the blues never stops rolling. All right. We took after a quick break.

We got Riplock in the studio for the first time tonight. Can't wait to hear you guys. This is our song Everclear.

It just came out three days ago and we wrote it with our buddy Kellen Langston. It's a song about, you know, your girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, maybe. It's not really elaborated on, but she's an alcoholic.

Oh, wait a minute. So the song is called Everclear? Yeah. All right.

Let me tell you the mistake that I made. There was a video posted to you guys at Nash Vegas and it said something, the caption said something like, okay, how about a little Everclear? So I originally thought of the name of the band. And before I really got into watching what you guys were doing, I said Everclear.

I said, okay, they're just another cover band. And I skipped over it for a second. You thought it was... I thought you were going to play something by Everclear.

Yeah, that's exactly what I thought was about to happen. I was like, okay, so it's the name of the song. All right, my bad.

I got to go back and listen to it. Some Santa Monica. That's right.

All right. Take it away, Riplock. All right, here we go.

One, two, three. If I'm being honest, you're an awfully bad backseat driver. Because I'm getting more lost, and you're getting higher.

You're a smoke though, I start to choke every time that you light it. I'm trying to fight it, but it sounds delighted every once in a while. I'm counting playing cards, but it's weighing on my heart.

And I ain't got one call that rang on the phone. It's 3am in the corner of that. They don't care if I make it home.

But you passed out in the backseat. You woke up, then you asked me, how the hell did I get here? We're grabbing for a beer in Everclear, and then you kick in. I got to deal with your words and your alcohol scaling.

Don't the drinks you swallow burn more than the ladder? I'm counting playing cards, but it's weighing on my heart. And I ain't got one call that rang on the phone. It's 3am in the corner of that.

They don't care if I make it home. But you passed out in the backseat. You woke up, then you asked me, how the hell did I get here? Playing cards, but it's weighing on my heart.

And I ain't got one call that rang on the phone. It's 3am in the corner of that. They don't care if I make it home.

But you passed out in the backseat. You woke up, then you asked me, how the hell did I get here? But you passed out in the backseat. You woke up, then you asked me, how the hell did I get here? How the hell did I get here? Yeah, very good, man.

Oh, thanks. Fantastic. I knew that was going to be good.

I just had a feeling, you know? Thank you. He's got the smokey voice going on over there. That's right.

He smokes a lot of cigarettes. No, I was born with it. He was.

He had like, what'd you have, nodule surgery? Yeah, I had nodule surgery at six. Oh, wow. I used to yell a lot and stuff.

I don't know. I was just born with it. And everybody's like, is that an effect? I'm like, no.

No, that's because it's all me. Awesome. You don't hear it.

So who brought that song to the table? So I brought it to him, and I'm like, well, actually, we were playing a wedding, and we were just shooting videos, and I played it. And he's like, wait, did you write that? He's like, I kind of like that. Yeah, yeah.

And then it was actually him and his buddy, Kellen Langston. Kellen Langston. Our buddy, yeah.

He lives like two minutes away from me. So we write together, and it's pretty convenient. We got that written in like an hour, and I just edited.

I like to write quickly and then edit it throughout the course of like two weeks. Every day, just like change a little bit. Yeah, if you think about it too long, you start to doubt whether or not it's good or not.

So just do it and set it aside and come back to it. Yeah, I get that. So your first song that set you on your journey was Journey, right? What was yours? I don't even know.

I like a lot of 70s stuff. It was probably like Doobie Brothers, CCR, stuff like that. I'm a huge fan of that stuff.

Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones. I'm huge. I'm actually wearing the shirt right now.

Yeah, you are. Any of that 70s stuff. Huge 70s fan.

Boy, you don't hear about that very often. You know, guys in their 20s listening to 70s stuff. And that's where it's, you know, and we talk about this all the time.

It's because the music back in the 70s was so cool. It was great, right? I love it. Stuff, I mean, timeless.

Things that you could wrap yourself in forever, right? Unlike some of the computer stuff that you hear on the radio. It's so good. It holds up so well.

It prevails, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because every song I listened to you guys play or everything, every video that I saw of you guys, I was like, okay, that sounds like rock and roll, but I can hear a little bit of like Southern rock twang in there as well.

I can definitely hear that in there for sure. We've been reaching slowly as more of like a Southern rock band. Like we started out because the market up here is very heavily country music oriented, but we're kind of reaching towards like a rock.

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of cool stuff coming out of like that Texas rock scene right now. You're getting, I mean, Co Wetzel and Whiskey Myers kind of led it, but you know, you're also getting guys, you know, like look at Treaty Oak. Yeah, there's a resurgence of what was known as like outlaw country.

Right. You know, where it was country, but it sounded like Southern rock. Yeah, right.

And it was, and the honesty in the lyrics and the angst in the voice, if you're going to, if you're going to, if you can identify with that, that's coming, it's making a comeback. It really is. A lot of people say it's like grunge mixed with country and it kind of like angsty.

Yeah, a little bit. And, and for lack of a better term, it kind of gets lumped in with the whole Americana thing. Right.

Yeah. And you know, in a way, which is, I mean, that's, it's my preferred genre of music is what I absolutely love. I just love the way the guitars sound and the, the, the, I guess the tone and the attitude and the vocalist's voice, you know? Right.

It's natural. It's, it's a pretty natural form of music. And I think even now with, you know, everyone's worrying about AI and that's, that's, what's kind of nice about what I think we did is it's everyone who played on that record, or I mean, that single besides the steel player was, and who recorded it too, younger than 22.

Everybody. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, No way, everything. If we shot an album cover, it's an actual shot. It's, it's a 69 Chevelle.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's because we're stubborn, but we were just like, we don't want AI to be a part of this at all.

Yeah. Like we didn't use it for writing. We didn't use it for production at all.

So good for you. And I think the more we lean away from kind of that Nashville really polished sound, the more it's going to, to stick out. There's so much of it.

It's so everyone's got that sound. Yeah. You know, and where's ours going to be? And that's something we're figuring out.

You know, we don't, we don't quite know yet. We got four songs ready, three on the burner. We don't use like auto tune or anything.

Like, so we submitted our song to a bunch of playlists on Spotify and they're like, Hey, I like your song, but it's too like, it's, it's raw. It's too raw for me. They're like, we want it to be way more produced and like fake sounding.

That's because we're playing real instruments. That's right. Real music really sounds like.

Did I mention that we're like all 22 or younger? So we made a little mistake in that recording. We just left it. Yeah, exactly.

Whatever. We recorded it in what? Two takes. We're a two take Jake.

Yeah. And that's the other thing, the studio environment, like we're so used to playing live. And like the framework for that is just, you know, you're going to have mess ups and like, there's kind of, you know, diminishing returns if you're so caught up with that and not giving a performance.

Right. And so it's not really a worry. Obviously we do our homework, but when you get into the studio, especially with the quality of equipment that they're using, everything counts.

It's ice in your veins kind of thing. And, you know, it was definitely, it was definitely a challenging learning experience. You know, it's, we're not in front of a crowd or anything, but you're just sitting there waiting for that, for that thing to hit and you, you got to play it perfect.

And it's like, we just got frustrated with a couple of things. I'm sure the average listener won't know, but every time we hear it, we're just like, dang. Yeah.

And we record it pretty quick. And it's kind of an energy thing for us. Like we do like two takes and we're like, which take had better energy? That one we're going with that one.

Yeah. It's not like, is this perfect or whatever? It's just like, which sounded better? Which can we. What's the one song? We recorded a song at the end of it.

Our drummer like touched his sticks together and I'm like, just leave it in. It's cool. Like you can hear like a little at the end of the, why not? That's, I mean, that's what used to be done.

You, you ask, you talk to anybody like, like Bob Dylan is famous for saying, you know, it's Bob Dylan once said that he stopped recording music and took a long hiatus from actually recording albums because he's like the recording process get to the point where I couldn't hear any of my mistakes, you know, and, and there, there makes, there makes a difference, you know, mistakes add dynamics to it. Right. And I firmly believe that compression sucks the dynamics out of anything, you know, the last time I was in the studio, we, we recorded a pretty heavy rock song and then the, the engineer just wanted to, okay, now I got to just compress everything down and he compressed everything down and it's like all the energy has left the song as soon as he compressed everything down.

It has to build. It's a climax. It's a storyline.

Yes. And we're big on that. I'm excited for you guys to hear the other stuff that we got coming, but our, you know, when we're approaching songs, it's very much, especially when we're working with people we're arranging with, it's like, how is this going to build? How is this going to resolve? That's another thing.

A lot of stuff you hear that 70s stuff. It's great, but it's just, they just grab the board and slide it all down. It's like, you guys got to have an ending.

Not just like chorus out. And just fade it out. Yeah.

Cause, cause now when, when somebody goes out and tries to cover your songs, they got to come up with an ending for you. Right. Being in the cover circuit, it's like, guys, how are we going to do this? Yeah.

Right. Right. Right.

Yeah. Okay. And you have to have an end.

So, um, I assume you're going to play another original for us. Sure. Yeah.

But I'll tell you what, if you can do this, I would love for you to walk us through the writing process of this next song you're going to play. Should we do, um, which one should we do? Let's do a, you know, this one might be held a little longer, but this, uh, this one's called chain smoke. This is one I wrote.

So me and Matt kind of go back and forth with like the songs we, uh, we write on our own. We're just like, Hey, what do you got? What do you got? And then if there's anything you think he can add, like let's do it. Yeah.

Um, so this, this one was, um, this song chain smoke. It's pretty much, uh, it's just a comparison between, I really love 90s country and like the silly kind of tongue in cheek stuff. Um, but it's definitely not that it's definitely just a comparison kind of thing.

You're, you're there, there's this girl, of course, um, and you're pretty much a pack of cigarettes, which, you know, how degrading, right. But it's, it's a very pleasant experience, but, but what kind of cigarette? American spirit. We'll see the most expensive ones on the market.

She's a high class chick. Compared to that buzz. So, so did you come up with the riff first or, um, you know, so, um, the riff in that kind of came second.

It was just one of those things. I just had this, it just comes to you sometimes and those are the easiest to write. Of course.

Um, you know, and as far as the riff and stuff, I felt like that kind of came later on. I would say this is more of a Southern rock Americana vibe than what we are probably originally intending. Yeah.

It's kind of cool on the record. Like I stretched a little bit. I was playing like a little, uh, Mando.

Right. We brought in a mandolins are playing mandolins a little more Americana. It does, which we, we might revise.

I do like it, but for our sound, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of mixed on whether we should juice it or not. Um, make it a little more electric or yeah, because you know, it kind of, at least for this first Pete, you know, this EP, I'd like to have a similar, you know, what do you guys sound like? Or maybe it's something we say for a later date and that's fine with me. Uh, we got other stuff too.

So did you have the song completely written for you? And then you brought it to me and I was like, that's really cool. And then we sat in his basement, just went through the arrangement and figured it out. Um, you know, you go through ideas like, should we just do this whole song with a different drum beat or should we do parts of it with different drum beat? And uh, yeah, pretty much it.

Yeah. And then we recorded it the same day as another one. All right.

What's this song called? This is a, this song is called chain smoke. Chain smoke. Another song named after a band.

So the first song was called ever clear and this is called chain smoke. So I guess chain smokers, they're both named after drugs, various substances, sex and drugs and rock and roll. Right.

But it's, it's a very different approach. It's like, yeah, it's like a lot of comparisons are like, Hey, you know, I think you got an issue here. Like it's not much, but we're comparing drugs to women though in this song.

So that's, you know, that's right. In a positive way. In a positive way.

It's an experience. You ready? Yeah. One, two, one, two, three.

She was an American spirit wrapped in a blue coat. Mama asked that I keep from smoke, but I breathed you in and let you go. I hit all the pain in my mouth, never felt when a one-hundred hit like a king size.

So was he a buzz? I was feeling the heat of the air. I was breathing between my fingers. Can't let you go.

Now you're all I want to chain smoke. You must have ripped off that one label and say no to you. I wasn't able to search and Jen was worried about my heart, my two-hundred-fold nicotine kicks on.

So was he a buzz? I was feeling the heat of the air. I was breathing between my fingers. Can't let you go.

Now you're all I want to chain smoke. Now you're all I want to chain smoke. There's kind of a short version of it there.

Okay, man. Okay, so all right. How cool was that? It's very cool.

Yeah, I totally get the comparison to the one. So, you know, you guys mentioned, you know, do you put a mandolin or something like that? Yeah. I heard pedal steel.

Yeah, that's on it. Got it. That's on it.

We're huge fans. I said my when we recorded DePaul, I made a joke and everybody's like exactly. I said, we make rock songs with pedal steel in it and it's called a rip lock.

I mean, I wouldn't, I don't know. I wouldn't electrify it up in the whole bit because I was totally hearing pedal steel. And if you're going to have some type of a solo in there, it should be a fiddle.

Oh, we talked about that. John, our producer was like, you should add a fiddle solo. And I know, and I know a young lady that is a spectacular fiddle player.

She is unbelievable. What's her name? Am I Heather? Yeah. Yeah, Heather.

Shout out, Heather. What's up, Heather? No kidding. Wow.

I mean, I just met her just a couple of weeks ago. It's Billy Gray, Simple Remedies. She does it all.

Tim Gleason, she does it all. Yeah. We're going to get her in there.

She plays with Billy Gray now? Yeah. Yeah. Well, she's done it all.

We just had Billy Gray in the studio a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I saw that. I saw you also had Ryan Craig on.

Oh, yeah. Good friend of ours. Yeah.

Wow. We should have just had one big giant party. You know what I'm hearing? What are you hearing? I am hearing a rock and roll Chicago podcast music festival.

You know, we got all these people that know one another. And then we can have one of those big giant all-star bands where you put 20 people on stage at the end of the show and they all try and play together and it sounds like crap. Yeah, it's the mixing.

And we charge an admission. Yeah, we charge an admission. Yeah.

The Roxy Studio. I can see it happening. Yeah.

Dude, that'd be really cool. Yeah, we've been talking about it. We've been talking about it and talking about it and talking about it.

We're all really good friends. One of us has to get off our ass and just organize it. Yeah.

We have to do that. The great thing about bands in the area is, I mean, me and you know, like most of them, I'd say, and we're all friends with all of them. There's never any weird things with any of the bands.

We all love each other. And that's the great thing about, we talk about this on the show a lot too. One of the greatest things about being a musician in the Chicagoland area is the sense of family and camaraderie around here.

I mean, you don't get this in other big cities like Chicago. I mean, like we know everybody. Like the bass player in Billy Gray's band is the daughter of a very good friend of ours.

Wow. Awesome. So we know a lot of people.

It's not like Nashville where they're all competitive and stuff. Right. We're all just hanging out.

That's the way it was around here back in the 70s. 70s and 80s. Oh no, you didn't cooperate with other bands.

Yeah, you didn't. You had the good band. The other bands all sucked.

You didn't get to see them. That's right. And you got pissed off if one of your guys was going to play with somebody else.

You got pissed off. Oh, there was none of that. And you booted them out of the band.

No, you went and played in this band. Nope. You're done.

You're out of here. But it's not like that anymore. Not anymore.

It really isn't. You know, there's a great group of musicians in this direct area of where we're all from. And what's funny is you'll go out on a Thursday and you'll see a concert in the park.

And then you'll go to a club and you'll see a band on Friday. And you'll see another band on Saturday. Right.

And over the course of all three days, you might see the same six people over and over again. Yeah, that's true. Because once you find good musicians that you can rely on.

Yes. It's like you just keep working with them over and over and over again. Till eventually it's like throwing food at a wall.

See what sticks, right? Eventually you find a group of three or four or five or whatever it is. And you play with them consistently. But you always know that you can fall back on some of your friends around any area.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's great. That's great.

Yeah. And that was a lot of what I was talking about earlier. It's like we all work together.

Yeah. Like it's really cool. You know, we got a set group of guys who come in and then, you know, maybe they're playing with who knows who.

Yeah. The next day. You know, it's kind of like a all for one and one for all kind of mentality.

Because, you know, big record companies, let's face it. We don't need them anymore, right? I mean, you can get your music out, sold, become popular, and you don't need a big record company to help you do that, right? So you've got a bunch of people that are all in the same boat. You've got a producer that wants notoriety.

You got some songwriters that want notoriety. You got some players that want notoriety. Let's get together, put something together, put it out there, you know, and sell it ourselves.

And we kind of have to take that because how many years have musicians been bent over a table? Right, right. You know, what are some of the famous ones about the lawsuits? There's a million, but like where the record companies, I mean, Taylor Swift was a big one, right? She didn't make a lot of money from her first stuff. So she sued the.

But I think she owned the publishing. Yeah, yeah. It's the kicker.

No, see, that's the thing. You don't want to sell your publishing rights. That's it.

You want to keep your publishing rights. You can put it anywhere. You want to keep your publishing rights.

You want to build up a catalog. And then when you're like in your 50s, then you sell your catalog. Right.

You know, that's when you sell your catalog. Yeah. But no, you go back to the 50s and 60s, you know, there were, there were some groundbreaking record companies that were in Chicago, right? There was Alligator Records, Chess Records, right? Right.

Yes. The Rolling Stones recorded their first American album here in Chicago, right? Right, yeah. Chuck Berry recorded here.

Of course, Muddy Waters, you know, recorded there and Howlin' Wolf and all the old blues. Buddy Guy. Buddy Guy.

And these are people that, I mean, how many guitarists list Buddy Guy? I mean, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton. The list goes on and on about how they all think that Eric Clapton was their favorite guitar player, right? And these guys have all, you know, the notoriety that all these guys get. And then you find out that, God, these guys, as famous as they were, they were working jobs until they were in their 50s.

They had day jobs until they were in their 50s because the money that they were making from the record company off of the sale of records was like nothing. All the money was going to the record company. You heard about the CCR one with John Fogarty? Oh, of course.

The famous one. That's the worst probably example of that. Yeah.

And what sucks about that, it's his own brothers that prevented that. I mean, it happens, right? So, hey, we got to, we got to join together some camaraderie and get it done, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

So what do you guys, what else do you guys do? Nothing. No? Yeah, this is it. Well, we just got done with school.

Yeah, we just, I actually just had my final say at accounting. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So you have a degree in accounting or not? No, you just, oh, well, no, I took the class kind of as to like, you know, learn. Gotcha. Yeah, you know, I actually, yes, we would like to get hands on eventually.

Yeah. I just need to know what the numbers mean. Sure, of course.

You know, I'd like, okay, cool bonds, like, but that's not in our thing, you know, but at least I know what bonds are now. But, but no, everything from like, because merchandise is like the bloodline of art. That's where most of the money comes in.

Right. And being able to read those financial statements, if we get it, you know, someone to help out when, if this gets bigger, just so I know someone's not pulling my leg, just to be able, hey, you know, there's something going on here. Yeah.

You know, we're almost like, what are they? You got to know, I guess you could say jack of all trades, but you just got to know a little bit of everything just to make sure you're not getting, you know. Well, you know, it's, I forgot the, the artist that said it actually, I think it was Holland Wolf that said, if, if everybody else knows about your financials, except you, guess what? That's right. You know, he used to, he used to perform with all of his money in a suitcase underneath his stool.

You know, he's, he would walk into it. He would walk into a venue with a suitcase full of cash and just sit down on a chair or whatever, you know, cause he did perform sitting down a lot and he just put that suitcase under his stool. And that was all the money that he had right there under that suitcase.

He wasn't letting it out of his sight. Yeah. Oh, that was like his savings or was it just the money he made from the gig? No, that was good.

That was all of his money that he had in the world. Yeah. That was all the money he had.

Yeah. Didn't trust anybody. Yeah.

Hey, that's probably good. Look at all the, you know, I guess watched the, uh, the Billy Joel, um, there's a three part Billy Joel thing that was on Showtime right now. They're streaming it on Hulu now.

I mean, this guy is an international rock star, probably one of the biggest songwriters ever. And twice in his life, he lost almost everything he had taken to the cleaners by people that he trusted. You know, the first time it was the first time it was his brother-in-law.

Didn't he say in that documentary that like piano man, he still hasn't really made anything off piano man. Yeah. Yeah.

That's crazy. Geez. That's crazy.

Yeah. That's pretty amazing. I love what you guys do, man.

I really do. I had a feeling this was going to be pretty good. A lot of good original music.

I mean, we've been, I mean, we've filled up our podcast already and it doesn't feel like we've been here that long. I know. I know.

Unbelievable. I want to get one more song out of you guys. And when we come back, we'll talk about how people can find you and where you're going to be playing and, and do all that stuff.

Sound cool. Let's take a real quick pause again. Yeah.

You're listening to the rock and roll Chicago podcast. We're coming back. Give us one more fellas.

All right. This one is, uh, right now it's titled love songs. Um, and it's kind of a love song.

We wrote it. Uh, it was after a heroin experience in Bloomington. A heroin.

I was going to say, we're going three for three. It's a heroin experience. No.

So there was a, uh, there was a fire or they thought there was a fire. Yeah. And I, uh, I didn't hear it.

And, uh, I, apparently everybody gathered in the lobby and I came out the next day. I was like, what happened? And they're like, you almost died. But what actually happened is me and Ethan Bell walked out of our hotel room and we were surprised at the site of the receptionist running across the lobby with a toaster.

Someone burnt their toast. That's what it was. Someone burnt their toast.

Oh wow. And we were up till 5am and that was at 730. Because of burnt toast.

Because of burnt toast. Oh man. Was I mad? Let's see.

You got two hours of sleep, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Wow. And that's what this song is about. That's what the first verse is about.

And that was basically a song about life on the road. And if you had a girlfriend that you want to see again, but yeah, it's not really true, but that part's true. Yeah.

Yeah. It was funny when I first, when I first heard it from Matt, I was like, I know what that's about. True, true stuff.

Yep. All right. Take it away, fellas.

Here we go. One, two, three, four. And I hate it when the words keep pouring.

I had nights where I was going slow-mo. Made it once, now I'm out the photo. Heard there was a new guy that took my place.

By an accident, I see your face. I want to hear you sing all my love songs. Blankets around the sofa, baby, come closer.

I'm at the point where I'll take you back. It's been so long. Hear a scene left by the room.

I want to hear you. Felt the world crumble in a motel room. Singing on the road, going crazy.

I haven't felt normal lately. What I had till she told on my hometown. Made it once, now I'm in the background.

Heard there was a new guy that took my place. I really want to see your face. I want to hear you sing all my love songs.

Blankets around the sofa, baby, come closer. I'm at the point where I'll take you back. It's been so long.

Hear a scene left by the room. I want to hear you. Hard to see.

Girl, you're kind of making it hard to see. Hard to see. Girl, you're kind of making it hard to see.

I want to hear you sing all my love songs. Blankets around the sofa, baby, come closer. I'm at the point where I'll take you back.

It's been so long. Hear a scene left by the room. I want to hear you.

Man, I was going to. Oh, there it is. We got to bring it up in there like that.

I was actually like kind of in awe by that song. I was looking into his eyes. Oh no, another bromance.

I was like, oh no, where are we going? This was the coolest thing in the studio. So we were recording Chainsmoke and getting all the rhythm tracks done for it. John Curry, who got us in there and he was producing and recording our stuff.

He came in to me and he was just like, Eli, we have time. We have to get another in. You guys got it.

It's all set up. It sounds great in here. And it really did.

We had like 40 drum mics. He's like, we got it all set up. 17.

He was like, we got to do another night. So I hurry on, run down. I grab Matt.

What do you got? Bust out the notebook and the pen. Let's go. I'm going to run across the street and grab canes and I'll be back with food for everyone.

Get it done by the time we get back. By the time I got back, they were already in the studio recording. They did two takes.

They were kind of working through the arrangement. It took like 30 minutes. They were just working through it.

To write that song. They did their first take and then you guys did a second take. And we took the first one.

We ended up sticking with the first one for the release. It was crazy. It's one of those things.

I guess the new kids call it flow state, right? But me and John are sitting in the control room and we're watching it. And like they hit that first hit. I'm like, John, I got a feeling about this.

You can just read everyone's how they're working with each other. It's surreal. It's one of the coolest things.

And they hit it again. I'm like, John, this is going to be the one. They do it again.

And then, yeah, I'm like, John, this is it. And then we're in the studio, like in the control room, jumping around. And Matt is... I poor Matt's back in the studio trying not to laugh while he's doing his takes.

I know, I'm looking at him across the room being like this. I'm like, I'm trying to hold it together here. Yeah.

But no, we used the first take. It just had this energy built and it was just something. And, you know, there's something to say about that.

It's really cool. Back to that talk of the rawness. And it was there.

And that's what you're capturing, that energy, that feeling. Like you said, all the compression in this production, it kills the dynamics and just the liveliness of it. Yeah.

It's just I'm so glad we were able to capture that performance. Absolutely. You know, it's always the songs that you write quick that turn out to be your best songs.

Yes. Every artist has the story about how they wrote it on a roll of toilet paper while sitting on the toilet. Everybody.

Everybody. Pretty much. Yeah, I wrote one.

Toby Keith should have been a cowboy. Yeah. Wrote it on toilet paper.

Yeah. Like in like 10 minutes or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wrote a song called In the Deep. Sitting on the toilet. In the deep.

I mean, that's that's a true story. I mean, it makes a perfect, you know, timely joke. But no, that's the truth.

Called In the Deep. Yeah, yes. Excellent.

That's awesome. So where can where where can people, well, first of all, see you live? Where are you guys going to be? Yes. So on June 19th, we were 115 Bourbon Street.

Yes. Are you guys in the big room up front or were you guys playing? I believe up front. Yeah, front.

I don't know if they're doing much music back there. I could be wrong. But I think a lot of it's front.

Yeah, yeah. It is summer. It could be outside.

That's right. Open up. It could be pretty cool.

Is it just the two of you guys or you got a full band? A full band. A full band. Excellent.

Excellent. Yeah. I think that's a five piece too.

So two two guitars, drums, bass, and our buddy Doc Brown playing steel and aux guitar. Yeah, nice. So then I can come in with that mandolin every now and then.

So he can fill that for me. Yeah. Either one of their stages is great.

Inside is great. And outside is a lot of fun too. It really is.

Oh man, I can't wait. And what else? You got something coming? Yes. And the next day we'll be at Oglesby Fest.

Oglesby Fest. Okay. 5.30. 5.30, 7.30. On June 20th.

Yes. Where can people find these songs you play for us? So Everclear is out now. It's out everywhere.

And then that song we just play, Love Songs, will be out around July 10th. I would say just pencil that in. Okay.

Spotify and all the streaming platforms. Everywhere. And then we're... And hopefully soon to be found on the Rock and Roll Chicago radio.

Oh man, wouldn't that be something? Yeah. That'd be cool. That would be something.

Yeah. And what about social media-wise? It's all... Riploc Official, R-I-P-L-O-C-K-O-F-F-I-C-I-A-L. Yes.

Our Instagram is probably the best place to find us, but we're very active everywhere. Excellent. Excellent.

Guys, I loved meeting you guys, man. You guys are great. I think you have two more fans.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Actually, three if people listen to the podcast.

Yeah, we only got one listener. And he's in India. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, actually, truth be told, how many countries did we reach last month? I don't know. It was 114 countries. Wow, congrats.

All over the place. 114 countries. That's fantastic.

Yeah, so you guys will be international now. Wow, let's go. All right, guys.

Thanks a lot for coming in. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast is edited by Paul Martin. Theme song courtesy of MNR Rush.

The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.