Siberian Traps
Introducing Fort Worth, TX’s Siberian Traps; press photo courtesy of the band.
Siberian Traps are the talk of the Fort Worth, Texas underground. Championed by The Longshots/Joe Gorgeous leader Joey Gorman & friends; their debut album Stray Dogs is out now. Like the eclectic nature of Gorman’s bands & output, Siberian Traps live up to the hype by providing timeless tunes that you can rock out to with friends, possibly even your parents, or just by yourself as Stray Dogs is the perfect road trip audio companion to cater to that wanderlust thirst from deep within. With Fort Wort currently caught up in one gnarly heatwave; groups like the Traps will have you wondering if there is something in the desert air (or local watering well) that contributes to what could be a burdgeoning Fort Worth sound. For right now, the quartet of Seth Reeves, Peter Wierenga, Mike Best & Ben Hance are here to show us how it’s done with a little bit of elbow grease & analog know-how.
Stray Dogs begins with the title track that walks, struts, & runs in slow motion like a happy bunch of hounds breaking free from their kennels at nearby Animal Control sanctioned pound. Siberian Traps move from kraut psych sensibilities to new romantic nouveau aesthetics as heard on the buddy bonding song, “New Friend in Town”, right before jangling up a dish of twanging chords that strum & blink in earnest. Diets, fads, & psychotropic experimentation bring about new the new day dawning of “Paleozoic”, continuing to expand & build upon their demonstrations of proficiency & range on the descending visions of beauty that appears in the form of “She Came To Me”. The dubious legacy of ruthless civil war general “Philip Sheridan” is investigated in the form of a pop ballad, turning the pitch down for the slow dancing “Songs I Don’t Write”, that sees Siberian Traps concluding their album with one last standoff from the arid trenches with “No Man’s Land”. Join us now for our exclusive interview session with Siberian Traps’ own Seth Reeves.
What about your homelands of Fort Worth influences or impacts your music?
We recorded the album in Fort Worth, but we used three different studios with three different engineers and (drummer) Peter and I produced it. So I’m not sure that it sounds like it fits in with a typical “Fort Worth” sound, if there is such a thing. We have a thriving music scene here, but its diversity is, I think, one of the hallmarks of what’s been happening here the last several years. We feel like we can share a bill with most of the bands in Fort Worth. We can play with bands that are more on the punk or garage side of things, we can play with bands that have a more rootsy sound, and we’ve played plenty of shows with bands that are shoegaze or even electronic. I guess I’m interested in exploring as many styles of music that appeal to me and, cliché as it sounds, I like being a band that’s difficult to pigeonhole. The challenge is to find a way to fuse them into something internally coherent, which I hope we’ve done.
As far as our hometown as an aesthetic environment, Fort Worth has historically been known as “Cowtown.” It has a distinctively rural, Western vibe even though it’s a major city. Stray Dogs, at least to me, feels like a mix of urban energy and more pastoral imagery. I dunno. That’s what was in my head when I was writing the songs. I grew up in Fort Worth, so I’m sure our hometown environment influences me in ways I’m not consciously aware of.
Siberian Traps live; photographed by Aubrey Mortensen.
How do the four of you write and record your songs?
I write the basic core of the songs – the chords, the riffs, the vocal melodies/harmonies, the words. But usually in the middle of that process, say when a song’s about 50-60% done, I bring the songs to the band in practice and we spend a lot of time jamming them, trying to see what shape they want to take. Then I sort of take that information back to just me and my guitar and work on the song further. I like to have a idea of what the other guys will do with their parts while I’m still writing the song, and then let it coalesce around that sound. Then a bit later, when it’s maybe 70-80% done, I bring it back to the band again. Rinse, repeat til it’s done.
Recording is my favorite part of the process because that’s when all the other hidden parts, particularly vocal harmonies, start to emerge and suggest themselves. That’s where the songs really start to show you what they want to be. When we started recording Stray Dogs, I had this near-crippling fear that I wouldn’t be able to do the songs justice. It had been three years since we’d made a record, our former lead guitar player had left the band and moved back Nashville, and I didn’t know if I could handle playing all the guitars. I learned through the process of making this record that I actually like to play lead guitar, even though my style is pretty simple. The responsibility of coming up with all those parts at first felt overwhelming, but halfway through the recording, I felt like I was just surfing a wave and I couldn’t stop coming up with different lead parts and vocal harmonies. It went from overwhelming to liberating. I love the studio. If I could be Brian Wilson and just live in the studio, I would.
What is it about these psych-kissed Americana ballads, and how do you fuse these organic components in your current day approach to balladeering?
It’s interesting that your question refers to the songs as ballads, because I usually think of a ballad as having a pretty defined narrative, and I tend to think of our songs as more impressionistic than that. But I guess that there is a narrative current running through each of them. The whole psych-thing maybe comes from my interest in transcendence, not in some grandiose way, but just in the ordinary moments that I experience in my daily life. A walk with my two-year old daughter. A simple conversation with my wife. An encounter with an aggressive junkyard dog that I learned to stand up to. I think life’s pretty weird, mostly in a good way, even when on the surface it seems pretty normal. That’s the story that gets told in the songs, I hope.
Strumming about & around with Siberian Traps; photographed by Bandstalkerfw.
What’s next for Siberian Traps, post-Stray Dogs?
First, we’re going on a tour of the Midwest and Upper South to support the record. I’m really looking forward to getting on the road for the first time. It’ll be our first proper tour.
Also, we’ve already written a little more than half of a new record. About six songs so far. And I’m pretty excited about them. They’re a little more groove-focused, a little more mid-tempo than the songs on Stray Dogs. On a couple of songs on the album, our friend Ben Hance played synth and organ. After we finished recording, we asked him to join the band, and he now plays lead guitar, keys, and sings harmony. He’s an incredible musician and his involvement in the band has been really inspiring to me. So I think that inspiration is showing in the songs we’re writing now. Because I got married and had a kid within the last few years, it took us three years between our last record and the release of Stray Dogs. I think we’re at a point now where it won’t take us that long to get something new out after this one.
Siberian Traps’ Stray Dogs is available now.
