Graphic by Joseph Kang
Since forming in 2017 Cheekface knows too well what it’s like to write music throughout disturbing and unjust times. Whether it’s through changing the tour van’s tires four times in only one tour, or reckoning with the monetized self-help culture after loss, Cheekface’s deadpan humor seeks to make sense of the grievances and mundanities of our days. With that, the band’s newest LP Middle Spoon makes its intrepid, absurd entrance into this nonsensical world–possibly through driving from “urgent care to Sweetgreen, Sweetgreen to urgent care.” With other extremely quotable lyrics and a cultish fanbase of “Cheekfreaks” to show for it, the new album–the group’s fifth in just six years–withholds the same sardonic self-sufficiency Cheekface has possessed all along.
Cheekface simply doesn’t stop writing songs. In the midst of their last tour cycle for It’s Sorted, their previous album which was released just over a year ago, the trio was hit with a whole new bout of life-altering circumstances. What followed was perhaps an alternative method to the often dystopian grieving processes Cheekface speak-sing of on Middle Spoon: 12 gut punching chronicles of grief, lost relationships, the American healthcare system, and the inane routines humanity uses to keep on keeping on. They each hold their own weight of brash, sarcastic, and stoutly human lines–and despite their relatability, could only be told by the eccentric songwriters of Cheekface.
Just three days after the surprise release of Middle Spoon, the fervent L.A. based pop-punk trio (Greg Katz, Amanda Tannen, and Matt “Echo” Edwards) sat down for a talk via zoom, while occasionally and sporadically speak-singing in typical Cheekface fashion. We talk about the lyrics-heavy approach, Dallas, Texas, a Philadelphia Pep Boys, and our shared love of local DIY scenes.
Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Greg Katz: Well, we love college radio, and we love New York.
I love both of those things as well. You ran your college radio station as a student at UCLA, right? What was that like?
GK: It was super fun. I skipped a lot of classes, but I never skipped a radio show.
You guys released Middle Spoon just three days ago. I’m curious what the post-album release life is like? What comes in the days immediately following the big drop?
Matt “Echo” Edwards: I have spent a lot more time on my phone this week than I normally do. A lot of trying to read what everyone has to say about the album.
How does that usually go for you, reading what everyone has to immediately say?
ME: I only read the good things that people have to say.
GK: Kidding aside, we just did a friends and family record release party on Tuesday night at a DIY venue in our neighborhood called Scribble. That was really fun. We played the whole album front-to-back and didn’t play any of our old songs. Shows like this can be a little mentally taxing, because almost all of the songs we’d never played live before. Also the audience, even though it was like friends and family, they’d never heard almost any of the songs until that day, even if they listened to the album prior. It’s a little nerve-wracking.
Doing something that is really demanding the day the record comes out makes it feel a bit more like an event. Actually doing something in the world and being together with people instead of just looking at the phone — the music is for people to listen to and listening only happens in real life. There’s no way around it. You have to vibrate the air and get it into your ears. Being in real life with the music felt really good, especially because everyone these days is looking at their phones and reading the daily fascist pronouncements — it can make you want to bury your head in the sand. So to me, selfishly, it felt good to go outside and interact with others and be like, yeah, there’s people. I can play music with my friends. Someone can walk up to me and be like, ‘I love the new record.’ And I can be like, ‘thanks.’ And that just rocks.
Would you say that playing live shows and being around people is your favorite part of the album-cycle process?
Amanda Tannen: We probably all have different answers to that question. It’s the whole package. If you dislike one part, it doesn’t quite hold the glue, so you need to enjoy them all. I feel like I get something different from writing with Greg or forming a community around what we wrote and sharing it with people — it’s the payback of putting the work into writing it.
ME: My favorite part is always the part that we’re doing. When we’re on tour, I’m like, this is the best thing ever. And when we’re in the studio, I’m like, this is the best thing in the world. Even when we’re at band practice on a Tuesday night, I’m like, “this is the best thing in the world.” I do think the most special part is seeing it once it’s out of our hands and what it means to people. Whether that’s the community in a room and we’re playing a show, a comment on the YouTube video, or someone in the DMs or whatever, the life that art takes on after our hard work is done is the coolest, most special thing.
You guys surprise released this album, as well as the two albums prior. You’ve recorded and released five albums in only six years. With that, I guess my question is, what is compelling about this unconventional release cycle? Sometimes bands can get really strategic with it.
GK: We try to stick close to what makes the project fun for us. One of the most fun aspects is writing the songs and recording them. So like, why would we delay the part that’s so fun, you know? If we’re having fun writing songs, we’re going to write more. If we’re having fun recording, we’re going to record more. I also don’t think it’s fun for finished music to sit on my hard drive waiting to come out — that certainly gives me no feeling of satisfaction of any kind, and it certainly isn’t fun. We try to do the bare minimum amount of hoarding music on a hard drive, because we like it to be out there.
Do you draw on inspiration from other artists in doing this?
GK: When I look at some of my favorite bands of all time, they have made a lot of music. What I went back to while we were making this record was Bad Religion. They’re especially inspiring to me because from 1988 to ‘94 they made six albums, and of those, five were self-released on their guitar player’s label. Those albums have all the best Bad Religion songs. Not every song is perfect, but all of the best ones are on that run of albums. I looked back at that and was like, okay, this was the biggest punk band in the US at the time. They were self-releasing their records and making one after the other because they were just having fun making them and having fun putting them out. No one was telling them no. I think that’s kind of where we’re at. It’s fun for us to make it, fun to put it out, and there’s no one who’s telling us we shouldn’t do that.
You were just saying that if writing feels so good, then why would you stop. Would you say that you’re always in this songwriting mindset? Like today, for instance, are you still thinking about things to write, just days after putting an album out?
GK: We’ve already written more songs since the album was finished. If I’m just sitting around on a day and not doing something, I’ll hit Mandy, and be like, ‘Hey, you want to write?’ Or vice versa. It’s so fun to make music with your friends, so we try to keep the ball rolling on that.
What state of mind do you guys think you write at your best, or most prolifically?
AT: Well, I think best is subjective. We write songs when we’re motivated. Sometimes it’s good feelings, sometimes bad, sometimes if you’re having anxiety or depression you just want to get it out. It’s just a way of expression.
GK: There’s days when we go in and I can’t wait to write, and then we get something that’s just okay. And then there’s days where we go in and I hate life and I wish I was dead, and then we write something amazing even though I almost cancelled five minutes before we were supposed to get together. Sometimes pushing through those feelings results in something cool. Not always. But there are enough times that even when I don’t feel like it, by the time we’re in the middle, I may feel like it at that point and be glad that I was doing this and not sitting on the couch looking at the ceiling.
You all have said that Middle Spoon came out of the experience of processing a lot of grief, and the forceful growth society imposes which often follows. Can you talk a little bit about this?
GK: Right when the last album came out, my dad had a stroke and went to the hospital, and spent months there last year. Literally on the eve of the first show of touring last year, my grandmother died when we were in England. I got a call at 4 a.m. from my mom the day we were supposed to play our first show of the tour. My dad and my grandmother were both extremely encouraging of my music stuff. There’s a little bit more to it than just bad family shit happening because of their role in my life. Those things were both very difficult to process and landed right on top of working on the album, so I barreled through them. On the one hand, it was nice to have something to do that wasn’t thinking about those things, and on the other hand, it provided no time for consideration of those things happening.
But this album isn’t a grief album. Certainly, there’s elements of death, dying, mourning, hospitals, and medical systems that are written into it because those were the things I was personally experiencing.
What is the worst venue, or worst show you guys have ever played on tour?
AK: There are so many that could be mentioned here. Echo?
ME: I don’t know if I really want to name names with cities.
GK: Name and shame Echo! Name and shame!
ME: I’ll just pick one and go. We had a really tough show in Dallas. I’m from Texas…
Me too — I’m from Austin! Dallas blows.
ME: No way! I’m from Austin as well. My grandparents lived in Dallas growing up, and my dad spent some time living there. I have some great friends in Dallas. A couple years back we played a show there and the sound guy was maybe the worst sound guy we’ve ever experienced. He came up onto the stage for three or four minutes to fiddle with the haze machine. [There was] squealing feedback nonstop for several songs during the set. It got to the point where I had to unplug my monitor, because I would rather not be able to hear anything than just have the screeching noise in my ear. Our touring keyboardist, AJ, at one point had to leave the stage and run up to the sound booth and be like, ‘Please turn my keyboard back on in my monitor. I can’t hear myself.’ I’m sure there were more things that happened at that show.
AK: You forgot the fog machine problem.
ME: Oh, the fog machine. Yeah. The fog machine didn’t work. And instead of leaving it alone, he …anyways. I’ve done a lot of work in live sound and production and stuff, and so I was trying to commiserate with him. And I went up to him and was like, yeah, like, ‘Tough night. Just so you know, that awful feedback when I unplugged my monitor, it went away. If you were looking for the source of the feedback, it was my monitor, and the reason it went away was because I literally fucking unplugged the thing.’ Two minutes later, he goes up to Greg and tried to blame the feedback on me unplugging the monitor, being like, “everything was fine until your drummer fucked with the monitor.” Anyway, absolutely the worst case scenario. And after that tour, we thought it’d be worth it for us to hire someone to come to every show and mix front of house for us. We just could not have another Dallas. Anyways, I still love you, Dallas.
GK: During that same stretch of shows we had similar things happen in Minneapolis, Salt Lake, and Chicago. It’s unfair for people to pay for tickets and then have that happen. This was 2022, and we were paying extra so we weren’t subjecting people to this when they paid their actual money to come see us play.
ME: Shoutout Talisa Garcia, our front of house engineer. Talisa is the best.
GK: We love Talisa.
Similarly, I’m wondering if you’ve ever had an absurd moment, or interesting interaction, with a fan or anyone on tour?
AK: Well, there’s one thing for sure — our U-Haul trailer. This isn’t a person, but the U-Haul trailer on our last tour loved to have popped tires left and right. Seriously, we had to get our tires replaced I think five times. Like, how many times was it?
GK: At least three.
ME: Mandy, I love that you brought that up because my first thought was Terry, the guy who changed our U-Haul tire in Philadelphia. It was maybe one of the most miserable people I’ve ever met, as he was on the ground trying to change the tire on this u haul. He was like, ‘This is fucking it. I’m done. I’m calling my boss. I quit.’ It was wild.
GK: He was laying on the ground, just swearing and yelling, ‘I can’t believe my fucking stupid ass boss, I should have quit this job fucking years ago’ and just kept going and going.
ME: We were like, ‘Hey, can we get you water?’ Hah.
GK: I hope we cross paths with Terry again. Speaking of Philly car troubles, one time we took the van for routine maintenance. We’re at the halfway point of the tour, and I took it to a Pep Boys in Philly and the mechanic there was told me the van was really fucked up, and we would have to replace the whole oil system for $1,500. They couldn’t do it for two more days, but they couldn’t give it back to us because it would be too dangerous to drive. So I called Echo, and I was like, ‘Echo, I need an adult, I don’t know what they’re trying to do to me here at Pep Boys, but they won’t give me the van back.’ And so we went and Echo valiantly called other mechanics. And then the other mechanics were like, ‘This problem that they’re saying you have, the piece that you need to fix it costs six or seven dollars. They can just screw it in and it’s fixed.’ So we told them, and then the the manager of the store is on his personal cell phone with somebody, and he’s saying, ‘I fucked him up. I didn’t fuck him up. He could still walk after.’ And then the store phone rings and he answers the phone on speaker phone, and he’s like, ‘Pep Boys’, and the callers like, ‘Hey, I broke my windshield and wing mirror and I need to get it replaced.’ And he’s like, he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, don’t bring it here, because honestly, people will just come and bash it in more.’ And then they were like, ‘Well, like, it’s already bashed in, so do you think you can just fix it?’ And he’s like, ‘No, just take it to the Safelite.’ And the caller’s like, ‘Take it to where?’ And he’s like, ‘Safelite.’ And the caller’s like, ‘Where?’ And then I’m standing there listening to this conversation because it’s on speaker phone and all of this chaos is happening. And I’m like, ‘Safelite repair, Safelite replace!’ And the store manager is like, ‘Yeah! He knows what it is, you know, Safelite! Safelite repair, like the song.’ Anyways. When you’re in a touring band, your real job is moving around black boxes and driving them from place to place. I mean, they don’t really tell you that, along with the moving around black boxes, you have to be the caretaker for a five ton piece of machinery. But that is a big part of the job as well.
Besides Dallas, what are some of your favorite cities to play on tour?
GK: I mean, my favorite cities are New York, we love playing Chicago. We love playing in Toronto. We love playing Seattle. I love playing in Austin. We love playing in Atlanta. We love playing D.C. I mean, there’s so many, and even some smaller cities are so magical. And I wouldn’t go to them if it wasn’t for being in this band. Pittsburgh, too. I love Pittsburgh. What a fucking cool place.
AK: Columbus and Cleveland, you know.
GK: The Upper Midwest cities are awesome. The South is awesome. That’s the
thing about being in a touring bend. Most places you’re like, I get why people live here. I get what you would like about living here.
So you self-release all your albums, you carry big boxers around — you embody the DIY mindset. Seven years into it, you guys keep growing and evolving. This album seemed a little bit more experimental than your last one, so I’m curious about what prompted that evolution. I’d love for you to talk about anything DIY in your music-making.
AK: Greg, Echo and I try to do all of the things ourselves. You know, if we can do them, we’re going to do them. And then if we can’t, we hire out someone that knows how to do it. Being part of the music industry and realizing that a lot of the things I can do myself, especially the visual stuff, I do all of that. I have a standard that I like to keep. Greg and I are a great pairing.
GK: And Echo just gets to sit there and look hot.
AK: Echo definitely looks hot. But he also does the things that Greg and I don’t want to do. We all have a really good work ethic, and our personalities work well together. We don’t have to pawn off everything to a label, or manager, but we can do it ourselves instead. So we do it.
GK: We all get joy out of that process of having our fingers in the details. We like to have our own vision of the big picture. A lot of people tell us our band shirts are their favorite to wear, because they look good, but they also feel good. The actual garment and fabric feels good. And that’s because it’s on purpose. We touch the garments before manufacturing them to know if it’s something we would wear, which sounds like it’s not that crazy of a thing to do. But most artists don’t do that, which is insane to me. A lot of time it’s about the cheapest one, because if you can make it for four dollars and sell it for thirty, they think that’s better. Where as we’re like, let us give you something for better, and we will pay a multiple of what the cheap one was. We want to give people the best experience for putting their money into our little art project.
The merch fabric, wow. I have never even thought about that.
GK: The first time I worked with a record producer he had all these outboard racks of gear out without putting things into the computer, and I was like ‘What’s the magic piece to make it sound better?’ He was like, ‘None of it is the magic piece. Every piece is a little tiny bit better than what you’d do with a computer. And when you put it all together, you get a much better picture.’ It was sort of a lightbulb moment for me: if you do every little thing a little bit better, then the overall picture starts to be a lot more clear and powerful.