The Real Sea Interview

The Real Sea – Jeong Kwan – Single

A tribute to the Seon Buddhist nun and chef of Korean cuisine, Jeong Kwan.

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Who is The Real Sea, please give your name and respective instrument?

Sharon: I’ll go first, so I’m Sharon and I’m the vocalist and I play guitar.

Sean: I play drums.

Eric: Hey, this is Eric, I play the bass.

Christopher: My name is Christopher and I play guitar.

How did The Real Sea start? How long have you guys known each other?

Sharon: This is Sean question.

Sean: Okay. Well, I think how we know each other. Christopher and I had played in a band called The life in bed. He played bass in that band. I played drums. We played together for about what? Seven years?

Christopher: For a long time. I consider it a long time. Yeah, Seven years. Yeah.

Sean: Yeah. So it was probably like in the majority of the early 2000s. Right? So early aughts. And then, Eric, I can’t really remember how we met. Was it through show pony stuff or?

Christopher: I think I actually first met Eric. I was playing bass with Host Skull at the time. And I think you came to a Host Skull show. And I think that was the first time, I think it was early when you had first moved up from DC, I believe.

Eric: That could have been it, yeah.

Christopher: And I think that’s the first time that I met you was that I believe a Host Skull show and then you started popping up and a bunch of other math rock shows that we were both bands that we were both super into a lot of Howlers shows, I believe. I started running into you with those places before-

Eric  A lot of Howlers shows, yeah.

Christopher: Before we were even considering knew we were gonna play in a band together. We obviously liked a lot of the same bands because I kept seeing him at on shows.

Eric: Yeah, I mean, same deal with me and Sean, were just go into a lot of the same shows. And eventually I don’t know. I don’t really know how the topic came up. I think we just all didn’t have anything to do at the same time.

Sean: Yeah, after the band that I was in called the red Western was kind of like, on the outs, and you kind of knew Lauren, right, Eric? But anyway, so Eric, Chris, I decided to start getting together and jamming and, you know, trying to write some songs. And we did that for quite some time. Probably the better part of a year.

And in the meantime, we, you know, we’re really trying and in earnest to find a vocalist. We knew we had some pretty specific, you know, requirements, obviously, we wanted a female vocalist, we wanted a female vocalist who could play guitar. And, but somebody who kind of had the aesthetic that we were, you know, kind of loosely searching for in your originally. Then it was just kind of serendipity that I hit we had struck out so many times putting ads on Craigslist, and this and that.

Christopher: Lots of, a lots of failure. Yes. A lot of fun responses too, I don’t sing but I’d play-

Sean: …like the bassoon or something, something outrageous

Christopher: Yeah. Can I join your band? I don’t sing but I played this weird instrument. And I was like no, the ad specifically said we need a singer, like we need somebody who’s sing.

Eric: Maybe now though, we should call, we could use a bassoon.

Sean: Yeah. But um, so anyway, I had gone down to a studio in Pittsburgh called Plus Minus, where a friend of ours, Sean Cho works and I just been talking to him about our struggles, you know, trying to find. He’s like, so what about Joel Grimes’s wife? And I was like, I’m like, okay, I’m like, I don’t know who that is, and he mentioned. You know, Sharon’s previous project Tiny Rhymes. And I was like, Oh, wait, I do know, kind of who that is because Sharon had contacted me while she was living in Buffalo, to maybe set up a show with my old on The Red Western. But that never kind of came into fruition. But I think Sharon, you did come to Pittsburgh, one time to visit Joel and you guys came to see us at that Strip District Music Festival or something like that. So but I don’t think we ever met.

Sharon: No, but I was really digging your band.
So my part of that story like the simultaneous part was heard I moved to Pittsburgh a couple years before I had a meeting these guys but I had been struggling to put together my own band. Because I had a folk kind of group in Buffalo. And it consisted of like string players, cellist, a violinist who didn’t live in Buffalo, but you know, a backup singer. And we had really tight vocal harmonies, all four of us, it was really fun. But I started to write, you know, more, stripped down songs and get more into the electric guitar. Because I was playing acoustic in Buffalo in that band, and then, you know, started like a kind of a different project. But I was struggling to find the players to fill it in. And so I like had hired some session players and I had used Sean Cho’s studio with the Madeline Campbell who was our sound engineer. It was fantastic. And she was kind of like producing me as well in in that she was not hired specifically for that role. But she was like really guiding me a lot. But anyway, while I was doing that project, I was struggling through it. I did talk to a lot about Yeah, you know, it’d be so much easier if I had a band. And here’s his band that was looking for a singer and I was a singer looking for a band. So-

Sean: Yeah, I had, I had, I think, when I told Chris and Eric about this, you know, Sharon had some music up on Spotify as Tiny Rhymes. And I think when we all, you know, heard that we were like, I think we…fingers crossed, like, you know, and so I still had Sharon’s contact info. And I, you know, contacted her and see if she wanted to come jam. And-

Sharon: It was a really different project from what you guys are doing. And what we do together is different from what we’re doing before, but it is really interesting that kind of retained and melted.

Christopher: Yeah, the Tiny Rhymes stuff that you were doing was a lot different that you’re referring too. Well, I think we were I mean, I was super skeptical before even hearing and just because of the experience that we had looking for a singer and just getting all these weird, you know, standard Craigslist responses and just not asking us Pittsburgh small. And everybody’s played in bands with everybody. And we didn’t want somebody that was like already had was in a band, we wanted somebody like this is we want this to be your main project. We don’t want this to be like a side project. And it was just like, we I think we’ve gotten to a point where we’re just so frustrated and you’re like, is this ever going to happen, you know, but as soon as we heard, like, I remember hearing Sharon’s demos for the first time and just being like, blown away, like oh my god, yes. Like, her voice is amazing. Songs are great. Like, let’s try this out. You know, I was super excited after hearing it.

Sharon: Plus you kind of knew my husband from being in the same scene. I remember Sean calling me…I remember Joel talking to me about Sean and then Sean calling me and being like, so before we rehearse for the first time do you want to like, meet us or something? No, I’m good. My husband vouched for you. It’s fine.

Sean: Yeah, Joel has been in the scene for a long time with Allies, Pikadori,  Trace Remains currently-

How did The Real Sea change when Sharon joined the band?

Christopher: It changed a lot. Yeah, I mean, I guess a lot of the early material was that I mean, I hadn’t played guitar in a long time. Like probably the better part of 15-ish years I had played bass for a long stretch and, but always, you know, I still had guitars and was always recording things just into a phone or you know, on a computer just ideas and riffs and stuff that potentially could have been used for bass or guitar. And so I kind of had a little bit of a back catalogue or library of ideas. Some are were like, literally like 15 some years old that I was like, man, I should really we should explore some of these that we did. That’s our initial jam. We’re just kind of riffing on those ideas. But yeah, it was a transition for sure and trying to figure out how you know we wanted to give Sharon as much creative freedom and we were craving that as well, very deeply, you know the house like we want to hear lyrics on you know, we want to hear a song. It’s still an ongoing process of coming up with ideas and figured out how to make them turn them into real songs and because most of them were essentially just like riffs just parts they weren’t for songs like beginning to end just an idea of like a riff you know, that would be a part of a song but not like you know, a fully fledged written from beginning to end that’s where I think we really benefited from Sharon coming in with she’s really good at kind of putting those as more of a like, real songwriter, you know, she’s really good at kind of piecing things together like that and making full songs out of ideas, like separate ideas, in my opinion. She’s really good about that.

Sean: Agreed. Coming from probably the most musically educated. I don’t know, I don’t want to speak for Eric. Eric’s pretty musically educated as well. But I mean, Sharon’s, a phenomenal piano player and, you know, piano tuner. So she’s more the professional when it comes to-

Sharon: Ok guys. Yeah, no, I actually, you know, it was really fun, I was looking for that kind of sound I was, I was starting to write like, lofi guitar songs that were like personal lyrics, you know, like, a lot of girl and guitar kind of stuff. That was evolving slowly. And then, you know, just listening to Chris’s ideas. This is usually how I feel like, some of our best stuff comes along is like, I’ll listen to one of Chris’s that really inspires me and they’ll inspire me to put a melody to it. And then, like, they said, like, then I’m compelled to, like, make it into a song structure. And then we collaborate over you know, does this need a bridge? Is this missing something is this where we should go to the chorus that I’ll usually come in with a sketch of like, you know, where things will lie, and then we kind of just work with that and rearrange it and fool around with it. And really take our time doing that. So that’s usually how that kind of gets so together, I think.

Sean: I do think that like Chris says, I mean, it’s there. It’s still a work in progress. But, um, you know, like, there was a bit of a learning curve after it was basically the three of us playing instrumental music and Chris basically playing the guitar using the guitar as the main melody line. That you know, probably, you know, eventually turned into vocal, you know, taking the vocal lines of the place of that but, but I do think that there was a bit of a learning curve there with like, the three of us. You know, we’re working with vocalists, you know, and another guitar player as well. But I think that, you know, that’s really starting to come into, you know, it took a while, you know, to really come into its own, but I think-

Sharon: It just wasn’t automatic because you had been missing. There’s been such a void, I think.

Sean: Yeah.

Sharon: And then. So I think like the math rock-y part of y’all kind of was taken over a lot. And you know, everyone here has a good sense of melody. So like, yeah, it’s natural to take it and make it into a melody. And now, you know, it’s a lot easier. We have like rules that are more defined.

Eric: From the bass perspective, I don’t know. I I definitely started out with like a really big pedal board. And I play a really small pedal board. You know, the idea is to leave space for everybody else. A lot of people like Chris and Sharon both have really present. The way they sound and the way they sing is very present. And so it’s kind of my job to not get in the way of that, except when it’s very tastefully carefully done. I think the self awareness is awesome. So, were you in a session?

Sean: Yeah, no, I think Eric’s describing I think, you know, what are kind of roles in the, in the band have like, kind of molded into in a way, you know, just everybody figuring out what their places for in the song, you know, has really, I think, over the past, you know, what, two years or so has finally come You know, probably become more comfortable for everybody.

Your band name comes from a Sylvia Plath poem, how did you choose that and what about it resonates with you all?

Sean: Chris, you want to take that one?

Christopher: Yeah, I guess I mean, naming anything. You know, it’s like, do you want it to be serious? Do you want it to be funny? Do you want it to be whatever I mean, we took a while with that, I think we all threw a bunch of different names down on a list and kind of just kept chipping away at them and going over, you know, different possibilities. And I don’t remember how exactly that I brought that poem back into it. I think I was actually reading I don’t know if it was a book of her poems or one of her books at the time. But how that poem actually resurface, I love that poem for a long time for a lot of different personal reasons. But it’s popped back into the fold. And it was just, it literally is the tail end of the name of the poem. And I just really liked those last three words really struck. Struck the light bulb, you know, and then through that in the ring, and it’s hard, you know, always even naming songs. Sometimes it’s like, do you just take some of the votes plus some of the lyrics out of the song? Or do you approach it from more of a not a straight forward approach? And should it be more some mystery to it or, but I think it was just a process of elimination for us. You know, there were a couple front runners for a while and you know, you brainstorm a bunch of ideas and after you say them a couple of times, some of them sound really silly or not. And yeah, I mean-

Sean: I can’t even remember except for Paper Machete, I can’t really remember. Any other one that we were tossing around. It was getting to the point of like, ridiculousness.

Christopher: I feel like those bands that I’ve been in where the naming process has happened like that, where it wasn’t already named, the band was already named, which hasn’t happened a lot of times for me, it’s always been that where there’s like 50, it’s just a no restrictions, no holds barred brainstorm, ongoing brainstorm session, and you read half of them in your life. You know, you’ll see somebody throw something down, really that’s what you want to name the band. But as much as the idea is to have a free note, you know, because then you can take those apart if you want to sometimes and put something else together, and you don’t want to restrict anything. The creative part of that to be open as possible. I think, you know, what, I think we all ended up agreeing on that one and liked it.

Sean: I think, yeah, it was like, from what I can remember, once you brought that up, like I was like, Oh, yeah, that’s it. But-

Sharon: This is the names guy. I might be the lyricist that Chris is the nammer. Yeah.

Sean: What did you want to name it again? I think you had some

Eric: Whatever it was, it’s not worth mentioning.

Christopher: We might still have a Google document.

Eric: That name thing kind of sums us up really well, though, because everything is so collaborative. But that makes things hard. That makes things take a long time, but it’s always worth it. To put in the work on it. Yeah. It’s not like one person. Yeah, it’s not one person’s band, and they write all the songs and they come up with the names. It’s collaboration.

You talk about collaboration and it taking time, but because of that respect for one another, do you think that will lead to longevity?

Eric: So we’ve kind of like…don’t let us fool you.

Christopher: I was waiting to see who was gonna answer that first.

Eric: We have times where we’re in the flow and things are going really smoothly, and that feels good. And then, like, if we do butt heads. That’s also what gives us our sound, though, it’s like this push and pull in this, this tension that really adds to create something that none of us could have done individually. And yeah, that’s where they hang on to that’s worth working through to see where it goes.

Sean: Nice. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s not been all smooth sailing. I think it was growing pains for sure.

Christopher: Not all been smooth sailing on The Real Sea.

::All Laugh::

Sean: Got a little seasick there a couple times but yeah, but I think, you know, just I think the creative process and figuring out our actual process took some time, but I do think that if, you know, pandemic, over the past year, you know, has you know, as if there has been any positive to come out of that from the band side of things, I think it really kind of allowed us to explore that process and get more comfortable with you know, how we’re supposed to how everybody’s comfortable with how we’re supposed to, you know, write songs and get things done. We know we did a lot of remote collaboration you know, a lot of you know, remote collaboration using logic and kind of sharing files and stuff like that.

Sean: And you know, I think that that really brought gave everybody a little bit higher comfort level to be able to explore their ideas and not be like kind of like in the spotlight, you know, at the rehearsal space to be put on the spot and hurry up and come up with something, even though I don’t think that was always an expectation, but, you know, you can get that feeling being you know, in, you know, not wanting to waste people’s time and stuff like that. So it really allowed us to kind of you know, take Our time a little bit more and get the parts down and I think that really, especially with like the new the new songs and stuff like that I can fear the progress when it comes to that stuff.

What is a band story or memory that you guys have as a collective band that like? What is your favorite experience so far.

Christopher: No one’s laughing right away.

Sean: I’m just thinking about that fated trip to a buffalo.

Sharon: Yeah. Well, we’re gonna put a positive spin. I mean, it was a bonding period.

Sean: Yeah, right.

Sharon: Have you ever been on tour in your car breaks down?

Christopher: I mean, most bands have a breakdown.

Eric: Not just a breakdown though. The car shut off on the highway. Like, the lights out, everything stopped and we just drifted off to the side.

Christopher: No power. It was cold too, right?

Sharon: It was like very classic band breakdown story where, on top of that, you know, we were gonna go play a DIY show that we didn’t personally promote. And I had the flu.

Christopher: That’s right. You were sick. Yeah.

Sharon: We were very lucky that I didn’t have it, you all would have gotten it like we were sharing a car but it you know, it might have been because we were in the car together. It was like 2019, November, so very possibly could have been a strain of it

Sean: It was November, it seemed like it was like the middle of winter.

Sharon: I think it was November though.

Sean: I think you’re right.

Eric: I think November too.

Sean: Yeah. But yeah, um, other than that, you know, we’ve had really, really great experiences, recording, you know, out at in at Miner Street in Philadelphia, we kind of, you know, have been using that studio and Brian McTear and Matt Poirier, you know, as producer and engineer, respectively. And it’s just been a really great experience. I think we all kind of decided, maybe I’m putting words in everybody’s mouth, but we really wanted to have a bit of a different recording experience. And, like, you know, kind of be able to immerse ourselves in the experience where, you know, we, you know, go to the studio for you know, a couple of days and that’s all we’re doing there in a different city. You know, we found Miner, I’m not sure who found Miner Street.

Sharon: Suppose you are Chris.

Sean: Yeah, I think you’re right, but Brian McTear is somebody that I had heard of, from you know, doing a couple other things that I knew like he did like the first couple like Matt Pond PA records and he did Sharon Van Etten’s Epic record. He also had a kind of a YouTube show called Shaking Through which he would bring in bands in for a weekend and they would record like one song and they would be all documented. It’s they’re really good. Like Big Thief, Waxahachie, who else like Halfway, this really cool band from Hong Kong.

Sharon: I forget that band’s name too.

Sean: Some, like legit, like, legit, you know, bands over the years. I think Sharon Bennett did come in and do it. Do one of those to do but um, but yeah, so talking to him, you know, on the phone, and he’s kind of like, you know, my age is kind of like grew up in like, the indie scene of like, the, you know, like the mid to late 90s, early 2000s. You know, he’s a musician as well, and we kind of all like, we’re like, yeah, you know, seems like that would be cool to do to work with and it just turned out to be really, really good too.

Christopher: He was really focused. Like I again, that experience is one that I’ve other than the fun dance or the vehicle breaking down while out on the road, but, uh Yeah, like the two times that we’ve gone out there to record now, I just really loved both of the trips. And I like, I really enjoyed working that way because it was kind of more working. And it wasn’t like, if we were to have stayed here in Pittsburgh and done something we probably would have. Not that it wouldn’t have been good, but it probably would have been a little bit more piecemeal, like, because there’s no travel involved. So it’s like, oh, well, maybe next Saturday, we could get a couple hours in and then you go and then maybe a week or two goes by and you book them some more time. Like, I felt like, you know, because we dedicated these two sets of four days there, it was very much like going to work, you know, like getting up in the morning and like, the whole time, it just very focused and dedicated time to spend on the project versus it being maybe a little looser and spread out longer. I think we’ve benefited from that a lot.

Sharon: Yeah, I think definitely we all feel similarly about Brian and Matt and are really positive experiences there, just all the way through and Brian is somebody who so like, we were talking before about collaboration and how we can sometimes get in our own way. And Brian is just like a maestro that comes in and is like, it’s gonna be like this. And we were all like, Oh, yeah, okay, Brian, I hear that. So I mean, like, his notes are really valuable. And he’s also not didactic in any way, you know, he’s just kind of like, this is what I really think and we just all really respect him. So I think that he’s really helped us out a lot.

Christopher: He made us really feel really, I don’t know, the recording, to me, sometimes can be more nerve wracking than playing a live show, where, you know, you’re the only person out there performing at a time and everybody’s in the control room and listening to just your isolated stuff happening or whatever. And they, I don’t know, both of them really made me feel a lot more comfortable in that environment. And the whole process of doing that where, you know, recorded in other studios before and it’s either they’re just literally hitting the record button. And, you know, that’s it, they’re just there to document what you’re doing. But they were really a big part of what these songs that we’re releasing now they’re a large part of that process.

Sharon: Yeah, like, especially with the process itself in terms of you know, they’re Brian has this console from Sigma, New York. And he also saw the first four songs we recorded on tape first. And he used the bass and drums, I think it’s correct me if I’m wrong, but we record it on tape, he use those sketches to, for us to overdub the guitars and vocals over, but we kept like everything else. Right? And it’s just this like really kind of pure experience it to the point where, you know, sometimes Chris and I can get carried away with, oh, we need one more guitar part. And Brian’s like, you don’t need one more guitar part. So he just had, you know, the philosophy that both of them have Brian and that is really helped us to, like focus, and find this sound that Chris was saying, you know, this is like a big part of what it sounds like now.

What is The Real Sea trying to sound like?

Sharon: Can I field this one first, because I feel like I’ve met a lot of resistance in trying to name like specific bands that we could use as benchmarks or genres that we could use as benchmarks but in the same process, like at the same time, we get compared to a lot of bands, so we were just like, okay, that’s what we sound like. Also we do have ideas of common bands that we wanted to sound like and that for sure. You know, and coming from like different eras of music to like the ones that really spoke to us at a certain age, we’re all like have slightly different ages and we have like slightly different influences because of that, I think. And then so we come together and you know, with like very not like the same kind of really strict expectations that you might have with other bands that I’ve worked with, for example, where people kind of get all the references, and we were all like on the same page, we all come from, like really different diverse backgrounds. And so we might not get everyone’s references and we might not be on like exactly the same thing that kind of works out.

And then for these two songs that we just recorded, we went in, it was like painting on a canvas, you know, and you get kind of this I want to say like a Bob Ross kind of like, a landscape and you’re almost all the way through, you know, and he’s like, almost done his painting. And then he just starts blobbing stuff on. So we went in with, like, most of that done, and then Brian comes along. And, like I was talking about his console before, and I forgot to finish this thought that, you know, he added a lot of analog effects through that console that are really subtle and dynamic and super cool. And also, he worked a lot for me specifically and I think Chris too, like the tone of our guitars. So he’s like that, like last dab. That makes the painting makes sense. But when we were kind of, you know, the beginning of our journey, let’s say, I think we have really kind of all agreed we really liked influences like Broken Social Scene, Metric…I mean, being Canadian, those were like my bands in college growing up, and they have other influences that they probably want to toss it into.

Christopher: Yeah, I mean, we all have different influences. I don’t know how well, to me, I like them being more obscure, like I literally when I come up with chords for songs or ideas for songs, like sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t end up being like, you’ll come up with a part. And you’d be like, Oh, this sounds really great. And then like, maybe after the fifth time you play it, I’m like, wait a second, this sounds like something that already exists.

And then I start like, you know, totally self judging, like, Oh, wait, what is this, somebody already wrote this, this has influenced to somewhere that you don’t want to, you don’t want it to be that because you want to be original you don’t want but then sometimes it just ends up sounding like we’re reminding you of something. And to me, that makes it cool. And it’s also kind of subtle at the same time, no not as obvious. And I, to me, that happens a lot with a lot of the things that we’ve written, we’re like literally one part, you know, only a measure long in a song, I’ll have a whole band that wraps that’s kind of reminds me of them. So that sticks in my head all the time.

But I think the one thing that we didn’t really plan on genre wise was falling into this dream pop category, like we didn’t really set out to be in any specific, like, we kind of fell into that, I guess a little bit later on. I mean, especially after Sharon was in the mix and started, you know, adding the vocals and then some things, softened offs and weren’t quite as Angular anymore.

Sean: I think really starting to, you know, use the effects palette, but guitar wise to, you know, a slightly more like atmosphere sound and I think, you know, less than less Angular I think really started to propel us into what I consider like our wheelhouse now, I mean, it’s not me, I think dream pop, nowadays is such a broad category, you know, as well as you shoegaze. So many things fall into that now. But, you know, Dream pop to me is like, you know, having those atmospheric texture guitars paying attention to the sound palette, not having things be like, you know, I think, you know, it just I think it really complements, you know, Sharon’s vocals to a great extent. And I think we’re still really kind of learning, you know, what we are, I think the one new song that we just recorded, was probably our least prepared song going into the studio and we kind of almost like made a conscious choice to do that to be able to kind of experiment a little bit in the studio, but what really surprised me and a good surprise was when we first You know, when we all started playing that and could actually hear, like in the studio as we were kind of reversing it before recording. It actually, like hear it in the headphones. I think I was like, whoa. Like, I can’t believe that, like this is something that everybody just came to seem to just kind of fall into. You know exactly what it should be. Which I think is a good sign for progressing. Yeah, maybe people don’t feel that way. But I was pretty stoked.

Sharon: Yeah. No, though, it was a really cool experience. And I like I was gonna make a point about the like, I started off playing a Sheraton. Do you remember the Sheraton guys? I was like, I play it on like the mid pickup with like tremolo through a Deluxe Reverb. I was I just wanted everything to sound like water. Like that was my thing. I just wanted everything to sound like really low and underwater like staying on top of it. And now like we’re playing jazz masters with rats and just like not giving a crap. So, I think we like we definitely kind of Chris and I a guitar-wise we kind of like came closer together I think because at first we were always on your OCD with like, what did you play a Mustang? What did you always play?

Christopher: I mean, it’s still kind of my main, I’m inching into the jazz master now sort of becoming more familiar with it, it’s still it’s been great for recording, but I haven’t felt comfortable enough with it live yet. So I definitely want to get it in there. But that’s another thing too, is live sound, tone, instruments, effects, amps don’t always translate. The same way into recording, when you get into studio don’t sound the same. So that’s another thing that tremendously changed with that studio experience of learning how to get just really experimenting a lot more with tone with different instruments with different tools, essentially, and you end up you know, you use something that’s available in the studio, and then Oh, hey, I’m gonna put this on my pedal board now, or the studio had a guitar there or a mic there that we use, and I go, hey, maybe try to, after you’ve experienced that, it just kind of opens up. You know, a lot of doors, sonic tone wise, and all that.

Eric, you said you had more pedals in the past and now you have fewer pedals. Where are you trying to land with what you sound like?

Eric: Yeah, I mean, coming in. It was only

Sean: John Taylor, Duran Duran. Haha

Eric: Coming in it was just trying to throw everything just bring everything I had to you know, see what would stick around and then kind of window that down. And yeah, to me, when we started out, we were kind of more like a post rock band. So which is funny too. So like I started out like fuzzy and delay pedals and all kinds of stuff like that on bass. And it we found Yeah, it works better if those were on the guitars and the bass, you know, was just a more of a foundational thing. But yeah, specifically we’re coming at it from is like, I think about the classic rock players like John Paul Jones and McCartney who really just knew how to prop up a song. But with style, you know, they could do it just right, you know, the parts would be melodic, when it was appropriate to be melodic, and I really just want to try to steal those ideas. Also, too, I feel like a lot of my parts, if you were to take like a Green Day baseline, and just really slow it down. It might be a oh, the other way around, you take my parts right now and speed them up. Right on the wall and create a bassline.

What are The Real Sea’s songs about, lyrically? Where do you find inspiration for those lyrics?

Eric: I’ll take this one.

::All Laugh::

Sharon: Can you? Just do an impression of me.

Eric: If I wouldn’t have known you. I would like if there’s this quote, there’s like this Bob Dylan quote where he says, Yeah, if I didn’t know Bob Dylan, I’d probably think he had all the answers too. I hear these like really like imagery, like there’s a lot of like, dense beautiful imagery in your in your words and then just me with my own interpretations of it, I just hear it as this abstract, really loose collection of thoughts that then words that sound good together. And that is how you’re right but you don’t it has meaning like I’m jumbling this answer but like the images mean something to you.

Sharon: Right.

Eric: Whereas I hear them and just you know, it’s an image and it’s whatever but you’re not doing it like that, you’re doing it from a specific point of view a specific.

Sharon: It would be really fun for me if you guys would analyze one of my songs like and, and just like tell me what you think is happening and really fun, not hilarious informational, like formative for me.

So songwriting is kind of a slog for me it’s always been a little bit difficult. And you know, I like Eric said I depend a lot on imagery at times when say a song is already established like the last couple of songs that we’ve done writing lyrics to establish music is like a little bit different for me than the other way around. So when it’s a song that I kind of put together first as a sketch and presented like you know, I come with a whole set of lyrics at first when it’s the other way around, or just kind of like, what’s a good vowel and they just kind of you know, I’ll draw from you know, like most people have personal experiences, sometimes natures and sometimes relationships just what I’m going through and it has you know, the past four years, five years since I’ve lived in Pittsburgh emotionally I’ve gone through like a lot of different stages. So it’s been a minefield of and a goldmine of information and lyrics.

Eric: Oh, I think there’s that imagery. Goldmine.

Christopher: Maybe we have to write that down to that’s a possible future some title. Goldmine Field.

What is your most recent single about?

Sharon: Yeah, Jeong Kwan is a monk. A Buddhist monk and so I don’t know, if I ever told you guys this. So most of my family is Buddhist and the person I was really close to, in my family, my grandmother, she took solemn vows to abstain from meat and swearing and gambling and drinking and a whole slew of other things. And we meditate like four or five hours a day. And so, like, there’s like a huge Buddhist influence on my life, even though I also grew up Catholic, because my mother’s Catholic and I went to Catholic school.

So it kind of a mishmash, and I found out about John Kwan, it was just like, you know, I was just watching a documentary about her because she is a Michelin starred chef, who, like at a very young age, she was like, I’m gonna go to the monastery live my life there. And that’s the aspect about her that kind of blew me away was just such a beautiful person to want to share food and share you know, like, her philosophy and her religion with others. But yeah, the aspect that blew me away was like, holy crap when she was 17. She was just like, I know what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life, why can’t I do that.

A large part of the song is kind of about that, you know, just contemplating my choices and how, you know, they’ve led me to where I am. And not always I wasn’t doing it in the most positive way. Unfortunately, like I was kind of struggling at the time with depression, so that peeks through in the lyrics a lot. And you know, just remembering my grandmother and talking about this character that I you know, just this incredible figure that I just happened to see a documentary about so I think it was an episode it was like an episode of a chef show.

And the riff came from Chris’s say so like I had been ruminating on this riff for like a while and then watched the doc and then sat with it. And it all came out.

Sean: It is kind of like I was listening to that song the other day and thinking about how the music really came out to just give me that visual you know, effect of the lyrics like just the way that it builds you know, slowly and to like kind of like you know, what do you what’s the, like the big goal of Buddhism like Nirvana is that right, am I?

Sharon: Oh, yeah, I guess.

Sean: Yeah. So just kind of like that like you know, reaching the highest level just the way the song builds I don’t want to stop.

Sharon: I think not interferences the goal but Nirvana is like the end.

Sean: Yeah. But you know, I just you know, it’s funny how that how it just basically came out so like the music and the lyrics are really complimentary of that.

What are each of your favorite songs you’ve written so far and why?

Sharon: Definitely, Jeong Kwan is like the, the one that I think is the closest to me for you know, I think I’ve said this somewhere else before we’re just I’ve put a lot of myself into it, which it might not come across, because they’re almost such specific like references that I’m not sure you know, that. It might just come across as a jumble to somebody else. But I’m kind of like a more of a diary than any of the other songs.

Sean: Actually, I want to hear Chris and Eric’s.

Christopher: It’s hard for me to pick a favorite I think I mean, I really like. I like all the ones that we’ve recorded so for, for many different reasons, different parts of them. Even Sure Thing which we rerecorded in the studio, we recorded it as a demo here in Pittsburgh just to be able to get on a page and to be able to book shows, and have some type of representation of what we sound like online, to be a vehicle to do things. We did rerecorded in Philly. So I’m actually really excited to put that back out again.

But most recently, I think the song title now is Fall Awake, working title, Falling Awake, fall awake which I think was the one that we talked about being kind of the least finished when we brought it into the studio. And the way that song develops and came together, mechanically, in the studio. I don’t mean mechanically in like a cold robotic way, but just a function like a form of process type of way, the way that we worked on it, and put it together.

And then I still remember hearing it for the first time, like the first initial rough neck. As Eric and I were driving back home from Philly and just being like, kind of blown away by it, like really, like, ridiculously excited to not just like I personally but like, I can’t wait for people to hear that song because I really, I don’t know, like, I’m like at a loss for words right now actually explaining how excited I am about the song. And it’s the first time that we’ve actually used a part, because we did that song we struggled with for a long time to figure out how to make it work. Because the main riff that was written was a pretty repetitive, kind of loop type of risk, where I kind of liken it to like being stuck in a roundabout where like, you know, you keep circling and circling. And it’s wow this is cool. It could go anywhere, how do we get out of the roundabout, there’s, like, you know, four or five different exits, we could take this one or we could take this one, but you’re still moving, you’re still going because you don’t want to stop.

But you have to figure out how to figure out which, yeah, Big Ben, parliament. And we struggled a long time, I mean, that song, the riff for that song I wrote quite a while ago. And that one to me, really, I almost kind of feel like I had been saving that riff for a special time. And didn’t want it to just be, oh, let’s just use it for this song. And it’s, you know, that’s kind of cool, whatever. And I could have used it probably in a couple other bands that I was in or, but I really feel like it really found a home in this band. And it really like, I feel really happy with how that song turned out.

And kind of releasing it out of my clutches a little bit. For the initial part that I wrote and Eric, we actually kind of melded the solution was melting it together with a riff that Eric wrote on his own and it really turned out great, because it was the solution for that round about, you know, dilemma that we’re in to figure out how to make it cohesive and turn it into a real song.

That one, sorry for a long description, but that one has a lot of deep meaning with me the one that I really like and super excited with how it turned out and can’t wait to get it out there.

Eric: I’m gonna take Ceiling Lines. I just like how it came together how it sounds it’s got a good like it’s got a good punch to it while still being smooth. It takes some twists and turns.

Sean: Yeah, I think that one turned out great. I think I’m probably gonna go with Sure Thing, only because I just remember like, that being like, the first song that we kind of wrote as a band, you know, per se, like with just like, I was like, oh my god yeah, that’s what I want to sound like it and I remember when we were recording it at the demo at the studio and just the first time that I, you know came in and heard Sharon’s vocals on that. And I was like, I had like goosebumps, it was just, I was so you know, blown away by like, I’m like, oh my god this is, you know, this is some good stuff and you know, so I think that one’s pretty special to me. But I still love playing and I think it’s still one of our best songs.

What are some songs or bands that you just love?

Sean: Oh, I mean, I think for me, like you know, I’ve always loved you know, like, early 90s shoegaze dream pop stuff, like I still listen like Slow Dive is probably one of my favorite bands. You know, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, that kind of stuff.

But I also you know, you know, always go back to you know, that stuff, I think but I’ve always like, you know, really trying to I’m a big fan of like, just like pop music in general. I think you know, I mean, in going back to like, you know, the 80s you know, type stuff and you know, like The Cure and you know, New Order and Smith’s that. You know, I listened I like to listen to new stuff, but like, those are always my standbys to go back to, you know, whenever I can’t think of what to listen to them. Like, I can always listen to that and never get sick of it.

Sharon: This is always a difficult question for me. I have like a lot of, I guess, folk influences that I listened to like in terms of Oh, do you have like a go to album? Yeah, I’ll put on something like Punch Brothers, Phosphorus and Blues or something and, or Joanna Newsom or, you know, Anaïs Mitchell, Adrianne Lenker’s like solo stuff.

But then, or like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, you know, like, then I’ll go into my Canadian indie royalty kind of the early aughts, Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Stars. Like, that’s maybe what I would like zone out to, if I really needed to do that.

Another one that I you know, can constantly go back to is Radiohead. Or, like certain bands that have covered Radiohead, or like Radiohead covers. Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like it just really yeah, depends on the night of course everyone’s different but. A

lot of female vocalists, Phoebe Bridgers, Sharon Van Etten, and Lucy Dacus like the contemporary like, Angel Olsen,. I’ve been listening in Tennis a little bit lately. And I think that kind of like, really inspires me.

Widowspeak. Widowspeak actually, like, really inspired me for the last two songs that we just did. Her sense of melody is just like crazy. So you know, yeah.

Eric: So next week, in about eight days, in exactly seven days and one and a half hours. Primus is gonna play it here in Pittsburgh, but not just the normal Primus show. They’re gonna play Rush’s Farewell to Kings album start to finish. We’re going to do the whole thing. And I just feel like that sums me up pretty well right there, I’m a mess.

I don’t I really don’t know if I have the capacity to experience so much of the things I like it one time. And the so before this tour was planned in 2019, and then it got cancelled in 2020 but in 2020 the plan was to have Battles open the show. So, I mean, that would have been it. I’m like, Why do anything else after that, like it’s not gonna get any cooler. Yeah, that’s where I’m at.

Sharon: You want to hear something funny, Eric. So we were driving to Philly. And I think the question was like, What do you think Eric would be listening to on this road trip and we Sean and I was like, well, Primus obviously, Sean said, Eric likes Primus.

Sean: I knew that he liked Les Claypool. I didn’t know that he was so into Primus’s music.

Eric: Oh, man. You can ask me any Primus trivia question.

Christopher: It’s that deep.

Sean: I didn’t want to. I have nothing against Primus.

Eric: I know it’s not the most sophisticated. You know, it’s not the classiest.

Sean: No, I mean, Sailing the Seas of Cheese was a good one.

Sharon: So three things about Eric. He’s really tall. He wishes he could play fretless in our band, but we won’t allow it.

Eric: Yeah, due to lack of ability and lack of permission.

Sharon: And Primus.

Eric: Yeah, I mean that I’m the stereotypical of a bass player as it gets. I hit all the stereotypes.

Christopher: I probably way over categorized bands and how they had some influence me just to love music and to listen to music and to pay attention to music. But then some specifically influenced me and more of a I wish I could play like this or I wish I could write stuff like this. So they influenced me to play often said that, I know that I see it really good band when it either affects me in one of either two ways, or both ways that that’s even possible, but especially with like a live show. And it hasn’t either. I know I really love the band if they either number one make me want to go home and write music. Or they number two, make me never even want to touch an instrument and again, like do what they’re doing. Like those two outcomes essentially like opposite directions, but they have the same effect on me.

And honestly, Depeche Mode is responsible for every fan that I listen to now. Hands down, I had a pretty weird experience in junior high where this was in the mid 80s. And everybody in high school was listening to Bon Jovi and Poison and Ratt and Def Leppard and Quiet Riot. And because that’s what was on the radio, you know.

But then some one gave me a cassette tape that was people are people and I took that home. And it basically kind of changed my life. I was like, wow, there’s this whole other world of music that exists that isn’t on MTV at the time, until 120 minutes happened and postmodern MTV. This rise of, you know, underground music kind of started to become alternative music became more popular and actually started to get some limelight.

But, you know, everybody that I knew at the time was listening to hair metal. And, you know, I was listening to all 80s new ways to The Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order. And then that led into Throwing Muses and the Pixies and the whole Boston, New England scene, which was more, it was wild because I was I played guitar before that. But then I started listening to this whole big new wave, and there’s not a lot of guitar and that it was all synth-driven. And I didn’t play guitar for a long time because I was like a guitar, ugh. Keyboards, synth, and drum machine.

But then that all kind of came back when like, you know I got the whole early 90s you know, kind of, I’m a huge post rock fan to Shipping News, June of 44, Rodan and my God, but there’s a whole side of, you know, more modern stuff I don’t. I feel like sometimes I get out of touch with the newer stuff, but like, a lot of bands that Sharon’s named as well, you know, Big Thief, Land of Talk, which is an offshoot from the Broken Social Scene. You know, she was in Broken Social Scene for a little while. And a lot of the Canadian bands that she mentioned, Broken Social Scene has huge influence on me. Guitar playing as well as any of the other ways that I mentioned.

But there’s a lot a lot, Smashing Pumpkin, guitar-wise. Nirvana, of course, big, you know, going to high school when that whole thing happened was a huge very huge thing. You know, as far as changing in the face of music at the time.

Yeah, I don’t know there’s so many Low, love the band Low, a lot of love and that time for making become a real problem when you try to decide like, what do I you asked this question earlier? What do you want to sound like? That’s a fight inside of me a lot of time. Like I want to sound like this. But I also want to sound I guess I want to sound real nice. And very minimalistic and very, like, I want to sound like Low. And then I also want to sound like, you know, the Misfits or some other loud, Fugazi, yeah, a whole DC scene. Sunny Day Real Estate. A lot of like, early emo cons, lots of stuff and too many to list.

What are The Real Sea’s future plans?

Sharon: I’m gonna have a baby. I will be 39 weeks pregnant. I don’t know what you guys are gonna do No, I’m just kidding.

Sean: Yeah, so obviously, we’re going to be taking a break from live stuff. But I think, you know, our, our game plan was to, you know, be able to have get some songs recorded, obviously, you know, we probably would have been a lot further along. If the pandemic didn’t happen. But I think you know, like I said before that that was positive for us in some ways, but obviously, you know, we had just literally gone into the studio that February of 20, and then everything shut down. So, you know, we finished up those four songs. And those actually didn’t even get done until like, what close to like March or something this year, you know, finally finished. And then, you know, so I would say that, like, you know, unfortunately, you know, we kind of lost a whole year of being able to be a live band. But we really kind of became stronger as like, uh, you know, writing in the creative process so right now, you know, we have those other two songs.

So what our plan is to kind of release those as singles and stretch out our kind of name in a way until, you know, Sharon’s, ready to start, you know, getting back into playing with us again, but I think that you know, Eric and Chris and I had talked about you know, trying to keep working on writing and stuff like that and hopefully maybe getting together you know, here in there to kind of keep fresh with the songs we already have. So we can kind of get hopefully not take too long to get back into the swing of it when Sharon’s ready. But, you know, we’re obviously super, super excited for the new, the new little one coming in so

Sharon: Our newest fan. She’s gonna be like, Mom, you’re such a dork. Your band sucks. No, just kidding, who knows.

Sean: But um, you know, I think that, uh, you know, we’re all we’ve gotten a lot of really good feedback from the music that we released already. And, you know, we’re planning some videos and just stuff to kind of stretch it out over the next, you know, six months, whatever it takes, you know, to do. But, um, I think overall, like, we’re really excited to get all the music that we have recorded out, especially, you know, I think I really heard a significant growth in the two new ones that we just did, and I’m excited for the future for sure.

Christopher: Yeah, hopefully, some promotion, you know, putting the songs out and trying to get them out side of Pittsburgh would be great.

Sean: That’s already happening, you know, it’s hard to like, you know, especially when you’re not playing live to really care all that much about Pittsburgh, you know, it’s like, I’d rather like get our music out to the world, and worry too much about, but you know, WYEP is been really, really great to us, especially with the first single and really is helping to get our name out there.

And, you know, even The X a little bit, even though that’s not really what I would consider, like our demographic, but, you know, the local show that they have, they don’t have to play it, but they do. Which is cool. But yeah.

Sharon: I think Pittsburgh is a really strong place for us. And that, you know, Paper Machete saw a lot of support that, you know, like, surprised by and, like, overwhelmed by how people reacted to that.

Sean: Yeah, right. It’s funny that, you know, even five years ago, there was hardly any bands like us playing and now, you know, you have, you know, at least, you know, a handful of bands that are kind of doing the whole, like, kind of dream pop shoegaze, you know, broad term music.

And, you know, it seems to be kind of getting a little bit more popular, if you will. But, you know, I think that we’re, we don’t want to be pigeonholed. But on the other hand, I think our, the sound that we’re developing is, call it what you will, but you know, I think it’s really starting to become our sound, you know. And I think that we’re, hopefully, you know, I kind of keep building on that.

Do you have any final thought?

Christopher: I don’t think so. Anything to add? No, I enjoyed the questions. Usually, you know, you never when you come into these things, a lot of times you get the same questions, or the obvious ones are kind of redundant ones. But this is like, extremely enjoyable. So I want to thank you for actually asking us to do it and whatever. This is great, you know, like, given the circumstances. And, you know, this is, I guess, the new normal with Zoom meetings and stuff, obviously.

But no, yeah, thank you so much for having us be a part of this and asking us to do it. And the questions were not redundant or stale, or they were great. And I had a good time answering them.

Sean: Thanks a millionaire.

Christopher: Thank you, Aaron. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Credits for Jeong Kwan – Single

released September 17, 2021
Recorded at Miner Street Recordings, Philadelphia, PA in February 2020
Produced by Brian McTear
Mixed by Matt Poirier
Mastered by Ryan Schwabe
Music by The Real Sea
Lyrics by Sharon Mok
Cover Art by Charlie Wagers

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