Too Much Joy’s Bassist Cracks the Code to Chat Pile’s Success
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When we had the pleasure of interviewing indie legend Too Much Joy this week, we talked a hell of a lot about their upcoming plans, a special reissue they have on the way, their take on Authoritarian America and much more.
We’ll be bringing you a couple of articles stemming from the 60-minutes-plus conversation with two of the Too Much Joy dudes, but as a way of whetting your palette, we present you today with an informative chunk of conversation with bassist/vocalist Sandy Smallens and vocalist Tim Quirk that wouldn’t have fit into the other stories.
Our exchange revolves around not just Too Much Joy but also Chat Pile. Specifically, Smallens addresses why he thinks other young bands should follow Chat Pile’s lead – not duplicating their sound, but learning how the best noise-rock band of the past five years interacts with their fanbase.
In the words of Ariel from The Little Mermaid, “It’s a whole new world,” and Smallens all but implores bands that want to build a strong fanbase to take note of how Oklahoma City giants Chat Pile have done so.
What advice would you give to younger artists who, in this day and age, have to market themselves? When you guys began, there was no social media, and it wasn’t like you always had to be presenting the best version of yourselves. Being snotty, like you guys admitted you were in your early years, was common if not even expected for indie-rock bands.
My heart goes out to these younger bands that are incredibly warm-hearted and just want to live their lives as musicians. I hosted a black-metal band over my place last night, and they were the sweetest guys in the world.
Sandy Smallens: Yeah, usually the darker the music, the nicer the band. The guys from Chat Pile are some of the nicest people I’ve ever spoken and hung out with.
So what sort of advice would you give young artists on how to reconcile the fact that they are obligated to have this sanitized public image but also stand for what they believe in, all the while staying true to the ethos of … I don’t want to say genre, per se, but do you catch my drift? I don’t know how I would deal with that if I were in my early 20s.
Tim Quirk: My answer is specifically to people like us, who have not achieved certain levels of fame: To the extent that we have a career, it is because we were just always ourselves. We were being ourselves through our music. Sometimes exaggerated versions of ourselves, but we were trying to be truthful, so that our songs gave you an idea of who we were when we’d come to your town. We wanted to be the types of people you’d meet and invite us to your place.
Even though we didn’t think of ourselves as [having] a “brand,” our brand really was us, because that’s what we were advertising. Some of the best shows and some of the most important shows we played were to, like, five people. [And even though] we were only playing to five people, we still played like we were [in front of a crowd of] 5,000. And those five people remembered it and, like, literally, donate to our IndieGoGo campaigns today.
All of that is just my way of saying that, what I have found for a band that plays our type of music, be yourself. It pays returns just being yourself. Now that there is social media, anytime I’m second-guessing myself about a post, I say, “Just be yourself. Don’t second-guess it. Nobody’s paying attention anyway.” If it ever gets to a point where somebody’s paying attention and you need to learn something, you’ll learn it. But generally speaking, people respond to honesty and genuineness.
“Authenticity” is a fraught word, because you can be a blues musician who’s never picked cotton. If you take a picture of you in a cotton field, is that authentic? What about people who take selfies at Auschwitz? When we came up, we were about as DIY as you can get. We had to learn how to book our own tours.
Smallens: It was not quite as dismal as it is with small venues now, but it was pretty hard to get gigs. The only way you could get to play at CBGB was on the Monday night audition. And if you didn’t bring 20 people, [founder] Hilly [Kristal] would never talk to you again. Somehow we got over that number and started playing there.
In a weird way, we had it worse, because it was very binary. If you didn’t get signed, you were fucked. That’s why people like R.E.M. and stuff were so impressive, because they actually breached that barrier and showed us how to go from independent to superstars. Nowadays, there’s lots of different ways to infiltrate into the system.
It might be getting tiresome [for me to keep raving about Chat Pile,] but after their last album came out – their breakthrough album, [2024’s] Cool World – [Luther Manhole (Griffin Sansone) staged] these very informal sit-downs and showed people how he played this song and that song.
Because they have really weird tunings, people were just dying to know [how he played like that]. Other bands [would’ve just] released the tabs. But Luther was, like, “Here’s how I do it. If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments section, [and I’ll respond].”
That’s how you connect with your fanbase in this day and age, and Chat Pile is doing it.
Stay tuned for much more from my interview with Too Much Joy.
Photo credit: Bayley Hanes
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