On Saturday October 4th, Salt Late City’s World’s Worst took the stage at Gabe’s ahead of Lip Critic and White Reaper as a part of The Englert Theater’s Track Zero series. The four piece heavy and moody rock band, comprised of Andy Aronson on guitar and vocals, Jake Phillips on bass and backing vocals, Jackson Wise on guitar, and Zach Mayo on drums, took some time after sound check to chat with me. They discussed their latest record “American Muscle”, how they got started playing music, and The Real Housewives of SLC.
Logan Melia: Let’s get rocking and rolling here. World’s Worst, how we doing guys?
Andy Aronson: Dude, doing well. Stoked to be in Iowa City.
Logan: Your first time, right?
Andy: Yeah, first time playing Iowa at all. Ever, really?
Logan: Okay, how are the vibes? What are we, what’s the feel?
Andy: Dude, good. We walked around the little main street down there briefly. Beautiful. There’s a lot of people out. A lot of bananas. People are wearing banana costumes
Logan: Banana bar crawl today.
Jake Phillips: Yeah, we saw a lot of bananas.
Logan: We have one about once a month. Different themes, different costumes.
Jackson Wise: You think the bananas might make an appearance here?
Logan: I have seen a banana here before. I’ve seen a monkey costume here before. I’ve seen many things. An alien, a blow-up alien that crowd surfed.
Andrew: Dude… If you get the monkey costume and the banana costume in the same room, that sounds dangerous. That could go south.
Logan: That’s a good one, that’s a good one. Did you prep that one?
Jake: No, no, no, no, he’s quick.
Jake: Andy’s a shit talker.
Andy: Something’s speaking through me right now.
Jackson: His comedy juices are flowing.
Jake: He’s really good at shit talking. Is he the funniest one of the group?
Andy: No, I think that depends on the day. I think morning time, Jake is the one ripping. I probably didn’t talk for the first four hours of the day. So it’s Jake’s free range.
Jake: Yeah, I’m a morning person for sure.
Logan: Okay, are we talking like long-form jokes like you’re setting up or just, you know, off-the-bat, you know, monkey banana jokes?
Jake: Just kind of just tweaking, saying like crazy shit, you know?
Andy: Yeah, just let… Just no buffers.
Jake: Stream of consciousness.
Logan: Okay, yeah, yeah. Is it a pretty cohesive stream of consciousness amongst the four of you?
Andy: By the end of this tour, we gain a hive mind sort of thing where we can all look at the same object and have the same joke immediately, probably. But we’ll get there. I don’t think quite yet.
Logan: And that’s a family. Now, the tour’s just started. We’re already at day three right now. Milwaukee, Chicago, Iowa City. With some really cool bands.
Jake: We played a couple shows on the way out here too, just to get to Milwaukee. We played Omaha and Minneapolis.
Jackson: This is day three? Holy shit.
Logan: It’s been a hike for you guys from Salt Lake City, correct?
Andy: Yeah, yeah.
Logan: The scene out there, how is it? As someone who doesn’t really know too much about it, what’s the vibe?
Andy: It’s great, I love it. I feel like I was talking to someone on this tour about it, that Salt Lake is such a… It’s a pretty isolated place in a way. It’s like far from every other major city. So like the scene feels very tight-knit, where it’s like everyone kind of knows everyone. It’s hard to tour, so it like builds a really strong community in Salt Lake, which I love. It’s like we have so many friends in it that are like, I don’t know, going on years now of like everyone’s bands, iterations and all that. It’s like the same kind of people that you see every time. It’s really nice.
Logan: That’s really sick. The West Coast, obviously things are more spread out. You mentioned that. Do you find yourself touring the West Coast a lot more? Yeah.
Jake: It for sure feels like easier for us too, because we have like a lot of friends in California, and we’re like put out… One of the record labels that put us out is from Oakland. So it’s like we have a lot of support in the Bay Area. So California and the West Coast is just like super easy for us to do that loop.
Zach Mayo: It’s really accessible compared to getting out to like Kansas City.
Andy: Yeah, it takes us like a few days to get on the East Coast to do it right. But West Coast we can kind of tap in pretty quick. But we really, I mean this year we’ve done, this will be our second time going through the East Coast. But last year we did the West Coast like three or four times. We did a lot.
Zach: Yeah, too much maybe.
Logan: You mentioned the Bay Area. I mean what a scene for music. I mean Jawbreaker.
I mean just like all these incredibly influential bands.
Logan: What was on your playlist growing up?
Andy: Yeah, growing up it’s like I think skateboarding, like skateboarding movies and videos. That is like my early exposure to a lot of music. And I found like Dinosaur Junior, Sonic Youth, like all of those that are like still to this day, bands I listen to pretty constantly
like I found when I was like 11 watching like an Alien Workshop video or something. So that was like my entry point into like music that felt like mine. Not just like things that maybe my parents were putting on the radio or something.
Jake: I really liked like pop punk and emo when I was like younger. My like older sister liked like Warped Tour music. And so like the suggested videos on like the family computer YouTube would be like blink-182. And I just bumped that like hella.
Logan: What about you guys?
Zach: Oh, um, yeah, it was a lot of the kind of pop punk, like Fall Out Boy and sort of the mainstream alternative music that was on the radio. And then kind of like Jake would like recommended shit on YouTube just from looking at that. Yeah. And then I had a drum teacher that had a pretty good taste in music and would like… He knew some guys in Thursday. And so like he taught me how to play a Thursday song.
Logan: Like Tucker Rule?
Zach: Oh no, the Car Crash one. Yeah, which I don’t know if people like that much, that’s the one he taught me.
Logan: They’re crazy. They opened up for MCR. Was that a MetLife or whatever? I’m from the Chicago area. They played this really small venue out in the suburbs to like 200 people or something like that on a Wednesday night. It was one of the most electric shows I’ve ever been to in my life.
Andy: That’s awesome.
Logan: You got anything, you know, out of left field?
Jackson: Well, yeah, I mean, I grew up just listening to whatever my dad had in his car and then started skating. And my first CD I bought was the first song that played on our local skate park’s website. It was One-Armed Scissor by At The Drive-In. So “Relationship of Command” was my first CD and that kind of started my blueprint with a lot of my life. Something that no fifth graders should listen to.
Logan: Well, I mean, you wouldn’t be here without it. Maybe, maybe.
Jackson: But you know, At The Drive-In inspired me to start learning guitar and start taking it seriously. The Mars Volta, I don’t sing in this band, but they inspired me to sing.
Logan: When did you guys start playing your instruments?
Andy: Dude, I was kind of late to it. I learned like open chords when I was younger. Just like very, but then I like kind of didn’t really care that much and I just wanted to skateboard. And then kind of started teaching myself how to like get around the guitar when I was like 18. Yeah, I had like a little background, but kind of didn’t really pursue it much. Like through high school, I didn’t play like guitar at all.
Jake: Yeah, I started playing guitar like pretty young. And then I played in the orchestra like in middle school. Like I played the bass in the orchestra and then stopped playing around freshman year. And I actually kind of, the orchestra made me hate music. So I kind of stopped for like, you know, like, I don’t know, from like 16 to 19. I didn’t really play music. Like when I went to college, like I didn’t bring my guitar or like anything.
Logan: Really?
Jake: Yeah.
Logan: I mean, drums are a little harder to take to college.
Zach: Yeah, absolutely. I started playing the drums when I was like 13 and then stopped at 17. And then I didn’t bring the drum kit out to Utah. I’m from Ohio. So I didn’t bring that out until I think we got a house like our junior year. And then didn’t play the kit at all until like a year later. And when Andrew and Jake wanted to start playing music, so.
Logan: How about you? When did you start playing guitar?
Jackson: I started playing guitar somewhere in elementary school. My brother got the red, I guess it was a Squire Strat. I don’t remember. It was some off-brand red, it was a red Stratocaster. And I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. So I essentially just took it.
Logan: I peeked through your guys’ blog on the website. There was mention of a Stratocaster that inspired, what was it? “No, I’m Not”. Yeah, that’s. Is that going to make an appearance tonight? Is that a on-tour guitar?
Andy: That’s been my mainstay for a little while now. I love that guitar. It’s so fun, but yeah. I love a Strat. I love the, I like that if you Google guitar, like a Strat is the first image that shows up. It’s like the most normal guitar.
Jake: It’s like the guitar emoji.
Andy: Exactly. It’s like the most normal guitar. It’s awesome.
Logan: Yeah. All right. So new record this year, very exciting stuff. You brought acoustics, shakers, a whole bunch of stuff. When you’re recording, do you ever have any off-the-wall ideas where you’re like, “let’s get a mandolin in the mix”? Or any big things you want to bring in later?
Andy: I had an idea and Jake executed it, but we used a shotgun for a sound.
Logan: Nice. That’s awesome.
Jake: Yeah, there’s a song called “Angus” and it goes like, “bow-bow (shotgun sound)”. It’s me playing the shotgun.
Logan: Is that going to make an appearance?
Jackson: I don’t think, yeah, I don’t think we can bring that in.
Jake: Yeah, I don’t think they’d love that one.
Andy: Venues don’t like that. That sound checker, like, can we check the shotgun? They don’t know how to do that one.
Logan: Ask “how many mics do you need”.
Jake: We brought up the idea and the guy, we were recording it with this guy named Rocky in his basement and he was just like, oh yeah, hold on. He grabbed his gun.
Zach: “Yeah, let me get my 11 gauge”.
Andy: Yeah, we threw a lot of ideas around. He had like all kinds of like kind of toys and random music gear in his basement.
Jake: We had this pedal steel, or not pedal steel, lap steel. Nice. And like synthesizers and like.
Andy: Yeah, a lot of things that like we don’t, like we don’t, we knew going into it, it’s like we’re not going to do any of this live. It’s like we’re just using this to like flesh out an idea here. Yeah, but yeah, that’s kind of the whole idea with the record is like we fleshed out all the ideas as like a live performance and then see what holes we can punch in with like different ideas, different, like a new guitar track that we probably can’t play live or like a new synth pad, like, you know, things like that. Just to kind of flesh it all out.
Jake: Tambourines and shit like that.
Andy: Yeah, shakers.
Jake: There’s a couple, we knew we wanted to like take a couple, like I know it’s pretty normal in the grand scheme of music, but for us, it’s a bit of a little like, like, you know, something different.
Andy: Experimental. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we’re pretty bare bones, at least in the past when we record, it’s like. Guitars. Guitar track, bass track, drums. Let’s get vocals on it, call it a day. But yeah, we spent a lot more time with it on this record.
Logan: When you bring in someone like a steel guitar, who plays that? Do you bring someone in to play that or do you guys figure it out yourselves?
Jake: The guy who produced our record, Rocky, played the steel guitar and he actually knew his way around like the synths and drum machines and like tambourine and shit. He’s just like a crazy dude who has a lot of, a lot of weird music knowledge, you know?
Andy: Yeah, he, yeah, he played the synths, played like a white noise machine essentially at one point. Like he, he was awesome. It was really fun recording with him. He kind of can know, he knows how to get around just about everything. It’s cool.
Logan: How long did it take you to record this record? What was the, how long did it take you to write, you know, all that stuff?
Andy: The writing process is like probably slowly over a year, I would say. And then recording, we kind of like, we didn’t do it in the traditional sense of like studio time, quote unquote, where it’s like we all had the time off and we all got there and we like muscled it through. We kind of all just like fit in our like work schedule, like head to Rocky’s for like a couple hours after work, try and get a guitar track down kind of thing. Yeah. So probably took around a month.
Jake: It did take exactly a month.
Zach: It was like 40 hours.
Jake: 40 hours in the studio. But like over, over a month. You know, like Zach played, Zach played the drums in like two days and then it was kind of like went and played the bass. Guitars took a lot longer, you know, just a couple hours here, a couple hours, because it was just like a friend’s basement, not like a real studio.
Logan: Oh, that’s a real studio.
Andy: Yeah. I mean, it’s a real studio to us. We love it.
Logan: It gets the job done.
Andy: Exactly. Yeah, it’s awesome. Feel more comfortable doing it like that than maybe going somewhere where, a studio where it feels like you kind of put your money into the machine and it’s like parking meter. It’s like, all right, the clock’s ticking. Get your drum take down. I don’t know. That feels a little stressful. It was, took a little bit of the stress out of it to just be hanging out with your friend in the basement, you know?
Logan: Yeah. When you’re on tour, I saw the Bedridden inspired kind of the “Gas Hands” riff. When you’re on tour, do you write a lot? Do you find yourself writing riffs, or is it kind of like you’re too busy?
Andy: I mean, there’s like been times where, you know, you’re just messing around at sound check and a riff comes to you, but I wouldn’t say we’re ever like setting aside time to write or do anything like that. We, uh, I think just with like the exposure to like, like I mentioned the Bedridden thing in the blog, it’s like playing with that band and seeing them play every night for like three weeks or so. It’s like you start to pick up on those things that the tricks or the magic that makes that band sound that way. And like, whether you like it or not, you’re going to start like absorbing that and maybe it seeps its way into your writing. And like, I feel like that song, I found myself being like, oh, this is kind of like a Bedridden type beat because of that. Maybe like not even intentionally. So just, I had heard so much of it that that’s where it ended up with.
Jackson: I think it’s like inspirational to just like be in all these new places and like you’re sleep deprived. So you’re kind of like emotional, you know what I mean? Like I’d like you come out of it with like, it’s just inspiring in a way, you know, like staring at the fucking plains, you know, like staring at the woods for like hours and hours, you know, in a car.
Logan: You mentioned just, you know, like the bands and everything. You mentioned Blink-182. Those guy’s over there, White Reaper, opened up for blink-182 like two years ago. That’s kind of insane.
Zach: That’s awesome.
Jackson: I got to interject. Is this White Reaper on house music?
Logan: They are on the playlist.
Jackson: The voice, I was like, that’s got to be White Reaper. They’re playing their music at their show.
Andy: That’s awesome. That’s how you know he made it, man. Yeah, you’re on a dime.
Jackson: I was like kind of losing. I was like, there’s no way.
Logan: I’ve heard everything from Miley Cyrus to like Judas Priest on this thing. So it’s, you know, we got a variety here.
Andy: Yeah, we played some pool. It was a good playlist when we were playing.
Logan: Yeah, they hold an extremely competitive pool league here on Monday nights. It’s, I’ve never participated, are you guys pool players?
Andy: Here and there.
Jake: Jackson’s all right, but we like to play.
Andy: Yeah, good way to pass time, you know, playing a lot of bars on tour. You end up like, “oh, we got two hours till soundcheck”.
Jake: It’s better than looking at your phone, you know, playing pool with the boys.
Jackson: It’s a good money exchanging for time. Yeah, a dollar could be five minutes, could be like 20.
Andy: Yeah, absolutely.
Jake: That’s a good way to think about it.
Logan: But it’s fun. And as long as you’re having fun, you’re winning.
Jake: 100%.
Logan: I won’t keep you guys too much longer. I got one final question for you guys. Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
Andy: Oh, yeah.
Logan: That’s an insane show.
Andy: Yes, absolutely.
Logan: What are your guys’ takes on Salt Lake City Natives? Once again, saw a touch of it in the blog. What’s the, give me your unfiltered thoughts here.
Andy: I love it. It’s cool. I honestly don’t think my girlfriend put me onto it. I think I put her onto it, which is funny. I love it. It’s great. I think it’s gotten the nation to maybe lend their eyes to Salt Lake City, Utah in a way that they haven’t before. It’s cool. I started it initially being like, I just want to see what businesses they go to. Like, kind of like, do I eat at the same places as them?
Logan: Did you notice any local spots?
Andy: Oh yeah. It’s a small city. There’s plenty of overlap. But they’re a little bit of, they live in a different tax bracket than me. So they’re going to a little bit more expensive places. But yeah, it’s great. I love it. New season just started. I was only able to watch one episode before heading out on this tour. I’m definitely going to binge through some once we get back. But I’m excited to see where things go. Seems like Britney is already stirring the pot, man. Classic Britney. We’ll see how that ends up. But we’ll see.
Jake: I’ve honestly never seen it. This is mainly like, but my older sister really likes it. And so anytime there’s a blog or something, she’ll comment on it and be like, “oh, blah, blah, blah”.
Logan: Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you guys. It was an absolute pleasure.
Andy: Thank you so much. This was fun.
Jake: Yeah, thank you man.
Zach: Thanks man.
Jackson: Logey-bear.
Logan: I’m looking forward to a great show. It’s been a pleasure.
Andy: Hell yeah.
World’s Worst made a statement with their performance, setting an incredibly high bar for the bands that followed. Their first journey to Iowa was impactful and bold. I walked out with an anticipation for the next time I will see them live, and a song dedicated to myself. Tune in now, and see them in a small venue while you can. World’s Worst are a can’t miss as they continue their tour across the East Coast with White Reaper and Lip Critic. Their newest record “American Muscle,” is out now.
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