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| Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Daisychain had suffered a moment out of a cliché band movie before we sat down with them last Sunday in the green room at San Francisco’s classic Bottom of the Hill venue. The Chicago band’s van had broken down outside of Los Angeles – forcing them to cancel their San Luis Obispo concert on Saturday and turning their days off between San Francisco and Sacramento into figuring out how and when guitarist Frankie Sripada and touring drummer Forrest Kelly could get the van back up north.
So many bands on the rise have faced the van breakdown moment and Daisychain was not about to let it cause any further disruption as they followed their charted course back to Chicago for the June 27th record release party for their excellent debut album All In A Name. Recorded and produced by the legendary Sylvia Massy - whose genre-bending credits include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Sublime and Slayer – the album takes the band’s music to the next level.
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| Sophia Williams of Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Their Sunday night performance saw them tearing through songs they had road-tested for months, while leaning just as heavily into the new tracks. There was a buzz and vibe of getting to see a band about to break out in a big way in a smaller venue. Seeing the multiple photographers capturing the show, one concert-goer grabbed me. “There are so many people photographing tonight. They are going to be big, arent’ they?”
In this interview, we sat down briefly with bassist/singer Nickole Regala, rhythm guitarist/singer Sophia Williams and lead guitarist Sripada to hear more about the process of creating All In A Name – first in their hometown of Chicago and then at Massy’s studio in Ashland, Oregon.
SFBayAreaConcerts: Welcome to the Bay Area! As a former Chicago resident, I wanted to know how Chicago influenced your sound and your approach?
Nickole Regala: Well, the blues for sure.
Sophia Willams: Definitely. We love the blues and obviously Chicago is known for it and has extended roots in it.
Frankie Sripada: You’ve got so many different generations and scenes that have impacted the world -whether it's the electric blues, jazz, industrial music, house music or all these big rock bands. You meet different people at all the same places - everyone winds up at the same after hours funny enough and so you immediately cut your teeth in these different areas - but all on the same stage.
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| Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
SFBayAreaConcerts: I listened to your new album twice and then listened to the past EP. Can you talk about your evolution or revolution in this album All In A Name coming out June 27th?
Sophia Willams: We did a lot of experimenting as far as the writing. We had the task of writing 100 songs so we just let all inhibitions go and threw everything out there. Any idea was a good idea and we were all super open-minded about rolling with the punches, working with whatever was presented and running with it.
Nickole Regala: It was the first time that we had a set deadline that “we need this amount of ideas by this date.” I think that definitely influenced the evolution because we had to just put our heads down.
Sophia Willams: It wasn’t as self-conscious as far as thinking ”we only have so many ideas to present and all of them have to be really good and super polished.”
Nickole Regala: Just a story or a hook or anything…
Sophia Willams: Without feeling as much pressure.
Frankie Sripada: On both Different Shades (2022) and the self-titled EP (2020), the recording situations, process and resources were very austere. We recorded Different Shades in a home studio in Peoria, and we only had a couple days hanging out there to do things. The prior EP - the main four tunes we literally did in two days: One day doing instruments and one day doing vocals. So, the amount of time to commit to getting the best performances was night and day.
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| Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
SFBayAreaConcerts: Working with Sylvia Massey - everything she’s done - just the work she did with Rick Rubin alone.
Nickole Regala: She’s amazing!
Sophia Willams: And she’s such a wonderful person, too. All the things she’s done aside. She’s a pleasure to work with and open-minded about any idea or direction or instrumentation.
Nickole Regala: She was part of the whole process, too. From the jump, she was in the room. So that was really special. She even took us to a train tunnel because she does a lot of method recording where she could get weird sounds from weird places and then manipulate them. So, that was really cool and I was really very honored honestly that she gave us the whole experience.
Sophia Willams: She carved time out for us. It was really special.
Frankie Sripada: Her team was very surprised at how much time she gave to us. To me - the guitar player - they were like “Don’t expect her to be around too much for you. She's mostly gonna’ focus on vocals and drums.” And then later they said something to the effect of “We haven't seen her this excited and involved in a project in like 10 years.” Her sense of humor alone was so lubricating to ideas.
Nickole Regala: Especially, the drums, because she’s a total drum nerd.
Sophia Willams: She had a water hose connected to a microphone looped around the drum kit. It was really cool.
Nickole Regala: She was a drummer when she started out.
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| Nickole Regala of Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
SFBayAreaConcerts: How do you feel about the reenergized Shoegaze scene?
Sophia Willams: We draw from everything, and we definitely touch on some Shoegaze, but we identify more with Psych.
Frankie Sripada: There was an interesting point made of more and more people listening to music in some form of background situation - whether it's driving in their car, at the gym, going on a jog or something. Some music or tones fit that a little bit more and that may have something to do with the Shoegaze resurgence in popularity. I love it for the guitar zones. In some of my writing I definitely took to listening to some Catherine Wheel and Ty (Segall) – tremolo, swirly guitars.
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| Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
SFBayAreaConcerts: Tell me more about the 100 songs you had to come up with. Talk me through that process.
Sophia Willams: We had a few months to do it. We got the deadline around New Year’s and had to have it finished by the end of March. We had to write about eighty songs in that time. We had a solid fifteen or so before that we had prepared. But we were doing this on top of working full-time jobs, so we were going from the second we woke up to every second we could. We live next door to each other in Chicago, so it was every day.
Nickole Regala: Getting yelled at by my neighbors. I was like “We’re recording with Sylvia Massey! I’m sorry.”
Sophia Willams: We had to have morning rehearsals because we had to work.
Frankie Sripada: We’d make a mug of coffee and show each other each two or three new ideas. Then, go over whatever ideas had been flushed out in the last week and run through one more time. OK, this is the arrangement and this is the part and then we’d also be putting 3 to 6 more ideas on the stove. And then it was lather, rinse, repeat for three months.
Sophia Willams: We went out to my parent’s house for a week and did twenty songs in a week. It was insane.
Nickole Regala: We were getting down to the nitty gritty. But I was surprised at how many of the new ones (Massey) chose. I thought “She’ll definitely choose these old ones that we’ve been hashing out live forever.” But she chose a lot of new ones.
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| Daisychain @ the Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
SFBayAreaConcerts: It feels like the production is pretty clean on this album. Sometimes, it feels like production can get so muddy. But this one is clean and when it’s fuzzy, it’s fuzzy in all the right places. I was really impressed and am excited to hear the songs live.
Sophia Willams: Thank you. I think that has a lot to do with Sylvia and her team and I also think they wanted to honor rock ’n’ roll and keep it clean. Not too digitized.
Frankie Sripada: Regardless of what microphones or if somethings’ done to analog or dumped into a DAW right away - it's still the four people in the room playing instruments that are gonna ‘shine through regardless.
SFBayAreaConcerts: What do you want people to know about your band and what’s up next?
Nickole Regala: We fu#$ing love rock ’n’ roll!
Frankie Sripada: The next classic record of 2025 comes out in a couple weeks.
Sophia Willams: We’re going to be touring the midwest and Colorado starting in July. With more tours to come.
Nickole Regala: We’re coming to a city near you!
