Interview: No Skull (Written)
No Skull plays heavy jams. Their new album, ‘Fields of None’ is out now on vinyl and streaming services. We get know them a little better in this interview.
1. Hello! Thank you for taking the time to chat to us. First things first, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started.
Hi! Great to be chatting! I am Ryan from No Skull. We’re From the Lansing area in Michigan and have been around since 2016. Our guitarist Jason and I have been in various bands together on and off for the last 25 years, but he joined me in No Skull sometime in 2020 after some line up changes resulting from the 2020 lockdowns for covid 19. During the lockdowns Jason and I were in the same bubble so we worked on music that ended up being our album “Mad Dog With A Tiger In Its Teeth” and shortly after we recruited Dave on drums. With this line up we recorded our most recent album called “Fields of None” and have been rocking together ever since.
2. Someone comes to you and asks you to sum up what kind of music you play – what do you tell them?
The answer gets more elaborate depending on the engagement of the person. I usually answer “rock” and “country”. If they want more info, I will say we that play stoner rock and sludge/doom influenced alt rock with a prog core and sometimes we switch it up and play what we call doom country or space country. Another description someone else has said is we sound like if Black Sabbath played Pink Floyd.
3. What’s currently going on in your camp? New releases? Tours? Etc.
We just released our album “Fields of None” on vinyl and streaming services and we are working on some new material for some future projects. We have sparse summer shows but hope to get some things booked for the fall.
4. What has been the most positive experience of making music to date for you?
The positive reaction to our new record has been very satisfying. Although on a low scale since we are an underground and mostly unknown band its nice to get a reaction at all, but folks have said some real nice things about our record.
5. Likewise, what has been some of the more challenging aspects and how have you overcome them?
Recently, in the last couple years the biggest challenge is booking shows. In Michigan at least (although I’ve heard from other bands, managers and booking people it’s like this everywhere) a lot of the better venues have closed down or pulled way back on booking loud rock bands and it seems like people just don’t answer emails anymore. Most of the legit house venues seemed to have closed during the covid era and not many have re-opened.
6. How do you handle the modern expectations of being in a band?
Always online, having to put out content constantly, your success measured in likes and follows? -Hahaha! We don’t. I mean we have social media and we clearly use streaming services but we don’t scramble for content or make ourselves 100% available all the time. Its probably a good reason we have such a challenge landing gigs consistently. At times we attempt to be a good internet band but none of us think about it much. Usually when we have material to release we collab with a few online blogs and stoner rock sites to spread the word but in general we are not efficient in this realm.
7. What’s something that really ‘grinds your gears’ about the industry/business these days and what would you propose is done to combat it?
The whole system sucks. The history of racism and sexism the industry has is despicable. The homologized music the mainstream tends to put out (even stuff I like) is kind of nauseating. Not many bands seem very dangerous anymore. And we have these people who’s talent is questionable making millions while the person who collects your trash or the person who cleans your septic tank does not.
I guess on our level the worst is promotion and pay. You have artists who work regular jobs while writing, rehearsing, recording, making cover art, paying for all these services, promotion, flyering, paying for online adds, loading up their personal vehicles with gear that costs way more than it should, driving to the venue using your gas up, performing like professionals which brings folks to the venue and in most cases sells booze for the bar….then they come around with $25. WTF? Clearly an underground band is not going to make thousands of dollars but come on!? These venues want people to be on time and play and act professional but want to stiff hard working folks out of their loot or underpay them or not pay at all. Its no wonder to me that people end up playing in cover bands or just quitting altogether. If bars and venues would respect the time, money, energy and talent underground unknown and local bands put in they would pay a respectable amount. Pay folk out of the Bar or some such thing.
8. Speaking directly to listeners – what would you ask they do to help support your music?
Buy our records. Stream our music as much as possible. Then tell your local promoter to book No Skull in your town. Then come to the show and buy more merch.
9. Outside of the music, what’s do you do to relax?
I read a lot. I watch cartoons, sci-fi and comedy shows. My wife and I bike quite a bit. We go on ‘bike crawls” where we bike around town and have drinks and appetizers at various bars and restaurants around our town. We travel as much as we can afford. I live by a decent sized lake with a nice park and we spend time there when its warm. I like going out to shows but that’s been a bit lower on the scale recently because Im a bit lazy after work, and there are very few venues who do live music around the Lansing area these days.
10. Where can people find you?
You can find us on:
Spotify | YouTube Music | Apple Music | Bandcamp
Honestly just about every place you can stream or buy music and we are on:
