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Progressive/Powerpop group Stop.Drop.Rewind. recently played Swale Music Festival in Michigan City, IN. Coming from our same hometown in Valparaiso, IN, we were excited for an opportunity to interview the band after their set. This four piece chicken nugget meal consists of Kris Lohn, DJ Crenson, Andy Sutton, and Matt Alley. The band gave some insight into their writing/production process, the story behind their latest single, and pre-show rituals.
To better understand how Stop.Drop.Rewind. came to be, the band discussed how they started making music together. Kris begins, “DJ and I were the loneliest, ugliest, nerdiest kids in our science class...So we ended up doing a project together and becoming best buds because no one else would hang out with us.” DJ adds, “Because we were so ugly.” Kris elaborates, “We were quite handsome gentlemen. DJ was hanging out with somebody else, this was like sixth grade so you meet an infinite number of people...We’ve had a bunch of bands over the years, DJ and I have. This is our nineteenth year playing music together. We’ve done school concert band, our own jazz stuff outside ‘cause DJ played sax in school and I played bass, obviously. We did marching band, church band, emo bands, we’ve done DJs singer-songwriter band, and Stop.Drop.Rewind, which is like a progressive thing.” Matt adds some details about his involvement in music, “I started playing in middle school, seventh grade. I was in a bunch of bands all through high school and college. I played a lot of biker bars. That was my thing, I grew up in South Carolina and so the best places to play were biker bars...So then, I moved to Indiana to go to IU Bloomington. And then my then-fiancee, now wife, got a job in the region so then we came up here, met these guys at a jazz jam and we started playing together.” After some insight into their time as musicians, the band talked about their process when writing/producing music.
Kris summed up the band’s creative process, saying, “We’ve got it down to a pretty good science over the years. It’s pretty collaborative. We generally write the music first, some kind of musical idea. Not like the whole song. And then we’ll try to find something to pair that with, either like lyrics or subject matter. Or theme or something like that.” DJ further elaborates on these points, stating, “Like Kris said, we have a musical idea first, and then we pair that with lyrics or a theme and we’ll work up something like a verse or chorus, enough to pitch. And we’ll bring that to practice with Matt and Andy. Matt usually participates in the origins and we bring that to Andy. Yeah, that’s pretty much where it comes from.” While the band follows this creative process that works for them, their latest single “Floating Stone” seemed to come together faster than other songs.
When asked to talk a bit about the production or inspiration for “Floating Stone”, Kris explains, “I was at the pond skipping rocks and one floated. It just kept on skipping and I just felt that on a spiritual level. No, to provide a real answer to that question, ‘Floating Stone’ is a song that’s about a lot of things. It centers around our experience of being in a band and sort of trying to make a living out of music...Where we’ll be gone for long stretches and we won't see them and for Kris, Matt, and I, we’re far away from our families to do this, stuff like that. But it's good and bad. Obviously, we love it so we keep doing it, but we recognize that it's sometimes a lot to ask from our loved ones. That’s basically the spirit of the song...It came together really quickly though. A lot of the times we take a long time for us to finish a song. But this time “Floating Stone” we just kind of started it and then it was done. So that’s a nice break from the six months it usually takes us to write half a song.” Moving to the idea of live music, the band mentioned a few of their favorite songs to play live.
Kris talks a bit about the band’s rehearsal for each set, and some notable live moments in a couple songs, “It’s weird because it’s pretty rehearsed for the show, we try to be kinda free with it, but lately, we’ve been doing blocks of songs...Matt’s guitar solo in ‘Casino Song’ can get pretty huge. I’m trying to think of some of the big feel stuff. If the chorus for ‘Sexual Deviant’ feels really good and we set it up well.” Matt notes that his favorite song to play live is “Open Water”, and Andy adds “The Entire Orchestra” as a favorite. To wrap up our interview, the band talks about upcoming festivals this summer, and their plans for the future.
Stop.Drop.Rewind will be playing the Highland 4th of July Fest, Here Hear Festival on July 27th, and Front Porch Music Festival on the 28th of July. In terms of future plans, Kris states, “We have a new single coming out on July 12th, and we will have three more singles coming out before the year is over. So we’ll be in the studio releasing new music. We’ll have an audio-visual component to go with it as well. Some traditional music videos, some of the other types of artistic expression. So I’m excited to actually see how they turn out. The songs are coming together, so that’s happening. I’m excited to see what the rest of it brings with that.”
We want to give a big thank you to Stop.Drop.Rewind. for taking the time to answer our questions, as we love supporting local music, and they are just a really fun bunch to talk to. If you are in the area, be sure to check out the band at one of their upcoming festivals. No matter where you’re from, keep an eye out for Stop.Drop.Rewind’s upcoming releases. We are stoked to see what these guys produce in the future.
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