Off the Record

DJ Crush 0:00
Yeah,

Mason Baker 0:02
Hello, dear listeners, I'm your notes so devilish host, DJ crush, and you're listening to WKNC 88.1 FM, HD, one, Raleigh. This is the witching hour a WKNC run podcast where we interview local and national musicians alike. Today, I have the distinct pleasure of interviewing a group from right here in North Carolina, please give it up for the one, the only the incomparable bedrumor.

Lazuli 0:27
Thank you. That was a really good introduction.

Mason Baker 0:30
Thank you. So for anybody who is woefully ignorant of your group, please give a brief introduction of yourselves.

Lazuli 0:37
So my name is Lazuli, and this is Ryan.

Ryan 0:42
Ryan.

Lazuli 0:43
We also have two other members with us, Alston, who plays the drums and Nick Van Buskirk who plays saxophone. I'm the lead singer and the bassist, and then Ryan plays guitar. The two of us write the songs usually, and then we arrange it with a full band together. We're from Greensboro, North Carolina originally. That's where we met, at UNC G music school. And

yeah, we're really excited to be here today.

Mason Baker 1:11
I'm very excited to have you.

Lazuli 1:13
Thank you.

Mason Baker 1:13
So how would you give an elevator pitch for your general sound?

Lazuli 1:17
Oh my gosh. See, this is really like, that's a good question. I feel like every time we talk to other bands, like there's this particular show that we had at the Flatiron recently with this other really, really cool North Carolina based band called Melo swells, and we were talking a little bit about our sound, and he said that every time he describes us, he adds another genre to the list, because there's just, like, so many things that we're covering. Ryan is a jazz guitarist, so he went to to the jazz school, yes, at UNC G

and then I was actually in the classical department, so I was doing, like, operatic voice stuff. I don't really do that as much anymore, but I feel like some of that sound does kind of come through with some of my vocals here and there, but we basically just kind of brought our different musical backgrounds together to make the sound that we have currently. And we're also inspired by the other local bands in the area, like I really love, like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, I really like the kind of Appalachian country sound and I feel like

Ryan 2:22
our other, like, really local Greensboro band.

Lazuli 2:26
Yeah,

Ryan 2:26
lucid amethyst.

Who else we like steal from people sometimes we do, yeah,

Mason Baker 2:35
imitation is the finest form of flatter, as they say.

Ryan 2:38
We'll shamelessly just like, try to make like a we'll just listen to one song over and over again that we really like, and just try to make something exactly like it, like we're really into Adrian lanker And like, yeah, thief right now, like stuff like that.

Mason Baker 2:53
So moving away from the music for a brief moment. How did you settle on the name bedroom where? Because, frankly, I'm a little upset I didn't think of it myself.

Lazuli 3:04
So it's interesting. We actually, I started with just kind of like a Notes app note in my phone with just like, all of the names that I could think of that were, like, kind of clever.

Mason Baker 3:15
I feel so very connected to you in this moment because I have that exact notes app

Lazuli 3:19
right? Yeah, it's a good method. And so that was one of them, and I had shown it to Ryan, and he kind of like picked out, like, his favorites. So it was kind of like in the final contenders. And I thought, like, since we do most of our stuff, especially in the beginning when we were just a duo, most of the recording and the writing and all that just took place in my bedroom. So I felt like it was really fitting in that regard. And still to this day, like most of the things that we record and the things that we write are in our house, because we live together now.

Mason Baker 3:54
But I also just like that it was kind of a cool play on words, because it's like bedroom, bedroom rumor, you know. So there's really no rumor going around. Not that I know. I'm glad I didn't have on my questions list. What is the rumor? So I know that you mentioned both being at UNC Greensboro music school, but how long have you been making music as bedrumor, or at least, at the very least collaborating together on it

Ryan 4:22
since we met, basically, which is what,

like two and a half years, almost three years now, yeah,

yeah, that was, like, basically all we that's how we, like, started, Like, being friends.

Lazuli 4:40
Yeah, it was through music. I was kind of using him at first, because I was trying to get into the jazz scene in Greensboro, because, you know, like I said, before I was in the classical department, you

Ryan 4:51
would she would also use me. She would just send me a, like, a version of a jazz standard and be like, what key is this in?

Lazuli 4:59
Yeah, that was, like, our. Conversation for like, the first three months that we knew each other to be like

Ryan 5:03
G minor exactly, and then not hear

Mason Baker 5:10
I'm very glad to hear that this has produced such a wonderful duo between the two of you, and especially now that you've added several other artists along with it, it's really fascinating to specifically hear about Ryan being in the jazz sector of things, and you having an interest in jazz Lazuli, because you can really feel the undercurrents of that in just about everything that I've heard from the two of you. We'll get specifically into the tracks that I'm talking about. But I feel like you can really feel that influence, even though you've only been making music together for about three years. Yeah, you, I feel like you have truly found your sound that fits the two of you perfectly. And knowing that this has kind of been boiling under the surface for longer than that, it it's starting to put a lot of things together.

Lazuli 5:57
Thank you.

Ryan 5:58
Thank you. That is very affirming to hear because we

I don't know if we really feel like we've found ourselves. We're always changing the the goal the like the goal post keeps moving for like the sound and like what we want it to be.

Mason Baker 6:14
But you know, if it's any solace from every single artist I've talked to, none of them ever think they've found their sound, or even if, from an outside perspective, I feel like they have

Speaking of the music, let's go ahead and transition into some direct music questions. Who would you say? And you've touched on this briefly before, about some local Greensboro artists are some of your busy, biggest musical influences, both musically and in terms of your general aesthetic as group.

Lazuli 6:41
For me, I would say, especially like in the earlier stuff that I was writing by myself, I was really inspired by King cruel I really like, just like the things that he does on the guitar. I like the harmonies that he chooses. I feel like he also kind of has like an undercurrent of jazz sound and his stuff too, which I really, really like. I think we kind of talked about it earlier, where we've been really inspired by Adrian lankers writing like the lyrical content is really good, and also what she does with the guitar, like she's busted,

Ryan 7:17
seriously, I guess I'm on my end, like I am kind of more. I mean, I went to music school for jazz whatever, right? So I'm kind of a nerd for that stuff, but I really a lot of Pat methe music, and, like, Herbie Hancock's music is, like, stuff that I hold really close to me. But honestly, a lot of our writing process together has come from like, she'll Put Me On to just like random stuff or like whatever she knows more like cool new music than me. So you know.

Mason Baker 7:55
So let's specifically talk about your most recent single that came out about two months ago. By this point, mother's hand. Can you kind of talk me through the writing process? Of that song?

Lazuli 8:05
So we came up, like with the guitar, like a riff at your parents house.

Ryan 8:11
This is actually a great kind of look into our writing process thing. Because what happened was, yeah, you came up with, kind of the main line, like the what starts off the song, and the guitar, like this little kind of descending thing. And we, like, played it for with it for a little bit, and we did some voice memos and and then, like, months and months later came back to it, and then, like, always, last adds a bunch of like, cool new sections and like stuff. And she's like, how do we make this work? And, yeah, we just went from there,

Lazuli 8:51
I don't know, yeah, like the the one part that comes in kind of closer to the middle of the song, that's like, I was like, because I was listening to a title fight song, I think it was head in the ceiling fan or something like that. And they did these really cool, like hits in one of the songs. And I was like, oh, we gotta add like, some cool hits in our song. Yeah,

Ryan 9:14
actually, to shout out a man who is not here, Tyler Monroe, who also plays drums with us. I think maybe had a large part in coming up with the that hit section, because we brought it to I think we were doing a different set of hits, and we were like, We don't want it to be exactly this thing, like, we want it to be a little different. So I think he might have come up with that.

Mason Baker 9:41
so still on topic of mother's hand, you have a music video out for it. Yeah, very enjoyable music video. It's shot quite in a retro style. How did that kind of come about? And also, if you can remember who did the cinematography for that video,

Lazuli 9:56
so it was mainly my good friend. Sophie, who I knew from high school, she was going to a photography school some I forgot where it was. It's like, near Greensboro. She dropped out, actually, like, not that long before we shot the video. But she did most of the videography, and she had, like, her, like, school camera, but then I also had this really old digital camera that I just had, like, I might have gotten it from like, Goodwill or something a long time ago, and I just really liked the way that the footage looked on that, because it just kind of added, like, kind of the old, like, not Y2K, but like, that type of vibe, you know. So I was like, oh, maybe you can just get like, a few shots of us on this while you're also recording with like your professional camera. And then, like, in post, when I was editing, editing it together, I was like, Oh, I kind of like the old, like, kind of crappy footage from the digital camera a little bit more. So I ended up using mostly just that. And then my friend Margo, who lives in Greensboro, she does like animation. So she kind of added like the animated pieces. And I had been seeing a lot of videos of like mixed media where people would take stills from the videos, print them out, and then just scribble on them a bunch. And so I sent her like hundreds of stills from like different shots of the video, and she just did like her little scribbles and added, like flowers and butterflies and like stuff that kind of was evoked from the song, basically. And also, like, we were kind of out in nature, so kind of like that nature vibe. And so she did that, and then I just kind of put it all together, and that's how it ended up being what it is today.

Mason Baker 11:34
So I'm really glad that you mentioned it, because I was just about to ask if that's what's how it's done, because in a production class that I had last semester, somebody did that exact thing. And I was sitting there watching the music video, and I was like, this technique looks so familiar.

Yeah. I'm very glad to know that that's how that kind of came about.

So I actually didn't discover you from mother's hand, because I initially found you on, I want to say SoundCloud, where the very first song that I listened to you was your bossa nova cover of duvet. Because I one thing that a lot of people around the station know about me, I'm a sucker for some bossa nova.

how did the kind of the cover thing come about? And also, what would you say is your favorite one that you have done thus far?

Lazuli 12:27
Oh, wow, we've done a lot. We started mainly just doing like, jazz standards, I think when we were doing like, like on Tiktok and stuff, yeah, some jazz standards.

Mason Baker 12:40
Don't worry, we have that coming up.

Lazuli 12:42
Great. Yeah, we did

night and day, My Funny Valentine, My Funny Valentine.

Ryan 12:50
But, yeah, I don't know, like the we kind of always did the covers, I guess not always. I don't know we started, I think we did one on YouTube, and then we transitioned over to TikTok. And then I don't remember how the she's always like, can you put a bossa nova, like, groove on it, like, because I'll learn the chords real quick to the song. And then she's like, okay, but can you play it with a boss and I'm like, Okay. And then we do it. And that one we liked, and it did really good on Tiktok. So we made that little SoundCloud version of it, and also on, I think it's on YouTube too, all different, like, versions of the same idea, but yeah,

Lazuli 13:32
and we also did a version of image and heaps a new kind of love with a boss who groove. And that one did really, really well. I feel like the duvet is probably one of my favorites because we also were able to arrange it as, like a band, and we had covered it a few times at like, live performances, and I actually really liked how it sounded in that way. Um, I don't know.

Ryan 13:57
I think my favorite cover of ours might be just a random one on YouTube. Of it's a Mac DeMarco song, but let my baby stay is that it's called Yeah. It doesn't have that many views, but, like, I don't know. It's just one of my favorites. When I go and re watch some of them, I'm like, Yeah, that one's really good.

Mason Baker 14:22
To round out the more musically inclined section of the interview, feel free to say no. Are there any projects that we can look forward to?

There

Lazuli 14:31
There actually is. So this single is going to be part of our debut EP. Yes, that we're excited in the next couple of months, what we've been doing is we have, so we have, like, a porta studio four track cassette tape recorder, and what we do is we'll just order like, five tapes online, and then we'll just put like, whatever demos we're working on on the tapes, and we'll just, like, sell those at shows, because before Mother's

Hand came out. We didn't have anything on streaming for a long time, so people were always like, Oh, how can we listen to you? And we'd be like, Oh, you can listen to, like, YouTube and that stuff, but we wanted to have, like, a physical version that people could keep, because it's nice also to just have as a keepsake. It's kind of funny because, like, people will buy the cassette tapes at our shows, and then they'll be like, I don't have a cassette tape player, like, I don't even know how to open this, you know, but it's just nice to have like that memorabilia. But what we're probably going to do is just keep putting, like, the demos from the songs that are going to be on our EP on those cassettes, so that they're available, you know, to people who want to hear it beforehand. Because we say we're going to release stuff, but then we don't release it for like, months and months after, because I'm just, like, a perfectionist and also a procrastinator, which is like, the worst combination I know quite so, yeah, so hopefully the EP in the next few months will be out, and mother's hand will also be on that too.

Ryan 15:55
Hopefully

a single, yeah, in less than the next Oh,

Lazuli 16:00
yeah, we're trying to release one more single from the EP, and then the EP.

Mason Baker 16:05
This is fun little fact. I'm going to be seeing bedrumor tonight, actually, at locals only at Neptune. That is a WKNC affiliate event. Will we be getting any new material there?

Lazuli 16:19
Actually, yes. So we have, it's going to be, I think, two new songs that are going to be on the set that are also going to be on the EP. One of them, Ryan wrote the he just, like, recorded the instrumental for it over Christmas, and I was actually in Texas while he was doing that, and he sent it to me, and then I wrote the lyrics. And I was like, Yeah, we should add this to the EP, because it sounds really cool. And the other one,

Ryan 16:44
this is kind of news to me.

Lazuli 16:46
Oh, well, yeah, it's gonna be on the EP.

Mason Baker 16:48
Now, you know, great, interesting developments here in the studio. So now we're gonna talk about a bit about your performance styles. Have you ever performed in Raleigh before?

Lazuli 16:59
Yeah, we actually performed at Neptune's not that long ago. We did, like, our first kind of mini tour with this other really cool band called hiding places, and we performed at Neptune's. I think it was August 29 of 2023 and the reason I know that date is because every time I do a show at a venue that I've played before. I'll always say, like, this is the four month, 28th date anniversary of the last time we played at this venue. So I'll probably do that tonight. Also perfect, but yeah,

Mason Baker 17:32
how would you kind of describe the Greensboro music scene? I know that you mentioned that you're actually quite tapped into it.

into

Ryan 17:39
Man, I don't know. Honestly,

does any any other Greensboro lings want to chime in here? Austin or Nick? A lot of jazz. There's a lot of jazz. I don't know. Yeah, the DIY stuff is pretty cool in Greensboro. There's a cool spot called etc, that we play it a lot. I I don't know, pretty lacking in venues. Yeah, it definitely can be lacking in venues. But there's, there's lots of really good art around, yeah, true in the triad in general. Yeah, yeah. Also, that is true. Like, Winston Salem and Greensboro are pretty, like, tied in sometimes. There's a lot of like, cross, you know, we we play in Winston a good bit, and Winston bands playing Greensboro a lot. I don't know that I could describe it musically, because I feel like, in this day and age is just so, like, you can listen to literally anything in the world at any given time. So it's kind of hard to, like, you know, come up with some sort of cultural overall sound. But, yeah, I don't know.

Mason Baker 18:54
How do you typically prepare for a performance? Do you have any kind of good luck rituals or anything?

Lazuli 18:58
So for me, I kind of touched on this earlier. I'm like, I don't have as bad of stage right now, just because I've performed so many times, but I do still kind of get, like, nervous before every show. So what I try to do is prepare some things that I want to say at the show that could kind of like fill in space in between, like changing songs when he has to like tune, and things like that. So I'll kind of look online and I'll just see, I'll just search today in history, like what happened? So today, some people might know it's the national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter. And I found that out because I tried to go to the post office earlier, and then I realized when I opened the door that it was actually locked because they were mourning Jimmy Carter. So there was no mail happening. There's also, I think it's, what did I say? It was like, it's like the 532nd anniversary of when Christopher Columbus mistook manatees for. For mermaids. Wow, isn't that crazy? And he wrote in his notebook or journal or whatever he had, that they weren't as beautiful as how they were painted. Basically,

Mason Baker 20:13
wonderful. Yeah, we also practice. We also practice the day at some time, you know? I imagine that's roughly equivalent in importance, right? Yeah, manatee facts and practice, I guess exactly they go hand in hand. So let's quickly jump back a bit to what we were talking about with your social media presence. I'm gonna brag on you two for a little bit, your most popular Tiktok video has 2.3 million views. They have what is that? That is 80,000 Tik Tok followers and almost 3 million likes on Tiktok. Your most popular Tiktok has 80 million, not 88 million views, which is rivaling the popular population of Switzerland. Wow. So if every single person in Switzerland watched that one video, how did this social media journey kind of begin? What inspired you to start posting?

Lazuli 21:09
So for me, I actually started posting on Tiktok before I knew Ryan. It was right after I had moved back to North Carolina because I was going to school in San Francisco for a couple of years. But the thing is, I transferred to UNC G right before COVID happened. So I was in school for probably, like, two months. Like, I don't, it was like, March or something, right when they, yeah, when we went on the spring break, and then it just like lasted forever. But so, because I was just at home at my mom's apartment, I decided to just start uploading covers. And so I had my personal Tiktok page back then. And there was one video, I think it was a king cruel cover that I had done of his song Baby Blue. And that one did really well, which, like, was super surprising, because that was kind of before tick tock had such a big impact, like, on the music industry, because, like, now it's really over saturated with, like, musicians and stuff. But before I was just, like a dancing app, essentially. So I had posted that it did really well. And then I was excited, but I was also nervous, because I was like, Oh, this is a lot of people that are watching my stuff, you know. So I think I posted one more time, like an original song, and that one also did really well. But I think I just like, I got scared for some reason, and I just felt a lot of pressure. So I stopped posting for probably, like, maybe a couple years. And then I was still in school, I was going to UNC G and then I met Ryan, we started making music together, and then I was like, oh, we should start posting again. So that's kind of how that came about,

Ryan 22:54
yeah, and really, like, the bedrumor, like name, and just the whole thing kind of came from, like we just needed to name our TikTok, something that wasn't just like Laz and Ryan, yeah, like doing covers. So yeah, I feel

Mason Baker 23:12
like Laz and Ryan doing covers could have been very popular myself, but All right, so we are kind of nearing the end of our time together. But I do have one more fun little segment for the both of you. This is rapid fire where I want I'm going to ask you a series of 10 questions, and I want you to answer without thinking. Give it as quickly as possible. Decide amongst yourselves who's answering first. You

Ryan 23:38
want to alternate? Yeah, you go first, I guess so. Okay,

Mason Baker 23:42
all right, without further ado, would you rather lose all your valuables or lose all the pictures you have ever taken,

Ryan 23:49
all the pictures I've ever taken?

Lazuli 23:52
Oh, Am I answering

Ryan 23:52
to he had she had time to

Lazuli 23:55
think about it. Dang all the, all the pictures I've ever taken. Which

Mason Baker 23:59
Spice Girl Are you?

Ryan 24:01
I could tell you which one I don't, because she literally has a Spice Girls like poster in her room that I looked at like for hours and hours while I'm trying to fall asleep. But I don't know, I don't know, Scary

Lazuli 24:14
Spice for me,

Mason Baker 24:16
who was your top artist last year?

Ryan 24:19
Mine last year. Oh, like last year, it was actually Wayne Krantz, guitar player, fusion guitar player, probably

Lazuli 24:27
Ella Fitzgerald.

Mason Baker 24:29
Do you believe in life after love?

Ryan 24:33
Yes,

Lazuli 24:35
no.

Mason Baker 24:37
Would you rather not have eyelashes or not have eyebrows for the rest of your

Lazuli 24:40
life. Eyebrows, eyebrows, ooh, what

Mason Baker 24:45
is your least favorite word?

Ryan 24:51
Silken.

Mason Baker 24:56
No thinking

Lazuli 24:57
tofu. That's all I could think. It.

Mason Baker 25:00
This is specifically

a question for Ryan. Would you like to apologize to the Spice Girls for not knowing which one you are? Me, would you rather have a bad mullet for a year or be bald for six months?

Ryan 25:13
Well, bad mullet because I've done that. Bad

Lazuli 25:17
mullet. Yeah, currently,

Mason Baker 25:20
when you're in a movie theater, which armrest is yours?

Lazuli 25:24
Right? The right?

Mason Baker 25:26
What is your

dream collaboration?

Ryan 25:34
That was too much thinking. My say something. Nard war, Nard war, wow.

Mason Baker 25:45
And that is all of the questions that I have for you today, folks. So as I say at the end of all of these interviews, any last words,

Lazuli 25:57
stream mother's hand.

Ryan 26:00
Streamer song, come to our show please at Neptune's at a by we got 4t shirts by one of them. New Music soon, I guess.

Mason Baker 26:12
Where can our dear listeners find you?

Lazuli 26:14
You can find us on Spotify, tick tock, YouTube, Instagram, all bedroom, B, E, D, R, U, M, O, R, all lower case, yes, one word, perfect.

Mason Baker 26:27
All right. So that is all we have for today, folks. So as the bell tolls, dear listeners, the witching hour draws to a close, but don't worry. If you want to hear more from us, you can find interviews like this on wknc.org/podcast, under off the record, a very big thank you to bedroom for joining us today. And as always, if I don't see you again, sleep tight.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai