Having released their debut album ‘Scream from New York, NY’ in June 2024, Been Stellar have spent the last 7 months on the road, touring their native North America and opening for The 1975 across Europe. Bandmates Sam Slocum and Skyler Knapp discuss songwriting, their love for Sonic Youth and the state of the live scene.
Q. What bands did you look to for inspiration when writing ‘Scream from New York, NY’?
Sam: "The five of us come from pretty different musical backgrounds. I think we look to bands that we feel like are earnestly themselves. We really like Sonic Youth and the way that they commit album to album to an aesthetic, the songs all really make a lot of sense in the context of each other. We’ve been listening to a lot of nineties, we love a lot of music from that era. New York music from that era often gets overlooked by 2000s New York, but there was a lot of cool stuff in the nineties".
Q. What themes or ideas influenced the lyrical content of the album?
Sam: "The main theme was the idea of language not being enough to convey feeling; when words fail, how people resort to more primal forms of expression, like a scream. In a place like New York, people end up resorting to more primal forms of expression all the time, you hear screams all the time. Lyrically that’s the main throughline, but I’d say not every single line of the record is trying to support that thesis. Each song is kind of a window to a moment from our lives that harkens back to that main idea, even if it’s not in the most direct way".
Q. How did signing for Dirty Hit impact the process of releasing the album?
Skyler: "It was definitely easier. For the first time we actually had money to work with. We were able to work with the producer that we wanted to work with and in the studio that we wanted. It alleviated some of the financial burden so we could focus on making the record. More people are leaning on you to get it done and get it done correctly, there’s definitely more responsibility".
Q. What experience did you gain from supporting The 1975 on their European tour?
Sam: "The biggest thing we learned was the importance of connecting with the audience. Before that tour we were not the best performers in some ways, we were kind of in our own world. That tour taught us to connect with people, especially when you can’t see their faces. The response with that many people in a room is very palpable, so I think it made us a lot better at feeling out the vibe of a room".
Q. How do you stop yourselves from feeling homesick when touring internationally?
Skyler: "The homesickness is inevitable but it's more so finding home within the touring cycle. It’s a lot of simple things; since we’ve been in the UK we go to Costa pretty much every morning, that feels like a routine. I don’t really get homesick because playing on stage feels like home. It feels very comfortable and it feels like my job. Just let yourself savour the time you’re on stage playing, it makes the crazy adventure to get there less difficult".
Sam: "I miss our friends, definitely. I think this is the longest we’ve gone doing this thing, so there’s moments of homesickness. I stay in touch with my closest friends back there and I call my parents sometimes, that helps. It’s weird, the feeling doesn’t hit me that much anymore. We’re touring so DIY - we don’t have a tour manager and we don’t have a driver - there’s so many tasks that we don’t have much time to get homesick, we’re busy all the time".
Q. Is there a city in the UK that you’ve felt particularly connected to whilst on tour?
Skyler: "I really like Glasgow personally, I thought that was a great venue and a great crowd. Leeds I thought was really good too".
Sam: "Definitely. Manchester felt really good too".
Q. How have you been spending your downtime in the UK in between shows?
Skyler: "Going to the pub to be honest with you! I guess aside from that we’ve started working on new music, we’re doing a writing thing at the end of this tour, so we started to individually get some ideas together".
Q. What’s surprised you most about being on tour?
Skyler: "To be completely real with you I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I do. I thought that I would be having a way worse time but I actually really love it. It’s obviously really difficult and really stressful but I could keep doing this. I'm sad that it’s ending soon. I really like the pace of it and the palpable connection we make with people every night".
Sam: "I didn’t expect to see so many people at these shows. When I saw the capacity of these rooms I thought shit, I don’t know if this is a good idea. But every single night, even in Warsaw or Prague, it felt like the rooms were really full. That’s a real trip for us, we’re seeing the dial move for the first time in a very tangible way. We’re not just throwing our music out into the void. With streaming you get a skewed sense of if things are really moving, it feels so fake and virtual. But when you get out on the road there’s actually a real meter of how things are really going, that’s very comforting".
Q. What was the last argument the band had on tour and what caused it?
Sam: "We can’t talk about what caused it… But it was probably like yesterday!".
Q. Lots of artists have had to cancel shows because of the rising financial burden associated with going on tour. How do you think industry executives can better support grassroots bands to do D.I.Y tours like yourselves?
Skyler and Sam: "I don’t think they will".
Skyler: "It’s like all of the music industry, especially the live music industry is a fucked monopoly. Unless you have someone like Drake or Travis Scott standing up to Live Nation there’s no legitimate way that they’re going to actually give a shit about smaller artists. I think the best thing to do as a band is equip yourselves as much as you can. Keep your costs really low and don’t stop doing it. I see a lot of bands giving up because of financial burden but it’s sort of your duty to work it out. People really need to hear live music".
Sam: "There’s good change happening. On the tour we just did in the US we noticed that a lot of venues are no longer taking merch cuts, that’s always been a standard. For as long as we’ve been doing this the venue would take a merch cut and we’d get fucked. The fact that the merch cut is happening less is very cool but there’s still a bunch of ridiculous shit that you experience. When you get into some of these venues it starts to get so bureaucratic, especially when there’s really big companies controlling how things go. At the end of the day nothing’s really going to change - you just need to roll with it. We’re losing money on this tour and we’re doing it literally as bare bones as possible. You’ve got to make ends meet and keep working through it which is what we’re doing now. It’s definitely a hard gig but it’s what we want to do. We love playing our music, it feels like a real privilege".
Q. Lastly, how would you describe New York in three words?
Skyler: "I would say it’s fast, it’s honest and it’s difficult".
Sam: "The. Big. Apple.".
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