QUICK SIX! - SNOOPER, Nashville Tennessee

Introducing Quick Six, a new series by our resident photographer, music guy and dear friend of Monster Children - Dougal Gorman.

Urban Dictionary definition of ‘Quick Sticks’: Used when asking someone to hurry the fuck up! ‘Chad, your round for drinks, quick sticks!!’

And so…Quick Six was born. A quick and (roughly) six question interview series with Australian and international touring bands. Accompanied by a Spotify playlist curated by said interviewed band. Quick Six is like going on a first date…I’ll be asking sub-par questions such as ‘what’s your favourite colour’ in hopes of getting know someone better. Fear not, there will also be some relevant music-related questions too. Depending on how nervous I am. For the first instalment of Quick Six I sat down with Nashvilles finest and funnest egg-punk band, Snooper. Having already played the night before at Oxford Arts Factory, Snooper announced a second secret show the night after at the Enmore Hotel, which is where these six questions took place. Read up! Please!

Snooper is: Blair Tramel, Connor Cummins, Cam Sarrett, Happy Haugen and Ian Teeple.

What’s been the best part about Australia so far? Has anything caught you by surprise?

Blaire: The grocery stores! I had a really emotionally positive experience in a grocery store in Brisbane, it was so awesome. We’ve been eating like shit the whole time we’ve been here. We had a night where we said we’ll just go get a snack but we ended up getting a whole cart. We don’t have produce like you do, I was like taking videos in there. The produce is so beautiful, the honey there was so cheap, it was just so awesome. I kept going up to people saying this is beautiful. 

Connor: The hospitality from everyone. Everyones been so nice, we’ve been surrounded by friends the whole time. Also, no guns anywhere is really nice (laughs). Everyone is really nice and not hostile.

Yeah no guns is nice.

Blaire: Also the trust, it seems like there’s a certain level of trust in Australia that is really nice. For example Billy (from RRC) took us to a graveyard and I was like ohh I don’t know about this. Connor was like should we bring a knife (laughs)? Then this young kid comes up to politely let us know the gates are closing soon, I don’t know it just seems like people trust each other here. It also seems like if you guys (Australians) need to resolve something you just fight, which is not really an American thing. 

Connor: Also no corn syrup!

Happy: The Hungry Jacks is fucking amazing!  

Wait what do you mean corn syrup?

Cam: It’s in a lot of things in the US, it’s regulated in Australia but not back home. It makes everything sweeter.

Blaire: Even the carrots were delicious and so big.

Yeah because our carrots don’t have corn syrup in them! What made you become a band? 

Connor: Ummm - covid!

Blair: I was doing a lot of paper mache and big prop stuff at home. Connor and I weren’t living together at the time, but he was coming over a lot so we were just hanging out with each other. Obviously he records a lot of music and I was trying to learn the drums, we were just getting into a lot of weird hobbies at the time.

Connor: Yeah we kind of messed around with starting a band and originally I played drums, but wasn’t the best.

Blair: Well, originally I played the drums too! I was like please let’s try write a song and if we do we’ll make a music video for it…and then it just happened!

Connor: Me and Cam were in a band called Safety Net and were practising every week until covid shut that down. Pretty much everyone I was living with was freaked out, we didn’t know how bad covid was so I would basically live at Blair’s house. I bought over the 8-track one day and said ‘let’s start with one song.’ We never thought we were going to play live, it was just going to be a fun project to pass the time.  

Blair: Also I never wanted to play live! It was never even a consideration. At the time too we were making music videos and because everyone was at home on their phones people got really into them. 

Connor: It was fun too because in our other bands everything we would write we would have to recreate it live and have to be perfect. But going into Snooper with the idea of not playing live I was like fuck it I’ll just do ten guitar tracks, we’ll never play them live. There was a lot of freedom. 

Cam: It’s weird to think back on it (covid) because in some ways it was empowering? At least to me! It felt like what the fuck else am I going to do. It’s whatever I want to do in this exact moment. 

Connor: All the social pressures were out the window. It was just you.

Blair: In a way, there’s a nostalgia for that time.

Where does Snõõper get their inspiration from? 

Cam: The internet?!

Connor: Definitely the internet! Nashville doesn’t have many punk bands - barely any at all - it’s mostly country. But in a way it’s good because we take all of our influence from outside of the city. I feel a lot of it genuinely comes naturally. 

Blaire: A lot of it I think comes from props and what we make, not necessarily musically. Connor writes the music then I’ll come up with a prop (like a phone) to match. At home we have a lot more props and stuff. For the song Powerball we have a huge 8 ball, we come up with a visual element that ties in with the songs. I have to share this really good idea with you. We want to make a vending machine for our merch! There will be a PVC pipe that the merch gets pushed down and plexiglass in front of the records and cassettes. From that we’re leaning towards more of a consumerism-type motif for the next record.  

Happy: A lot of the inspiration just comes from each other! I was always a big fan of Connor and Cam’s stuff before I was in the band with them. So it’s pretty cool to be melting all those worlds together. 

Blair: It always had to be Happy though! We needed him.

Connor: To knock off the simple music influences though; we’re definitely inspired by DEVO, The Ramones were a big inspiration on the first 7-inch, and obviously modern mid-west NWI punk. I feel like bands such as Ween and White Fence - bands who did weird 8 track stuff - were one of the most crucial parts, the experimentation of recording is almost as big of an influence as DEVO. Just being weird with an 8 track, speeding things up, slowing things down.

Cam: Yeah that works for the recording, but when it’s a live show…

Connor: We’re just a hardcore band! We just want to be as loud as possible.

Cam: Yeah it’s a lot about energy and keeping it way way way way up.

Connor: Which is why we have so many fitness motifs. There’s not a single show where our sweatsuits aren’t drenched in sweat. 

Happy: We have to all run during the riff of ‘Running’, I’ll usually be the first to tap out. It quickly goes from running, to jumping…to just standing.

Who is the mastermind behind the Snõõper paper mache characters and what do they represent? 

Everyone but Blair: Blair Tremmel!

Blair: Yeah I don’t know why. I’ve been making paper mach heads for a really long time. Looking back I had no reason to be making them. I would make them and put them on my head, and that was it! Connor said we had to bring them into Snooper and people would like it. I just thought it was goofy though! Going to punk shows for so long before I was finally in a band I wanted to keep it cool. Then we took a paper mache (not a full puppet) to a show in Asheville…and the crowd went crazy! Our friend wore it and couldn’t see anything.

Happy: Yeah he got beat up pretty bad. Shout out Jack!

Blair: I started figuring out a way to have the person still be themselves, so now there’s a backpack the puppeteer wears and the head goes on top of a pole. 

Connor: Part of it too was Blair being sick of seeing three dudes on stage standing there being so boring. She can’t really hear guitar tones and one day said ‘I don’t care how good your tone is, if you're just standing there and playing perfect it’s fucking boring.’

Blair: Especially in Nashville you have so many bands come through town. I always feel so disappointed when I go see a band that I really like and you know…they’re not doing much. But the boys are always like dam they’re tone was really sick! (Laughs)

Happy: It’s the crossed arms head bopping kind of crowd.

Cam: Not to bring the pandemic up again but after that eased up people really wanted to go to shows again. Why the fuck would you go to shows where it’s like people doing their practice on stage. It sucks.

Blair: I think the props get our crowd involved in it. Like when the puppet goes into the crowd, I think that’s really fun, it makes an experience.

Connor: It started with a weight, then a tracksuit, then all wearing tracksuits, then building giant phones. What if we did choreography? Can we add a whistle? In other bands I feel like we’d make a cool suggestion but then never do it. But Blair at home will be like I think I should make a giant TV and make an animation for it. 

Blair: Yeah I get really high…I smoke a lot of weed (everyone laughs).

We probably should of started with that point!

Connor: The home town shows now have a giant video game, a stoplight, a giant 8 ball and two puppets. It’s like a fucking full production! 

There was a $100 million Powerball draw last Friday, what would Snooper do if you won that much coin?

Happy: Balenciaga!?

Cam: Move to Australia?!

Connor: We’d take it to full production!

Blair: Yeah go crazy on the props. 

Cam: Pyro!

Happy: Road cases for the puppet heads!

Blair: We saw a Travis Scott show with a rollercoaster. Do more stuff like that. 

Connor: As much production as possible.

Blair: It’s what it’s all about! 

Which band do you think could collectively lift the most weight? GT, RMFC, Carnations or Snõõper? 

Blair: RMFC!

Connor: Noooo? I don’t know? I think I could take two of RMFC.

Happy: Alan’s bass is pretty heavy!

Connor: GT? They’re always doing push ups on Instagram. 

Cam: There’s a lot of people in Carnations. 

Connor: Blair has been lifting the weight every day since the Snooper shows!

Cam: It’s not even us (Snooper) it’s just Blair!

Billy from RRC walks in on interview*

Billy who do you think could lift the most weight out of GT, RMFC….

Billy: We have Ben Portnoy in our band and he is built like a brick shit house.

There you have it folks, the answer is actually Research Reactor Corp.

Billy: It would come down to Connor and Portnoy, and Connor would lose.