Sunflower Bean: From Paris To Our Showcase In Austin

When booking a showcase at SXSW, you want to be weird.

You usually have between six and eight bands to book, and you’re in for a long night, so you want to create a rhythm. You want to draw people in with something good then hit them with strange, then good, then strange, and repeat. Right hook, left hook. Rope a dope. Other boxing metaphor. All of this is to keep your audience enthralled and challenged, but not so enthralled that they don’t dance, and not so strange that they think it’s an art project. It is a difficult task, and few are able to pull it off. The most crucial point is the anchor point: the final band of the night. Your ender, the one who will pop champagne for whoever is willing to hang around until one in the morning, which, if you’ve done your boxing well, will be a few hundred people.

The last band is crucial – a perfect melting point of good and strange, and for this, we have booked Sunflower Bean, because if ever there was a band to seal the deal, it’s them.

So where are you?

Julia Cumming: Right now? We are in Paris. This is not common for us, but we just finished tour and it ended in Paris, and so we decided to stay and do some work here for a few days.

What do you mean when you say ‘work’?

JC: It’s currently fashion week here, so just connecting with some people that we’ve worked with, or worn their clothes for shows. Even doing this interview counts.

Are you walking runways?

JC: Not really, just attending shows. I haven’t done that so much in the last few years.

How was the tour?

Nick Kivlen: It was really fun. I’m trying to think of how it was… it just ended. This is our first day off.

JC: It was our first time actually being in Europe in a long time. On our third album, we didn’t get to tour here. It was during the pandemic times and it was like the first thing that dropped off of the itinerary. It was exciting to open that back up again because it’s so different from touring in the UK or the US. Maybe it’s more similar to the US in a way because each state is so different and each country here is so different – you have to aquaint yourself with the culture in the one afternoon that you have in that place.

Are you guys tour people? I know bands that absolutely despise it.

JC: I think we definitely used to be. It was a big part of who we are. I think that playing shows and showing our band through live shows has always meant a lot to us. Our wanting to do that kind of supersedes how we feel about it, but I also think that during the pandemic we became more of a writing band because that was all that we were able to do and that switched us out from the typical Indie Rock cycle of having six months to make an album then you tour it for a year and a half and you have six months and then you tour it for a year and a half. It changed in that way, but I think that our relationship to writing got deeper in the absence of being able to tour as much as we wanted to.

It does sound sort of different pre- and post-pandemic, and I’m wondering how your audience may have changed, or how their experience of your music may have changed.

NK I think it depends on the city and the night of the week; it depends on such a huge range of factors. We play everywhere from DIY house shows to doing stadiums, and it really depends on those factors.

JC: I think that the way that I interpret your question is like… I think that during the pandemic, the way that audiences experience music became so digital, and the way that they expect to interact with artists is much more digital. I think that in some ways that can be really tough, but in other ways, everything kind of moves like a river and if little streams are being puished through by technology, you just have to move with it. I think that sometimes complaining about that kind of stuff can get really tiresome and boring. I would reahter try to view it as an opportunity to reach people in a different way. All of that beign said, it’s definitel more lonely to release an album and it feel like you’re just waiting for comments on an Instagram post.

NK: That’s the biggest thing that I would say. When you’re playing live, that’s the only time that you have your audience’ undivided attention. It feels like the only pure musical experience that you’re sharing with right now.

JC: After our Paris show we went to London to do this one little club show after the tour, and it was really fun and sold out really fast – London is a special city for us. One of the members of the other band was like, ‘that was the first time in so long that I’ve just relaxed into a show and let myself space out and watch what was going on,’ and I was like, yeah, the most luxury thing right now is to be able to do one thing at one time; to watch a show and let yourself do that. It’s hard to focus on the thing you like.

NK: Yeah, because everything I love about being a ‘musician’ is now an abstraction in a thousand different ways; really through making TikToks or doing interviews or Tweeting, checking into hotels; the only time it’s actually like, ‘oh, I’m a musician,’ is when you’re on stage playing for people.

It’s weird how making music isn’t really the job anymore it’s only like maybe an eighth of the job. It seems like you have strong values for your music and performances. If you played a show, what would make you go, ‘that audience was incredible’?

JC: I think something like the London show. I mean, it was literally a pub, so the circumstance wasn’t really what I wanted to give from a sound perspective, but there were lots of mometns where you could see the crowd singing along, and the band that was opening for us, we found out through doing a show with them that they had once covered a song of ours when they were first coming together, and that was something that I was thinking about during the show. We had them come on stage and play the song with us and sing back ups; I love when you can make it feel like a family and do special unexpected things. I love making that connection with people. I think that in this day and age more than ever, it means so much when you get to just feel like the human-ness of that relationship where the music stops being abstract and it means something to someone, and to you.

Have you played SXSW before?

JC: We have, yeah, and we are extremely excited to play this Mohawk show with you guys. It’s our favorite venue and in the best time slot. We’ve done it a few times – all the bands are there, all the fans are there, it’s one of the last like, live things that exist where you can meet all the other bands and try to do something in person about this thing that you made. And also, Catcher and Dune Rats, it’s a very good bill. I think that people will be pushin’ and shovin’.

Can I ask you a question that’s super soft ball but it’s one of my favorites?

JC: Sure.

What’s the weirdest thing on your rider and why is it on there?

JC: Rotisserie chicken.

Okay, that’s on more than one person’s rider, why is that?

JC: This might make it less weird, but when you pull up to a venue, it’s around lunch time, and what you’re trying to do with a rider is get as many people fed as you can. If you get a chicken, then that gives everyone the chance to get sustenance, and everyone’s less angry for sound check. Chicken, hummus, pita, diet coke.

You don’t want to go for chicken with a side like mashed potato?

JC: How many green rooms have you been in? It’s usually a room with a dusty couch, piss on the wall- you don’t necessarily want you and your band mates with spoons around mashed potatoes.

NK: For sanitary reasons, you don’t want mashed potatoes, is what she’s saying.

JC: You also don’t want to send some venue intern on some mashed potato odyssey. People fight over that chicken. Whoever gets to it gets the best bits, you gotta get to it and stake your claim.