Interview With Mowth: Yeah, I'd Listen To That
With a nostalgic punch that has nuances of Bikini Kill and Minor Threat, yet with a kind of experimental and elevated production, Mowth is making noise that is relatable yet sounds new and fresh. The band - consisting of Rachel & Jordan Clark, Callie Crofts, and Zac Bryant - arrived on the northern Utah scene about a year ago. They got right to work putting out their EP New Religion last spring and put together a rather big production for their music video for their latest single “Choking”. Salt Lily sat down with the group to see what went into all their hard work and what they plan on doing next.
Q: How long have you guys been playing together? How did it all start?
Jordan: We released our first EP in April, just this last year. I think we started writing it [in] february..?
Rachel: No, the summer before that
Jordan: Oh, the summer. That’s right. But it started off just me and Rachel, and we got a couple songs down, and we’re like, “oh! Wouldn’t it be cool to play these songs? This would be great!” So we knew Zac and Callie. We hit them up and they were super down to come jam with us.
Did you know them prior?
Jordan: I had met Zac through the scene.
Zac: We’ve known each other for a few years. Just kinda running into each other in the scene.
Callie: We’ve all been in the scene long enough. We were talking about this on the way up here. We don’t actually know when we met each other for the first time. I don’t think any of us remember [laughs] our first meetings. We’ve just always been there.
What goes into creating your guys’ sound?
Jordan: Yeah, how did we go about getting the sound?
Rachel: Growing up with punk-influence from my brother and his band. He raised me on NOFX and Minor Threat, all the Fat Wreck Chords discography. I grew up on that and the Cure and the Distillers. And then Jordan and I kept talking about writing and doing a project. So he started writing the kinda music that I would like and we starting getting it together and writing it, and got that sound that I love [laughs].
Jordan: Yeah. I had actually written a couple songs and [said to her], “Rachel, what do you think about playing this? We could start a band!” I showed them to her and she was like, “no. I don’t like that song. That’s not good, or not my style” … And then one summer day, after probably listening to way too much Courtney Barnett, I grabbed my acoustic guitar and was like, “ok, if this had a bunch of distortion on it we’d right a song that’d sound like this!” And I wrote a song, I [recorded] it on my phone from start to finish - the whole structure of the song…
Rachel: Was that “Right Now”?
Jordan: “Right Now”. Yeah… And was like, “yeah! That sounds like a song!” Went in [to a studio], recorded like a demo of it, sent it over to Rachel and she was like, “yeah, I’m actually into that, like, that’s actually really cool.”
Rachel: I was stoked. 14-year-old me was like, “Yes! I’m doing it. Finally!” [laughs].
Jordan: I was in a unique situation. I work at a recording studio - at Rigby Road Studios in Murray - and had some time afforded to me during that summer where I could just spend time writing and recording songs. I had all this time where it was like, “alright, well, if she liked that one I’ll write a handful more.” And I just started writing songs, we would demo them out and then Racheal started singing on them. The sound [of the band] was developed mostly between [Racheal and I].
Rachel: Jordan is really good at writing pop so I had to bring it back. [laughs] Like, don’t make me throw up over Bieber.
Jordan: I think a huge part of the sound I can attribute to our mix engineer, Joel Pack. He’s an amazing producer and engineer he has done all the mixing, and I think that helped form the sound and make it, not just garage rock music, but like kinda lifted up to the next level where it’s like, “oh! that sounds like fucking radio music … yeah, I’d listen to that!”
Lyrically, where does your subject matter come from?
Rachel: Jordan and I have been together for so long that we have the same views on life and so, both [of us] coming from a Mormon background, I love singing about sex, drugs and politics, the three things you’re not supposed to talk about [as a Mormon] … any taboo, let’s just talk about it. “Choking” was a really nice way to get out a lot of that. It’s very political. It’s about the drug industry pulling the wool over your eyes.
Jordan: The lyrics from that song- we had the tune and the basic arrangement of the song but we didn’t know what it was gonna be about, and then that was the first song that Rachel and I had ever sat down and were like, “Let’s write lyrics together for this”. We 100% tag teamed the lyrics on it … I think we had been watching a lot of politics. It was probably during the whole opiate thing that was going down with Purdue Pharma. Yeah, that was on our minds very heavily. We wrote a song about how the pharmaceutical industry just likes to use you for making the dollars. They’re gonna go ahead and change the laws and put them in their favor, and you’re really just a pawn, you’re just a number to them. Just another dollar sign.
The music video for that song was a fairly big production. What went into making that?
Jordan: Rachel works in the film industry doing hair and makeup. She’s been doing this for years and she’s just made all these relationships with people. We started coming up with the idea to possibly do a video for it. She threw [the idea] out there to a couple people. This director/producer Derek Wride really gravitated towards it. [He and Rachel] had a good relationship and so he took it on as a passion project … He really wanted to shoot the whole thing on 16 mm, reel-to-reel film.
Rachel: All of it is on film, even the underwater scenes … I’m a big film nerd after being a photographer and now working in the film industry. Derek calls me and he’s like, “I got it! We’re gonna build a pharmacy in the desert!” And I’m like, “Are you fucking crazy?... You’re nuts,” because I know all that goes into this…
Jordan: It was a crazy production, though. The biggest video production that I’ve ever done.
Callie: Aside from the big production, Jordan and Rachel stepped up to the plate. Their acting was amazing. Me and Zac has this little part at the beginning where were like irritated customers waiting for our drugs at the pharmacy...
Zac: So I pretty much got to be myself.
Jordan: Zac looked so annoyed during the filming of it. And because he looked so annoyed and so anxious I, being the pharmacist was all smiley in the video, did my best to try and make Zac feel better while I was acting.
Zac: I was trying so hard not to laugh at Jordan being smiley.
What’s coming up from you guys that people should be excited for?
Rachel: More music. More shows
Jordan: We’ve probably gotten a whole other EP written at this point. Yeah, we have a headlining show coming up … The main focus has been creating the music. That’s obviously our favorite part of it. And since getting the band, the parts arranged to play, it’s been so much fun hanging out and rehearsing … And starting to write together has been really fun. So I could see the sound starting to change a little bit. Also, our first EP that we did, New Religion was a little stylistically, pretty punk rock, and I think that we’ve been branching out and not feeling like we have to pigeonhole ourselves with that genre. We’re opening it up more to more alternative styles.
Where do you all see Mowth in the next few years?
Rachel: Hopefully on tour
Zac: I personally would love to continue doing what we’re doing and continue having fun doing it. That’s been my favorite part of this band, just the good-time-feeling that it has.
Callie: We’re just besties.
Jordan: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of fun just getting to be like best friends, all four of us … I think in the next year, just play a ton more shows, branch out, doing some touring gigs, make more friends in the local music scene- that’s one of my favorite things, just making friends with all the cool bands.
Their single “Choking”, as well as the music video for the track is out now. Be sure to catch the band’s first headlining show January 29th @ Urban Lounge.
