Beneath The Sheets Interview
Beneath the Sheets is a punk rock underground band out of Lowell, Massachusetts. The five BTS members, Evan Gillis, Myke Valley, Albie Landry, Jeff Ferro, and Austin Bryant linked up in 2006 and have been ripping up the Boston scene ever since. They’ve got a second album on the way and plenty of summer shows lined up. Steez had the chance to meet up with BTS frontman Evan Gillis and guitarist Myke Valley to get the scoop on what’s hot Beneath the Sheets for Summer 2011.
Tell me the story behind the music. How did you get started?
About four years ago, we all got together. We had a few rotations of kids we jammed with before we found the dream team. Eventually, Myke and Albie hooked up with us and jammed a few times. It’s not too exciting of a story, really. Just a lot of long nights spent up in classrooms at UMass Lowell. We’d go in there and stack all of the desks and chairs to the ceiling and jam until four in the morning, quit right before the college classes were about to start. It ended up being pretty rad because it was me, Jeff, and Austin who were there for school and one day I thought, what about adding Myke and Albie to the mix, my hometown boys, and we’ve really taken off from there. We just wanted people we could play with and party with, equally as hard. We haven’t kicked them out yet; not yet.
Where did the name come from?
It’s actually one of Evan’s little treasures that no one wanted to use, but that he forced upon everybody. There was a good long time when we didn’t have a name, or a few really bad names. I think Albie wanted to call us Tough Guy Tuesdays, like, really bad names. One day we were all in an elevator coming down from practice and he just said it and everyone was like, “Whatever, let’s stick with it.” I think the original name was The Heat Beneath the Sheets, but after a week of saying it we realized it was hard to remember, hard to say, and really long. So, we became Beneath the Sheets. People get our name wrong all the time though, they think that we’re Between the Sheets and we wonder if maybe we should have been that, but it has the word “tweens” in it. That is not a good look for us.
I heard that you are dropping a summer mixtape. What’s the story with that?
Well, we’re all huge hip hops heads, for sure. We all love Biggie, Big L, everything. We’ve loved hip hop for so long and we thought about hip hop artists always releasing mixtapes; they flow over anything and give it all out for free. Rock bands don’t really do that, so we thought, why don’t we emulate all that we love. We’re downloading mixtapes on the daily and our CD’s not going to drop until the fall, realistically, but people need new music, like, they’ve been hounding us for new songs. We figured we’d go through some of our older stuff; go through the vault, so that’s what we’re up to right now. There are some songs that we’re going to bring back and you’re gonna be like, really? We’re also gonna have a pretty sweet feature on there for hip hop artists, we always gotta have out hip hop friends on stuff. The first one will actually be out Monday, June 6, and we want to have them lined up to drop every month and a half or so until the new album in the fall.
^Click to listen^
How’s the new album coming?
Well, I dunno how you felt about our last album, Go Easy…It’s my First, but we took everything we didn’t like and bumped it up a notch. We bumped the lyrics up a notch; we’re introducing some dubstep, some dance stuff. There’s something on there for everyone. We love hip hop, dubstep, electro, metal, everything. Our sound is still the same, like our punk sound is underneath everything, you’ll hear it and know that’s Beneath the Sheets, but there’s definitely a new feel. It’s a real fun, summer album; definitely not as dark as Go Easy…It’s my First. It’s fun, we definitely bumped everything up a notch and we’re stoked on it.
So, who writes?
We all write. Evan writes the lyrics, but recently he’s been taking it to the guys to see what they have to say, but we all write the music. Like, Jeff, or someone will write nine-tenths of a song and take it to all of us to see what we think, and then we all work on it. It’s sweet because by the time we get to the jam spot we’ve all worked on all of the music until its perfect. What’s different this time is that we’ve brought our friend and producer, Drew, into our practices to be our outside, unbiased ear. It’s good because sometimes you get caught up in a sound that you love and you need someone to walk in and say, “You should do it this way,” or “That’s not working with the rest of the song.” It’s better than me walking in and trying to tell Myke like, “Dude, it’s cool, but it’s not that cool.” With this album it’s been about learning how to write songs together instead of writing five different parts that can all be played at the same time. For the last album, we wrote a lot of stuff in the studio; last minute, very nerve-racking and very expensive. This time, we’re a lot more prepared, we definitely learned from our mistakes. Everything was planned out and perfect before we went into the studio. It took five days to record the whole album, so we got to record extra drum parts and extra bass, which is sweet.
Tell me about the growing fan base since the last album.
The first album is still selling, people are still coming out to the shows, and I think it’s getting to the point now where we’re seeing people at shows that we don’t know at all. People will say “Oh, I heard about you guys through this,” or “I follow you guys on Twitter.” It used to be all our hometown friends and college friends, and friends of their friends at the shows, that’s how it started. But now, we play shows and don’t know half the people there. It’s awesome to be building up legit fans.
Is Twitter helping that fan base continue to grow?
We’ve made a higher quality of fans through Twitter, for sure. They’ll see us out in Boston, or where ever, and follow us on Twitter, keep in contact with us. Then, the next time we play a show those fans come and meet us out, see the show. I can’t talk any more sh*t about Twitter, the fans are so legit!
Will you tour?
Eventually. Hopefully. No, we definitely will, but we have to wait for the timing to be right, when there are enough people waiting to hear us up and down the east coast. It’s really expensive and our lack of having a really sweet van; we basically can only do chunks at a time. We’ll do a northeast tour, and then we’ll move a little bit further south and have a southern portion. We need that fan base to keep growing, that way there’s not like, twenty people hitting us up to play in New York, there’s like, two hundred.
What’s next for Beneath the Sheets?
New mixtapes, new album in the fall, potential tour, plenty of shows coming up in Boston with Baylock and Bearstronaut; Prospect Hill after that. We definitely have to do a Lowell show, of course, gotta have the Smokehouse Show. We kind of take ‘em as they come. We keep getting sweet show offers without having to do anything, which is cool too because we’re actually getting street cred within the industry. KEDS approached us recently and were like, “We want you to play the KEDS ‘HOW DO YOU DO?’ tour when we come to Boston.” That wasn’t anything we did, we just got an e-mail and we were like, “Sweet!” We were considered for a few other bigger shows, like North by Northeast, in Canada, so we’ll see. We’re just trying to plan for the CD release after that, and we’ll play a lot of colleges. Colleges all fall and winter, ski resorts, which we really want to do more of; we didn’t do as many resorts as we would have liked to this past winter. I think our music is pretty awesome to shred to, and I don’t care, I’ll wear my v-neck and go outside and just play.
Anything else you’d like to add?
New BTS swag! New Imma Freak Beneath the Sheets shirts! We’ve been making everything ourselves. We like being able to be in charge of it, we love it. It’s fun when you have a business that is growing, small but growing. We love networking, making swag, plus we’re all control freaks. We know exactly what we want and through trials and tribulations, we’ve found that nine times out of ten it’s is exactly what we want when we want it, as long as we make it ourselves. Instead of paying, waiting five months, and being disappointed, and you feel so much better about it when people love it and you made it. Those new shirts are three quarters of the way gone after the first show and it feels so good to see people walking away with our stuff knowing that we made it; we came up with the design, we physically made that shirt. Same thing when we see our stickers in random subway stations in Cambridge and Boston, on the back of random cars on the highway. Like, that’s us, and people love it. It’s awesome. Actually, we know a girl who cut the Imma Freak off her sticker because she was getting hassled at work. Maybe we’ll make some more kosher stickers in the future. Maybe not. It’s hard not to be dirty when your name’s Beneath the Sheets.
Words: Cait Reagan
Sunday brought the ams and the pros out to Flushing Meadows for the Vitamin Water Am Open and the pro street finals. The Am Open was pretty entertaining and Evan Smith stole the show. Look out for more from this kid, he’s coming up. The pro’s went head to head bracket style with an instant elimination after the 4 minute jams. The stands were packed all day long and the crowd was hyped. This years finals didn’t have the extreme temps of last years so it made for a good day for everyone. Lutzka was a standout even from Saturdays jams so it was no surprise that he battled through and took first place and $160K cash home. Busenitz, Decenzo and Figgy were close behind. It was a lot of skating for these guys, sometimes only getting a small break before the next jam. Props to everyone and Maloof and Vans for putting this mega event together for another successful year.
World fair remnants in the background.
Lots of wires for lots of speakers.
The Village was packed again on Sunday.
Grandstand seating was maxxed too.
Free stuff from the big apple.
Lutzka being Lutzka.
Schaffer wanted the music turned up.
The new outdoor course kept everyone busy.
