From writing songs to recording an EP and playing shows, Wicked Bears have had a busy year. Bassist and vocalist Casey Keele talks about the ideas that fueled their new release, Tuning Out, as well as the recording process, lyrical messages and their love for Salt Lake City in this episode of SLUG Soundwaves.
Since the band’s spontaneous beginning in the colder months of 2015, they’ve been working hard to create material. After talking back and forth among Keele, Nick Fleming and Ken Vallejos, they all agreed that being in a band would be a good idea. “We got together and wrote our first song two or three weeks later,” Keele says. “After we wrote that first song, we wrote five more songs and we did an EP in February.”
Tuning Out is considered to be a “snapshot” of how the band has been feeling over the last year. “There’s been a lot of polarizing things that have been happening, and we don’t really talk about the polarizing things,” Keele says. “It’s about the need to see more important things.”
While Wicked Bears were writing the songs for Tuning Out, they were hoping to quickly get the tracks done and get them out. The writing process started in March, and they started looking into recording in June. They decided to work with Wes Johnson from Archive Recordings, as well as Chance Clift from Lewis Manor in Provo. “He was really excited to work with us,” Keele says. “He’s a rapper, and it was really funny recording punk vocals in the studio with him …”
Wicked Bears are playing the Beehive Social Club in celebration of Tuning Out’s release on Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. Tuning Out will be available to stream and purchase on their Bandcamp: wickedbears.bandcamp.com.
Thanks for listening to SLUG Mag Soundwaves.
- This podcast was created by SLUG Magazine and produced by Angela H. Brown and Secily Anderson
- Associate Producers: Alexander Ortega, Joshua Joye, John Ford, Kathy Zhou
- Executive Producer: Angela H. Brown
- Music by Wicked Bears
- Soundwaves logo and art design by Nicholas Dowd
- Technical design by Matthew Rasmussen
- Photo: Gilbert Cisneros