--Ada Wofford
----28 April 2020
In this installment of Life During Quarantine we speak with multi-instrumentalist and guitarist/vocalist for Tiger Castle, Jon Urban.
MLU: Tell us what instrument(s) you play and what project you are currently working on—If nothing current, what have you worked on recently or in the past?
Urban: For Tiger Castle live it's just guitar and vocals. In another band I'm in (Tough Guy Soda, mostly the same guys but on different instruments) I play bass and vocals. I played trombone in middle school, high school, and college. And then for various definitions of "play" there's drums, piano/keyboard/synth, melodica, Omnichord, dulcimer, banjo, stylophone... basically whatever I could get my hands on and be just proficient enough to record a take for a song. I've overloaded myself with stuff to do as is typical. I'm mixing demos for a friend-band (The Hell Yeah Babies out of NYC, they're great), slowly picking at a dozen song ideas I've written so far since quarantine started, slowly mixing a different EP from the one we just released, overseeing a month long thrash metal album listening series I'm doing with some band-friends, at this very moment I'm editing the TC submission for a monthly series of brunch shows that used to be in person. If that sounds overwhelming that's because it is, and I did it all to myself.
MLU: Ok, so you basically answered the next question but in case you left anything out: As a musician what have you been doing during quarantine?
Urban: The only other thing I can think of is bouncing song ideas back and forth between whoever messages me at that moment. But yeah, I think that's the exhaustive list.
Urban's home recording setup
MLU: Do you feel that quarantine is affecting your productivity as a musician/writer? If yes, how so? If no, why not?
Urban: I definitely think it does. I've been more productive but in a sort of anxious way, a sort of "gotta do something to fill the space where playing shows used to be." Four of the activities I mentioned before were started completely since quarantine started, and the remaining ones were done at a much more leisurely pace beforehand.
MLU: What records have you been gravitating towards during this time?
Urban: It's been a two-pronged approach. There's been whatever records I've been meaning to listen to for a while now. At work before, while it wasn't explicitly said No Headphones or anything, nobody ever did it, so I felt weird listening to headphones. But now that my cats are my supervisor I can do a lot more listening. And then there's the thrash playlist. Couple of my bandmates and other friends are along a spectrum of sincerity when it comes to being metalheads, and around the time quarantine started I happened across a FaceBook post about best thrash albums, so I thought hell, why not, let's get a playlist going. We wrap up this Wednesday on a 36-album playlist that at times has been a real slog!
MLU: Can you give use some bands/artists?
Urban: Yup!
Antarctigo Vespucci - Love In The Time Of E-mail
Fountains Of Wayne s/t
Superchunk - Majesty Shredding
Secret Machines - Now Here Is Nowhere
King Gizzard's entire damn discography
and then
Havok - Time Is Up
Metallica - Ride The Lightning
Testament - The Legacy
---For both sides of that listening journey.
MLU: Do you think you’re gravitating towards them specifically because of the quarantine?—If so, how?
Urban's guitars and pedals
Urban: Not so much the albums specifically, just the volume of music consumed and produced. But ya know there's always the odd song or lyric or whatever that makes you go "Yikes, this used to play a lot better pre-pandemic." Like the song “Superbug” or the album title “Spreading The Disease,” stuff like that. It's all part of the vibe of looking at old concert footage and nervously going "they're too close" despite it being from like 2014.
MLU: Writing a song about quarantine/the pandemic—Cool or Cheesy?
Urban: I've yet to come across a quarantine song that isn't cheesy but that's either because the lyrics are screamingly obvious or you're told before you hear the song and then you see the obvious symbolism. The latter is a general pet peeve of mine I think, I tend to prefer more vague or abstract lyrics. As an example, I learned that the song “New Friends” by Pinegrove is about him being nervous at a party where he didn't know anyone, and now forever I shall go "Oh my GOD it's SO OBVIOUS" and it's definitely made the song a bit sillier for me. I heard a quaran-song recently that used the phrase "social distancing" and I just had to turn it off.
MLU: What’s the first thing you plan on doing once this is over?
Urban: Stay inside a week longer than is recommended! But honestly, it's hard to say what's the first thing I'd do. I keep typing and deleting this answer. Probably hug a friend or get a beer or something. It's hard to imagine doing any of those things with much gusto right after this is over. We're all gonna be weird and leery of each other for a while. I CAN’T WAIT for a real band practice though. Zoom sucks! In the best system we devised, only one person has their mic on and everyone else is muted. So, we can't all hear each other and just rely on the honor system. We can't work on anything new, just prevent atrophy of old songs.
Jon Urban in his home studio
MLU: Just for fun, if you were to write a song about quarantine or the pandemic, what would you call it?
Urban: Something like “Two Degrees Removed from Explicitly Talking About It,” like Cellmate or Spacious. Or maybe I'm in an emo song title mood that day and it'll be, “I'll Never (Not) Wipe Down My Groceries Again For As Long As I Live.”
You can read our review of Tiger Castle’s latest EP here and you can listen to the track “Rachel the Vampire” below: