Talking Tour Life with The Ivy & LYNCS
We met up with The Ivy and LYNCS on a very cold April evening at the Drake Underground. We talked about influences, dream collaborations, and life on the road. Read the full interview below.
Photo Credit: Jake Scott
Eve Bradley: What does an average day in the life on tour looks like for you guys?
Shawn Abhari: Wake up, drive to the venue, get to the venue, load into the venue, set up, sound check, get first meal of the day, sometimes second, then play the show, load out, and back to bed.
Sierra Madison: Do you guys ever get to check out the cities that you're in?
SA: Yeah, I mean sometimes if we have an off day like yesterday, we were in Toronto, so we were kind of intentional about like let's go see the city.
EB: What did you get up to? What did you do?
Jackie Hynes: We went to see Niagara Falls yesterday. It was my first time on the Canadian side.
SM: Not to flex but we kind of have the better side.
SA: It's amazing, it's like a big white hole.
JH: The ice at the bottom was crazy!
EB: Do you guys have a favourite tour memory? Or a crazy story so far?
SA: I mean I guess the craziest story was riding in the back of a random guy’s pick-up truck while he was hauling all our gear.
Wyatt Clem: Yeah, our van broke down and the towing company wouldn't tow the trailer, so this guy pulled up in like an 80s ford truck and I was just like “hey man super random can you tow us like 5 minutes down the road”, and it ended up being 20 minutes down the road and I was like it's not impossible that we could get murdered right now.
SM: The likelihood is low but not zero.
WC: It's definitely there, it's not zero.
SA: He could just keep driving!
SM: You never know, you could've ended up on a Netflix special!
WC: Luckily, he was really cool, and we made it but yeah, that was pretty wild
EB: I was wondering how your collaboration with Don't Fall Asleep To This came about. Whose idea was it? How did you go back and forth with ideas?
JH: The guys brought in a really cool opening synth that you hear in the song. They just had it on their laptop and sent it to me. I listened to it and then we just kind of went from there and were thinking about “what is this about really”? And kept going back and forth with ideas until it kind of just started writing itself. And then it really kicked off from that first night.
WC: We started writing melodies and stuff over it pretty fast, and at the end of the first day we had a solid working demo of it. Then we showed up on the second day and Jackie had sped the drums up and I was like “That’s exactly what it needed”
JH: I was so nervous about it too because we spent 6 hours the night before on it and I kept listening and thinking “man I feel like I really want them to like this and I'm not 100% sold that this is the best I could do, so let me just completely change it and see what happens” and luckily they liked it
WC: Yeah it worked out
SA: We came back and were like “okay nice now it's a banger”
EB: Now some separate band questions. What's your favourite song you've put out and what's your favourite to perform if they’re different. What're you looking forward to performing tonight?
WC: My favourite ivy song out of everything is probably Hurts Just Right. My favourite to perform is the song Stop on a Dime from our album.
SA: My favourite song that we have that's out... I don't know, I really like our song Broad Shoulders. I love the time that was written. And I love the song Gold live because its double time.
JH: I think my favourite release is How to: Cure a Heart Attack, and then my favourite one to perform right now is If I Lose you I Lose Everything because there's a lot of energy and its very dynamic.
SM: Is there like one song that you find the crowd really reacts to and you have a lot of fun with them in that moment?
JH: I mean If I Lose You is really fun because I do this thing. There’s a line where I say, “pinky promise by the bleachers where we met”, and I always go down and find someone who wants to do a pinky promise. Sometimes they know it's happening, and sometimes they have no idea, but that one's fun. And I think like any time, anyone knows the words.
SM: I feel like that must be such a surreal feeling.
JH: Every time!
EB: Tell us about the early days of getting into music for you guys. How did you get started and how did you all find each other?
SA: For me, music was always a part of my childhood, always extracurricular activities whether it was a band that I started or just school band or piano lessons. It was just random instruments my whole life till I went to college and then I always tried to make sure music was a part of my life. And then at some point I was like “you know what? I’m going to start a band” and so it was just me and I was like “yeah I’m going to be called the Ivy and I'm going to find a signer and a guitarist and a drummer and we’re going to make music”. And so, I kind of started making music and then I met Wyatt at music school. I went to go get my degree in music production with Wyatt and we had the same class schedule, and we just started writing music together. By the end of the first semester, we started releasing our first music.
EB: Its kismet, its perfect.
WC: I got my first guitar when I was 13. It was just a cheap acoustic and my dad could tell that I was trying to put chords together and I could kind of start to piece things together so he was like “oh yeah we should do lessons”. Throughout early high school I took guitar lessons and then I started to have more of an interest in recording and writing songs so I started on an iPad and I just was remaking... dubstep was the thing in 2013/2014 so I was like showing my friends like “dude I remade this song” and I didn't... at all... it was bad. But that was kind of my first introduction to recording and then I kind of bounced around college for a while until I found out about ACM where I met Shawn. I was in a band at the time just as a guitar player, had no desire to be a singer at all. I had a few things out on SoundCloud, but I’d never sang live. Shawn invited me to join based on a couple SoundCloud songs that he heard. I was like “okay dude I’ll play this one show and then I got my other band” and that band fell apart and it was serendipity. The timing of everything worked out.
SM: Sounds like fate.
JH: They're like a perfect match
SM: They're like soulmates
JH: I feel bad being in the middle right now!
JH: I got started in music pretty young. My mom had me learning the piano when I was 4. We had a family friend who taught piano lessons, and they were like “oh that's a good thing to learn!”. I got really lucky because the elementary school that I went to, for some reason, the year that I started going they were like “every first grader is going to get a violin! They're all going to learn, and it's going to be a new way of learning!”. I really took to it hard. It was like my entire personality, and then from there I picked up upright bass and that lead me to the bass guitar and then to the guitar. Full circle, now I play kind of everything. That just lead me to start producing and writing by myself. I started recording myself and trying to figure out how to make music when I was around the same age, 13 or 14. Up until then I was just playing whatever I could. I was on Ultimate guitar tabs just leaning every Paramore song, anything I could. I didn't really start recording or producing anything until I was maybe 13 or 14. Just trying to hit record and see what happens, putting things on top of each other.
SM: A learning curve.
JH: Huge learning curve!
EB: A little garage band moment.
JH: Yeah, yeah, exactly
SM: It's how all the greats are made. It's just a curiosity for the craft
JH: I couldn't get enough of it. I still can't.
SM: It's like a drug. A good drug.
JH: I think about it all the time.
EB: Do you guys have a dream artist to collab with or tour with? Other than each other, of course.
JH: I would say mine right now is this artist in the UK called Griff. I think she's awesome. She makes all her own stage clothes, and she's super creative. It would just be really cool to talk to her. I feel like she's super chic and chill.
EB: This is also a selfish question. I'm just trying to get some music recommendations.
SM: Yeah, I need to update my playlist.
WC: I've always thought Hippo Campus would be pretty cool. They've been one of my favourites since like 2015. The Japanese House, obviously, would be sick. If we decided to go more rock with future releases, there's this band called Wishy that I think would be so sick. They're actually my favourite band. Thats my 3.
SA: Same, probably.
EB: What's next for you guys? Do you have anything exciting to plug, anything coming down the pipe?
SA: I mean we’re always writing, always having music kind of being wrapped up. Right now, we have songs, a lot of songs, and it's just kind of about figuring out the way to package them and when we want them to come out, things like that.
SM: Is there one sort of feeling when you put out music that you really want people to feel or a certain experience you want them to go through? Do you want to provoke a certain emotion?
SA: Yeah, I guess almost like a familiarity with the song. I've heard someone tell me this and it was a very cool comment. They said “whenever I hear your new song I felt like I'd heard it before but not in a ‘this sounds like everything else’. The notes went exactly where I wanted them to go”.
SM: Almost like a nostalgic feeling where you already know. You feel it in your soul.
EB: This one is for Jackie. On your website you cite The 1975 as a major influence for you, and in Miss You, you mention knowing all the words to Robbers. I was wondering what your favourite 1975 song was?
JH: Oh man!
EB: It's an impossible question. Maybe a top 3 if that's easier.
JH: That’s also impossible. We’ve been going through it in the van and even our top 5 is impossible to pick. Right now, I've been listening to menswear a lot, I really like that one. You really makes me feel like I'm 13 again, so I like that one, it has a soft spot in me. Their new record is just so good, I like Wintering. I just posted that on my story today because it was snowing.
SM: It goes with the weather!
EB: It is a good Toronto winter song, every winter, after the first snow, I listen to it.
SM: When I need to get a little bit moody, I’m like “yeah this is it”.
EB: Jackie, your 2020 EP is called Every time I Find the Meaning of Life it Changes, what's your current meaning of life?
JH: My current meaning of life? I'm really focused right now on staying in the present. Which is pretty easy to do on tour actually, you kind of have to consistently be present. Thats not really the meaning of life though. I think it’s just togetherness. Just the human connection of being aware of everyone around you and being together as humans.
SM: Especially right now with everyone being plugged in. You'll sit down and talk to someone and they're somewhere else completely. I've been noticing that more and more. I have to put conscious thought into being here together right now. This is it, this is all there is.
JH: I was just talking to Talltale, Kat, last night. She was talking about how she’s taking these dance classes and she said that they've totally changed her life right now because she goes in four days a week and she's obsessed because it's the one time a day where she has to physically be looking and listening to a direction, and if she doesn't, she can't follow the steps right. I’m constantly looking at screens, sometimes I have multiple screens going. I think we're all guilty of this. It’s constantly all over the place. Being present is really there for me, and just that connection to fully be there with people is important.
EB: On that note, do you think there's a kind of meditative aspect to being on tour where every day you have to be present and lock in on something? I know it's obviously stressful and you're all over the place, but is there any two sides to the scale there?
JH: There’s definitely this scale. It's like I'm either super here or I'm zoned out completely. It's usually in the morning or the nighttime. I've found, especially this tour, that everyday I'm wiping my nails off and painting them again. It’s this time when I can just sit and focus on just that. It's just been nice. Usually, I do my nails once every week or so, but every day I've just been painting my nails and just being with the birds and sitting with myself. Anything to ground myself where I am and just exist by myself. We’re all kind of on top of each other for 30 days, so you don't really get a lot of alone time or privacy. Anything that you can do to keep yourself as yourself is important when you're on the road with people and spending a lot of time with people.
SM: For sure. I feel like it gives almost sibling energy where you're all stuck together and you're like “I love you, but you're getting on my nerves right now, I need to go take a breath”. It's so important to carve out that time. We’re super excited to see you guys perform. Thank you so much for taking the time.
SA: Of course
SM: Sorry for the weather, that was our bad. Hopefully it’s better next time.