A Quarantined Interview with Diet Cig
A talk with the duo about their new album while we're all stuck at home.
A ton of work goes into releasing an album that most of us never consider. And that work is done by people most of us never think about. There are studio engineers, graphic designers, tour managers, merch sellers, vinyl pressing plant workers, publicists, venue employees, etc. The music industry runs on the backs of a small army of these behind-the-scenes people. So when a sudden, unforeseen disaster strikes, it hits them all hard.
"We want the arts to be an integral part of defining and understanding who we are as a people." Bernie Sanders said this during his livestream with Neil Young on Monday and I think it’s significant at this moment. Few people consider the continuation and preservation of the arts during a crisis like this. Arts/entertainment are assumed to take a backseat behind other industries and, yes, obviously healthcare professionals, teachers, food service employees, etc. are all essential to the integrity of society right now, but the arts play a crucial role as well. If we are not fighting for the survival of our culture, what then is the point of our collective existence?
Aaaaanyway, I am very dim-witted and do not possess solutions to any of the larger issues that are impacting the music industry either in the immediate or long term. All I can do is use my platform, such as it is, to document it in its current form and make sure things don’t get lost.
Lately, I’ve been sympathizing with all the bands who are stuck in the unenviable position of releasing something they put a lot of work into during what is turning into the most uniquely dark period of this generation. One of those bands is Diet Cig, who is releasing an album called Do You Wonder About Me? on May 1. I figured it’d be a good idea to have a video chat with guitarist/singer Alex Luciano and drummer Noah Bowman since we’re all stuck inside due to the quarantine. (I’m currently toying with the idea of making this a regular segment and calling it ‘Tine Time. Or something less hokey. But probably ‘Tine Time.)
If I’m being honest, I was slightly nervous about doing this chat because I do not socialize well in times of crisis. Find me at any funeral and I’m the guy who insists on making jokes because ha ha that’s way easier than dealing with harsh reality in any meaningful way, right??? Ha ha mom and dad are fighting what a great time to tell a joke I heard at school today quick everyone pay attention to meeee instead!!!!! (Man, it would be cool to be able to afford therapy to work all this shit out but oh well what can you do. )
So anyway, I was a little uncertain about how to conduct my first quarantine talk but I figured I should just kick it off by asking something simple like how are you guys doing today?
Alex: We’re safe and in a home.
Are you guys still in Brooklyn?
Alex: No, we’re based in Richmond, Virginia, now.
Can you tell me what your week has been like, trying to plan for album release with everything going on?
Alex: It’s been a lot of stress-phone calls with our team. Everything is on hold. The biggest thing we’re trying to figure out, like everyone else, is: Are we gonna go on this tour in the spring?
Which is supposed to start when?
Alex: April 28. There’s a UK run that went from April 28 to May 7. But then there was a US run that went from May 15 to June 6, which was just far enough away enough from this eight-week ban that, maybe, if we’re feeling optimistic, it’ll be OK by then if everyone does what they’re supposed to. But I get all these calls where it changes every day. One day it’s like, “Oh, we’re feeling really optimistic!” Then yesterday we get on a call that’s like, “Actually, it’s looking pretty bleak.” So this week’s been a lot of sitting on our phones.
And it’s hard because at once you don’t want to be selfish, but I’m sure it’s a source of income for you guys and your livelihoods are based around these uncertainties.
Alex: Yeah, and it’s not even just the two of us. We have a whole crew we tour with that relies on that income. And it’s trying to figure out: Can we give them a deposit in advance, for whenever the tours are scheduled? It’s making sure our people are taken care of and balancing that with, like, OK, how are we gonna pivot to online? Are we gonna do livestreams? Are we gonna do Patreon?
What’s been the most challenging part about launching an album now?
Noah: Well, it kind of feels like the last thing we should be talking about, in a way. It does feel kind of selfish to say, “Yeah, all this is going on, but also don’t forget! Our record comes out in May and get your pre-orders in!” It’s this weird balance. The record is still coming out in May but our whole thing has changed. We had music videos we were planning on doing that we can’t do now. Everything is frozen right now, but we’re trying to support each other. It’s silly because I feel like the same bands are all Venmoing each other the same 20 bucks.
I’ve seen so many people encouraging others to buy merch, and yes, do that, but it doesn’t cover those people who depend on you for touring. So for people who want to support artists, is there anything additional besides buying physical things?
Alex: I think internet support is big. Making playlists, boosting things, a retweet is helpful! Posting and commenting, just to keep everyone in the mix. That kind of internet interaction is free to do and is actually super helpful. In terms of supporting the crew, I feel like all of our crew has side hustles and we’re trying to do that for them—buying their stuff, subscribing to their things, reposting on our accounts. It’s tough. It doesn’t feel like there’s a number one way to support anything right now.
As a touring band, do you have enough saved up to sustain a canceled tour? How long does a tour cancellation impact a band at your level?
Alex: We took this past year off of touring because we had toured so much in the three years before. After three years of touring nonstop, it was like, OK, now we have the means to stop touring for a year, write our record, and kind of chill out, which is scary because we’re at the end of that rope right now and it we were hitting the point where we really needed to go on tour, and now it’s being canceled. You have to do so much touring to take time off. And for us, touring is our entire income. Streaming and merch sales are almost just supplementary income. It’s all about touring. We’re likely not going to be able to tour until November. It’s pretty scary. It’s a big hit. It’s hard to quantify it. We rely on that money for everything —paying our people, paying designers to make our merch, paying people to make content for us, paying for our van, paying for gas, all of that comes from touring.
Not to sound fatalistic, but we’re also assuming that after we hunker down, people are going to be in the financial or emotional position to be able to go to concerts or buy records. I don’t mean to drag this in a dark place, but that might not be the case.
Alex: Yeah, and it’s scary because musicians and artists and freelancers don’t have that sense of, “Oh, when you go back to work, it’ll be fine and you’ll have your hourly pay.” It’s so much more up in the air. There’s got to be a change where there’s more supplementary basic income for people who are freelancers. I’m hoping people like Bernie Sanders get elected, and I’m just looking for optimism.
One of the knocks you always hear about Bernie is being too radical or too extreme, but I’m hoping that since things are so uniquely bad right now people will understand that radical change is needed. Do you think this will all force any sort of positive change, either in the music industry or generally?
Noah: I’d like to think so. Maybe I’m trying to be as optimistic as I can. Everything has already changed in three days, but it’s gonna be a lot different and I think we will, in this time, figure out different ways to do things that we haven’t thought about yet. That’s just how we are as people in the world. So there are positives but I think a lot of things that we think of as normal now will probably not be as normal. It’s a radical time, and going back to your Bernie point, yeah maybe we need someone who is radical to come in and change it up. Clearly, whatever we’ve set up isn’t working.
Alex: Right now, things are radical and extreme. So maybe Bernie’s policies will seem normal. They are, around the world, in any other majorly developed countries. So I do hope we come out of this with people realizing how unprotected service workers, musicians, artists are. I hope we find ways to make a more consistent income. We’ve gone so many years where we don’t pay creators for content. It’s just free on the internet, and I think maybe people are now understanding why it’s important to pay content creators.
Things are changing so rapidly, as you said, and I look back at things I said or posted even a week ago and they seem so quaint. I’m wondering how you feel about releasing an album that was created in a pre-quarantine time. Have you done any reevaluation of it now that things have changed so drastically?
Alex: I will be doing that after this call. [Laughs] But I think the themes on our record are universal feelings that I still feel even though we’re in a crisis. Like, I still feel petty towards people who’ve wronged me, even though we’re in a crisis.
I think it’s good to harbor pettiness! It’s holding on to normalcy.
Alex: Yeah. But the record is all based on feelings, and no matter what happens, people are still gonna feel their feelings. We’re all still human in this way. We’re going through this thing that’s scary but everyone is dealing with things emotionally first. The record is looking back on how I reacted to things. A lot of the songs deal with looking back at past versions of yourself and reckoning with that, and trying to get over feeling embarrassed by a younger, less cool version of yourself. So I think that does relate now in a way.
There’s one line that stood out to me in that context. On “Broken Body,” you say, “I can’t even walk a fucking block from my house. I’m missing all the things that made me feel alive. I want to die, I’ve been cooped up inside.” I’m wondering how you view that in hindsight.
Alex: I didn’t think about it until right now. [Laughs] I wrote that song when I had ACL reconstruction surgery. I couldn’t leave my house. I was on crutches. My leg was super fucked up and I got really depressed because the things that I thought were so integral to being me were things that revolved around being able-bodied, and reckoning with that internalized ableism, kind of. But yeah, it’s kind of wild relating it to this time. I feel like the last thing I’ve been doing this week is listening to our record, so you’re really shining a light on it. Maybe I’m a psychic. [Laughs]
But yeah, I’m so overwhelmed that it’s hard to assess how I feel [about the album]. But people are going to be listening to this album while dealing with this current pandemic. Our song “Thriving” is out, and nobody’s thriving! It’s almost like a mantra. It’s been interesting to see people posting that song and saying that it’s empowering or getting them through. It’s nice to see that, even in all this craziness, music is something that is good and helpful to people.
Here’s a photo I just dug up of me and Diet Cig from a few years ago, back when we could do stuff like you know go outside and what not:
Alright, so you heard ‘em, pre-order their new album, follow ‘em on social media. You can listen to “Thriving” on streaming platforms. I am linking to Bandcamp since the site is waiving their revenue share this Friday.
On the Bandcamp tip, Laura Stevenson also put out a song this week that she wrote four years ago right after getting married. She said the song “is about how the world might seem like it's falling apart but we still have love and all we can do right now is take care of ourselves and each other.” Ha ha not me though no one cares if I live or die and I’m primarily just doing this newsletter thing to remind myself that I still exist in society. But even though I am a loveless and useless husk, I got very emotional listening to this song! So maybe buy it on Bandcamp on Friday as well! Laura is gonna have a baby soon and that parenting shit is not cheap!
Oh and blah blah blah I am not pregnant but do always need rent money (every month wth???). To that end, you can also support me by getting a paid subscription to this newsletter if that’s your “thing.” Here, I will lower the price:
Also, we’re going to see a lot of artists offering livestreams while stuck at home. I personally have not been watching many of them because the livestream eliminates my favorite part of watching live music: Complaining and shit-talking just loud enough for everyone around me to hear and shoot me dirty looks. But Ben Gibbard says he’s gonna do them every day.
I watched yesterday’s and noticed that Ben was coughing A LITTLE TOO MUCH FOR MY LIKING. I pointed that out on Twitter and people replied to tell me that apparently Ben recently got over an illness that he thinks may have been Corona? Protect Ben Gibbard! He was a personal favorite interview subject for my Rank Your Records series. Before we started, he told me he was a fan of the series, which is normally just what someone tells me so I don’t feel bad about wasting my life on music journalism, but as soon as I turned the recorder on, he was ready to GO, so he proved me wrong. Nice guy. If you’re cooped up inside and looking for a longread, that’s one of my favorite Q&As I’ve ever done.
Also, one more thing. If a band you like announces that they have to cancel a tour, for the love of god don’t start complaining in their comments. It honestly blows my mind that a few people are doing this, and that they think that it is somehow within the powers of the band themselves. If a tour you were excited about got canceled, the band is probably selling off all the merch they had printed up for it and a better use of your energy would be to order that instead. I myself was excited to see Portrayal of Guilt next month, but since that’s no longer happening, I ordered one of these sweet leftover shirts:
OK, that’s it for now. Don’t worry, the emails will continue to go out and they will become increasingly deranged as my brain deteriorates. Stay home and stay safe.