My previous band, Cloud Person, dissolved in early 2019 after nearly a decade of performing. A couple months later a few of us reconnected and began this project. Our mission statement was to make guitar-driven, synthy rock that you can dance to. Just after our first recording session, the pandemic hit. I moved our old drummer’s kit and my amp into the garage and used them as an escape from quarantine. Through the process of demoing a few songs for the new band I learned how to mic drums decently, trial and error style infused with youtube tutorials. These were dark, early pandemic days and the release doing this provided was life-saving.

After many months of zoom meetings and bottles of whisky we felt safe meeting up again in person and restarted the process of writing, rehearsing, and recording. We still didn’t have a name so we compiled a list of potentials (numbering in the hundreds) and held a ranked vote. Worry Surfer, from a friend who teaches and asked her class for band name ideas, was the clear champion. Glam Dragon was a close runner up.

Originally an outline for Radio Waves was scribbled on a post-it note and left, forgotten for years, on the desk of my home studio. After the end of Cloud Person, I unearthed it and wrote lyrics. This was pre-pandemic, but the words were ominously focused on whackadoo conspiracy theories that we have all seen merge with a multitude of others to form the current far-right situation. Then I made a lofi (shitty) demo with way too much midi. This tends to be how songs get started in Worry Surfer. I send the demo out and then the band pulls the song apart and reforms it at rehearsal. This can take a while but in the end the songs turn up with every member’s fingerprints all over them. When we got back to recording in earnest we decided that doing it ourselves made sense because covid and money. We took full advantage of the freedom this afforded. We wrote parts while tracking, we did and redid and redid parts ad nauseum. We experimented. It was cathartic AF.

In the end I think we came up with a driving post-punk blues-inspired anthem full of rhythmic synth and chugging bass/drums supporting growling guitars and fiery vocals, complete with a towering guitar solo. We’re pretty fucking proud of it.

…and so, lovely people, after almost 3 years of not performing or having released music we are diving back in.

Come to a Worry Surfer show, let’s have a pint and toast whatever is to come ahead. We’ve missed you all.