Rhododendron (Live on KEXP)

0:00This is live on KexP. My name is Tanner. I'm the host of Seacon Destroy the weekly metal show right here on listener powered KexP 90.3 FM saddle 92.7 in the Bay Area and streaming from KexP.org We have all kinds of great programming you can find up on our YouTube channel as well as at the website I am joined in studio today by the incredible Portland Oregon band Rurdy Dendron. Let's take it away

3:31. The That's a lie! I can't let it go, you! It is a lie! It is a lie!

4:52That's a lie!

23:52Outstanding. That was fantastic. Thank you so much. Roted Ender and Live on KEXP. Thank you so much for coming in. Really, really appreciate you making us stop here for us. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having us. This is super cool. So some people were maybe just hearing you for the first time. And I don't know. How do you describe what this band is and what it means to you? It's a labor of love. There's a lot of love. My hand pisses on the labor. Gage can probably get into it more, honestly. Huh? Yeah. Jesus. It's a compulsion, really, I think. It's like we kind of have to or we'll just stop moving pretty much.

24:57Like we'll stop just living our lives the way we should. It's like something will be eternally missing if we don't do it. Yeah, it's like the best outlet of all time. So it feels like very integral. Like it needs to happen. It's very important piece of all of our lives, I think. Yeah, and it continues to be fun and awesome. So we continue to do it. We've been doing this for like, it's coming up on like the first show we ever played was like next month, seven years ago. And we still feel like there's a lot of stuff to do. And I think just the uncertainty is something that really is integral to how we work, which is why I like, and I'm like, oh, what kind of band are we? And I don't really know. We're still figuring it out. And I think that's one of the greatest things about it, because we still really care about whatever we're doing. Yeah, I mean, it's like if we keep, if there's an evolution to be had, that can be seen very clearly, then, you know, that's like a sign that you just have to, you have to be to conduit to make it pretty much, I think.

25:59Our hearts are in it too. We always want to do more stuff. Yeah, and we keep changing. If it gets boring, we'll just stop. And after every release, we're pretty much like, it's like a assessment. It's like, are we bored? Are we done? You know, checking on it? Yeah, pretty much. It's like a good conversation to have, and the fact that we can be open about it. But yeah, it's fantastic, and it keeps getting better. When you started this band back in high school as well, right? Yeah. That sort of word is all formed. No, it was in middle school, actually. Middle school, okay. He was 13. That's awesome. Yeah. How has it changed, you know, since all those days ago? I think, like, well, when we started, like, gauge and I had, I mean, I had no know, if you're like a year prior to when I met gauge. And we had been playing a little bit of music together. We were really young. But then I'm engaged and I met, like, we just started talking about a lot of music. And he was really introducing me to a lot of new stuff. And like, I was like, this is like probably 2018. I was like 15 at the time, and I was like, very staunch.

27:00Like, I liked, I liked Slayer, and I liked, I liked Death a lot of, we like bonded over a lot of Death Metal, but then over time, he just started introducing me to a lot of new stuff. Like, in some, like, do Metal Band that had three practices in the span of about a year and a half. And then at the very end of it, like, gauge came in. And then we were immediately realized we're like, we need to do something way different. Let's like do something that's kind of like strange and challenging, and we can just do whatever with it. And we knew what we, whatever we needed to do, we needed to have no, because he's still the best drummer I know. And he was down. And so we started playing a lot in, like, 2019. And at first, it was very informed by just, like, kind of whatever we were listening to. And we just, like, throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see just kind of what's stick. So, um, a lot of the earlier material was just, like, very all over the place. Like, oh, here's this, like, kind of shoe gaze-y sounding song. Oh, here's this, like, super fast song. And I think one of the really big important things to us over time is just really refining that. And just really just making it something that reflects us and want to just write good songs.

28:02That was a really big thing. That kind of permeated the process of the last record. And then the record before that, we wrote it, like, in COVID. And we were, like, just practicing all the time. And it was very much like a thing where it's like, oh, let's do this. Oh, let's do this. And, um, just, like, there's a lot of different ideas. And we're like, we can't do this. We also can't play any of it live. So we just can just start writing new stuff. Yeah, it's weird to write music for nobody, but yourself, you know? So it gets, like, a bit indulgent, I'd say. Right, right. Or something kind of rewarding writing for yourself, though. The first album and the second album do have like a very different sound to them. The second album, too, feels very intentional. A scent effort. Just the name is very much like sort of maybe like a clue as to how you guys approached it. Do you want to maybe speak about the last record a little bit? Yeah. Since it's new, you know, out this year on the funser. I think, didn't I come up with the name of it? Yeah, those. I like wrote, yeah, I was really late and I think I wrote down like a bunch of names.

29:04I was just like thinking of on a envelope and I sent it to them and they're like, the first one's pretty good. I think we were like kind of in the leads about what the pluralize it, make it the ascent efforts. There was like a whole like, oh, does it sound like we're being like too egotistical? We're like, oh, just. Yeah, I didn't want it to be like a mid-a thing. I wanted it to be like a spiritual like, well, in my mind, I was like, I wanted to be like, you know, that's how you feel, man, or whatever, you know. Yeah, whatever, you know, I think coming off the heels of the first record prozone battle hymns, it was written almost entirely in COVID. So we had like, yeah, just saying we had like no real exposure to like audience reception for these songs. So a lot of these. Yeah, a lot of the songs were just, you know, written in my basement with my parents listening upstairs and then we recorded this album in my basement and that was that. That's awesome though. Yeah, it was like a great process and definitely solidified. There's a lot of things that we still do today, but very immediately after that,

30:06I think we realized pretty, we had some pretty big revelations about what the next sound was going to be and how that first album was going to, you know, like open into the second edition of the project that we're still working on today. But yeah, those first songs were just like almost immediately rendered something we didn't want to do. And we needed to push past that very quickly. Well, that kind of leads me to another question. You know, today you played a song off of a cent wreck. You played family photo off of a cent effort. Yeah. And then you played an untitled song, a brand new track that you're, is it debuting on the tour or? We've been playing it for like, I'd say it's pretty much like the day. It's like the main thing. We've been playing it for the past like, years, so, and just refining it. So it doesn't have a name. This is going to become the third iteration of the band or. Yeah. We'll be able to take like another five years to come out. Yeah. We know what we're doing now, like kind of an earnest, especially like label stuff,

31:07because we kind of went into the last record really blindly and just had to figure that all out, just like when it was presented to us. And now we're like, okay, we have a better gauge on what we're doing. And, yeah, I don't know. Hopefully we won't take that long. Yeah, I don't like that. We like the song a lot. Yeah, it was like a retroactive. It felt like retroactive with the last record, because we didn't, we came in with like, we recorded it and it's like we have no plans for it. It's just like just record it and then you can figure it out later. Like, like luckily, like mostly, most of it fit onto a vinyl record. But we, it's like, that's, that's like the amount of planning we'd like, forgot to do. Or it's just like barely, like not even keeping things in mind. We didn't even, yeah, we didn't even know if it happened to fit onto a vinyl record. Yeah, it's like mostly, yeah. We had to cut a song. Honestly, fine about cutting it for the record. But, um, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So it's just like trying to be a bit more intentional, like record it. And I don't think we had to album title when we recorded it. And then we didn't really have a plan for the album art.

32:07That's a very long time. Yeah, so it's like, that's like the main, well like for like new stuff. That's the main lesson. And we're just being like a bit more tight and coherent with everything, like fitting together and knowing it'll fit together by the end. We're just being prepared for it to flounder. I don't know. Yeah. It's a, it's a beautiful record. It really is. Yeah, I think we're all, I mean, it came together in a way that I think we're all really stoked on. And I appreciate the special thank you to John at the end from the Flensware, because he helped us like over the course of like almost like what a year and some change. Like we were sending you to, like constant emails and just like all of this back and forth about. You know, cover art and track listing and all this stuff. It's just like he kind of helped us solidify like, you know, how this stuff should go going forward. And then how it went for the record. So he was a big help for, you know, getting the ball rolling. Definitely. And they were going to think about it for the future. Yeah, awesome. Yeah. But I still like the record a lot. Like I think that's a sign of, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like it's pretty good, because I mean, we wrote these songs like forever ago.

33:07It's been, we literally finished recording it. We recorded it like April 2024 was mastered by August 2024. And like almost two years that are I'm like, these songs are still pretty sweet. I don't really have any real reservations about it. I just know what I want to do going forward. But I'm still really stoked on it, which is a nice feeling to have. Well, and they sound amazing live. So thank you. Thank you guys so much for coming into this has been rooted in Dr. Andrin for important organ playing some songs off of their album. A sent effort that just came out this year on the Flensware and some new stuff for us as well. A little probably come out of the tree. You've been listening to Kexp. This has been live on Kexp broadcasting at 90.3 FM Seattle 92.7 in the Bay Area and streaming from Kexp.org. We are listener powered and if you want to learn more about how you can help us and become an amplifier, go to Kexp.org. There's a bunch of stuff there. My name's Tanner. I've been your host today. Thank you all so much. And next again for coming into place. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's really fun. Woo!