Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesCHIRP Radio Q&A With Tension Pets (Performing at CHIRP Night at the Whistler on 9/29)

Chicago band Tension Pets will perform at CHIRP Night at the Whistler on Sunday September 29th. We recently caught up with the band ("...there’s no 'I' in 'Pets'") to ask a few questions.

So, What’s going on? Tell us about your current releases and/or upcoming shows (such as CHIRP Night at the Whistler!).

We are currently writing a slew of new songs that have us all super sparked up. Still high from the fumes on our debut release from this summer, CUBEY EP, but definitely excited to keep moving forward - we haven’t even celebrated our first show anniversary yet! We’ll definitely be playing a brand new one for the fortunate folks who come to CHIRP NIGHT AT THE WHISTLER ON SUNDAY 9/29.

How do you go about turning your thoughts, ideas, and feelings into sounds?

A healthy dose of “why not?!” goes into our collaborative song-writing. Some ideas might be too dumb to work but we’re honestly a bit surprised that more aren’t. We have a giant secret spreadsheet of absurd band names we were floating when we first got together, hundreds of rows long - sometimes we’ll take one of those names and make a song around it, ie; “3,000 Stooges”. Some are feelings-inspired…our song "Propylene Promises" stemmed from the exasperation of waiting to de-plane. We try to make each other laugh a lot.

If your music was a kind of beer, ice cream, or coffee (take your pick), what would it taste like?

We’re 110% coffee. We’d taste like the throw-a-couple-cubes-in-the-leftovers on a rough morning or early evening kind. Relish in the perfect imperfection of that necessary kick you needed.

Do you have any particular or unexpected influences? Are any other artists or bands catching your attention at the moment?

Every day is another day living on the shoulders of giants; everything before is an influence in some twisted web of a way. Some more direct but maybe unexpected musical influences might be new age, '80s sophisti-pop, contemporary computer music, and '00s grindcore but also stuff like cartoons and junk on YouYube.

Current bands that rule are Macula Dog, Container, Cel Ray, and CocoJoey to name a select few!

If you couldn’t make music or be involved with music, what would you be doing right now?

-Rotting in the ground , music is life! 

-Probably getting monetary compensation for art, time, and hard work

-Making cozy indie point & click adventures for your loved ones

What is it about Chicago that pleases you?

There’s something unique about Chicago in a Goldilocks sort of way that creates the perfect climate for starting a band for the right reasons –there’s a diverse, supportive, and inspiring scene, and enough people and venues to play shows while keeping things exciting.

There’s also an opportunity to exist outside of the limited vision of what a Typical Buzzworthy Band ™ must look and sound like to survive the grind in larger cities. Ultimately, it translates into a perfect environment to throw some fun shit spaghetti at the wall and not care if it sticks.

And Davey says "the smell."

What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in a basement?

Once at practice we spent a little too long figuring out how to end one of our songs with repeating the riff from My Sharona at a crawling tempo. It sounded pretty stupid, still might do that at some point.

Do you take vacations? What’s your perfect trip?

Touring in Japan would be an absurd opportunity and a bucket list trip. Doing our part to speak this into existence, CHIRP Nation.

If you were someone’s life coach, what are the top 2 life lessons you’d teach them?

Go outside! Drink water + move your body.

Get as much help as you can with mental health issues.  Also, don't beat yourself up because unlearning our society's programming can be a lifelong process.  

Are there any stories or anecdotes you want to share but haven’t been asked the right question to do so? Or do you have anything you’d like to declare to the world? Feel free to share…

Keep in touch with Tension Pets on yesterday’s hit platform Instagram for shows, antics, and animated oddities (@tensionpets). See you this Sunday!