Gnawing
Gnawing, the Richmond, Virginia-based project of John Russell, is a dream come true for fans of 90s indie rock. The trio incorporates influences from several distinct spheres under the genre umbrella of this era, taking some Evan Dando-esque melodies, mixing them in with a bit of Sebadoh fuzz, and topping it with the guitar firepower of J. Mascis. They even manage to mix in a bit of alt-country twang for good measure. The three songs on their 2020 7-inch, Shaky, include a newly recorded version of “Matheson Ave.,” a song that originally appeared on their 2018 debut EP, a hooky title track, and the brighter sounding “West Coast,” which is perfectly sandwiched right in the middle. The band is currently working on the first full length, which is scheduled for release later this year.
We recently chatted with the band via e-mail about their origins, the inspiration behind their sound, and what’s next:
Tell us a bit about how Gnawing started. How’d the three of you come together? What’s your background as far as playing in other bands/projects?
Gnawing was sort of an accidental band, really. I had recorded the s/t tape by myself when I was moving away from Charlotte with no real intention of it being a band, and was sort of passing it around once I got to Richmond to see if anyone would want to play something like that. I was doing repairs at Guitar Center with Christian and showed him the tape, and he was immediately interested in playing together. For the first bit of being a band we had Ali Mislowsky from Big Baby/Young Scum playing bass with us, but she wanted more time to focus on Big Baby, and being in three bands is quite time-consuming! After she stepped back, we reached out to Chris to play bass and he was really excited to come play with us. Once Chris joined I feel like we really locked in and started to sound exactly like what I was hearing in my head.
As far as my background in other bands, I started playing drums in 8th grade and was in several bands in middle/high school but didn't do much outside of local shows. Once I got to college I sang in a short-lived hardcore band that was basically just a Guns Up/Carry On xerox copy but was really fun. After that I played bass in a band called Viewfinder and then played guitar/sang in a heavy shoegaze band called Earth Mover that did some regional touring. After college, I started playing drums in Alright (who just put out a killer LP) and played guitar in a noise rock band called Planet Creep in Charlotte. I have been in a couple other short-lived projects throughout the years but these ones are the "formative ones" for me.
You recently moved from Charlotte to Richmond. What prompted that move? How would you describe the current state of the scene in Virginia?
I moved to Richmond the summer of 2018 which feels like it could be either six months ago or ten years ago! I was in a long-distance relationship and we wanted to move somewhere new together instead of having one of us just move to the other, so we just sort of decided on Richmond. I had played a lot of shows here and loved it, so I felt like we were making a good choice. Now we've been here almost three years and are married so I feel like it was a good choice?!
Pre-COVID, the scene here was really incredible. There were always multiple killer shows happening on any given day, and there was always a lot of different stuff going on. Richmond has a ton of bands, and there's a bunch of different scenes that are all intersecting with each other. Hopefully in a post-COVID world we can return to that. I think most subcultures struggle with diversity and inclusion (and hopefully that is something we rectify after a year+ of no shows) but Richmond does the most of any city I've lived in to really strive for an inclusive music scene.
We love Shaky, the 7-inch that you released last April. How’d the songs on it come together?
Thank you! The main riff for Shaky was one of the first things I had written after the initial batch of songs that made the tape. I kept coming back to the riff but couldn't figure out what the song around it should be. I wrote the chorus while driving for a delivery job I had for a short period, I would just play the voice memo of the riff over my car stereo and try different words and phrases. Once I had that, the rest of the song just sort of came together, and we really hammered it out in the practice space.
West Coast had originally started on an acoustic (as most Gnawing songs do) and it just had such a natural twang to it that I really wanted to preserve that instead of just turning on a bunch of distortion pedals and turning it into another big guitar rock song, so that was our tribute to our twangy/country influences. My friend Wes Hamilton played pedal steel on it, and really just sealed in the country vibe.
What’d you envision these songs sounding like when you went into the studio to record them? To me, it’s like this great combination of The Posies and like Sebadoh. The big riff on “Shaky” also reminds me of J Mascis on Where You Been? Were you going for that sound?
Gnawing as a whole has been a love letter to the bands that really got me interested in "alternative music." Dinosaur Jr has been one of my favorite bands since I was like 17, so J's influence (especially Where You Been era) is heavy on the 7", but also bands like Mudhoney, Husker Du, Lemonheads, Swervedriver, Liz Phair, Superdrag, basically anything drenched in crunchy guitars from that era. West Coast was our way of expressing our love for a little calmer stuff, definitely like Posies and Sebadoh, but even further back like Gram Parsons, Big Star, 70's era Stones, CCR, all the classic rock I was raised on. I feel like I have pushed back on being in bands that were easily identified by their influences, but with Gnawing the three of us have really just kinda leaned into the influences and just try to put our own spin on it.
I noticed you re-recorded your song “Matheson Ave.” for this release. Why’d you decide to do this?
We really wanted to include a bonus track that would go with the digital download of the 7" and we weren't really sure on what to include. I think Josh (Refresh Records) might have initially been the one to suggest re-recording one of the older songs from the s/t tape, and we thought that was brilliant. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of the whole tape, but Matheson really sticks out to me on that batch of songs. It just feels different than the rest of the tape. Plus we have played it at every show we've played, so it made sense to have an updated version of Matheson Ave as the bonus track. It's really funny to me to compare the two versions and see what a difference a year makes. And someone other than myself playing drums and bass....
How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard you before? How do you think your sound has changed?
I can't ever figure out how to describe us, I think our Bandcamp says "a loud rock and roll band that wishes they were a country band" and I think that's still fairly accurate. There are some easy influences to pick out but I don't really know anyone that sounds like Gnawing as a whole. Our sound has definitely changed since the first tape as well, I think we have grown more comfortable in playing and writing together, and have spent a lot of time developing that into a sound that is explicitly Gnawing.
Who are some of your favorite bands from your local scene that you’d recommend to our readers?
Oh boy, there's a lot. Young Scum really nail the jangle-pop thing. Big Baby writes the catchiest songs I've heard, and not just because we shared a member once. We're blessed to be in the same city as our labelmates Downhaul, and they are truly amazing. Sensual World is one of my favorite punk bands in the entire southeast. Twin Drugs does the heavy reverb-soaked shoegaze thing better than most "shoegaze" bands. Captain Scrunchie are the only other country punx I can think of off the top of my head, so obviously shout out to them. I'm sure I've forgotten somebody and like three days from now I'll be like "dammit!"
Since you haven’t played live in quite some time, which song of yours are you most excited to play in the live setting once shows resume?
ALL OF THEM!!! “Shaky” is definitely a live favorite because we can make the solo a little longer and let it breathe a little more, and I think “Matheson Ave.” always hits live. Someone somewhere has definitely cried while we've played that song at a show.... But honestly, I think the newer songs are some of the best ones we've written yet, and most of them will be incredibly fun to play live.
What’s next for Gnawing? I hear you have a full length in the works. What can people expect from that?
Over the summer we recorded a bunch of songs with Allen Bergendahl that we are incredibly excited about. They will indeed form a full-length record, which will make an appearance in 2021, should it prove to not be as much of a garbage fire as 2020. People can expect the aspects of Gnawing that we are known and loved for, tons of fuzz, tons of twang, but all of it a little more refined and molded into our own thing. I really feel like we have found our own "sound" with the LP. There are loud, fast songs and there are straight-up country songs with barely any electric guitar. It's got something for everyone, I think.
