Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gus Carrington, the lead singer and guitar player for indie band The Stupid Reasons. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Gus, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
I look back at where I was taking the first steps toward planning what became our debut album, and I feel like that’s a completely different person. There was definitely risk involved in taking that leap, but sometimes you know in your gut you gotta go through with something. Comparatively, I’ve played in bands that were way more studio-ready than I was (without a consistent lineup of musicians) in The Stupid Reasons.
There’s risks involved in making music no matter how you slice it. You can play clubs for years with a group of friends, getting real tight, and then have it all fall apart before you can capture the magic in a studio. You could also do the opposite — pay to go into a studio without an established “band,” but, as a songwriter, you then risk that each musician you invite into the project might alter the songs in ways you didn’t expect.
“(Petunias)” represents the first time I tried the latter, and wow did it work out with each and every musician who played on this thing. My Dad always told me “a great drummer listens twice as much as he plays,” and everyone we worked with on this record seemed to have a similar philosophy with their instrument (including him because he’s on three songs!)
Still, that journey is fraught with risk. It’s tougher than people realize to put yourself in a leadership role with something like music. You don’t want to step on people’s toes or TELL them how to play something, but I’ve learned it’s worth it to leave most stones unturned, especially in a studio setting. Then and there, it is essentially THE CHANCE to figure out whether one way could be better than the other, before you move on and keep building on what you have.
Musicians are all human, and so it helps to have decent people skills for every corner and conversation involved with making music. Yes, it’s risky to invite people to work on something sacred to you (like a song), but if you both check your egos at the door, the reward is oftentimes greater than either of you could have predicted. That there is real life magic.
Gus, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
The Stupid Reasons started as a stage name and vehicle for the songs I wrote through college and work and even playing in other bands. I’ve fairly consistently been a drummer in the Memphis music scene, but loved writing and entertaining more than anything else.
Specifically through college, I played acoustic sets at the now defunct Avenue Coffee, and that really shaped me into the songwriter and performer I am today. In 2019, I wanted to take being a frontman to the next level, so I invited a longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist, Daniel Wasmund to play in “Reasons.” Soon enough, we enlisted some other friends to play parts, hit the studio with producer Matt Qualls and got 3 songs in the bag before the pandemic hit.
At the end of the day, I’m most proud of the end result we were able to continue to create through 2020 and 2021, but the reception we got after releasing “(Petunias)” in 2022 was nothing to shake a mask at. Our music video for the single “How Does That Make You Feel?” was featured in The Indie Memphis Film Festival, and we finally broke 1,000 streams on Spotify for the title track of the album, “Petunia (The Break Room Song).” As my roommate says, we “GOT THAT K.”
It doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that we’ll be touring the world soon, but last year was good to us. We’re looking forward with a more electric sound and enough material written already to record the followup to “(Petunias)”.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
That’s a tough one, but I guess a huge goal is just to make music as much as possible. So many people say they don’t really know what drives them, but there’s home footage of 6-year-old me watching The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” at point-blank-range of the TV. Enjoying (and playing) music is somehow both something that was passed down to me and something I’ve been able to make my own. It’s as personal as it is communal, which is incredible.
When Willie Nelson said “where I find love is making music with my friends,” I felt that. At the time I’m writing this, Daniel and I have toured a grand total of one week (in our other band Bigger Fish during the summer of ’19). I fully subscribe to the idea that variety is the spice of life, and yearn to get back out to pairing my love of music with my love of travel. There are times when I feel the most at home when I’m going somewhere I’ve never been.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Ironically, with all my wanderlusting (and even some anti-corporate overtones interpretable from the album), one of the most helpful shots of adrenaline for making things happen with the band has been a marketing concept I learned from a “Hubspot” training video. I took notes from a cubicle about “First Horizon, Second Horizon and Third Horizon Goals,” which all correspond with different points in time.
“First Horizon Goals” are what we can do this week or today, “Second Horizon” is what we can do a couple months from now and “Third Horizon” is a year from now (maybe even two years from now). Planning out the 2022 album release essentially took the form of these “Horizon” goals back in 2019. Everything kind of compounds on each other and makes the next goal possible.
If you want to make an album you have to record songs. If you want to do that (most effectively in my opinion) you need to meet the right producer. Scheduling a meet-and-greet is a first horizon goal, getting into the studio is a second horizon and getting the masters back is even, I’d say, a third horizon goal. Art takes care, and art takes time. Nothing just happens, and no one just gives you anything by virtue of you being you. Closed mouths don’t get fed. You can’t count your chickens before they hatch before the chicken or the egg. I’m running out of clichés and answering these questions mighty late on a Wednesday night, but you catch my Tokyo drift.
Contact Info:
- Website: thestupidreasons.com
- Instagram: @thestupidreasons
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thestupidreasonstofollowus/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gus-carrington-935758129
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVyDKHNUjra_hsdru7yDKQ
- Other: TikTok: @thestupidreasons Bandcamp: https://thestupidreasonstofollowus.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR1qgDwsOjiK_ZYaLAr8U7Tv9AD-tMcLJ3i7YziAGdNJtv_AudMNwuo5-MA
Image Credits
Chloe Littlefield, Justin Malone, Mitchell Jones