The Sports Team Band!
By Kate Hutchinson, The Guardian | Sports Team, the London indie-pop band was recording at a studio in Devon when lockdown began | Al Greenwood (drummer): Our debut album should have been out last Friday, but when we realized we had to push everything back, we decided to go to a studio in Devon and start writing again. We were there for 10 days before lockdown and then had to make a tough decision: prioritize the band or be with our loved ones. Ultimately, we agreed on being in the studio indefinitely. I think the situation brought out a new side in us. There’s a tendency for everyone to be constantly joking, but it forced us to be more considerate and open. But then we were told we had to leave. Now, there’s complete uncertainty and we’re all in different parts of the country, trying to make a music video.
I don’t know how we’ll manage being in different places. Some vinyl records need to be signed by all six of us. The sheer logistics of trying to organize that … Our fanbase is super-engaged, so we’re trying to find means of maintaining that connection that isn’t, like, “Oh, we’re on Instagram Live again today.” We have a WhatsApp group where fans can share stories – stuff like that spurs you on.
Joe Armon-Jones
The jazz keyboardist lives in London with the producer Maxwell Owin
Maxwell and I have been trying to make some music together for ages. We rarely have a week where we’re both at home, so now it’s easy. I’ve seen a lot of people posting about the pressure to be creative, but that pressure is always there. People just distract themselves by doing things like gigs and touring.
We’ve been working with beats rather than live drums. I wouldn’t be able to record an album like [Jones’s 2018 release] Starting Today because that requires me to be in a room with a lot of musicians, playing together. That can’t really happen at the moment, and that upsets me. It’s going to be interesting to see how lockdown affects UK jazz. A lot of music is created for dancefloors – that music is going to change probably. If the lockdown goes on long enough, music will naturally adapt to the setting that people are in. I’m not sure that all of the musical scenes will make it through this time.
Octo Octa and Eris Drew
The DJs and producers live in rural New Hampshire with their partner, Brooke
Drew: We’re in a log cabin, surrounded by trees and a river. It’s beautiful. We’re all trans here and we’re in a relationship: me, Maya and our partner, Brooke, so we look after each other. I’m the most scared for my friends who are alone. When I first came out and I was trying to be a woman and exist in public spaces, the only places I got validation for who I was, at first, were within the very small dance music community. So if the only people who use correct pronouns and see your struggle in this world are the people that you’re connected to through music and then you’re isolated, no one is creating that support system around you for who you are. It can get dark.
That’s one of the reasons we’ve been doing livestreams from our backyard. We’re trying to do one thing a week to give people some access to music and community. We’ve done DJing guides, and we want to start a conference to discuss them. Maya and I have been joking about starting a synth-pop band. But we do so much together, it’s important to go it alone sometimes.
Octo Octa (Maya Bouldry-Morrison): It’s hard to say that isolating is nice, but I am happy to be here. We work as a unit pretty often. When Eris and I are on the road, we’re attached at the hip. There is a lot of melding of personalities and becoming one person, in a certain sense, when you’re having to travel together, play together, and that somewhat carries over to home. But we have two different studios in the house, so we work on music separately, and then Brooke does visual art.
When we first came home from tour, I got a bunch of stuff done really quickly. I put out a mixtape; I put some finishing touches on an EP. And then my motivation kind of started dipping. I’m staying positive by doing all the things I’ve been waiting to do around the house – I get to throw away old roofing tiles that have been sitting in the basement since 1989. Quarantine is not for ever. It eventually ends, and then new things will come.
Dave (synths): There’s six of us in one flat: me, James, Finlay and Charlie from Walt Disco; Ali plays drums for Lucy and the Best Boys and Anna is the singer of Medicine Cabinet. My bedroom has turned into the performance space and the four of us are in it all day. We all gave up on having personal space a long time ago. We actually filmed a music video for our next single, Cut Your Hair, in the flat on our iPhones. It feels like the best thing to be putting out now.
James (frontman): I share a bed with our bass player, Finlay. Charlie, the guitarist, sleeps on the couch. The only problem is in the morning when everyone wants to shower. People in bands are suited to being in isolation because they spend days in cramped spaces without doing much exercise. We’re lucky, because we were meant to be writing a debut album anyway, and being stuck in quarantine with your band means that you don’t have any other option but to do it. We weren’t in the best financial position, so we applied for the Help Musicians’ Coronavirus Hardship Fund, and that’s been a massive help. We got really drunk and made a trap song one night with the other two housemates – but we haven’t formed a supergroup yet.
Read other stories on how bands are quarantining here:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/16/we-had-to-choose-between-us-or-our-loved-ones-bands-trapped-together-in-lockdown