Getting Candid with Bathe Alone [INTERVIEW]
We’re reporting from South By Southwest Music Fest in Austin, Texas. We sat down for an interview with Bathe Alone, along with 3 other performing artists including Elle Shimada, ASHY, and Ada Oda. You can listen to interviews with all of these artists on Name 3 Songs podcast and see the full transcribed interview with Bathe Alone below.
Bathe Alone is the dream-pop moniker of multi-instrumentalist Bailey Crone who works alongside producer Damon Moon to create indie rock through a sound design approach. We talk to Bailey and Damon about using sound design as a playground for infinite expression, and how they’ve translated this to the stage with a 6-piece band.
Name 3 Songs: Today we’re here at South by Southwest. We are talking to Bailey and Damon from Bathe Alone. Welcome to the show guys. Can you give yourselves a little intro for all of our listeners?
Bailey: Hey we’re Bathe Alone. I’m Bailey, I sing and play guitar.
Damon: I’m Damon. I also sing and play guitar.
South by Southwest is a pretty famous music festival. It’s been around for about 30 years. It’s known for bringing talent from all over the world together in one place. What drew you to South by Southwest?
Damon: It’s kind of just a rite of passage. I’ve done South By several years ago. But we’re in an album cycle and it made sense for us this year.
Have you done South By before, Bailey?
Bailey: I’ve never done it before. I’m leaning on Damon’s wisdom here.
How’s it feeling? A little chaotic or getting into the groove?
Bailey: It’s really fun. I want to see Dry Cleaning so bad!
South By is a very international festival. It’s kind of an even playing field when it comes to artists. There’s an aspect of cultural exchange and artists being able to meet each other. What aspect of that do you look forward to the most?
Bailey: I’ve heard a lot online that people are like, ‘your band sounds like it would do really well in Europe.’ I don’t really know what that means. But maybe there’s people from Europe here that can see us.
Damon: On that note I feel there’s fans from all over the world here. It’s really cool to see fans that we would normally have a difficult time seeing, [with us being] from Atlanta. But to have everyone jam packed in one city for a week, it’s kind of cool and exciting. There’s something in the air.
Getting into your music, Bailey, you are a multi-instrumentalist and you’ve even studied music theory. Part of this is that sound design is a really big focus for you. I think this is something that listeners can pick up on, but don’t necessarily understand what sound design is. Can you explain what this means to you and how this informs your approach to music?
Bailey: It’s an ever-evolving experimental process. You don’t really know what you’re doing. And if something sounds cool, you chase it, you change it, you morph it.
Eventually it’s not something playable at all on an instrument. And, Damon, you’re really into Shawn Everett. You can talk about him, but [Damon] gets so many ideas that he wants to try. Because he’ll see, ‘oh, this guy does this wacky thing,’ and let’s try to do that. And then it becomes ours, because it’s so unique.
Damon: Yeah, he’s a big influence on me just as a producer and engineer. [We] just try to get unconventional sounds, at least let’s start unconventional and try to warp them into something.
For instance, there was a song that we used like a tiny cymbal and a music stand and we recorded the sound of rubbing metal on metal. It sounded kind of crazy. But we took it into this program called Melodyne – it’s traditionally like a vocal tuning software, but it will give you the pitches of what’s happening. There’s thousands of harmonics and pitches that you can edit. So we just drug it all together into one note and then it became a sample of a C note. Then you can spread it across a keyboard and play a melody that sounds like metal being ripped apart.
Bailey: That was on “Childhood.” It’s so cool.
Damon: Yeah, it’s like doubling this acoustic guitar thing. It sounds like a really cowboy, western kind of part. But it was just like, ‘what can we do to make this sound creepy, not so cowboy?’
It’s pretty fascinating the way you’re describing it because it sounds like there’s infinite possibilities once you start running it through programs and synthesizers. It’s literally like a playground – you never know what you’re going to get.
Damon: Yeah, yeah, lately we used a binaural head which is a mannequin head with microphones for ears. It’s used a lot in ASMR, but using that in music in a space…
Bailey: We were recording a bunch of percussion and hi-hats. [Daman was] in the middle of this room with this, holding his head up, slowly rotating it. So then in the headphones it’ll sound like the hi-hat is like going behind you.
This is so cool. Whenever we talk about making music… It sounds like painting. Like when you can see how different forms of art actually are very parallel to each other. Because you’re turning music into this medium to build upon. As a listener it’s something I never would have thought of before. When you hear weird noises you’re like ‘how’d that happen?’
Bailey: Yeah my ears are [constantly] perking up at different things. We’ll be in line at Jimmy John’s, playing a song ,and I’ll turn around to Damon and start air drumming like, ‘whoa they did this thing here,’ and then I’ll go back to ordering my sandwich.
Just like Picking up on different things that excite you and light up your brain makes you want to do it too.
Damon: Yeah. I think it’s all around us when you actively seek it out. Just in everyday life. Do that and then try to take some of those things and make them tricks.
Did you always think about music like this? Or is this like a gradual step that happened?
Bailey: I did not think of it like that until I met Damon. I was so into guitar and drums. [The] world I came from was Paramore and bandy-band sounds and then [Damon is] Mr. Synth Man. And I walked into the studio for the first time and it’s lined with all these vintage organs and synths and I was so anti-synth at the beginning. I was like ‘I can’t figure this out’ and [Damon] just filled in the gaps and that was exciting to me. Now it’s like, ‘wow, this is something worth chasing.’ And that lights up my brain too. Let’s just keep doing that.
Damon: Yeah, totally. Usually when I’m beginning to work with anyone, it’s sort of figuring out roles and what the path is going to be. In this case, [Bailey] had these demos that were songs, but they were demos. And so very early on, I was like, ‘are you open to this synth here?’
So it could have truly been a pop punk band and instead we got this. That’s so cool. The people that you’re in a room with can really influence you in really positive ways. That’s so awesome.
Damon: Yeah, once she was like open to that and then we actually did some of that, I think we both were like, ‘jeez, we gotta keep doing this. It’s just really cool.’
You have an album coming out in June, called I Don’t Do Humidity. The story explores [Bailey’s] divorce among many layers of romantic relationships and complex friendships. On this record it sounds like you’re very open about personal details of your story. Was it hard for you to be this vulnerable in the songwriting process?
Bailey: I think it was not hard because everyone that I worked with and is in the band, they’re all such good friends and they helped me through the process as friends, so to be vulnerable in the songwriting didn’t feel like I was like naked or like putting myself out there because I was around people that understood. I don’t know if I would have done that if I just met a random producer. We’re just really leaning into the vulnerability and the anger and whatever emotions are fitting. It’s because it’s a comfortable environment.
Damon: Yeah, I think that as it was happening in real time, we were all trying to empower Bailey like ‘if you wanna tell this story, then you should tell this story.’ I don’t know if that would have happened if you were in your room writing a song. I don’t know if these songs would exist the same way.
Having support systems is so important and I can only imagine when it comes to music, because being vulnerable like that must be terrifying. A lot of times musicians say ‘this album is about this’ and it’s not as obvious to the listener. Whereas the storytelling you’re doing is very straightforward, which I think is powerful because so many people need to hear it. Has it ever been weird when you have fan interactions where they’re like, ‘oh I listened to this song like I related to this like deeply.’ How do you cope with that when your work is so personal?
Bailey: I love it. I love when people relate to it. It’s like everyone’s supporting each other, feeling like we all have these feelings.
And it helps to have role models like Lana Del Rey or Amy Winehouse and people who are kind of sassy with their lyrics and it’s just salty in a fun way sometimes.
Have you ever had fans come up and say ‘this song meant this to me’ and it had an entirely different meaning?
Bailey: Oh, yeah, totally. There’s been so many people that “The Silence” has meant a lot to. In different ways, it changes meaning for me. All my songs, they’re still serving me in different ways. It’s so cool to see all the ways it serves other people.
I think that’s been one of our favorite themes among artists. Songwriting and lyricism are kind of a language itself where you can interpret it based on your lived experiences. Everybody interprets things differently, and that changes over time. It’s cool how you can share something so deep and emotional when you’re not the same person you were when you wrote it.
Bailey: I don’t want to out Syd, but our song “$35 Copay” that just came out – she was like, ‘Oh my God, this means this to me.’ And we had a huge conversation. It was really meaningful, what it meant to her. Like, ‘Oh my God, we’re going through the same thing.’ And with our situations and the fact that I’m so close to her. It just kind of blew my mind. We’ve been working on that song for like over a year now. And it just now hit her about what that song is. It was crazy to see that evolve for someone.
Damon: It’s wild for it to happen in the band. I mean it happens to me too sometimes on stage singing backups on some of these songs and then I’m just like, ‘oh I never thought about what this actually means to me.’ It’s totally something else for me. It feels really good to be part of something like that.
On this record you mentioned that there was a lot of growth in your vocal abilities and how you approached vocals. Can you expand on that journey?
Bailey: Yeah, so the first two records, I don’t think the [live] band existed yet. It was just me alone in my bedroom for most of the process. I had my way of singing and I liked the way it worked. And then we started doing the live band and I was like, ‘I can’t sing that loud.’ I need to project more but still somehow make it sound delicate and mysterious, which is a hard balance. I’m getting better at it but it’s made me [realize] I actually have a higher register than I thought. I can control how I break my voice and it’s actually really fun to be expressive. So I’m just leaning into it.
The voice really is an instrument, and there’s so much you can do to evoke emotion. I think for a lot of artists starting out, it’s maybe an afterthought and they’re just so focused on playing guitar or having a drum teacher, but people don’t necessarily think about vocals. So it’s really cool to hear when people are like, ‘no, actually I purposefully was working on this.’
Damon:. Totally. I think that’s something that feels like we’re getting more into pop territory. Especially with vocal production and the intention that we have in the studio with all the vocal tracking, vocal production, vocal affect. We’re treating it much more intentionally.
Bailey: I want the lyrics to be more understood on the newer stuff. When we’re tracking and I’m like, ‘the way I’m saying this word, does it sound correct? Can you understand what I’m saying?’ Whereas on the first two records, it was more like the whispery, more atmospheric.
And there’s so many people that are like, ‘I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ So with the new stuff, I still want to maintain an immersiveness.
Damon: It’s a fine line between that and style. Trying to find that perfect balance between like, ‘yes, we can understand the word, but should we do something that Lana del Rey would do or do something that Hayley Williams could do here?’
That’s so interesting. Also, you mentioned that you only recently started playing with a full band. What was that shift for you going from being a solo musician to sharing this with other people? Also, you have six people on stage, so that’s a lot of people.
Bailey: It was a long process of figuring out, ‘do we make it sound like a record? Do we make it sound like a new thing live?’ I like leaning into the live sound. Let’s make moments happen on live, that don’t happen on the record, let’s elongate an outro. But I think that I came from a place of just being me and how I played the bass part, so I know how it goes. I’m able to help the band, and I make videos for the parts, and they try to copy it. But at a certain point you just gotta let go.
I would say there’s an aspect of even if another musician can learn it the way you do, they’re still gonna have their own style that they bring to it.
Bailey: And sometimes it’s better.
There’s an aspect of trust, like ‘okay this person knows what they’re doing like they’re bringing this style to make something new and special on stage.’
Bailey: Yeah, which they do and they all have their own things that they’re good at and I could never do it like that.
With six people on stage, was it difficult figuring out what the formatting for that was?
Damon: Maybe initially for me at least, I kind of saw it as like, ‘we’re gonna need six to like be able to do this.’ Because for me, I was done being in bands and was really happy just recording other people and starting a studio and everything. And I always like, ‘I’m very passionate, if I was ever gonna do it again, I’m gonna really try to bring the studio to the stage’ and just do stuff that most people wouldn’t try to do live. It’s such a pain to lug all this stuff out, but that’s what’s important to me and that’s what I’m passionate about.
Bailey, Damon, thank you so much for talking with us today, we really appreciate it.
Bailey: Thanks so much for having us!
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