I recently caught up with Ian Graham of “The Well” stoner/phyc/doom power trio hailing from Austin Texas following my review of their latest release the outstanding “Death And Consolation” out now via “Riding Easy Records”.
“Is there a theme or a set of events that influenced the “Death and Consolation”?
There was a lot of pretty profound change that happened over the year that led up to the recording of the album. Some losses and then the realization that I had hit a rather rocky low point. Those things brought me to a spiralling dark space for a while. But, I just tried to take it all in and embrace them the best I could. Then rework them into something cathartic for me and hopefully entertaining for others. That’s the consolation part. Ha!
How did you guys form? What influenced your sound? I personally feel its a fresh take.
We got together after I was kicked out of my previous band for being, quote, “reclusive and despondent.” Ha. Unfortunately for them, I wrote all the songs, so that previous project fizzled pretty soon afterwards. However, that freed up some time on my end. Lisa and I were spending many evenings hanging out in her garage, drinking and playing around on our guitars, keeping a beat with just a disheveled bass drum. We could harmonize easily from the onset, so it wasn’t long before we pieced together the first song or two and invited Jason in to help us record a demo. He jumped on board and we’ve been rolling ever since.
We listened to a lot of the obvious influences on our sound, heavy hitters like Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Sleep, Om, Acid King, but all three of us have drawn from music outside of metal as well, bands like Joy Division, The Sound, The Raveonettes, The Cure. Vocally, especially, we were interested in playing with that easy harmony Lisa and I found, creating a kind of androgynous feel by blending the male and female voices. Lyrically, even rhythmically, most of the influence on my writing comes from reading, mainly poetry, psychology, sci-fi… anything good really. Ha. Baudelaire, Pound, Rilke, Robert Anton Wilson… too many to list there, but you get the idea.
Possibility of A UK Tour?
We have toured Europe four times now with only one festival show in the UK proper. We are planning a tour right now for this December where we thankfully get to spend much more time there. Our EU agency (Artery Global) is based out of London, so y’all should be seeing a lot more of us on the horizon.
Plans for the rest of 2019? And beyond?
We’re hitting it hard right now, trying to bring Death and Consolation around the globe. We’ve done the western half of the US and Canada already, we’re doing the eastern half of North America in October, with a stop off in Puerto Rico for the first time, which we’re really looking forward to. We also have a couple festivals still to come in 2019 – Blow Up Festival in Helsinki, Finland in October, and Levitation Festival in Austin, TX in November. Beyond that, we’ll be returning to Europe for a club circuit at the end of 2019, and then again for the festival circuit in 2020. Finally we’re working on heading out to Australia and Japan for the first time in 2020. Oh yeah, and we’ve started writing the next album, so that’ll keep us occupied in the downtime. It’s gunna be a busy year, but the good kind of busy. ”
Buy “Death And Consolation”
http://thewellaustin.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR37w8zY0fZFrxTlCnt_PpotgE1jfcU04jRB3WNEUW4BYr4ouOXs2v1L7vk
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Kenny Lenehan 