STEPH TAKES OVER

fallenloverecords:

Hi lovers! Here at Fallen Love headquarters we periodically interview people that we adore in order to shine a spotlight on our wonderful pop planet. We post all those interviews right here for your education and enjoyment.

Pecas is the ghost folk project of Sandy Davis from New Paltz, New York, USA. Fallen Love head Harley corresponded with Sandy in early summer.


Fallen Love Records: You’ve been pretty quiet since October. What have you been up to? Are you working away on a second album?

Sandy: I moved from New Paltz to New York City about a year ago and that kind of shook things up a bit. I’ve been bouncing around from sublet to sublet, freelance gig to freelance gig, just figuring out how to get by but things seem to be falling into place lately and I’ve been spending more time on the second album. I decided after Dwelling that I wanted to record the next album in a studio. There was too much freedom in doing everything myself and it felt like I could go on forever and never be satisfied. I also wanted something bigger and more dynamic than any sounds I could produce myself in a bedroom. I started recording a few songs last summer in a studio in New Paltz and then I ended up working more recently with another producer in Woodstock, Dan James Goodwin, at his studio The ISOKON. I was just up there with my bassist Owen Shaer and a drummer friend of mine, John Morisi from one of my favorite New Paltz-bred bands What Moon Things. It was really magical being up in the woods with nothing to do but record and play with a bunch of the toys Dan has laying around and it was an eye-opening experience for me when everything started coming together. I spent a year with these songs and was pretty self-conscious about them and scared of taking them to a studio but there was so much freedom in the process of recording with Dan that I’m totally addicted now and way more confident in my abilities as a songwriter and musician. There’s still a lot more work to do before the album comes out but we’re getting closer.


FLR: How did Pecas begin? You’ve played with a number of different bands in the past (Breakfast In Fur, Young Neighbors, Dr. Awesome, Pelican Movement). Was Pecas a direct response to that, in the sense of wanting to try something solo with you alone at the helm?

S: I think I’ve always been a solo artist who just occasionally dabbled in other musical projects. Pecas has always been there in me in one form or another, I just called it by my own name in the past. But “Pecas” as it is today was really born out of a conscious desire to take my music a bit more seriously and be more courageous about putting it out into the world. There are so many incredible bands in New Paltz and the surrounding area that were putting albums out and going on tour and it really inspired me to get my act together and put something out too. Using a new name was a way for me to give my music a new life. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, though. Sometimes the more seriously I take it, the less I end up enjoying it. I’m still finding the balance of trusting myself versus yielding to the opinions of others and navigating the social media/PR world in a way that doesn’t feel disingenuous. I don’t like the culture of constant self-promotion and the pay-to-play politics of music PR. That’s also part of the reason I’ve been quiet. There’s more value, for me, in hidden gems than in music that is constantly shouting from mountaintops to be heard. But Pecas was in some ways born out of a desire to be more visible so it’s tricky.


FLR: You play guitar, bass, piano, and synth among other instruments so I assume that allows a certain freedom?

S: Yeah, it’s kind of out of necessity that I’ve learned to play a variety of instruments. I started out songwriting and recording with an 8-track recorder, my father’s guitar, and a couple of cheap computer microphones. But I always heard something way bigger in my head than just guitar and vocals so I bought a bass and figured out how to play that to some extent and then I bought a drum set and a keyboard and just kind of learned enough to be able to play a part to fill out the song. I can’t read music very well at all and if you asked me what key a certain song is in I definitely couldn’t tell you but I think, to some extent, having the vision is more important than being professionally-trained. Once you know what you want, you’ll figure out ways to bring that to life and use instruments as tools for doing that. There’s freedom in knowing that things are possible and allowing yourself to experiment.

FLR: Your first album, Dwelling, was recorded over the course of two years in a 19th century farmhouse. How much did the setting influence things?

S: I’m sure on a subconscious level it had an influence on the mood and feel but, even more directly, living there influenced some of the lyrical themes. “Dear Ghost” is literally about living there among the ghosts of all the people that had inhabited the house before me, but also metaphorically about the people I was living with at the time. In the attic of that house (which we were forbidden to go in but of course did anyways) there was a picture of one of the families that had lived there in the early 1900’s and I later found out that the first inhabitants were one of the oldest New Paltz families so there was a lot of history there, and at least a few ghosts. The album is supposed to feel a bit haunted but it really was more about someone who I lived with in that house and losing them than the ghosts in the attic or the hallway. That said, the one song that wasn’t written or recorded there, “Waters,” sounds very different to me, probably because it was written and recorded in a space with different energy and acoustics. I do believe that places have personality and character and some people are more sensitive and open to it than others.


FLR: You were born in Spain. When did you move to America? Do you feel like your culture plays a significant role in your music?

S: Yes, I was! I moved to the Hudson Valley when I was six so I was pretty young but Spain was my first experience of the world and that will be with me forever. I don’t really think there’s a Spanish musical influence in my own music, though I do reference my background with my name, Pecas, which means freckles. What is definitely there, thematically, in my music is a longing for home. There’s a big part of me that is still waiting to go back to home Spain as if my whole life in America has been a strange dream. I think being separated from my family and my world at such a young age and so suddenly gave me a weird perspective. I often feel like I’m an outsider looking in and I’m more comfortable observing than participating in a lot of situations, which can be good and bad, but ultimately I think I’m an artist because of that perspective. I do identify with a lot of aspects of Spanish culture but it’s not something I can easily describe. It’s the way the air smells, the sky, the architecture, the way the people carry themselves. I connect with it very strongly when I visit but the funny thing is I look nothing like a Spaniard with my red hair so I’m perceived as a foreigner and that feels weird and feeds into that longing for home and trying to reconnect to a past that feels like it never happened. It’s that bittersweet feeling you get when you wake up from a beautiful dream that will never come back. I’m not sure how you bottle that up into a song but that’s what I tried to do in Dwelling and it’s a running theme in some of my newer songs as well.


FLR: This series of interviews I’m doing is loosely based around the theme of “summer tunes.” What’s summer like in New Paltz?

S: It’s a lazy, hot, boozy adventure in paradise with a bunch of your closest friends. A typical summer day in New Paltz would start with having the breakfast special and bottomless coffee at the Bistro (where everybody knows your name) and then heading out to swim in the mountain with a couple of friends and maybe some beers. Then you’d get back to town as the sun comes down and you are sufficiently sunburned and catch a band at one of the local venues. It’s the perfect place to spend the summer. I do like the beach, though. That’s something New Paltz doesn’t have, but it does have a beach town vibe. I definitely miss it.


FLR: Tell us about the last dream you had.

S: I’ve had some pretty intense dreams lately. Last night I dreamt that I went to the doctor and, as I was lying down on the hospital bed, she started to jam this metal thing that looked like a crowbar into my leg, right at the bottom of my knee. She kept pushing harder and harder and I was in excruciating pain but she wouldn’t stop. Finally, thankfully, I woke up. That was it.


FLR: You’ve said that Dwelling felt very blue to you. What color is the new album?

S: I don’t think there’s really a defining color in this album because a lot of the songs start off as one thing and evolve into something completely different. It’s more about change and dynamics. There are still a lot of light calm blues but there are oranges and pinks and bold reds and dark blues. Dwelling was pretty mild-tempered and kind of one-dimensional in a lot of ways. I think that album was representative of how I am perceived at face-value. This new album has a lot of those same elements starting off but it starts to chip away at that, so a song that might start out feeling serene is turned inside-out and starts to feel like hopelessness towards the middle, and it shifts again and ends on pure joy. It’s a more dimensional album. At least I hope that’s what people experience in hearing it.


Pecas on Facebook

Interview with one of my favorite inspirations, Sandy Davis of Pecas