Arts Fishing Club

What began as frontman Christopher Kessenich’s solo endeavor—out of necessity more than intent—has slowly evolved into something more communal, more cohesive, and more creatively rewarding. With their upcoming Supernatural Groove EP, the Nashville-based group leans further into that dynamic, expanding beyond heartbreak narratives into something stranger, more exploratory, and more mature.

We caught up with Kessenich to talk about the band's evolution and how he's learning to trust the creative mess that comes with nonsensical lyrics.

Analogue: I read a quote from you from a few years ago calling this a semi-solo project, and I just wanted to start there to see how accurate that still felt.

Christopher Kessenich: So the intention was never to be a solo project. I've only ever wanted to be in a band band, but I got into music a little bit later,

To be honest, my opinion on most band bands, almost all of them are either brothers, cousins, or best friends from high school or college. There are very few bands that start a little bit later, I think, and kind of go that way, just because of the nature of the beast. When you start a band, it's so hard for so long to not make any money.

If you start a band well into adulthood, then people have to make money right away. That’s kind of been the situation for us. I started releasing music when I was 25, I think. So it was just a kind of the nature of the beast of us grinding it through with a handful of people being in the band. After a while of, ‘Hey, I can't pay your entire life's wage,’ people would kind of rotate through.

But now, it's definitely changing where it's starting to feel much, much more all in with the guys that we're with. We have that band band feel, which has always been the goal with it. It's kind of a Field of Dreams situation where you’ve got to build it and get it going before that happens, at least for us. So I would say we're much, much closer to the overall band dynamic.

I'm the primary songwriter of the group. So that has been something historically where I would bring songs to musicians in Nashville, and we would arrange them together and then go out on the road. But now as we're touring so much more and releasing more music, it's definitely becoming the band band.

Analogue: I'm actually glad I asked that then, because it makes me curious how the changes and metamorphosis you're describing can be heard on a song like the new single, “Supernatural Groove.”

Christopher: “Supernatural Groove”? Yeah. So we produced that one. So let me see. Rothko Sky, we produced with Thad Kopech in town. And “Supernatural Groove”, we also kind of self-produced with Thad.

Since it was the second time going into the studio with Thad, there was just more confidence within the guys in terms of how to produce it. And then Matthew Chansey, our longtime bassist, he really is, for lack of a better word, instrumental in the production and the sound of the band. He's got a great grasp on it overall, and so we lean on him a lot. So I think it's just more comfort after playing with each other for a long time.

Analogue: What are you wrestling with now that you weren't an album ago on Rothko Sky?

Christopher: I love that question. Rothko was, top to bottom, a breakup album. It's a relationship album, I should say. It’s the ups and downs of a relationship.

I think with Pocket Full of Mumbles and this EP that we're putting out this summer, Supernatural Groove, they were kind of clumped into one session and had two different emotions running through each portion of it. But I think for these songs, I really wanted to get away from just the heartbreak. Writing those songs, I mean, there are so many of them, because it's so natural. It's easiest to sit down with the guitar and pour out your heart when you're feeling sad or heartbroken.

There are a lot of songs on Pocketful of Mumbles and even Supernatural Groove that take that next step in processing human life and emotion. And not all of the songs are about a relationship. A lot of them are about life and about weird, random experiences as well.

Analogue: Do you think you could mine those subjects because you'd already kind of cleared the slate of maybe more immediate and obvious places to write from?

Christopher: One hundred percent. Absolutely, and it's funny because going further into the songwriting journey, I don't want to write another love song. I'm bored with them. I'm bored with myself.

I love love songs, and I guarantee you, I'm going to write a bunch more too. But some of my favorite songwriters, like Bruce Springsteen or Brandon Flowers of The Killers, really dive into people's stories. And I think that takes a next level of maturity and maybe even selflessness of putting yourself in someone else's shoes. It’s seeing that some of these other stories need to be communicated.

That is a more challenging and, I think, a more mature place. You need some maturity in your songwriting skills to get to that place where you can start doing that.

Analogue: Is it harder to follow the muse when the subjects are newer?

Christopher: Yeah, I do think it is more difficult.

I think one way that I've approached it that's made it easier is to allow some nonsensical lyrics. I think Bon Iver, Justin Vernon has been a huge inspiration with that. I’ve watched some interviews with him where he's talked about his earlier music being more straightforward, sad songs about love and heartbreak. Then he started just really detaching himself from the meaning of the words as he allowed them to come out.

I think there's a handful of songs on this record that have elements of that, where I allowed the music to just really drive things. Then with some of the editing, you’re able to add in meaning and story as well to what was nonsensical. So I think that has been a process that I've tried to dive into and allow a lot more.

Something that I love about that too is that it does make for a lot more interesting word pairings. “Pocket Full of Mumbles” was a song… we were on tour and we stopped at a place called Lake Siskiyou in California and it was beautiful. I was sitting there with an acoustic guitar playing a fast set of chords, and one of the guys in the band walked up and offered me a banana. And he wasn't kidding. It was really funny and weird.

I was strumming those chords and sang, “He offered a banana and it was no joke.” And then “he got a pocketful of mumbles and a midnight robe” just fell out behind it. And it was like, ’What the hell does that mean?’ But to me, it’s fun as hell and captured the energy of that moment.

That song just took off from there. So I think just having fun with it all a little bit, and really letting the words just come out and not judging them for a meaning right away has helped in this one.

Analogue: It’s learning to trust that early impulse.

Christopher: Yeah, I think so. There’s something childlike in it. I think I just saw a quote from Tyler the Creator yesterday where he said, ‘When you're creating, you’ve got to create like a child and then edit like a scientist.’

Analogue: That’s great.

Christopher: Yeah, and that is exactly the space that I'm trying to move into right now. I think that I have been naturally shutting off that adult brain, the critical brain in the moment, and just, you know, vomiting all over the page. Even with musical ideas, no judgment, just let what happens happen.

Once you have that base layer of stuff down, you can go back in and start really prescribing, choosing the things that you love and then building from there. ‘Okay, now, how do I turn this into a story that means something? And what was the emotion that was coming out that led me to these words? Let’s dive into that.’

Analogue: Is that pretty easy for you to let that filter go? Or is that hard for you?

Christopher: Yeah, I would say I am pretty good at it. Songwriting is absolutely a muscle. It's like going to the gym or going on a run, where if you haven't done it in a week or two weeks, that first time feels like your body doesn't feel good. It's hard. It's super hard. You feel like you're forcing it.

But if you do it three or four days in a row, on that fifth day, your body wants it. I think, for me, the filters of songwriting are almost the exact same way, where if I'm disciplined and I've written for several days straight, then stuff is just screaming out and those filters just evaporate.

Those periods of time are my absolute favorite. That’s the reason why I make music. It’s found in those moments. That’s the purpose behind it all.

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