Artist Selects: bugsy
All photography by Kathy Callahan
Minneapolis based indie-pop quartet, bugsy, is a group of friends who are also rockin’. The band is known for their love of animals and melancholic lyrics expressed through playful alternative-rock songs. Their first EP Teratoma features a collection of tracks that tug on your heartstrings but, at the same time, make you want to dance your heart out at a basement show. The group is fronted by Emily Schoonover accompanied by Griffin Desai on guitar, Alex Norman on drums, and Shannon Maroney on bass and harmonies.
For TRASH MAG’s Artist Selects series I had the opportunity to meet with bugsy, joined by Emily’s bunny named Fudge, to talk about their first year playing together as a band. We discussed the new direction of their sound on their latest release “talk to you,” random findings in their touring van, and what they’ve been currently listening to!
Listen to “bugsy Selects” while you read the Q&A:
How would you describe bugsy’s sound?
Emily: Sad songs that also make people energetic and jumpy.
Shannon: One of Alex’s friends described it as “hard as hell but also soft as hell” and that’s how I like to think about it. Also, we’re all playing different things a lot.
Griffin: Yeah, I think things have changed a lot now. Emily wrote all of those songs right when we started up. Anything new is going to be really different, probably more on the heavier side honestly.
I wanted to say congrats on your one year anniversary as a band! How would you say your first year has been together as a band? Were there any memorable moments?
Alex: So raw. I’ve known Emily for a while but I didn’t meet Griffin and Shannon until the first time we all rehearsed. So, yes there are lots of memorable moments as bugsy but it’s also been cool getting to know everyone.
Shannon: It’s crazy because I think all three of us knew Emily independently and then she was kind of like a cornucopia.
Emily: I frankenstined the band.
It’s been really fun because I feel like putting the band together happened so quickly. Also, the shows have been fun obviously. We had quite a lot of big things coming up that got canceled just because of COVID, which is a bummer.
I think when we started the band I wasn’t super close friends with anyone, now I would easily say that my bandmates are my best friends which is cool. It’s like we’re rocking but also we’re friends. It’s a very intimate relationship to play music with people. Especially if you write a song, they know you’re sad before you know you’re sad.
Griffin: I’ve also been in a few different bands and there can be social problems when it comes to just trying to do group art projects of any sort. Stuff can go wrong when people aren’t working together, but when we were going on tour I had a moment when I knew it was going to be easy. There weren’t going to be any problems and we were just going to have a good time. And we did have a good time! Then we had to cancel everything so that sucks.
I’m curious, and because it’s so cute, how did you guys decide on the name of your band?
Emily: We’re obsessed with guinea pigs and bugsy is the name of a guinea pig from an Adam Sandler movie. It’s also the name of a mobster but it’s also like bugs.
Griffin: And bugs are cool.
It says in your Bandcamp bio that you’re all fans of animals. If you could have one animal as a companion, real or not real, what animal would you choose?
Emily: I would have fudge.
Alex: I’m really big on cats. I don’t know, cats are cats but I feel like I just am a cat. Even beyond house cats, I’m not trying to trap wild cats by any means, but I think people think that house cats are related to like tigers and that’s crazy.
Griffin: There is this woman who scuba dives to the same reef every year. When she scuba dives to this specific spot in the reef there is this specific eel that comes out and visits her because she feeds it. I would like to have something like that with an eel.
Shannon: I’m kind of on the cat train as well, but if I were to say any animal I would say a cow. I’m not a horse girl but I was a horse camp counselor for a few years and I’m also really good with horses.
What is the most memorable show you’ve played together as a band?
Griffin: I still really like Alex’s birthday, the last show that we played. There were some really good pictures and being on tour was really cool.
Emily: The last show we played was pretty memorable. I just feel like every show we played kept getting better. Obviously, there are exceptions but it kept being an upward trend of us as players and the reception from the audience.
I tend to close my eyes when we gig, but at the last show we played in Minneapolis I opened my eyes. There was a moment when I was singing and then I stopped singing because I ran out of breath or something, maybe I was crying, and I heard people singing the words and I was like, “Oh you guys know these!”
Album Art by Emily Schoonover
You recently released a new single called “talk to you”, can you tell us a little bit about what the song means to you personally?
Emily: We actually recorded it in the spring, slightly before coronavirus. We recorded two singles and we were going to record a full album but because of COVID but we had to stop, so it was just the two singles. We decided to release them separately and do an album at a different time.
talk to you was one of the first songs we played together as a band. I wrote it after breaking up with someone pretty much and it was the least sad and least angry of them. Most of my songs are like, “I’m so mad and angry,” but that one was more like I’m accepting that I don’t want to talk to you.
Where do y’all draw ideas from when writing songs? What’s your songwriting process?
Emily: Usually I’ll write a song, bring it in, and then we’ll workshop it from there.
Alex: I’ll try to do what sounds the best but I’ll also try to do something I haven’t done before. I always try to go off the rails a little bit. What people expect me to do, I try to do an inch to the side of that. Sometimes I like those imperfections.
Emily: There’s also a lot of editing. I’ll come in with a song, people will add parts to it, then I’ll change my part based on what other people do. It’s a process of having an initial song and then there’s a lot of editing before it gets to the final spot.
Shannon: I think we all like playing rhythm. There’s a lot of tweaking until we get it just right and then when we get it right we’re like, “that’s it!”
Emily: Honestly, most of the time we don’t even fully know what everyone is playing until we record.
Griffin: Or until we meet up separately and really work stuff out.
Emily: Griffin and I will meet up for workshops, or Alex and I, or Shannon and I. So for an hour, Alex and I will say, “Where do we put the stops in this song?”
Griffin: I think it’s like Emily’s the core of everything that happens, but we really do all also do our own thing. I personally like to pretend that I am a merperson in the ocean and that notes that I play are the bubbles and the jellyfish rising from the deep sea bed. Envisioning that helps me.
Emily: Everyone’s connected to someone in the process, but we’re not all connected to each other.
How do you think your sound is evolving? What do you think is new for bugsy?
Shannon: I speak from my perception and viewing Emily as a songwriter, but I think Emily has become a lot more confident in their songwriting and abilities as a musician. It’s been cool watching Emily grow and to be able to work with them. The music has reflected Emily’s growth and all of ours, but they’re Emily’s lyrics.
Griffin: I feel like sometimes people use this word in a negative context, I don’t think it is, but it’s all a lot edgier. I was showing some friends the demos today and they said it was a lot more edgy and I said, “Yes it is!”
Shannon: It feels more authentic.
What’s something you would find in your touring van?
Emily: I can answer this! Half of an avocado, some sleeping bags, and gear.
Shannon: Also a banana.
Griffin: And four rubber ducks.
Emily: We do not leave anywhere or to any gig without the ducks. We keep the ducks with us at all times.
Griffin: We each put a piece of our souls into those rubber ducks. They represent the band. There’s also a severed baby leg hanging from my back mirror.
Alex: To top it off, this isn’t a physical item that’s in there it’s more of an idea but the car is the nucleus. Being in there it feels like you’re in a mobile home – not a literal mobile home – but a mobile home.
Emily: It’s where we’ve had so much bonding time. I feel like everyone’s shed a tear in Griffin’s car.
I love bugsy’s collage style in your album art and music videos, what inspires these visuals? Does someone in the band make them?
Emily: I do and I just do them. The album cover is my hair – I cut off all my hair one day, put it on a piece of paper, and took a picture of it. The cover for our singles is just a bunch of photos I was going to throw away.
Griffin: I would describe the core of bugsy as Emily being her truest self in a vacuum. That’s what we all build off of. I would say the album art is just a visual representation of Emily being herself in a vacuum.
You mentioned on your Instagram that you’ve been writing a lot of songs, what do you have in store for bugsy going forward?
Emily: An album hopefully coming up soon. I’m just starting to get into recording, so we’re recording the demos. We don’t have a date for the album itself but the demos are slowly coming along.
Griffin: For the current future, watch out for the new single and the live shows that we’re going to be doing.
Lastly, can you describe some of the picks on the playlist?
Griffin: Obviously the world's really shitty right now, but I’ve been having a kind of a sad couple of weeks. So, I picked a Russian song from the ‘80s just because something about the attitude was gloomy and sad in a way that touches me right now.
Alex: I didn’t really start listening to Marmalade a lot until a few years ago. I had seen them around here and there, but then I saw them at the Keep for Cheap release show and there was something about that night where I was like, “Whoa.” Speak sounds like before they recorded that song they all walked through a torrential rainstorm for a year straight, then went straight to the studio, and that’s just what came out of them.
Shannon: Our buddies are Marmalade and Keep for Cheap, so we also put Melancholy by Keep for Cheap on the playlist and that song is just so good. Autumn and Kate’s voices just melt, it’s like butter. Also, we have Mannequin Pussy because you gotta love powerful women screaming.
Emily: We also put Beauty and The Beat by Justin Beiber on there. Everything is just a reflection of where you are when you do it, same with this playlist we just put what we’re listening to right now. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve just been giggling about that song.
Everyone in unison sings: Justin Beiber, I’m gonna hit him with the ether. Buns out, weiner, but I gotta keep an eye out for Seleaner.
Stream bugsy’s latest single “talk to you” and keep up with them on Instagram!
