Cooped up in the small green room at the Rockwell Theatre in Somerville (255 Elm St), I spoke to the five member Allston-Brighton based band, Winkler, 30 minutes before their performance in Rockwell Theatre.
The band members consist of Christian Schmidt (drums), Maddy Simpson (vocals), Justin Schaefers (vocals), Danny Edlin (bass), and Alex Massey (guitarist).
This interview has been edited for clarity.
How did you guys form Winkler?
Christian: Maddy used to have a Youtube channel where she would upload videos of musicians playing in a dorm room, kind of like a Tiny Desk spinoff, and we were friends and lived on the same floor. And then Justin did one of those, and we were just hanging out with them and we became friends and so we played music together. We had a different bassist and a different guitar player at one point, a few years ago, but then eventually we reeled in Alex and Danny.
Where did Winkler’s name come from?
Justin: We had one song kind of finished called, Winkler. I think it was a play on words, because there was a line in the song that had to do with Happy Days; it’s a TV show. We had a gig coming up and no band name and we were like maybe we should just use the title of the song we have finished. You know, it’s dangerous because once they put it on the poster the first time, you either have to make a whole big thing about changing it. So for better, for worse, we’ve been Winkler for this whole time.
What was your first gig as a band?
Justin: We played at a house venue. It was called the Green Thumb. No longer exists. It was on a street called Gardner Street. It was in a basement apartment, I’m pretty sure. So a lot of the times we’d set up in, like, looking at the kitchen the whole time. It was fun.
Where were the rehearsal spaces you guys practiced in?
Christian: There’s a rehearsal place on Fordham Rd in Allston that we used to play at but pretty soon we moved into a place that we could play in the basement.
Danny: Nowadays, we practice split between a house in Brighton and a house in Allston, world’s apart.
Winkler’s Spotify description is “Making Music in the bedroom for the bedroom,” what does that mean to you guys?
Justin: It’s a little cheeky. It’s hard to think of a bio. I think we came up with that at one point because we wrote it down. But we did at one point make all the music in a bedroom with just the equipment we had and now we usually do it in a basement.
What was the inspiration for your sound? And what artists are you guys most inspired by?
Justin: I think we all approach it from, we have like a common love for some music, and then we all deviate in our own special ways at the moment.
Winkler: Our big shared interest is the Beatles.
Justin: When we’re in the car for a long enough time, though, sometimes we’ll have multiple hour drives to a show, because I think you get to the point with the Beatles where you just really feel you get to know them. It’s really like a parasocial relationship. So we spend a lot of time hyperanalyzing their relationships with each other. And really just being insufferable. There’s a term Disney adult, well I think we’re Beatles adults.
What was it like making music during COVID-19?
Maddy: Christian and I lived together the whole time and then we lived with Justin. We had already decided before COVID that we were all going to be together. We had signed the lease. And then COVID happened. And we were like, well, what do we do? So we all moved into the house anyway and then it was really easy to make music because there wasn’t anything to do, except to make music.
Christian: We would send each other demos and stuff. We’re all just noodling on our own for a while. I think we all got a little better over the time we couldn’t play together because of how much we were forced to play a lot.
I saw that you hosted a front-yard performance in 2022 rather than the basement shows. How has your choice of performance venue shifted since then?
Christian: I think that show, particularly, we played a duo show. It was very low stakes. So I guess that affected the set because we played some new stuff that we were working on or just tried out some new songs for the first time. Sometimes it’s nice to have a show that’s pretty low pressure to try new things.
Danny: I feel like generally, we take shows based on factors you would imagine, like whether we’re available, where it seems fun.
Justin: Now it’s nice because we’ve been playing shows for long enough to where we just want to play with bands we like and vibe with and maybe when we’re first starting out, we’re like, we’ll play anything.
Maddy: But now we can say yes, only to things we want to.
What is the writing and production process for making your music?
Justin: It’s been a couple different ways. The first record, a lot of the songs were like fully done beforehand, and then we made different arrangements. Then we played live, some songs we added strings to and everything. The last one was a really weird album. We took a lot of time to experiment, so we got to find a lot of results we worked up otherwise. But now we’re just playing so much and we’re playing the next batch of songs that we’re going to release. I feel like that’s gonna influence how this next batch sounds. Maybe we’ll just record them all how we play them live. It changes.
I read from your Allston Pudding interview that you guys had a love for Home Analog recording, how do you incorporate that into your production?
Christian: I think literally it just makes things sound distorted. So it’s always nice to have a little distortion around the drums and the bass and it gives the guitars taste. Because it only records up to a certain frequency, it gets rid of the really high and harsh frequencies sometimes, which helps fuse together a bunch of different instruments, when they’re all a little rough around the edges. It helps it sound more satisfying.
Alex: It’s also like a different process. You have to arrive at different stuff when you’re moving physical knobs and watching tape spin around.
Christian: I would say it feels more like high stakes too. If you are recording digitally, then you can always just infinitely redo things. But sometimes with the tapes, it’s like we already recorded over this one spot a bunch of times. We should just do it.
How important is it for you guys to be independent artists in Allston? What are some obstacles that you guys face being independent artists in Allston/Boston?
Maddy: I really love Allston, and also just Boston DIY in general because everybody’s so supportive of each other. People go to each other’s shows and ask each other to play shows. What I love about Allston-Brighton is that the people that put on shows aren’t necessarily musicians themselves, or people that play in bands. A lot of the time, people who just really love DIY music and want to organize DIY music. I think that’s really cool about Allston right now, like there’s people like that and the people who are in bands. We all support each other and we’re all friends in real life too. It’s a big community of people.
Danny: I think a lot of the infrastructure in Allston is really good. Like it’s a lot of muti-family homes that can house a bunch of people and they have a bunch of space, which I think is naturally more creatively generative than a two-bedroom apartment where you can’t make a ton of noise. There just is common space in these bigger houses and a lot of people in other neighborhoods or in other cities don’t have that. So I think that’s like partially why a lot of reasons like Allston-Brighton are pretty good for making music but they’re problems with that we still have neighbors and stuff that everyone deals with.
Maddy: I think one of the challenges is that in Allston the rent has risen astronomically and so it pushes artists farther out of Allston. I mean that’s why three out of the five of us live in Brighton because we can’t afford to live in Allston, though we love Allston. It also drives out the place where we would play, so like the Great Scott, like O’Brien’s is about to close for however many months. And then there’s nowhere to play in Allston. So then we come and we play in Somerville instead because that’s where all the 100, 200 cap venues are.
Alex: The problem with Boston in general is like the lack of small, like 100 cap, venues, which is like I think why the house venues step up and attempt to fill that way.
Justin: The cops will, on like a semi-annual basis just shut everything down. I guess COVID, nothing happened and then we got like a couple of good months of playing and then like three of the premier places either got shut down fully by the police or were nervous about the presence.
What were the transition periods like when the group members changed?
Justin: We played some really weird shows. For a couple of months before Danny joined, we were between bass players, like Alex played bass a couple times, sometimes we played no bass.
Winkler: And we did like acoustic. Electric guitar, drums. It sounded just like garbage. I mean interesting maybe. It wasn’t great.
Maddy: Both times we needed to find a new player, which was very easy because Alex came and saw us at a show right after COVID.
Alex: I saw Winkler and I was like, I think I’m probably going to be in Winkler.
Maddy: And then when our last bassist, Ava moved, we were devastated. So it took us a few months to like bounce back cause she was so wonderful, but then Danny’s done a good job.
Danny: I played on bills with Winkler from another band and knew everyone personally, at least a little to some degree. I wasn’t a total random.
Maddy: We told Danny that he could audition, but then we never auditioned anybody else.
Justin: Yeah, this is probably right.
If you could choose one word to describe your relationship with one another, what would that be and why?
Winkler: Rock, cause it’s all for rock, everything we do. You gotta do something. So you might as well do rock.
Would you say each of you have a different sound/style? What is it like trying to blend individual voices or parts together?
Maddy: It’s like what Justin was saying earlier, we all have shared interests, but then our differing interests all combine into Winkler.
Justin: What’s nice is we all know how to play a Winkler song. Even with newer songs, not that it’s repetitive in nature, but I think we’re all good enough in the craft and know what would fit to make it blend.
Alex: I think we’re probably the best Winkler cover band.
Justin, you recently released your album Modest Hits, can you tell me the process of that and how it worked with being the lead singer of Winkler?
Justin: Those were all just recordings made on my phone. So it was sort of fun because those were ideas I had that I was working on in my own time. But of course, that’s such a different vibe than Winkler, where the whole thing is that there’s five people playing individual parts. But it’s cool. We all have different creative endeavors that all contribute back to Winkler.
Cicada Summr, a song released in Bazooka Baby, your latest album, gives a much different vibe compared to the other songs released on the album. Is there a reason why you chose to take this creative route on the song?
Christian: I guess with any song we record, just the idea of the song you sort of imagine like a way you think it should sound, like it has a little landscape of its own. Most other songs, we usually like okay this one makes sense with drums, bass, guitar live but that one we started with the synths and added the drum machines and that it just ended up being different because we had to piece it together part by part. So I think that made it sort of more like a collage, more than other songs. And I guess we kind of wanted it to sound like She Wolf by Shakira.
Maddie: I think the thing about being in a band, there’s this idea that you have to have like one sound, but I think actually you can really do whatever you want. I think it’s actually a strength to be able to do things that are really weird and out of the realm of what somebody thinks you should sound like. People think that Winkler is whatever, but we could really be whatever we want.
What is one of your favorite songs to perform?
Maddie: Fire by Winkler
Alex: We have a song called Mexico that’s not out that I think it’s awesome.
Christian: That one’s fun to play. I like that one too.
Danny: I love City Rain.
Justin: There’s a new song of ours called Fire, which is just fun because it’s so easy. You can really sit in it without having to think about what’s going on.
Are there any pre-performance rituals you guys do before a performance?
Maddy: We usually just hang out, we usually eat dinner.
Christian: We do hang out, but definitely when we have a show, it’s like we know that the five of us are going to hang out
Danny: The biggest thing about it is that we’re all required to be friends with each other.
What is an artist that you would like to work with in the future?
Justin: I like John Andrews and the Yawns and we are big fans of this singer named Devendra Banhart.
Christian: That would be a dream to like open for him
Maddy: We’ve been able to open for some people that we really love, which is really cool.
Justin: There’s a lot of artists that I love to run into in a coffee shop. I really want to be their best friend but I don’t think Paul McCartney would want to do anything right now.
Is there anything in the future that listeners should anticipate?
Maddie: This is going to be our most rocking record yet because our first record was like folk rock and then our second record was like folk.
Alex: My mom called it our acid era.
Christian: I feel like this album, more so than other albums, is the one we could most accurately just play live. All the other two albums had songs like acoustic or electronic, but this next album was pretty much like band instrumentation.
Justin: Which is great because even when we’re putting out the last two, there’s certain songs we like, we’ll do it for these release shows and if we go on a tour for it, but then we’ll probably like phase it out because other songs were better in a performance.
