I caught Danvers at the Rusty Nail, just outside of Philadelphia, back in June and was really impressed not just by their show, which was super-tight and bursting with energy but also by the fact that they drove all the way from Pittsburgh—a good four or five hours away—to play their set, then turned around and drove home again when the show was over. The least I could do was buy the albums they were selling that night, How Did It Ever Come to This (2019) and Jazz Standards (2016). Both albums, like this year’s Like We Knew What It Meant, offer a blend of incredibly evocative lyrics and hard-driving punk arrangements: songs of love and loss and loss and then more loss, leavened with a pinch of regret and bittersweet nostalgia for former lives and loves gone by.

Hello!

Hey this is Lee from Danvers. This is my first ever interview! Wow. 

Happy to be your first! What brought you to Philadelphia back in June? 

The promoter Eugene actually messaged us on Instagram thinking we were a local band, from a show we played June 5 at The Yard. I messaged him back and said “hey, we’re from pittsburgh but we like playing philly!” and he was like “cool!” and that was that!

You mentioned that the band originally formed in the Philadelphia area ten years ago before moving to Pittsburgh. What’s the story there?

Yep, I moved to Philly (from Pittsburgh) around 2012 or so, just basically for a change of scenery and wanting to start a band. My previous Pittsburgh pop punk band had fizzled out and I was just chasing the dream. I figured a bigger city, bigger scene. After various craigslist ads, we got an incarnation of Danvers going  around late 2012 and recorded the demo in 2013. We were called Gallant back then.

How do you keep a band going for so long? Has the lineup changed in that time?

We have had a multitude of members – however the current drummer, Nakul, was in Danvers at the time of the demo. That incarnation did split when I moved back to Pittsburgh in late 2013. I’d say there’s a good 20+ ex members of the band, lol. We’ve had a couple members even leave and come back. A bunch of dumb stuff has happened to us via ex-members – a physical assault, lock changed on the practice room, merch held ransom, etc. Dudes will be dudes. You’ll always run into personality conflicts and differing work ethics. I just keep it going, it’s been my dream since I was a kid to be in a band. Faces come and go, but Danvers is eternal.

There’s also a fairly wide spread among the band members in terms of their ages. How does that play out with respect to interpersonal dynamics within the band? What’s the chemistry like?

Chemistry is awesome currently – with so many former Danvers members and craigslist auditions, you get a knack for sensing the vibe of a person pretty quick. Age literally does not mean a thing. Enthusiasm for what we are doing, and amicability will beat all.

I have to admit that I’ve been listening to your How Did It Ever Come to This and Jazz Standards albums on vinyl quite a bit since your show. The music aside, you clearly took some time with the packaging and design of each, right down to the choice of fonts. The font you used for the back cover of How Did It Ever Come to This, for example, screams David Lynch. Are his movies—or his art more generally—an influence? 

Thanks!! That’s interesting. I designed the art for the albums, and I have zero previous art/design experience. It’s basically me finding some photographs on ebay or in my personal collection that match the vibe, and then a lot of time staring at a screen and iterating. I have some font styles I appreciate more – but I cannot put it into words what’s good about this one versus that one. I’m googling David Lynch art and fonts right now – he 100% has an “album cover” syle, if that makes any sense? Or maybe just a lot of bands ape his style. I will say my biggest design/art influence is 90’s and 00’s emo bands. To travel down the Lynchian route a bit, Lost Highway is in my top ten films of all time, but I’ve probably only seen only maybe 3 or so other David Lynch products. He’s definitely up my alley, I just haven’t put the time in!

I’m also struck by the fact that you included lyric sheets with each album—a significant added expense, I’m guessing. The typesetting on the lyric sheet for How Did It Ever Come to This is especially interesting in that the lyrics appear in paragraph form, like prose as opposed to poetry, and without individual titles. What was behind that decision?

This is awesome because no one has ever commented on that before. I was just trying to find a semi-creative way to lay out the lyrics, something that would be cool as black and white only (to save on printing costs as you had mentioned). I went for a storybook/newspaper layout that I thought fit the aesthetic of the album cover.

Your titles are interesting, too. For the most part, it seems like they’re only obliquely related to the content of their corresponding songs, assuming there’s a relationship at all. There’s even a bit of artful misdirection—or maybe ironic juxtaposition—in the title of your Jazz Standards album. Can you talk about that a little bit?

I have to contain my glee here because you’re asking great questions. I think it’s kind of lazy, and a missed opportunity if you just name your song some words from the chorus. My objective with song titles is this: assign the song a cool song title. Something that stands out in a silly way, or words that sound or just look cool together. It’s also a lot of vague “this title for whatever reason feels right for this song.” The title can add to the lyrics. “Cliff Jumper” might be an awesome Transformer name, but also that song is about a period of my life where I was having bad panic attacks and maybe I wanted to jump off a cliff. We have several songs with titles in reference to Amelia Earhart, and they’re all connected. “Best Episode” I did break my own rule on, but just because it felt right to have one generic song title on the album. 

Speaking of “Cliff Jumper,” two of your titles, I think, reference the Transformers: that one and “Prime Told Me There’d Be Days Like This.” What place do the Transformers occupy in your imagination? 

Transformers were of course a big part of mine and a lot of 80’s kid’s youth. I’m going to go a step further, and this is a deep, deep cut. “Prime Told Me There’d Be Days Like This” and “Save the War Stories, Hot Shot” are quotes from Transformers samples that were used in songs by the band Shockwave. Shockwave is a Transformers-themed hardcore band from Erie, PA that holds a lot of good youth memories of mine — going to shows, and spending time with a pretty close-knit music scene. I was a hardcore kid before all this pop punk and emo stuff! You’ll also find a clip from a Transformers episode at the end of “XII. Allegro.” I guess you can say all this just adds depth personally for me, but maybe some folks can say “hey I know the Transformers, and that’s a cool title.”

Guilty as charged! I was one of those guys who came up after your last show and said that Cliff Jumper was the first Transformer I ever owned! On another note, I love the video for “MoshPolice.” I actually watched it after I’d been listening to the somewhat heavier—lyrically heavier, anyway—tunes on How Did It Ever Come to This, and it really made me laugh. How did you film it? How long did it take?

Thanks!! I literally filmed that thing on my iphone XR and edited it in DaVinci Resolve, a free program. My computer is kind of old so I had to look up ways to make it run better. ‘Twas a choppy process. I came up with the title from another moment at an Erie hardcore show where (if memory serves) this kid named Josh Buck was dressed as a policeman and giving people tickets in the moshpit for bad moshing. The title spawned the video idea, as well as Beastie Boys “Sabotage.”  I just said to Chasz and Don, “are you willing to play as detectives in this stupid video idea I have?” Then begged Bea, Nakul, and a few other friends to play moshers. Came up with some scene ideas, and we filmed it in about 5 hours at a couple spots around Pittsburgh.

Nice! Are you working on any new projects? 

In DIY music these days it’s all about the music video and social media, so we’ll probably be doing a couple more videos in the immediate future. My mind is focused on just trying to get the word out about the latest album as much as humanly possible, and gigging as much as our schedules allow. 

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me! 

Thanks Marc, that was fun!