Interview: Saintseneca's Zac Little
By Zack Baker, Editorial Director
Born out of the nearby Appalachian hillside, the now Columbus-based Saintseneca are all grown up. The band released Dark Arc, its ANTI- label debut, a few months back and it wasn’t long before the music world took notice. The album’s haunting melodies and raucous singalong hooks feel like a realization of everything the band has done before. ACRN had the chance to chat with Zac Little a few weeks back about the band’s early days, the shift in process for Dark Arc and why playing with pop-punk bands makes sense for a folk band.
How did Saintseneca come together? I know a lot has changed since the early days.
Saintseneca started in late summer of 2007. That was when we originally started playing some of those first songs. That was actually when I still lived in my hometown, I moved to Columbus later that fall. We were still just kind of playing and figuring out where things were going when that happened. The band was originally with some childhood friends of mine, we had grown up together and played in bands together when we were in high school. But then things really kind of solidified when we added Grace [Cheng] and she played violin in the original lineup. That was kind of the way things had rolled for a few years, we were pretty much all acoustic for a really long time and had set up as sort of like a bluegrass band would set up.
Eventually, around the time we released Last [Saintseneca’s debut full length], the lineup started to shift and that was a lot of the motivation for making that record and for doing it the way we did. It was kind of in anticipation of the fact that the lineup was going to change and we wanted to document that, what we had. We wanted to encapsulate that in some ways. Once the lineup changed--that was when Maryn [Jones] started to play in the band. From there, while I feel like it’s been consistent for a while, the lineup has become a little more fluid. It changes on tours and we tour in a bunch of different ways. That kind of affected how we approached recording, because by the time we were recording Dark Arc the original lineup had more or less completely dissolved. Maryn was still playing and Steve [Ciolek] was too, but they had both joined later. It was kind of unclear what we were doing as a live band, but that really opened up the recording process. Since then we’ve branched out a lot.
Early Saintseneca releases have the same sort of vibe as Dark Arc, but Dark Arc feels like a "debut". It takes all the ideas that were present in the earlier work and fully realizes them. What was the process for Dark Arc as opposed to the earlier material?
It was very different. The early stuff was all pretty much recorded together, live. Those first two EPs were both recorded and mixed within 10 or 12 hours. We just kind of went, played the songs, mixed them and we were done. It was really, really direct. I think there was some cool stuff and a certain charm to some of those things, but when I look back I can’t help but be like, “Ah man!” on some of the little mistakes and things. Of course there are things I would want to change.
Last was a little bit further along in terms of how methodically we approached things, but even that was all recorded in four days in the studio. We went back and mixed and did a couple overdubs and some other cleanup, but for the most part it was all tracked live.
Dark Arc was a pretty different, because, like I said, our lineup was still kind of fluid and nebulous at that time. There wasn’t really a band to write the songs with, necessarily. It really opened up how we could approach the recordings. Rather than going to a studio, we were tracking with my friend Glenn Davis [of Way Yes] for about 10 months. That was going in really, really regularly and just tracking and mixing and trying a lot of different stuff. After we did those 10 months we had the opportunity to go and take all that work out to Omaha. While we were in Omaha we worked with Mike Mogis who’s done, like, all of the Bright Eyes recordings and a bunch of the Saddle Creek stuff. We spent a month working in that studio, so all in all there was just a lot more time invested. It was a pretty different process too, just being more open about how we tried to track stuff and all kinds of things.
Going from a week in the studio for Last to almost a year in the recording process of Dark Arc must have been sort of a drastic shift. How did the transition go over with the band?
I think it was great. I really enjoy recording, so it was nice to finally get to get in there and really push things in a way that we had only really scratched the surface of before. It was us finally doing what I really would want to do.
I first heard about Saintseneca through Derrick [Shanholtzer-Dvorak] from Broken World Media’s Twitter account or something. He sings your praises all the time-
I’ve actually known Derrick since high school.
Oh, really?
Yeah, we’re from a pretty similar region. He’s from West Virginia, and I’m from pretty far down in Southeast Ohio. My bands in high school and his bands from when he was living down there played together, so I’ve known him forever.
Makes sense then! Anyway, I’ve been following you since then and I always find it interesting to see the line-ups that you play shows with. Even though you’re pretty far on the folk side of things, you’re constantly playing with bands that are a little more punk-leaning. You may be playing to crowds that are way into Title Fight or something, but you always seem to nail it. How do you approach bills like that where you may not sonically fit right in with the bands you’re playing with?
I don’t think it’s always a consideration of like, “How are we going to appeal to this crowd?” I think it’s more of a thing where we know what we want to do, and trying to do that well. I guess it just translates. It’s not something where we focus really heavily on trying to “win over” this totally different thing.
I think that we’ve always played with bands that aren’t always an obvious choice or fit in terms of genre, more just people that we mesh with in the DIY or punk circuit. That’s what we’ve tried to do in Columbus as well. We’re always playing with pop-punk bands or hardcore bands, but it always works. I feel like I like doing that more than--Sometimes I’m frustrated when people will book a show and choose things that are maybe a little more obvious. It’s less interesting.
The variety of a more mixed bill is more fun.
Yeah, I like the variety and I think sometimes there’s a more subtle connection between those kinds of bands or aesthetics. Sometimes it’s a more thoughtful curation of a show than just, “Oh! Well this band has an acoustic guitar so I guess we’ll book another band with an acoustic guitar.”
You have been touring a lot lately, almost a full year of on-and-off runs. How’s the whole band feeling, especially with that east-coast run coming up soon?
I love being on tour, and I think these past few have been amazing. But at the same time, it can really be a lot of work. For example, we did a six-week run that went out west, and I was just so amazingly tired for some of those shows. But as soon as I get home, just give me a couple of days and I wanna go out on tour again. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to do it, to play shows and to get to travel and meet people and see so many bands. I think it’s a really exceptional opportunity, and the shows have been good! They’ve been getting better each time we go out. It’s nice to have something tangible, it’s a nice kind of validation. You go on tour, and you can see how it’s paying off. People being more excited about it each time, it’s nice feedback to have.
Has there been a noticeable shift in the shows since Dark Arc came out?
One of the things that I always notice is that things change subtly, at least for us. While we’ve had a lot of cool opportunities and some exciting platforms from which to present, be that some kind of press thing or some kind of festival or whatever, it’s always this cumulative effect. It grows in this subtle sort of way. I think that it becomes better every time, but for us it’s never been a thing where overnight we go out--We have played shows where I’ve been overwhelmed by the response and the way that people engage, but I feel like it’s been a slow build. It’s not like you snap your fingers and people are just going nuts.
How are you preparing for the upcoming east coast run of shows?
We’re just practicing a lot. We’re gonna have a different lineup for this tour, so we’re just getting ready. Every tour there’s so much that you learn from playing shows, especially this last one--it was pretty long. By the time I get home I’ve got a list of things that I’m going to change and what I’m going to make better. So I’ve just been getting all that stuff prepared and practicing with the lineup for this run.
What is the lineup for these shows, or how has it changed since the last tour?
It’s actually the same lineup that we had when we toured in January, I think. Rather than Steve Ciolek, it’s Steve Jacobs who was in the original lineup. Steve [Ciolek] is actually busy with some personal recording, so he’s not coming with us on this tour. But it’ll be a lot of fun to have Steve back with us.
Catch Saintseneca live at Nelsonville Music Festival on Saturday, May 31.
