Today we’d like to introduce you to Gus Carrington.
Hi Gus, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
The Stupid Reasons started as a stage name and vehicle for the songs I wrote outside of different bands I played in over the years. It took me a while to find the right name—I got serious about writing songs on guitar in 2014 while technically being the drummer of a group called The Jetpack Crew.
We went through a phase where we strictly played acoustic open mic nights, and that’s really what did it. For these, I played guitar or ukulele instead of loading in a drum set (these were good times). I was able to focus on chord structures and lyrics instead of sitting behind the kit and caring most about what was fun for the drummer (like trying to convince the other members that we should make their parts more and more complicated like I See Stars or A Day To Remember).
I love metal and technical music, but there’s something about focusing on telling a story and stumbling upon a convincing melody that is a pursuit of its own. It often can become something timeless when that’s your north star. The other full-time bandmate of The Stupid Reasons is the one and only Daniel Wasmund—he once told me the mark of a great song is how you can pick it up, put it in different genres and it still works. For our new album especially, the focus was on that classic sense of songwriting.
With that in mind, all of the tunes on “(Petunias)” were written first and foremost on acoustic guitar at different points in my life. The closing track “The Happy Song,” dates back to those Jetpack Crew days while “The Moon (From Heaven)” was written as recently as 2020.
Playing drums in another Memphis band, Bigger Fish also honed some songwriting skills as Dan and I collaborated with the great John Hoffman. We were super active from 2017-2018 and getting to sing harmony with John helped me gain a lot of confidence when it comes to hearing my voice through a microphone.
The Stupid Reasons really was going to be my NPR-tiny-desk-style acoustic project (and I picked a great year to invest in new equipment and start playing more gigs), but in 2019 I asked Daniel and other friends to fill out an amplified live sound.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Every artist who has to think about paying rent struggles with balance, I’d wager. (Namedropping one more band I’ve been involved with), it was playing bass for Blvck Hippie that really put a fire under me to record this album specifically. The title track was directly inspired by the frustration I felt in not being able to get off work during the days that Hippie had booked time at Young Avenue Sound.
I wasn’t in some high-falutin’ position anywhere—I was giving tours at the Memphis Zoo making next to minimum wage. It baffled me that I was stuck in a literal circle, driving around the Zoo all day while missing these exciting sessions. The giraffe-keeper Mrs. Shirley always had a way of hitting me with some knowledge when I complained about work. During this exchange she threw out one extremely practical southern (?) expression that I think has gotten lost in the modern lexicon:
“Well, you must feel like a petunia in an onion patch!”
My jaw dropped. I had never heard those words put together like that, but it was exactly how I felt—phrased better than I could think to articulate. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the parody movie “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” but there are these moments where John C. Reilly repeats a phrase to himself and stares off into space dramatically. “Don’t you dare write a song right now Dewey!” Most people that call themselves songwriters I think would agree that these scenes are hilariously accurate.
Soon “Petunia (The Break Room Song)” was born, and I vowed to record it in the very place I didn’t get to experience it because of the situation that inspired it in the first place. There are parentheses around the title of the album to represent these times where you feel like an after-thought (due in part to a hyper-capitalist profession-obsessed society), but they also represent the full circle moments that you can engineer when you make the best out of a seemingly rotten experience.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Genres can get way too specific and silly, but that didn’t stop me a year ago from declaring the kind of music we play as “Emo/Americana.”
In my mind, that’s the kind of music that gets made when you’re equally inspired by My Chemical Romance as you are by Johnny Cash. I did a quick Google search to see if that term had been used anywhere else, and the only other place I could find it was in the headline for a review of an album by Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties (who is also a big influence).
There are bands that double down on the folk aspect (doing a better job of it than we can) and there are bands that are strictly electric-guitar-driven alternative rock type stuff. Personally, I’m impressed and drawn to artists like Jack White who can shapeshift between loud fuzz-rock bops and stripped-down acoustic-driven tunes.
When you listen to a Beatles album you’re going to hear songs for almost every mood (and even one random country song they gave to Ringo), so that “full album” experience I hope helps separate us and our record (especially the part about one random country song).
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I kind of just spit out my coffee thinking about how hard it is to pick one lesson from the pandemic. I know I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did at the corporate marketing day job I had if I wasn’t working from home for two years. As much as I love talking to crowds in bars, ZOOM and TEAMS calls are my worst nightmare.
There’s little to no reaction to what you’re saying. I ramble on and reveal that I’m actually not as far along as I should be with certain projects. If I timed it right, singing a song right before the call helped. Freestyle rapping as soon as the call was over was a nice celebration for getting through it.
Pro tip: Check if the canned iced coffee you grabbed from the fridge (60 seconds before a work call) is “spiked with rum” before you sit down and crack it open. Actually, that was the best meeting I ever had.
As far as the onset of the pandemic, sometime after we had the first 3 songs for the album mastered, I had a COVID scare at a time when that was unthinkable. I wound up staying in the hospital for a weekend in a specialized lock-down room where the air was being vented through a machine and the doctors would come in practically in hazmat suits.
This all happened because I had a small cold, and thought that I would do my due diligence—have a swab tickle my brain. The nurse that performed the test called her friend over and said “I’ve never seen the machine say this before, what do I do?” Needless to say, the importance of managing stress is the biggest takeaway from this global crisis for me.
Once admitted, I started texting our producer Matt Qualls with plans for how to release the 3 songs we’d worked on in the case that I wasn’t able to see the day.
Eventually, I found calm in that storm through some particularly engaging movies on cable television—” My Cousin Vinny” now has even more of a special place in my heart. This one rom-com with Channing Tatum had me thoroughly invested. “Amistad” was an incredible story, and the opening scene just floors you.
Bringing it back to the album and some of the songs I’ve had since 2014, “The Happy Song” explores how you really have to flex your happiness muscle to keep a positive outlook on life.
Whether it’s about recognizing all the good stuff still present in your world after a breakup or allowing yourself to laugh (under a mask) about Marisa Tomei’s biological clock (while you wait to see if you’ve contracted a deadly virus), it pays to keep track of small joys.
I started texting our producer Matt Qualls with plans for how to package the 3 songs we’d worked on (at that point) in case I wasn’t able to see the day that they were released.
Pricing:
- Shirts are $20 and our CDs are $10 on our Bandcamp: https://thestupidreasonstofollowus.bandcamp.com/
- We also have $10 cassette tapes of our EP “Little Light” https://thestupidreasonstofollowus.bandcamp.com/album/little-light-ep
- Cashapp for tips: $thestupidreasons.
Contact Info:
- Website: thestupidreasons.com
- Instagram: @thestupidreasons
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thestupidreasonstofollowus
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVyDKHNUjra_hsdru7yDKQ
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thestupidreasons
Image Credits
Chloe Littlefield
