Interview by Kat Harmon<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I caught Stolen Gin, a five-piece disco funk band from New York City, before their performance on the first day of Levitate Music Festival in Marshfield, Massachusetts. The band consists of Will Adler on guitar, Sawyer Adler on bass, Josh Farrell on drums, Evan Jacobson on sax and keys, and lead vocalist Jackson Lardner on guitar and keys. Despite the suffocating heat and humidity, the band\u2019s optimism prevailed- \u201cbetter than rain,\u201d as Sawyer said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat Harmon<\/b>: So Levitate is one of your first stops on your tour this summer, and your first festival stop of many.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will Adler<\/b>: This is actually our first ever festival performance.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: Oh, sick! What about performing at festivals are you all the most excited about?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will<\/b>: We\u2019re just always trying to play in front of new people who don’t know us, like our favorite thing is to see new people in the crowd who have no idea who we are and try and get them into the show and dancing in whatever way we can.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: When and where did you guys first become a band?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sawyer Adler<\/b>: So, in 2019, Jackson and Will first met, and they had the idea to form the band based off of the production they were doing together. I joined a few weeks after that, when they were looking to start performing live. We had other guys coming in and out in our college years, and we took a long break for COVID, as pretty much everybody did. And then when we got back together, we brought Evan in, and not too long after Josh, because we started to play more and more and get more serious and we were just, y\u2019know, trying to find our people. We\u2019ve been with this lineup for about two years and it\u2019s been an onslaught ever since then, just relentless touring and it\u2019s been great.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: You guys were formed in NYC, so what about the New York music scene have you taken into your shows elsewhere?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Josh Farell<\/b>: I feel like we adopted some of that culture, but we have our own aesthetic, I would say. Musically, we create based on our own influences, like- Sawyer, Evan, and I are jazz-based, so we have a lot of jazz influences, and maybe I would say funk even though Sawyer doesn\u2019t like that word, whereas, like, Will\u2019s favorite band was Dave Matthews Band growing up, Jackson- you have a variety of influences also.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jackson<\/b>: I\u2019m fucked, yeah. I have\u2026 way too many influences.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Josh<\/b>: Which is a great thing, though, because you have a lot of things to pull from. But, yeah, that\u2019s what I would say.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: Your relationship with the audience has always been very friendly and open, and you emphasize the importance of making sure every gig feels like a party. How do you tear down the wall between performer and audience and create that informality?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Evan<\/b>: I think that the audience can see that between us on stage, it\u2019s so interactive, and I feel like it almost makes people feel like they\u2019re more of a part of it, because we all kind of don\u2019t really know what\u2019s going to happen next. So when we\u2019re having a conversation on that, they can see it, and they respond well to that. It makes it feel like it\u2019s more of a communal activity. We\u2019re just all here to have a good time, rather than a performer and audience type of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: Building off of that- why do you choose to eliminate that distance between audience and performer? What\u2019s important to you all about keeping that kind of equality?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jackson<\/b>: I mean, I think it\u2019s pretty simple: there\u2019s no us without them. We gotta treat them as equals, and we treat them as friends, and we treat them as people who literally make this work. That\u2019s why we give them all we\u2019ve got, every time we play.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: You\u2019ve gotten a lot of popularity for your cover of Gypsy Woman, and on TikTok, you\u2019ve covered everything from Fleetwood Mac to the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm. What draws you all to filming and posting covers online?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will<\/b>: We play music that we love, first and foremost, when we do covers, so it\u2019s just fun for us to play. And for social media, people just love hearing songs that they know. It\u2019s the same thing when we play a cover live: we try to pick covers that people already know the words to, and are gonna sing along to.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: Speaking of TikTok- how would you all describe the experience of being a band in the digital, short-form age?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sawyer<\/b>: How would I describe\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jackson<\/b>: This is the perfect man to answer this.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Evan<\/b>: \u2018It\u2019s all about the <\/span>data<\/span><\/i>, man.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sawyer<\/b>: Like, yeah. At the end of the day, every era of artists and bands has something like this, whether it\u2019s, y\u2019know, a radio jockey really choosing to champion your song, or whether it\u2019s a festival promoter choosing to give you slots, or whether it\u2019s a TikTok algorithm choosing to send your song to lots of people. If you want that incredible back and forth between the audience and the band, you really have to do the work to generate the audience. The audience isn\u2019t just going to show up on its own. We have a lot of fun doing TikTok when it\u2019s covering songs that we like, for the most part we\u2019re just really trying to put that work in to do the marketing and really get the word out to people that we have these songs, and we have this vibe- it\u2019s this music and this certain visual aspect of it that\u2019s big on TikTok, and if they\u2019re a fan of it then they should come see us and check us out.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: This is an everybody question: if you each had to name a few greatest influences in your performances, what or who would they be?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Josh<\/b>: I recently got turned onto Khruangbin, I really like them. I\u2019m also a big fan of Infinity Song, I like their performances. I\u2019m a drummer, so like, I could name a bunch of drummers- for this setting, Isaac\u2026 I forgot his last name but the drummer from Tauk. I\u2019m a fan of his, and I like how he directs the band.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Evan<\/b>: I would say, like, some house music DJs that I\u2019ve really been liking. I like Kaytranada, that\u2019s a personal favorite of mine.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jackson<\/b>: Kind of more on the philosophical side, The Grateful Dead, just the way they approach performing and writing and being a band. And then more in the musical sense, I come from a lot of blues and folk singer-songwriters- John Mayer is a big hero of mine.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will<\/b>: I grew up listening to a lot of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, and Grateful Dead as well. And later on, when I started getting more into music production, I got into a lot of dance music: Darius, Daft Punk, that world. Just inspired me to kind of blend those two ideologies and create our own thing.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sawyer<\/b>: I\u2019m a big fan of certain British funk bands, like Jamiroquai and Level 42. I\u2019m a big fan of Victor Wooten\u2019s bass playing as well, how it\u2019s really exciting to watch but also really funky and good to dance to. Like Will said, I\u2019m a big fan of bands like Phish and Goose, where you\u2019re there for the jam and you get to have so much fun during the jam, but when the vocals come back in everybody\u2019s singing. There\u2019s a song and a really great jam attached.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kat<\/b>: What\u2019s next for Stolen Gin? What should we expect from you all in the near future?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will<\/b>: Lots of shows this summer. Some great opportunities opening for bands that we love, like String Cheese Incident and Umphrey\u2019s McGee. 2025 is kind of a question mark, but a lot of new music, hopefully. Keep growing the shows, keep the social media in check, involved, and growing.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can check out Stolen Gin\u2019s packed tour schedule for the summer at their Instagram, @stolengin, and stream their latest single, \u201cLondon After Dark,\u201d wherever music is found.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Interview by Kat Harmon I caught Stolen Gin, a five-piece disco funk band from New York City, before their performance on the first day of Levitate Music Festival in Marshfield, Massachusetts. The band consists of Will Adler on guitar, Sawyer Adler on bass, Josh Farrell on drums, Evan Jacobson on sax and keys, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22960,"featured_media":42135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,1523],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22960"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42137,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42134\/revisions\/42137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}