Egon: But it was there, you know. And it kind of took Eric and I kicking and screaming, not that we didn’t wanna do it, we just wanted it to be perfect. I think a lot of our songs get written that way. Where you’re like “Well, SOMEONE has entered the room here! Who are you?”
Eric: I think the first time we jammed together he just belted out “#summerhit”
Egon: Emanuel, it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Monica [Wizgird, multi-instrumentalist and former member] was like “My friend Eric is coming over we’re gonna have band practice,” and our relationship was very young at this point. I was like “Oh, that’s really cool let me grab my things I don’t wanna like intrude,” trying to be considerate. And she was like “It’s really more of a casual thing if you wanna sit in I’m sure no one would mind, it’d be really fun, I know you play guitar.”
I was noodling around on her keyboard and her synthesizer and at certain point she said “Here do you wanna play the guitar? And I’ll play the keyboard?” And that’s when “#summerhit” was written.
And there was this really funny moment – cuz we recorded all of our early practices – where we make the skeleton for “#summerhit” and it finishes and you hear Erin go “Monica, I hope it’s okay but you know he’s in the band now, right?”
Photos by Monica Wizgird
So what was CONDO and how was it different from Daymaker?
Eric: CONDO was totally different from Daymaker. It never became a serious thing it was always just like me, Justin [Booz], Erin, and Viviana [Gentry Fernandez-Pellon] jamming.
Justin was also super into noise and stuff and we would just kind of meet up once a week or at random times and just jam. That’s pretty much how Daymaker started writing songs and still writes songs.
What’s weird is how CONDO and Daymaker both were weird, droney, experimental projects at first. I was playing guitar through my laptop and we would just improvise stuff and Monica and Erin would play synthesizer also through, like, Ableton.
And we would write some songs but it was a super super super loose thing basically until Egon came along and started playing guitar and I switched to bass, you know, which was my first instrument. And then songs just started coming together.
How’d you meet Dina?
Eric: Erin met Dina. I met Dina when she showed up to practice. I mean, I had heard of Regular Fucked Up People and I think I had checked out some of their music and thought it was cool but I didn’t know Dina and I didn’t know Anthony (from RFUP) or any of them pretty much until Dina showed up to practice.
What about Ruby [Dunphy, former drummer]?
Eric: Ruby was another Erin find. I didn’t know Ruby until she showed up to practice too. I hadn’t heard of Haki or any of that. Erin just has a knack for finding cool people.
*A note on the author’s process: This Feature was compiled from four separate interviews with the members of Daymaker. over the course of one week!