Image via Sarah Pardini
Listening to Lingua Ignota gives Mike Giegerich catholic guilt and he’s never even been to church.
The early days of sobriety embody the darkness before dawn. There’s the promise of a bright future ahead, but first lies the unpleasant task of parsing through years of pain. In the case of Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto, they were still in a tenebrous state upon the formation of the beloved post-punk outfit Sextile. Founded in Los Angeles in 2015 while both artists were in sober living, their debut album A Thousand Hands fittingly waded amidst a noisy, gloomy palate. It’s not to say that the project was abrasive to the point of aversion (see the propulsive rhythms of “Visions of You”), but there was an opaque haze across its tracklist.
After two years of growth, 2017’s Albeit Living found frontman Keehn, percussionist Scaduto, multi-instrumentalist Eddie Wuebben, and bassist Kenny Elkin taking a creative leap. Their sophomore album’s production had a distinct bounce. Its vocals emerged from anarchic distortion and there was now an underlying suggestion that their music was meant for the dance floor. After the replacement of Elkin with Cameron Michel, Sextile truly came into their own on 2018’s striking 3 EP. Razor-sharp synthesized grooves sliced through the audio ether on essential cuts like “Disco” whose title belied its potent edge. Sextile were now on an upward trajectory of exponential growth.
It all came to a grinding halt when Wuebben tragically passed away from an accidental overdose in 2019. As a band founded within the gestating womb of sobriety, it was particularly cruel to lose their creative partner, shining light, and personal peacemaker in such a fashion. Crippled by the seismic loss, Sextile fractured into solo efforts. Keehn debuted Panther Modern, Scaduto moved from percussion to the microphone with S. Product, and Michel dedicated himself to his visual art. As each member creatively blossomed in their own separate worlds, Sextile could have threatened to drift apart permanently.
But in 2022, they announced their return with the brilliant double single “Modern Weekend / Contortion.” Its visuals of joyous, rebellious youth signaled a completely reinvigorated Sextile. And after a year of touring and recording, they finally revealed plans for a full-length in summer 2023. The announcement was driven by a massive tonal shift with the technicolored elation of “New York.” A longstanding oeuvre with distinct ‘80s influences like Suicide was nowhere to be heard on the track. Sextile were sharing a Los Angeles-based bill with darkwave mainstays like Black Marble and Drab Majesty only a year ago. Now, their sound was supplemented by acidic rave synths harkening back to classic Goldie and early XL Recordings. Those nostalgic synths underscored Scaduto’s question seemingly posited toward the audience: “Are you ready?”
Firmly grounded in dance music and its exhilarating possibilities, Push is washed over by a sense of unshakable optimism. There’s venomous barbs that strike out at misogyny and caricatures of unbearable Los Angeles DJs, but blistering breakbeats and frenetic drum & bass rhythms make even the most seething lyrical moments tailor-made for Warehouse District after-hours. The project is bright and boisterous; even its visuals glowingly signal that their new era is a trip. And while this all might seem like a surprising left-turn for Sextile, their DJ sets over the past year have continuously hinted at the possibility of new pursuits. Regularly breaking the 170 BPM sound barrier, sweat-filled rooms whir down to the most fundamental molecules while the band dances with pent-up intensity from a years-long hiatus. Sextile are back and breaking new creative ground in the process.
Now fully committed to a cutting-edge creative pathway, there’s much to discuss. Keehn and Scaduto contemplate the importance of self-sufficiency almost a decade into their career, a home on Reno Street as a sacred space, and consciously keeping Wuebben’s memory alive through Push and beyond.
What spurred your partnership with Sacred Bones? They feel like the perfect fit in terms of understanding catchy counterculture art.
Brady Keehn: Well, I think we played that show in New York, recently, at TV Eye. And from those few shows, Sacred Bones was at one of them. We’ve always been a fan of Sacred Bones and a lot of the stuff that they put out. We were always like, “Yeah, we’re gonna be on Sacred Bones, that’d be great.” And then when they came to us, we were kind of nervous actually, ‘cause we’re like, “Do we want to be on a record label anymore?” And I think now, having been working with them for about three or four months, I think we made the best choice we probably could have made for ourselves. They’re an amazing team. They work really hard. They are super communicative with us. I think we’re all really enjoying working with Sacred Bones right now.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I mean, the music industry has changed a lot. So that’s what made us apprehensive about going on with a label in general, because we had just left our old label. And you know, I’ve been making music for many years, and I’ve been on multiple labels through the years, but I have never seen a team work as hard as Sacred Bones has on this, where they’ve brought up sh*t that I had never thought about, of us doing that we couldn’t possibly do on our own. They’ve kept this organized and on it more than I’ve ever experienced before. And also, we had already decided when we wanted our record to come out, so I thought it was so cool that they were like, “Yep, we can do that. We can make it work for what you guys want,” as opposed to a label telling you “Oh, [it’ll] come out a year from now after you’ve finished it,” which is usually the situation. So it’s been kind of above and beyond honestly; they’ve done much more than I expected.
I can understand being skeptical of labels, especially with how self-sufficient Sextile is. I see you’re still going as far as hand-making your own merch, so it’s nice to hear that a label can match your energy.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we try to do everything ourselves. Brady records and mixes us. A lot of stuff, we’ve really tried to come up with ourselves and incorporate our friends and do work within the community around us. So, yeah, appreciate that. I think it works well with a label that also is just gonna work on the business end with a band that is self-sufficient in these other ways. So maybe that’s why the team effort with them works really well.
Speaking of self-recording, I saw you post on Instagram that you just moved out of the apartment where you recorded a lot of Sextie’s music?
Melissa Scaduto: It was a house and her name is Reno Street and I love her [laughs]. I was just grateful for her. I wanted [to give] the house a hug because she really fostered so much for us for a long time.
When did you move in there? And what was the first record you recorded there?
Melissa Scaduto: We moved in there in 2016, maybe going into 2017. We did some songs that we never put out, like this cover of this weird, glam French band that no one’s ever heard of. And another song called “Lazy Monday” that we recorded with Eddie, our bandmate that passed away. And then we did the whole 3 EP which has “Disco,” “Hazing,” “Spun” – the record that has our most well known hits was done in there. “Current Affair” was finished in that house. And the music video was also shot in there … Yeah, it’s just been a lot of stuff over the years at that house. All the merch was made in that house. And I really learned how to screenprint at that house. So that’s why I’m so sentimental. I just moved to an apartment. When you move from a house to an apartment, it’s just quite a difference. My landlord was so rad that he just didn’t care what we did there. And my neighbors didn’t either. So it was very easy to dream up and do whatever you wanted to there. I mean, I had multiple friends even make music videos and do photo shoots there too. The house also had a lot of bands stay there over the years. As I was leaving, a few different people were like, “Damn dude, I still have the keys to that house!” A lot of people do because it was a place for that. I mean, it was like 3000 square feet. You can do a lot of stuff there [laughs].
I know you retreated away from Los Angeles and recorded this album out in Yucca Valley. How would you describe the experience of stepping outside of this house with so many memories and going somewhere new to record?
Melissa Scaduto: Well actually, some songs we did work on partially at Brady’s and at the Reno Street house. “Cressy Mel,” the vocals were all done at the Reno Street house … I think that was probably one of the last things that I did there that’s coming out on this record … We initially went to Yucca Valley basically, to try something new and just rent an Airbnb house for a week. And out of that came probably about half the new record. A lot of the punky guitar songs that no one’s heard yet that kind of sound like the B-52s that are coming out on the new record. I feel like they have B-52s energy. We went in there with intention with that too, because we love them.
It was weird because we weren’t used to the desert. We honestly felt tired. Yeah, we sort of realized from going to the desert that yeah, it’s a cool vibe, but it’s also a sleepy one. So next time, we want to go to one, maybe in a new city, an exciting city, like Berlin – maybe not Berlin because we kind of think it’s dark there [laughs] – but you know, a city that has vibrancy and life so you can go ride a bike without being like, “Oh, I can’t do that because there’s vultures.” I didn’t really like the desert as there’s a slight fear of trekking out on your own there because it feels so weird not to be around water and just be like burning out there.
Brady Keehn: Yeah I 100% agree with what Mel’s saying here. We didn’t realize that the serene quietness would put us all asleep and make us so sleepy. We’ve been just going so hard that by the time we got to this super quiet space, we were like, oh my god, all we wanted to do was sleep. But I agree with Melissa, [we want to] go into a city with more energy where we can get up, get a coffee, see somebody, see some people, be inspired by something. The activities of living and living in a different city inspire us … And now we know the desert might not be the best choice to go [laughs].
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I mean, the music industry has changed a lot. So that’s what made us apprehensive about going on with a label in general, because we had just left our old label. And you know, I’ve been making music for many years, and I’ve been on multiple labels through the years, but I have never seen a team work as hard as Sacred Bones has on this, where they’ve brought up sh*t that I had never thought about, of us doing that we couldn’t possibly do on our own. They’ve kept this organized and on it more than I’ve ever experienced before. And also, we had already decided when we wanted our record to come out, so I thought it was so cool that they were like, “Yep, we can do that. We can make it work for what you guys want,” as opposed to a label telling you “Oh, [it’ll] come out a year from now after you’ve finished it,” which is usually the situation. So it’s been kind of above and beyond honestly; they’ve done much more than I expected.
I can understand being skeptical of labels, especially with how self-sufficient Sextile is. I see you’re still going as far as hand-making your own merch, so it’s nice to hear that a label can match your energy.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we try to do everything ourselves. Brady records and mixes us. A lot of stuff, we’ve really tried to come up with ourselves and incorporate our friends and do work within the community around us. So, yeah, appreciate that. I think it works well with a label that also is just gonna work on the business end with a band that is self-sufficient in these other ways. So maybe that’s why the team effort with them works really well.
Speaking of self-recording, I saw you post on Instagram that you just moved out of the apartment where you recorded a lot of Sextie’s music?
Melissa Scaduto: It was a house and her name is Reno Street and I love her [laughs]. I was just grateful for her. I wanted [to give] the house a hug because she really fostered so much for us for a long time.
When did you move in there? And what was the first record you recorded there?
Melissa Scaduto: We moved in there in 2016, maybe going into 2017. We did some songs that we never put out, like this cover of this weird, glam French band that no one’s ever heard of. And another song called “Lazy Monday” that we recorded with Eddie, our bandmate that passed away. And then we did the whole 3 EP which has “Disco,” “Hazing,” “Spun” – the record that has our most well known hits was done in there. “Current Affair” was finished in that house. And the music video was also shot in there … Yeah, it’s just been a lot of stuff over the years at that house. All the merch was made in that house. And I really learned how to screenprint at that house. So that’s why I’m so sentimental. I just moved to an apartment. When you move from a house to an apartment, it’s just quite a difference. My landlord was so rad that he just didn’t care what we did there. And my neighbors didn’t either. So it was very easy to dream up and do whatever you wanted to there. I mean, I had multiple friends even make music videos and do photo shoots there too. The house also had a lot of bands stay there over the years. As I was leaving, a few different people were like, “Damn dude, I still have the keys to that house!” A lot of people do because it was a place for that. I mean, it was like 3000 square feet. You can do a lot of stuff there [laughs].
I know you retreated away from Los Angeles and recorded this album out in Yucca Valley. How would you describe the experience of stepping outside of this house with so many memories and going somewhere new to record?
Melissa Scaduto: Well actually, some songs we did work on partially at Brady’s and at the Reno Street house. “Cressy Mel,” the vocals were all done at the Reno Street house … I think that was probably one of the last things that I did there that’s coming out on this record … We initially went to Yucca Valley basically, to try something new and just rent an Airbnb house for a week. And out of that came probably about half the new record. A lot of the punky guitar songs that no one’s heard yet that kind of sound like the B-52s that are coming out on the new record. I feel like they have B-52s energy. We went in there with intention with that too, because we love them.
It was weird because we weren’t used to the desert. We honestly felt tired. Yeah, we sort of realized from going to the desert that yeah, it’s a cool vibe, but it’s also a sleepy one. So next time, we want to go to one, maybe in a new city, an exciting city, like Berlin – maybe not Berlin because we kind of think it’s dark there [laughs] – but you know, a city that has vibrancy and life so you can go ride a bike without being like, “Oh, I can’t do that because there’s vultures.” I didn’t really like the desert as there’s a slight fear of trekking out on your own there because it feels so weird not to be around water and just be like burning out there.
Brady Keehn: Yeah I 100% agree with what Mel’s saying here. We didn’t realize that the serene quietness would put us all asleep and make us so sleepy. We’ve been just going so hard that by the time we got to this super quiet space, we were like, oh my god, all we wanted to do was sleep. But I agree with Melissa, [we want to] go into a city with more energy where we can get up, get a coffee, see somebody, see some people, be inspired by something. The activities of living and living in a different city inspire us … And now we know the desert might not be the best choice to go [laughs].
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we try to do everything ourselves. Brady records and mixes us. A lot of stuff, we’ve really tried to come up with ourselves and incorporate our friends and do work within the community around us. So, yeah, appreciate that. I think it works well with a label that also is just gonna work on the business end with a band that is self-sufficient in these other ways. So maybe that’s why the team effort with them works really well.
Speaking of self-recording, I saw you post on Instagram that you just moved out of the apartment where you recorded a lot of Sextie’s music?
Melissa Scaduto: It was a house and her name is Reno Street and I love her [laughs]. I was just grateful for her. I wanted [to give] the house a hug because she really fostered so much for us for a long time.
When did you move in there? And what was the first record you recorded there?
Melissa Scaduto: We moved in there in 2016, maybe going into 2017. We did some songs that we never put out, like this cover of this weird, glam French band that no one’s ever heard of. And another song called “Lazy Monday” that we recorded with Eddie, our bandmate that passed away. And then we did the whole 3 EP which has “Disco,” “Hazing,” “Spun” – the record that has our most well known hits was done in there. “Current Affair” was finished in that house. And the music video was also shot in there … Yeah, it’s just been a lot of stuff over the years at that house. All the merch was made in that house. And I really learned how to screenprint at that house. So that’s why I’m so sentimental. I just moved to an apartment. When you move from a house to an apartment, it’s just quite a difference. My landlord was so rad that he just didn’t care what we did there. And my neighbors didn’t either. So it was very easy to dream up and do whatever you wanted to there. I mean, I had multiple friends even make music videos and do photo shoots there too. The house also had a lot of bands stay there over the years. As I was leaving, a few different people were like, “Damn dude, I still have the keys to that house!” A lot of people do because it was a place for that. I mean, it was like 3000 square feet. You can do a lot of stuff there [laughs].
I know you retreated away from Los Angeles and recorded this album out in Yucca Valley. How would you describe the experience of stepping outside of this house with so many memories and going somewhere new to record?
Melissa Scaduto: Well actually, some songs we did work on partially at Brady’s and at the Reno Street house. “Cressy Mel,” the vocals were all done at the Reno Street house … I think that was probably one of the last things that I did there that’s coming out on this record … We initially went to Yucca Valley basically, to try something new and just rent an Airbnb house for a week. And out of that came probably about half the new record. A lot of the punky guitar songs that no one’s heard yet that kind of sound like the B-52s that are coming out on the new record. I feel like they have B-52s energy. We went in there with intention with that too, because we love them.
It was weird because we weren’t used to the desert. We honestly felt tired. Yeah, we sort of realized from going to the desert that yeah, it’s a cool vibe, but it’s also a sleepy one. So next time, we want to go to one, maybe in a new city, an exciting city, like Berlin – maybe not Berlin because we kind of think it’s dark there [laughs] – but you know, a city that has vibrancy and life so you can go ride a bike without being like, “Oh, I can’t do that because there’s vultures.” I didn’t really like the desert as there’s a slight fear of trekking out on your own there because it feels so weird not to be around water and just be like burning out there.
Brady Keehn: Yeah I 100% agree with what Mel’s saying here. We didn’t realize that the serene quietness would put us all asleep and make us so sleepy. We’ve been just going so hard that by the time we got to this super quiet space, we were like, oh my god, all we wanted to do was sleep. But I agree with Melissa, [we want to] go into a city with more energy where we can get up, get a coffee, see somebody, see some people, be inspired by something. The activities of living and living in a different city inspire us … And now we know the desert might not be the best choice to go [laughs].
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: It was a house and her name is Reno Street and I love her [laughs]. I was just grateful for her. I wanted [to give] the house a hug because she really fostered so much for us for a long time.
When did you move in there? And what was the first record you recorded there?
Melissa Scaduto: We moved in there in 2016, maybe going into 2017. We did some songs that we never put out, like this cover of this weird, glam French band that no one’s ever heard of. And another song called “Lazy Monday” that we recorded with Eddie, our bandmate that passed away. And then we did the whole 3 EP which has “Disco,” “Hazing,” “Spun” – the record that has our most well known hits was done in there. “Current Affair” was finished in that house. And the music video was also shot in there … Yeah, it’s just been a lot of stuff over the years at that house. All the merch was made in that house. And I really learned how to screenprint at that house. So that’s why I’m so sentimental. I just moved to an apartment. When you move from a house to an apartment, it’s just quite a difference. My landlord was so rad that he just didn’t care what we did there. And my neighbors didn’t either. So it was very easy to dream up and do whatever you wanted to there. I mean, I had multiple friends even make music videos and do photo shoots there too. The house also had a lot of bands stay there over the years. As I was leaving, a few different people were like, “Damn dude, I still have the keys to that house!” A lot of people do because it was a place for that. I mean, it was like 3000 square feet. You can do a lot of stuff there [laughs].
I know you retreated away from Los Angeles and recorded this album out in Yucca Valley. How would you describe the experience of stepping outside of this house with so many memories and going somewhere new to record?
Melissa Scaduto: Well actually, some songs we did work on partially at Brady’s and at the Reno Street house. “Cressy Mel,” the vocals were all done at the Reno Street house … I think that was probably one of the last things that I did there that’s coming out on this record … We initially went to Yucca Valley basically, to try something new and just rent an Airbnb house for a week. And out of that came probably about half the new record. A lot of the punky guitar songs that no one’s heard yet that kind of sound like the B-52s that are coming out on the new record. I feel like they have B-52s energy. We went in there with intention with that too, because we love them.
It was weird because we weren’t used to the desert. We honestly felt tired. Yeah, we sort of realized from going to the desert that yeah, it’s a cool vibe, but it’s also a sleepy one. So next time, we want to go to one, maybe in a new city, an exciting city, like Berlin – maybe not Berlin because we kind of think it’s dark there [laughs] – but you know, a city that has vibrancy and life so you can go ride a bike without being like, “Oh, I can’t do that because there’s vultures.” I didn’t really like the desert as there’s a slight fear of trekking out on your own there because it feels so weird not to be around water and just be like burning out there.
Brady Keehn: Yeah I 100% agree with what Mel’s saying here. We didn’t realize that the serene quietness would put us all asleep and make us so sleepy. We’ve been just going so hard that by the time we got to this super quiet space, we were like, oh my god, all we wanted to do was sleep. But I agree with Melissa, [we want to] go into a city with more energy where we can get up, get a coffee, see somebody, see some people, be inspired by something. The activities of living and living in a different city inspire us … And now we know the desert might not be the best choice to go [laughs].
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: We moved in there in 2016, maybe going into 2017. We did some songs that we never put out, like this cover of this weird, glam French band that no one’s ever heard of. And another song called “Lazy Monday” that we recorded with Eddie, our bandmate that passed away. And then we did the whole 3 EP which has “Disco,” “Hazing,” “Spun” – the record that has our most well known hits was done in there. “Current Affair” was finished in that house. And the music video was also shot in there … Yeah, it’s just been a lot of stuff over the years at that house. All the merch was made in that house. And I really learned how to screenprint at that house. So that’s why I’m so sentimental. I just moved to an apartment. When you move from a house to an apartment, it’s just quite a difference. My landlord was so rad that he just didn’t care what we did there. And my neighbors didn’t either. So it was very easy to dream up and do whatever you wanted to there. I mean, I had multiple friends even make music videos and do photo shoots there too. The house also had a lot of bands stay there over the years. As I was leaving, a few different people were like, “Damn dude, I still have the keys to that house!” A lot of people do because it was a place for that. I mean, it was like 3000 square feet. You can do a lot of stuff there [laughs].
I know you retreated away from Los Angeles and recorded this album out in Yucca Valley. How would you describe the experience of stepping outside of this house with so many memories and going somewhere new to record?
Melissa Scaduto: Well actually, some songs we did work on partially at Brady’s and at the Reno Street house. “Cressy Mel,” the vocals were all done at the Reno Street house … I think that was probably one of the last things that I did there that’s coming out on this record … We initially went to Yucca Valley basically, to try something new and just rent an Airbnb house for a week. And out of that came probably about half the new record. A lot of the punky guitar songs that no one’s heard yet that kind of sound like the B-52s that are coming out on the new record. I feel like they have B-52s energy. We went in there with intention with that too, because we love them.
It was weird because we weren’t used to the desert. We honestly felt tired. Yeah, we sort of realized from going to the desert that yeah, it’s a cool vibe, but it’s also a sleepy one. So next time, we want to go to one, maybe in a new city, an exciting city, like Berlin – maybe not Berlin because we kind of think it’s dark there [laughs] – but you know, a city that has vibrancy and life so you can go ride a bike without being like, “Oh, I can’t do that because there’s vultures.” I didn’t really like the desert as there’s a slight fear of trekking out on your own there because it feels so weird not to be around water and just be like burning out there.
Brady Keehn: Yeah I 100% agree with what Mel’s saying here. We didn’t realize that the serene quietness would put us all asleep and make us so sleepy. We’ve been just going so hard that by the time we got to this super quiet space, we were like, oh my god, all we wanted to do was sleep. But I agree with Melissa, [we want to] go into a city with more energy where we can get up, get a coffee, see somebody, see some people, be inspired by something. The activities of living and living in a different city inspire us … And now we know the desert might not be the best choice to go [laughs].
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: Well actually, some songs we did work on partially at Brady’s and at the Reno Street house. “Cressy Mel,” the vocals were all done at the Reno Street house … I think that was probably one of the last things that I did there that’s coming out on this record … We initially went to Yucca Valley basically, to try something new and just rent an Airbnb house for a week. And out of that came probably about half the new record. A lot of the punky guitar songs that no one’s heard yet that kind of sound like the B-52s that are coming out on the new record. I feel like they have B-52s energy. We went in there with intention with that too, because we love them.
It was weird because we weren’t used to the desert. We honestly felt tired. Yeah, we sort of realized from going to the desert that yeah, it’s a cool vibe, but it’s also a sleepy one. So next time, we want to go to one, maybe in a new city, an exciting city, like Berlin – maybe not Berlin because we kind of think it’s dark there [laughs] – but you know, a city that has vibrancy and life so you can go ride a bike without being like, “Oh, I can’t do that because there’s vultures.” I didn’t really like the desert as there’s a slight fear of trekking out on your own there because it feels so weird not to be around water and just be like burning out there.
Brady Keehn: Yeah I 100% agree with what Mel’s saying here. We didn’t realize that the serene quietness would put us all asleep and make us so sleepy. We’ve been just going so hard that by the time we got to this super quiet space, we were like, oh my god, all we wanted to do was sleep. But I agree with Melissa, [we want to] go into a city with more energy where we can get up, get a coffee, see somebody, see some people, be inspired by something. The activities of living and living in a different city inspire us … And now we know the desert might not be the best choice to go [laughs].
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: I mean, what we needed to do got done, though. It took a couple days to snap into it for all of us.
Brady Keehn: And I think we got some really cool songs out of it too. Not say that it was all not worth it.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Before you put out “Modern Weekend” and “Contortion” last year, you two spent time on your respective side-projects in Panther Modern and S. Product. Did those offer you a creative recharge before coming back to Sextile?
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I would definitely think so. Especially for me, because S. Product put me in a different role that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable being yet. I never wanted to be in the front of a band, I always wanted to stand behind people. But when Sextile broke up, I realized that I sort of had to step to the front, if I wanted to make music continuously and take it seriously in a different way. Because when you play drums, you’re viewed as sort of an auxiliary member, not like a songwriter; I guess I never wanted that. And then I realized after that I did, because Sextile felt so much like mine, and I wanted it still, and so I realized that I needed to, yes, sing in a band. When Sextile got back together, I feel like we’re honestly better now, having a femme energy in the front – I personally would prefer to see that. So, you know, you always gotta make art that you would want as well. So I kind of think we’re better for it. And I think Brady, with Panther Modern, got to explore a lot too for himself. And I’ll let you talk on that. But you’ve got more talent to me when I think about what you got to learn how to do with Panther Modern on your own without anyone interjecting.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Brady Keehn: For me, it enabled me to like get some ideas that I was thinking about out and to work on them, which to me freed up a lot of my…I don’t know, like if you ever had a bucket list of things you wanted to try and it was like, “Alright, I can try this, try this, try this, we’re gonna try that. And we’re gonna try these ideas.” And I feel like I got most of them out of the way so that when we came into this new [Sextile] project, it kind of felt clear. And I was able to be more open to trying different things and wanting to experiment in different ways. I’ve gotten a lot back into sampling, which is what I used to do when I first started making music, which is so much fun for me. And now I’m finding this whole new energy or inspiration around it. It was like,” Melissa, you have so many records.” I was just telling her the other day, I wish we had listened to at least one a day during the pandemic and then maybe cut a cool sample from each one of them, but maybe we’ll have to do that a different time.
Before this call, we were talking about your DJ sets and how spinning rave music over the past year inspired you to actually create within that framework. Can you talk about that creative evolution? Because there’s such a stark difference between your first album and tracks like “New York.”
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. You know what that is? I think most people who love art want to keep getting inspired by it. So naturally, you keep consuming all different types of art. I feel like you hit a ceiling sometimes when you’re doing the same thing. I noticed in my life, once I master the type of thing that I want to create, I then just end up pushing myself forward. And I believe that you should always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself forward. It’s a natural progression, I think, for most humans, to want to keep inspiring themselves and you inspire yourself. Personally, I inspire myself with new things. So the first Sextile record is so vastly different. And although I love it and appreciate it, it’s just not the kind of music I want to listen to anymore. But you know, you just end up making music you want to listen to as an artist … “New York” is more of a sound that Brady and I particularly would rather listen to these days. I don’t know, there’s more to be said within dance music. It’s harder with rock for some reasons these days.
Brady Keehn: I completely agree with Melissa. I think another thing to say about it is, it’s probably come from playing live shows a lot. Like playing slower, moody music can be fun for a while, but I think really what makes us feel something is seeing the crowd and the energy and people dancing and having fun and creating that environment – but not where it’s too cheesy or too over the top or feels like it’s fake or manufactured. We want to try to bring our genuine ideas [and] punk sensibilities to dance music, and that’s something that we want to try. I don’t know, I feel like when you hear EDM, you think that some of those producers have probably just produced EDM their entire lives, they didn’t really have a punk band before maybe. But taking those elements that we have from the first few records, and then making them even dancier is a very interesting thing to me. And like Melissa said, challenging ourselves and inspiring ourselves to do something that comes from playing shows.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: It’s that for sure, energetic wise. It comes from playing shows, because we want to dance. So we want to make everyone else dance. Because dancing is such a religious experience, it’s incredible. It is for most people in this world. But it’s 2023, and in 2023 the only way to make something new is to throw some random sh*t at the wall and try it. And it being more foreign than what you’ve ever heard or done before. I bring up Lil Peep because I think Lil Peep is a really great example of…I would never think if someone told me, “I’m gonna make an emo-trap project,” that that is a good idea. Now we know since Lil Peep there’s so much stuff like that, that has been successful. But I think Lil Peep, even musically for somebody like me; I’m turning 40 on the 20th, but for some reason, Lil Peep speaks to me. I think it’s because it’s so authentically good. And authentically, the genuine artists where it transcends whatever the genre that it lays in. And I was never the emo kid. So even if you think about it like The Prodigy, [they] did the same thing. They were making dance music, they didn’t want to be stuck in dance music, so they added guitars. And then we get The Fat of the Land, which still sounds like a very forward-thinking record today, how many years later? So we were thinking on that level. F*ck it: let’s try something new.
How do you approach songwriting as two lyricists with two distinct deliveries and personalities? And how do you see each other fitting together on the album?
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Brady Keehn: The lyrics usually come last in our process of songwriting. I think it has been really natural for both of us to approach songwriting together. We usually go through the same music phase as each other, so when it comes to getting inspired about what type of approach we want to take we are usually in sync. I think we fit really well together, I feel we have a similar range and attitude to our deliveries.
Melissa Scaduto: When we write a song, we usually do the vocals last. Either of us will come up with drums or bass, and then sort of decide where it’s going. We don’t consciously decide, like, “Oh, you should sing on this one.” It’s basically whether one of us has a vocal idea. We try to put it down right away. And if it works, cool, we keep working with that. If it doesn’t, then the other person tries, you know? With “Crash,” we had our friend Izzy [Glaudini] sing on it. I was gonna sing the chorus, but Izzy had asked me multiple times through the years if we ever had a song for her to sing on because she’s always been a huge supporter of the band. We knew her before she even started Automatic. It was such a sweet song and her vocals [were] so pretty and soft. And although I can kind of sing like that, Sextile is such a loud band, it’s easier for me to shout in that project. So I felt with the soft song that this was the one for Izzy to sing on. Because we normally make more aggressively sounding, tougher sounding tracks, which could work for a soft vocal. It does in “New York” ‘cause I kind of do a soft vocal, but getting Izzy to sing, I think was a really good move on our end. I feel like what she came up with really complemented the song too.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
You have the sampling of LA soundscapes alongside direct references to the city’s scene on “LA DJ.” Is a sense of place important in your music?
Melissa Scaduto: I’ve realized more and more that it’s becoming that [way] because of a song on the record called “New York,” and then we have a song on the record called “LA DJ.” Both are really talking about locations, but I think I’m an extremely sentimental person. I think Brady is too. We definitely wanted to rep LA because it’s where Sextile was born even though we met in New York. So both places hold a really special place in our heart. Personally when I listen to other people’s records I can hear the location in it…like Lou Reed has very specific locations to me on his records. “Berlin” being a record and then “Coney Island Baby” sounds like such a New York record. There’s no other sense of location besides New York on that record. But The Velvet Underground embodies it, too. I guess it’s not an intentional thing about location, though. It’s funny you bring it up.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
I think you touched on it earlier with the sentimentality of the Reno house. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m probably going to think about this place housing your creativity every time I listen to your music.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, we made “Contortion” in that house, too, I should say. So a couple songs on the record were made in that house. I just think it’s really cool when… we’re in an industry, the music industry doesn’t pay a lot of money. All of us have other jobs, so you have to use what you have. So it’s cool when a house can actually foster that for you. And it also helps you learn how to make these things better and easier. Which weirdly, the house kind of taught us more skills, because Brady really learned how to mix the way he does there. And then I really learned also how to use Ableton in that house, which I never had used prior to Sextile. But I also really learned how to screenprint and even use Photoshop better because I was forced to figure out how to learn graphic design. When Sextile first started, I didn’t like the graphics that other people made for us. The first record cover I did not make and I don’t like that record cover. And I realized I gotta learn how to do this. And if it wasn’t for Reno Street, the ability to even have the space to set up and then learn how to screenprint myself, teaching myself via YouTube. You know, having my landlord be so chill. Yeah, I don’t think any of it would have been easy.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Were the new record’s album art and the “New York” video products of your own creative vision?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I actually come up with all our music video concepts, pretty much. Despite the song “Ripped,” Brady did that one. But that’s from our old record, Albeit Living. I generally come up with our photoshoots, our record covers, our music videos, whatever the creative direction is going to be for it. Because I’ve sold clothes for so long, I try to style us all the time. I can’t help it, I just love aesthetic values of things. Because I definitely pride myself in being obsessed with pop culture and subculture, it makes sense that my brain sort of works in that way where I can come up with references easily for music videos and photoshoots.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
The photoshoot for the record Push, that idea came around when we were mixing. And I was eating Fun Dip [laughs]. We were mixing for 14 hours and there was no food. And Brady had some Fun Dip from his mom, some candy that he wouldn’t eat. And so I just decided to eat it. And then my tongue was brightly colored and I stuck my tongue out at everybody. My friend Cesar who was working with us, he was like, “Oh, your tongue looks crazy.” And I was like, “Oh, that should be the single cover for ‘New York.’” But then we decided, “Let’s just make it the record cover for Push.” And I put the Sextile symbol on my tongue as if it’s a hit of acid, as if you’re dosing the record, you know what I mean? [As] if you’re dosing the band, because the Sextile symbol is an actual symbol, it’s a six-point star. My friend Sarah Pardini who takes all our photos, she’s such a star. She literally is the only one I know that whenever I dream up any photoshoot, she can execute it to a tee. And so we just went to her apartment which is up the street from Reno and took that picture really quick. No makeup artists, no nothing. The photo wasn’t touched up at all. We just slapped on some sloppy lipstick and I ate candy and we put the piece of paper on my mouth.
When you announced the album with that eye-popping cover and video for “New York,” it was exciting to see Sextile visually evolve from your dark, post-punk aesthetic. It felt like a statement to expect a more colorful sound.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, I think Sextile for a while now, we’ve wanted to incorporate more color into our sound and aesthetic. The “New York” video, I got to make all my friends in New York, also it was like a quick turnaround situation. I flew to New York, we made it in two days. And I wanted to have some of my oldest friends who’ve supported me and stood by me, even through my darkest hours for the last 20 years are in that video. So it was really special because it was people that we grew up together, we were all all raging f*ck ups. And now we’re all doing really well. It was really special. That song is really pretty and fun to me. So I wanted it to come off as joyous. Yeah, rather than darkness.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
It all feels more optimistic from an outside perspective.
Melissa Scaduto: It definitely is optimistic. Sextile’s first record was made [while] we were in sober living. And we were all going through so many changes. There was a lot of darkness still surrounding how we looked at the world I think. We were younger, and we were freshly sober. You’re still learning about yourself at that time, because you haven’t grown emotionally. Even though I was 31 when we first started Sextile and at the time, I felt like I was old. But in retrospect, now with all these years later, I realized my mentality and the way I looked at the world, my emotional maturity level was young. So it makes sense that the record is weirdly more emo [laughs] and not as confident, you know? And I think where we’re at now, yeah, it’s totally optimistic. I think we even choose better people to be around, which comes with age, but also just any form of growth.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
How would you describe your personal growth from the sober living days to now?
Melissa Scaduto: Oh, my God, I mean it’s insane. The fact that I just got my own apartment that I’m dropping an insane amount of rent on that I never thought that I could do. And I am doing it based on being self made. I literally feel like I get paid to be me. I grew up extremely poor. So to go from that, and to be someone who’s literally on the street, I was a street person, I was a thief, I was not somebody that… Sometimes I still have some weird impostor syndrome that I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be at some fancy restaurant or something, even though I’m paying for it with money I worked for [laughs]. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not supposed to always be allowed in those places even though I’ve grown and changed so much. And with nine years of sobriety now, it’s funny that I would still feel that way at all. But yeah, things are just vastly different. I have a cat – she’s turning eight in October. I’ve had her since she was four months old. And she’s only known me as someone who shows up for her and gives her everything that she wants. And I’m really proud of that. I feel like if she could understand my view of how I’m talking about myself in the past, she would have no idea what that type of person is because she doesn’t know me like that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Push is the first full-length since the passing of Eddie. Was that on your mind during the recording process? How have you personally and creatively pushed forward?
Brady Keehn: Yeah, of course. Eddie is always on my mind but I try not to think too hard about it these days. It still gets me emotional and I fluctuate between sad, angry, and happy when I think about it. Sad he is gone, angry that he is not here to experience this, and happy that I even knew him. He was the peacekeeper and guardian of the vibe in the band. To me, his MO was to have a good time with his friends making music and watching everyone come up with him. We try to hold true to that as much as possible.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
How I have pushed forward creatively and personally is hard to put a finger on when you are in the middle of it all. I will say though, for me, the pandemic was a creative low. I lost the sense of why I loved art, or the point of it, to me. It’s vital that as an artist, you view and express art through the attributes [and] points that hold meaning to you. Over the pandemic, I got involved in crypto and watched large amounts of money be spent on pointless sh*t over and over and over again, some calling it art. My idea of what I thought people valued in the world began to shatter and I saw the raw human greed and fear display itself in full force. It really depressed me. I started to think about how all that wasted money could have been used to support all the struggling artists around me who continue to inspire communities of humans in vastly different ways. It took me a while to push through this depression and finally feel like I’m in the clear. Back into myself. Back to the start. Back to the basics of why I even fell in love with music and what were those things I found interesting that compelled me to make it in the first place. I feel like back there, diving into manuals again, learning how to manipulate sound to articulate the emotions that I feel.
Melissa Scaduto: He’s always on my mind. Because I had to go through eight years of a house, I found a lot of his stuff. I was having an emotional day about moving, and I had done this load of laundry, and one of his shirts was on my bed. The shirt was folded in a way that I could only see three numbers, which was 888 on it, which I guess is an angel number for abundance to come. And I felt like it was a sign from him because he was such a numerology person. And I felt like it was a sign for me and an encouragement to [handle] this move. Because change is hard, and especially from a place that I love like a person. So, he’s always there. He’s always on my mind. And I always think that he would be so proud of us for making it this far. And that he would be so stoked, though, that we could even do this new record and a record release at the Fonda. And I have to remind myself of him, because he was somebody who always tried to put me in a gratitude mindset. And I tend to get out of that at times when I’m not actively working on myself, or showing up in a way that I need to, or just stressing out about life and focusing on the negatives. I get reminded, like, “Oh, I’m here, blasting music and screenprinting and I’m gonna get paid for this thing. I should be so grateful. What am I complaining about? Oh, I gotta do this, and I gotta go to brand practice.” Acting as if that’s an issue is pretty wild. So I try to remember Eddie all the time, because it’s really easy to get into, the stinking thinking [laughs].
It’s so meaningful when you have someone who can reframe your mindset and remind you of the positives that are happening in your life when it’s hard for you to see it all at that moment.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: Yeah, definitely. I thought a lot about him while we were making the record in the desert, just what his opinion would be on all of this, where we’re at directional wise. There’s a song on the record that I wrote about another bandmate that was in the band with Eddie and us at the same time. And I thought about all of that while we were making this lyrical content. Weirdly, I don’t know where people go when they pass, but I do weirdly feel connected to Eddie still, like a lot. It’s weird…even when the band is even bickering [with] the three of us together. I sometimes lately have been like, “Okay, I gotta take on Eddie’s persona, to reunite us right now. And just be goofy and fun. Because that’s what he would do” He was sort of a peacemaker. And so I try to embody his energy a lot, because it brings positivity and so it can’t be a negative thing.
With what you’re saying, I feel like people live on through us after they pass.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Melissa Scaduto: Absolutely. I even think that with musicians [I didn’t know]. I literally have a tattoo for Kurt Cobain, because I think he does live on through all of us as well. I would have never played guitar if it wasn’t for Nirvana and hearing that as a young age. So yeah,I think a lot of people can live on through us and I think that’s so special.
Ending with a bit of an esoteric question: what does Sextile mean to you as a collective and a concept?
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.
Brady Keehn: It is its own entity… We serve it and feed it. It continues to grow and takes a life of its own but we can only guide it. What it means to others and where the world takes it is entirely up to them and their experience with this entity.
Melissa Scaduto: It partially seems like it’s something that I think about as my livelihood at this point. I try to think about it as an art project and collective that I love, but [it] also gives me the life that I want to live. But I do think about it more as a group of best friends, I think about it as like a gang when I think about the others and us together like a family. I also feel like Sextile helps me get over a lot of fears in my life and have confidence in a way that I never thought that I would. I had a really hard time embodying the character that I wanted to be. I think Sextile, especially in 2023, does that for me. I’ve never been more excited to play music live than I am now. And I’ve played in bands for years, like I’ve said, Now, it just feels way more free, like [I’m] free to actually just be me. And I’ve never seen more femmes at our shows than before. There’s just so many. And I’ve gotten some letters from fans that sort of keep me there. I realized that some people that follow me on Instagram have seen I’m very candid [about] my struggles with different things that I’ve gone through … I’ve had a couple of fans tell me that it inspires them to persevere. So yeah, it’s a combination of a lot of things for me of what it means now. It also is to keep Eddie alive, too. I feel like it’s the one way to do that.