Water Damage Interview: “I think about the albums as a continuous thread”

In the early hours of Sunday morning across Utrecht’s cold, sodden streets, for those unperturbed by the elements, noise overload and the slight trek from La Guess Who?’s main hub to EKKO, the reward is Water Damage.

A boutique bar that leads through to a creative space that holds around 150 people, EKKO is the perfect milieu to indulge one of the festival’s pinnacle acts. As the clock hits 3.00 a.m., Water Damage gets to work with a new piece (Reel 25) that would feature on the Austin, TX ensemble’s much-anticipated new album, Instruments.

As Mari Maurice thrashes at her violin, Travis Austin and Jonathan Horne find a pocket of space to start making noise on their respective bowed instruments – Horne’s, a bowed guitar; Austin’s, the modified stringed instrument which is the catalyst for the band’s searing “chainsaw” sound. As bassist Nate Cross is tucked away centre stage behind dual percussionists, Greg Piwonka and Thor Harris, the rhythm section keeps it all in-check, their repetitious blasts in sync and thundering from the sound system.

On this night, Ajay Saggar is welcomed into the Water Damage commune and having the time of his life; his guitar ringing into the ears of all and sundry, and 40 minutes in, it’s cranial befuddlement of the most beautiful kind: Water Damage, pulling psychedelia to new corners.

Almost six months on, and it’s a performance etched to the mind. One that bred danger and excitement; an extension of Water Damage’s blinding run of form which has seen them unveil three excellent full-length releases in as many years. The roaring pillar of menace that is Repeater (2022); the supremely underrated 2 Songs (2023); and last year’s guardrail-scraping epic, In E.

The aptly titled Instruments is yet another high-watermark. From Greg Piwonka’s artwork (another wonderful facet in this chronicle), to the sheer torrents of noise, Instruments sees Water Damage at their borderless best.

Starting with Reel 28 – a metallic, protracted psych jam that slowly builds with hypnotic drones in a moment where Water Damage hasn’t sunken so deep into the groove. Featuring Patrick Shirioishi on baritone saxophone, his performance adds new textures and tone, sitting somewhere between The Stooges’ LA Blues at half-speed and Can on the shrooms.

It’s not the only time Water Damage welcomes new voices. Experimental guitar maestro, David Grubbs, lends a hand on Reel 25 and Reel 32 – the latter, humid and haunting, as whining strings pierce through the speakers with feedback sounding more like a swarm-of-bees. It’s the darkest moment Water Damage has committed to tape.

Finishing In E with a cover of their kindred spirit, Shit & Shine’s Ladybird, the band are at it again here on India (Slight Return) – a Parson Sound cut which is given the necessary Water Damage treatment, with a droning slab of noise that is like being thrown into the abyss.

Bristling with energy that sends shivers down the spine, Instruments is another victory for the Austin giants, and in a decade that feels as tumultuous as life has ever been, while it’s tough to predict the future, it’s hard to imagine one without Water Damage in it.

With the current core line-up consisting of Maurice, Harris, Horne, Cross, Austin, Piwonka as well as his brother, Jeff, Danielle Hills, George Dishner and Mike Kanin, at the beginning of March, five of the Water Damage members, Dishner, Hills, Cross, Austin, Kanin and Greg Piwonka, answered a series of questions about the band’s story so far, including their latest dispatch, Instruments.

Sun 13: Firstly, can you tell us how Water Damage came together? 

George Dishner: “The band started with Nate, Greg, Jeff, Mike, and me I think in 2018? We’d all been friends and played in and with each other’s bands for years. Pretty quickly Thor, Mari, and Travis got absorbed. Then Danielle and Jonathan as well before we recorded the last album. The band started as a project for long-form drone-y sounds, but we quickly hacked down the number of notes and changes. We started to just play a single simple idea by early 2020. It was when we recorded Repeater that it all really clicked.”

S13: Instruments feels like a good choice for a title. Was the writing process any different to your previous releases?

GD: “No, not really. The writing process is mostly the same. We’ve gotten way better at the recording process, though.”

Greg Piwonka: “There are two tracks on Instruments that were kind of improvised… or we had never played them before recording. India (Slight Return) is a Parson Sound cover that Nate wanted to do and we just winged it. I had never heard the song before, and I just listened for a minute on Nate’s phone, then we did it. We played it the next day at the Yo La Tengo show at Mohawk in Austin. James McNew sat in with us for the set. I remember thinking the live version was way better than the record version and that we should record it again, ha! There is a live recording of the Mohawk set on our Bandcamp that’s super blown out. 

“Reel 28 has a bass line that Jeff brought to the recording session. He was listening to Lungfish on the way over and came up with the bass line in the car. We had never heard the bass line before, so we just figured out the song in 10 or 12 minutes and then recorded it. It’s basically a really long Lungfish rip off.” 

S13: Reel 28 probably slowest piece you’ve recorded, but it really builds and demands the listener’s close attention. Was that one of the reasons you decided to make it the first track?

Nate Cross: “Sequencing our albums is pretty simple considering it’s one song per side. With Instruments, when we had the four tracks picked out Reel 28 felt like the strongest opener. It grabs your attention, and I love having Patrick Shiroishi’s sax playing on the track – kind of the same thing we’ve always done but just different enough.” 

Danielle Hills: “I feel like it was the first riff we came in to record with, so it got recorded first. The writing process since I’ve joined is very laidback and everyone is welcomed to bring in their ideas.”

S13: I’m curious about your writing process. Does it usually start with one person bringing in an idea and working outwards from there, or is it more of a case of thrashing out an idea collectively at practice or in the studio?

GD: “We usually start with the bass riff and / or drum beat. Then yeah thrash on it and see if it sticks. Pretty simple process.”

GP: “Most songs usually have been played live a few times before we record them. There are a few exceptions.” 

NC: “We usually do both approaches. As we mentioned, Instruments has two songs that we hadn’t played before going into the studio, whereas Reel 25 we had played a handful of times before recording it and worked out a form of sorts. Reel 32 was adapted from an idea that Mike and Thor were playing during a line check before one of our shows, I recorded what they were doing on my phone and listened back later to fill out the idea. That track also features a lot of overdubs and sort of how we sometimes build tracks in the studio with overdubs.”

S13: You’ve been on an excellent run of form with four releases in as many years. Having seen you perform Reel 25 at Le Guess Who last year, it got me thinking… does the band always have one or two new pieces of music ready to be released at any given moment? 

GD: “Yeah we’re always writing, recording, mixing, overdubbing. Some of the live recordings are working pieces that will get properly recorded later. Some are older ones with newer details. Random depending on the line up.”

Travis Austin: “We have more than one or two right now.” 

NC: “We try to come up with new ideas regularly. As Travis said, we’re sitting on about five or six different ideas that are fleshed out to various degrees. Some may never actually work, but there are a few that will eventually turn into whatever the next album is. We tend to organise recording sessions around whenever Travis is in Austin (since he lives in Boulder, CO), which happens somewhat frequently, so we try to keep the forward momentum going.”

S13: Another great aspect of the band is the continuity from each release. From Greg’s excellent artwork to the label, 12XU, it all feels a vital part to the Water Damage story. Is that something you think about?

TA: “I think about the albums as a continuous thread when mixing.”

Mike Kanin: “I fucking love Travis’ answer. I had no idea!”

GD: “We sent some recordings to only a couple of labels. 12XU was one of those few. Several of us had worked with Gerard [Cosley] before and he said yes pretty quickly, which made the whole thing official. Greg nailed and continues to nail the covers. We didn’t set out with aspirations or a visual aesthetic, but here we are.”

DH: “Who knows where we’d be without 12XU? Greg’s art absolutely makes the releases more cohesive and vibrant, adding more energy to our sound.”

GP: “The music has for sure influenced my own artistic output. I might not have gone back to making abstract paintings without doing the covers for the band. And just the notion of having one idea and working in repetition has found its way into my paintings. It does become challenging to keep doing one thing over and over and to not just pump out the same song or the same painting and to try to keep moving forward.”

S13: There’s a lot of tension in your music that feels like a release of all the bad energy most of us are exposed to in this world. Do you see Water Damage as a political band?

GD: “I don’t think of us as a political band. There is some sort of inherent escapism with the repetition and volume, for me at least. I always get some sort of serotonin or dopamine hit when we play and I get to hang out with my friends.” 

DH: “I agree with George about playing for escapism, totally. 

“Politically, we’re all on the same page, but we are not a political band. As a unit though, it’s our due diligence to put our art into the world as an act of resistance. Smash the Patriarchy!”

TA: “I don’t think of our music solely as a release of bad energy, but more like interfacing with an energy that doesn’t care about good or bad. I see it as political in that it exceeds what a person or group of people could fully organise or define.”

MK: “This band, to me, is certainly not as overtly political as other projects I’ve been involved with. But I think it is impossible to avoid the realities of our day-to-day existence. We live among fascists. We are from a place (Texas) that actively exports the worst of humanity (I’m thinking here of racism, homophobia, transphobia, a carceral practice that is the model for all kinds of horrors across the country, self-centred religious fanaticism that worships only money, identity exceptionalism that perpetuates the myth of individualism – something that represents the worst of the US; the list goes on).

“Fuck that. Fuck the people who do that. Until we are free of those systems, I think we all have a responsibility to be honest about what we are facing. Our music might be challenging to some. The systems we face are challenging to all (except those that actually need the challenging). Maybe our music is a reflection of all that. Either way, my hope is that people who listen to it use the time they spend with us either to escape – briefly, as a recharge – the mess we’ve currently made, or plot resistance to it. Also: everyone should watch Thor’s instructional video about how to punch a fascist.” 

GP: “I don’t think we are overtly political with the music, but everything is political. We are all well informed individuals who pay attention to local / world issues, and we discuss these things. I feel like our politics are in the music as much as it can be when dealing with an abstract form without lyrics. We all process the world as individuals, and the band produces this sound. Our lives, stress, politics, good days, bad days, it’s all in there.” 

S13: Remaining on the subject of tension, with so many members, is there a lot of creative tension in the band and, if so, do you think that it makes the end results better?

TA: “The only place I’ve thought about tension in Water Damage is between whatever is organised and not organised in our music. I’ve never felt the way things come together to be fussy.”

GD: “There’s really no tension or ego inside the band.” 

DH: “As a new addition to a group of roughly 10 folks, I’ve never sensed tension or ego once. It’s pretty amazing.” 

MK: “Yeah, nah.”

GP: “Most of us have been playing together for more than a decade in different configurations. We all know what to expect and how each of us play. So not much tension. We would probably still be playing together just for ourselves even if nobody cared.”

S13: Artists talk about the ideal state of mind for being creative. Do you think about this and, if so, what are yours?

TA: “Non-ideal state of mind sounds better to me.”

GD: “I like to be mildly stoned.”

DH: “Yeah, choose your own adventure!” 

GP: “Through the course of one song I usually have multiple states of mind, and then eventually I let go of everything and am in the moment and that is the most satisfying state. Being in the room but also outside oneself.”

S13: How much do you think your immediate surroundings of Austin, Texas influence your music?

GD: “I think we could exist anywhere. Being in the same neighborhood in Austin helps for convenience. Maybe the heat affects us. We record in a sweltering garage with this skinny genius named Max Deems. He’s an amazing musician and engineer.”

MK: “Seconding George here. I definitely think the heat has something to do with it. As does Max. And maybe that we all kind of live in the same place.”

DH: “You have got to be a certain kind of person to tolerate 100-plus degree weather for indefinite amounts of time.”

S13: Since Repeater, it feels like Water Damage have slowly gained traction in terms of exposure and playing more shows around the world. Does it feel as though life has become easier for the band? 

GD: “Yes. I’m pretty surprised by our ‘popularity’ if we want to call it that. We had no real goals when we started but we’re trying to maximise what we can while it’s there.”

MK: “In terms of being able to perform in all kinds of awesome spaces, yes. But I’d love to be able to make creating music the thing that I do most of the time. Our current set of politics makes that impossible. Fuck that.”

GP: “Yeah, we have been included in some things that I thought were never attainable. So, it is nice to get asked to play great shows and be in amazing publications.”

S13: Having all been involved in outsider culture for many years and seeing physical product such as vinyl and CDs being the most common modes to consume music, did you ever envisage that art would essentially be boiled down to streaming platforms and a JPG?

MK: “Yes? no? Either way, fuck the kind of profit those motherfuckers at Spotify are making, how they are making it, and the fact that it’s difficult to not be in that space.”

DH: “It’s a double edge sword, but I appreciate that our bootlegs are available for folks that don’t consume or cannot afford to consume hard media the way some do.”

GD: “Yeah, it is not surprising. Art has been streamlined into easy consumables apparently.”

GP: “It is a bummer, for sure. Seeing a picture of a painting usually isn’t anything like seeing the work in person. Same with our songs, hearing it on the record is never the same as the live show. I also mostly listen to albums all the way through. Streaming music was for some the death of the album and brought in the prominence of playlists. Our songs usually fuck up most playlists and I kind of love that.”

S13: Artists often make the comparison of bands being like families. With Water Damage that may be true, too, but it also feels like a community and one that continues to grow. Do you see it that way?

TA: “Yeah, I’ve thought about it as a group that goes with and without me – which I love both sides of that.” 

MK: “Seconding what Travis says here.”

DH: “Totally, as I’m a more recent addition to this crew, thanks to Mike. You don’t feel bad if you miss a set because someone will always have your back.” 

GP: “Jeff is literally my family, but I do consider everyone in the band family. We all get along and enjoy getting to hang out and play music together.”

NC: “I definitely feel like both of these are true. I think we try to share space and time with others in a community oriented way – we just had a 13-piece version of Water Damage at Big Ears. I would have never thought David Grubbs would end up playing with us multiple times and on play on one of our albums! But there is a certain type of person that ‘gets it’ and they can become a part of our extended community. Folks like Grubbs, Patrick Shiroishi, Rosali Middlemen, Ajay Saggar, Wendy Eisenberg and more have all played multiple shows with us and will continue whenever we end up in the same space. But there is always room for more, as we said before, there are no egos here.” 

Instruments is out this Friday via 12XU. Purchase from Bandcamp.