Page 14 - BiTS_12_DECEMBER_2025

we've had like conversations about who's in the band or not. Usually it's just kind
of like, kind of happens. But yeah, everybody is pretty stoked about it now.

BiTS: Smitti, I've spoken to a lot of band leaders over the years and very often they

find it very onerous and hard work and all the rest of it, but you sound as though
you're thoroughly enjoying it.

SS: [Chuckles] Yes, absolutely. It's been an experiment. Like I said, I've been in

enough bands to see what could be improved upon, and I haven't been hurting for
work because being a bassist in town, there's so much work for bassists here.
Everywhere, really. Not a lot of people are willing to kind of just groove and learn

the song and be in the back just grooving away. So I'm not saying that it's been easy,
and I'm not saying that it's like I found one formula that works better than another.
It's been a learning process, and the musicians in the band, I've really been letting

gravity do its thing. I don't have to tell people what to do much.

BiTS: Oh, that's good.

SS: You know, it's really cool. And when we get together, it's just magic. It's really

cool. Especially, the more we play, the more we have a precedent to trust each other
in a way that – it's not very ego-oriented. Because we're all sidemen and have so
many other projects, and we love music so much, I think we're all big music nerds,

but some of the bands aren't comfortable enough yet with that moniker. But I'm
going to say it [chuckles].

BiTS: Let's talk a bit about the album. You went into the studio to do it. How long

ago was that?

SS: That was in late February. We got a grant from the Threadhead Cultural
Foundation, and that enabled this to be possible. I mean, there are a few things that

really, really made it possible. I've recorded
the band before the grant a few times in

some sessions, but not, like I said, using
gravity as a guide, there weren't a lot of
pressing things to like motivate me and
make me decide that, okay, I need to record

this. Then we played our first festival gig
organised by Johnny Sketch and the Dirty

Notes, a pretty popular New Orleans band. It was our first festival gig, like a New
Orleans festival, and we played a set there and the people there really loved it, loved
our originals and there were a lot of Threadheads there and they encouraged us,
they were really pivotal in encouraging us and kind of like solidifying our confidence

as a band, and encouraged us to apply for the grant. We applied for it and we got it.
So we decided to go to Dockside Studios, which is like almost three hours away from

the city. I chose to do that because – we could have done it for a lot cheaper – I
wanted to be out there and use the opportunity of being able to pay the band per