"There is good stuff that comes next.”: Interview with Staircase Spirits
AInterview by Molly Louise Hudelson. Photo by Courtney Coles.
This spring, California pop-rock duo Staircase Spirits released their EP Ghost Stories, but that wasn’t their only release of the year. Ghost Stories was the first part of what will be a trilogy of EPs by vocalist / acoustic guitarist Anna Acosta and drummer Eva Friedman; War Stories was released this summer and they’ve recently announced that Love Stories will be released on December 8th. To go along with the release announcement, Staircase Spirits recently shared the first single from Love Stories, “California Winter.” Acosta tells us it’s “a love song where I didn’t want to say the word love”, and it’s a fitting introduction to what will be a chapter of acceptance and moving forward.
Read on for the interview, where Anna and I talked about “California Winter”, how Love Stories fits in to the trilogy of EPs, and more!
C&S: You recently premiered the song "California Winter" over on Substream which is coming off your upcoming EP Love Stories- why did you choose for that song to be the first one you released?
Anna Acosta: We decided to go with "California Winter" because we had this moment in the studio when we were listening to the playback before anything had even been done to it where we just looked at each other and we were like, "We think this is our single." It was sort of intangible. I don't really know what it was about it; we just knew it was a really special song and we wanted to make sure it was the first one people heard.
C&S: For people who haven't heard "California Winter", could you put in to your own words what that song was about or what that song means to you?
AA: The song is a love song where I didn't want to say the word love. I actually started writing it when I was in a relationship at the time where it was good but I had sort of seen some signs that it probably wasn't going to go the distance; I wanted to capture that moment where I'm like, "I really care about this person." I heard this love song that came on- it was a new song by a pop artist and it was just- "I wasn't complete until I met you", kind of vibe, which is a pretty common theme in love songs- and that sort of take has always bothered me. It's one I subscribed to when I was younger before the abusive relationship that I talk about a lot in Stories- and on the other side of that I just had this different perspective where I was like "Okay, the words 'I love you' are not nearly as important as I used to think they are- it's more about the other stuff."
C&S: What's the "other stuff"- the actions and everything that goes on in the relationship?
AA: Yeah, the actions and the idea that I'm here because I want to be here and I want to be here with you. Because anyone can say "I love you" and being in an abusive relationship where one of the abuse tactics is saying "But I love you" gave me this different perspective that the words themselves kind of don't have any meaning, it's about what's behind the words. And so I wanted to write a love song where I never actually said "I love you" cuz I just didn't think that was the part that counted.
C&S: That makes a lot of sense.
So Love Stories is the third of three EPs that you're releasing this year, coming after Ghost Stories and War Stories- can you talk to me about this trilogy- from Ghost Stories to War Stories to Love Stories, how do each of the three EPs fit in to the picture?
AA: Well I can tell you that they are one chronological story so Ghost Stories picks up- the song "That Night" it basically is January 2013 and the last song on Love Stories which of course is not out yet is called "That Night 3" and there is a "That Night" on each of the three EPs and it sort of takes you through two years in the immediate recovery after this- going through this relationship, exiting it, and then sort of the aftermath- and I've always characterized the three EPs as different stages of grief, which is that Ghost Stories is about mourning and it was about sadness and I was in a very dark place through all of that. War Stories is when you stop being as sad and you start to get pissed off. The color red was thematic for our artwork for War Stories just because it was about fantasizing a little bit about the things I wish I'd done and the things that actually happened and just being frustrated that you are still having to deal with all of this. And then Love Stories is acceptance, in a way, and moving past, rebirth, renewal, finding love again- all of that.
C&S: Why did you decide to do three separate EPs instead of a single album where all of it was released together as one piece of material?
AA: Well it is a full-length, it's just "Stories", and so we were thinking maybe we would do a physical full-length release and we haven't ruled that out yet- that would be more of a, frankly, financial thing that we would have to figure out- but we are working on this really cool- I don't really know how to characterize it, I guess it's technically gonna be a piece of merch, but we're working on something that I can't really give that many details on yet cuz we have no idea when it's gonna be finished. But I will say we are working on something that does tie it together as a full-length and I think it's gonna be very cool when it's done.
In terms of why we decided to do it this way, we figured that we are a brand new band and we are in a very single-driven musical landscape right now, and we just kind of figured who on earth is going to sit down and want to listen to fifteen songs from a band that we've never heard of? It's hard enough to get people to listen to a single. So it was honestly just a practical decision.
C&S: Bea Miller is doing a similar thing. She's doing a series of three EPs- it was Chapter 1: Blue, which was sadness, Chapter 2: Red, which was anger, and then Friday she's releasing Chapter 3: Yellow. When I interviewed her, her whole thing was that she couldn't have gotten to the point where she was writing the songs on the final EP if she hadn't already gotten that other stuff out of her. So I was really curious- had you written all of the material for these three EPs at the start of this, or did the writing happen over the past several months as you finished the others?
AA: It's a combination. Some of the songs have definitely been around a little bit longer than the others. Initially when I was first thinking about putting out an EP, it was just Ghost Stories. And it was a five-song EP, I hadn't written "Eight" yet, and "That Night 3" was under a different title and originally how Ghost Stories ended.
I completely get what she was talking about because that's sort of exactly what ended up happening. I just realized I had a bigger story to tell and I didn't think I was doing it justice by just making it those five songs. I definitely think that the reason that Love Stories- that we love it so much- and I don't want to say we love it more than the other two EPs cuz it's just different- but I think that we are so confident that this is our sound, in a way that we weren't necessarily with Ghost Stories and War Stories, because we did go through recording those and because I was just mentally in a better place so I think I was able to do the vocals a lot better, frankly. And so it was totally reflected in the writing process as well.
C&S: You said this one is so much "your sound"- how would you describe your sound, or the essence of what Staircase Spirits is and sounds like?
AA: We tend to just call it "pop-rock" because we do draw from so many different influences. It's always hard to know what you sound like in terms of comparisons, so I've never known how to answer that question. But what I can say- I mean we had a hard year. With Ghost Stories we originally had a guitar player who ended up leaving LA for personal reasons, which was totally understandable, but that was right before we were going to go in to the studio for War Stories and so it was almost appropriate that the way we recorded War Stories was completely hectic. We did the entire thing in like, two days.
C&S: That seems kind of fitting for the material on that one, yeah.
AA: I agree, I definitely completely agree with that- it was very hectic and crazy and we sort of had to make do with what we had. But that being said, we do love those songs, we love that EP and I think they are what they needed to be, but with Love Stories, we were able to be so much more intentional about what we were doing. We had our team in place and it's also fitting because the theme of the EP is supposed to be closure and what's next.
C&S: I was gonna say yeah, it makes sense thematically. Have you been recording all of them in the same studio with the same engineers and everything?
AA: Ghost Stories was done with - the tracks were recorded in a different studio by a friend of ours in LA as a favor but our studio guy Jonas Vece did all of the mixing and mastering for all three EPs and he did all of the recording for War Stories and Love Stories as well. I think we're probably going to end up ultimately doing a re-release for Ghost Stories just because, again, there were some- it took a look lot longer to record than we wanted it to. We actually started recording that one last summer and just because of the changing hands with the audio files, we kinda wanna re-record a couple of the tracks on it. So we'll probably re-release that before we release the other stuff that we're working on.
C&S: You've been very active in commentary and discussion in all sorts of things that are going on in the music industry regarding sexual assault and diversity and gender equality; how do you feel that your approach to writing about these very public incidents or very large scale industry discussions has impacted your approach to writing about your own experiences in your music?
AA: That's a very interesting question- I mean I'm absolutely sure it has impacted it, because how could it not- but I think maybe it was the other way around because the thing that made me start being so vocal about all of this stuff- because I was not particularly "woke" before, as the kids say- but I think that going through what I did with my ex and having that experience and coming out the other side, it sorta made me see more than I saw before.
And so then the other catalyst was when everything happened with Warped Tour and Front Porch Step, that was when I really started becoming vocal because frankly, it was a trigger, cuz my experience so mirrored that of his ex. If I can do anything to sort of try and create a platform for myself so that I can protect other people from potentially going through something similar then I felt like it was my responsibility to do that.
In terms of Stories, a big part of being- I don't like the word "victim" but I guess "survivor"- a big part of that is feeling like you're not heard and with these EPs I approached telling my story. My big thing has been just making sure that it gets heard and it gets told the way that it happened because abusers tend to have a very different version of events, one that paints them in a much more innocent light even though people don't give themselves things like PTSD but they sort of operate under this idea that you know, we're being dramatic or we're making all of it up, and I wanted to put out there in concrete form, "this is what happened from where I'm sitting" and people are gonna hear this story.
I would say the two both influenced each other- but they sort of started around the same time. I've always written songs about my own life but I do think that I'm more intentional in wanting to convey particular messages than I used to be when I was younger.
C&S: For sure. So- what do you want listeners to get out of Love Stories?
AA: I just hope- hope, honestly, is the thing that I would like them to get out of it. I have kind of said before that you can't tell people how to feel about songs once they're out there, and people are going to interpret them through their own gaze, with their own experiences attached and once you release the song, you stop having any kind of say over what it means to people. That being said, my intention with this EP is it's a bookend to the grief, the pain, and the anger that was in the first two EPs where it's like after all of that happens, there is good stuff that comes next. You just have to get to it and you have to let yourself go through all of the bad parts. This stuff's not linear- that's not to say that every day is great, but it's just that these things have to- endings don't have to be the end; they're just the start of something else. And so I guess I hope they can find closure for anything they need closure on, or that it can just help them maybe have a moment where they're like "Okay- there can be good stuff ahead for me too."
C&S: I always like to ask this any time I'm talking to anyone I'm interviewing- how do you respond to "haters" or anyone who throws negativity your way surrounding your music?
AA: Ha. Well, for a band as small as we are you would think that we wouldn't have any but I've always kind of been a lightning rod for it- something about my personality I guess- but I do not like to acknowledge them outside of my art so my tactic is honestly I'm gonna let you keep talking. If the situation demands a response from me I will give one but for the most part I'm just- you're gonna end up in a song, so keep talking, buddy. And of course that would be different if I had done something or if I messed up, that's different, but if we're talking about straight-up haters, like people that just want to dislike you for no apparent reason- yeah. It's more just- I'm too old for it, frankly. [Laughs.] But yeah.
C&S: For sure. Well thank you so much for talking. Anything else you want to say or anything else you would want people reading this to know? A: No, I think that we pretty much covered everything. The next thing that we're working on is we're trying to- we're auditioning guitar players right now and if people want us to come play, please let us know. We would love to. Any local bands that want to play with us, by all means, we would love to.
Thanks Anna! Love Stories is available for pre-order here. Keep up with Staircase Spirits on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their official website.
