The Feed Interview
Feed is a band that really draws from a lot of different musical styles. Centralized in Columbus, Ohio, the trio is most succinctly described as “indie rock”, but this doesn’t fully articulate their sound profile.
A lot of their songs are pretty low key, with kind of wavy, rhythmic guitar riffs and a rhythm section that really feels built around the vocals. In this sense their music does have a ‘pop’ feel to it, where each instrument emphasizes the lyrics and lyricist as the central part of the listening experience. But at the same time, they have a grittiness to their sound, with a wider, rougher guitar tone, and more intricate drum and bass lines than would be expected in a pure pop-rock song.
This heavier, garage-y sound is what I think makes Feed so unique, and makes their soothing, melancholy aura more defiant, and more powerful. Along with the clean, pure vocals, this creates a harmonic experience that is super pleasing to listen to. It’s like a big, warm stew, with all these different components coming together to create a truly savory sound.
Obligatory food analogy aside, I had the chance to see Feed perform live a few weeks ago at the Rat Motel holiday extravaganza, with Befriend Strange Creatures rounding out the bill. It was a great show, and it made me admire the distinct sound of Feed even more, being able to fit alongside two super explosive, rambunctious groups like that. It was a very different performance, but it by no means felt out of place, and I’m very glad I was able to witness it live!
I had the chance to interview the Feed trio right after their performance, which is transcribed below. Be sure to follow them on Instagram, check out their Bandcamp, and enjoy the interview!
FEED
[ Originally recorded December 27, 2024 ]
Intro / Background
Can you guys introduce yourselves and what you do in the band?
Jude: My name is Jude. I play guitar and I sing, and it's a project I started a couple of years ago.
Eric: I'm Eric, I play drums, I started playing with the Jude and Nathaniel back in March.
Nathaniel: And I'm Nathaniel, I play bass. I started about late January this year.
How did this project start?
Jude: In my early college days I took up guitar seriously for the first time and I had a friend in college who wrote music and I was like, “I didn't know you could do that”. So she was a huge inspiration to me and eventually, during COVID times, I moved out to Indiana with her and I wrote a bunch of songs.
It was kind of, like, in the middle of nowhere and yeah, I just had a bunch of songs. I moved to Columbus after school and it was a dream to have a band, but I didn't really intend to, like, start a band moving out here. And my boyfriend at the time was like, “You're going to start a band by November”, and then I did!
How did you two find your way into it?
Nathaniel: I actually found Feed… or Feed found me at a laundromat. I was doing my laundry at Dirty Dungarees and they were playing a set. I heard them warm up and I thought, “This is really cool”... and then I left to do some other errands I needed. But we connected and kept running into each other, I went to some more shows. Eventually I think I just came over to jam, heard some, like, periods of movement, and they haven’t kicked me out yet!
Eric: I got to know Jude- and Nathaniel was also at this show- but I was playing a house show with another band that I did, Well Read, and Jude was playing a solo set. They were on tour with Fred Thomas at the time, and they came through Columbus, played this house show called “The Lab”, and we met there.
They needed a permanent drummer and Jude was like, “Hey I like what you're doing. Why don't you come over and play for Feed?”. And so we did the same thing, we jammed for a little bit and everything was good vibes! And I really love the music, like, Jude is a very good songwriter. It's really fun to perform and play songs that you feel very passionate about from the get go.
Is there a story behind the name?
Jude: Um, not necessarily… I just knew I wanted, like, a one word name. It’s not super well thought out, but it’s- you know what, I’m not going to say yet. A lot of people have their own interpretations and I really like that.
The Music
How would you pitch this band/the sound of this band to someone who's never heard it?
Jude: (laughing) I hate this question.
Eric: I get asked this a lot.
Jude: And I’m like, “Ew… indie?”
Nathaniel: I never have an answer… The genres are too broad.
Jude: They're getting too specific though I think. I would say indie rock. A lot of inspiration from pop and maybe 90s indie as well. I really just try to make it beautiful, but, like, something that I would like to see people dance to!
Eric: I feel like there’s a Renaissance going on of like: something classic, but something fresh- that’s kind of what I think Feed does. And very pretty, kind of ethereal lyrics that are written plainly, but aren't cheesy. I like to throw in “garage-y” too.
Jude: Yeah, me too! Columbus really shaped that garage thing, when I moved here I really fucked with that. I like that it's gritty and you can be fucked up, and people will come and they’re still gonna rock to it. There's a lot of warmth to the garage sound.
Eric: Feed has been put on bills with some pretty hardcore bands compared to our sound, which is just really funny.
Jude: Yeah, that's what I really like about it is we can really melt into anything because I think- it's my own band, of course, but I think we really are our own thing, and I think people kind of scratch their heads at us, and I really like that.
I definitely had that. I was like, “I feel like this sounds like something, but I can't place it”. And I was listening to your demos and they are very different from something like Befriend Strange Creatures or Rat Motel, but I could hear it working really well!
Jude: Yeah! Thank you, thank you.
What music or musicians do you find inspiration from for this band or in general?
Jude: Yo La Tengo is pretty big for me. Jesus and Mary Chain. The Beatles, honestly. I really love, like, Sky Ferreira. Tierra Whack has inspired some songs. I like everybody, I just really like pop and I really like rock!
Eric: As a drummer, I really love drummers like Jason McGerr from Death Cab for Cutie, very textural drummers like Bryan Devendorf from The National. Drummers that serve the song in a really great way and are just very textural with how intentional they are with what they're playing and how it fits in with the music. That's something I really love about playing with Jude and Nathaniel is that we're able to kind of build a composition rather than just playing parts, you know?
So, I really am inspired by Jude’s songwriting, because it all starts there and then it's like, how can I compliment that? That's kind of what you see with those drummers I mentioned. In terms of music, I listen to a lot of different things, I play a lot of different kinds of music, but primarily- I call it “millennial-core indie”. Like, 2000s to 2010s indie is stuff I really love. Stuff that was really fresh back then, like Death Cab for Cutie, for example, or Postal Service. The National. Airborne Toxic Event is a deep cut that I really love.
Nathaniel: I've played for a little bit, but I think this is the project where I’ve most wanted… I guess, to do my best as an instrumentalist. Because the bass can be nothing or it can be too much. It can really be too much, and I want to contribute the most that I can and fill in the space to the best of my ability, and kind of develop our sound given the profile that I think it deserves.
Inspiration wise, a lot of the music that I listen to is kind of not the same at all, so it's interesting trying to find a little bridge between it. I will say when I first joined- I don't remember if I just straight up Googled “good bassist”- but I was listening to a lot of Greta Van Fleet, just because I remember the bassist was doing really simple things, but they worked well. So I was like, “Ok, I want to be able to do that”. Just clean, simple, gets the job done.
Jude: I've never met someone who listened to Greta Van Fleet voluntarily.
Nathaniel: (laughing) It wasn't.
Jude: Only here in Feed!
Nathaniel: Only here in Feed! I had to lock in.
When you're performing live, what are you focusing on to make it a good performance?
Jude: I don't really know… Before I played, I was really nervous and I was talking to a music friend about playing and I was like, “I just don't think I can do it, like, I want to throw up every time I think about it”- I still do- and he said something like, “It might, like, make you sick, but that could be something someone really needs that night”. And like, that’s a really romantic way to view it.
I want the lyrics to be relatable but also have a veil, like, you don't get to see everything. But I want people to reclaim themselves. I want people to feel like- people that have been wronged- I love my music to be this imaginary space where they won. I don't know, it's very theoretical.
Eric: Slightly different answer- me as a performer, like, what I think about and how I'm carrying myself when I play- I want to help people tune in by making it feel intentional, showing it's a passionate endeavor. I think some bands have a certain vibe or performance they want to be kind of dissociative, where you kind of just lock in to the atmosphere, but for me as a drummer, I like to be expressive, I like to be dynamic.
I just think it pulls people in, it makes things interesting, but it also allows people to see and know that I'm having a good time. Like, sometimes you look at people playing on stage and you’re like, “Do they like this? Do they actually enjoy this?” And for me, it's not like I'm all smiles, but I want people to share in the love that I have for the songs and for doing this.
Nathaniel: I think I've got something similar where- and sometimes I'm not there- I want to be so comfortable in the music that it doesn't feel like a person performing it, I'm just producing it, if that makes sense. Where you've drilled something down so hard that it's not work to go up there and [perform], you’re just sharing it. You don't have to worry about the show anymore when you're in a good groove, and I think we get that a couple times every night, make eye contact together, on a good line. And I think it expands to the crowd. You can't see them, but you can kind of feel or hear them responding to it.
Eric: Yeah, I think that's the point of rehearsing, right, so that you feel comfortable enough to where you don't have to actively be thinking about what you're doing so you can actually have a good time. Like, you can look at each other like, “Hey, we’re doing this together”, and bring the audience into that space.
Jude: And a side note, this is the first time Feed has felt like that. We have seen a lot of arrangement changes and I finally have a team where I have full confidence in them. Like, it's honestly a little nice to be the weak link of your own band, because I'm like, “Yeah, I’m a problem”, but I never worry. I have the best trio, ever.
This is maybe a weird question, but what’s your relationship with your instrument like?
Eric: For me, it's something that I’ve wrestled with since I was young. I started playing when I was twelve, for church, and, like, learning from my youth pastor or whoever played drums. Then I played in high school, like, all the different musical groups: marching band, concert band, jazz and steel band- we didn't have orchestra, but that was kind of concert band.
Nathaniel: That's crazy.
Jude: Steel band, no orchestra??
Eric: Steel band was crazy because I didn't play any of the pans or anything, I just played drumset, like, I'm not messing with all that, I’m just gonna play drumset. But for me it's like, when you're fresh into an instrument, and especially someone that doesn't play an instrument- maybe some people still feel this way when they’ve been playing for a while- but you see it as this mystical, cool thing. It’s a lifelong endeavor, it's something that you're like, “I'm going to be a rock star if I do this”. So I had some experience, I had some skill, I was like, “This is the interesting thing to do, I want to go to music school for that”. That's what I started with in college, like, “This is something I need to do with my life, right?”.
But then I started to realize- painfully- that while it is something that can bring you a lot of joy, if you make it your primary occupation, sometimes it can just rob you of that, and that was my experience. So freshman year I switched majors, I didn't do music, and I was like, in a funk with it. I kind of took a long break from playing the drums [until] I got to a point where I was like, “Oh, I see where this fits in now”. Like, it doesn't have to be my dream, it can be something that brings me joy and brings me happiness in addition to what I do that enables that. So my job is something that enables me to go out and have fun, play with my friends, stuff like that.
So that's kind of been my relationship with my instrument. It used to be where I need to be as good as I possibly can be, but now it's something I want to be good at in different ways. I don't want to be just technically sound, I want to be good at using it to support a songwriter that I really love, that I really believe in- I want to be that missing piece. I'm still a huge nerd about drums and about technique and gear, but it's kind of at a healthy place now where it's not something that I'm sacrificing other things for, it’s more I'm gaining things because of it.
Jude: Yeah, Eric is the perfect drummer, because someone too technically skilled is annoying and just doesn’t sound good a lot of the time, and somebody who doesn't give a fuck doesn't give a fuck. So, it’s really nice.
Nathaniel: My relationship to the bass specifically is much more recent than their relationship to guitar and drums, because I grew up playing violin and, like, some piano, just ‘cause my grandmother was a music teacher. And for me, it's the hardest I’ve worked in a long time, because the violin came really easy to me- I had to work at that as well, eventually I hit a wall and I had to work hard to get to where every note was natural for me.
I think I had a moment- also at church, funny enough- where their bass player was like, “I noticed you paying a lot of attention. I know you play multiple [instruments], but if you want to be a bass player, you have to choose to be a bass player”. With [bass], the wall was there immediately, it wasn't as natural. So it's been a very gratifying struggle. Playing the root of stuff I feel like has opened up music to me in general a lot more, I'm hearing a lot more than just the top now. And I appreciate it a lot, being in the rhythm section with Eric. It's a good relationship that I haven't had to music since like early college.
Jude: Yeah, Nathaniel is great. Nathaniel is also the perfect bass player!
Eric: It's good vibes in the rhythm section. Such good vibes.
Jude: It’s great vibes, yeah. My dad played guitar growing up, but he never taught me, so I, like, learned a few chords myself in middle school and then I kind of put it down. And then early college days is when I picked the guitar back up- it was an acoustic guitar that was my sister’s- and then I wanted to play electric guitar. So in like 2020 I asked my dad if I could have the guitar he bought my sister in like 2008- that's the Telecaster I play and that guitar is part of the family and it sucks. It’s buzzy, it's possibly going out of tune, like, there’s nothing I can do. But it's something I'll hold on to, like, that's my guitar. So, my instrument itself I have a very strong [connection to]. Like I look at it, that’s me! Like, it's my cat and my guitar.
Nathaniel: Mine has nowhere near as much sentimental value as yours, but I did forget it was the going away gift of my childhood friend to Oregon. So like, even though there are a lot of better basses in the world, I do not want to upgrade what I have.
That’s really cool.
Misc / Outro
You guys have two demos out right now- what are your future plans for more releases?
Jude: I would love to put out an EP or an LP- not sure which yet. But it's honestly been a matter of- (laughing) they bug me every day about recording, and it's always been daunting. Like, these are songs I have had written for five years now and they're really close to a place that I hear in my head.
I just really need to find a recording artist I can truly connect with, and that's really difficult. So, the plan is to put more shit out- we’re hopefully recording tomorrow- but it's not something I take lightly. So if it takes me years to put out another demo, bitch it takes me years to put out another demo!
Eric: Yeah, don't rush that kind of stuff.
Jude: But it also is like, “Girl… put something out”.
Nathaniel: The struggle with other people has gone so far that I've, like, filled a paper notebook with how to record.
Jude: Yeah, Nathaniel is like, “We're just going to do it ourselves”.
Nathaniel: At least demos- it doesn't have to be the final [thing].
Jude: But yeah, we're hoping to record something tomorrow!
Do you have a name for your fans?
Nathaniel: Oh, we’ve had a couple through the months.
Jude: Feeders is already a band, but that could be one. “Feedheads” is a pretty common one. “The Fed”, someone said something like that.
Nathaniel: Eaters?
Jude: Eaters?! Eaters is crazy. The Munch Community, Arianators- that’s from Ariana Grande.
Eric: Oh, I didn’t even know that. I thought they were called Grandes.
Jude: Wow guys…
So, work in progress.
Jude: It’s a work in progress. I would like to think that the fan base would name itself.
Nathaniel: Yeah. Once we get above 8 fans, it’ll figure itself out.
Jude: (laughing) Someday!
Would you rather have a rock that looks like a hamster or a hamster that looks like a rock?
Nathaniel: Hamster that looks like a rock, easy. They're already lumps- I mean, he's just, like, walking around, he’s just a rock. It’s like having a pet rock as a kid, but it's real!
Eric: But it can’t walk- does it have legs?
It's just a hamster, it just really looks like a rock.
Nathaniel: It’s just really rock built, like, bad body.
Eric: I feel like it would be, like, a horror beyond human comprehension… I don’t think I’d want to see that.
Nathaniel: I also imagine it might move like a snail, where you can't really see its feet, but allegedly it’s moving.
Jude: I believe hamsters were made in a lab, by Petco.
Nathaniel: That's true.
Jude: Like that's not a real animal… Where is a hamster in the wild?? They're just at Petco.
That’s a good point actually…
Jude: So anyway, a rock that looks like a hamster.
Eric: Yeah, rock that looks like a hamster.
Jude: This is such a funny question, what’s your answer?
I've heard too many is the problem, I’ve heard so many rationalizations for both.
Nathaniel: What's the one that stuck with you the most, like, a reasoning?
Eric: Were they like, math rock? I feel like that’s a very math rock answer.
Nathaniel: We need to invent general STEM rock, like, not just math: science, technology…
Eric: I think honestly that exists.
Jude: Reading/writing rock…
Do you have any closing thoughts or things that you want to say on the record?
Jude: Feed rocks. But we don't need to tell you that.
Eric: Music is about friends. It’s always about friends and friendship and the most important thing about a band is liking each other.
Nathaniel: That’s true! Being comfortable, hanging out, and drinking a beer. You need to be able to drink enough of a beer to say, “Damn, that sucked!” to your bandmates. That’s the most important thing…
But also, thank you to people who come out to Feed shows and listen to the Feed demos! It's crazy to share… not mine, but Jude’s inner world. I mean, it's mine too now, it's part of me. There's me that lives in it and vice versa now and it's crazy.
Eric: That is a good point. The friendship thing, that also means the friends we have that help support us.
Jude: Feed is about the friends we made along the way!
And that is all for Feed! Big shoutout to them, I’m looking forward to hearing more music from them in the future! This sort of soothing, hypnotic, indie alternative vibe is so pleasing to my ears, and I am excited to follow along with their musical journey.
Also, happy new years bobcat nation! What better way to start the year off than with another entry into our catalog of interviews? I appreciate everyone who has interacted with and supported this project the past year so much, especially all the artists who have taken the time to give us interviews! I look forward to many more this year, and hopefully some other big announcements soon. Stay tuned!
- Bobcat Press out