After playing and releasing albums under the name of Slow Season, this fantastic band announced they’d become Westing. Their new album, ‘Future,’ will be released February 24th, 2023 via RidingEasy Records.

Ben McLeod of Nashville’s All Them Witches joined them and they became a four-piece with him on lead guitar alongside guitarist, vocalist and keyboardist Daniel Story Rice, bassist Hayden Doyel and drummer/recording engineer Cody Tarbell.

“We wanted to hit the reset button on some things and so we included a new band name to that list. Fresh start, for the psychological effect of it. We first met Ben in 2014 opening for All Them Witches in San Diego, and we did that again in 2016 and he and Cody corresponded about tape machines, music production, and other similar nerd stuff. We started swapping a few ideas early in 2021 and then flew him out for four days in August 2021. We got Future mostly down in that short span and did some remote stuff for overdubs, but nothing major. Obviously, our creative processes jelled pretty well to allow for such an efficiently productive session.” Daniel Rice

What we have here is a very mature band that are making their own mark playing a style of their own with roots coming from the classic era of Rock music. “To me, “future” is a word that embodies both hope and dread,” explains Rice, “and the future seems to be coming at us pretty quickly these days. In some ways, it really feels like I am living in “the future,” as if I time traveled here and don’t really belong. That feeling pervades this band’s ethos in some ways. I thought Instagram was a steep climb until I met TikTok.”

“We make music we want to listen to”

The band originally started as Slow Season, what led the name change in 2021 to Westing, which is actually a 2016 album you released?

Daniel Rice: Slow Season went on hiatus in 2018 after we had burned ourselves up on the road. Everything needed to reset and reconfigure. We were contacted by Ben McLeod in 2020 and he broached the idea of reforming Slow Season. With a new guitar player and new quality of song craft, we decided to make it an official restart and ended up pulling our last record’s name into the mix in hopes that we could maintain our connection with Slow Season fans. I saw it done by Jason Molina (RIP) when he changed Songs: Ohia to The Magnolia Electric Co. and it seemed logical but now I’m not so sure, haha.

Ben McLeod of All Them Witches is now part of the band on lead guitar alongside guitarist, vocalist and keyboardist Daniel Story Rice, bassist Hayden Doyel and drummer/recording engineer Cody Tarbell. Tell us how did this transition come about?

Daniel Rice: Ben was the person who called us out into this effort in the first place. Cody and Hayden and I needed someone to tell us it was worth resurrecting. He messaged me on Instagram and we put the thing together after about a year of talking around the idea of making a record. He is a super busy dude and the four day session he was able to make it out for was highly productive. He lives in St Augustine, FL and we are in Visalia, CA.

Ben McLeod: I was already a huge fan of Slow Season, since 2015 or so. I sort of knew Cody through Instagram. We mainly chatted about gear, recording techniques and our love for the Tascam 388. Once I found out Dave, Slow Season’s old guitarist, had left the band, I sent Cody a message as a joke that I should be the new guitar player. Immediately, we started sending demo ideas and I had a flight booked to go out to Visalia to record with them. I was pretty nervous and a big fan boy. It was probably embarrassing on my behalf! Once we all got in the same room, we were like, “oh yeah, this is gonna work just fine.”

What can we expect from the latest album, ‘Future,’ out February 24th via RidingEasy Records? Did you have to get rid of any demons from your previous name?

Daniel Rice: So many demons. Haha. To be honest, a band breakup is pretty traumatic if it involves your best friends. After we had taken care of our personal lives we could focus on music, and the content of this record is similar to Slow Season in its apocalyptic themes balanced with hopeful themes. It’s a product of 2016 (our last LP) to present societal issues and all. Musically that hopefully comes across as a balanced assault on your senses, sometimes threatening you with foreboding minor keys and sometimes beckoning to you with a little bit of pretty but never just leaving you alone.

Hayden Doyel: The name change wasn’t an easy decision. We all put in a ton of work to build the band, music, and following, so saying goodbye to “Slow Season” was hard until we all decided that the most important thing was just being creative and making music together.

Can you share some further words on how the album was recorded?

Daniel Rice: We recorded it as we always have: mostly live drum, bass, and sometimes guitar recorded in the living room of a double wide with isolation provided by couches, tables, and dry erase board. We go straight onto 1-inch 16 track via a TASCAM MS16, but unlike before we did not mix down on half inch half track. Instead we brought the tracks into a…um, computer. We still mixed on the fly without automation, all hands on deck, but the computer really streamlined some stuff here. Sorry, purists!

Ben McLeod: Well, so much was done in pre production before we even hit record. I live in North Florida, so we could not practice at all before the session, so it was all demoing back and forth, iPhone audio recordings and stuff. The first thing we tracked for the whole album was ‘Silent Shout’. I played the acoustic track by myself, mapping out the song, which was pretty nerve-racking. Again, I was already a huge fan of these guys and did not want to disappoint.

<a href="https://westingband.bandcamp.com/album/future">FUTURE by Westing</a>

There seems to be a certain concept going on through your album about the future, tell us what inspired the songs?

Daniel Rice: 2016-present. Kings and presidents and influencers and other fools manifesting the eschaton. The human species is so clever and yet so unwise, solving its short-term problems in exchange for a calamitous future compromised by the very technology that is supposed to save the race. YOU’RE LIVING IN A REAL LIFE DYSTOPIA, BABY. It’s the history of mankind and I smell another big one coming. War in Europe? Pandemic? Fascism? WE ARE BACK IN THE TWENTIES AGAIN!

Was the writing process any different than on your previous albums?

Daniel Rice: Definitely. Cody wrote two, Hayden wrote two, Ben wrote two, I wrote two. We didn’t plan it that way but it’s what came out of the process and that is fucking sick in my opinion. It shows the buy-in from everyone. Back in Slow Season the typical way was I would either bring a mostly written song or the other three guys who mostly lived together would have some stuff they had been working on for days then I would come in and help turn it into a song via arrangements for vocals.

Ben Mcleod: I did a lot of overdubs once I got back to Florida. This was a first, finishing my parts for an album on the other side of the US. It worked great. I was able to take my time with a lot of the guitar solos.

Would you like to talk about your gear, pedals and effects?

Daniel Rice: Fuck yeah. We are all about that. Joints with backline preferences hate us. Cody is gonna talk to you in detail about his drums. It’s one of the keys to our sound. Ben and Hayden as well. Here’s what I will say: I never considered myself a guitar player until recently. I have always been a songwriter in my mind and never practiced my instrument. I mean I truly neglected that aspect. That was dumb. No longer. I’m taking my time with scales and buying expensive pedals, though I still have every guitar I have ever bought because I’m not a gear head, haha. My favorites are my 2002 worn cherry SG with crescent moon inlays and a rolling bridge and Iommi pickups added. I’m not a huge gear guy once again, but I know what I like and I’m playing this either through a ‘69 Bandmaster Reverb or ‘71 Bassman. New double cutaway Les Paul with P90s on the way so I’m stoked to see if that works out.

Ben McLeod: I played three guitars on the whole record…my Les Paul, a 52 Reissue Telecaster and whatever acoustic they had at Cody’s studio. I used one of Hayden’s 70s Musicmaster guitar amps, which is honestly the best amp I have ever heard. For the solo’s I tracked at home, I used my Princeton Reverb and a 1960s 1 Watt Harmony 303A. Not many pedals overall. I used a Creepy Finger’s Fuzz Face that I had custom made, a Strymon Riverside and a Strymon Timeline for some slap back stuff here and there.

Hayden Doyel: The bass was mostly recorded straight to the board with some compression. My ’54 Precision Bass plugged directly into the board has everything you need, and we were able to fine tune the low end with a few simple tricks. Live, a fuzz and phase might be thrown in through a growling 70’s Acoustic rig when needed but, what you hear on the record it is about as simple as you can get.

“Every record we make as Slow Season or Westing I want people to question the period in which it was recorded and mixed”

The band is clearly highly influenced by the hard rock groups of the 70s, but you still managed to make your own blueprint across the records, is that part important for you and is it just something that comes spontaneously?

Daniel Rice: It’s spontaneous. We make music we want to listen to and our tastes naturally gravitate toward ’69-’73 rock and roll when we play together. We also live in the modern world and listen to tons of different kinds of music – so eclectic, truly. All of that is part of the filter too. Maybe you can hear the 90’s alt rock unintentionally filter through?

Cody Tarbell: I think even if someone tried to copy something straight up note for note, it’s inherently going to come out unique to the individual playing it. The actual character comes through in peoples playing, or it should. I think work-flow is a big thing for us that helps contribute to our sound, the way things are mic’d up. We rarely use headphones when tracking the main parts of the song. Obviously for vocal overdubs or whatever, you need them, but on the actual capture of the song it’s very important to hear one another looking each other in the eye while playing. Whether you know it or not, you can hear that kind of thing and I think that’s the most important, feeling comfortable and confident. Every record we make as Slow Season or Westing I want people to question the period in which it was recorded and mixed.

Hayden Doyel: Yes, we (like most bands I presume) strive to be mentioned in the same context of great bands of the 60’s and 70’s. However, each of us have been influenced by so many other groups and musicians from every era and that comes through in the way we play individually and as a group.

Let’s go back to the early days. Were you in any other bands before forming Slow Season?

Daniel Rice: Cody and I met in a folk rock band together. He was given brushes by the singer and I was doodling around with slide guitar and high harmonies. We confided in each other the need for voluminous rockage and split off to do our own thing around 2011.

Cody Tarbell: I played with a blues guy for a year-ish around California and then I met Daniel playing in a group called the Whiskey And The Devil Chaplain.

Ben McLeod: I have been in All Them Witches since 2012. That’s about it for me.

Hayden Doyel: I grew up playing in the school jazz bands and in church. These were both great ways to hone the basics and skills of the instrument, improvisation, theory, and stage presence. During college there were some other musicians I played with but not much developed out of those groups, nor was there the same connection like I had with the other members of Slow Season and Westing.

I still remember years ago when I first heard ‘Ernest Becker’s 32nd Schizophrenic Nightmare’ and the follow-up EP ‘Heavy’. How do you remember those early recordings?

Daniel Rice: Whoa! EB32SN never made it on an official release because it was our first recording experience. We went to LA and this guy had a really set way of recording things that we didn’t like so afterward Cody said, “fuck it, we are gonna buy a tape machine, I’m gonna learn how to use it, and we are never gonna do this kind of shit again.” It’s not a bad recording but it doesn’t sound like us. Heavy sounds like us but the funny thing there is it’s just an old demo. It’s the birth of Slow Season. Cody handed me a CD-r of like 8 riffs. I cut up the riffs on pro tools, threw my vocals on it, and that was it! We never got a better recording so we just kept the old demo. No bass player on it even, didn’t have one at the time.

Cody Tarbell: I look at those recordings as a turning point in my recording life. Before I ever even got a tape machine I used to download and read different manuals for tape machines, old books on mixing, Audio Engineering Society articles, basically anything I could read geared towards recording that either came out in the 50s, 60s, 70s or if it was recent publication it was focused on the methods and practices of those times. I figured since we were paying we would go in and this guy would kind of record and mix us how we were wanting to do, and that turned out not to be the case. He wanted me to use the drum kit at his house rather than my own, I felt like he tried to influence our process a bit and mold it into something that might be a little more commercially digestible. The person we recorded with was more a space for recording indie musicians in a much more “standard” way of recording and mixing. I was bummed out about how we sounded but very encouraged that we could properly represent ourselves better. It was great to record and mix ourselves with a clear picture of what didn’t work from those previous sessions.

Hayden Doyel: Simply thrilling and easy. I had never had such an experience playing and recording with musicians of such caliber which I could also meld with so well.

Then you signed with RidingEasy Records and released ‘Mountains,’ what was that like?

Daniel Rice: It was a huge thing for us because we loved wax but the costs were so high and we were from a dinky place where no local bands ever got to have their own records. It connected us with cities and bands and opened the world up to a bunch of country boys from FarmVille USA. We won’t ever forget how Daniel Hall gave us our real start. Hell, we were his second band after Salem’s Pot!

Cody Tarbell: That time was a lot of fun. It was a very intense period. Hayden and I lived together and it just seemed like whenever we were home we were working on something for the band, either writing songs or trying to design a t-shirt, different merch ideas, all different types of things. Our first album we wrote and recorded once we found out Hayden was moving away for college, so it was a pretty condensed affair.

‘Mountains,’ we had a couple of songs demoed out while Hayden was away at college, then wrote some together when he came back, but I think we played them live maybe a little bit before we recorded them. We started getting pretty busy around that time so it was a lot of fun being gone more and more and meeting different people, and then if we were at home we’d either be writing or recording or mixing. It was a very busy time in the best way possible.

Your debut album, ‘Slow Season’ was later reissued by RidingEasy, right?

Daniel Rice: Yes, minus ‘Ernest Becker’s 32nd Schizophrenic Nightmare’ and ‘No More Running’ from the original demo CD. Don’t let other people record you if you can record yourself. You know what you’re supposed to sound like and they don’t.

Cody Tarbell: Yeah, so the lineage on that is actually our second record, ‘Mountains,’ came out first. The self-titled being our first record which we self-released, but the RidingEasy one is minus a couple of tracks.

How do you see your final Slow Season album in comparison to the upcoming album?

Daniel Rice: ‘Westing,’ the album didn’t get as much traction as ‘Mountains,’ I’m guessing because we used to work hard instead of smart. 90 shows a year is a dumb idea at our level. Just dumb.

Cody Tarbell: I see it as the album prior to this one, you know what I mean?

Hayden Doyel: It was another step forward in both songwriting and recording technique. When it was released we felt that we made a huge step forward and it has led to the new progressions on this newest album under the new band name.

Do you play a lot of gigs? What are some of your favourite shows and what are some of your favourite bands you played with?

Daniel Rice: We used to. Now we are going to be more selective. We just love to play so we used to say yes to dumb ideas. That was good in a way though because it led to some surprises as well. Yeah, the Roxy and the Observatory and the Double Door and Saint Vitus are cool, but have you ever played a barbecue in the backyard of a bar in Yuba City in front of 60 drunk hillbillies while the opening band’s singer wields a long sword and chalice?!?! On second thought, maybe we will play some dumb shows. We are small town people and we love the small town experience so keep an eye out for us in places like Fresno, Nevada City, and Arcata.

Favorite bands we’ve played with are tough because there’s so much out there that I truly respect and don’t want to leave people out.

Cody Tarbell: We used to. We used to live out of the Ford van. Since Covid time we haven’t toured like that.

Hayden Doyel: Sleepy Sun, Mothership, Earthless, Durand Jones & the Indications, and All Them Witches of course.

On that note, what’s the craziest gig (or could be a situation that happened to the band) that you recall?

Daniel Rice: Partying in a castle with King Buffalo a couple times has been fun. Volleyball and bicycles are a good after show activity and they had those there. The craziest stuff probably shouldn’t go in print for various reasons. It’s also always fun when a head shows up randomly, like meeting Wino in Austin or some Jackass folks in PDX.

What are some future plans?

Daniel Rice: Our big goal has always been a European tour.

Cody Tarbell: To record another record, hopefully get some live shows going on. See if we can get on a heater bud.

Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?

Daniel Rice: I also work with Sun Umbra in Fresno and Hayden and I do some projects that are mostly folk rock songs. Cody is getting together something cool but I shouldn’t spill the beans probably. Ben is, of course, very busy with ATW at the moment. He also has Woodsplitter and El Castillo.

Cody Tarbell: I’m playing with a band out of Bakersfield called the Aviators. Matt Purdy from the Aviators is playing guitar live with us when Ben is busy. I’m also playing drums with this guy Randy Holden, he is talking about playing some shows this year and even trying to do SXSW for some god damn reason, so you might see me out with him.

Ben McLeod: I have a cool little Western Surf band here in Florida called El Castillo. We play a lot of Spaghetti Western songs, Ventures and Los Straightjackets tunes.

Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

Daniel Rice: Absolutely. Elder, King Buffalo, and All Them Witches are killing it. As far as other records, I usually buy older stuff. Jazz and rock, mostly. Budgie, Bill Evans, Gentle Giant, Nektar, Lizzy, T. Rex, Groundhogs, Bowie are getting lots of spins recently. Neil Young is always in my rotation, always a favorite.

Cody Tarbell: I just found out about Palm Palm, it’s the new thing J. Roddy Walston and the Business is doing. I’m pretty obsessed with the song ‘Jungle Gender’ by them. I think that’s what Zeppelin would’ve sounded like had they made it to the 80s. I’m very interested to see what else they come up with. Myron Elkins I just found out about and I’m listening to that a lot. The production on that record is so good. It’s so faithful to what you would’ve heard in the mid 70’s. I absolutely love that. That’s what I’m actually listening to at the very moment, his ‘Factories, Farms & Amphetamines’ record. Look it up if you just like music.

Ben McLeod: Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Collected Works’ box set is on repeat on my record player. Miles Davis ‘In a Silent Way’. The first 5 Can records.