All this week we’re celebrating Chicago-based band Red Scarves, who will be releasing their new album Nice Try on Friday, April 26. It’s an album that further showcases the band’s growth from their early folk days into an eclectic rock quartet that draws from having multiple vocalists and songwriters.
Today, I’m excited to share my in-depth interview with three of the four members of the band – Braden Poole (vocals, guitar, acoustic, euphonium), Ayethaw Tun (vocals, guitar, bass, acoustic), and Robby Kuntz (vocals, drums, percussion, Wurlitzer, piano, synth, organ) about their journey making the album. They’re also joined by Ryan Donlin (vocals, guitar, bass, acoustic, synths, piano, Rhodes, double bass, percussion), who penned an essay for us on the band’s song “Runner” last year.
The band recorded Nice Try with the help of Dave Vettraino at three different studios in Chicago – Palisade Studios, Shirk Studios and Jamdek Recording Studio – as well as band members’ apartments and homes. Michelle Pranger (valve trumpet) and Renee Vogen (French horn) contribute to the band’s song “Lament.”
So, without further ado, find your favorite red scarf and sit back, as I share our recent conversation that explains why they consider themselves a band’s band.
Nice to meet all of you. Can you talk first about how the band originally formed?
Poole: I met Ayethaw and the other two founding members back in 2012 when we were all attending the same university in Bloomington-Normal. It was called Illinois Wesleyan University. And we all had a professor at one point or another, but I had him in my freshman year. I took his Bob Dylan in the Sound of the ’60s course. His name was Ron Emmons. Unfortunately, he’s since passed. But at the time I was taking his class and was in his office for office hours writing a paper I think on the Bob Dylan’s Desire album. So, I was getting some notes from him, and in walks this fresh-faced Ayethaw Tun and Alan Rushton, who was another founding member of the band. And they had a burned CD of some folk demos that they wanted to give Ron Emmons. So, they knocked on his door and he said, “Oh, do you know Braden? You guys should get together and play together. He plays music, he likes Bob Dylan and The Beatles.”
We just kind of got each other’s contact information after that and we formed in late 2012. And later that winter, I think in November, there was a yearly competition at Illinois Wesleyan called Undercover. And it’s usually the big to do there, where a group will cover a song, or a single artist will cover a song and it’s held in the student center. At the time, it felt like a bigger deal and it’s kind of like a competition. So, we decided to do a Bob Dylan song and a Mumford & Sons cover. We did those two and we ended up actually winning that.
That was our first kind of taste of what it was like having a group, or at least my first taste of having a group and playing and collaborating with like-minded individuals. It was a lot of fun and the band’s changed with the lineup since then. Robby and Ryan came on board in around 2014, 2015, I think. And we’ve just been kind of growing together and propping each other up with music and friendship. So at least in this form it’s 10 years strong.
How do you think the additions of Robby and Ryan most impacted the band’s sound?
Poole: When we first started, we were very much in the folk era of Red Scarves. We met because of the Bob Dylan class. And at the time, that’s just what I was listening to, it’s what I was into. And the early 2010s was kind of the second folk revival after the ’60s. Everyone was listening to Mumford & Sons and Avett Brothers, The Lumineers, and all that stuff. That’s just what was on, and that’s what we were playing, and that’s kind of how we were writing at the time. And with the introduction with Robby on drums and Ryan on bass and later guitar really introduced these elements of rock and jazz and prog that we still kind of use today.
And it really just kind of opened up the musical floodgates of not pigeonholing us into one box or one genre, like folk or folk rock. There’s a lot more that we all had to offer, and we were keen on exploring that. Robby and Ryan, it’s no secret that they’re already legends.
Ayethaw too, of course the OG legend. But yeah, they’ve really shaped us as people and our music substantially. And I know I would not write the songs that I do today had they not joined the band. And I probably wouldn’t be as good of a person, and I just really care about them. And I’m glad they’re on board.
What’s the story behind the band’s name?
Tun: This was definitely prior to Robby and Ryan joining. There was a group chat we had. We were discussing band names, and there was a lucky scarf that I had. It was very short, maybe three feet long, barely. It was a scarf that my mother bought for me before I was born. I was born in the UK, and she bought it in Edinburgh, Scotland before I was born. And she knew that, “Oh, it’s cold here in the UK, so we need to get something warm for my son.” So, when I was growing up, I still had this scarf. She always put this crazy amount of importance onto it like, “That’s your lucky scarf, I bought it for you before you were born. It’s older than you.”
Just almost pushing it to this sort of… I don’t want to say godlike status, but it’s beyond just an object. It’s beyond just this little scarf. And I remember very specifically when I was in high school at a track meet, I lost the scarf, and I was freaking out more than I’ve ever freaked out. I had a huge panic attack. I was like, “Oh my gosh, where’s my scarf? Where’s my scarf?” Luckily the next day, I called the school that the meet was at, and they found it. So, it’s safe at my house and I still safely have it today. I’ve never worn it out ever since. But long story short, with all that background was that I was like, “Oh, maybe Red Scarves would be a good name because there’s this extreme importance that I put on this just silly little piece of fabric.” I’m sure there’s even hundreds of the same thing in the UK somewhere, maybe thousands.
But it was so special to me that it gave me this huge feeling of importance and specialness. And at the same time, at the high school, the same era, I thought of music in the same way. I was like, “Oh, this Beatles album or this one song by Bright Eyes or this Elliot Smith’s specific record or the specific song,” it was the special important thing. It was more than just the CD. It was more than just track two, track three. It carried this just wild mythical status, for me personally. And I think Red Scarves hopefully is like, “Oh, that sounds like a good name.” The idea of having something like a band or an album, you make a song and hopefully it can be that special kind of companion for someone, even if it’s just one other person.
At least for us, for me, I feel like the music we make are special companions to us. So, it has to be special to us first, and hopefully it can carry that importance. At the same time, Braden was saying that we were a folk band. A scarf is a sort of folk iconography. Everybody was posing in coats, and nobody was a folk guy in short shorts and on a beach. Everybody in a folk band was cold for some reason.
So that’s where the band name kind of comes from and we’ve kind of transcended all of that aesthetic since. But the genesis of the name still sticks with me, that sort of specialness you put onto an adamant object. A three-minute song, a piece of wax, a piece of plastic, CD, whatever it might be.
The band’s final single for the album is “Missed Approach.” What inspired that song?
Poole: It’s one of my songs. It’s kind of a satire song just about a guy who works at an airport but doesn’t really get to fly, even though that’s kind of what he wants to do, just because of his eyesight. Sounds a little hokey, but it’s one of our more rockier songs on the album and it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Kuntz: Yeah, I think the song is a good encapsulation of the themes of Nice Try as well, of this kind of character that is kind of screwed over by things that are larger than them or they can’t control. And just trying to embrace or accept those things in their life. I think it pairs really nicely and encapsulates Nice Try really well.
How would you describe the band’s sound and chemistry? What makes it unique and stand out from others?
Tun: I think the band is four friends that are all songwriters, and the group was a band… I think it’s always been about songs. And Braden was one of the first to just be the most prolific in his songwriting. And all of us kind of wanted to follow suit. So, me, Robby, Ryan. I think everyone wanted to write songs in that way because… I think you can write songs in maybe a fashion of, “Oh, I want to make it a rock song, or I want to make it maybe a super pop song,” or whatever it may be. I think the way Braden wrote songs and the way we all kind of collectively shared music, we all wanted to write songs where maybe it’s in a folk realm, but I think the lyrics are important.
It’s like the marriage of lyrics and music are equally important. It’s not like the lyrics take a backseat or music takes a backseat. So, we all kind of just became very excited about that. I think even before we met, we were listening to music like that anyways. I think all about the love of writing songs and us putting it together. And what makes it special is all four of us have very different styles. We have different tastes, different sensibilities. If I bring a song, I really want Robby or Ryan or Braden to come up with their own ideas or their own input to it. It’s like the music that we bring to the band, it becomes something totally different through the lens of all four of us together, just because we have such a varied musical background. And it’s special because we all sing too.
So, I think it just makes it different from maybe some bands you’ve seen in the scene. There’s not a lot of bands where all members are all singing lead vocals in a show or on a record. And I think maybe in the past it was a little bit disjointed, but now with Nice Try, I really feel like it’s come together. And all of our tastes kind of really interlock in a nice way. And it doesn’t feel like a totally different song, one after the other. It feels like, “Oh, this is a band. They just have four different singers.”
A lot has happened for the band in the lead up to you releasing the album, including losing and finding a rehearsal space and dealing with the lack of shows with COVID. What was it like having to readjust with those challenges? How did having each other make it more tolerable?
Kuntz: Speaking for myself, I kind of came to somewhat accept the circumstances that we were in at that point. I’m talking like mid 2020 just because everyone else was in the same boat. I wasn’t like, “Oh, we are experiencing a specific problem that’s only affecting us. Everyone else is having the same issue.” In that regard. I was like, “Well, I don’t feel too pressed about it because what is there to do?” It’s so early on, no one really knows what to do and the future… No one knew when things are going to be back to normal as well.
It was February 2020, and we had a space at the Treehouse that once lockdown started, we pretty quickly were like, “Okay, we’re not going to renew this anymore because no one’s going to be able to use this.” I think it was Ryan who found the [new] space, the one that we currently have. It was around September [2023] when we started using that. And it was pretty difficult. I mean even from then from September to way into 2021 as well, there was a lot of anxiety over COVID, understandably so. And that made even meeting up sometimes a bit tricky to kind of figure out where everyone’s comfort levels were at with masking or meeting up and testing and all that.
So obviously there’s a lot more that we had to go through if we wanted to meet up, but we were still making it happen because we felt like the songs were worth it. And at this point it was like, “Well, we’ve got to make hay, so to speak, while the sun shines,” while we can. Because we don’t know if this is going to get better. We don’t know if this is going to get worse.
I’m really glad that for the most part, it’s pretty much over and we’re able to meet pretty safely and do these things that we want to do. But yeah, back then it was weird adjusting. It’s nice having a new space. I mean, I still love the space that we have. It’s got a great vibe to it. It’s hard to describe the vibe of that space. I like that it’s like concrete covered in carpet, which I think is a great little aesthetic.
Poole: Once the logistical nightmare of meeting up and making sure everyone was tested and masked, that it was very much, we kind of forgot about outside for a little bit. So, it was a nice kind of little aside to go back to your people and see them, number one. And number two, share new songs that we were working on and made us forget about the outside world for a little while, which was really nice at the time. Just because there was so much chaos [in the world] and there’s the virus and George Floyd and just a whole bunch of craziness going on in the world.
Tun: I think a good amount of the songs on Nice Try were written when pandemic started. And I think it all put us in a maybe different state of mind or it might’ve put us in a different state of mind of how we wanted songs to sound, whether we wrote them or not. I think it definitely brought out something different for us.
We used to have five members and then we went down to four, and that was another factor too, where we were reconciling this loss of a sort of sound literally in a room and trying to make our arrangements full that way.
The album’s title is fitting with all that the band went through in making it. Kind of knowing that things aren’t always going to be perfect, but to just keep on trying.
Poole: Yeah. And I don’t know if that was even really talked about at all, but all the songs really kind of dealt with trying and failing to an extent. So, I think it was just kind of a happy accident or maybe we’re all on a wavelength that was just unspoken.
Kuntz: I think it was the wavelength for sure.
Tun: I think we were all kind of in a certain arc of our life too. COVID hit after literally the glitz and glamor of our time in college and post-college life. We were all getting to that age where we’re reflecting on where we were, what we were doing. So, everything kind of reached… It’s sort of an apex of us to feel that way.
Poole: I had a little dream about it. The dream made no sense, but the reasoning behind the name came to make sense.
Poole: It kind of felt like we kind of loosened up on this one, compared to the last one.
Kuntz: I think there’s a lot of similarities between Nice Try and Annuals, like the way it was recorded. Songwriting wise, it felt different. It felt more democratic this time around where each song was more a statement from whoever was singing it. Whereas Annuals, there’s some exceptions, but it felt much more like this is this person’s song, this person’s this person’s song. And we’re kind of interpreting it a little bit or arranging it in a certain way. But I think recording wise, the method of doing it on tape, doing it live in the room with each other, working out these arrangements and rehearsing them beforehand, that’s a method that we’ve been using for a while. I don’t think we’ve really co-signed the idea of this being made in Pro Tools and it doesn’t even touch a wood floor at any point in the process.
There’s always been a liveliness to how we’ve made records, and it made sense to us. And I think economically too, it was kind of a marathon session, but we got to get a lot of material out in a very short amount of time, and that’s kind of turned into two releases over two years. So, I think it’s kind of banging for its buck, so to speak. Songwriting creatively, I think Annuals and Nice Try are different in that regard. But the method of working and making the actual album, I think the two records are pretty similar in that respect.
Poole: We let the song stand for themselves rather than just kind of adding a whole bunch of overdubs over overdubs.
Kuntz: We definitely spent more time in a studio with Nice Try than any of the other records that we’ve ever done. I mean, obviously the first sessions at Palisade, but we also did additional sessions at Shirk and Jamdek. And that was a first for us moving to a different studio to work on things. And I think that has paid off because the fidelity of those overdubs is very high, and they definitely come through. Like the brass specifically on “Lament” is something that we couldn’t have done by ourselves. I’m glad we did that in a studio.
Tun: We rehearsed all the songs with a very powerful PA where you could hear our vocals. So, I think for the first time, we really made the arrangements tied into the vocal melody and the lyrical content. And I remember past songs where I’d be like, “Oh, that’s what the song’s about?”
Kuntz: Yeah, I would’ve played differently if I knew what was being sung here. That helps me come up with drum parts that fit whatever the vibe of the song is going. But knowing what the song is about is also… That’s always very helpful for me. I like knowing the lyrics.
Tun: And that was the first time we really focused on the lyrical nature and the marriage of what the lyrics are and what the arrangements are going to be. It really changed how the songs turned out.
Kuntz: I think just personally, the big difference with this record is guitars are back. I can’t speak for the guitarist in the band, but there was this kind of reluctance to embrace more muscular guitar stuff because we kind of come from this… I don’t know how to say this nicely.
Poole: The anti-machismo guitarist.
Kuntz: Yeah. I mean, at the time, we all would’ve collectively been rolling our eyes at something that was really guitar heavy. And we just thought, “Oh, we’re better than that,” but we’re a rock band at the end of the day. And specifically reducing us down to a four piece made us be like, “we’ve got to make these guitar parts the center of attention now.” They really got to grab you and have to be good.
And that’s funny because “Lament” is the complete opposite of that, and there is practically no guitar on that song. I think Braden has an acoustic track, but I think it is one of the few songs that doesn’t really have any guitar on it. So, I think it stands out on the album in that way for a fairly muscular album. I feel like that’s got to be one of the heaviest songs that we’ve ever written, and we wouldn’t have ever written something like that prior to 2020, that’s for sure.
The mantra of this band is us kind of going 300 miles an hour on the arrangement part.
The band recorded live at Palisade and sounded like it was a pretty interesting experience. What was that experience like?
Kuntz: Obviously we had recorded in studios before, but this was the most… I hate to say it, “professional” studio that we’ve been to. High ceilings, bigger room that we’ve ever recorded in, and they have all the works with the technology there. So, I think we decided on it because of the piano there. Because we knew that we were going to do “Lament” live in the room together. So that meant that Ryan was a big advocate. I think he recorded there with Olive Avenue recently, and he really liked the piano sound there. And honestly, I think that’s why we picked that place, because of the piano. That’s something that you can’t really change. It’s well tuned and everything. I think that was during July as well, 2021, July 12th or 13th or something like that.
We rehearsed our butts off because we’re playing this live, and we have all these songs. You can only do them a max of maybe five times. Once you start getting more than five takes, you’re like, “All right, we’re kind of minimizing the amount of time we can work on other stuff.” And this is also on tape as well, so very little editing to be had at this stage. So, we had to be really, really prepped. I think I said in the liner notes, it felt like taking the ACT where you prepare really, really hard, and this is a test. The whole thing kind of works as a performance.
It has its upsides, but I don’t know if I’d ever want to record 14 songs in three days again, but who knows? But yeah, Palisade was great. I liked the lights there too. They were programmable lights in the live room, which we had a lot of fun with.
Poole: Party mode.
Kuntz: Yeah, party mode. When we recorded “Alice,” the take that we used on the record, we had party lights going during that. And I remember for “Things I Might’ve Missed,” the whole room was like this blood-red kind of color when we did that. I can’t remember the other lighting stuff that we had, but that to me is the other kind of a memorable thing about those sessions.
Poole: We also recorded at Jamdek, which we’ve recorded before as well, and also at Shirk Studios for a couple of instrumental overdubs. And both of those are also really great.
Tun: It was our first time going to multiple studios. So, Palisade was where the meat of everything was recorded, but all the dressings were done at Shirk and Jamdek. And it was fun to go to different spaces and hear our music back through different rooms. When we’re at Shirk, Robby was really excited about the organ there. He does all the organ overdubs on “Lament.” It’s fun how studios are defined by the instruments there. We have some Wurlitzer played by Robby, and that’s at Jamdek. And they have this beautiful… I forgot the model, but it’s like a 243A Wurlitzer.
Were there any other big surprises making the album or moments that really surprised you?
Poole: It was such a long period from when we recorded till now. We recorded it in 2021 and it’s 2024. It just feels kind of like a long time coming. We’re trying to see if anyone would like to pick it up and help us kind of distribute it. And I think we all just kind of got tired and we’re just like, “Let’s just do it ourselves.” The old classic way of doing it, which I think is probably the best way of doing it. No one else is going to care more than you are.
Tun: I think the surprise for me in that sense is that I still enjoy the album. I still feel like it’s fresh to me. I don’t listen to it very often, but when I do, I’m like, “Oh, this is the best thing we’ve ever made to this point.”
Poole: I remember listening to Annuals all the time and I just kind of ran it into the ground in my brain.
Tun: I was surprised personally where some of our songs went. None of our songs are on the nose about the pandemic. I guess “Lament” is the closest, but Braden never is quoting or sort of dating himself by referencing anything too time specific. I think we were all writing songs in a different way just because of the time and all of my songs, which is just two on Nice Try, “Michael” and “Things I Might Have Missed.” And then “Just Like A Man” which is on our EP, all three of them ended up being very specifically about my parents, which I’ve never done before. So, I think that was a surprise of the song content and definitely affected how Ryan wrote “Locked Out Forever.”
I think Ryan wrote “Locked Out Forever” in the same month that Braden wrote “Lament” and “Locked Out Forever” in a lot of ways is almost sort of the upside-down inverse version of “Lament.” Lyrically, at least not musically. Usually, we’re not songwriters that sort of touch too much on current events. I mean, people probably can do it way more eloquently than we do, but it was a surprise to have things in our present time outside of personal connections, personal relationships, personal experiences. The sort of collective thing going over us, it definitely affected the lyrics of the songs even if nothing’s on the nose at all. Nothing is referencing COVID or referencing masks or anything.
What are you most looking forward to in the months ahead? What’s next for the band?
Poole: I’m definitely looking forward to the music video. I think it’ll be kind of a lot of controlled chaos, and I think it’ll be fun to kind of spitball ideas and mess around on a tarmac. I think that’ll be interesting. And just having the album out I think is just going to be a big release for me and just finally having these out in the world. We’ve been playing them live for years, but to have them out physically, it’s just kind of this resolution that’s been building for a long time, so glad we finally do it. We finally have beautiful vinyl LPs that I think we’re all really proud of.
Tun: I’m looking forward to the album release show. We’re going to have people we look up to a band called Mooner and an artist named Jessica Risker and her band, and they’re artists that I really love personally. I think we’ve all kind of rubbed shoulders with them over the years, and I think it’ll be a great night of music. I think everything fits. Nothing is like, “Why is this band on the bill? Or why is this artist on the bill? I think everything will be perfect that way. I’m just excited for people to listen to it. You just have to sort of let go and be like, “Well, maybe there’s somebody far away that really loves this and I won’t know.” And that’s beautiful.
We’ll see what happens with the post record, but I just want to continue making music with these guys, so that’s never going to stop. So, more music will happen no matter what…I’m looking forward to all that because it’s our baby. It’s like our band together. What makes our band unique is all four of us would be the perfect representative for our band. You could send any of us on a talk show and you would get the gist of who we are. You could talk to any of us, and any of us would have a beautiful individual answer of what the band means.
I’m playing a show with Chapter. I wouldn’t say it’s my band, I just play in the band. I would just be like, “Yeah, I play in Chapter.” But when I talk about Red Scarves, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s my band.” I think that’s the beautiful individual part about this group. It’s like our collective baby together.
You can follow the band at Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and Twitter.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
