Funk Turry Funk weren’t content to just bring you the rad Stoked for The Fest Vol. 1 Compilation, which saw Fest bands covering other Fest bands. Now, they’ve got Fest bands to chat with Fest bands for a very special interview series that we are super stoked to share with you!
So without further ado, we’re kicking off the Funk Turry Funk/The Fest Interview Series with Alex Palermo of Typesetter fame and the multi-talented musician—and Static Age frontman—Andrew Paley giving each other a good ol’ grilling.
The pair chatted about influences, scene response to changing sound, the impact COVID-19 has had on band life, and so much more.
Some edits have been made for clarity.
Alex: Hi Andrew, Alex Palermo (they/them) from Typesetter here. Firstly I want to say I love a band in the punk world challenging the punk sound. What I mean by that is, your sound covers a huge range of influences but your band exists mostly in the punk scene.
Out of curiosity, I went back and looked up some reviews on Punk News, and there were two. One that gave you a nearly perfect score and one that gave you the lowest score (the guy that wrote it was clearly a total asshole too). This just further proves my point of the challenge. With all that said, what are some of your influences, and do you have any words for the people who have nothing better to do than write a bad review?
Andrew: So there’s sort of a continuum here that starts with The Static Age. Back in high school, a few of us were in punk and hardcore bands together—bands that sounded a lot more like they fit in with a particular sound. But we were listening to all of this music that pulled from the fringes of punk too—bands that pushed the sound in different directions like The Psychedelic Furs, The Chameleons, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, The Replacements, and so on. At some point, we decided to push further out into different directions, and The Static Age was born.
Creatively, it’s been a blast to be able to play with different sounds, and we’ve continued to evolve since our inception. On the downside, we confuse or offend people here and there—we’ve definitely played some shows where the collective vibe is that we’re not punk enough or whatever, and it’s sometimes made it hard to find “the right” bands to tour with or labels to work with … but the exploring is sort of the point of it, and I’d prefer that to the alternative of being easily lumped in with someone else’s sound.
And then there’s the solo stuff. Even though The Static Age has been a big tent sonically, there were always songs that still fell outside of what I thought fit the band. Those ended up as parts of the solo records I’ve released so far. The first couple albums—“White Rooms” and “Sirens”—both strayed into more of the acoustic/stripped down realm, whereas “Scattered Light,” which just came out a few weeks ago, goes a different direction, pulling also from the realm of art rock at the fringes of post-punk—like early Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush—as well as post-rock and ambient electronic music (I’ve been listening to a lot of Tycho and Com Truise, for instance).
I think this latest record is probably the most expansive one I’ve done in or out of the band—it was certainly the most challenging to make as I wrote and produced everything in my own studio space and didn’t really know what the hell I was getting into when I started. Is it a punk record? In spirit, I think so—it’s a DIY political pop record that dabbles in some pretty weird territory—but I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying otherwise.
As for your question about reviewers, I mean, to be honest, I’d rather have a really positive review and a really negative one than two middling reviews—at least it’s a reaction beyond “meh” either way. I’d be lying if I said that the occasional bad review didn’t get to me early on in the band, but I’ve gotten used to the idea that some people just aren’t going to get what I’m doing, and that’s cool by me.
Alex: To add to the first question, how do you feel about the punk scene/world? Personally, Typesetter has experienced pros and cons of our sound evolving while remaining in the scene, but we have always been excited to challenge the ears of people who are expecting a very specific type of music.
Andrew: I came up going to DIY punk shows in a little all-ages space called 242 Main in the basement of Memorial Auditorium in Burlington, VT. As it happens, Bernie Sanders had something to do with getting it started way back in the 1980s, but that’s another story. By my time, it was starting to have some issues with the city, and is sadly no longer around, but I was lucky enough to call it my second home from about 12 or 13 through high school and beyond.
Weekend over weekend, I met some of my best friends, including members of The Static Age, and got exposed to all sorts of ideas that shaped my concept of the world in that important space between art and politics. Bands would come through from all over, and distros would set up in the back alongside the flyers and zines.
Even though we were in a smaller city, we were smack between Boston and Montreal, and—back before the fire marshall would shut us down if we exceeded capacity—we could pack a few hundred people in for everyone from AFI to Avail to Converge to Bane to a number of different local bands. It fostered an amazing music scene in Burlington that lives on to this day in 242’s debt. My friends and I were mostly kids just figuring it out, and that place and that scene gave us the space to do so.
And then, we started touring, getting connected to little islands of local scenes all around the country and world, and I realized the power of and promise of our little federated global community. The fact that this network exists and is built on people just getting up and making noise, setting up basement shows, pressing records, printing zines, sharing ideas, and making friends all over the place is pretty amazing.
So yeah, that’s all that the punk scene is to me—it’s a DIY community, wide open to new ideas and with a few rough edges but moored to some strong ideals in the space of human rights, self-expression, anti-authoritarianism, community, and direct action. Sure, I don’t agree with everyone on everything, but it’s a big enough tent that we can all fit (with a few exceptions—the Dead Kennedys wrote a pretty solid song about those). And honestly, that idea is why I think The Static Age is still part of the punk scene, even if we don’t sound like one some of the time.
And, in keeping with that idea of a big tent, the next release for my solo stuff is actually a split with Days N Daze—a rad band who make music a bit different from mine and are awesome at it. They covered one of the songs from my record for the Fest comp, so now we’re making a split seven-inch out of it!
Alex: Shifting gears, I cannot believe we have not played a show together. I’m correct in saying this, right? Chicago has been very tight-knit with music for so long it’s kind of crazy we haven’t matched up. That said, we’re total gear nerds and love fawning over whatever the band playing is stomping on each transition. Can you give me a pedal and/or gear run down? Your recordings have a lot of cool synth sounds and bass chorus-y vibes for sure, and I’d love to hear what y’all are rockin’.
Andrew: Agreed—and it’d be awesome to make that happen post COVID!
In the meantime, the answer to the gear question is quite different depending on the context of when and in what situation (band, solo, or studio). On the band side, and I imagine I’m about to severely bum you out here, but I’ve been using a Kemper most recently. It just sounds great, and I can bring it everywhere—studio, practice, shows, overseas, whatever. I used to make fun of people like me, but now I’m me.
That said, pre-Kemper, I was using a board leveraging some mix of Walrus Audio pedals (mainstay was the Julia chorus pedal), Boss classics (mainly delay and sometimes a flanger), and then reverbs of some sort (most recently, I’d sprung for a Strymon BigSky). I also used a Xotic EP Booster for a bit of gain/weight, as I play a Tele and wanted to thicken it up on the way in. That all ran through a 5150II that actually caught fire on tour years back and was rebuilt and came out sounding even better than before. It was a decidedly weird set up, but I loved the sound.
On other pedalboards, Adam, the bassist, uses a vintage CE-2 chorus pedal that he’s had forever on his bass, and Nico, who plays guitars and keyboards, has a pedalboard that I can’t hold in memory—I can’t even begin to enumerate the stuff he’s got on there. For keyboards, the live go-to now is a Nord Electro for mainly strings/synth patches.
On solo fronts, I’ve most recently been running everything—electric guitar included—through my laptop with some plugins. It reduces travel overhead a lot, and I play with samples and backing tracks live for the solo stuff, so it all works out to keep them synced.
Alex: I noticed your band seemed to take hiatus for a while but seemed to resurface during the pandemic. Did all this downtime kind of give y’all an extra spark back into things? COVID has really made it a windy road for some bands, so it’s cool to see that it potentially worked for y’all to get something going again. Tell us about that.
Andrew: The rekindling of things actually did predate COVID by a bit, but we’re trying to make the most of the slower pace at present to get some new stuff done. We had been on a bit of a hiatus since tours in 2016. Nico and Joe (our drummer) had been playing with some of their other projects, and I’d been doing a lot of solo stuff—I put a record out at the end of 2016 and then again just a few weeks ago, and had done a number of tours in between—so we’d been keeping busy individually.
That said, sometime last year we started talking about touring in 2020 and finishing a record of some sort, so a few things were in motion when the pandemic hit.
Alex: Since we’re both Chicago folks, I’d love to hear who your favorite local bands have been over the past 10 to 15 years. It’s cool to see where certain parts of our big city but small scene connect.
Andrew: Love this question and now I wish I’d asked you the same! Well, I first want to give a shoutout to Nico and Joe’s awesome other band, the Young Distractions, and also to my friend Pete Cautious, whose new record is great. Beyond that, I’m always partial to Bob Nanna and his various ongoing projects (and who got all his songs stuck in my head when we toured together in 2017). Some others that immediately come to mind are Disappears, New Canyons, Volcano!, Pelican, Angel Olsen, Russian Circles, Laura Jane Grace (a more recent Chicago arrival, I know, but I’m still counting her), and Los Crudos (outside the time window originally, but they’re still playing shows!). The new Hum album is awesome too. Also, honestly, I’ll be adding you guys to this list if ever I’m asked again! I’m sure I’m forgetting like 10 more that I’ll kick myself for later. That said, I came to Chicago after bouncing around Vermont, Brooklyn and LA, and after The Static Age was regularly touring. For the first few years, the band was scattered all over the country too, though that’s changed as of late. So yeah, we didn’t grow up as a band with the scene here and didn’t naturally become as embedded as much as I’d have liked.
Alex: Y’all have played The Fest multiple times before as well too, correct? It’s our band’s favorite time of the year. What year was your first time and what has stuck with you over the years since then?
Andrew: Actually, we haven’t! I’ve done the Fest once before—in 2016, I think it was—and had an absolute blast. Twenty-twenty was supposed to be Fest number two, but I guess that’ll have to be 2021. T
hat said, I’d been to Gainesville for other shows a few times before, and it’s pretty wild to see the whole city basically taken over by punks from all over the world. I ran into people I’d met in various other countries or toured with years earlier just walking down the street, and it definitely felt like a huge family reunion or something.
Alex: How did y’all come to choose “we are nothing” as your cover for the Stoked For Fest comp? You took a really cool route with the textures and sounds on the recording, I’d love to hear more about that recording process as well.
Andrew: Thanks! That was recorded in an evening in my living room. I knew I wanted to do that song—I love the raw sincerity of the original, and I’d played it a few times on tours in 2017/2018—so, when the prompt was “a cover of a band playing the Fest,” it was kind of a no-brainer.
That said, my initial inclination was to just do it straight ahead with an acoustic guitar. I actually recorded that version and listened back and felt like I was missing the chance to try something weirder, and, like, two hours later, the version on the comp existed. It’s basically my tele through the Kemper with some Valhalla reverbs (which, for anyone who does production work and is looking for really creative reverb or delay plugins, are awesome), and then a few synth layers to add some depth, and then the one vocal.
Alex: Lastly, I want to say the new split (with Love Equals Death) sounds great. I also love the album cover with its throwback Misfits look. Who did the art? Is this release something you recorded a while back that just now came to fruition or is this a new thing y’all worked on this year? Either way, good work.
Andrew: Well, thanks again! The artwork was done by Stefan over at SBAM (one of the two labels that released it—the other being Say-10). He’s got some pretty sweet artwork and people should look him up. As for when it was tracked, we actually laid down the drums and bass for “Recover” as a part of a recording session a few years ago. Around that time, I laid down the vocals as a demo, but those ended up being the final takes, too.
That said, the guitars were recorded in October/September, as were all the tracks for “The Fan and The Bellows,” so that’s all new. We’ve always wanted to finish and release multiple songs from the sessions “Recover” came from, and COVID has provided us the time, so there will be more coming on that front too!
Andrew: So, first off, what’s life like for you at the moment? What have you been getting up to with all the pandemic-driven downtime? How are you keeping yourselves busy/sane?
Alex: We’ve had our flows of creativity during the pandemic but we’ve mostly been using it as a break from our busy touring schedule. We’ve demoed some songs for the next release and me and our drummer, Matt, started a long-distance side project with my brother, Bradley Palermo.
Other than that, we’ve all been hustling to pay the bills since most of us have been out of a job since mid-March. I started a vegan food company called Palermo’s Unreal Foods and Marc our singer/guitarist started a vegan pop-up called Vagabond Vegan Supper Club (Matt also cooks with him). So that’s kept us very busy.
Andrew: Typesetter has an awesome, unique sound and it seems to be evolving if I listen to your first EP vs your latest album or number seven, that EP that I think came out just this past summer. What’s the writing process like in your band? And has it changed at all over the past eight years? Do you feel like your influences or sound has shifted, or are you just growing into realizing what you set out to do?
Alex: Thank you for the kind words! And yeah, totally. We started as a band just sorta set out to be punk but to challenge the sound in weird ways when we can. I think our band has always had a wide range of influences but over the years I’d say it has gotten much wider. It’s a strange battle to make sure everything stays cohesive while also keeping the audience’s attention, but it’s worth it to us.
I’d say every time we release material we’re just getting closer and closer to what we’ve been set out to do musically. As for the writing process, it has always been pretty collective. Someone usually brings a skeleton to the table and by the time the whole group is done with it, it’s a Typesetter song.
Andrew: How did you all get together as a band in the first place? Were you in other bands together previously? How did Typesetter’s first show come to pass?
Alex: Three out of four members of Typesetter are from St.Louis, MO so we all grew up playing shows together. Kyle (our guitarist and singer) and I grew up as best friends and played in a few bands together and Marc was always in another local punk band that we’d play shows with. We had the idea in 2009 that if we all ended up in the same city that we’d be in a band called Typesetter and in late 2012 that finally worked out.
As for our first show, I saw a Run Forever/Dowsing/State Lines/Dog & Wolf show get announced at Township and we had about 5 songs ready. I messaged Toby from Red Scare and he threw us on.
Andrew: Also, I just have to say, high-five for that Propagandhi cover on your recent EP—that’s like one of the best songs on one of the best albums by the best band. Now I’m curious—what other covers have you guys done?
Alex: Thanks! I’d say if every member of our band had to agree on one band it’d be them. Sometimes on tour, we listen to the whole catalog front to back, haha! As for other covers, we haven’t done much. It’s always been hard to agree on one or we want to spend time working on our own stuff. My favorite one we did was “Hanging on the Telephone” by The Nerves (or made popular by Blondie) and in our early days we covered Desaparecidos’ “Man and Wife, The Latter.’
Andrew: A question from one Chicagoan to another: when a band comes through town and has a day or afternoon off, what’s something you tell them they have to check out in Chicago (restaurant, venue, record store, whatever)? Semi-relatedly, what’s the place you’ve missed most during quarantine?
Alex: The first place that always comes to mind is the Chicago Music Exchange. It’s just fun to watch the whole “kid in a candy store” moment with musicians seeing what that place has to offer. Otherwise, I always suggest whatever new vegan spot has opened up and of course a record store. My favorite record stores are definitely Bucket o Blood and Bric-a-Brac.
Andrew: It looks like you’ve gotten up to a lot of touring since your inception back in 2012. What’s something you didn’t bring on tour the first time, but now always make sure to pack?
Alex: Ah, yes. We’ve toured quite a bit over the years and have certainly forgotten a lot of crucial things. I think bringing a hoodie and a beanie on tour no matter what the weather is like is a solid move. The beanie is obviously warm but doubles as a face mask when you’re trying to catch some extra z’s in bright situations. As for a hoodie, you’re constantly in and out of hot and cold situations and it’s just good to have to combat that. Extra-long phone chargers (or longys, as we call them) are crucial if you’re sleeping far from an outlet or sitting on the second bench of the van, you still can use your phone. Lastly, Triple fuckin’ A. The amount of times we’ve been stranded with a broken down van with next to no good options on how to dig ourselves out of it is far too many.
Andrew: What are you working on now and/or looking forward to in 2021? I know it’s kinda hard to forecast, given the state of things, but what’s the future hold for Typesetter?
Alex: We’re working on a huge batch of songs that we’re also demoing out. If touring stays on hold for as long as we think it will then there might be a record recorded by the end. We had probably the busiest year ever planned for 2020 and had to cancel 100 shows (a lot of which were international which makes us even sadder), so needless to say we’ll also be looking forward to saddling up and making up for all of those shows missed. Thanks!
You can follow Typesetter on Twitter here, and on Bandcamp here, and Andrew Paley on all the socials here. Stay tuned for more Funk Turry Funk/The Fest Interviews!
Images courtesy of Typesetter, Andrew Paley, and Funk Turry Funk
