We interviewed San Diego surf rock band Sitting on Stacy and discussed 2000s pop anthems, aliens, and neighbors calling the cops. Interview with vocalist/guitarist Hoyt Yeatman, bassist Kyle Hart, and drummer Trevor Smith.
Your debut EP is called Goat Soup. It’s pretty warm in San Diego, but what are some of your favorite wintertime recipes?
Sarah: I read that the goats were pets, so I don’t think they were soup.
Kyle: I did not see that coming.
Hoyt: I used to have these little pygmy goats, and they were the best little animals. They’re kind of like dogs. They have square eyes and they neigh.
Kyle: We’re a soup band.
Trevor: Honestly, New England Clam Chowder.
Hoyt: Clam chowder is good on a wintery day.
We hear that you guys moved down to San Diego for school, how have you been able to manage balancing music with getting a degree?
Hoyt: It’s been pretty challenging. I just graduated, they have one semester left.
Trevor: We’re both done in three months, so it’s been way easier honestly.
Hoyt: In the day it was a lot harder, we had to do a lot driving and stuff. We were all super committed to it, so it just kind of worked out. We didn’t think of it as a chore, we were just like, “Alright, let’s do this.” When we’d play shows, it kind of reminded us why we kept doing it.
Trevor: Shows will come back after we graduate too, so it might work out really well.
Hoyt: I was doing marketing, like business.
Kyle: I’m communications.
Trevor: I’m poli-sci.
You guys have posted several covers and “bathroom sessions” throughout the past year, how have these been fulfilling you during this pandemic?
Hoyt: It makes us feel very good.
Kyle: We’re so glad the first bathroom sessions stuck around. That was super fun of us to do.
Trevor: It was the most we could do during this time.
Kyle: We wanna continue making music, and we can’t play shows.
Hoyt: Might as well make the most of it.
Kyle: It was fun, just acoustic covers and covers of songs we liked and stuff.
Hoyt: It was really fun to do those covers and stuff. It’s cool to see the reactions of people. It’s our own version of trying to play a show, I guess. A lot of time on our hands.
Trevor: We had fun making the videos, too.
So, if you had to choose right now, what iconic early 2000s pop anthem would you cover?
Hoyt: I’m just a teenage dirtbag… Or “Stacy’s Mom”.
Kyle: Stacy’s Mom! Fountains of Wayne.
Hoyt: What’s the scumbag song? The teenage dirty song? Or a Blink-182 song for Kyle. That’s his favorite band. One of them.
Can we expect new music from you soon? Has quarantine given you more time to write and experiment with your sound?
Hoyt: We have like two albums’ worth of music. We have a big announcement that’s gonna happen very soon. We can’t say anything yet.
Kyle: Hopefully within the next few months or so we’ll be able to release music.
Hoyt: We’re really excited. The songs have definitely gotten a lot better, and the production value has just gone up. Every day we’ve been grinding trying to make good songs.
Trevor: We’ve had a lot more time, too, since we’re living near each other now.
Hoyt: With more time, too, we’ve been able to find things to do a bit better. We’ve been kind of moving along. A lot of doing a song, and then re-record it a month later, and then do it again, and then do the vocals again, and just make it better. It’s gotten better. It’s coming.
There’s some space imagery on some of your album covers. Do you believe in aliens? Why or why not?
Kyle: 100% yes.
Trevor: Such a yes.
Hoyt: I’ve seen one. I was flying on a plane to Houston, Texas. I had the window seat, I was maybe 14 or 15. I was just looking outside the window, and we were going through all these clouds. You couldn’t see anything for a long time. I looked out, and I see this giant ass orb flying underneath our plane. I was like, “What is that? So weird!”. I couldn’t explain what it was, and everyone else had their windows shut. It was so weird, I was the only one seeing it. It flew under our wing, and I was expecting it to fly out the other side, but it just disappeared.
So, I looked it up, and I guess there’s this site where you can see other UFOs that have been spotted in the area. I typed in where I saw it, Houston, 7 o’clock, whatever. A bunch of other people, like 15 other people, saw red lights in the air. I thought I was crazy, but I was like, “Okay, if 15 other people saw it, I’m not crazy.” It was like that Twilight Zone episode where the guy sees the gremlin. Watch that, if you haven’t seen it. Weird, but I believe in it.
Kyle: I want to see one.
You’ve been putting out music for the past couple of years now, does your perspective on your songs that have been out for a while change over time? How so?
Hoyt: We hate them
[Laughter]
Kyle: We kind of look back, and I think we’ve grown as songwriters a bit more. And the way we record songs has grown. It helps to look back and see what you can improve on.
Trevor: The music is definitely more mature.
Kyle: Just like the subject matter we’re writing about. I guess we’re writing about the same things. Girls and random stuff.
Hoyt: Some songs, we thought, “Aw, we could do this better.” But some songs have a place in your heart, they’re cool. I don’t know if I like it or not. We’re very critical people, of our own music. We’ll be like, “Oh, that sounds bad.” We’re open with each other, which is good. We’re not hurting anyone’s feelings if we say we don’t like it.
Does the meaning of the songs change for you over the years?
Hoyt: Yeah, I’ll always think back and the lyrics I wrote were about a situation I was in or a feeling I had. That always stays very true to me. When I hear those songs, I just think about that one time. It stays pretty much the same. Sometimes I’ll go back, and it’s really cool, because I think about the subject matter and I want to explore the same topic in a new song.
So, you’ve said that you’ve had the cops called a few times while filming music videos. But have your neighbors ever done anything to retaliate against your crazy loud rehearsals?
Kyle: Oh yeah. Many times.
Hoyt: One time, we were in San Diego and we were jamming, and gosh, this lady… There were a lot of college students in the area, and there were some old people that would live there and hated the college kids because they were rowdy and would party and stuff. There was this lady who would call the cops every five seconds over everything. Like if our car was parked a little bit outside of where it was supposed to, she would call the cops. She was always peeking out the blinds. If you look at our EP “Mel’s Neck of the Woods,” that person peering out of the blinds, we tried to make it about that one neighbor. She stormed into our jam session, and was super drunk.
Trevor: She was grinding on you. It was so weird. I was like, “What is going on?”
Kyle: She was like, “Oh, I love this song. You guys should play it this way.”
Hoyt: Then the next day she called the cops. It was like she forgot she had done that. The cop showed up and was like, “We got a call you were playing some really loud music.” And we just had our acoustic guitars. He was super chill. He was like, “Yeah, you guys can totally do this.”
Trevor: One time, I was playing drums at my house, I was by myself. It was like eight or nine, it wasn’t even super late. We got a knock at the door, and my dad answered, because I didn’t hear the knock because I was playing drums. Some lady was there and was like, “Tell Ringo Starr in there to shut up!”. My dad knew I was a big fan of Ringo Starr, so he knew I’d be complimented by that.
[Laughter]
You described yourselves as caffeine addicts in a different interview. What’s your usual go-to coffee order?
Hoyt: I like cold brews with a lot of caffeine. It helps get the records done.
Kyle: Iced coffee with milk.
Hoyt: I’ve never seen you drink that.
Kyle: That’s what I drink.
Live shows are obviously a really integral part of your band, but what band(s) would you want to see live after this pandemic that you’ve never seen live before?
Hoyt, Kyle, and Trevor: Um. Um. Um. Uh. Um.
Kyle: Black Flag.
Hoyt: Nirvana.
Trevor: God.
Kyle: You guys put me on the spot for this one. Royal Blood. They’re pretty neat.
Hoyt: They have some good songs.
Kyle: I want to go to a festival of some sort.
Hoyt: Like Coachella.
What are your upcoming plans?
Kyle: Um, just maybe some music videos. We’re always working on music videos for new songs and old songs.
Hoyt: More covers.
Kyle: We’re excited to play some real shows.
Weronika: Don’t get the cops called again.
Hoyt: That was terrible. Once we were doing the video for “Chest Hair” at the beach and everyone was just calling the cops left and right. They were like, “You can’t do that.” We had permission, but people didn’t care. It was the drums that were too loud or something. One guy was like, “My wife she can’t go to the beach, it’s too loud.”
And this frickin’ lady, she walked in the middle of the street and almost caused an accident. We were parked on the side of the street unloading gear. She was like, “This is why you don’t park in the middle of the street, it causes accidents!”. And then she started yelling at my mom. She called the cops.
We had the land cruiser, and the license plate says, “I Love Hoyt” and the cop was like, “What’s the license plate?” and she had to say, “I love Hoyt.” So funny.
THE END
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