Interview with Gillian McGhee of Turnspit

Chicago punks Turnspit release their debut full-length album, Desire Paths, this Friday. You can stream the whole album now over at New Noise Magazine. I pointed this out earlier this year as one of the albums to look forward to in 2018. It is full of catchy, emo-tinged pop punk songs that are as high on meaning as they are on hooks. Look for a full review here later this week. Desire Paths was recorded right here in Chicago at Atlas Studios. Preorder the album through Dodgeball Records. Catch Turnspit live at their album release show this Saturday at the GMan Tavern with Retirement Party, Blood People and Third Twin Sister. More info on that show here. I chatted with guitarist and vocalist Gillian McGhee about the new album, live shows and making a hot sauce.

Phil Collins: How does it feel to have it coming out where people are going to hear the full album and kind of having it released to the world in a few days here?

Gillian McGhee: Right now I just feel like there is so much to do before that actually happens but I think we're all just ready ... We started recording it in December of 2016. It's just, you know, we've had these songs for a long time and we're so proud of it and we've been sitting on it for a long time ... We're just super stoked to have people finally hear what our sound is now as a band. We've matured a lot since those (2015 and 2016) EPs.

PC: I'm sure kind of announcing the record and then putting out a song and then putting out another song, that's a good lead up and it gets people excited about it but having recorded everything I'm sure you must be ready for people to just hear the whole thing already.

GM: Yeah, definitely.

PC: You said you have kind of a lot of stuff to do between now and it coming out, is it mostly promo stuff and getting ready for the release show or what does that look like?

GM: Yeah, totally. Just even like scheduling an interview like with you, doing a couple podcast things ... promoting the record release show. Just a lot of things getting tied up leading up to the release.

PC: The sequencing of the songs on the album comes off very deliberate to me. It makes a lot of sense switching off who's on lead vocals if you're listening track to track and the tones of the songs. How much did you guys bounce that around?

GM: That was really important and I have to credit Jason with the bulk of that. Because sequencing is something that personally for me, I had a general idea of like oh this song should be at the beginning and this song should be toward the end, whatever. Jason really took over and really analyzed the sequencing and I will say, almost every interview that we've done or friend that we've sent it to, one of the first things that they mention is how smart the sequencing is. That's something that as a songwriter, you don't always think about because your songs are like the meat and potatoes, right. But the sequencing is really important and is something that I never really had to think about too much because I just put out solo EPs with three or four of my songs. This was a different beast with different songwriters and I think the fact that people are noticing that is really really awesome. That was a lot of Jason's doing but we all obviously agreed as a band on the final order of everything.

PC: As a full album listener, in the music industry at large, that's kind of been going off the wayside for the last several, many years. Since the whole Napster thing, it seems like people are just pushing more singles and stuff. So when that is apparent on an album, I definitely appreciate it because that's still how I consume music.

GM: We want to create an experience for people, whether that's our live show or our record. We spend time talking about our setlist as well. I think that just goes to show the amount of detail that goes into what we do, how we do it. It's not just like we get up there willy nilly and figure out what we want to play at that moment in time. Everything has a lot of forethought and planning. That's kind of how we operate as a band and I'm glad that that comes through on Desire Paths.

PC: Are there any songs that you like playing live better as a full band versus at your acoustic shows?

GM: It's tough to answer that. Acoustic as in me and Jason or acoustic as in like when I do my solo sets? Because that will change my answer.

PC: When you do the Hi Ho stuff, that's different, right?

GM: Yeah, because Jason and I sometimes do acoustic sets. But yeah for Hi Ho versus Turnspit, one of my favorite songs to play live with Turnspit is "Watching the Lightning." That song relies so heavily on backing vocals. Jason's lead line is so hooky and when I strip it down, I need to have the crowd sing it with me. Unless I'm at a show where I know most people, I'm not going to have that. I played that song I think when I opened for Jeff Rosenstock a couple years ago. I don't know if I played it with a crowd solo before. It didn't convey as well as it could have. "Irish Name," which is one of the newer ones, that one is fun to play acoustic but again I feel like full band it just has such a stronger impact. On the other hand, I love playing "To the Moon and Back" solo. I think that's really powerful. I also like playing "Skin" full band better, that one, you know that song is about sexual assault. The first couple times I ever played it, before I brought it to Turnspit, I played it at two of my acoustic shows and almost started crying while I was singing it. It was really tough to get up there by yourself and sing something so personal and raw and vulnerable and upsetting. When I brought it to Turnspit, we made it so you still got that at the beginning of the song but then my band comes in and backs me up and it's like this empowered rage that I think the song turns into. That, for me, feels like more of a I'm here and I'm ok after everything that's happened to me and I feel more powerful playing that song full band. I still will sometimes play it solo, but I have to mentally prepare myself for it in a way that I don't with Turnspit.

PC: That makes sense. I'm sure it takes on kind of a different tone for the space too.

GM: Yeah, because I can stand up and yell and stomp my feet a little bit.

PC: When did you open for Jeff Rosenstock?

GM: I want to say February of 2016. I think so. It was cold, for sure. February at the Beat Kitchen.

PC: You're going to be on the same hot sauce label so to speak with Soothsayer. How did that come about for you guys?

GM: We wanted to collaborate with Kyle for so long. Over the last year, we've been like hey, when the record comes out, we want to do a hot sauce. He's like dope. I'm so down. Kyle's always been a big supporter of our band and we all like hot sauce and stuff. It was really like every couple of months, I'd be like hey, the record still isn't coming out, are you still down to do a hot sauce and he's like yeah, just keep me in the loop. It's been a long time coming and we're really excited about it. Kyle was saying it's the most different sauce he's ever made because usually he does like garlic and onions as the base and we wanted to do something different. Jason really wanted to have lavender as one of the main flavor profiles in the sauce. We were thinking of doing like a raspberry or some sort of fruity kind of hot sauce. It turned out to be a strawberry lavender hot sauce. It's still pretty hot by my standards. I'm kind of a wuss. It's right there at the cusp of where I can handle it and it's really tasty even though my mouth is kind of on fire. And I'm so equally stoked for Kyle and Soothsayer's success. Obviously he's a friend of ours and I'm stoked on that. He's done hot sauces for Less Than Jake, the Flatliners, Elway and Direct Hit and it's just been really cool to see how his passionate side business that is outside of making music is still supporting the music scene. I think that's a really cool thing about the Chicago punk scene is how supportive everyone is in any way that they can be.

PC: That Malort hot sauce blew up pretty big.

GM: Yeah! Space Blood. That took on a life of its own, for sure.

PC: Are Turnspit Malort drinkers, or no?

GM: Sometimes. Most of the time no. Dan Tinkler, the drummer of Turnspit, does love Malort. But the rest of us, I would say, avoid it. Jason one time did a shot of Malort with Sam, I think, from Space Blood, who's hot sauce, the Malort hot sauce - that was their band. One time they were all doing shots at the bar at Burlington and Jason immediately took the shot and went for the garbage can and literally threw up all over. It's not a thing. I will do it as a novelty or if somebody is putting a Malort shot in front of me. But even in the last four or five months, I will say I will not do a shot of Malort. Sorry, can't. I can't put myself through this again. My one rule that I have with Malort is that I will never drink it unless I've had at least two or three drinks. That taste doesn't leave your mouth, it like sticks to your tongue so you have to have some sort of alcoholic coating over it already before I let it ruin my body.

PC: You have to have a chaser ready to go right away otherwise that flavor is just going to stick there. With the release show coming up at the GMan, is there any personal reason you chose the GMan or it just kind of worked out to have it there?

GM: Yeah, I mean I wanted to do somewhere different. You know, we've played Quenchers before, we've played Burlington and all those important medium sized like Downstairs SubT and played Chop Shop. The GMan has been a place that the four of us individually and together have gone for many years. We have a lot of personal histories there. We're friendly with the staff. It's just been a place where a lot of us know a lot of important musical stuff and just general moments have happened. Lots of blackout nights for me. I've spent a lot of time there. The reason behind it was primarily sentimental. We love the Metro and the GMan crew. We wanted to try and do something different for the release show and not just play the same place over and over again. A second choice would have been Beat Kitchen. Close second if GMan wasn't able to do the date. We also love everyone over at Kickstand. That's kind of why it's an important spot for us. We went there after our JBTV thing and we have other band things there after shows at the Metro and all that.

PC: As a Cubs fan, punk fan, it's been a very good post-game refuge if I'm ever out there after the game. All the craziness is mostly the other way down Clark so just kind of ducking into the GMan, even if it's busy it still feels like, ok, I got into the good bar.

GM: You're in a safe space. Totally.

PC: The record is coming out on Dodgeball Records. Do you know people involved with them or how did you get hooked up with Dodgeball?

GM: Yeah, kinda. I knew that Mike Felumlee, he does Live from the Rock Room and then is the drummer for the Smoking Popes and is a songwriter of the Bigger Empty. Mike has been an early supporter of Turnspit and we played shows with the Bigger Empty for a while and I saw that he was involved with Dodgeball, which was a new label kind of based out of the Midwest. That is kind of how I heard about it, what tipped me off to it. I started doing a little bit of investigating and I was reaching out to a bunch of different labels over the summer when we were trying to shop Desire Paths around. Chris Messer is kind of the head of Dodgeball, I sent him the record and about a month later he got back to me and said he really liked it and wanted to talk. We talked, and here we are.

PC: Is there anything else we should be on the lookout for in 2018 with Turnspit or anything else that you'd like to add?

GM: I think we've got quite a few shows lined up already. We're gonna try to play a lot of regional Midwest cities at the very least, hopefully go on some two to three week runs coming up in the summer and fall. I think one of the most exciting and also anxiety-inducing parts of being in this band and about to drop the record is we really have no idea how it's going to be received. Obviously, we really like it but you never know, if the right person hears it everything might change for us or we might just still be trucking along, working as hard as we can you know, to put out music. We have a ton of material already. If we started writing a full-length now, we could probably finish it in a month or two. I think we definitly don't know too much what's going on this year. We're excited to see just how Desire Paths kind of takes us on a new journey or a new path ha ha ha. A new path for the band. There we go. Wrap it up.