Today we’d like to introduce you to Sean Zearfoss.
Hi Sean, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Small Reactions formed as an earlier band loosely affiliated with the jam band genre. I’d mention the name, but there might be some audio or video evidence that is best left to the dusty annals of history. You would probably prefer hearing us as doing what we now instead of a Phish knock off. We still jam on occasion, but we try to sound more like Can or a looser Stereolab. (We still love the Grateful Dead, but we just don’t sound like them anymore!)
Until we signed with SofaBurn, we were almost entirely DIY. We have a small team of folks that we’ve hired, but mostly everything rests on our own shoulders. We pressed our records, booked our own tours, designed our own merchandise, and do our own graphic design. This amounts to a lot of work, but it pays off when we see the finished product. Well, actually, I wouldn’t say it “pays” yet, but maybe one day?
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Being in a band is difficult, but entirely rewarding. This isn’t a hobby for us, but it also isn’t keeping a roof over our heads or food on the table. Our situation isn’t unlike most other bands today, though. We all have “real” jobs, or at least jobs that pay us more than this one does. So, squeezing in practices, shows, loading and unloading, recording, pressing records, and all the other things after an evening of work or shreds of social life is not always easy. And it doesn’t get easier as time goes by, either.
To be a touring musician, you’ve either got to make enough between record sales and shows or you’ve got to keep work that allows you to tour for long stretches at random. It’s a conundrum, though–do I take less money from a more “stable” job in order to tour and do I go all in on my music career and struggle to make a living wage even fully devoted to the craft? It’s a Catch 22: outside work needed to sustain yourself prevents you from doing this full time, yet you often feel like you have to do this full time to really get anywhere, but you won’t make enough money to do it full time. America does many things well, but value the arts (at least monetarily) is not one of those things.
We had been working on our new record, ‘New Age Soul,’ before the pandemic.
We wanted to finish it so we would have something to release and promote in the months we couldn’t play shows and tour, but were obviously reluctant to do so. We stopped practicing in early March, but we decided in September to find ways to shoot videos, practice, and record safely in order to finish the project. I think we finished the record on 4 practices and 2 days in the studio. We wore lots of masks. We finished the project and are now back to not seeing one another until if safer to gather. It was a challenge navigating the new normal. It’s an even bigger challenge not playing any shows or touring at the moment. Playing live shows are such a fabric of who we are as individuals, so it has been hard adapting to that, but we take this pretty seriously. If you’ve never worn ear plugs and a mask at the same time, you really should–it’s an experience, especially when you’re playing drums.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We branded ourselves as a “Nerve Pop” band years ago and that label still seems to reflect us fairly well. We are beholden to a pop melody, but spend most of our time in this band trying to push that melody as far as we can towards a tipping point. How far can pop music go before it is no longer “pop?” We try to find that line and spend a song or an album or a show’s length trying to dance around it.
To be more tangible about what we do, I’d say we try to write indie pop songs with a bottom to them. We are driven equally by bands like Orange Juice and Women. Another example might be ‘White Light White Heat’ vs third album Velvet Underground. We like a good melody, but we never want it to be easy, for ourselves or the listeners.
We’ve always tried to have a pretty solid live show. We started this band in Kennesaw. GA and Ross, who joined later, started his career in Boca Raton, Florida. In those scenes, it wasn’t really about the records as much as it was about the shows. In DIY spaces, your band exists only for that 30 minutes you’re onstage. So, it needs to count. We learned that early and never forgot. Our albums were still on a burned CDs with my name and number on the top so you could find us. Social media wasn’t really what it is now, so we operated differently!
The punk mantra is “No future.” Even though we were never really a punk band, this was still our ethos. When we went to record, it was always just a take or two of each song, minimal overdubs, and little thought. It was pretty much what we sounded like on stage with little else. The present was all that mattered and you can hear it on our first record, ‘Similar Phantoms.’ With our subsequent records, we’ve begun focusing on the details more. There is a future and it depends on a great record. So, we tried to make those.
Our producer, Jason Kingsland, argued a while back that a record can be its own animal. He pushed us to think about arrangements, structure, variety, and identity. Worry about the live show later. You can hear his influence on “Police State” especially. That arrangement was his idea. He, along with another producer/engineer Ben Etter, helped make our forthcoming record ‘New Age Soul’ what it is. We spent more time on this record than anything we’ve recorded in the past (combined probably) and I think it’s evident. I’m prouder of this record than I am anything we’ve done yet. I’ve been happy with our live shows for a long time, but I think I can finally say I’m also quite proud of an album.
I’m answering these interview questions on Thanksgiving, so I’d like to say how thankful I am for our producer/engineers Jason Kingsland and Ben Etter. They’re the real MVPs and I think they both pushed us to another space with the band. I’m proud to know those guys well and call them my friends. Also, big props to Maze Studios here in Reynoldstown.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I love talking about folks who help us! Malissa Sole here in Atlanta taught us almost everything we know about music business and integrity within the industry. Jeremy Theall has been our press guy for a long time; he does a fantastic job with his PR firm Future Chord. He hooked us up with SofaBurn Records who we’re thrilled to be working with on ‘New Age Soul.’ Zach Gabbard at SofaBurn deserves huge thanks especially. He was willing to sign a band to his roster in the middle of a pandemic when touring was impossible and the music industry was taking some huge hits at the moment. Ben Etter and Jason Kingsland have been our engineers, producers, and guides for a few years now. I trust each of them with my art and livelihood.
Before we began working with the Maze Studios crew and having them do the mixing “in house,” we always had our good friend Jeremy Scott at Civil Defense Studios in Brooklyn do our mixing and mastering. He’s a real gem of a dude. He mixed and mastered our first two albums and a smattering of other songs for us.
These people all get the formal credits.
Informal credits go to people like Jeremy Underwood who is the best friend of this band. He taught us how to be an indie pop band and even let us be his backing band in Gold-Bears for albums and tours. We still hope he resurrects that band. We’re waiting, Jeremy. Sara Rachele gets me off my ass and reminds me why I’m a musician, even on the days when it sucks to be one. She also gives me honest opinions when our songs don’t sound as good as they could. We even asked her to play bass for us, but she said no. Probably a wise decision! She also writes and sings my favorite songs ever. Finally, I cannot go on without mentioning Luciano Giarrano, who was our earliest cheerleader, engineer, and confidant. I could mention Jeffrey Bützer, Chad Shivers, and Mitchell Hardage, but then I’d probably go on for pages. Thanks to those guys, too.
Contact Info:
- Email: smallreactions@gmail.com
- Website: smallreactions.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/smallreactions
- Facebook: facebook.com/smallreactions
- Twitter: twitter.com/smallreactions
- Youtube: youtube.com/smallreactions
- SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/smallreactions
Image Credits
Ruben Alvarado
