Starcrawler perform in The Current studio
February 28, 2023
Starcrawler’s Arrow de Wilde and Henri Cash met in high school in Los Angeles. Both were disenchanted with school and wanted to be in a touring band. “We rehearsed every day after school because we wanted to make it really happen,” Cash recalls. “And it did.”
“We both really, really had the same drive,” de Wilde adds, “which is I think the most important thing in starting a band, is everyone has to be kind of on the same page.”
Last September, Starcrawler released She Said, their third full-length album. While touring in support of the album, Starcrawler visited The Current studio to chat with host Ayisha Jaffer and to play songs from the new record.
Watch video of the performances above, and listen to the full session with interview in the audio player above. You can also read an interview transcript below. Starcrawler share their origin story, and they also talk about how one of their songs can trace its roots to Phoebe Bridgers’ guitarist and — yikes! — a car accident.
Interview Transcript
Edited for time and clarity.
Ayisha Jaffer: I'm Ayisha Jaffer, and I'm in the studio with Starcrawler; I've got Arrow and Henri with me today.
Henri Cash: How you doing?
Arrow de Wilde: What's up?
Ayisha Jaffer: I’m good! Thanks for being here. So I have to ask this because there's been a like, I've seen a lot of floating like origin stories, and I love origin stories. I know that you guys met in high school, but then like what was like the driving force to like greenlight Starcrawler together?
Henri Cash: Well, I wanted to drop out of school. And she didn't want to go to college. And we both wanted to be in a band on tour. And so when we met, we kind of, we rehearsed every day after school because we wanted to make it really happen. And then we did. We got lucky.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah, we, yeah, I don't know, we just like, you know, we both really, really had the same drive, which is kind of I think the most important thing in starting a band is everyone has to be kind of on the same page, you know? And, and yeah, we just practiced and played a lot, and then started just playing shows around L.A., like a bunch for a couple years until we, you know, we were able to tour and whatnot.
Ayisha Jaffer: You know, it's really, I feel like it's really rare that you have people who are actually artists who are actually from L.A.; you often hear, "We're from L.A., but we're actually from Philadelphia," or whatever. So do you feel like just growing up in the Los Angeles area like that, that has uniquely influenced some of the art that you create?
Henri Cash: Definitely, yeah. I mean, the L.A. music scene is incredible. And we were lucky to both grow up going to a lot of shows, and be around musicians who inspired us, you know, early on, to where we at least thought of it as something that was accessible. Because a lot of times, I feel like people that grew up in smaller towns, they think of, you know, their favorite bands as something so far out of reach and rock stars. And we just thought of that as people, and you know, like a job that just like a doctor or something; you could grow up and be a doctor, you could grow up and be a musician, if you worked hard, too. So we're super lucky in that sense.
Ayisha Jaffer: Yeah. And so you have a new record, too, out, She Said. Well, I want to talk about Tyler Bates, too, and working with him because I feel like that, what a unique choice because he's kind of like in the action horror lane a bit.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah.
Ayisha Jaffer: But a perfect choice for your band. So what was it like working with him?
Arrow de Wilde: I mean, it was super chill. And he's like,
Henri Cash: He's also family.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah!
Henri Cash: That's the kind of environment it felt like. We were constantly going to his house a lot and hanging out with his dog. And it's the same family vibe that we have, and he makes things sound so big for movies and stuff. And we did a song with him for this Dark Knights: Death Metal Series. And after we did that, a song "Goodtime Girl," we thought it sounded so cool that we wanted to continue working with him. And it was amazing. Also, the engineer Robert Carranza was amazing as well. He's worked on several records. And they're both just amazing people. And so it was a really special experience.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah.
Ayisha Jaffer: And I can tell you guys have like a cinematic thing going; like, there's visuals that inspire what you do in the sound. So I really love that you kind of choose all the elements to put to it, like in live performance, and otherwise.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah, it kind of happened naturally, like, meeting him and stuff. But then it kind of just, it all made sense once, I don't know, we started working together.
Ayisha Jaffer: One of the things I know you guys really care about: access and all-ages shows.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah!
Henri Cash: Oh my god, yes.
Ayisha Jaffer: And so I'm just curious, it's kind of a two-part question really, in that, how have you been able to kind of uniquely find ways to access those kids coming to your shows? And also, what would you like to see change to maybe bring them to the forefront?
Arrow de Wilde: It's hard!
Henri Cash: It's really hard. It's crazy because also the amount of money that gets handed if you play a 21-plus venue is much more than all ages. So a lot of the times, we're skipping out on like, you know a couple thousand dollars a night because we want to play the all-ages show. And that sucks that venues only care about the alcohol sales, and I miss the days of like Fugazi when they just played, you know, $5 shows and it was all ages. And I wish we could go back to that a little bit. But it's really hard in this era.
Arrow de Wilde: Because we try to make — we really do! — like, I know a lot of kids will write us mad, like they think that we like purposely do 21+ shows. But honestly, like, we we really try hard to make every show all ages on a tour, like it's literally a thing where we're like on the phone with our agent, and like, "Isn't there a different venue or something?" But like sometimes it just, like, sometimes there's just nothing you can do depending on the city or the size of venue that you have to play.
Henri Cash: Especially with Ticketmaster and all these. Ticketmaster. It's a weird thing. But I hope that more kids in each city can, you know, start figuring out putting on their own shows and own venues. In L.A., we have a lot of cool underground venues, like Non Plus Ultra is one of them where they do underground all-ages shows. And The Smell is another one. And we go in to a lot of cities, and we try to look it up to find out what's the venue here that does that? Because also we're fans of music, and I loved going to shows when I was kid, and when it was 21-plus, I would be so bummed out and I'd write the band. Whereas a couple times where bands would come through and I'd get to watch the soundcheck and I thought that was really cool.
Arrow de Wilde: Yeah.
Henri Cash: One show could change you as a kid, you know? And so I think it's really important.
Arrow de Wilde: That's true. And it's just they're, like, way more fun of an audience. It's like, it's either a bunch of like, rad, you know, teens and 20-year-olds that come dressed up and are moshing, or just a bunch of like, when it's 21-plus, it's like, no offense, you know — we love you, thanks for listening to music — but like, you know, like, they're just not as fun. Like, as an audience, they just stand there. And they're all like...
Henri Cash: I think the mix of both is really the perfect, you know, everybody.
Ayisha Jaffer: Wait, so I have to ask about "Stranded." I'm not interested in the meaning necessarily, because I want, like you say, like, have other people interpret it yourself. But what was like the feeling that inspired that? Or was there like an experience that happened that inspired the root, because we're thrashing "Stranded" here at The Current. We love it.
Henri Cash: I got in a car accident with Phoebe Bridgers' guitar player, Harrison Whitford, who I didn't know at the time; since then, we've kind of become friends. I was driving, it was still in the COVID phase where you weren't seeing anybody. And we came off tour. And I was, I realized I was an adrenaline junkie from every night, you know, you get this rush playing! And then all of a sudden, a hard stop and not seeing anybody, I was just miserable. So I would just get in the car, which is a cool L.A. thing as well, and just drive around. Kind of like after a show, we would drive for hours, and you feel like you had this meaning, you know, moving somewhere. And so I got in the car, because I felt like, I felt really out of touch with writing and just with myself personally. And to try to get some sort of inspiration. And then Harrison hit me with his car, which I don't even think it was his car. I think it was the drummer's car. But we were both so not, didn't know how to do that, you know, the exchange of information. It was very, "Oh, sorry about that, man."
"Oh, yeah."
"I mean, you're good."
Like, "Oh, we should probably..."
"Yeah, yeah, I guess, your license, right?" kind of thing.
And then after, we realized that we were both under 25 or something, so the insurance would have gone way up if we reported it, so it just never got reported. And then I had to get a new car.
Ayisha Jaffer: Oh, no! It was that bad?
Henri Cash: Oh, but I went home and got inspiration right that, which...
Arrow de Wilde: Trade a car for a song!
Henri Cash: It was worth it. I feel like we got something out of it because it was like the first thing. So we never, we were like, I said, it's cool, you know, I got something out of it, too.
Ayisha Jaffer: This song will pay for the car.
Henri Cash: Yeah! That was the hope.
Ayisha Jaffer: Well, thank you guys so much for hanging out with me. Starcrawler in the studio today. She Said is out now. Thank you, guys.
Henri Cash: Thank you so much!
Arrow de Wilde: Thank you.
Songs Performed
00:00:00 Road Kill
00:02:18 Stranded
00:06:03 She Said
All songs from Starcrawler’s 2022 album, She Said, available on Big Machine Label Group.
Musicians
Arrow de Wilde - vocals
Henri Cash - guitar
Seth Carolina - drums
Credits
Guests - Starcrawler
Host - Ayisha Jaffer
Producer - Derrick Stevens
Videographer - Derek Ramirez
Audio - Evan Clark
Graphics - Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer - Luke Taylor
External Link
Starcrawler - official site