Author: Nicholas Brandis
Last week the first half of my interview with Milwaukee based band Diet Lite was published. Today, the much anticipated second half has been posted. Let’s get right into it – I hope you enjoy the read.
NB: I was hoping you guys could tell me a little bit about the Seems To Be The Way It Tends To Go album cover. More specifically, whose eyes are those, staring into my soul?
MN: This is a good story. So, my little brother, he goes to the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. He’s a hell of a visual artist, and he’s done a lot of –
EM: He did the “Chopsticks” video, he’s done a lot of our stuff.
MN: He directed the “Chopsticks” video, he’s done show posters for us, he’s helped me with other bands that I’ve been in with visual stuff. So, we enlisted him to do the album cover. Here’s the backstory. The first music video we did was “Queen”. We had this one character in this video that was just someone staring, it was like a classic kind of Scooby-Doo type thing where we had someone behind a painting, with their eyes. So, we cut the eyes out of this owl painting. At the same time my brother Alex was doing this cover for us, and we were going back and forth with ideas. He had this cool design and these cool texts, but it wasn’t gelling yet, and I remember we were trying to add borders to it, it just wasn’t working. I remember I handed him the eyes that we cut out of that painting. I was like “see if you can add this to it. See what you can do with this.” I remember he looked down at them, and he just looked up at me and was like, “okay, I know what we’re going to do now.” Then like a day later he got back to me with the finished product. But yeah, Alex Niemann (@botched180) on Instagram, you should check him out he’s really good.
NB: That serves as a really good segue, because my next question is about your music videos. I just adore those music videos, they’re awesome. I was wondering, do you guys have a favorite music video that you’ve made? Is there one that stands out above the rest?
EM: Dude, “Chopsticks” is probably the coolest one honestly. “Queen” was the most fun.
MN: “Chopsticks” was really cool. Making the “Queen” one was really fun. That was the first time we really ever done it, and the director who did it, it was his first music video too.
EM: His first Rock music video, he usually did Rap music videos.
MN: It was really fun. We had some writing sessions where we bounced back and forth ideas, and it was kind of like a natural extension of some of the skit comedy we’ve done on the Diet Lite page, and some of what Evan has done with his Tik Tok channel, just on a bigger scale. That was a lot of fun, to see that develop and come into fruition. “Chopsticks” was just fun to film.
EM: I think it’s the coolest looking too.
NB: I was hoping you guys could tell me a little bit about your songwriting process. Is it a collaborative, group effort, do y’all individually write songs and present them to your bandmates, maybe a combination of the two?
EM: Definitely a combination. All three of us write music. But then honestly, when we do take it to the others then it’ll kind of evolve. Taking “Queen” to these guys, I kind of had a simple bassline, but he [Kelson] embellished it a ton and made it way more interesting. I feel like “Keep It on the Record” you [Max] just wrote that and we play it pretty much how he wrote it. Sometimes it’s very collaborative, sometimes it’s all individual.
KK: I feel like we all have our strengths with how we write. Like, I feel that Evan is a drummer and a guitarist, and he’s able to multitask in his head, so he can picture what’s going on where. Max is just a really good songwriter in general and he’s really good at structuring things. He’s really good at having the feel for how long something should be, and also just a really good lyricist. I’m okay at some things, but I’m really good at instrumentation of things and writing guitar solos. Which really doesn’t help when I’m playing the bass.
MN: No, it does! Kelso’s the lick-master. The bass in this band is the lead guitar.
KK: So yeah, there’s times where we’ll write out a full song idea, or if we get stuck on parts we’ll bring them to each other and help each other. Hold each other’s hands, kiss each other on the cheek, and finish the song. That’s really what it comes down to. I think we write efficiently, probably more efficiently than most bands. And yeah, we write good songs.
NB: I love how Diet Lite markets themselves. What I mean by that, is I’ll see posts you guys make on your social media, where you’ll do a giveaway for a McChicken, or you’ll make a meme saying that Chris Pratt has been selected to play Max in an upcoming film about Diet Lite, among many other novel and funny methods of marketing the band and its music. So, with that I was wondering, who is the creative genius behind all of that?
EM: That’s me.
MN: Yeah, Evan definitely takes that up, and I think we’ve all kind of fallen in line behind that.
EM: It’s what gets people’s attention. I mean, we’re talking to a m*********** in Seattle right now. It works evidently.
MN: I don’t know, it’s like, what you said before, like the “I didn’t know you guys were so meta and philosophical and serious,” that was kind of my bent. I’ve let that take much more of a backseat, at least outwardly because a.) that’s not fun, no one wants to hear about your b****ing, and b.) comedy just works better.
EM: I majored in Marketing in college so I’ve got a little knowledge of it. Comedy is definitely the most effective form of advertising. What you brought up about being philosophical, I feel like that’s a reason why people have strayed away from rock music in recent years, because it’s serious as f***.
MN: Everyone’s way too serious. It’s funny, my dad and I were having this conversation today actually. He was talking to me, he was like, “I’m seeing a lot more of these younger bands, a lot of these Gen Z bands, these bands your age, they’re way more sarcastic, way more black humor, way more funny, and way more light-hearted.” And I was like, “yeah, I don’t know, we’re not doing high art here, we’re just playing rock and roll, you know?”
EM: In the past twenty years people have taken themselves too seriously. Like lighten the f*** up.
MN: I immediately look to bands like Pavement, or these kind of quirky 90’s indie rock bands.
EM: Pavement is funny on social media.
MN: Pavement is hilarious! They’re funny in their music videos, they’re funny everywhere except when it gets down to the music. It still reflects that humor, it’s upbeat, the lyrics don’t always make sense, it’s goofy. That’s kind of the approach that I like to think we take. The actual act of making the music and the content of the music is as serious as we want to be as people, but everything else beyond that can just be a big old farce.
EM: I feel like a big thing about getting people to like your band is getting them to like you as people. If they see the s*** you’re posting and they think, “I want to hang out with those guys, they look like fun dudes,” then they’re more open to listening to your music, you know what I mean?
NB: Oh, for sure. That’s exactly why I started listening to you guys, that’s exactly the reason. You nailed it on the head. Is there anything else you guys want to add about the marketing of the band?
EM: Honestly, be yourself. Just being yourself, it sounds cheesy and cliché, but if you’re putting on this image that’s not real and genuine then it’s not going to be effective at the end. You’re not really putting forth your true self.
MN: People are smart. They see through b***s***.
NB: With that, I want to ask about Evan’s Tik Toks. Evan, I imagine you’ll be able to explain it better than I could, so if you could please talk a little about that.
EM: Right, so for those of you who are not familiar, I have a bit of a following on Tik Tok. The main source of my content has been that I’ve been playing the little lick from the end of “Buddy Holly” by Weezer from the peak of the solo in that song, playing it every day trying to get Weezer and/or Rivers Cuomo to duet my video. So far, he’s only liked my video once, and I heard from their social media team like a year ago. But I’m still going strong, I’m still holding in there.
@dietlite_evan playing the riff from buddy holly by @weezer every day until they duet me. Tag #weezer and @rivers_cuomo #weezer #thebluealbum #riverscuomo
NB: What day are you on right now?
EM: I still need to make the video for today. Today will be day 515.
NB: 515? That’s incredible.
MN: If you can’t say anything else about this kid you can say he’s committed!
EM: And then I just try to post random funny s*** that I come up with, videos of the band, whatever. It’s just basically a dumping ground for creativity.
NB: Yeah, that’s how I discovered Diet Lite, through Evan’s Tik Tok.
MN: This is our cash cow. I personally hope he never duets it, because then Evan just keeps doing it and more people can find us.
NB: And it’s worked! That’s how I figured out about you guys, and we’re doing this interview right now. I’m interviewing you guys for KXSU, the student-led radio program and blog for Seattle University, so I have to ask, can we expect a Seattle concert any time in the future? I realize that Seattle and Milwaukee are about two thousand miles apart, but I think that having you guys perform a show over here would be incredibly cool.
MN: This coming summer we’re really hoping to do a seven-to-ten-day Midwest tour, something pretty close to home. Obviously, the goal is to play literally everywhere, at every venue in the world.
KK: And then eventually, the venues off the world.
EM: We’ll be the first band to play on Mars.
MN: The only time we’ve ever left Wisconsin to play is Chicago, and that’s not too far. We’re trying to go a lot farther than that though, very soon. That’s a big goal for us, among others.
NB: Well, seeing as I’m asking about possible future endeavors for Diet Lite, I was wondering what’s next for Diet Lite? Either in the immediate future, or months or even years down the road.
EM: We’re starting to record some new songs.
MN: Yeah, we’re going to be hitting the studio real soon with a lot of songs we’ve been playing in our live shows recently. We’ve been gigging a bunch; we’re going to be gigging a bunch more throughout the rest of the year and into 2022. Then in the summer of 2022 we’re going to want to be touring, and beyond that it’s just getting into a groove of exactly that. Record, tour, play a local gig, record, tour, play a local gig –
EM: Get a record deal and get some money behind this project.
MN: Until the powers that be decide that we’re good enough to throw millions of dollars at.
NB: Is there anything else you want to add to the people out there Diet Lite?
KK: Whatever you believe that you can do, you can do it.
MN: Abide in death.
EM: Follow us on Instagram, follow me on Tik Tok. They’ve got Tik Toks too.
NB: Alright, well thank you so much Diet Lite!
EM: Oh yeah man.
MN: Thanks for having us, it was fun.
Thus concludes the interview I conducted with Diet Lite. I hope that this interview has inspired you, the reader, to check them out as much as it has inspired me to continue listening to them. Their latest album, Seems To Be The Way It Tends To Go is available on all streaming platforms. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading this article – my first article with KXSU. Here’s to many more.
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NICHOLAS BRANDIS | Abiding in Death | KXSU Music Reporter