interview: heatloaf
photo credit: John McSweeney
I caught up with philadelphia comfy-rockers heatloaf around the dining room table of the cozy west philly house that half the band lives at before band practice recently. Heatloaf have been shining a soft light in the philly do-it-yourself scene for a few years now. After their 2019 debut EP, meatwave, and 2020 full-length sweet stroke, your fav no boy band is set to return with a second full-length of sticky-sweet songs in the new year. 2024 will certainly be an exciting year for loafheads around the globe.................
heatloaf is…
pax martyn (they/them)
beck picone (they/them/theirs)
margot whipps (she/her)
raven bell (she/her)
Describe heatloaf’s lore in 5 words.
all: wooooowwwwwww
pax: friendship, DIY, like very consistently DIY, phillyyyyy
beck: true
margot: yeahh
beck: temple university…
[everyone laughs]
beck: no boys…
pax: that’s two words… but those could be the two words
margot: that could be the two…
beck: what is it? friendship…
pax: friendship, philly, DIY, no boys
margot: that’s pretty good actually, yeah
beck: that does describe heatloaf
margot: friendship first… love
pax: that’s 6 words
all: bonus word love
Now tell me how it actually started
beck: me and margot met at Temple because we were living in the same hallway
margot: yeah and i really wanted to start a band and [Beck was] interested in also starting a band, but we were very like ‘we have no idea how we would do that’ like it was an idea that we were both like ‘this would be cool’ but we weren’t believing that it would actually happen
beck: we didn’t try very hard to make it happen, but i had been going to [Philadelphia] for shows in like highschool and stuff and i thought that it would be a really cool thing to have a band that had no boys, because that wasn’t something i had seen before
margot: and we both felt that we would feel more comfortable writing, practicing, and performing if there weren’t boys present in our band. At least for me personally, I was very scared to start a band of my own and go into a scene that I didn’t know and i was like ‘I’d rather control some aspect of it.’
beck: we didn’t have very many connections
margot: no, no
beck: I don’t remember the exact timeline, but I just loosely put on my Tinder that i was starting a girl band and we needed a drummer and I spotted Raven on Tinder and she said she was a drummer and she played guitar and was looking for a band, she had just transferred to Temple, and I superliked her and I made my bio ‘don’t be scared i need you you’re a drummer’
[all laugh]
margot: and then we met her and it was amazing…. It wasn’t bad
beck: the first couple months of us practicing was so bizarre because it was in like one of those very new Temple off-campus housing buildings
margot: it was in Raven’s room
raven: and Margot and Beck sat on the bed and i was using an electronic drum set
margot: that was just how we practiced, sitting on Raven’s bed…but yeah, that was how we started. We played one show that we like, hopped on last minute and played all of the songs we had, which was 4 songs, and then we didn’t play again until after covid.
pax: over covid, living at my parents house, like mega-lockdown margot messaged me, and i like knew margot but
margot: but we weren’t close
pax: [Margot wasn’t] like close friends story territory
[all laugh]
margot: we just had friends who...
pax: we had mutual friends, we had mutuals… and Margot knew that I played guitar and she asked me if i wanted to play lead in heatloaf and i remember recording videos of myself playing the songs that [Margot] had tabbed out for me or like, hummed tunes to… [i was] recording them, on the like, mac photo booth video function being like “Hi Margot! What do you think of this?” and then like, sending it to [her]…and then it wasn’t for like a full year, year and a half after that that we even played a show after that because COVID halted everything.
margot: but we practiced a lot
pax: we practiced every single week, we played the set twice through every time
margot: it was nice, by the time we were playing a lot we were really comfortable playing together, which was nice, cuz our first show – we did practice a lot for our first show – but it was still really scary, but understandably.
Do you remember the bill for the first show you played?
pax: the first show that I played with y’all was highnoon, bleary eyed, and...
beck: and itchy
margot: but our first show was…
beck: hot dad calendar...
raven: was it was poms?
margot: poms
beck: kid south
margot: Yeah it was a weird show, but i always remember hot dad calendar because they have that song
margot & beck: PBR lite
beck: it’s so good
margot: yeah it’s very catchy
margot & beck singing: “drinking PBR lite / all day and all night”
[all laugh]
You guys put out your first full-length album, sweet stroke, in 2020, and I know you’re working on a new record, how has your process of putting things together changed?
pax: the big difference now is when we recorded the album in 2020, it was still COVID and none of us had real jobs yet and like nothing was really going on and we recorded the entire album front to back, 11 songs, in maybe 12 hours total…we used our friends basement
margot: we didn’t want to take a lot of time and we pretty much ran through all the songs in one day, we recorded guitar, bass and drums in one day and then i think the second day we went back it was like fixing some of those and vocals and then we were done… and kind of the same with the EP meatwave we recorded that all in one day but now… i think it’s because we were borrowing someone else’s space we were like “we need to do this really quick and we don’t have another option”
pax: and now we’re recording it in this house, so it’s really easy to be like “oh, it’s right down there, i can do it anytime” and then anytime is like, in a month.
[all laugh]
pax: but it’s nice, since then I went school for audio and i feel like now i have a much better grip on producing music and recording music and i have language for things that I didn’t have before instead of being just like “oh press this button and it makes it louder, idk” [laughs] i definitely have more knowledge but it is taking longer because i have that knowledge now and i’m going to be a bit pickier about how we do things
margot: yeah, we just have to be more [disciplined about] setting times
beck: the first album we were very disciplined
pax: very prompt
beck: [Margot] wrote, like, everything and gave [herself] a deadline over the lockdown and [she] finished all the songs and then we started practicing them for a year before we recorded them. and this time, it’s just been…
margot: it’s been a longer process of the songs being done and then also getting to also recording them, just the difference of what we had going on when we recorded the last album, it’s just so vastly different
beck: we had literally nothing going on
[all laugh]
What’s something you’d love to see more of in DIY music?
beck: womennnnn
[all laugh]
margot: hot chicks
[all laugh]
margot: but like, foreal
beck: straight up…i do love, like, a femme-fronted band where it’s just her and her little guys behind her, love that vibe, but i do also just want more femme presence even in booking, it’s a guy’s world sometimes
margot: most of the time
pax: also, coming from someone who loves heavy music, I love a soft live band. I love when bands can be cute and sincere and i think that is something that we excel in
margot: yeah, and that we don’t have a lot of other people in that circle with us
pax: i feel like it’s kind of hard to book sometimes
beck: we’ve done some really strange bills
[all laugh]
margot: but i think that’s because we’re doing something that isn’t as… popular? At least within the musicians that we know but that’s not a bad thing, too, it’s nice to feel like we’re doing our own thing. But it would be nice to have a band or multiple bands, that they get our vibe and we’re on the same plane of creating stuff and could kind of feel like there’s more competition within our section because i think that’d make me want to work harder…
beck: we have a monopoly
margot: at least in our genre, whatever it is, right now… in our own circles, but i agree with you i would like to have more of that vibe that isn’t someone’s solo project
pax: yeah, full band soft, sweet…
margot: comforting
pax: comfort, friendship
margot: ooh! Comfort is good, yeah comfortable…soft... yeah, but definitely more…
j2bb:hot chicks
margot: emphasis on hot
[all laugh]
beck: they gotta be hot
margot: yeah, but it would be cool… cuz… i don’t know like i really just wouldn’t have felt comfortable playing music if i hadn’t found all of you guys
beck: no, we started out really rough
[all laugh]
margot: it’s true, we really did not know what we were doing
beck: we had no idea… i mean, Raven did school of rock
pax: hey…
beck: well…
pax: and Pax
beck: when me and margot started we wanted to do something so people could see it, but we had no idea what we were doing, we were starting basically from scratch, it was really rough, but i want more people to realize that they can do that
margot: that’s what i try to tell people too when i talk to them about it, it’s like we were literally stupid
pax: right, we worked for it
margot: we worked our butts off, for sure
You guys have any advice for the new year?
pax: practice forgiveness and empathy
beck: live and let live
pax: quit smoking, read a book
margot: go to shows, support your friends
pax: honestly yes
margot: nothing feels better than watching your friends play music
beck: nothing feels better than your friends coming to your show
margot: that’s true, go to our shows
pax: come see heatloaf
margot: yeah but, community is important, go to your friends stuff, you’ll feel better about living life
beck: real.
beck: quit smoking and exercise, that’s what i want for myself
raven: being more present
margot: get off your phone…
pax: follow heatloaf and then get off all social media
margot: follow us and just never look again
[laughing]
margot: we should start an email newsletter
pax: i do that for work, i could do that very easily
margot: i feel like we should have John [McSweeney] do it
pax: yeah
margot: John could be in charge of our newsletter, he made us a website
j2bb: oh wow
margot: a fanclub website
pax: on Neocities
margot: and it has a little song that plays
pax: it’s like this little cat song and then the album art is raining from the top of the screen
margot: we need more of those, make us more websites
pax: advice: be more like John (@djmcsweden)
beck: real.
margot: yeah that’s a good one too
**loaf nation website disclaimer**
any opinions on skateboarding?
margot: raven has opinions
raven: i haven’t really been doing it recently
[laughing]
beck: didn’t you break your foot or something?
raven: yeah i broke my toe a couple months ago and then i just never… [laughs] I would have to agree though, more girls would be cool, because i feel like there’s a big intimidation with that
margot: there’s probably parallels
raven: there needs to be a bigger community to go together
pax: i didn’t skate but i grew up in a skate shop like, sleeping in cabinets for naps when i was like 2 years old in the skate shop and i think that more girls should do it, that’s all, no opinions but i love community. Support your local skate shop.
margot: yeah support pax’s dads…
pax: support my dad’s skateshop, it’s all about us…wear a helmet
