DWLLRS talk tour, how they met and family influences

Composed of lifelong friends Bren Eisman and Joey Spurgeon, DWLLRS evolved their late night conversations into a string of hits that landed them over half a million monthly Spotify listeners. After their first ever tour, which they headlined, interviewer Sloane Johnson got a chance to talk with them about touring, how they came together as a band, how they are preparing for the future.

Sloane: You guys just got done with your first headlining tour. Congratulations. What was that like?

Bren: Thank you. It was, everything we dreamed of, that's what we called the tour. It was surreal. We've spent so much time building this brand and working on all this music and kind of just establishing who we are online for years because we started the band around Covid.

Sloane: How did you prepare for this tour? And would you do anything different or add anything,  as you're preparing to support Claire Rosinkranz?

Joey: We rehearsed a lot. We rehearsed a week almost every night. I feel like we were pretty prepared. The only thing that was tricky was flying with all of our equipment, which was pretty stressful. So for this next tour, we might be taking a bus or a van, and, that'll be different might be a little bit better.

Bren: We've been preparing for this our whole lives.

Sloane: So you guys grew up together and you went to college together. What were your majors at the time and your career plans?

Joey: I was a psychology major in college. And then, I transferred to Berkeley School of Music and was gonna major in the production or music business I think.

Bren:  I majored in film, well, it technically wasn't film because the school that we went to, because me and Joey went to the same school our first year, it was super small and they didn't even have a film school. But I always wanted to do a film. It was called like cinema arts, but I would just tell people that I was a film major just because it sounded cooler. I always wanted to be a screenwriter or just work in the world of film and I never even thought that music was an option for me.

I always did theater and stuff growing up. But then when but when we roomed together and we got really close, he kind of just like introduced that into my life. And it's cool because now that we're doing music and it's something that is our career, it's opening doors for us to do stuff. It's in the film world too with music videos and all the visual content stuff. 

Sloane: Do you feel like your families were supportive of that change in like, career plans?

Bren: My family was definitely scared. It's kind of like a pipe dream, you know? Like, oh mom, I'm a drop out of school. This is gonna be the thing that I, that I do. I promise it's gonna work. And then I took a semester off and then ended up going back to school cause we were still in the process of building and hadn't gotten to a point where I could only do music yet.

Joey: I ended up dropping out of school, which they weren't that stoked about, to focus fully on music. That took some convincing, but at the end of the day, they were super supportive. They've always known that I wanted to do music and, and pursue that, and I wouldn't really do anything else. So, they were supportive.

Sloane: Speaking of family what was it like growing up in terms of music played in the house and family influences on your music style?

Joey :My mom played a lot of soul music like, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles.

Bren: The two most memorable types of music  I remember from being a kid was country and like, the Les Misérables soundtrack and the Polar Express soundtrack, that's all, that's like the only musical influence I got from my mom. But my dad was dope. I grew up with this CD that he'd play, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and, Red Hot Chili Peppers and some and Pearl Jam

It was the most random CD-like mix tape that was made. And every single day driving to school, we'd listen to that. So those songs are ingrained in my brain. But I'd say my biggest musical influence was my brother and my sister who they listen to , punk rock and like the mid two 2000s alt rock scene kind of that emo influence, like My Chemical Romance.

Those bands are so sick. [They] just l set the foundation for me, being a emo little kid and then kind of growing from that and figuring out what like my own personal taste really is in music. 

Sloane: How would you say that you two being best friends impacts your musical relationship? Is there ever any riffs or anything, or do you think that it's very beneficial in terms of making music?

Bren: I think the thing about it that makes it so one of a kind for me and that Joey, making music with Joey is literally the biggest blessing in my life is because it's so organic. If me and Joey were just in a room for a week straight, we could either just talk about the deepest stuff and just have amazing conversations and just make each other to laugh.

Or we could write 20 songs that we're on the same page on and that we're both vibing to. And it’s kind of a safe space thing where Joey and I know each other so well now that it's kind of just like a push and a pull and a give and a take to the point where we trust each other so much, I just love it. It's never forced when it comes to the music. The music is the thing that is never forced. I'm so eternally grateful for that.

Sloane: What is that songwriting process like? Is it normally just like the two of you bouncing ideas off of each other? Or do you ever get anyone else involved on that?

Bren: That's always an interesting question for us cause it's so random. Every song that we've made has been a completely different process. But I'd say the most  consistent way we write songs is just  jamming something out, coming up with melodies and then kind of going from there, trying to, typically it's melody first then vibe. We like to set that first and then, the song is kind of birthed out of that.

Sloane:  Where do you guys hope to be musically in the next year?

Bren: I just hope that we have our first album finished. Hopefully, our second album will almost be finished by next year. Also to just be really confident,  musically and conceptually, 

Joey: I think confidence is a great work to touch on because we have the vision, it just comes down to like trusting our guts, trusting our taste and just cooking it up and having the finished product because we can see it and we've made pieces of things that we are so proud of and that we love so much, but we just have such yearning to always do more and make more.

And I feel like it's achievable for us to hit that highest point. For us that's an album, a full piece of art.

DWLLR’s will be back on tour starting February supporting Claire Rosinkranz . You can buy tickets here.