Distant Edge Q&A

By Tosin Faseemo

Distant Edge is a Twin Cities-based band. It consists of vocalist Nolan Litschewski, keyboardist Sam Swanson, guitarist Nate Erickson, bassist Aaron Eiden, and drummer Jahmal Fisher. Keep reading to find out about their band’s origin, their creative process, and more.

How did you guys meet?

Nolan: We met a very very long time ago. Back in middle school, we were all in different after-school music programs. That's for the most part where we met some, some of the other guys like Aaron and I were, we were friends in second grade. So we go pretty far back.

Jahmal: I wasn't actually in any of the after-school programs besides jazz band. It was actually one day in seventh grade, Nolan walks up to me and he's like, “You know how to play the drums right?” And I say no. He was like, “You want to.” And I was like yeah. Then he invited me to come over to his house, and I'm learning how to play the drums, and I'm like, “All right, so what was this for?” He was like “You're in the band.” And that's how it started.

Sam: It was similar for me. I already played piano. I knew Nolan tangentially; he was a friend of a friend. Their old keyboardist had called it quits and they needed a new one. He knew I played piano so he asked me. I didn't want to do it at first, but eventually I said yes, for some reason, and now we're here.

What's the story behind your band name?

Nolan: We had a notebook full of stupid ideas, and we would write pages on pages of potential band names. We had pools of words that we liked and then we threw different ones together. I guess this one stuck.

What genre of music do you make?

Sam: I would call it alt-pop, maybe. It's definitely changed. It used to be more rock, for sure.

Jahmal: You could say, rock-inspired pop.

So you guys have been together since middle school. How has that affected the way you make music?

Nolan: I guess yeah it's evolved a bit. In middle school, we used to get together and we'd have these like six, seven hour practices. Then obviously, as we got older we didn't have time to have these eight hour segments in our week just devoted to this. A big scary thing was when we went to college because it was like, who knows if we'll stick together. Eventually, the process evolved. With our most recent album, we started it the summer before freshman year of college and finished it last year. We wrote everything while we recorded which, I think, brought a lot more freedom into the creativity of it.

Sam: It felt a lot more creative, because we weren't recording in a recording studio. We weren't paying for studio time; it didn't feel like there was any rush, which I think allowed us to experiment quite a bit. We did a lot of things that I don't think we normally would have if we weren't writing as we were recording. There were a lot of ideas that we would record and then come back to the next day and say, “Oh that was bad. Let's change that up” or “That could be better.” You know, things like that. 

I know you mentioned that you guys were doing some live shows recently. What's it like to get back into doing live shows after the pandemic?

Sam: It's very exciting. We've only played four or five since we've been back. But, it's been very exciting. We played at The Whole; that was super fun. Our first show back was at a brewery, which was so fun to be back. With the pandemic we've had a lot of time to sort of workshop the live show. I mean all we’ve had is time, so it's been really exciting to be able to finally show off all that work.

Jahmal: It's great and all releasing this album, but I want to play the songs in front of people. I want people to be there to listen to the song while I’m playing it. There's just nothing like that.

Nolan: Yeah, and it's cool because the songs evolved too. It was fun after the album was set and we were kind of thinking about how we were going to play it live as we were writing stuff. It was fun. Being able to actually play around with the music. When we wrote the album we were never all five playing together because we recorded each thing separately. One of my favorite things beyond being with people watching the show, I just love being with all five of us and actually playing music together, like we did in middle school. 

Do you guys go to the U?

Nolan: Yeah, four out of the five of us go here. It's kind of interesting. Freshman year I roomed with Sam. Sam, Aaron, and I went here. 

Nate: Freshman and sophomore year I went to Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, and then I transferred here this year and it's been really great being able to live with everyone. It makes band stuff a lot easier, because I don't have to drive two hours to do anything with them.

Sam: I think that's the biggest reason we were able to do so much last year with the album was because Aaron, Nolan, and I were living together and it was really easy to just walk out of our room and into his room and talk about band stuff.

How would you say your location as a Twin Cities/U of M band informs the way that you make music and interact with people who listen to your music? How does that affect the way that you function as a band?

Nolan: There's a great music scene in Minnesota as a whole. People think of New York, LA, and Nashville but Minneapolis has First Avenue and all the history here with Prince. We're from the Chaska/Chanhassen area so, when we go home, we drive past Paisley Park every time. I've been there; I've toured it. I think there's such a deep history here in Minneapolis, and such a unique musical scene, unlike any other.

Sam: Even the local acts. There's so many bands on campus. It's really great to be in that community where there's so much new activity all the time, there's so much creativity going around.

Who would you say is your biggest artistic inspiration?

Jahmal: It's really hard for me, because for the last three years or so, I haven't really been listening to music in English. I've mostly been listening to Japanese music and other more Eastern music. That's been a really big inspiration for me for the last few years. The way that they structure their music and the way that they organize their chord structures, just like the general sound that they have, has really interested me. It's very different from Western music and it's given me a different look on the way I play the drums and the way that I listen to music in general. It's kind of just been seeping into the band slowly and steadily. So, I'd say at least for right now, it's not a single person but more Eastern music has probably been my biggest inspiration for the last couple years.

Nolan: Yeah, and that’s what I love so much. It’s that we all have such different inspirations and it shows itself throughout what we do. For me, artistically, I feel like a lot of what my first inspiration was when I was a kid. The music we listened to when we were younger is totally different from now, a lot of it was just kind of what my dad listened to, but also, when I first started listening to music, a lot of what was on the radio back in like 2010 or whatever. A lot of it was super anthemic pop that was super synthy and stuff. Then I was also listening to film music too. So, a lot of my artistic inspiration comes from movies in general. I feel like any kind of piece of art that draws emotion out of you is a big inspiration for me. 

Sam: I’ll narrow it down a bit. I think Hippo Campus would be my biggest inspiration. Maybe not technically artistically, I mean, their songs are awesome. I could listen to every one of their songs and not skip a single one and love all of them, but just what they’ve been doing with the community. They’re a big national act and it feels like they’ve stayed really grounded in the local scene. Like, they just played a show I think at the Fine Line, maybe it was the Turf Club. It was just a surprise show, nobody knew they were even going to be there. It was a lineup of local acts and they just showed up to play a set and I think that’s super awesome. I guess, I would emulate them as a group for sure, they’re definitely an inspiration.

Nate: I think I would say, for me, my biggest artistic inspiration, at least currently, would probably be Tim Henson from Polyphia. Just because I feel like he’s doing so much with guitar that it’s sort of redefining what guitar music can be. Yeah he’s just pretty cool, he makes a lot of interesting stuff and I think it’s good for guitar music in general.

Aaron: For me, I think it’s changed a lot, especially since I was younger because my family used to literally only listen to country. I’m pretty sure they still do that, so that was the only music I was really exposed to when I was younger, but then I started getting into the band, but it turns out the rest of us don’t listen to country as much as I did. So I started getting introduced to new stuff through these guys. I think that’s really changed my mindset on music a lot because there’s actually so much more to open my eyes to. I don’t know if I can narrow it down to one single musical inspiration, but I guess it changes quite a bit from how much I get exposed to stuff. 

Distant Edge will be playing a show on November 19 at 10K Brewery in Anoka.