Consume our new favourite strain of weed, straight from Portland.

“Give your body to the trance. Give your mind up for the dance,” praise Portland-originated band WEEED. All the members interconnected with each other for 17+ years now, have created a rich soil for their wildest creation to grow on. So far coined as psychedelic, they couldn’t agree less. The music seems to be only an exciting side effect of their rock-solid friendship. Though to introduce a bit of fluidity to the construct, on their newest album, ‘Do You Fall?’, WEEED give us instruction on how to let go and enjoy the impermanence after accepting the pain that comes with changes.

Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

We are WEEED, from Portland, Oregon. 

The terms ‘psychedelic’ and ‘rock’ tend to get attached to our music, though they don’t really mean much to us.

The only lasting ingredient to our music is friendship. Our songs are the fruits of a democratic and communal system of creation that is based on improvisation and trance. The music we play requires strong emotional attunement between everyone to work. We’ve been connecting and playing music with one another in different forms for 17+ years now. What we’ve written and recorded under the banner of WEEED is really just a testament to our attempts at bridging the gaps of otherness between us during it all, via a non-verbal language . More-so than any desire to emulate or renovate a certain genre of music, it’s the tears, the triumphs, the deaths and births and rebirths we’ve collectively experienced and individually experienced collectively that have defined our commitment to the music and fueled the nervous center of our creative process.

How are you feeling about the release of your new album ‘Do You Fall?’?

We're all really happy with the way ‘Do You Fall’ turned out…which is kind of unusual. 

Not to suggest that we’re not proud of our previous efforts, but one of the biggest challenges of this band has been learning how to consistently and effectively capture the raw, intimate energy of our live performances on an album. Historically, there’s often been something lost in that translational process that isn’t easily definable, some purity that gets corrupted, ever so slightly, some vitality that gets muted. We’ve all struggled with this when reflecting on previous albums. 

With Do You Fall, I think we came as close as we ever had to reproducing and encapsulating a series of truly magical moments that authentically embodied our studio time.

Can you tell us more about your songwriting process?

There’s really no one consummate formula for how we craft songs. Sometimes we just jam for a while, lock into something chemically, then revisit it later as chemists with structure in mind, sorting, blending, separating, purifying, so that it might fit into a song we’re working on, or become something on its own. Other times someone brings a budding song with parts and structure already conceived to the table that we explode and expand and contract and trim until a single riff has turned into a 12-minute chronicle.

A collaborative mentality, a generous disposition, and a healthy appreciation of improvisation are really the only constants. And even then, to greater or lesser degrees, depending on the project. For instance, Do You Fall was arguably the least democratically-composed album we’ve made—nearly all of its songs were written by Gabe, and many of them he had fully fleshed out and conceptualized before they ever entered the practice space. Thus, the rest of the band spent more time than usual learning parts that had to be played in certain ways, acting more conservatively with where to improvise, and letting go of creative impulses that might re-direct the album’s trajectory too far from Gabe’s vision . And still, a communal ethos was central to its making. Each of us committed, on our own will, to helping Gabe bring these songs to life, and in turn, he relied upon us to fill in the gaps. That was the compact for this particular album, and it was definitely effective.

One the other end of the spectrum, some new recordings we have were written together, practiced, and put to tape entirely on the same day. And still, other new ones we’ve spent over two years finely tweaking and crafting, with nearly every choice being put to council first . 

Song to song, project to project, we usually just try to make the method fit the madness.

What are some themes behind your new record?

One of the album’s core mantras goes “Give your body to the trance. Give your mind up for the dance”. These are, at root, instructions for letting go. Lots of the motifs of Do You Fall revolve around that act as a necessary response to the evanescent nature of things and the grief that arises from encountering such impermanence.  

This album is also a charting of the places we arrive at only by first experiencing the dances of sorrow and pain and change, entrancing ourselves within their rhythms, then emerging anew. At root, this album is about healing and growing, about learning how to heal and grow.

Can you tell us how you produce your music?

As with our writing process, our production process has morphed over the years and is rarely replicated to exact parameters twice. We strive to keep our goals pliable enough to respond to unforeseen difficulties, which any musician who’s ever made an album knows are inevitable. We’ll usually have a plan for studio time, but that plan can be thrown out the window or adjusted in the moment. Again, the operating principle is communal deliberation. Everyone has a say in everyone else's perspective on how we approach a record, whether we’re weeks out from entering the studio or hours away from putting on the finishing touches. It can be a slog to sift through divergent opinions for common throughlines, but the ends are unanimously worth the means.  

One thing that has remained throughout our production is a devotion to live tracking. We’re not above overdubs or re-tracking of certain parts in post, but the take we use as a foundation must be done live. We will usually go to great lengths to set up a studio so that we can all record in the same room, often in a circle, ideally without headphones. Since our songs tend to be quite long and often contain precise differences in instrumentation, tempo, and time signature, and since we're all a little perfectionist when it comes to our performances, live takes are quite a challenge. We do our best to land songs in single takes. Sometimes we need to integrate multiple takes into one to get a track good enough to mix. We ultimately prefer these methods to layering songs track by track, which we find has a tendency to cannibalize the lifeforce of our music

Over the years, we’ve worked with different engineers and producers for mixing and mastering, but we never outsource the post-production process entirely. We like to be in on the action as much as possible. The mixing process itself can really re-frame your understanding of the music you make. We wouldn't want to miss out on that. 

Where did you get your band name?

We needed one for our first show, and just sort of figured, jokingly, what better a name for a “stoner rock” band, which was what we wanted to be when we formed as highschoolers in 2008. The name stuck, and we added the third “E” in 2013 to distinguish ourselves from another band of the same name that was active in our area.

We like to think of our name more as an abstract representation of a life-long psycho-sonic exploration between seriously goofy best friends than as a literal representation of what we care about. 

Who’s the biggest stoner in the band?

Our audience, probably. 

Can you tell us something interesting about yourself that doesn’t have anything to do with music? 

There is nothing that doesn’t have to do with music.

If your music were a film or TV show which would it be?

A crossover between Moana, The Bachelor, and John Wick 3.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s important to you?

We’re always returning to the Grateful Dead’s catalog, which I personally discovered in 5th grade. Of course, that means naming not just one album, but like several hundred.

Whatever. They are a truly remarkable band. Hardly another out there quite like them. 

What do you hate right now?  

The fact that, in a historical moment defined wholesale by technologies that could unequivocally be applied to beneficial humanistic ends, so many people still struggle tooth and nail to live, thrive, and self-actualize.

What do you love right now?

Our communities, large and small. Always.

What comes next in the Weeed story?

COVID undeniably gummed up the gears. As did the recent loss of multiple loved ones. With all the uncertainty around live shows in the past couple years, we placed our focus on writing and recording. We’ve got an exciting backlog of material that we’re preparing to share over the next year, beginning with a new release that will be out this spring. With any luck, those releases will all be shored up by some regional tours and shows. Crossing our fingers. 

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Ladies and gentlemen, the inimitable Mick Fleetwood.