Steve Barcus says he isn’t used to being called “chill.” He says this while slightly reclined in what appears to be a cozy, thrifted linen kaftan robe, one barefooted leg crossed over the other, with a cat in his lap. He says this even as he’s accompanied by three of his bandmates in the Detroit-based post-punk five piece known as Double Winter, each of whom have already enthusiastically embraced the descriptor of “chill.”
We’re in the high-ceilinged living room that Barcus shares with his partner Morgan McPeak, the drummer and co-founding member of this band which started 10 years ago. Holly Johnson is also there, she’s the bassist, singer, and other co-founder of the arguably chill outfit known as Double Winter, and seated to her left is her longtime musical collaborator Vittorio Vettraino, who joined the group almost immediately after it “started.”
And maybe it’s that Barcus, who officially joined just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, just isn’t used to being in a “chill” band. “But it’s easily the most amicable band I’ve ever played in,” he says, adding, “we legitimately just wanna hang out.”
Their conversation flows easily, punctuated by charismatically self-deprecating quips that trigger warm, eruptive laughter; it’s a shared history that’s thick enough to be considered familial by now. And when we suggest that Double Winter may be contenders for “chillest band in the city,” it’s McPeak, Johnson, and Vettraino who immediately agree.
“I’d love to embrace the moniker,” Barcus cautions, “but I also recognize the irony. I think claiming to be the ‘-est’ of anything is, in itself, NOT chill.” And just then, his partner and now bandmate, McPeak immediately pipes up to, at least, claim the title of “chillest drummer,” stirring more laughs. But Barcus continues, “If any other band wants to have it out with us to demonstrate that they’re actually the chillest, that’s fine — I’m also all about handing over the victory to someone who bests us.” Vettraino then counters that that insouciant submission would only further illustrate their prevailing “chill.” And Barcus smiles.
Pressure
Double Winter wasn’t always chill, though. Even if it all sprung out of a sense of veritable whimsy with low-commitment basement jams, named for the formidable “polar vortex” that Michigan endured a decade prior, the group legitimately locked in to some serious momentum throughout the latter half of the 2010s, rigorously practicing and hopping onto a show every weekend here in town before then heading out on several self-booked tours. During these bustling years, the band had McPeak, Johnson, and Vettraino as its core, with original founding member Augusta Morrison on violin. And it all felt like it was building to a natural culmination: a full length album!
“And then we joked that our first album was actually cursed,” McPeak says, her laugh sliding into a sigh. They had the worst luck: working with a couple of particularly flaky engineers at first, and then hitting a series of “roadblocks” that wound up tacking on a nearly two-year delay to its eventual completion. Finally, with light at the end of the tunnel, they scheduled a release party for their debut, It’s About Our Hearts: for mid-March, 2020. Which was, obviously, canceled. All that stress and hustle, building up to a significant let down.
McPeak says that in those few months, pre-pandemic, the band was “starting to be pressured to hire a PR person and spend a bunch of money to start promoting [It’s About Our Hearts].” Adding that “things were getting really expensive. The business side of [music], in general, is just too stressful. This was always supposed to be fun — that’s why we were doing it in the first place. But then [Morrison] left the band, and then everything shut down, and we just took this big step backward. We just… stopped.”
Patience
It’s at this sensitive time in the band’s existence when Barcus officially joined; he and McPeak had already been married for several years, and together even before the band formed. “And if anyone knows our songs,” says Johnson, “if anyone’s been to every Double Winter show, and even heard every rehearsal, it was [Barcus].”
Thus began the era of chill. There were no live shows or tours to worry about in 2020 — so why not just jam? The four of them formed a circle in a cleared-out bedroom on the second story of McPeak and Barcus’s cozy, creaky historic home on the east side, jamming all day long with the windows open and even attracting a small crowd out on the sidewalks below. Barcus, who had already intended to join the band in late 2019, replacing Morrison’s violin with his guitar parts, came in cautiously with his past of “being in other bands that fought a lot,” but says, “it wound up working out great, with such a great chemistry all around — I just wasn’t used to a band being so chill.”
“We’ve all been playing music for so long that we’re pretty realistic about it by now,” Vettraino says. “So our egos never really battle.” Along with that, though, McPeak says they’ve let go of any prior self-applied pressure. “And that,” Vettraino adds, “makes it more enjoyable.” They’ve embraced a very chill “que sera, sera” vibe. If their new record, titled Hourglass, happens to take off — great! If it doesn’t, fine — ‘cause they can still stay in their room together working on more new music. And that’s what matters.
It’s then that Barcus references a theory of contemporary philosopher Byung-Chul Han, about how “...we’re living in a digital panopticon — whereas before, we might have competed ‘with the Joneses,’ we’re now spending so much time on our phones that we’re all competing with ourselves and thus driven to narcissism. It’s so easy to become consumed with ‘becoming your best self,’ …why not just live with your most fun self? That’s what this band allows me to do.”
Johnson says, “[We] have this new ongoing bit where we say we’re ‘a groove band’ now.” Vettraino adds, “It started as a joke, but I think we’ve been willing it into existence.” Johnson legitimizes this, saying, “we’ll actually catch ourselves in these serious grooves! Especially with the new album.”
Make it last
When you can lock into the disco rhythms of a song like “Jelly Donut,” or shimmy to the nervy-cool new-wave dance-hooks in “Make It Last,” then you’ll believe that this chill band is now certifiably a “groove band.” But most ears will likely still hear their distinct post-punk sensibilities shining through on their new album, Hourglass, which comes out this week, capped off by a show Friday night at UFO Bar. The recording process was inherently chill, of course, because they worked with the maestro of mellow, producer Chris Koltay, here in Corktown.
Vettraino reiterates the vital “chill” factor that Koltay can bring to the recording atmosphere, but he further compliments the producer for his willingness to prolong the process. Because, on a whim, back in December, they decided to add a fifth member: Brian Polsgrove, on saxophone. Polsgrove had already been a longtime mutual friend of each member “and was already hanging out at our house a lot anyway,” McPeak says. “So,” Vettraino adds, “we thought, let’s add sax and see how this sounds! But, it was also important to us for at least some of this new album to reflect how we would sound live, so we convinced Koltay to just get [Polsgrove’s] sax on at least two new tracks!”
Barcus expresses gratitude for the opportunity he had to contribute songs and ideas to the record, while also complimenting Johnson’s creative lyricism. “She has a propensity for word play and double entendres, particularly when it comes to song titles,” he says. “One new song is called ‘Our Glass,’ and so we said, let’s call the album ‘Hourglass,’ …the timekeeper as opposed to the possessive. We realized the deeper meaning [of the album title] later, which I feel doesn’t take away from the significance of it. It’s that [this band] can be a timepiece that is continually restarting itself.”
As Johnson sings on a new song from Hourglass: “It takes time to grow / we want to move fast / oh I know / [But] sit down / ….Relax.”
“Flip the hourglass over,” Johnson says. “We’re the ever expanding band, just continuing to evolve.”
