by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
The old saying would have you believe quitters never win, and Winnipeg’s David Schellenberg knows a thing or two about digging in his heels. That’s what his band Tunic was founded on; it formed, after all, when Schellenberg parted ways with his previous ensemble after being told he wasn't a good enough bassist. With trademark tongue-in-cheek spite, he started his own project on guitar--an instrument he had even less experience with--and started pumping out jagged, roiling noise punk (the early 7” material and their 2019 debut LP, Complexion, were rereleased earlier this year on Artoffact Records as a compilation called Exhaling).
In that context, there’s something both confrontational and self-effacing about calling their seething sophomore record Quitter. With its release on October 15, Schellenberg will be the only remaining member of the band’s original 2012 lineup (founding bassist Rory Ellis features on the album, but left after the recording). But in his own way, he’s also embraced the virtue of quitting; these are brutal, uncompromising songs shaped by his decisions to give up smoking, give up drinking, even give up his long-time job booking shows for the bar he was then a part-owner of.
Where Tunic is concerned, though--kept in motion by Dan Unger’s tenacious drumming--Shellenberg has never sounded so dug-in and committed. The band’s experience serves them well, but Quitter also has the primal sound of a group cut loose in the wilderness with only their inventive wits and sheer, screaming force of will to survive. Before the release, Shellenberg sat down with Post-Trash over Zoom to talk about recording sessions as glorified hang-outs and unintentionally becoming a straight-edge vegan in the making of Quitter.
What have you been up to in the run-up for the release of the new record?
Oh, I've been doing everything that you're supposed to do for a record, except go on tour. [laughs] But we've been busy hanging out on the socials and bugging people on releasing music videos, making sure that people are aware that it's happening. We're just such a touring entity, so I never thought I'd have to release two records in a year that would both have no touring support.
If we can go back to the first of the two records, earlier this year you put out a compilation of all the Tunic material to date called Exhaling. What is it like seeing the whole discography laid out that way?
[laughs] It's truly terrifying, to be completely honest. I never thought that I would put out every single song I've ever written and recorded in one year. It's cool to see everyone who's been in the band, and all of its different incarnations. Tunic is the first band I've ever fronted and been the lead vocals in--or played guitar in, even--so it was cool to see the growth as a band and myself as a songwriter. It's cool to see us start slow and then end up being this fast, heavy band making two-minute-long songs, whereas in some of that earlier stuff, it's a little slower and a little less produced, if you will.
It's like watching a kid grow up, I guess? [laughs] Or like I got baby teeth, and then they fell out, and I got adult teeth, and I started feeling more confident and started playing more with my vocals. I think it's cool for people to check it out, and all that stuff is long sold out, so it was really cool to have a second opportunity to get it out there.
Was that shift something that you noticed as it was happening? Or is it something that only now occurs to you looking back?
It only really occurred to me looking back, and a lot of that is because I was brand new to guitar when I started Tunic. I was brand new to fronting a band. It just sort of came out of necessity, out of me being a new guitarist, and sort of being like, "What is the easiest, dankest thing I can write without knowing what I'm doing at all?" So that was rad, on a 100% personal note, for me to be like, "Whoa, I'm way better at guitar now, and I actually understand what I'm doing!" [laughs] whereas in probably the first half of all that stuff, I was just like, "Make loud noises, make guitar sound bad.”
You're a bassist originally, is that right?
That's correct, yeah. I played bass forever, until it was--and I wasn't even that good of a bassist, to be honest. [laughs]
How integral is you growing as a guitarist to the core of what Tunic is?
I think it's very much part of the band's identity. Everyone who's ever played in our band who understands music theory or anything like that is very confused by everything I write. Rory, who just left the band and is still my best friend--we were roommates, I was the best man at his wedding this past summer--who is a musical genius and understands theory, was just like, "I don't even understand how you write this." I think that is kind of what makes Tunic a more unique, punky, noise-rock project, is my lack of understanding of how the instrument works at all, really. Even if I wanted to rewrite a song that I heard that I liked, I don't know how to do that. I can't just be like, "Oh, it's these chords,” or “It's these shapes,” or anything like that. I'm just like, "I dunno." [laughs]
I know that you recorded Quitter back in 2020. When was the writing phase?
The writing phase of Quitter really started in 2019, I guess right before we put out Complexion. Dan had just joined the band on drums, and we had been playing with them for a while, getting them all sorted, and then we just started touring like wild. We did 112 shows, I think, in 2019, touring the record, and we sort of wrote in between the tours. [laughs] We were like, "We don't need to practice. We're good. We've played these songs so many times," and I think just out of not wanting to rehearse the songs that we'd been playing every day on the road, we wrote between the tours.
And actually, we wrote a little bit on tour. We sort of did a pretty stereotypical band thing--we had a show cancel and then we had two days off, so we ended up having three days off in rural Massachusetts. We found this Airbnb called The Creation Station, which was this weird hippie--I don't know, very weird vibes, but they do house concerts in it, and it was on these people's farm property, and we were like, "Hey, we're a band. Here's what we sound like. Can we come write and live at The Creation Station for three days?" and they were like, "Yeah."
So we did, like, three eight-hour days at The Creation Station writing for this record. I think "Reward of Nothing" was written in those sessions, and I think the start of "Smile" was there. "Apprehension" started there too. But it was just one of those things where I knew that we wouldn't wanna come home and do eight-hour days--
You'd be exhausted, right?
Yeah, having to work our jobs, and everyone has their partners to see, and friends, and everything like that. I got some resistance from the band being like, "We have three days off. Can't we just hang out?" I'm just like, "When are we gonna have this time again?" So that was sort of cool. We were able to take the ideas we made there between tours--and we also booked the studio time for the record in those three days off. I remember emailing [Quitter producer] Jace [Lasek] and just being like, "Hey, you wanna come make a record with us in nine months?" [laughs] Which I also sort of needed to light a fire under my ass.
How does it change the way that you approach songs when you're away from home in a rented space on those days off?
It doesn't really change anything, to be honest. I guess the only thing is that I don't have enough time, like when I work on it at home. Back then, I was writing sort of sporadically and when I had the time, and I didn't actually have a guitar at home. I made sure not to have one at home because I wanted to go to a dedicated space to just work, and my jam space was right above the bar that I worked at, so it was very convenient to just pop up for an hour every day after work.
But when writing in that weird house for three days, I was able to take an idea that I thought was good right away and hand it to the band, so more often than not, Rory would just be like, "This needs to be workshopped," and I was like, "You're right." [laughs] 'Cause typically I would write something on a Monday and work on it all throughout the week and then take it to the next time we had a full band practice. I could be like, "Here's something I've worked on for a week" instead of being like, "Here's something I worked on for 15 minutes."
I've heard that Dan was actually a fan of the band before they joined, and they came in knowing all the previous songs already. What did they bring to the process of writing for this record?
Oh, it was awesome. Dan really crushed it. Yeah, that's true, when we had our first tryout with Dan, I was like, "What songs do you know?" And they were like, "Oh, I know all of them." And we were just like, "Oh. Okay." [laughs] So that was really cool. But yeah, Tunic was sort of on this verge of falling apart before Dan joined, so besides them being an awesome drummer, they sort of brought this youthful energy that I needed to continue the band--for someone to be like, "I wanna do all this cool stuff that you're doing!" I was like, "Okay, I'll do it for you," and then I was like, "Oh, I actually still love doing this.” I was just sort of in a dip, if you will. They brought this amazing energy and this--yeah, real nervous energy, I will say.
The drums are the driver of the band, and a band is only as good as their drummer, and so I think Dan really grew up, and we pushed them pretty hard to write different parts, or to be more complicated, or to not fall into a routine. Really, to listen to what the song wants. Dan always explains that working with Rory and I was very difficult because Rory and I have been friends for a decade and lived together, and we have a vernacular that they don't know. That was absolutely a challenge for them, walking into a band of two people who are not only bandmates, but hang out with each other every day and live together, but I think bringing that fresh approach is what really allowed us to push the songs further.
Also, Sam, our original drummer, has all this background in hardcore and punk, and then Dan was a metal kid growing up, so they brought this whole new slew of reference points and style that Rory and I have never really dabbled with. That really helped evolve the songs.
Is there a point on this record that stands out to you as emblematic of that energy?
There's a few parts of the record that stand out to me just where I'm like, "That's interesting to me." The chorus of "Reward of Nothing," to me, is very poppy for a Tunic song. It's almost a hook, and I remember I described this record to a friend saying that it was us trying to write pop music, and they laughed at me and said, "It sounds nothing like that, and I would never tell anyone that."
But when I think about--like, on "Common Denominator," the opening riff is in five, and it's this really cool heavy moment. Then it does this little guitar squeal, and Dan does this sort of weird awkward fill. That was something we worked on so hard together, and I think that really is that moment of, like, all three of us combining our personalities to make something work.
Tell me about the shift into being a duo now that Rory is no longer part of the band. How does that change what Tunic is?
Rory told us in November of 2018 that he was leaving, and it was like [laughs] the longest two weeks that he put in of all time. 100 shows later, you know? Quitter was Rory's last thing, and then actually, Rory even stuck around a little bit after to help write some stuff post-Quitter that we actually aren't really gonna use. The shift was pretty natural just 'cause we knew that it was happening, and there was sort of a natural shift within the band of Dan stepping up and Rory stepping down, and them trading tasks and leadership roles, and Dan not being a kid anymore.
Like, when Dan joined the band, they were 20, you know? Had never really gone on tour before, and then all of a sudden, they're this far more dedicated individual. It's great. I loved working with Rory, but Rory didn't have his whole heart in it, and that's totally cool--you know, being in a band is really fuckin' dumb and hard and not for everybody, and it's cool now for Dan and I to operate the band as two people that are fully committed to it and want to pursue it as hard as we can. No slight against Rory for that, of course, but it's not for everybody.
Of course, and I ask because it gets rolled in with the story of this record being called Quitter, being about quitting various things. You talk about mental health and bad habits and also about being in a band. If you wouldn't mind, could you tell me about how that theme developed?
I didn't even really realize that the record was about that until I wrote the song "Quitter" itself. Until I told Rory that the song was about him, and he said, "You should name it after me." And I said, "Call it Rory?" And he said, "No, call it 'Quitter.'" And I was like, "Oh, shit." Then it just snapped in my head, and I looked back on everything, and I was like, "This whole record is about me quitting drinking, quitting smoking, quitting and selling my shares in this bar that I own, and Rory quitting," so all of a sudden, I was like, "Holy shit."
It was just this moment that I realized, "That's it." Like, "I've quit everything that I held so close and dear and thought made me who I was in the year of writing this record." I had a very hard time imagining myself without alcohol, without cigarettes, without poor mental health and stuff like that, and all of a sudden, I was just like, "Damn. I've really turned a page this last year and quit a bunch of stuff that I was unhappy with, finally."
The first track on this record, "Apprehension," was also one you released as a single. What can you tell me about how that song came to be?
"Apprehension" is a pretty funny song because I wrote most of it in one sitting in our jam space. The whole song sort of exists for that breakdown that sounds like it's gonna be a mosh breakdown, and then instead it becomes a noise thing. I kinda thought it would be funny to write a part like that, where like--so often, we play these shows where people try and mosh, and we're not really into moshing. It's just kind of a dumb, weird, stereotypical cis male thing that people do that takes up space, which is annoying, so I wanted to write this part that would kind of be a fuck you to the hardcore community, I guess? Even though I have no real beef with them. It just was a cool idea, so I sort of wrote the opening bass line first, and then I wrote that breakdown, and just was able to bridge it all together in-between.
Lyrically, it's really just about gettin' fuckin' plowed by a relationship--[laughs] by someone just ripping your heart out of your chest, and me wanting to retire from the world of trying to date. Part of that song is also about, I had quit smoking at that point, and then I instantly started smoking again, so that's sort of a theme there. It sucked.
There's aspects of music culture--you know, you talk about taking up space. There's also things like straight-edge that have this ethical code connected to them in heavy music. What role has being a musician and being in a band played in this journey of looking at yourself and your habits?
Well, yeah, hilariously enough and 100% non-intentional is that I am now a straight-edge vegan, and I have become a punk stereotype. [laughs] I never intended for that to happen, and now I'm like, "Aw, fuck, here I am playing in a hardcore, noise rock band and I'm a straight-edge vegan. I'm a Hard Times article.”
But no, like, Tunic is political within itself, and having someone who is nonbinary in the band is really important for us. So much of noise rock and hardcore and everything is so cisgendered and mostly white. Obviously, you have bands like G.L.O.S.S. who led this amazing charge, but we've sort of taken it on ourselves on a very quiet front to just sort of educate and inform people in other bands or in the audience that nonbinary people exist and also exist in this world.
I have no desire to push my beliefs of not drinking and not eating any animal products on anyone. I have no songs about being vegan. You know, all Tunic lyrical content is autobiographical, and unlike Propaghandi or anything like that, I have no desire for anyone to stop eating animals or stop drinking or anything because of me. It's just the frustration that was in my life at the time of writing this record and that's how it's here now.
I do have to ask one more thing about "Apprehension." There's this really neat sound in the last section--it's almost this electronic-sounding gliss?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
What is that?
Jace, who produced our record, found this really weird--[laughs] this is embarrassing! Found this really weird compressor-slash, like, thing that created autotune? So we all took a turn playing a solo where everybody got the guitar and just made noise on it, and then we all took turns just twisting knobs on this noisemaker. It's just, like, eight different takes of us fucking around on guitar and twisting knobs to make the most brutal sound ever.
Is that a pedal or a rack thing or what?
It's a rack thing! I don't even know. I can see it in my head, but I can't tell you what it is at all.
Tell me more about working with Jace, who I know you worked with on Complexion. Having the first one under your belts, what was the atmosphere like working together again?
Oh, you know, we were laughing. The reason we worked with Jace the first time is because I met him through my ex-girlfriend's project. He recorded her band, and the vibes were just unreal. He's just the most un-judgmental and open-minded guy ever, and just makes recording fun. As I mentioned earlier in the interview, I feel like I am a weak musician, so working with someone who doesn't judge my musical abilities was really important to me. That's why Jace really stood out to me, working with him.
Bringing Jace back and having him know how we operate, having the road map to make this record, was way easier and allowed for a little more exploring in the production of the record. It sort of allowed us to do some more wild stuff 'cause we knew what we were gonna do this time. We knew how we operated and how we made records, so I was excited to just do it again with him 'cause it was so much fun.
Do you have a favorite moment in the studio?
Every time we give Rory a guitar, it's hilarious. Because Rory would just be like, "Okay, Jace, can you run this please?" [laughs] We would run it, then Rory would always play some dumb riff from, like, AC/DC or something as his first take.
You know, making our record was glorified hanging out. Jace was really open to anything. There was that moment I talked about on "Apprehension" where we were just messing stuff up, and then Jace threw this keyboard in front of us and was like, "This is gonna be on your record." And we were like, "What?" And he was like, "It's gonna be on your record." And we were like, "Okay." So we spent an hour to two hours just putting this really cool keyboard on the record in very faint places where it perhaps didn't belong, but then Jace made sound cool.
So you recorded in January of 2020, is that right?
That's right.
Did you play any shows after? Or was there a break and then lockdown?
There was a break, then we flew to New York to play a festival, and we flew home the day after we landed because it was March 12, so we never have played any of these songs live, except for on a livestream or in some live promo videos. Yeah, we tracked this in January. In February [laughs] we went to Las Vegas for Rory's bachelor party, and then in March, we went to New York for 36 hours, didn't play, and came home.
I was looking back through the bio for Exhaling, and there's this quote from you about writing autobiographically. You say, "I need that catharsis of screaming about these things over and over again. These are all things that have unfolded in my life, and I use Tunic as a coping mechanism." Having this record where you write in that mode, you record in that mode, and then you don't perform--how has that changed your relationship to these songs?
I think it honestly gave me some real peace to not have to bring up these things every day and scream about these things that have, you know, damaged me or hurt me. I don't have to relive my traumas every day for six weeks in a row, so it kind of brought me peace to be okay with it, to the point where I can listen to it and not cringe, or not be scared of even listening to it. I look forward to touring this record one day, so I'll just be physically wrecked and not emotionally wrecked after a show.
You mentioned that you had started writing stuff with Rory that got put to the side, and now you're in the writing of album three. What has it been like, and what's the direction?
You know, it's weird for us. I just turned 30, we're making our third record, and I'm ready to switch it up. Not to say that I'm going to--I'll use Low as an example--make this amazing produced, glitchy, you know, thing that's produced by someone who produced Charli XCX or anything like that, but I'll use Daughters as an example. Daughters always sounds like Daughters even though they may sound like a totally different band on each record, and that's sort of where I'm exploring a little bit. I'm painting with new colors, I guess, but I'm still the one who's painting? You're a writer. How's that as a metaphor?
That's great. I love that.
Okay--[laughs]
You also do music marketing in addition to playing music. What perspective has that given you as you're in the process of putting out an album of your own?
Yeah, so I've recently launched a business, and it's become a full-time gig doing digital marketing for bands and artists online. I work with a variety of labels--Artoffact, who Tunic is on, Constellation Records, as well as some other ones. 'Cause as we've talked about throughout this call, all I did was tour before. It's really allowed me to shift gears and focus on creating a stronger digital strategy to make sure that the music reaches the ears that it's supposed to reach in a world without DIY shows and, you know, find the corners of the internet where our band can perk some ears.
What's your advice to artists who are trying to make an impact and get listened to right now?
Just be authentic. I was a promoter for the last 14 years of my life--like, I booked shows since I was 16 till I was 30 as a full-time job, and authenticity was the most important thing to me as an outside listener. Even if I didn't enjoy the music and I wasn't a fan of the genre, I could still tell if it was from the heart. If something is real, then I'm cool with it even if I don't actually like it.
Most recently you've put out the video for "Apprehension," which has this really wild animated style. How did the idea to do an animated Tunic video come up?
It just sort of came up because we've never done it, and I thought, "What the hell?" Sam, who was our original drummer, had been playing with animation, and we also got hit up by this other guy, Dimitri, about it. I sort of put them together and threw some ideas around, and I just thought it'd be an interesting concept. You know, all of the Tunic videos sort of explore our faces, so I thought it'd be cool to do that in an animated world for the first time and see if we can translate that uncomfortable-slash-eeriness from the in-person music videos into a world of animation, and I think it kinda did that.
"Fake Interest" being the other one from this record that was the live-acted video.
[laughs] Yes, of me smashing stuff.
I loved the comment you tweeted about that when you shared it. "Overly emotional and sensitive boy smashes things with a bat to try to appear tough in band's music video."
Yeah, and you know, that's 100% accurate. [laughs] That was just fun to do and I thought it would look cool, and conveniently, our songs are so short that I can really have one idea and be like, "There it is! That's two minutes."