On the Rise
gash

The Bon Iver talisman casts a larger-than-life shadow over the sturdy Midwestern city, an hour from Minneapolis and a few more from Madison and Chicago. His mythos reaches beyond his discography and deep into Eau Claire itself, through April Base Studios and the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival, which returned last summer after an eight-year hiatus.

Tucked into that community-minded, soft acoustic orbit was gash, an amorphous, experimental group whose eerie percussion and scavenged samples cut against the city’s gentler folk leanings. Their presence at the festival laid bare another facet of Eau Claire’s tight-knit music scene: the weird, restless pockets of creativity that gather anywhere people make room for them. “We’re kind of the black sheep, but so is everyone else,” says gash founder and lead vocalist Logan Nyberg. 

Nyberg started the project while living in California. Since moving back to Eau Claire 10 years ago, he has added a second guitar, brought Bathke in on vocals and keyboard, and watched other members cycle in and out. Now a five-piece, he has “a grander idea of what we could do. What types of sounds can we get out of five people that we can’t do with three?”

Bathke first encountered gash at a DIY show in Eau Claire. Countless musicians and fans remember the first time the barrier between performer and audience disintegrated. In those compact, oppressively sweaty rooms, the usual conventions and roles of live music collapse, putting everyone on similar footing, whether they’re playing, running sound, making art, or just watching, and often blurring those roles entirely.

“ I was a young adult, and that was my first taste of the Eau Claire house show scene. There was this venue called Cherry House – shout out Cherry House. That’s when I discovered what was going on behind the curtain. I had no idea. My sense of Eau Claire and the music world burst open.”

She was particularly transfixed by the egalitarian nature of the house venue. “I loved that it wasn’t at a bar or someplace with a stage. It was someone’s living room. This is where they live, and they’ve invited us to experience this music together. I thought it was so cool. It was really inspiring, and it made me wonder: Do all cities have this?”

That night also shattered her notions of what Eau Claire’s pleasant, placid music landscape could be. At long last, there was another odd one out. “I think we’re eager to get away from our hometowns, and then you always come back. I can’t speak for all hometowns, but I think Eau Claire has something in the water that makes everyone want to come back.”

With a formal endorsement from Vernon himself, gash is pushing themselves to become a capital-B band. For years, they released music on their own timeline, with little regard for formal album cycles or industry expectations. “We wanted to tour before the festival, and we realised we should probably release music in tandem with it, which is something we've been bad at. We usually go on tour with nothing to tour for. … This is our first venture dealing with that aspect of the music industry,” Nyberg explains. Now signed to Fire Talk imprint Angel Tapes, they’re learning how to work within a more traditional band infrastructure while still protecting the DIY environment that shaped them.

For years, “it was just me doing demos. I don’t know if I really intended for it to be a band. It was just ideas,” he continues. Now that those ideas are taking shape, the two of them maintain a tight clasp on their band’s little universe. To Nyberg, it’s crucial that “ everything that goes out is done by us: the album art, flyers, recording, mixing, and mastering. I don’t see us making a music video and having someone else do it without any input, or having someone else mix and master our songs. It feels important that we see it all the way through from start to finish.” Most of all, “ it’s important for us to not let our egos get too involved with the music.”

“It’s  naturally radiating from us,” Bathke interjects. “I think we both have that disease where we want to do it ourselves because we have this vision in mind. It’s not that we don't trust anyone else, but sometimes it is easier to just do it yourself.”

Instead of arriving at the studio with an idea in mind, as they’d done in the past, the five members bounced ideas off each other until they reached the finished product, though Bathke still relishes the chance to “play composer.” That freedom helped her gain confidence as a singer, in part because she turned to her band members for support. “I was a bit shy, and not as confident as they naturally are with music. I said, ‘I don’t know how to add my parts,’ but they helped me figure it out, and it was okay. I think it’ll be different going forward.”

“ I think the way we did this last record was more conducive to adding Breckelle [Bathke] into the band. She can try different vocal ideas on a recording vs. when we’re at practice.” Now that she’s comfortably integrated into the band, she seeks the thrill of building the plane as she flies it. “You Know What You’re Laughing At is probably a formula that we’re gonna stray away from. Because it was computer-first, just to get the ideas down, and then learning how to make it come to life on the instruments. We wanna go back to figuring it out live.”

gash brings a delicate, fallible touch to everything they do, plucking samples from Nyberg’s home videos and leaning on each other as they wade through the gauzy layers of their own creations. Bathke says, “You can hear it in the songs, that we’re all buddies.  There’s a lot of letting go of whatever sonic vision that you had. There’s a lot of sacrifice. I  think it’s a beautiful thing to have all your best friends and lovers to go through it with. I love any sort of human aspect to being in a band.”