Spring Part 1: Still Listening to Washer
Catching up and looking back at the "Boy Scout" era with our forever faves.
A little late, but we’re starting our two-part spring newsletter with a treat for the Real Heads: A special-edition interview with our friends, Washer, by me, Loren. We hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of Patio season. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
In late 2014, when Patio first started coming together as a “real” band, we were lucky to have enough people around who encouraged us, put us on bills, and inspired us to keep going. Mike Quigley was one of those people, and we’ve been friends ever since. Lucky for me, as much as I liked Mike — known as “Quigley” to his best buds — I also liked Washer, his band with Kieran McShane. My obsession reached its peak when I immortalized the duo in “Boy Scout,” the first single from our 2019 debut album, Essentials. The oft-quoted lyric (“I think I’m gonna go home and listen to Washer/ Instead of spending any more time with you”) was inspired by a dream, and a rare moment of mid-20s clarity: I realized I’d rather be alone spinning “Clid” and “Joe” (from Washer’s 2015 split 7” with Flagland) for the millionth time than doing most other things. Almost a decade later, the sentiment still rings true.
Through the years, Washer’s classic garage-punk bark has grown even more bite, as evidenced by Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends, the band’s first album in six years. I’m partial to the prickly, guttural yearning of “Blammo,” which finds Quigley struggling under the crushing weight of passing time — “an old man with nothing to prove or say.” In an appropriate nod to the time that’s passed since we were mere children putting on shows at Shea Stadium, Palisades, and other lost DIY spots, I caught up with Quigley and Kieran before their set at another 2010s-Brooklyn-era landmark, The Gutter. I hadn’t been since Washer last played in 2015, which set the perfect nostalgic tone. Read our conversation below.
Loren: Let’s go back to the early years. When we first met, Patio didn’t exist yet, but I talked about it nonstop. Washer was already one of the most active bands playing around Brooklyn, and your support meant a lot. What are some of your earliest memories of Patio from that time? Feel free to say we were unhinged…
Quigley: I remember that aspect of you willing it into existence, where you were like, “I have a band now!” But we met before Patio started. Did we know you just as a writer before then?
Loren: Not so much… I was blogging here and there, but my career really started when I met Joe [Galarraga, from Big Ups], who introduced me to Derek [Evers] from Impose Magazine, and I started writing for them.
Quigley: I feel like Impose was one of the first sites that wrote about us… probably also because of Joe. He also worked for the radio station, Heritage, in the back of Roberta’s….
Loren: We were all just kind of in the same place at the same time, doing a lot of different things. I was able to have a career in journalism mostly from just being around, and then getting opportunities from people who also became my friends.
Quigley [to Kieran]: That's also how you became a butcher, because Joe worked at the radio station, and then ended up getting a job at their spot in the Essex Street Market, which we lived near… then Joe got Kieran a job.
Kieran: None of us would be here without Joe.
Loren: Another Joe who was important in those days was Joe Romano [from Spit], who introduced me to LP. Back then, you couldn’t get anywhere without a friend named Joe.
Quigley: Oh, yeah. I still listen to Dead Broke for Life… still one of my most listened to records of all time, ever.
Loren: We need a Spit reunion.
Quigley: That’d be so sick. They fucking rip, dude.
Show poster by Quigley.
Loren: Do you have a favorite memory of a show with Patio from that time? Mine is definitely when we [Loren, Quigley, and friends] went to the Hamptons, lost at Harry Potter Trivia at the Southampton bookstore, and then drove back to the city the next day and played that show at Shea where we did the Lit cover [“My Own Worst Enemy”]. Spit also played that show!
Quigley: I forgot about that! I’m going to look at our list of shows… that was July 31, 2016 at Shea Stadium with Patio, Spit, and Human People. How sick is that?
Kieran: Great show. I remember playing that cover and being like, “Wow, that’s the best response we’ve ever gotten.”
Loren: Oh yeah, I have not had an experience like that since. We should do that again.
The aforementioned Lit cover captured by an iPhone 8 or less.
Loren: I wanted to bring up the Washer reference in “Boy Scout”… not so much a question, but people still love that song.
Kieran: People still say to me, “Oh, I was listening to that song, and I forgot about the part where they talk about listening to Washer.”
Quigley: People have told me that’s how they heard about us. They’ve come up to us and been like, “I was into Patio and I heard that song and learned about your band.”
Loren: I love how that’s persisted. That relates to another thing I wanted to bring up… our styles are so different, but there’s always been a lot of commonality. One thing is minimalism, though we do it in different ways. And then lyrically, there’s the ongoing theme of apathy vs. action.
Kieran: That’s been the most significant through-line in the band.
Loren: The “luxury” theme, which started as a joke that we've kept going, was always about that… living your best life, but also recognizing the dangers of isolation and indifference. Improved Means touches on so much of that, too.
Quigley: That’s like… basically every song. It’s the thing that, whether I’m purposefully thinking about it or not, is going to come out the most. I often talk about things that bother me, which can quickly devolve into apathy, or even nihilism, which I think is bad. A lot of our songs are me naming stuff that sucks, but then reminding myself that I have a responsibility to not slip into that pit of despair… to be actionable in some way. Even if it’s just for myself.
Loren: I don’t mean this in a corny way, but I’ve always seen your lyrics as altruistic. You have this outward awareness, a lens toward others. I feel like my own lyrics tend to be super introspective, even if I’m trying not to be.
Quigley: That’s interesting because, for the most part, I think of my lyrics as extremely inward. They are entirely conversations with myself. I think others can relate, because a lot of people deal with brain problems, mental health, and general despair…. but almost every song is either a pep talk, or sometimes a shit talk, to myself.
Loren: I still listen to “Clid” a lot. There’s that line about how “we’re all sad sacks of sinewy shit.” I never use “we” in my lyrics in that way.
Quigley: When I write, I’m often trying to empathize with this part of myself that I don’t like, or that’s causing me problems. And in externalizing that, you can see how the thing that you’re getting mad at, in your own self, is something you would have empathy for in another person. That’s what I think allows the “we” aspect… it’s that stepping outside of your brain.
A picture I found on my phone from 2015.
Loren: How are you approaching being a band right now? Was there a time during the pandemic when you felt like you were done?
Kieran: I never felt that way. I was like, “I can’t wait to get back to doing it.”
Quigley: The pandemic caused the realization of how important the band actually is. Not having it for two years truly was fucking terrible. I was going through rough stuff, brain-wise. So last year, we played a lot… that set a precedent that we’re trying to continue with this year.
We’re not doing it in a way that’s like, “Let’s go tour for 30 days and ruin our relationships and lose our jobs.” It’s more, “How can we not stop? How can we do it without getting burnt out?”
Loren: We’ve always viewed Patio as choose-your-adventure… and it’s nice, after doing it for so long, to feel like you have nothing to prove.
Quigley: Yeah, absolutely nothing. It’s good for us, so we do it. I’m extremely grateful when people connect, and share, and come out to see us… as long as people are down, I’m down.
Loren: You just released two new singles, “You’re Also a Jerk” and “Come Back As a Bug.” The latter has a bit of country influence. Are Washer and Beyoncé on the same wavelength? When is “Cowboy Kieran” coming?
Kieran: I was just talking about buying a belt buckle.
Quigley: He’s got a bolo tie, now he wants to get a matching belt buckle. I don’t think we’ll have a country album, but the last few years, I’ve definitely listened to a lot more music like Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which Kieran introduced me to, and older country stuff. And even David Berman, Silver Jews… all that stuff is just him playing “cowboy chords” while talking about absolutely miserable shit. That shit rocks. I’m influenced by that for sure.
Loren: I think that’s all I’ve got. Thoughts on the last decade?
Quigley: Long live Patio! It’s been good.
Kieran: What a wild ride.
Loren: Look at us! You know that meme…
Quigley: Who’d have thought? Look at us, literally almost ten years to the day, back at The Gutter.