Diandra Reviews It All -Interviews Pressure Kids: Dealing With Pressure

God, I love my titles! (lol!) Basic Irony at its finest. Yet, for The Pressure Kids, pressure has been a weird friend. Pressure can either make you run away from a dream or turn into the road-runner trying to find every possible path to get to it. Since college, this band has rolled on through the highs and lows of figuring out whether your dream is really that “dreamy.” In our interview, Nick Johnston discusses how they have stuck together through the natural changed that come with being a person and artist.
The Pressure Kids // “Mint” (Official Music Video)

Diandra: What have been the biggest changes you have seen in each other since meeting in college ? What has stayed absolutely the same?

Nick : Our band formed the fall semester of our freshman year at college in Nashville, Tennessee. There is so much growth that happens as a human being during those years, it has truly been a special experience to watch everyone in the band mature and deepen alongside each other and alongside the music. After half a decade, some personnel switches, and a novel’s worth of missteps and movement, our process has basically remained the same. That sort of electric, “near-impossible to articulate chemistry” present in our first dorm room jam is still there every time we get together to write, rehearse, record. We really do just love playing with each other, always have.

Diandra: What do you feel each member offers to the collective in talent and personality?

Nick: There has always a been a strong sense that everyone brings really distinct talents and skills to this project. Our personalities complement perfectly. It feels like playing on a really great basketball team. As a young band, just getting going, you are put in many wonderfully strange and different situations on the road. Everyone steps up when they are needed to help keep things humming along. We’ve been together long enough now, where everyone is really tuned into each other’s strengths, and can set each other up musically. It’s rooted in this subliminal trust, a mutual respect, and a true desire to listen and learn from one another. Everyone has honed their own special magic. Some of the most gratifying and surreal musical experiences of my life have been in my basement where we rehearse; watching songs tumble out of our five heads at once.

The Pressure Kids // “Team” (Official Music Video)

Diandra: Working as artists for so many years, how have you seen “making it” and “success” be redefined within you?

Nick: You learn that “success” is a moving target, that it must be defined and redefined daily. While having a grand vision for the arc of your career is essential, we’ve learned that this arc is built by zooming in and dissecting the countless, little daily successes that build on one another. How well is the bridge of a song we are working on emotionally communicating with the rest of the song? In an opening slot, how can we win over people that didn’t come to see our band? How can we get our music spun on the radio stations we admire? What unconventional merch items might set us apart? Who has the drink tickets? Where did we put a fucking ¼ inch cable? How should we release our new music in a way that tells the story we want to tell? “Making it” is a million daily little missions that amalgamate over time, that’s how we’ve always approached building our band.

Diandra: With that in mind, how do you feel about those that still call you a “rising” artist or a “new” one. Do you feel like you are still new and rising?

Nick: We embrace it. We always want to be a “rising” band. People have always resonated with the underdog story, and if we’re always making things that are pushing our own boundaries, getting us in front of new ears, if our band is always “breaking,” then we’re doing something right.

Diandra: How do you see you give each other clarity and hope as a band and fellow creatives? Which song of yours most represents clarity and hope to you?

Nick: This band is easily the most supportive group of people I’ve ever been involved with. There is a trust, an admiration, and a love for each other, both personally and musically, that has always been the backbone of our project and for us, as friends, and I think it really does translate to the music we’ve made together. Some of us have side projects, some of us run marathons, make our own hot sauce, throw silly parties, we have family members that roll through town, everyone always shows up and supports. We strive to be an emotionally literate band, to always push each other to be better communicators, be better citizens of the world. I always have considered “Untitled (Pick Me Up)” off of our self-titled EP, to be our most hopeful anthem, and our sonic “I’ve got you” to each other.

Diandra: How do you feel your upcoming EP represents who you are currently? What qualities and message can we find?

Nick: While our first EP highlighted our more immediate indie pop-rock sensibilities, we wanted the second volume to showcase a side of us that was more textural, a little darker, a little more chaotic, to tell stories with a bluer tint. The songs are about characters that are involved; that are getting together and getting away with things. They’re tacking magazines up on their wall and driving through the night and sleeping on boats with other people’s girlfriends and following each other around and hiding from each other and doing all the things that people do to stay inspired and to come down and to get close to others. I think the sonic textures and the arrangements on this record really mirror the beauty and strife and complexity of being tangled up with one another.

Diandra: You have said this EP is like a thesis for the band. If you could sum up the band as an actual thesis, what would it be?

Nick: We make songs that are big, loud and beautiful for people that live big, loud and beautiful lives.

Diandra: With your songwriting being so collaborative, what is your favorite lyric you have come up with together?

Nick: Some of my favorite lyrics I’ve ever written were for the song “Mint.” I knew I was writing for Katy’s voice and it cleared this stream in my head that let some things flow that I’m really proud of. It was special to write these phrases I could imagine coming from her spirit. The last refrain, “you could hollow out or stick around,” came when Allan, Katy, and I were first forming the idea that would become the song; it tumbled out in one hot breath and just immediately outlined the emotional capacity for the whole song.

Diandra: As a group that sees a song like a story, what are a few stories, either yours or someone else’s, that you want to make into a song?

Nick: I’ve been trying to write a song for a while that is from the perspective of an old tree about to be cut down, so I guess I’ll keep you posted if that one pans out.

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