Words and photography by Sierra Skinner.
I shared a cigarette with a girl who also shares my same name as we waited for Wilt to play at the Love Song.
This Sierra told me that she had come straight from the airport to the show and would be headed right back after. She flew out just for this. What exactly? Well, to see Wilt play songs from their new album when no one’s watching for the first time. She’s been a devout fan from a distance for years now, but was greeted by the band as if an old friend.
Tempted as I am to write off the internet as a slow-release poison to the arts, this may very well prove to be its redemptive characteristic. The capacity to connect makes social media a worthwhile vehicle for distribution and discovery. Musicians are granted the ability to reach beyond their immediate community and find like minds from all over reaching back. You’re not alone in these feelings anymore, whether you’re occupying the position of artist or audience.
This postmodern phenomenon is at the heart of Wilt’s story. Before the fan pages and the world tours and the media attention, there was just Chelsea Rifkin, Aaron Liebman, Andrew Vance, and Daniel Bermudez. The audience has grown exponentially but that heart remains the same. That’s what this album represents, those in-between and outside moments that can exist only between the band and its members where our prying eyes cannot reach. The moments of sensitivity, emotionality, heartbreak, and all that devastating humanness that not even rockstars can shake.
I checked in with the band the following morning to reflect on touring, writing, the purpose of content creation, and how they’re integrating it all without sacrificing the music.
Well, how was last night for you guys?
Andrew Vance: Oh it was fun!
Chelsea Rifkin: Yeah, fun….. A little stressful. Very stressful at first. I kinda felt like a shitshow for most of it. But it was really fun when we were playing and afterwards.
I mean, of course. The set up is always the worst part, the anticipation. You’re also just running comms too, wearing a million hats…
Aaron Liebman: I very much had the thought-as I was telling Andrew-like, when Maroon 5 has an album release party, the band is not running around with posters and T-shirts.
That is the thing about this level, the whole DIY thing. You can’t just be a band member.
AV: We also have high expectations. Like, we chose to do the album in full, which means half the songs we had never played before. We wanted to have all this exclusive merch, to just make it a really special experience, and I’m glad we did it.
CR: Yeah, it was awesome.
And that was your first show home after the tour, right? What was that like?
CR: Fun! Really long of course. Once again in that DIY spirit, we did everything ourselves, just with the four of us. And so we sold merch every night, we tour managed, we drove… Yeah, we did everything. But honestly it was way more fun than we expected in those circumstances. I think it definitely made us a lot closer. We’re also all sharing one hotel room.
Oh, woah. One bed? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style?
CR: Two beds, but we have camping mats. So it’s like one person per bed and we all switch off depending on, like, who’s feeling good, who’s feeling bad, who had a rough night.
Daniel Bermudez: It sounds bad, but the camping mats are actually better than most of the hotel beds.
AL: One thing I’ve reflected on since being back was like, oh, it felt so good to be busy. And when you're a freelance musician like most of us are, your sense of purpose for your day can be completely different. But when you’re on a tour where you're working really hard, it’s so nice to be like: wake up, this is my job today, get to the venue, sell merch, and it was the most routine I’ve had in a long time. It felt really good to have that purpose every single day.
That is so interesting to me, and I guess it definitely comes from the fact that this is more of a full-time gig for you guys….
AL: Getting there, yeah.
Which is awesome! That’s the dream, but I’ve often heard of tours described as such the opposite. Like a complete disruption of routine.
CR: Well, we’ve toured a bunch now, but I think we’re still at the beginning of our career. So everything is still sparkly and exciting to us. Like going to new cities and getting to play shows. Maybe it feels like work on the sixth week, but it’s just so much fun and we’re living our dream until then. And Aaron made such a good point. I feel like I’m most in a band while on tour. And I always say if we could be on tour all the time, I totally would wanna do that, you know? Especially when it was set up like these tours, where we had a couple days off in certain cities. But the Jutes fans were super receptive and awesome. We also got to tour with Mothica, and In Color, and everyone in those groups were so, so sweet and so talented. And it was really fun to play with heavier musicians.
And now you’re coming straight off tour into full album release mode. What was the timeline like between finishing the album, leaving for tour, getting ready to promote?
CR: We recorded the album in February and March, and then it was basically done before we went to Europe earlier this year. Then we came back and started releasing singles and stuff. We had a couple different ideas of how we wanted to do it, and we did have a bunch of time to really get some promotional stuff done for the album with music videos and reels and such in between the Europe tour and this U.S. tour. Now we have a couple weeks–we leave November 3rd again for Europe, which we’re all so freaking excited about. Best place in the world. But we basically just have to focus on rehearsing. It’s a headline set with all the new songs so we basically have an entire new set to do. We’re also trying to level up our show. We added the lights this last time and we’re going to need different things when we’re in Europe because… it’s Europe.
It’s also just been a very big logistical thing figuring out tour, so yeah, we’re stacking our schedule, taking interviews, doing content shoots, whatever we can before we leave.
That actually brings me to a point I’m super curious to hear about, with the social media element that now bands are having to put more and more thought and energy towards, how does content creation and self-promotion factor into your creative process? Is it a major consideration?
CR: Aaron always says this–and I think it puts it best–that no one’s gonna make it work out or like, make us famous, except for us, you know? You can have a team and you can have a bunch of people, but we’re always gonna have that DIY mentality of if we want something we have to get it for ourselves. And social media is of course horrible in a lot of ways but also great for that because you don’t have to have any money, you don’t have to have any team, you can literally just post to social media. And that’s what we did at first. That’s how we gained any following. And it is a huge factor in our creative process, I would say. We definitely write music from the heart and try to focus on the music just as much, if not more, obviously, than the social media. Like, the social media is the thing that is going to make our music go forward. And that’s kind of how we view it, you know? Like we’ll do whatever we can to get people to listen to our music because we’re so proud of it. Aaron and Andy do all of our social media and are geniuses.
We’ll always be that kind of funny band-next-door, an approachable rock band. Which I feel like a lot of people just are not right now.
AL: You can be both reactive and proactive when it comes to this. We’ve seen bands that have blown up on social media but not from their own doing. And that is a really crazy thing because it’s like, oh, they’re a social media band that doesn’t know how to use reels or TikTok. And it puts you in an interesting situation. I mean, that’s really cool, they had a good vibe, they blew up from a fan, right? Like, making a viral video with their audio, which is sick. But we really try to take it into our own hands and we could put out cool music and just wait around for some fan to make some viral video with our song or we could just do it ourselves.
AV: We’ve also been doing this for–crazy to say–four years now. And it’s been a thing since day one. I don’t remember the exact date but we’re probably within a few days of four years to the date of the first TikTok we ever posted that had three million views. And that was before we even had our first song out.
CR: The first video we posted, it wasn’t even consciously like we were trying to do anything with it. We just thought it was a funny moment before rehearsal that I taped. And then we were like, oh shit! Look what this can do for us! We gotta keep going with it. How could we not.
That is kind of the way to reach people now, especially when representation isn’t a guarantee. That’s also pretty new for you guys, right? Like, being signed and having a whole team behind you.
CR: Yeah, recent within the past year and a half, two years… we started adding to the team. Everyone we have, we absolutely love. I think we’re one of those rare projects where we really trust everyone on our team and we know that they’re going to bat for us. And so that’s a really great feeling. But also, like we said before, we’re never gonna put our destiny in someone else’s hands. We could have this great team, we could have an even bigger team. We’re still gonna grind just as hard. We’re still going to do our own shit because that’s just what we believe in and what makes us so excited about wilt.
What’s it been like to navigate all that pressure? Especially with social media, it does happen so much quicker that way, so suddenly you do have all these eyes on you. Has that influenced the way you react, how you write, the way you’re creating?
CR: Well, so that’s actually exactly why we named the album when no one’s watching because it felt like right off the bat everyone was watching us. But people weren’t hearing us, you know? Like people were excited to see our funny reels because we have great personalities and know how to make a killer meme (laughs), but no one’s listening to our music.
And we’re a band. We’re not influencers. So a lot of the album is about that juxtaposition of people seeing and people watching and thinking that you’re doing great. Then in reality you’re not getting exactly what you’re wanting, you know? It’s about that feeling of if no one was watching, what are you actually feeling? What are you doing? What are you working towards? I think that was a big factor for a long time, was trying to get the people watching our reels to actually listen to our music. And it definitely took a lot of trial and error to get there. But when we started posting for Bite My Tongue, I would say, that was the trigger for our brains to go, “Oh, this is what works for us!” This is what actually gets people to stream and listen and become fans that will go to concerts and not just watch things. Big applause to Aaron and Andy for making it happen. That’s definitely when I started feeling like Wilt was taking off.
Well said. Well, with all that in mind, are there any particular lyrics or songs off this album that you feel particularly connected to or that you feel are expressive of what’s inside of you?
CR: My favorite song is definitely Rats. It’s the heavy one with most of the screaming and breakdown. That one just feels so emotional and cathartic and relatable. It just feels like the type of song I want to scream all the time. I would say my favorite line is “You can leave it all for me to take, softening the fall until I break… bite your tongue until you suffocate.” Which is so self referential which I thought was cheesy at first but now I kind of love because the sentiment rings so true. It’s like, just don’t say shit until everything falls apart which is such a relatable feeling for anyone that bottles in their emotions. Shout out to Aaron for helping me with that one.
What about you Aaron?
AL: I’m so proud of the riffs on this album. Writing lyrics is kind of like pulling teeth for me. I’ll do it if you put a gun to my head and then I’ll have fun and be like “Huh, I should do that more!” but for the most part I express my feelings with guitar. And I could talk about the riffs, but I think when I first heard Chelsea’s lyrics for Dent I was immediately blown away. Like, holy shit, it just really struck me. They’re so vulnerable. So that’d be my pick.
Alright, who’s next? Andy?
AV: My first answer in my head was the selfish one, which is Closure, ‘cause I wrote the choruses. I do agree with Aaron, though, when I think of the ones that Chelsea wrote for Dent. But yeah, selfishly it’d be Closure. I just love to write an anthemic chorus if I can find it and that one landed.
It absolutely did. And what about you Dan?
DB: I mean, my answer, I’ve been thinking about the self referential line from Rats. That one really stuck out to me a lot. I really love also the lyrics to Suffocate just as a whole. Those are kinda two big ones for me. As a song, I have a soft spot for what I feel is the underdog of the record, which is bitter, burned. It’s just, something about that song. We’ve had it for a long time and I just really love it. It’s really fun to play.
when no one’s watching is available on all streaming platforms now, and it’s worth being really, truly listened to.