Interview: Cowboy Destroy's Leslie Bumgarner Talks Slop Pop, "Dirty", and New Music on the Horizon
Cowboy Destroy are coining the term “slop pop”. On the surface, you could describe them as fuzzy alternative rock. But if you go a little deeper, the genre term they’ve crafted is representative of pop/rock music that’s catchy, while still not feeling overly polished. All it takes is one listen to tracks like “Dirty” and their newest release, “Married Mercy”, and you can fully understand what one of rock’s newest acts is trying to do.
Shameless SF sat down with vocalist/guitarist Leslie Bumgarner to talk about the making of the song and music video for “Dirty”, the new music that the band have on the horizon, and much more. Check it out below.
Portions of this interview have been condensed and edited solely for the purposes of length and clarity. Photo Credit: Don Marcelo
According to the press release and info I received about your band, you’ve coined the term “slop pop”. Do you care to elaborate what this genre encompasses?
I think that term kind of came from the idea that, well, I’m hoping that we can write popular songs that people wanna sing and something that could potentially be on the radio. But also something that isn’t polished, and something that has that indie feeling and hasn’t been swallowed up by a “studio sound”. That was my idea for that term.
Tell me about the making of “Dirty”. That came out back on May 6th, and I can’t believe it’s already been a month. Tell me a little bit about how that song came about, how you pitched it, and how it grew in that process.
I was alone for a month in December while my wife was in Australia. There was some travel difficulties because of COVID, and I wasn’t able to join her over there. So I was just in the house, ruminating on things. I had a friendship that dissolved a few months before that, and that’s really where the song came from, that breakup and that loss. That’s the honesty of it.
Inversely, while the song has a heavier feeling that reflects on the loss of friendship, the music video for “Dirty” features the band fashioning guitars into skateboards, putting them on GoPro cameras and riding them around a skatepark. How did you conceptualize the video and work to make it different from the tone of the song?
The video definitely has more of a sense of fun than a sense of loss. I don’t want to wallow in all of that, I just want to make music and have a good time. I also think that the song was a bit of a bravado, acting like things don’t affect you while trying to move on and everything. I was having kind of a blue sky creative discussion with our bassist J.D. Ramage. We were talking about what we could do, and I think we were inspired by Ty Segall’s “Break A Guitar” music video, where he exploded those guitars. So we thought, ‘How could we do something where we could destroy some guitars on a low budget level?’ J.D. had a bunch of ideas, and he came up with the idea to put the trucks on [the guitar] and skate it, and I was like, “That’s awesome”. Once he said that, we just went for it. I got guitars, found some skaters, and it naturally progressed from there.
I was so worried watching that video, even though I knew the guitars were going to break. But I kept worrying as someone was going up a vert ramp that the neck was going to snap. But it looks really cool!
Well I don’t know if you noticed, but I did not skate on one of those guitars, because I too was concerned about the same thing. [laughs]. I said, ‘let’s get some pros who are actually interested in fucking around with this thing’, because it looked like a broken ankle to me. But yeah, we found some guys that were totally up for it and I can’t believe they were able to flip it, go off the ramp, and do a couple of [tricks] with it. It was impressive.
Yeah, I always knew we were going to destroy them afterwards so I felt like we had to. We’ve gotten a lot of pushback on TikTok from people who were like, ‘Aw, I’m saving up for my first bass, I can’t believe you destroyed that thing’. I’m like, ‘ah well, these weren’t super nice instruments to begin with.’ These were Craigslist finds that were super busted up to begin with. So hopefully people aren’t too upset with us. [laughs].
It's not like you guys were going, ‘Hey, here’s a $4,000 Gibson guitar.’ It kinda looked like something you got on Craiglist or bought at Target that was very cheap.
Yeah, and the bass wasn’t even a real Fender. I hope that people aren’t too upset. [laughs]
How long did it take to film?
One day. It took about six hours. I work as a camera operator and director of photography, and I had a buddy come and operate the camera. We had a GoPro, an iPhone, and a [Sony A7X]. With the two guitars, two operators, and three cameras, we were able to get a good amount of footage in six hours. J.D. edited it, so we just had a little inhouse team, friends and people helping [out]. Because I work in the industry here, I knew a few people that would come and help.
From the looks of it, Cowboy Destroy has a few shows coming up. What can fans and new listeners expect at these shows as far as your live performance and any new material?
We play about half of the songs that we have released on Spotify, and then the other half are from songs that we haven’t recorded yet, songs that we’re trying to work out and get as polished as possible before we record them. We’re trying to do a fun show where people dance, and we’re trying to get people moving around. A friendly mosh pit would be an ideal situation, you know? That’s the vibe that we’d like to create. But you know, L.A. is a mixed bag. Sometimes people want music that night, other people are just coming out to vibe, so it really depends on the venue and the night.
Last question: we’ve heard “Dirty”. We’ve heard what’s on Spotify, and you said you’re working on new songs before you record them. What’s on the horizon for Cowboy Destroy in terms of new music? What can people expect?
We’re still recording in my basement. Things might change, but right now it’s looking like the releases for the rest of the year will be more lo-fi inspired releases. We’re hoping to release something every six to eight weeks, for the remainder of the year. I’ve got a really special Christmas release that I want to do, which is a punk Christmas song. Our next release is called “Married Mercy” (which is out today). We have another release in July called “Only A Mother”, and man, I am so excited for that release. It’s gonna be a really sick song, and I’m excited for people to hear that.
Be sure to check out Cowboy Destroy on their website and social media so that you can stay up to date on any new music they have coming out.
Cowboy Destroy
www.cowboydestroymusic.com
www.facebook.com/cowboydestroy
Instagram: @cowboydestroy
