Petite League: Live and On Camera
Lorenzo Gillis Cook of Petite League talks to live show director Gabriella Gray about new releases, quarantine, and staying positive in an exclusive video interview with KXSC. Petite League is a New York-based band that released their newest single, “Joyrider,” on September 1st. The newest single encapsulates the feelings of uncertainty and finding opportunities in moments of difficult change. It’s a summer song, but a distinctly 2020 summer song. Cook discusses the full process of the newest release, and how his ideas and intentions for this project have become a reality.
Gray: So why don’t you give us a little backstory to who you are, where you are writing music, when did you start Petite League, stuff like that.
Cook: I’m an American but I grew up in Belgium, my dad works for NATO and stuff so we were abroad. I went to a kind-of American school, like an international school, and for college, I went to Syracuse, so that was the first time I’ve really lived in the US. Pretty early on we were starting to go to shows, like basement shows, which I don't know if that’s a thing at USC. But, in Syracuse and upstate New York, there’s a big DIY house show scene. So we started going to those shows as Freshmen, and as Sophomores, my friends and I started a little band called Conroy Blanc, which was like a goofy surf rock band. I’d been in bands in high school, and was also in a music business program, so I was really itching to be in a band. I was doing solo stuff which was fine, but it wasn’t fulfilling the itch I needed to scratch.
By my Junior year I figured out how to record electric stuff, which I’d never really done myself before, and I figured out it was pretty easy. And I started recording, and borrowed someone’s interface and started recording. I only knew one drummer, which was my friend Henry, and from that point on, since 2014 together. I kind of write everything and record everything but drums, and he’s like my drummer rock. So another year of school, and then 4 years in New York, and that’s kind of the very shortened version of what this band has been doing.
Gray: Why don’t you talk a little bit about the new release and where the writing came from, what your inspiration for it was?
Cook: I started writing not super intensely in early 2020. I went home for a little bit and came back thinking it’s time to start piecing something together again. I had one song that was in the works, and then COVID hit. We were on tour in early March, and my plan was after that tour was to buckle down and write an album, it’ll be springtime, it’ll be great. And then everything changed pretty quickly. It was the first time I was writing a record where I wasn’t reflecting on something in the past, it was kind of in the moment. Every week that would go by, things were changing so quickly and my life was getting thrown around in weird ways. All the feelings and everything were so raw and omnipresent. It was easy to write a record in the present tense, which I’d never really done before. It’s not necessarily the COVID album, it’s about a lot of self-reflection, but self-reflection that’s ongoing. The record’s called Joyrider, which is the same name as the song, a lot of it was seeking out pleasure and finding something to get myself --or anybody-- would need to get through this time.
And it was really hard in New York. My neighborhood was hit really hard, there’s a hospital down the road and there were trucks full of bodies. That was on my way to the post office everyday, shipping records. The US is the worst-hit country, this is the worst-hit city, and I was in the worst-hit neighborhood in the worst-hit borough. And it was so real and so exhaustingly draining, but at the same time, I felt like I had to do something and write about it. I’m still processing it, so I’m not totally ready to say “this is what this means.” It’s a lot of overflowing feelings, and this is what I was going through and am going through. So maybe in a couple years I’ll have a good answer, but I think for now it’s mostly about daydreaming about feeling good, or finding a little calm in a chaotic thing. There were weeks on end when I didn’t leave my room, and that is calm in a way but a chaotic neutral. Writing in that sort of environment was strange.
But honestly, if you can find any silver lining, I think there’s something good about it. Because I think I would have written a record that wasn’t as interesting. I think this is our best work, or my best work and Henry’s best work. There was pent up energy that just needed to get out. If this all hadn’t happened, I don’t know what we would have written about. I was feeling a little bit dried up before all this happened, and then it happened and everything felt too real. In a good way and in a bad way.
Gray: What's one thing you hope people will take away from the new release?
Cook: I think there are a lot of songs on the record that are a new direction for us. My takeaway I hope that people have here is that this is the best version of what we can do. I know some people have a fondness for the old stuff which is cool but, I hope people understand that this is like — my friend Jonathon who is an incredible musician, he just took a look at the tracks before we put them out and was like “I’ll just fix a few things.” Which I’ve never done before, and he was able to bring the production level up, and just make the parts I knew I was recording but didn’t have the technical ability to make sound like that, he was able to bring it out.
So there’s a lot of that on this record where it’s like “I don’t know what I’m doing, I tried my best but can you help me package this right?” And so I hope people understand that’s what happened here. This is what I always wanted this band to sound like, especially with the new song, I think it’s so prototypical of everything I’ve tried to put out before, or have put out. But to me, this is the best version of that.
And the response has been crazy, we got such a good response from it all and I’m just so happy. Not that we usually get bad responses, at least that I see, everyone’s super nice. But this time felt a little different and that’s what I was hoping for. I was hoping people would be like “Oh shit they did get to that next level.”
Gray: If you could have one band cover the song you just released, who would it be?
Cook: It would have to be an older band. I always think covering old music is cooler. There’s a band Superchunk, they’re an older band, been around a while. I’m not super aware of them but people keep comparing them to me and us. I listened to the songs and yeah totally, I’m not ripping them off, I just don’t know them, but their music is great. They figured out the formula for that catchy, catchy power-pop song. I’m a sucker for The Replacements stuff and all the 80’s production value.
I don’t think anyone would cover it because who would cover a new song, other than Johnny Cash and the Nine Inch Nails stuff.
Plugs:
New Single “Joyrider” by Petite League
Mini Label @zapworldrecords
Check out:
Pistol Gang Artist
Solitary Recordings Label
Cannibal House Rules by Jonathon Something
— Gabriella Gray, Live Show Director