almost monday
Words by Willow Shields, Photographs by Briony Graham-Rudd
“any question that you can't just find on the internet is a good question”
On a deceptively sunny Thursday in June, while the entire music industry and most of its fans are away at Glastonbury, the Groupie team are at home in Brighton. And with winds blustering in from across the channel, San Diego’s almost monday arrive in the city for their last show in the UK before heading back to mainland Europe. The two groups will meet ahead of the show at Patterns around five in the early evening, before parting ways potentially forever.
The Groupie day starts thus; this writer, accompanied by photographer and 70’s goddess Briony Graham-Rudd shimmied into a taxi and made our way towards the inevitable. Cole Clisby (guitarist) and Luke Fabry (bassist) sat upstairs at Patterns in a booth, and on arrival we were directed to take seats opposite them. I found myself looking in the space between the pair and finding myself in a floor to ceiling mirror. Feeling slightly offput by my wildswept reflection and nervous blushing, it was a slow start of an interview. The awkwardness hung in the air and I was unavoidably out of practice at cutting through it, so it sat there for most of the interview. Mocking my ineptitude and continual pink cheeks.
But first, an introduction. almost monday are a three piece hailing from San Diego, California. Having gone viral and topped the charts with “can’t slow down” from their 2024 record DIVE, the band have seen a boom in popularity in the last year or so. That’s not to say that they’re just a TikTok band, having released their first single in 2020, they have been steadily gaining traction for the last half-decade and at time of writing have just shy of 2million monthly Spotify listeners. They’ve toured extensively since their formation, in an almost constant circuit of shows. The USA, Mexico, South America, Canada, Australia, mainland Europe, East Asia, back to the USA again, back to Europe again, everywhere from Norway to Ireland, Chile to Canada, they’ve seen most of the world and played shows in most cities. They’ve toured with Joywave, The Driver Era, AJR and I’m sure many more artists who aren’t on the Wikipedia page. And they’re currently on a gargantuan album tour for DIVE, having started in South Korea in November last year, they finish their main string of dates in Vienna on the 15th July in a couple of weeks before playing festivals throughout the summer. All this to say, they were in Brighton and they were tired and I started by asking them how it was going. Potetially a mistake. Cole began, “There’s a bunch of new spots we’ve never been to before so we’ve never played in Wales, we played Cardiff [then] Nottingham, Leeds and tonight in Brighton, so it's all new spots for us and there's people coming out to the shows, which is crazy.” While Cole was answering, Luke peered out the window behind me, then locked eyes with Briony and began to speak, “[I’ve] never been to the coast in the UK. Which is nice. It's nice to see similarities between… because we live by the coast in San Diego and LA and it's funny to see that there's a place that's similar to this, where we live, and it's funny how a coastal towns can be similar in all different places of the world.” He then went back to looking just behind us at something else.
I think it’s important to note at this point, that everyone involved in the interview was speaking just above a whisper. A level of noise made like we were all in detention and the teacher was just outside. The band’s crew weaving in and out of the room, working silently as we spoke about the weather in Brighton blustering outside the door. I asked them what their favourite place they’d been was Luke began to answer, “I’ve found that it's like, every place does something really well. So it depends what you want. Like, you want to go out? Do you want to go surf? Do you want to get good food? Do you want, like a good live music scene? So it depends. But to give you an answer, eastern Europe, I like Berlin and Prague a lot and Japan's great as well.” Cole then, “I really like Japan. We’ve only been to Tokyo, and there's so much more to Japan than just Tokyo, so I’d love to have some more time there to see all that Japan has to offer.” I countered “Where's been the best sunset that you've seen?” Luke started, “I think Rio. In Brazil.” Cole replied, “Oh, yeah, on top of Pao de Açúcar,” Luke then continued, “Yeah, it’s the Sugarloaf, I do remember that. That was nice.”His gaze now fixed on Briony once again,” It's really beautiful. I think's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. There was amazing. It's dangerous, but it's really beautiful.”
If you’re familiar with the concept of Groupie Magazine, or my writing in any capacity, you’ll already know I hold a strong dislike for talking to musicians about music. However, sometimes; the bullet needs to be bitten, medicine needs to be taken and the music must be faced. “What's one of your songs that you think that more people should listen to? The underrated banger?” Cole, fiddling with a pen that would eventually dart over the table and onto the floor after hitting me on the chest on its way, he answered first, “Underrated songs. I like Sequoia. I think, maybe went under the radar.” Luke glanced over to Cole and then back to Briony on my left, stated flatly “ I would echo that.. What else? Maybe Sweet Feelings. I don't know.” Having received an answer in a tone that has continued to haunt me since I first interviewed a band over zoom half a decade ago, I quickly moved onto the subject of crisps. “If you were a crisp slash chip flavour, what would you be?” Luke seemed to perk up a the sudden change of tone, but was still wary. “It’s hard delineate between what I like and what I would be?” He asked, so internally scrambling I qualified, “You can give two answers if you like.” He proceeded, “Yeah, I really like them. Salt and vinegar. That's a banger of a chip.” Cole then jumped into the conversation, enthused, “I like… they don't really have it in the US a lot, but paprika chips, over here. Just kind of like paprika spice. But they don't really do that for some reason in the U.S. I don't know why. But, you know, I like those.” Luke carried on, “Barbecue chips. I don’t know chips are good. I don’t like… It's not ranch, but it's like.. “ Briony then found his answer in “Sour cream?” He smiled, “Yeah, I'm not a fan. But other than that, I'm pretty open. I'm pretty, you know, chip fluid.” A beat. Then Cole then began to regail us with a story, “I got a lot of interesting flavours. We went to grocery store, gas station thing on the way here from France. They had like all sorts of, like, chicken. I think I had, like, Peri Peri chips. I got some crazy flavours over there. It's interesting.”
I then felt a sudden panic looming in my chest, because these men were just answering the questions I’d given them. Usually, artists tent to ramble, or at least go on tangents, but not these two members of almost monday, no way. They’d been media trained. My worst fear had been realised. Yet, out of the panic, I found a way around. “What would be your ideal question to answer?” Bingo. They laughed, I laughed, “This is journalistic integrity right there.” I quipped. Then Cole began, “One, I think that we've been liking a lot is, ‘What's something that somebody doesn't know about you?’ I feel like that one's been like entertaining, we've been talking about that one, even outside the interviews. Just funny stuff, I remember we were walking in South London. But Dawson was admiring these hedges and he was like, ‘oh, I should have said that as my answer for the what is somebody not know about you question.’ Because we get it occasionally. And sometimes we just say something that somebody may already know. But it's kind of hard to think of on the spot.” Luke continued, “Yeah, honestly, any question that you can't just find on the internet is a good question.” I replied with, “I hate asking about music as well. Because also it's what you have to talk about all day. So it's like, let's not talk about music. Let's talk about you as people.” Luke replied flatly with a cheeky grin plastered on his face, “We are people.”
“What's your favourite colour?” Luke began, “I like burnt orange.” Cole addressed his bandmate, “You got a sweater that's burnt orange,” “Do I?” “Yes, it's a thermal.” Cole continued, “I'm pretty like 50, 50. Maybe blue slightly over green.” “What kind of green?” Luke questioned. “There's a lot of greens,” We all then witnessed a debate about the colour green, Cole finally decided on, “Plants green. Yeah. A well watered plant.” I then had run out of genius and turned to Briony, “Do you have any questions?” She obliged, “What did you have for dinner last night?” “Ooh, meat pie. I had a meat pie from the venue which was called…something brundle, Social Club..” Briony assisted, “Brudenell?” (pronounced broo-duh-nell) (in Leeds) “Oh, yeah. It was really cool. Amazing pie. I had a beef one for lunch and then I had a chicken one for dinner.” Cole then continued on the meat pie train, “I had one for lunch and an early dinner and then I was maybe going to hit the third for my post show food. But then I ended up running over to a Mediterranean spot.“ Luke, enthused said, “The Indian food here is really great, though. What do you guys recommend? Like, what food genres to go to?” Briony recommended Earl’s and its Bhan-Mi’s, I suggested Fish and Chips “because it’s a classic,” The Luke told us about how “Cole got food poisoning last time.” At “The oldest pub [in England]”. Then questioned “Was it the oldest pub?” And Cole Replied, “No, because we went to the oldest pub in Nottingham. That was like 1186. This one was like 13 something.” Luke then asked us what the oldest pub here was and we, combined, has absolutely no idea. Briony then asked the final question, “What's the worst dinner that you'd have as a kid?” “Beets.” Was Luke’s answer, Cole japed, “That was a quick.” Then began speaking his thoughts to the group, “I feel like my mom mad some pretty good food. I'm trying to think of something. Maybe other's stuff I got, like, sick of having too much. I like I definitely got turned off to like blander like food options. Like a quesadilla or something.. It's just, like really plain cheese and some type of bread. So maybe that.” And that was all, Luke asked, “You guys hanging out for the show, yeah?” And that was all.
As we left, we giggled and giggled. Finding our way to the sea we were surrounded by blustering wind, yet we giggled still. Having a pint and debrief at an empty Daltons, Briony and I talked about touring and the realities of it all, how much of a person might be long along the way. We talked about how there was a queue outside the venue already, that the band had a meet and greet package available for purchase and how much we disagreed with it, and wondered how they felt about it as people. Then we headed home, only to go out again a couple of hours later. When we arrived back at Patterns, the girls previously outside had been let in, and the sun was just dipping below the horizon lighting the sky with an orange hue. Entering into the belly of the venue was a stark contrast to the warm outside, a mildly warm room filled with people painted by blue light and shadows creeping from every corner. We found a base at the far side of the room and as we waited for the band to jump around on the small stage in front of us, I began to look around the room. In the front row there were at least two separate groups of teenage girls, with whom I found a silent sense of camaraderie, seeing as I was once one of them. Behind them, the rest of the floor was a mixed company of fans, couples and parents.
When the band took to the stage, the small room erupted in screams, Briony and I shared a glance to say everything to, “I didn’t think they were that famous,” to “I cant believe just a few hours ago we were sitting upstairs talking to them about meat pies and the colour green.” Our view for most of the show however was of the mystical third member of the band, Dawson, who we did not meet because he was on vocal rest. He pranced around the stage with such joy and practice it was hard to not look at him. They sung through their hits, everyone around us screaming along to these songs that were obviously so important to them and their lives. I don’t normally find myself viewing the audience as much as the band, but this show was different. I wondered how each song touched the lives of each person in that room, and I remembered how important it all is. I thought about the young girls in the front row, ribs squeezed onto the metal barrier, who’ll have bruises on their legs for the next week, but they wouldn’t feel in the moment. I thought about how I was one of them once, how I made friends through bands who were my life, and how I wouldn’t be who I am without those bands or those girls. I thought about the parents behind me who maybe put up a fight to chaperone, like mine did, or maybe they wanted to come. Because they know how important everything about it is to their child. I remembered how I was allowed to go to cities I’d never been to alone at fifteen, and that I was maybe sixteen the first time I went to Brudenell Social Club, and I wondered if there are girls like me still, and I wished for them to be safe. Then Dawson caught my eye and I was no longer lost in the past but focussed on the band in front of me.
almost monday have the countenance of a band who can’t believe they’re filling up tiny rooms, even though they’ve played hundreds of venues bigger, it was nice to see them giggle and have fun and be almost dumbfounded to have people scream lyrics back at them. They joked with each other on stage, and with the people in the front rows, singing lyrics to them and letting the fans fan them with their fans. I found that Cole and Luke were right and Sequoia is an underrated banger and it was so fun to hear it live. For a band who are non-stop on the road, I imagine playing shows has the potential to become dull, or at least unenjoyable. But it doesn’t look like it, to me it looked and felt like a group of brothers bonded by years together having just the best time ever. When their set was coming to a close, the girl group in front of me held each other and sang their goodbyes while tears streamed down their faces. I had theorised that they had at least been to a few dates of the UK leg together, and because this was the last one, they wouldn’t see each other for a while. And it was heartbreaking, but beautiful.
When almost monday came to visit Brighton, they had a great time playing a show, and I was reminded that it is about so much more than that.