ifitbeyourwill Podcast
“ifitbeyourwill" Podcasts is on a mission to talk to amazing indie artists from around the world! Join us for cozy, conversational episodes where you'll hear from talented and charismatic singer-songwriters, bands from all walks of life talk about their musical process & journey. Let's celebrate being music lovers!
Season 6 starts Fall 2025… Looking for indie musicians
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ifitbeyourwill Podcast
ifitbeyourwill S06E06 • Shallowater
A quiet room. Three players. More air than distortion—and somehow it feels heavier. We invited Blake Skipper from Shallowater to pull back the curtain on a second album that trades pedal stacks for patience, lets the drummer steer dynamics, and turns the bass into a melodic foil that fills the trio without clogging the mix. If you’ve ever wondered how slow/fast shifts can feel cinematic, or how minimal gear can still shake a room, this one lands right in your wheelhouse.
We trace the band’s path from Lubbock House shows to an independent release that knows what it wants: space, restraint, and intent. Blake breaks down how songs form in the room, why lyrics usually arrive last, and how a well-timed TikTok plus an Ethel Kane playlist slot helped the music find its people. There’s candour about the DIY grind—distribution, merch, schedules—alongside the pure joy of first tours, late-night drives, and fans who cross state lines for 45 minutes of slowcore catharsis. Expect talk of odd-time grooves, drummer-led accelerations, and the subtle choices that make quiet passages tense and loud moments bloom.
We also explore how reviews reflect the band’s bet: some call it sparse, others call it necessary. That’s the point. When you remove the extra, the melody has to carry, the timing has to mean something, and each player has to leave room for the others. Blake shares what’s ahead—new writing, deeper interplay, and dates with The Raveonettes across Chicago, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, and DC—plus a hope to bring their “dirtgaze” north to Canada. If you care about slowcore, alt-gaze, Texas indie, or simply how a small band can sound big through intention, queue it up, lean in, and let the space do the talking.
I want to move back to where the wind blows.
Blake:Thank you for having me on. Yeah, we um this is our second album we've put out, and uh I don't know, we're we're real proud of it. Uh the first one was good and it was a lot of fun, but I feel like you know we've just got a a lot better, got sturdier legs under us, and um I don't know, we're all three feeling like we're better musicians this time around. And uh I we're we're really proud of what what came of it.
Chris:Totally. And and the the record you're referring to is theirs a well, right? That that came out in 2023. Um again, a great record, but I totally get you, Blake, in saying the evolution of of what's happened with you guys. And I think you guys took it like three or four steps forward with this this latest one. Um now you guys are from West Texas, right? Um friends before bandmates. Um, like you guys had known each other for a while, or you know, um fraternized in the same circuits or the same circles for a while.
Blake:Yeah, yeah, we were we were all living in Lubbock. Um, the other two boys are uh from there, and I I was going to college there, and uh we all met there going to going to the local shows and everything, and um it was uh it was a really cool little house show scene out there, and we we wanted to play music, we wanted to play the house shows, and uh we weren't very good. But uh then we we got better and we started playing house shows and it was uh but yeah, friend friends before band.
unknown:Totally.
Chris:And the evolution has been pretty dramatic, would you not say? Um now just maybe to describe a little bit um like some of the what comes out of you guys is I mean they call it kind of dirt gaze, um it's slow core, it's like it's it's such a hard um genre to classify or music to classify, I should say. But I was looking through Texas um and kind of doing a deep dive back into their history of slowcore, you know, kind of alt grunge well, not grunge, but gazy more. Bedhead came to mind like and I used to be a huge fan of Bedhead when they uh when they first came out in the eighties, like nineties. Just like and I never felt that um spirit that they put out until this record. And I find that it is the this the the slow, fast, slow, fast that you guys like to dabble in has been so underutilized over the last you know 10, 15 years. So when the record and I got a chance to listen to it a little bit ahead of time, it just trans it brought me back to those days when I was you know a snotty-nosed kid growing up, you know, up here in Canada. But the memories that it brought me back to just through listening to the guitar and the delivery and that sequencing. So my question is when did you guys nail upon that slow, fast kind of style of writing um your your songs?
Blake:Well, I think uh a lot of that probably comes from our drummer. Um he's just such a uh he he's such an amazing drummer, and you know, if we didn't, you know, uh let him shine, that would be such a waste. So uh, you know, he he has a bunch of crazy ideas. We have to shut him down on a lot of them. He goes too wild. But uh, you know, we uh I don't know, also we just come from a place of uh not really knowing too much theory and everything, so it's really nice to be able to break down um he he knows how to break down like the the time signatures and everything. We had a we had a song in 5.4 um and before we were playing with him, and we didn't know that uh we didn't know what it was. We couldn't figure it out, and so then he uh he told us what it was and uh and then the speed ups and everything, that's that's always just a fun thing to do. It happens while we're jamming, and then uh you know, sometimes it makes it into the songs.
Chris:Nice. And who who who pens the song like who brings the ideas in? Is it a is it a conglomerate of all three of you, or are you the one that would bring an idea in and say, I think I have something here with a couple of chords and I have a few lines in my head? Like, how does how does one of your songs in Shallow Water come to be?
Blake:Uh different songs come about different ways. Uh some of those songs Tristan brings in, some of the songs I bring in. Um, and then a lot of them we uh we work on together. You know, we'll bring in a half-baked idea, and then um we usually come up with the lyrics last. Uh that's usually a big collaborative effort. Um that's always been the trickiest part for us, you know, trying to, you know, we we have this whole song here, and what what do we want it to say? That's uh that's a tough thing to figure out sometimes.
unknown:Yeah, totally.
Chris:And is that collaboration like do the songs come in like kind of like pretty well defined, or is there tons of room in there to like are you surprised sometimes of how the song comes in and then what it evolves into?
Blake:Yeah, so uh a lot of the times, like uh for um Untitled Cowboy, for instance, uh I brought that one in like you know, in my head it was pretty well cooked, but uh it the the whole like feel of it and uh everything that goes on, the the speed ups and the the slowdowns, that that all came with uh just playing it together and thinking um you know the collective mind rather than just my head in my bedroom.
Chris:Right. Yeah, yeah. So that they all just kind of take a life of their own once they uh get out in the middle of the room. Right. And is it crazy for me to suggest that you guys grew up listening to like heavy music? Uh maybe the other two boys for sure. I grew up uh pretty sheltered. Uh my mom didn't want me listening to uh rock and roll, you know, if believe it or not. Um but uh you know, so I I grew up listening to a lot of country and uh various things, but um definitely uh whenever I got to college especially, I uh it was a whole new world of uh all the music that ever existed that I got to go through and uh it was a really great time and I got inspired by a lot. There's a lot that I I'm sure I'm inspired by that I don't even know. And Blake, were you were you already writing songs and like interested in becoming a musician before you entered into college? Like was that happening at home as you were growing up in high school and all of that?
Blake:Yeah, uh Lonely Sea off the first album. I wrote that one whenever I was uh like 14, I believe. Um I uh I don't know, I I've always wanted to do music and uh so now it's uh it's really nice to actually be doing it. And um that was uh that was a nice little song that uh ever everybody else seemed to like it, so uh we tried to take a real whack at it and put it on a record, so we did.
Chris:Awesome. And Blake, what's your process? How do you how do you get from an idea to a song? Like, are you the kind of musician that has to do something every day or do you wait till inspiration kicks in or till uh something that pops in front of you and inspires you? Like, how do you what's your process like from for for writing for being a musician, I guess?
Blake:I feel like for me, um it's uh it's kind of ebbs and flows. I uh you know, I I play guitar uh all the time, but I'm not always writing. Um and uh but but like there's little windows of uh where I feel super creative and um you know a lot of the time nothing really comes of it, but you know, there'll be little uh weeks where I'm like, oh yeah, this is this is a really cool idea. I'm gonna keep going. That that leads to another cool idea, and that leads to another cool idea. And sometimes you get a song you like out of it, and sometimes not.
Chris:Do you keep all those little you know?
Blake:Yes, they're they're all reharvest one day or I have uh like a million voice memos, and uh, you know, maybe I'll go through them one day.
Chris:So that's is that also a part of your practice is you'll always have kind of your phone and like you'll you'll capture ideas through the recorder on your phone.
Blake:Yes, yeah. And uh that way, you know, you don't forget and you can go back and um you know if if I take a video of it then I can remember how I how I was playing that. But um you know it's it's a really frustrating uh thing to forget an idea. Um I've I forgot a lot of them, but they they probably weren't that good anyway.
Chris:So they'll come back eventually, right? Yeah, yeah. The good ones will. That's right. That's right. And how did you guys kind of walk into like I know playing subtle is very hard. Like it's not you have to people's tendency when they play is like to you know, rock it out. It's it seems almost easier, like when there's lots of noise, because you can hide stuff in there. Yeah, your sound is like it's there. Like I heard that you guys don't use a lot of pedals, effects. Um you keep the stuff pretty clean. Is that an accurate statement?
Blake:Uh it's uh it's a pretty minimal pedal board. Um I think uh on the record I'm using uh not counting the tuner pedal, I think three pedals.
Chris:Um was that always the intent of of you guys of Shallow ater is to keep it clean with enough space in there as well?
Blake:Yeah, uh especially with this um with this record, we had more of an idea of what we what we wanted to do with uh this new record. The first one was just kind of you know, throwing everything at the wall, figuring out what we can do, and then this time around we um had a concise idea of um you know it it it's a really hard thing to do um to be so slow and so soft sometimes, but I I really like that kind of music, so wanted to be able to pull that off.
Chris:Well you do it, man. You do it with grace and integrity and like it's um like I've tried to do those kinds of things and it's so exhausting to slow it all down so that there's enough room for the the music to just be. Um and I find the interplay between your guitar and your bass player amazing. But the drummer, as you were mentioning, I mean, it just adds this uh it's more than a drum. It's like almost another instrument or a voice speaking. Uh it's it's really quite unbelievable how you guys assembled all that together.
Blake:It's uh it's really nice. And uh yeah, as for the bass, uh Tristan plays bass in a really special way. I I wouldn't want to play with anyone else because uh I think it the way he plays it, it fills out the three-piece. The three-piece would sound pretty empty. Um but I don't know, he's kind of playing the bass and uh secondary guitar simultaneously, so it um it leaves a lot of room for me to uh you know dance around and figure out what I actually want to play.
Chris:Right. And so like how long does that process take when you're the three of you together like say you have an idea that you're trying to, you know, you have an idea of a song and you're still kind of working it. Where do you find your um entry point, I guess, in the song for a girl, you know, like as you were mentioning.
Blake:Yeah, yeah, like with um with Sadie, uh that's like a bass line that uh Tristan has had kicking around for a long time, um since before we moved out of Lubbock, I think. But um You know, I I just never could really figure out what to do with it, you know, what what I'm supposed to be playing on it and everything, and um so it took a long time. Um and then you know, we just kept jamming on it in uh in spare time, and uh finally we uh you know it it just it was slow, but it it came together. But then there's other songs where uh like million dollars came together really fast. Um it's really we haven't written two songs the same process, I don't feel like and what's the connection with Ethel Kane? Um I I read something in one of the reviews. Could you elaborate on that collaboration or connection or yeah that um so I think that the reason anybody's heard of us is uh because of her. Um so I'm very grateful for that. Um I think uh well so so what happened was uh there was a uh TikTok posted by um by our friends uh uh Outside Noise and uh that TikTok for some reason got picked up quite a bit, and uh I believe Ethel Kane's roommate um saw that and liked the song uh or you know, liked one of the songs and uh shared that with Ethel Kane and um and uh then she put us on her playlist and that uh that really did so much for us. And uh and then uh we got to meet her at one of her shows in New York and that was really special.
Chris:And have you guys like do you guys ad admire like had you known about her before, like and what she does as as her craft as well?
Blake:I was definitely aware of her. Um I I hadn't listened that much before uh before it became relevant uh you know in my life, but uh there's a lot of music I haven't heard, so you know that's that's uh that's not a dig.
Chris:No, totally. There is a mass amount of music out there that we'll never all listen to. It's impossible. But yeah, and it just never stops. Um how how do you navigate that the the record cycle? Um like there is always such this huge buildup, right, when you're putting a record together. It comes out. You know, like how do how does you how do you and your band kind of navigate that cycle of okay, we have this thing, this archive we're gonna create, we wanna put it down on a record, we want to put it out on on digital platforms, the day comes, it goes.
Blake:Yeah, no, it's yeah. It's been it's been a real crazy process because the the first record we did, uh, we put it out with a local label. Um and they uh you know they did a lot of the the little uh the busy work, you know, like the the nitty-gritty. Um and uh this record we have put out independently, and it's uh it's been crazy to find out how much really goes into uh all the all the I's you gotta dot and all the t's you gotta cross. Um you know, we we've gone with uh distribution platform and figuring out how to work all that, and then um handling our own merch and everything. There's just uh so much, and then you know, hopping on calls like this, you know, it's uh trying to keep your schedule in line.
Chris:Yeah, totally, totally. Well, and and and keeping that kind of flow or that line of the record out there, you know, so that it it's still getting talked about a bit and shared and identificated on, etcetera.
Blake:Trying to get it in front of people that haven't heard it yet, and uh there's uh there's a lot to that. And then also uh, you know, touring on top of that, we we just uh went on our first real tour um with uh our real good friends in the band uh World's Worst. And that was a great tour, and uh that was in July. And it was a great experience and really exhausting. And then now uh next week we're going back out um with the Ravenettes and uh I uh yeah, I I knew uh I knew it was gonna be busy, but uh it's daunting, but in a good way, you know. This this is what I wanted to do, but um I'm uh I'm a little overwhelmed, but it's uh it's good to be.
Chris:Yeah. Was that like what was the decision process for saying, okay, this one it's DIY, we're doing it ourselves? Like what what brought you guys to that decision of of saying that with the latest record?
Blake:Well, we uh you know, we hadn't intended to go independent with this one. I I think we were waiting around for something to happen, and uh nothing ended up happening, and then we uh got to thinking, well, uh, you know, if it's gonna come out this year, we better make something happen. So uh, you know, we didn't want to wait around on it forever. Uh wanted to we were excited first off to to put it out. You know, we we've been sitting on it for a while, you know, in our it's in our phones and everything, but uh wanted to put it out and wanted to you know keep the momentum from the last album, didn't want that to completely die off. Um so it was uh it was a weird decision to make. It felt it felt weird. Um but I think uh I think we made the right call and uh I'm overjoyed to have this thing out there.
Chris:Like what do you you know it's you've created this archive, you know, of a period in time, you know, uh what is September whatever it came out? 10th I think it was September 5th, 5th, yes. The archive came out, the world could finally listen to it. How do you have they have are you finding that people are getting what you wanted out of the record? Like are you finding that the people that are listening to it are getting what you guys were trying to do?
Blake:I think so. Um I think a lot of people that I've talked to have uh you know gotten a lot out of uh, you know, pe different people will tell me different songs resonated with them, and uh you know, a lot of the time I'm like, yeah, that that's uh that's what it does for me too. But then it's also really exciting to hear someone have a different take that completely wasn't in my head, you know. Um and it means something totally different to them than what I intended, but that's uh that's a really beautiful part of it all too.
Chris:And when you guys were touring in July, did you have some cool encounters with your fans like at at shows and stuff? Like could you tell that people were really into what you guys were doing?
Blake:There was a lot of special moments like that. Um I I'm gonna kick myself for not remembering his name, but there was uh we played our first show on that tour in Kansas City, and uh there was a guy there that uh drove all the way from Nebraska. Um and you know, he he drove several hours to come see us, and that that uh that's a surreal feeling. Like, why would you do that? You know, like but but it's uh it means a whole lot and it's uh you know very um reassuring. You know, it it feels uh it feels weird to say you're taking music seriously, you know. Um there's uh I don't know, you know, it in my head it feels weird, you know. It's like why I I feel kind of silly, but um but to see it actually mean something to somebody is uh you know that's uh very reassuring, very uh very special feeling. Yeah, the validation of all of that work and effort that somebody's getting something out of it. You know, it might not be exactly what our intent was, but it's something for them that means a lot to them. So that's really special. That's a great feeling to have as well that um you're connecting to other humans on a different kind of plane, um, because no words are exchanged, it's just through what you created. Yeah. It's a it's a really special connection. And you know, I I think of all the all the music that's meant a lot to me over my life, and uh I uh I don't know, I I want to I want to do that for somebody. And uh it's uh it's nice to have it out there to where there's a bunch of people out there that I'll never meet that can listen to it. And that's uh that that's a really cool part about the you know the whole internet age and all that. Uh you know, as as cheesy as it is, but uh you know, you can just upload something and you know, there's all the pitfalls to you know, Spotify and all that, but um but it is cool that anybody can put anything out um and uh you know you don't have to print CDs or you know, get your record pressed or anything.
Chris:It's uh you can just connect you just have to go gander at your Bandcamp page. I mean, you can see the attention that this record's getting. Um you know, it's only been 15 two weeks, and I mean you got a lot of people that have downloaded it, which I love to see. It's just so uh encouraging, I find, when you're finding a record that you really like and then you also see that it's validated by all these other people is um it's a special process, that's for sure.
Blake:Yeah, yeah. I all the support has uh really floored me. Um just uh seeing all these people uh you know, even just say nice things about it. Uh uh it's um it's surreal.
Chris:Like the reviews overall have been the ones I read anyway were really nice.
Blake:And yeah, there's a there's a couple of them that say it's uh kind of boring and everything. But you know, the the they're they're right too, you know. It can it can be boring.
Chris:You know, if you don't like space, you know, like if it's too spacey, you know, too much space in between it it freaks some people out, but other people like they crave that, like me. Yeah. For example. Um well Blake, I want to thank you. Uh this has been a real treat to talk with you. Um I guess my last question is what can we anticipate um for the rest of 2025-2026 from Shallow Water? What what's coming down the pipe that you could that you can share with us?
Blake:Well, uh, I think um, you know, we're working on music uh slowly but surely. Um and I think it's happening again, you know, we're we're constantly growing, um, you know, like as musicians and uh songwriters. So um I'm really excited to see what comes next, you know, what what we can pull off. Um and uh you know that that'll be down the road, but um but I'm excited to see what comes.
Chris:And are there any other dates coming up of shows that that's the other thing?
Blake:Yeah, we're uh we're going out with the Ravenettes. Um I think uh oh I don't have all the dates in front of me, but um I'll post them on the on the descriptor, but you're on the road soon.
Chris:Like you go out for how long how long's this run for?
Blake:Yeah, I think we got uh five shows with them. Um got Chicago, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, and DC, I think.
Chris:Um those lucky buggers. Anyway, eventually I definitely want you to bring uh your dirt gaze up to uh cold Canada. Have a have a listen in uh it's been just such a pleasure we can all the best too with uh this record, the one coming down the pipe, which will be sometime and also your shows. Um keep uh keep finding that uh magic that you guys are producing, and uh I mean it just sparks. So congratulations on this record. And people out there, go check one of those shows if you're in that area. Uh get a t-shirt by the record, support these guys. Um you will thank uh Blake for doing it, and you'll thank me for having him on the cast. So Blake, thanks so much, and uh thank you. Take care of yourself.
Speaker 02:You two You've got your million dollars and a handful of roses.
