In The Pocket: “Motel 6” by DZ Riley

As they buckle in for a long night doing the last of the mixes of their upcoming single “Motel 6,” DZ Riley jokes about some of the technical difficulties they had on stage last night. The band played BookClub, a hole-in-the-wall venue just a couple blocks west of Wrigleyville, nestled between a beauty shop and a Harold’s Chicken. Noah Savoie, keyboardist and saxophonist, wrestled with his laptop, which inconveniently died mid-set, resulting in an almost ten-minute impromptu jam session on stage. 

Between Keefer Schoon shredding on the guitar, Hugh Maxey’s expertise on drums and Jakob Morris holding it down on bass, the band pulled off the ruse flawlessly; the crowd didn’t have a damn clue. That’s just the way DZ Riley runs.

Although the band probably thought it was a major mistake on their part, it hardly came off as that. It was magic. 

DZ Riley, formed in 2019 by Schoon and Savoie, is a rock band, but it’s hard to turn a deaf ear to the heavy influences of funk, blues and psychedelic (just to name a few) music in their work. “Entropy,” the band’s first album, is the conceptual narrative of Alzheimer’s disease in an elderly man through 14 songs. Their newest project demonstrates their need to perfect storytelling primarily through their tireless mixing and recording of “Motel 6.”

“If we overproduce it, then we lose the part of it that we’re there for in the first place,” Schoon says when discussing the difficulties of mixing a song. 

Finally exhausting what time there was to linger in the studio’s “lobby,” the group mingles and heads for Studio B. The room is small yet big; it exudes “homey,” which will, funny enough, become our home for the long night ahead.  Shawn Clendening dims the lights before sitting down to mix for the next five straight hours. Clendening used to work in audio before taking up a career as a chef. Lead singer Gracie Lubisky quips, “He chefs it up in the studio too.” 

Mixing is an extraordinarily detail-oriented and strenuous process, almost impossible to do in one sitting. The soundboard, littered with buttons and dials, is an unfamiliar language to the average person, but to the band, this is where the story is heightened and pushed forward.

“Motel 6,” the second of a trio of singles to be released before band’s upcoming second album, tells the story of a woman who finds out her lover is cheating on her with another woman.

Through the borderline satanic cackling adlibs and seductive back-and-forth relationship between the guitar and drums, we are led through the tainted mental state of a woman who has been betrayed. 

“C’mon baby girl now/You can do it/Just pull the trigger there ain’t nothing to it/It’s as easy as,” Lubisky sings.

A manical yet convincing voice is in the background of the songs mind, egging on an altercation, practically begging for it. This is the voice of our impulses, the voice we dont want to listen to, yet this time we do. A build-up ensues through the monologue lyrics and maniacal yet elaborate drum patterns to five shots, the sound of a gun reloading, and a final shot.

“What came first was Noah’s melody and the riff,” Lubisky said, then mimics the guitar riff in acapella style. “It informs the lyrics, it informs the structure, it informs all my melodic choices, production choices; it all kind of comes back to what the story is, the narrative, the climax, it all indicates everything musically as well,”

The lyrics were a collaboration between Lubisky and Savoie. It’s written in Savoie’s style with Lubisky’s voice in mind. The rest of the song was written with the whole band in the room. Savoie brought the bones, Schoon came up with the turnaround, and by the time they walked out of rehearsal, they had an entire song. 

“If I was this woman, what would I be thinking?” says Savoie. “What would I be saying? If I was so mad that I wanted to kill somebody, what would I say? Without the metaphors and poetic shit, we wanted it to be raw, genuine, real kind of shit. So that was hard. Finding the right words that didn’t feel fufu.”

Creeping up on three hours and ten minutes into the session, Clendening puts on his glasses and starts working on vocals. Papa John’s is ordered and delivered. Not once during these three hours does Savoie sit down; instead, he diligently oversees the edits made to reverberation and sound effects. Lubisky finishes homework because she’s in her last semester of school, while Schoon keeps the night interesting with a constant Family Guy’s Joe Swanson (aggressively-manly, paraplegic cop) accent. 

The monitor screen flashes with colors marking different tracks filled with soundwaves. After hearing the constant double clicks of highlighting a track, it’s time for a full listen-through. The critiques come in as the song begins to play for the first time in its entire length.

“I feel like there needs to be more bass,” Schoon commented. The song continues for a few more seconds, then is paused abruptly, and Clendening agrees.

This is the constant cycle of events as the mixing session continues throughout the night. Other artists in the studio wrap up their sessions and leave, but DZ Riley has work to do. Even the tiniest hint of someone talking during a take (the regular ear wouldn’t have otherwise heard that) is rooted out. Clendening scrolls up and down the pattern of tracks layered on one another, searching for anything out of place.

Heads begin to nod, and the time starts to slow down. 

After a slight detour to make the vocals less muffled, another revelation that the vocals might be too hot (or as the musically inept say: too loud) and an eventual middle ground being found, a listening break is needed. 

“I think everything that is supposed to be sitting well is sitting well,” Savoie says. 

We are nearing the end of the second to the last mixing session before “Motel 6” is sent to be mastered and then released. Faces are tired but lively from the high of finishing most of the bulk work. Savioie auctions off the last slice of pizza, and Schoon ends up eating it. Printing begins, and the result is saved. Lights are turned out, and the studio goes pitch black. 

“It’s come a long way from the demo,” Clendening reveals.

DZ Riley’s “Motel 6,” will be released April 21.