From the gritty suburbs of Rosemead to the indie enclaves of Santa Cruz, Nuzzle carved out a distinct place in the 1990s emo scene. Active from 1992 to 2001, the band – led by brothers Nate and Andrew Dalton – channeled their raw energy into a sound that evolved alongside the decade’s underground movements. Andrew of Nuzzle was kind enough to answer some questions reflecting on their journey and early influences, their role in the Santa Cruz DIY community, and the upcoming 30th anniversary reissue of their album Follow, For Now.
I’m gonna start things off with some questions on the more general side to introduce you guys as a band and for any newer fans as well. One question I’m dying to ask, where did the name Nuzzle originate? What was the initial concept or foregoing thought process behind coming up with that name for the band?
This is a good and straightforward question for which we have neither a good nor a straightforward answer. Like a lot of bands/artists (Bonnie Prince Billy and Modest Mouse are two that jump to mind) in a way it was just the name we happened to be using when things kind of took off. We don’t really remember the discussion too much. We had been listening to a lot of stuff on K Records and Kill Rock Stars where there was a tendency to have names that felt more childlike and not cool, dark or aggro. There was talk of changing it a couple of times. The biggest possibility was Underhill – which was both the name of a pro skater we liked and the alias Frodo uses in Lord of the Rings. We do like hard-rocking bands whose names don’t sound like it, like the Sleepytime Trio and Kisses & Hugs. And there is something about nestling your nose into someone’s neck or hair and inhaling, and the blissful feeling that gives, that we liked our music to invoke. We haven’t always loved it, but it’s like the name of a child or a pet, at some point the main connotation just becomes the thing itself, not any other meaning.
Who are the official lineup members of Nuzzle, present day?
Ricardo Reano plays the drums. Simon Fabela plays the bass (and runs our social media and similar stuff these days). Nate Dalton plays guitar, sings sometimes, and is our primary songwriter. His brother Andrew Dalton sings and wrote most of the lyrics. Been the same since 1993.
And a follow up to that last question, I know there’s been a bit of a hiatus and some down time for you guys as a band in the recent years, were there any side projects or solo projects during the this time taking place for any members? And was there really ever an official hiatus? To clarify, like did you guys ever still come together as friends & bandmates to jam and play music? Can you share with us what various directions the band members were taken in throughout these past few years?
Yeah, it really depends on what you consider a hiatus, and what you consider being active. The last Nuzzle shows and recordings came around 2001, but there was never a break-up, formal or informal.. We more-or-less morphed, with some slight shuffling, into a band called The Dying Californian for a few years after that, with music that leaned into harmonies and a more country inflection. It suited our tastes and our lives at the time. Nuzzle left enough of a foothold with recorded music that it remained out there. And after the Dying Californian, Nathan and Andrew kept playing songs together, mostly in private. They had a singalong project called the Holy Roving Archers for a few years with sing-ins in various West Coast cities. Nate has played a handful of solo shows under the name The Skinhorse. Simon has been the touring bassist for Duster the last little while. Nuzzle was revived more properly starting two years ago when Solid Brass put out our 1997 Stanford Sessions recordings, and it has become more real in the time since, with this new reissue, a handful of rehearsals with a real reunion in mind.
As a big fan, your music is all great! My favorite songs by Nuzzle have these somewhat slower, definitely a bit darker, stretched out verses and bridges, with the chorus then kicking in a fusion of faster heaviness and thrashing. It all merges and creates a blend of perfection that sounds so sick! For example, track “The Word # 2”! I personally dislike classifying music, especially more so present day… I’ll fully admit, it’s one thing I’m always so insecure to do! However, Nuzzle has been renowned to bridge the start of a hardcore era and genre of your very own in music. Who were some of your earlier influences? And as of currently, where would you say you land in classifying your music as far as genres go?
First of all, thank you! That’s the first time we’ve ever had anyone call out “The Word # 2”. When it comes to direct early influences, the massive effect of Unwound is undeniable, especially when it comes to those slower, darker, more epic songs. We really loved Heroin, who split up right around the time we started, and Universal Order of Armageddon and Lync and Evergreen, who are a band of our friends who in some ways were the best of the lot and are in need of some reconsideration. We all came from somewhat different musical places before. Ricardo’s taste was more Cure-Jam British. Simon was more of a metal kid. Nate and Andrew listen to a lot of early REM in their early teens, and while it mostly wasn’t conscious, you can totally hear it in the use of arcane and abstract imagery (with mumbled lyrics) and the dueling/soaring voices we liked to do more and more as we went on. We all definitely had a shared love of Sonic Youth, Superchunk, Jesus Lizard, Codeine, Mudhoney and Nirvana for a couple years before we got more of a taste for post-hardcore.
As far as classification of our music, we’ve been learning a lot about that lately through younger folk – sometimes it takes subsequent generations to put the tags on things. We don’t so much shun genre labels as not entirely get them. Post-hardcore seems pretty apt. Second Wave Emo too. West Coast Midwest Emo might work? Is that a thing? We don’t shun the “emo” thing but it’s come to mean such insanely different things through the years that it’s not all that clarifying.
What is the profound impact, if any, that the internet/social media and specifically streaming has had on the band in terms of expanding your fan base in the recent years? How is this different from when you first started and probably had to resort to more of a “word of mouth” approach to get your music out? Can you share with us your overall take on this? As you’ve been a band that’s gotten to experience the major transition and impact of these themes in music.
Spreading music might be the one unequivocal good that social media and internet have had both for bands like us and for culture more widely. Our current revival would be unthinkable without it. And getting listeners far younger than ourselves – which is most of them now – would be REALLY unthinkable without it. Some of that is via our band Insta and the good social media work of our labels, but a lot of it we don’t even know about. Some song will suddenly spike in popularity and we just have to assume it was on a TikTok somewhere that we didn’t see. There have also been some BMX and skating and snowboarding stuff on YouTube that has used our music and thrilled us and helped it spread.
And yes, it was all word of mouth or word of mail or word of zine before that. In some ways we marvel that things spread as far as we did then. We’d get the occasional letter from Europe that would stun us. But even when it did happen, you wouldn’t necessarily see the results. We’d pull into a town on tour with no idea whether the kids there knew about us. It led to some nice surprises where you could play a show in say, Lake Charles, Louisiana or Lawrence, Kansas and learned you had some followers there.
As a band, what do you guys think about and how do you feel towards the resurgence and renewed interest in vinyl, overall just in general.
Well, when it comes to our own records, even though they originally came out in the height of the CD era, vinyl was 100 percent what we had in mind when we made them and planned them out, both visually and musically. Just to give one small example, on Follow, For Now, which is getting reissued, it’s essential in our minds that “Newfoundland” with its mood and style and subject matter ends side 1 and is a “last” song of a sort, not just a song that comes in the middle of the list. In general, we’re pro-vinyl as it often gives a little more dough to the artist than streaming does, and we all for different reasons like experiencing music this way. Having said that, we have no desire to fetishize format and anyone should listen to any of our music in any way they see fit, be it streaming, YouTube, MP3, VHS or CD-ROM.
Now, let’s take a dive into some of your music and projects, both recent and upcoming! Let’s start with a little background on the Follow, For Now, 30th anniversary release coming out next month. The initial release of the LP came out in 95’, and many of its songs’ were a huge part of the bands trajectory. From what I’ve learned, the 95’ release was through Youth Strike Chord which, at the time, would have been a local label for you guys in Santa Cruz if I’m correct? How much of an impact did the Santa Cruz scene have for Nuzzle as a band during that time and throughout the years for the bands continued growth?
There are probably some other metaverses and timelines where things would have worked out just as well, but our ending up in Santa Cruz when we did was just huge. Because it was so fertile for a scene with music like ours, but untapped enough that it allowed us to be at the center of it. Part of it was just the geography. We were a sweet little island on the West Coast. (For those who don’t know, Santa Cruz is a town known for its college and its beach boardwalk that’s a 90 minute drive south of San Francisco). When bands tour the East Coast, they have no end of cities they can stop in with a 2-hour drive. But bands touring the West Coast have vast spaces with often nowhere to play, and are always looking for that extra tour stop. We put on a show for Unwound and Lync (that we also played) in 1993 that went awesome for all involved. After that we became a constant tour stop for people like the Gravity Records bands of San Diego and the K/Kill Rock Stars bands of the Pacific Northwest. We got to play with them, and have them in our house.
All that helped establish a really nice local scene that’s essential to our identity. When we next play a show we wholly expect a front row full of Santa Cruz kids (or Santa Cruz adults now). We had so many of our best shows in the basements and living rooms of that city. This Follow, For Now reissue is full of songs that were written there and played to sweaty rooms there. And our other LP from the time, San Lorenzo’s Blues is pretty much all about Santa Cruz. (The San Lorenzo is the river that runs through it). Youth Strike Chord didn’t necessarily have a home base as a label, but our friend who ran it, Drew Gilbert, was an absolutely essential builder of the Santa Cruz scene, and played guitar in one of its best bands, The Fisticuffs Bluff. He also put out one of our early EPs and was priceless as a booster for us.
Let’s flash forward back to present day, now… as for-mentioned, Nuzzle, Solid Brass Records, alongside Zum Audio have put together a HUGE 30th anniversary vinyl release available in different color renditions for your iconic LP, Follow, For Now, set to drop next month! For starters, where can fans preorder and purchase a copy of their very own vinyl for this release? And can you tell us a little bit about the layout and artwork presented within the new vinyl releases?
Yes! We’re really delighted by this, this record was begging for a re-release. There were so few of them made, but in spite of that it features our two or three most beloved songs. And there were some quirks in the rushed production process that left it begging for the remix that our friend (and Dying Californian bandmate) gave it. The cover art on the old original records was silk-screened on to the plastic cover in a way that was really impractical to try to recreate. But we’ve really honored the spirit of it and used a lot of the same picture and drawings that were on the old vinyl. The cover is a meld of us playing with the Big Dipper roller coaster on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. The stuff on the inside, including most of the text, is recreated from the original a lot more closely. We especially love how many pictures of our dear friends we got to sneak in here and there. You can order copies from Solid Brass Records or Zum and will hopefully be able to find it at your local independent record store.
Nuzzle has some deep rooted history with both of these labels I’d like to discuss. I’ll start off with Zum Audios’ presence in the bands history … and, please correct me if I’m wrong, but rumor has it to my knowledge Nuzzle is, technically, what brought upon and built the foundational grounding for Zum Audio? As to my understanding, founder George Chen wanted to find a solution for the continuation and reissuing of sharing your music after hard copies ran out and flew off the shelves? Can you share a little insight about your journey with them and how it feels to still have such a central connection to them over all these years?
Yes, George Chen has been the guardian angel of Nuzzle for many, many years, and we owe him more gratitude than we can express. He put out the last Nuzzle release of the old era (the No Mas/The Word No. 2 7”) and helped us put on a lot of shows when some of our previous help with this had thinned out. (We flaked on some of the best shows he got us on, sorry George!) Then he put out the CD compilation that included both Follow, For Now and our first two EPs that would be the entire reason you could find us at all on streaming for many years. It’s incredible that he’s been able to sustain the Zum thing overall through the years, and it’s really great to have it still working for us (and to be able to hang out with him!) here on the other side.
Moving forward to Solid Brass Records. Now, this must be so exciting, for both you as a band and them as a label, as Nuzzle is a band with such a strong foundational history in the scene that really set the standard for so many others, and Solid Brass Records have grown to be such a reputable label held in such high regards! It’s truly a cult classic pairing. Can we touch base on your partnership and history with Solid Brass Records and how things came into formation? Am I correct in learning you guys were actually their second release to have taken place within their archives?! Can we briefly address that experience and that release?
Yeah, so while George and Zum kept us alive through the years, we owe most of our current moment to Jason, Chuck and Justin at Solid Brass, who are doing wonderful things for such a young label. Love the bands they’ve chosen to reissue and the new artists they’ve taken on. So without getting too detailed, Chuck Pettry was a constant at our 90s shows, and his label Sound on Sound partnered with Zum to put out that CD comp and the No Mas 7”. That single was taken from a series of recordings we did with a student at Stanford that didn’t otherwise get released. Most of the songs from it were re-recorded for San Lorenzo’s Blues. But Chuck and some others had the tape of the Stanford recordings and liked it more than anything else we’d done. So when those guys started that label, they asked if they could release it as a proper album, and we were thrilled at the idea. The experience has been golden. We’ve had more freedom to do whatever we want than we ever did in the 90s. And the promotion and encouragement they’ve given us totally led to this moment.
Alongside that, and most paramount at the moment, how big of a role has Solid Brass Records played in the reissuing of the Follow, For Now, 30th year anniversary LP for you guys? Who played a major part in the initiation of the release to begin with? As well as how big of a role was the bands self-involvement on behalf the forthcoming of the project and release?
For the reasons mentioned before, Follow, For Now was the super-logical next thing to release, but however obvious it was we were still thrilled they wanted to put their money, time and love into doing it. They chime in with their suggestions, but above all just want to make what we want happen.
Can you also give us any further insight behind the commencement of the anniversary release and any extra possible credentials partaken in the project I’ve potentially overlooked? In other words, any additional shoutouts you’d like to give voice to behind the remixing and remastering of the newly, to be released vinyls?
Yes, let’s not forget anyone! Our old scene-mate Sonny Kay, who was in the VSS and made many other musical things happen, did all the artwork layout. And another old scene-mate, Dennis Bunton, did the original recordings in his bedroom and dealt with upset neighbors about the noise. And Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios did the mastering. The whole thing has just been this festival of friends. I’ve never been so happy to be part of a long email thread. Oh and the other three members would really like to shout out Simon for being our in-band manager, publicist, business dude and handler for a long time, we’re full of gratitude even if we don’t always show it.
Of the newly remastered songs, you’ve teased your fans with a couple of samples from the new vinyl release. The first to drop was, “The Sorting That Evens Things Out”. There’s this breakdown around 1:50 into the song that sounds SO insanely clean and compelling on the remastered version of the track! Was there anything in particular that cemented your decision in this being the first song to release & sample out for fans to stream? Or was it more of a traditional thought due to it being the first song on the LP, and feeling that was just the proper way to go about it?
While it’s not necessarily the most typical of our overall sound, The Sorting has always been kind of our signature song, the ones people who didn’t even know us well seemed to know. That breakdown part IS actually pretty typical of us and we love the way it sounds now. It’s also beyond fun to play live if we can keep the wheels on, or actually even if we can’t. Anyway for all these reasons it was just undeniable as a first single.
One of my favorite tracks from Nuzzle, you guys sampled and released “Newfoundland” for streaming. I have to say, they’re truly both phenomenal remixes. I appreciate most how the songs stay true to their core characteristics and ethics, but there’s definitely a standout, really nicely added elucidation. Especially on the vocals! They come across with a striking, alluringly laid out clarification that’s really projected them amongst both tracks I’ve had the opportunity to hear thus far. Best of all, the louder you play the newly remixed versions, the better they sound! Refocusing back to “Newfoundland”, this song is also quite renowned to be a really monumental track for you guys. Where was this song originally recorded? At the time, what was the bias behind the lyrics written for the song? And currently, what do you, personally, like most about the added touches and different variations offered in the new reissued version ?
Yeah, this song kind of felt like us at our apex in some ways, representing both the sound we’d had to that point and the direction we’d go. It was the traditional show closer, and many of our best band memories are of taking this song on its long sweaty journey in front of a swaying crowd. It’s the first one that fully takes advantage of the voices of both brothers. Nate sings and (wrote the lyrics for) most of it, and Andrew likes it that way, both out of brotherly pride and because he gets to stand back and be a fan for most of it, while diving in to take it home at the end. Andrew doesn’t always want to be heard too much in the mix, but the clarity that comes through on the track now is just perfect. It also may be our song where the lyrics and the music meld most perfectly. The lyrics at the end – on storms and swarms and doomsdays and resolve in the face of it – seem to just be describing the music. The bass and the drums sound so good on the remix. Ricardo’s rolls and Sam’s melancholy churn through most of it, then the furious firepit they both create at the end.
Some other tracks I’m really excited and looking forward to hearing once the full release officially drops and I grab my very own copy, would definitely be “Ican’tations”, for sure. I love the subtle, slowed down ending. It’s so brief but adds the perfect finishing touch to the song that you just melt away into. “Age Of Cinders” is another I’m stoked to hear the remaster of as similarly, both these songs mentally bring me to a really evocative place of relation during what was a truly unique time and era in music. Is it appropriate if I ask, do you guys have a personal favorite of your own from the newly remastered tracks? Likewise, are there any certain aspects of the new remixes that you’re particularly fond/proud of?
We’re kind of surprised about how brief some of these songs, like “I’cantations”, are because they do feel like longer treks. That’s a song that we never played enough live at the time and has kind of been a happy re-discovery for us through this process. Same with “And Then There Were Somme”, which has that haunting piano at the start and is probably Ricardo’s favorite song of all of ours despite it being a taxing drum test. The last line of “Age of Cinders” is Andrew’s favorite that he ever wrote (just don’t ask him what it means!): “If skin, don’t come, don’t bury egrets, don’t bury grace.” We all have a real joint love for “Newfoundland” for the reasons laid out above. And we found a vibe we really love with the chill drum-and-bass opening of “Bring the Leeches”.
And just a quick, lighter question for fun before I wrap things up, what’s/is there a song you wish you would’ve written and/or released?
This probably varies widely for each of us, so will let Andrew answer for himself. Probably the entire output of our friends in Evergreen and about ⅔ of Unwound’s New Plastic Ideas. And Palace’s New Partner.
And lastly, I’m sure you know what’s coming next… the big question we’re all waiting and dying to know as fans! Will there be any sort or form of official reunification for the band?! Can we look forward to anything else upcoming from Nuzzle, maybe even possibly performance-wise?
Can’t say anything concrete about this just yet, but we can say for certain that we’ve reached a point of joyful inevitably, so anyone interested might want to watch for an announcement. Fun days ahead.
Leave a Reply