Q&A: The Greeting Committee Delivers Authenticity With “Ada”
IT IS REALLY DIFFICULT TO TRANSFER WORDS FROM A ZOOM INTERVIEW ONTO A PAGE that truly captures the essence that Ada has. The Greeting Committee front-woman Addie Sartino and her muse Ada Brumback joined us on an interview to discuss the band’s latest single, “Ada”. The song is a powerful narrative about Brumback growing up transgender in a small town, though, Brumback says, it is not just a song about her. “The more we talk about it, it’s not even my story anymore, it’s a universal story”.
The upcoming album focuses on grief, according to Sartino, but with “Ada” the band has delivered a single that holds its own. “‘Ada’ is a bit of an outlier to the album, because the album is very pointed at heartbreak and the forms that that takes. In a way, though, that’s exactly what “Ada” is about… in the sense of growth and life. Ada is me taking somebody else’s story and lyrically making it cohesive and that’s why it is so special. It’s a piece of it’s own work living in an album.”
Alongside the single, The Greeting Committee released a music video directed by Brumback. “This is the first time in my career that I had a community rally around me to do something so important”. Despite being part of the queer community, Sartino understood that by directing the music video she would've been unable to fully capture the experience of being trans, because Sartino, while part of the queer community isn't transgender. The music video captures the protagonist’s journey through feeling abandoned to finding community. “It’s important to know that it’s not just a sorrow filled mess”, Brumback explained.
Read below to find out more about “Ada” and their upcoming album Dandelion, out September 24th.
LUNA: How did it feel to go from playing open mic nights to having one of your songs in a Netflix show?
SARTINO: A lot of time passed, five or six years. I think that I disassociate a bit because actually recognizing cool things that have happened would be overwhelming and too much inflation to the ego. When I do stop and reflect and think about me at 14 or 15 playing open mic nights, if I told her, “hey you’re going to have a song on Netflix and you’re going to be in a movie”, I think she would be very excited just as I was.
LUNA: What has influenced your growth as a band?
SARTINO: Probably one of the biggest things would be forgetting how to write for myself and then learning how to do that again. It is a lot of pressure getting signed to a major record deal so young whether that pressure is internal or external. I definitely put a lot of pressure on myself. Circling back to our last EP, I’m Afraid I’m Not Angry was really focused on writing for ourselves and I think Dandelion has a really good balance of pushing ourselves but also making sure that everything is genuine and authentic.
LUNA: Has the band’s purpose changed from 2017 to now as you’ve gotten more comfortable?
SARTINO: I’ve learned to not be as naturally passionate as I once was. Being as passionate as I am can come off as aggression by people who are scared by that, so that was a huge lesson for me to learn. For the boys, all of them actually come from places where they’ve learned how to be more vocal. I’ve been given the opportunity to really lead our band message as a whole, and that message is encouraging people to use their voices, to know that they’re important, and to connect. If anything now, we’ve enhanced that message, and we have more of a backup behind it because of how we all carry ourselves.
LUNA: Your new album is being released September 24th, what influenced it?
SARTINO: The overall theme is about the feeling of watching your life instead of living it. When I was grieving or going through a traumatic period, there was this feeling of being, like, a scarecrow. I wrote a song lyric, “a scarecrow to my own life”. I would say that that’s a big overall picture of the album.
LUNA: What are you top three musical influences?
SARTINO: We have a lot of direct waves at the people who influence us in the album. The song “Ada”, sonically, there is an influence from Tyler the Creator that Brandon and Austin pulled really heavily from that. Pierce referenced Bon Iver and Lorde for “Can I Leave Me Too?”. I put a Death Cab for Cutie reference in another song, and there’s another track where I reference Julian Casablancas from the Strokes.
LUNA: The new song “Ada” is dark and raw, how did you get such a powerful message within a 2 minute song?
SARTINO: The music came from Pierce. He brought in a demo with a 4 or 5 part saxophone harmony and we really liked it but didn’t know what to do with it. Brandon took that demo and put it into an OP1 and chopped it up. It used to feel very dancy and I felt very lost with what I wanted to do with it. I asked the boys what emotions they were feeling and what they wanted to do with it. Initially Pierce went off into this elaborate story that sums up to be someone being authentically, and genuinely, themselves.
For some reason that lead me to thinking about two people who are close to me and who have similar experiences in the Queer community. I texted Ada and my Dakota and said, “hey I have an idea for this song, do you think we can talk about your life and I can pull from your life experience?”. I always wanted to make sure that what I was saying was ok, and accurate, and mostly, that it made Ada feel something.
LUNA: Did it make you feel something, Ada?
BRUMBACK: I think I got the goosebumps the first couple of times. I was kind of blown away.
LUNA: How did you feel about the song, Ada?
BRUMBACK: I think the song is cool. We’ve spoken a lot about it and it has definitely gotten deeper than we really though, the more that we’ve dove into it. We were talking about it not even being my story, but more of a universal story. I’m excited about it, I think it’s important.
SARTINO: We have definitely gotten deeper and deeper the more that we talk about it. It’s like shaking rust off of the song. The more we talk about it, the more the song means to me than it did before. I think Ada (the song and the person) is incredibly important.
LUNA: Tell me about the music video.
SARTINO: It is by far the most beautifully shot cinematic piece of work that the Greeting Committee has ever put out. Ada did an absolutely incredible job directing it. I was so hands off and I could just be like “I trust this person”, and shut up for the first time in the band's existence because I trusted her vision.
BRUMBACK: I think it’s also important to do that when you’re in a situation where you’re trying to capture something that you’re not the ultimate source for. There are a million perspectives about the queer community, the trans community, and the dialogue surrounding it. It’s important to give people control over their own narrative. There are so many surface level rifts floating around about the trans community and I wanted to do something different. I gave people a real experience. I would like to think that’s what the video is - an educational experience. It’s an example of the worst and also an example of the best in terms of what you might experience as a trans person.
LUNA: What does the rest of the year look like? Are you hoping to tour?
SARTINO: The album comes out on September 24th. Around that we have some shows coming up, but I think we’re going to dive a lot deeper into this album than we ever have before with the tools that are available. We’ll have more music videos and merch coming out.
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