Chatting with UPSAHL at ZONA Music Festival 2022
We attended ZONA Music Festival 2022 and got to chat with the up and coming, UPSAHL!
Lace up your Doc Martens and let's go stomping through the mud at the first annual ZONA Music Festival 2022! When planning a festival in Arizona, there is a lot to think about! Everything from safety, to food and drinks, sounds and design, and of course, the weather. Rain isn’t usually a high-priority issue, since AZ has yearly average of 36 rainy days. But the weekend of ZONA Fest broke a record for the most rainfall Arizona has seen since 1908! We were unable to attend Saturday's installation of the festival, but saw the aftermath of the rain as we rolled up to Margaret T Hance Park in downtown Phoenix! The grass fields became a mud pit, but that didn’t stop the festival goers from reveling in the rain and dancing to their favorite bands and artists!
We were fortunate enough to sit down with the Phoenix native and rising star UPSAHL! She released her debut album, Lady Jesus, in 2021, and is set to release her EP, Sagittarius, this Friday 12/9/2022. Her song, Drugs, was used in 2+ million TikTok videos and charted on multiple charts reaching #1 Sound on the TikTok Trends Chart. She took time before her set at ZONA Music Fest to give us the inside scoop on what she likes to do when she comes home, tour life, song-writing, and even her secret to making the best charcuterie boards!
Check out the interview here:
Blake: We know you're from Phoenix. So welcome back to Phoenix but, you live in LA now, correct?
UPSAHL: I live in LA, but I come back to Phoenix whenever I get the chance. My whole family is here, I have younger siblings, so any chance I can, I'm coming back. Because of this festival, I drove into Phoenix like three days early to be with the fam.
Blake: When you come back, where are your favorite places to go / things to do?
UPSAHL: My mom has been running this sandwich shop in Phoenix since before I was born, and it was the first place I worked, It’s called Captain Bill Submarine and I crave a sandwich from there literally every day. So every time I land in Phoenix it's the first place I go to.
B: What’s your go-to sandwich?
U: I get a BLT and it is oh, *chef's kiss* it's so fucking good.
B: So, being back in Phoenix, are you excited to play for your hometown crowd?
U: Yeah, I'm so fucking excited. I got to play a show here on my tour a month ago. That was really fun. But this show is extra special because Psyko Steve, who's putting on the whole thing, has been booking me shows locally since I was like 12 so it definitely feels like full circle. I'm excited.
B: When you were younger, coming up in the Phoenix area, where were your favorite places to play?
U: Valley Bar is one of my favorite venues. It just feels so intimate, but if you want to put on like a punk high-energy show, it can feel like that too. And the food is fucking fantastic. I love it. I think it's my favorite.
B: Did you play with any, well I'm sure you did, but local bands?
U: We played a lot with Fairybones. I loved playing with them. Rooka, Decker… And I just feel lucky to have grown up in a scene where like, I was so young and stupid. But everyone who was a little older than me and more experienced really took me under their wing and put me on as many shows as they could. I feel really lucky to come up with all those people.
B: Do you think that helped you progress quicker in the scene to get to where you are now?
U: Totally. I think any opening slots I would get when I was in high school, like we got to play in a festival that was here and we got to open for some of my favorite bands like The Shins and Beck, and just any chance I could get to just learn from them and just watch them in their element I think is yeah, definitely helped me grow up a little faster.
B: Was that M3 fest?
U: Yeah, do they still put that on?
B: Yeah, they just I think put the lineup out like a month ago.
U: It’s a fun ass festival!
B: I’ve never been!
U: I went the year it was like Flume and Beck and The Shins. We got to play, my best friend Rachel who's over there, she was in my band we got to do it together.
B: That’s awesome! So now that you've done a big tour, how has that experience been like, playing these larger scale shows compared to a Valley Bar-type venue would be?
U: I feel because I've gotten to open for artists way bigger than me and then headline my own shows at smaller clubs and getting to play festivals, it's cool because I get to kind of see all different size audiences. I think it's definitely a trip because one day you're opening for like a huge venue where maybe a quarter of the people know who you are; everyone's there for the headliner. And then the next day playing a sold-out tiny club and they're all there for you. I think both are fucking amazing. But I think the magic for me has been my headline tour that I just finished, the past two months of that, even if they were like tiny little venues having everyone packed in was like so much fun.
B: We were watching, I think it was your tour diary, and there was a video of you getting a little emotional in there and-
U: My dramatic moment
B: You don't have to like relive it, of course, but can you kind of take us back a little bit to that and describe what you were feeling?
U: That’s a cool question!
B: Living that childhood dream.
U: Yeah, I know so fucking cheesy.
Jessica: It made me tear up.
U: It was so dramatic (laughs). On tour, you're never really alone. You're always around your crew or your band. It was the second to last day of our US run, I took the van to go like buy snacks or something. I was alone for the first time in a month and it just like, hit me. I was like, oh my god, I'm literally living my childhood dream. I got to play this, shit, like the tour that, almost sold out all throughout the US. I feel like it's so easy to get caught up in the mundaneness of life and comparing yourself to other people who are way further ahead of you. I think I just had a check-in with myself. Me, two years, I mean, even six months ago, I would’ve lost my shit to be on the tour I was just on. It was just this dramatic moment and I came back to the venue and I was like “Guys, I just sobbed in the car”, and my videographer was like “You filmed it right? Like I need that in the tour diary.” I was like, “Oh, I filmed it, don't fucking worry.”
B: How else do you stay grounded? I mean, you surround yourself, obviously with really great people. How do you stay grounded when you're out on tour?
U: My best friends now are my best friends from the time I was like, 10, which is cool. I have a really dope family who I see all the time. On tour, I think my crew and my band really have become my family. I've been touring with them for the past, minus COVID, but the past five years really, and even during quarantine times. We were doing live streams and doing as much jamming as we could so they've become my little tour fam, which is nice. I take my little sister on the road with me too. She sells merch so she makes it honestly, it's so cheesy, but she really makes like anywhere in the world feel like home, which is cool. So yeah, it's fun to bring the family on the road.
B: That's really nice! Because like your family, your dad was a musician, grandparents were music teachers. You started at a really young age playing guitar and piano.. Did you take a liking to either one quicker or were they both kind of?
U: I think the piano was the one that I was like classically training. My grandma started to teach me piano when I was five and that was kind of the one that came pretty naturally to me. Then my parents got me a guitar and were like, you should learn this too, and then sort of just started picking that up. I play guitar and bass more during my live shows because I can move more, but piano will always kind of be my thing that I feel the most comfortable with.
B: I didn't I didn't know you played bass too!
U: Not like well, I learned. I taught myself bass because I was like, "Oh, I know guitar. I can play bass"
B: Right!
U: But I'm not like great at it. I can like, enough to play live, which is fun for me.
B: So you have your first record out, Lady Jesus, and you have another one coming out next week, Sagittarius?
U: Friday, yeah!
B: We really love Lady Jesus. Is there a sort of shift in this next EP compared to Lady Jesus?
U: Definitely yeah, I think Lady Jesus had a very distinct sound for me. It was very autobiographical, about a breakup, and I was very much writing a story from start to finish. Sagittarius, which is my EP that comes out Friday, is still obviously autobiographical but genre-wise, it's like all over the fucking place, which is really fun. Lyrically and conceptually, it's just about me. It's the first time I haven't been writing about relationships or other people. It's very much just about me and I kind of got to dive into parts of myself that I haven't really dove into before in my songwriting so yeah, it's very personal, and I'm very stoked.
B: Did you write it on tour, or was it a mix of like on tour / at home, like COVID maybe?
U: I got back from opening for a bunch of people at the beginning of this past summer, and I knew I was going back out on the road in the fall, and it was like I had a timeline. I had three months to write a bunch of songs and make an EP and figure out a new sound. It was a whole like, buckle down, let's go! So this summer was honestly like a chaotic fucking shit show and I think you can, in the best way, you can hear that chaos throughout my EP, which I think is fun. A lot of it I did finish on this past tour too. It was fun because we played one of the songs, Into my Body, on the road before it was out. So I was playing it the first couple of shows and I noticed there was a part that like people lost energy, so I was calling my A&R and I was like, "Bro, before we put the song out, the fans don't like this part. We have to take it out." I think getting to play it before it was out, my fans unknowingly kind of like A&R’d the song, which is fun.
B: Your fans have also taken like that song and made it like, it seems to me, like the anthem right now. They've kind of taken it and made it their own, a song that you wrote about feeling dissociated, and I think it's cool that the fans found an identity-
U: Like within it, fuck yeah!
B: - and relate with you, we really enjoyed that!
U: Thank you! That's why I like playing live shows and touring is fun because getting to meet people and hearing them be like “I relate to this because of x,y, & z” like, that's what’s important.
J: Your songwriting seems so vulnerable, which is why I think a lot of your music really resonates with us as an audience. What was the hardest song for you to write?
U: I think Antsy, which is off of the EP (Sagittarius), but it's already out, but it'll be on Sagittarius as well. I think that one was definitely one of the most vulnerable ones for me. Just because it was literally me calling myself out for all the things my therapist calls me out for. Most of us, I feel like, have this ongoing list of things in our life that we want to change and a lot of that is normally within our control, but I think for me, and for so many people, I hope it's not just me, like that list gets so fucking overwhelming all the time that you just ignore it and would rather be miserable. I think kind of in a humorous way, calling myself out, and that song was definitely like "Oh shit like everyone's gonna know how my mental health is now, like sick". But yeah, it's been cool to see people get Antsy lyrics tattooed on him and stuff. It's cool that people have been connecting.
**Blake stumbled over some questions so we moved on to avoid embarrassment on his end sorry for the quick change of topic**
J: It seems like you’re a big fan of charcuterie boards.
U: Don’t even get me started!
J: What's your ideal charcuterie board?
U: Love, okay, there's a lot of colors. I think that's the key to a good charcuterie. I live for charcuterie. On tour is when it became my thing. Did you see me just light up? I don't have many hobbies aside from music, so if I get excited about something, I dive into it. On tour, I was like "How do I like feel at home still? What's gonna make me feel like I'm at my mom's house?" My mom always makes charcuterie, so I started making them on tour and I'm a pro now. I view it as a visual art, like you need colors, and shapes, yeah, it's great. There's everything on my dream charcuterie. A lot of cheese, a lot of fruit. Lots of different crackers.
B: Go-to cheese?
U: Anything truffle!
B: Same here!… We’re getting close to the new year now. How are you feeling about this year coming to an end? Are you gearing up to support Sagittarius and tour a bit more next year?
U: Yeah, I think getting to put this EP out before the holidays, right after my headlining tour is coming to an end, it feels like a really nice way for me to close out the year. I was like, here's this EP, and now I think starting in January, I'll just go back into the studio. Keep promoting, obviously, the Sagittarius EP but, yeah, going back into the studio, working on whatever's next, and a lot of touring. I've only been home from tour for five days and I'm like, get me the fuck out. I want to go, so yeah, I think next year hopefully supporting some more sick artists. I think that'll be fun and definitely another headlining tour, but yeah, shows!
B: If you had to make a shortlist of who you want to go with on tour or support?
U: That's a good question. You know who would be sick to open up for is Olivia Rodrigo. I idolize the shit out of her. I think she's so fucking badass. And like, the way she's built her career as a young woman who doesn't give a fuck, and I fuck with her. That'd be fun.
I can’t confirm or deny this one but are we smelling an UPSAHL and Olivia Rodrigo tour in the works?? Wouldn’t that be something?! We really want to thank UPSAHL and her team for taking the time out of their busy day to sit with us and everyone who put together ZONA Music Festival for a great weekend!