Roll of the Dice: 8 questions with Scarlet Street

The self-titled record from Ohio’s Scarlet Street is currently my favorite record of 2023, so there’s no way I couldn’t reach out to the band and label to see if they’d be interested in rolling the dice with TGEFM. Luckily, Ben Seitz (vox/guitar) and Jacob Leitch (drums) agreed. So check out the band, then check out this interview.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on the release of the self titled-record, I’m sincerely enjoying the hell out of it. What can you tell us about Scarlet Street for readers just discovering the band?

Ben S – Thank you for having us! I think something a lot of people don’t know about us when they’re finding us on Spotify or Bandcamp is we’re very energetic live. We write all these songs with the idea of how it’ll sound and feel when we play them in front of people and it’s something we’re really passionate about doing.

Jacob L – We’re named after an old movie. I haven’t seen it, but Ben says it’s definitely a movie. 

What album or band or significant singles made you go “Yeah, this is what I want to do”  Not just an influence but who or what was the catalyst?

BS – At a really young age it was Smashing Pumpkins, a lot of those songs from Siamese Dream through Adore really hit on emotions I wasn’t hearing from average radio rock music. As I got older and discovered some of the bands that I missed out on because I was too young to get them at the time it became albums like Full Collapse – Thursday and Commit This To Memory – Motion City Soundtrack that really captured a sense of dread that comes about when you reach early adulthood.

JL – You might think this is silly, but a combination of the Jack Black movie School of Rock, and playing Rockband started my want to drum, and I met a cool friend at 12 who owned a kit I was able to mess around on til I got my own, then I listened to a lot of blink-182, Sublime, Tool, or Rise Against. I didn’t like Midwest emo til I was 20 but now I’m worried it’s not a phase 

I thought it was just chili, a dog-obsessed racist baseball owner and drafting McCauley Culkin to play quarterback there, but Scarlet Street and Tooth Lures A Fang have put out some amazing records over the last few months. What’s going on in Cincinnati that led to so much of an overabundance of great music In the scene lately?

BS – It was a long time coming, that’s for sure. I put a lot of credit on The Dopamines and Mixtapes for being the first through the wall 15+ years ago, I think they brought a lot of local artists up with them like Vacation and Tweens that brought a lot of basement shows through when I was just starting college. That mixed with the fact that just a few miles north is Dayton which is the de facto capitol of 2000s Metalcore which I think a lot of current bands in the scene are taking slight influence from. But I also think it’s the fact that we don’t have a lot of big shows come through Cincinnati and yet we are less than a 4 hour drive to like 20 of the biggest colleges in the country, we’ve sort of formed a chip on our shoulders about being overlooked so we all seem to like to take this show on the road and that’s how you’re hearing about a lot of us.

JL – I’m ashamed to admit I couldn’t tell you exactly, but Cincy and Dayton has been no stranger to phenomenal artists in the past. Maybe it comes in waves, you know? We’re just on a good one. 

The world has been going through some shit over the last few years. What affect, if any, have the cultural and political landscapes of the last few years had on your music or the live scene in general?

BS – There are no positive songs on our album for that very reason although it’s less the COVID aspect and more so the general doom and gloom; I think this album, from a lyrical standpoint, took the traumatic events of the outside world and explored the internal effects of it, so it would have made as much sense in 1993 as it does in 2023. I think as far as the live scene goes, we’re all extremely worried about what the future holds and we are all trying to ease each others anxieties by being very positive and supportive, which is nice, but I have never been described as a positive person so I’m sure I’ve rubbed a few people the wrong way by coming off as a complete downer lately. The floodgates have completely opened for live shows, though. I’m seeing absolutely stacked bills because I think everyone feels the need to make every night of tour a completely crazy show, and I think that’s honestly a win for everyone. 

JL – Personally, I’m fueled by an anger, which stems from the current economic situation we’re in. I literally don’t know what’s going on at all but prices are rising, my dollars feel worthless and houses are unobtainable. I’m 26 and everything I want feels so far away. The best thing I can do is keep my head down and drum as hard as I can, and go to work the next day. 

What’s the state of the scene from your point of view?  We are living in a “just deal with COVID” world and everything about this timeline is some level of completely fucked. Where do you see the future of the music industry headed in the wake of pandemics, lockdowns and the proliferation of social media?

BS – Yeah, this is a weird time. I find the social media aspect in particular odd because it’s no longer a secret that shit is bad for you but we’re all sort of doing the same thing people did back in the Myspace days; a lot of times it feels like a pure popularity contest and nothing more, and in a scene full of artists writing self-aware anthems or even political rallying cries you’d think we’d see through the bullshit but instead we’re just sort of chronically on twitter. I think the future of the music scene is going to come down to whoever is best at capturing your attention on social media is going to be the biggest band and that’s what musicians are going to focus on, a lot would rather be a one-hit wonder than perfect their art or define their style. We’re going to get to the point where we have influencers who happen to make music rather than musicians who happen to be savvy self-promoters, and I think it’s because we, as consumers of media, want to find someone who defines who we are or what we stand for.

JL – The future of this industry in my opinion in having a whole team behind you, people you know and trust to help with certain aspects of your art, if you’re trying to turn it into your career. We have a producer we’d be proud to return to, people in other aspects of media to round out this whole experience of Scarlet Street we wanna give you. We can (kinda) play instruments, sure, but we can’t make sick art to put on a t shirt, we can’t take our own pictures, you know? People we love and respect that give us that energy back, we wanna help each other grow and if one of us makes it to the top, we can all make it. 

One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?

BS – Some bands that I think are really just trying to make the best music possible and succeeding are; Sweet Pill, Palette Knife, Cheem, Kerosene Heights, Tourneforte, A Place For Owls, Career Day, and OK Cool. Almost every one of these bands put out incredible albums last year, they’re great people, they work hard on their music and are creating things that are woefully under appreciated.

JL – Definitely Village Elder, Old Pictures/New Pictures, Pinksqueeze, Good Looking Friends, Sign Language. I feel terrible that my minds drawing a blank here, there’s so many more local bands that deserve the shoutout but as usual, I’m kinda brain dead over here. 

Now that the world has its hands on the album, what’s next for Scarlet Street?

BS – Another one. This album was such a protracted process, it took years longer than it should have, and while we’re all super proud of what we made, I think we made an album that we like to listen to and think other people like to listen to, while the goal next time is to make an album that we want to make and that people have to listen to. When we recorded our S/T we approached everything with “we should do x next time” and we’re approaching writing this with “This may be the last time we ever go into a studio again” simply because of the cost, so I think everyone’s mindset is that we need to absolutely swing for the fences. 

JL – Another album, of course, as well as hopefully longer tours. 

What do you wish I asked about or that you had more of an opportunity to speak about during this interview?

BS – If you’re in a band and a venue asks for a merch cut, you can say “no” and leave and there’s nothing they can do about it. They won’t ban you, they’ll forget about it, I promise.

JL – As someone who’s never really been interviewed, I couldn’t tell you. But if you were wondering about this little knob on my shirt, its a TC Topp from TC Tuggers. it’s actually for when your shirt gets stuck to your belly, and you need to pull it away. normally when you do this is causes a lot of wear and tear you know what I mean? Because when you go through the day, your shirt gets kind of bunched up, so I was wrecking my shirts ‘cause I was pulling them out subconsciously, but this has that knob, so you can just do it easily. But they’re not a joke, You don’t make jokes about ‘em, TC Tuggers. You don’t wear ‘em as a joke, you don’t give ‘em as a joke gift, or wear them ironically, or do pub crawls in ‘em like the Snuggie. They’re not like the Snuggie.

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Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A Pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.