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Salo Panto is: Joe Garwig, Max Doyle, Ed Beach, and David Kudelka
Since 2015, Salo Panto has been exploring and bending every corner of the rock genre. Rooted in psychedelia with a stage presence that will blow your hair back, commonly being described as “a sight to behold”. Their technical skill and original hooks play homage to the legends of rock while transforming the genre into something new entirely. These chameleons can be found anywhere from the alternative radio waves to a doom show lineup, specially curating their sound for every performance, creating an atmosphere that is infectious and inclusive, all for the love of music.
The band has frequented many premier venues in Portland such as Rontoms, Doug Fir and Dante’s. In 2023 they’ve added notable notches to their belt by performing four dates at the Rose Festival, Lose Yr Mind Fest and releasing their debut full-length album, “Parallel Narratives” on Literal Gold Records.
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Introduction to Joe and Salo Ponto
00:04:05
Speaker
Hey everyone, this is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. And you don't know this, but this episode is long in the making with Salo Ponto. We got Joe from Salo Ponto. Welcome to the show, Joe. Happy to be here, Ken. Happy to be here. It's a long time coming. It's cool. It is very nice to have you on the microphone.
00:04:29
Speaker
I've been digging on your music for a while in the Oregon music scene here. I haven't seen you live yet. I've been digging on the newer release, Parallel Narratives. Can you just launch in and tell us a bit about the band, the sound project, and what you're up to?
Formation and Early Days of Salo Ponto
00:04:55
Speaker
Sure. For quite some years now,
00:05:01
Speaker
I've been writing songs, I guess you could say, with some close friends from Ohio. Several of us went to college together and we played music in college together. And Youngstown, Ohio is a great place in a lot of ways. But especially in 2014, it was no Portland, Oregon.
00:05:29
Speaker
And so I guess our particular group of friends had a little bit of a, there was kind of a gathering of familiar people that we already knew out here. And I had some family out here. I already had some family, so I came out to check it out, investigated it, liked it.
00:05:55
Speaker
sole purpose of moving was to inevitably start a band. And that was clear with especially Max is the bass player in our band, we went to college together went to music school together. And, and so we just kind of wanted to go somewhere and start something where one of my big impressions of Portland when I first came here was that when I would go out and we go to whatever bars or
00:06:20
Speaker
clubs or whatever. And there'd be so many different types, there'd be so many different demographics, you could say, of people at a particular place like mixing it up together. And I thought that was really cool. And I'm sure that's just me not going to New York City enough or bigger cities where that's totally just a normal thing. But where I was from, and it wasn't a, Youngstown, Ohio is not a
00:06:42
Speaker
small town. It's more of a small city. It wasn't necessarily like that. So I thought that was really cool. I thought, well, this feels right. This is probably a nice place to come and then start experimenting with noise. The earliest formation of the band was me. I was kind of like live looping drums off of the
00:07:03
Speaker
like a synthesizer, and then adding stuff to it with bass and whatnot. And then Ed, who now is like the tambourine and keyboard player in our band, he just had a sampler and he would just kind of, more or less like, I don't know, make whatever kind of random noise he could. We'd dialogue for movies or whatever. And then it just grew. And then people started moving out here. And then our drummer Dave saw us at a show when we didn't have a drummer.
00:07:33
Speaker
Well, we had a four-piece band, no drums. And we had lose all the electronic drums. And afterwards, he was just like, we worked together. We worked at the same restaurant. And afterwards, he was just like, hey, guys, I play drums. And so basically, the rest is history. That was probably like 2016. And so we basically had the same core units since then.
00:08:00
Speaker
That's that's that that's so great in the drum sage just you know Saying hey, not that you need me, but you know, I could play the drums So Joe tell me about uh, you know, we we dig into art and philosophy on the show tell me about just just yourself as far as
Joe's Musical Background and Evolution
00:08:25
Speaker
creativity and say music. Was there a point in your development where you're like, I'm going to play music or I'm going to be an artist? Was there identifiable point for you or you always felt like that? There's definitely some identifiable point. It's gray in a sense because
00:08:51
Speaker
And I know this is true for Max in the band. Also, we grew up playing classical music in school. And for a long time, it wasn't necessarily something that I wanted to do. It was something that my my parents were kind of not necessarily forcing me to do. I'm sure I was getting like, I don't know, they're buying me whatever. Maybe I got a video game for staying in orchestra through
00:09:19
Speaker
seventh or eighth grade, but it was like that. We started in fifth grade in my school district. It was really, in hindsight, so thankful that it was a thing and that my parents made me stick with it, but it was like that. It was more pedantic and it was more mature. A lot of times, literally, it was a chore. I had to play violin for 20 minutes a day before I could do anything. At the time, that was just so unbearable. Then when I got into college, so I played through 12th grade.
00:09:50
Speaker
I was playing violin and orchestra through 12th grade. Then in college, the first year of college, I did not play music in school at all. I had already started playing guitar and I was really invested in it and I really liked doing it. But once I heard that my college had a music recording production program that you could major in, it's a game changer.
00:10:20
Speaker
I thought, well, that's it. I can read music. I've been doing that for a decade at that point, basically, and it just worked out that way. So I guess, flash forward to after music school and having this completely new interest in playing music, I would say it still took a little, because it was something I enjoyed so much and I had so much fun doing,
00:10:50
Speaker
There was a part of me that was a little hesitant to call myself an artist because I don't know. It's a harder thing to explain, I guess, because there was a lot of hanging out with friends and just doing it and gigging and getting shows and just kind of like seeing where it was going. And I guess none of us wanted to take ourselves too serious and that if we acted
00:11:18
Speaker
like people who consider themselves artists playing like jazz, rock, fusion stuff. And, you know, we didn't want to seem outside of our league, but I don't know. The older I get, the more I understand how it is what it is. You are doing this thing that is essentially art. It's artistic at the very least. And
00:11:45
Speaker
And yeah, I have much easier time grasping that now, but just growing up with it, it was it was always just such a different thing. And then it turned into it turned into this thing that I realized I was kind of set up for or unknowingly doing. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Joe, I have a question. I mean, in playing with the other band members for some time in your time out in
00:12:09
Speaker
out there in Ohio, plus the training, the background training, you know, that you have.
Art and Musical Influences
00:12:17
Speaker
I find it, I mean, I can hear it in the music that there's this...
00:12:28
Speaker
That there's this that there's this depth to it or the development between the albums. I feel that parallel narratives, your newest one has this more distinct kind of mellow. I don't know if mellow is the word, but a vibe to it.
00:12:50
Speaker
Tell it tell me about playing over time in that training and From your perspective how that comes out through the music I can I can hear it. I'm not describing it well, though Well, I would say I think like when you start it's more like There's definitely more of a
00:13:18
Speaker
I'm doing this. It's going to be what I want. But also it has to appeal to other people besides you. So that's a really huge pool to pull from. And if you like a lot of different types of music, you can kind of just say, well, OK, I like this artist and that. And I really like this wildly different artist. And, you know, maybe people can find some kind of common ground in what I'm doing.
00:13:48
Speaker
And so I think that just kind of has been our, that's always kind of been our, or at least my, a personal goal of mine is to keep it coming from different angles. And we definitely, we're not oblivious to the fact that we are a rock band, but within those,
00:14:14
Speaker
I don't know, parameters. How can you spin that? I just think that the songs, the ones that we're 100 percent sure about stick with us and we play and record. There's just so many other times where it's like, yes, this is a song.
00:14:38
Speaker
Um, it's fine. It's got a beginning and an end. We don't hate it, but there's something about, uh, following through with something that you're really, really convicted about and, and real more passionate. And I think that, uh, you know, I think that comes from just like drawing from a different, you know, different avenues, keeping, keeping yourself surprised. I think that's really cool too. So yeah, as the creator. Yeah. Yeah. And just, yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
You talk about bands who, like, no two songs sound the same. I'm sure they were doing the intentionally same thing. I'm not saying ours don't. I tell you several that do sound the same or like one another. But yeah, I think that's the same kind of thing, just keeping it almost to keep surprising yourself with what you're doing. Yeah.
00:15:39
Speaker
And in terms of art, one of the questions I ask is, what is art? And I heard in your description of, you know, kind of like coming to terms with, you know, seeing yourself as an artist seemed like a huge step. But what do you think art is? The general question, what is art? Lately, I've been thinking, or I've been throwing around, when
00:16:06
Speaker
when I am completely distracted from like the more mundane or even maybe say dark realities of actually being alive. When you have those moments where you kind of like come back to reality and for that
00:16:29
Speaker
It was you might not even listening to a song to be thinking about something or watching a movie It doesn't matter but like the the distraction from reality is almost I think artistic and the intentional and the intentional things like music and film and paintings like that's just the that's just the showcase of it you're giving it that time and I yeah, I think that's
00:16:52
Speaker
Like entertainment, why, I just heard something, I'm gonna, of course I'm gonna get this wrong. I'm not gonna look, I don't feel like looking it up. It's, it was like entertainment and art and like the Venn diagram that they have. But like on one side is, I forget which one was, it's like entertainment distracted you from reality and art like maybe presenting you with an entire new one in its own. Gotcha, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say,
00:17:23
Speaker
I just could have done a lot of work.
00:17:25
Speaker
No, I'd say on the distraction on the distraction bit. I heard that word early on. It's actually a word I don't encounter as much in asking this question tantalized by that because it is something like the the the distraction from the reality as is or the art in and of itself being the presentation of a different reality, right? It's either immersion in or a distraction from
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I I don't think that's exactly what I heard before but that's yeah, definitely Things about the roundabout, you know through the through the filter of my head that's I got I I kind of can identify with that for sure and You know, I It really helps to it really helps to collaborate with
00:18:24
Speaker
people who, you hear about record producers.
Production and Live Performances
00:18:31
Speaker
Some of those people do a really invaluable thing. For someone to trust what you are doing enough to pick up not maybe a rain or just be willing to walk with you through it and feel very much
00:18:53
Speaker
let it be your own thing. Cam Spieth really, he did a lot for the new record. He did our last two records. He produced our last two records and I was talking to him and someone the other day. He's great at the technical side of things, very good at letting you feel comfortable,
00:19:21
Speaker
In this high stressful environment, I think that's kind of maybe one of the more under appreciated things of a good of a good producer or whoever.
00:19:30
Speaker
You're here you're there and you're really trying to capture this this thing and this idea That you want like you've got so much riding on it almost the least of which are finances But those that's obviously very important. You're still there and you still have this this shot like it's gonna go and It's really nerve-wracking thing And Some people
00:19:59
Speaker
Some people are just so good at there's something to recording music lab. Some people are just so good at it It's you know, it's something you have to be comfortable doing and I think he did a great job Of helping with I think he understands that's part of a producer's role Which might not really get the kind of praise or credit that it it normally deserves When you listen when when somebody's gonna go to One of your live shows is one of the things I like to get into with the live performance of Sala ponto. I
00:20:29
Speaker
uh what uh what differences what what differences they get uh what's what's live experience like that's a that's a cool question um our live experience started our first show was really funny and kind of um i don't know maybe not serendipitous it's a small town
00:20:56
Speaker
We played with several of the other bands later on. We played in a basement. It's a funny story. We played in a basement like Holgate and 70th down in the Southeast. And this is before who now plays tambourine.
00:21:15
Speaker
This is before Ed, the tambourine keyboard, some vocals guy. He only played sampler at the time. He didn't have anything else really going on. We didn't really have anything else for him to do. But we had him playing like, again, like movie dialogue or whatever. And
00:21:35
Speaker
And so show's about to start. We're opening. His sampler goes out. And so he's got nothing else on stage. I should say he's got nothing else in the corner of this basement that we're playing in. And so we go through it and everyone's coming up to him afterwards like, hey, dude, that was great.
00:21:59
Speaker
He totally sold it. But the thing that we were doing that he really helped with having the sampler was that we would do like 45 minutes. We would like introduce ourselves and then we would do about 45 minutes straight through one song into the next. And at the end of it, we would thank people and whatnot. And to a degree, we still try to do that. There aren't a lot of stops.
00:22:29
Speaker
I don't hate talking, but we try. I certainly don't hate talking, but we try to, you know, just limit it and say what's required. And, you know, some things are. And then, yeah, I would say we'll do like blocks of
00:22:54
Speaker
We did one recently with four songs in a row. We'll start playing four songs straight through and then say something, then play another 15 or 20 minutes. A lot of times after that, we'll play one more song and that'll be the end of it. But there are things we do live that aren't on
00:23:20
Speaker
any records, there's extended formats and stuff. We're huge fans of live music in general, always trying to catch it. It's almost like going to see one of your favorite bands or for us going to see some of our favorite bands like doing homework. What are these guys up to this time? I got around to Yolatango finally,
00:23:49
Speaker
And I finally, I was into them and I just, it just never happened. I don't know. I always enjoyed like what I heard. And when that finally clicked for me, like the next time they came to Portland, they played two nights at the Wonder Bar of, I went to both and it was just blown away. It was so much fun. One thing they did though, one thing, yeah, they were so great. They ended both, I guess they end their shows with covers almost always.
00:24:18
Speaker
And we love covers and we have several that we kind of like put in and out, you know, whatever. We rotate them out, you know, there's several that there's several. I guess Yola Tengo does the same thing, of course. However many we have, they have like 200 more, I'm sure, because they're just incredible. But yeah, we love we love covers and I love I love when a band in particular, I don't know why, but I love when a band ends with a cover.
00:24:47
Speaker
Flaming lips do it a lot. I guess they don't end with covers, I don't know, but yeah. But having a lot of covers from a band like Flaming Lips is most enjoyable. Hey, Joe, I wanted to ask you one of the big questions of the show and then ask a little bit more about a couple songs, but big question of the show, no good time to ask it. Why is there something rather than nothing?
00:25:15
Speaker
Nothing just doesn't sound appealing at all the darkness is just so I don't know I don't know if I'm getting to I don't I don't know if there's a point to the question or answer, but I think I think it's a lot I think it's a lot easier for some people to create than others and I think the people who
00:25:41
Speaker
I think that the people who struggle to express the things that are inside of them from either one way or another, there's anxiety about how people are gonna feel. They're afraid to face rejection of their poem, song, movie, painting, whatever. They just can't, yeah, they can't bring themselves to lift the pen or anything. And I think those same people are some of the biggest
00:26:09
Speaker
appreciators and fans of all of the formats that I'm talking about. And also, some of the people I'm thinking of in particular have some of my favorite tastes and I really take what they, when the right friend
00:26:29
Speaker
who's a genius in their own right, calls me and says, hey, this show is really good. I think you'd really like it. I'm just kind of sticking with it. And a lot of times I struggle as a creator. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed with all of it and I wait for the people who I trust to kind of filter it out. It just always seems to happen like that.
00:26:55
Speaker
whenever enough people tell me about, and it, you know, it's always at the right show. I always get into it. I'm like, Oh, yeah, like that was great. So I guess what I'm saying is, um, it's a, what's the word, symbiotic sort of relationship between the, the audience and the, whatever the audience is and the people that make it, like everyone, 100% needs each other, you know? So.
00:27:24
Speaker
I don't know. I think that's why. Not the easiest, not the easiest question. But let me jump over to, let me jump over to Soloponto again.
Finding Salo Ponto Online and Song Insights
00:27:35
Speaker
For the listeners, where do you find Soloponto? I know there's a nice bandcamp page, definitely a page I recommend overall and can see the new music in your catalog there. But tell us where to find your stuff.
00:27:54
Speaker
With we're all over Instagram and YouTube. There is a there is I think there's still a sale of panto calm. But it's, it's, it's like an overgrown, I guess it'd be an overgrown front yard. It needs a lot of work. The weeds have the weeds have grown. And there's just there's just nothing recent on it. It's just older pictures of us.
00:28:22
Speaker
members in the band who had to move away or whatever and stuff like that. But yeah, Bandcamp and Instagram and YouTube are the big ones for sure. Great. Can you tell us about the track, So Little Earth? Yes. So Little Earth is the only song of its kind on our record, obviously.
00:28:49
Speaker
we always, we always kind of imagined it some kind of talking heads remain in light. You know, idea type idea. But we we all got to so we all I it's a song I I did something like it a couple years ago. And we didn't need
00:29:15
Speaker
We didn't need one more song for the album, but what we had were this group of songs that all really worked together. And then we had these couple much heavier rockin' songs that were a little their own thing. And so what we're doing is we're releasing an EP in December.
00:29:40
Speaker
And so we kind of let those songs be their own thing and we'll put them out later. And so we needed one more. And instead of just like trying to write a song, we took this one that I had done years ago and we all just kind of took our time. I say me, the drummer and the bass player specifically. We just kind of sat with a click and listened to the song or the groove as it were.
00:30:06
Speaker
And this is where the remaining light thing comes into play. We kind of just chopped it up, chopped pieces up and looped what we wanted and kind of let have free reign with a lot of the noises that we were coming up with.
00:30:25
Speaker
So yeah, it was just cool the way that that song came to be. The clip track is in the song. It starts the song. We just played to those drums for several minutes. And then through the architectural nature of Camp Space, who recorded the album, we came up with that. But it's fun. And yeah, it's going to be really fun to play live when we
00:30:53
Speaker
When you get around to it, I don't think we'll be playing it on Halloween. But but yeah, it's a it's one of my favorites for sure. How it came out. Wonderful. No, I love that one. We're talking with Joe. What about parallel narratives?
Inspiration Behind 'Parallel Narratives'
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, so parallel narratives, the title track of the album, that was a that was a covid song. And the idea, the idea was
00:31:26
Speaker
With the lockdown and everything, it was like, I felt like everyone was kind of, granted, there's always gonna be the super elite that have no real claim in the real world. But for the most part, no one could get into a movie theater, no one could get to a rock concert, no one could go into a museum. There were all these things.
00:31:55
Speaker
through all these things that you can't really bypass by threat of, you know, probably some kind of legal course. But yeah, it's for everyone to kind of just be on that same wave and path. And for really the first time for maybe, you know, I feel like my parents didn't know anything more about this than I did.
00:32:21
Speaker
And no one else's did either. So everyone was kind of just in this same boat together. And, uh, yeah, I just, it was just, it was in hindsight, a very inspiring time. It was, it was, it was the only time I can remember, uh, like, okay, well the next two months are kind of unspoken for, I better, uh, I better lock myself in a room and play as much guitar as I can while I have this time or, you know,
00:32:51
Speaker
It was like, it was like finally getting to focus solely on art as opposed to like bills or having a job or doing things like that. So, you know, it was awful for a lot of people. That's terrible. But I found, I found in it a little bit of a, I don't know, benefit, but I don't know, time to, you know,
00:33:20
Speaker
Practice and I'll worry about don't worry about working. That was nice, you know, but again, I didn't realize it was it it was a pandemic so Well, there's also the individualized purse, you know the experience of the pandemic particularly for artists, you know go and interview an artist through that time and just seen it was so varied like the the experience as significant as it was and
00:33:46
Speaker
you know, uh, for different type of ours had different meaning, uh, regarding the impacts most definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I remember, yeah. It was kind of a ship. I mean, it was very shocking. The reality didn't just hit it once over, over the course of those first few weeks. It was just just like, wow, this is what it is. And I'm going to try to take advantage of it, you know, try to make the most of this time that I can.
00:34:16
Speaker
Genuinely, yeah, I remember thinking that. Pretty good and I'd start drinking beer before five or six, if I could help it, most of, you know. You know, I remember we were, we did a really good job, me and my roommates. We were good. We were genuinely pretty good about it, you know. It was a good time. The bubbles, everyone's bubble. A lot of disinfectant.
00:34:44
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Joe, I can't believe we did this. We actually we actually got the episode. Oh, yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker
I wanna hear anything about the way you've been I wanna see the thick, I wanna see the thin
00:37:01
Speaker
Oh well, don't wanna hear anything about the way you've been I wanna see the thing, I wanna see the thing Don't wanna hear anything about the shape
00:39:14
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.