Ramblin’ After Midnight With Stef Chura

In June, Stef Chura released her second LP on Saddle Creek Records, which reissued her 2017 debut Messes. Produced by Car Seat Headrest wunderkind Will Toledo, Midnight finds the Michigan DIY staple feverishly jostling for layered clarity. Witness it and her live on Sunday inside at Mohawk.

Austin Chronicle: How’s the tour going?

Stef Chura: I think the turn out is a little better. It’s been a fucked up tour though. In Detroit, we played this venue that I work at, and they didn’t tell us that the A/C was broke. It seemed fine at first, but by the time it got to our set, it was so hot.

Because we’re on tour – we didn’t start [in Detroit] – I couldn’t go home to get new clothes. I had only packed something that was pretty warm to wear, so I essentially had a panic attack right after the set. I walked off stage and just started crying, like bawling my eyes out. It was really stressful.

I’ve never had this happen to me before.

Also, this was a more athletic set than Messes was. Messes was like half slow songs, and with this album, sometimes I’ll leave my energy until the end of the set. But I lost all my energy right after the first song in Detroit because it was so hot.

And there were a lot of people there, and everyone was sweating. It was really nasty. I heard of other people having to leave during the set because it was that bad. I cried for an hour. It just triggered all this stress. I was like, “I hate this! I don’t want to do this anymore!”

[The venue] flips into a nightclub, so I left for 10 minutes to get some air and when I came back, there was like 70 people in the bar who all sucked. It’s not like that when I work there. I only work karaoke night.

I paid this girl to do the merch, and she was outside smoking a cigarette. I was like, “Why the fuck is this unattended? Like this is super fucked up!” I didn’t do anything though. I started crying in front of all these people I don’t know, and who probably like my music. That was a good start.

AC: Sounds like a scary premonition of things to come, but hopefully it’s gotten better.

SC: You think, “only uphill,” but then you keep getting surprised.

AC: You collaborated with Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest on the new album. How has working with him changed your sound or music-making process?

SC: He does stuff in a very different way. With songwriting, I can’t imagine going to school for it, [but] there are some artists I like that went to Berklee or something. I really like Aimee Man and she went to Berklee. I can’t imagine what it was like to study that stuff, and Will didn’t do that, but I feel like he’s a good student. So, my point is that I never really acquired other ways and other methods of doing stuff.

I’d say that’s probably what the process is like with any producer. “We’re going to do it like this,” and you’re like, “Okay, never did it like that before.” I definitely feel I got some new techniques and ways of doing stuff. I guess tools is a better word.

He just arranges songs differently. Not even differently. He just had a way of completing them that I definitely was like, “Oh, okay. This is how we do it.”

AC: How much of the material is new on Midnight? With Messes, you pulled from material written many years ago.

SC: There are a few older demos on this one, too. That might just be my style, where I have some demos and I’m like, “Oh, we gotta do this.” There was a combination of newer, unreleased demos and then older ones. Like there are a couple songs from my Bandcamp we used. The demos were “Method Man” and “They’ll Never.”

AC: How do you go about picking demos you want to put on an album?

SC: With Will, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna pick some that are better songs that I really tried to work on more, and I really want to finish them and they really mean a lot to me, but I’m not sure how.” That was some of the stuff I sent him. I picked 25 things and he picked maybe 14. Eleven made it and then I did the cover [Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face”].

AC: Listening to “Method Man,” it’s a song about this dude who is super condescending, but then you kinda want his approval at the same time. There’s this really weird relationship to manage. Are there any “Method Men” you run into in your professional life or in the music scene?

SC: “Method Man” is a really specific song for me as far as that type of person. It’s kinda about that, but I started working on that song when I was 19. I was hopelessly in love with this friend of mine who was 24. I just had no idea how to talk to him.

He has very literate and would go on, on, and on. I don’t know if he was totally condescending to me, but I did feel a sense of “I’m smarter than you” kind of thing. It’s definitely about desperately seeking someone’s approval and maybe it’s not the best person for you, and you don’t get it.

AC: Reading press about this new album, so often people bring up Will Toledo and his influence. That’s been used to qualify this new album.

SC: I feel like we shouldn’t have made it such a point. It’s cool that I worked on it with Will, but a lot of producers work with artists and it’s not the defining thing. I think I’m at a level though and Will is at such a larger level that people just want to talk about that. On the label end and my end, at first it was a big deal, like, “Hey, look what we did. I pooped in my dipey. Mom, aren’t you proud?”

AC: I think a lot of female musicians are talked about in relation to a male producer, or a male artist, or a male act who’s supporting them. And somehow that’s like, “Oh wow, can you believe she’s so good that so and so is working with her?”

SC: I mean, none of it’s been negative. Actually, a lot of reviews have either minimized him or even kind of said what you’re saying, like, “Yeah, Toledo’s there, but this wouldn’t be what it is without her. This isn’t only good because of his presence.” There’s a little bit of acknowledgement in a lot of that stuff, but I would say that yes, it’s an omnipresent thing.

It’s hard to read about the album without reading about him producing it, but none of it’s been overbearing. I think most people who have talked to me have been sensitive to that. They don’t ask too many questions about him, like one or two. It’s not like, “What’s Will like? He’s cool, right?” It hasn’t been like that.

AC: You grew up in Alpena, Michigan. One of our music writers also hails from that the area. In his words, “Not that many people get out of Alpena.” Is that true?

SC: Sometimes, I’m like, “Oh, it’s my Aberdeen” [laughs]. I think about it like that, do you know what I mean? A lot of people stay there. They just, like, get pregnant and stay there.

AC: How has moving around Michigan affected your sound?

SC: You know, people ask me that question out of context sometimes, and I’m like, “It doesn’t!” But actually, from living in Alpena, I think it kinda does. It definitely does because there’s a community. When I was in Alpena, I would just write songs by myself, and then I had a band.

I had a band when I was 16 that was all girls. We were called Burning Bush, but we never played any shows. When I was 17, I had a thing where I wrote and then my friend wrote, like played the guitar. It was acoustic. My spirit was just very alone. There was no scene.

There was a music scene in Alpena that ended right as I entered 7th grade or maybe 8th grade. Because I remember in 7th grade going to a show right when it ended, but I didn’t know what it was that I was going to and it was over when I got there. Maybe that’s a metaphor for my life or something. There weren’t any shows like that anymore. There were actual punk shows.

Anyway, to answer your question, there was a lot more of an actual community, so I was writing songs and then I could go and play them at house shows. Then I started playing with a real band because my friends wanted to. I was able to evolve in a different way.

In Detroit, I met more people who had actually done bigger things and I think I was inspired. I was able to take it from a fantasy to like, “Let’s do it. Let’s try to do this.” It’s provided a certain level of structure that wasn’t there before.