If you haven’t heard the Chicago surf and indie rock band The Limbos then let me fill you in. The Limbos are a surf / soul band that dabbles in indie rock and their singer and main songwriter Ryan Miera also started Yellow Pills as a solo outlet almost a decade ago. Through label Mint 400 Records and their sub-label Raining Music Yellow Pills is getting new life as they have released 2 full length albums just in the last 4 months. If you like The Limbos or just have eclectic taste in music you are going to love this new LP. Above is the first single and video “These Pennies Are Useless!” and below a full album stream. We sat down with the mind behind the project Ryan Miera and talked about the new LP.
1. Why the side project when some of the songs tread the same waters as your main band The Limbos?
Well, I don't have to rely on anybody else for this project, which is admittedly motivating I've found. If and when I have an idea I can immediately record it, tweak it if need be and it's finished. No need to plan a rehearsal, work on parts, book studio time and check with 5 other people about availability etc. There's just many steps that are totally eliminated with Yellow Pills and it speeds up finishing ideas despite having to do it without that sweet horn section.
2. How do you decide what to write for this project since it's so varied?
That's a damn good question. I think it's as varied as it is because I get bored really quickly so the moment things start to sound repetitive, I switch things up immediately. And per usual, if something angsty is going on in my brain, I sit at the piano and write something so I don't go nuts.
3. Who are some of the key musicians you have on this album or is it all you?
It's largely all me but there were definitely some amazing friends who contributed and tied everything together. I write and produce everything but occasionally need a hand. That's why I refer to it as a solo-ISH project. Mary Mahoney played violin on one track. Mike Green from Mezzanine Swimmers played guitar on a couple of tracks and Marty Shutter and Bruce Binderman from Cocktail Preachers played steel guitar on a track but other than that, it's all me.
4. What's the history of this side project and how it got started?
It started as a bedroom project about 8 years ago and I called it Yellow Candy. It was essentially something to do in my own time. I made CDs and would sell them to whoever would buy them. I don't even own any of them anymore. No clue where one would even find them. I just had a ton of stuff that didn't really lend itself well to The Limbos so I'd just hammer it out in my bedroom and toss it up online so that it would at least be finished and accessible. Over this pandemic, I just had a tone of things I was writing so I just started recording them and Neil at Mint 400 and Raining Music was rad enough to offer to start putting them out. I changed the name to Yellow Pills though because somebody had bizarrely started using Yellow Candy as their name and I didn't want there to be any confusion.
5. You use a lot of answering machine messages and other weird little hidden things on Yellow Pills records, anything interesting that you can share a story about like the answering machine messages on this and the last album?
Haha! Yeah my buddy John left one that made its way onto the last album. I honestly just thought it was funny and that it would make a strange intro to a song so I threw it on the album. This most recent one has a message from my buddy Chris and that song honestly just needed SOMETHING in the spot where you can hear the message and I couldn't think of anything to put there then had a light bulb go on and thought "A-HA! MY FRIEND'S DRUNK ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE WILL DO JUST FINE!"
6. Were these songs all hanging around a while or did you write them in the last few months since the last Yellow Pills album came out?
It's a combo. Some were hanging around for a little bit but most were definitely in between that last album and this one. "Just One More Time" is actually a really REALLY old song that I re-recorded for the hell of it and ended up liking how the recording came out so I put it on this album to serve as a "Wait, is this on shuffle or something?" moment.
7. Who's some of the artists that inspire you for this mostly instrumental project? To me it's like a modern day Booker T and The MG's vibe but without any rules, do you agree or disagree?
Ohhh, I like that. I could definitely see that for sure. Big emphasis on the "without any rules" part. I think a lot of the artists that inspire me for this are honestly everything I've ever heard. As nebulous as that sounds, I think if you hear one of the albums it will check out. I can however say that the aquarium in my brain that generates stuff for this project is, at times, likely influenced by The Mix Up by Beastie Boys. It's that all instrumental album they put out in 2007. It's seriously my favorite of theirs. As a kid, I got turned on to Medeski, Martin and Wood. Particularly the album A Go Go that they put out with John Scofield. Then as a kid, I got into instrumental surf rock and that fandom never really went away as you can hear on every Yellow Pills album. But then again, I think influences that range from everything from Beethoven to Simon Joyner to Santo & Johnny to Brainiac to simply being pissed off have all somehow made themselves noticeable on this new one.
8. Do you see yourself inserting some of this vibe into The Limbos in the future?
I don't think so. That group definitely has its own rad vibe that we found over time and it would feel like trying to force hot sauce onto ice cream or something.
9. Have you ever played live with this project?
I have yet to play live with Yellow Pills but I got offered a show just a couple days ago and had to pass because there's simply nobody beside myself. For now at least. It prompted me to reach out to a childhood friend of mine who plays drums who moved to Chicago last year and ask if he "might possibly potentially MAYBE" want to start up something and fortunately he was like "ABSOLUTELY THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!" So there's definitely something in the works for live stuff. It's funny because him and I used to play in a swing band when we were in high school. Remember when swing was big for like 10 months? We started a swing band in high school during that whole craze. To be fair we were weirdos and had already been listening to Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Benny Goodman etc but then it bizarrely became pop culture. We thought we were these big bad asses but we were literally a teenage swing band. Man, that was a strange time. It made as much sense as if Doo Wop suddenly became popular in 2021. But anyway, there is a live line up in the works.
10. Anything else you want to say about it?
The next album is almost done. Keep your ears open!
- Sam Lowry