“We just love throwing a big party,” says singer-keyboardist Jonathan Khouri in a phone interview. “We’re releasing some new music. We have had some good shows in the main room at Mahall’s and just talked to the promoters at Bravo about putting us in there with some of our favorite local bands. They were open to it. I started building from there. I recruited [the local indie act] Front Porch Lights, who we share some members with, and [the local indie act] Who Saved Who is another band that we really like. [Local rock act] Frida and the Mann is one of the newer acts that’s been making a lot of noise and has a buzz. Frida is just a great frontwoman. We wanted to put together a cool night that would get a lot of people out.”
A decade on, the band has continued to build on its early goals to continue to grow as a band with every album and make itself part of Cleveland’s creative community.
“I think our aspirations were just to continue to grow as a band and have fun and enjoy the creative community around live music. That’s always been the goal. We played out of town once or twice, and when we were young, we pushed harder for some regional growth. As we settled into who we are as a band, we focused on writing great music and playing great shows with bands we love. That’s all come to fruition and made this lots of fun.”
Khouri says the group’s chemistry has continued to evolve.
“I think we just know each other better over the years,” he says. “We now have more of an understanding of the direction we want to take and more openness for growing in the direction we want to take to as a band. This lineup has been together for six years now, so that helps.”
With the new EP, the band set out to record with local uberproducer Ben Schigel, who often records national acts out of his Olmsted Falls studio.
“He does a lot of pop and hip-hop and multi-tracking,” says Khouri when asked about working with Schigel. “I don’t say we’re a totally difference experience for him, but we like to live track the foundations of the songs to give them that feel. We set up in his big room and track together. We will overdub the vocals. We’ll clean things up where we need to and add fun flourishes. We have one day where we track all the music, and then we’ll go back as we can and go through the mixing and arrange the songs. Everything that comes out of Spider is super polished. We know it will sound professional. We want to balance that sheen with making sure it’s in line with how we want to sound. It’s been worth spending the time on it and come up with something we really like.”
The band cut the latest single, “Long Division,” a punchy Ben Folds-like ballad with stirring vocals and a catchy refrain, as a throwaway.
“We just said, ‘Let’s record it because we’re here,” says Khouri. “It got built in the studio to the point where it was completed, and we really loved it.”
After 2022, some band members started families and careers. Balancing those things with the band has been difficult but rewarding.
“I now have two kids,” says Khouri. “Initially, you get into this stressful situation where you think about leaving your kids behind to do something for yourself, and you don’t practice enough, and I worry about whether I’ll lose the skill of playing well. But it’s so much fun, and I want my kids to enjoy it too. I’ll sit at the piano with my toddler. It’s hard to juggle, but it’s worth it and continues to give us that creative outlet and make us part of the community, which we really like.”
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This article appears in Dec 4-17, 2024.
