Q&A: Richie Quake Talks Community, His New Album ‘Dog’ and the Blessing and Curse of Self-Awareness
OVER ZOOM IN MID-NOVEMBER — I watched Richie Quake pace his Lower East Side apartment as he shared about his new album, Dog.
“Do you mind if I move around? I think better when I’m moving around,” he said.
On the surface, the Brooklyn-born artist could be the indie-rock guy from Hinge who broke your heart and then wrote a song about it. Others might recognize him from a recent Streethearts Instagram feature, or from the Lorem and side effects Spotify playlists.
“Why does @nolitadirtbag follow him? Who is this guy?” my friend said when I mentioned I was speaking to Quake.
But within the pages of his metaphorical “cover,” Quake tells a vibrant story. He has a charm and sincerity that shines through, both in his music and through the community he’s built.
His latest project is raw, human, and visceral. The imagery is jarring and strong. In the title track, he sings, “I'll be your plane, and your car, and your veins.” In “Baby Ocean Girl,” he muses, “I wanna breathe underwater too.”
These words are accompanied by a sound that is well-produced yet not manufactured.
As producer, vocalist, and instrumentalist, Quake creates a transcendent, emotional journey.
There’s the thrum of the bass throughout most songs on the album, reminiscent of the ’90s rock anthems that dominated Quake’s youth. But there are also tracks with a softer acoustic tone, as he even borrows from the day-to-day grit of life: muffled conversation, faraway cheers, a lonely dog’s barks.
Friends describe Quake as a “cultivator” of the New York City music scene (something he disputes).
“I just try to put together cool shows with bands that I like,” he said. “And I try to put together parties with DJs and promoters I like, people who I think are doing something cool and interesting. And if other people are into it, that's awesome.”
Quake has a community project, Real Life, that focuses on bringing different elements of the community together. In collaboration with fellow indie band Middle Part, he recently put on the Shred or Pie Festival in Bushwick, which featured musicians, vintage vendors, and artists across the community.
To hear Quake’s takes on tour and the creative process, read the interview below.
LUNA: You’ve been touring with Anna Shoemaker. How’s that been, and what have you learned from tour?
QUAKE: Tour was great. I love Anna. She's one of my best friends. I MDed her show and I played guitar in her band. Let's see, what have I learned from touring? Patience is just key. You're in a small, confined space with a very small amount of people for a whole month. You're relying on everyone and everyone should be given grace.
LUNA: Do you have any tour rituals?
QUAKE: I'm not very ritualistic. I try to do some pushups in the morning because otherwise when you're in the car for 10 hours a day, you start to lose your motor skills. Hitting as many thrift stores as you can is a good ritual to have. Whenever I'm on tour for my own project, I definitely try to do some vocal warmups. You can lose your voice by the end of tour really quickly.
LUNA: What’s your favorite vocal warmup?
QUAKE: I like lip trills. It's where you kind of like, buzz your lips together. It’s hard to replicate in text, but I guess it would be spelled, “B R B R B R B R B R B R.”
LUNA: Let’s talk about your album, Dog. How did you land on the concept of a dog? How do you feel about dogs, generally?
QUAKE: Dogs, to me, represent purity. There's no self-awareness. There's no filter. It's just, you know, inputting the world and then outputting your response to it. They're not self-critical. They're not judgmental of anyone. And they're not very self-reflective. They just are what they are, animals who just exist but they still have love to give.
Something that I struggle with so much is being self-critical and self-aware. Like how I'm perceived when I write or when I sing, or when I talk or when I move around, or whatever the hell it is. So I am obsessed with people who lack self-awareness and lack self-criticism, which usually leads me to being around some pretty crazy people.
But, just as a songwriter, that's where I want to get my inspiration from: my inner self, because I feel like that's what makes me human. And that's something that we all share, that unfiltered inner brain that we're all hiding from and we're hiding from everyone else. It's a shame because it sterilizes a lot of the world. I mean, there's great good in … self-regulating and filtering yourself and having empathy. But I also think that we really neuter ourselves and reduce ourselves to whatever the status quo is. And a dog doesn't do that.
LUNA: I liked how you used the word “neuter” and kept that continuity with the dog symbolism.
QUAKE: Oh hey, I didn’t even notice that! Wow.
LUNA: Yeah! Following up, do you feel like you got closer to that lack of self-consciousness with this project?
QUAKE: I think it's the closest I've ever been. I think I will always have work to do no matter how close I feel. But musically I think it's definitely the closest. It was recorded live and I really made an effort to not be afraid of mistakes and try to get the best take. I always played the song all the way through and just tried to keep the humanity of it alive.
With technology, you can really just perfect things to like the stars. Especially with AI becoming popular, it’s like… we're just going to see things getting more and more perfect. And I hope it moves us as an artistic community into a place where we realize that the thing that's gonna make us feel something is when we are like, embracing imperfection and humanity. That’s the one thing that AI can't do: be a human and fuck up and discover something accidentally. So I think I got close. I hope I did.
LUNA: What were your greatest inspirations for the album?
QUAKE: Listening to so much rock! In the process of trying to rediscover my own voice, I just went back to the stuff that I grew up on. It was a lot of Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Elliott Smith, and Jeff Buckley. But then there was a lot of new stuff too, like Alex G and Slow Pulp, and so many new artists who are also just doing really original things.
LUNA: Now I want to ask you about some specific lyrics in your album — I loved how you used these big, physical, bodily metaphors as reactions to emotional pain. Can you explain your writing process?
QUAKE: I had a conversation recently that was kind of interesting. We were talking about how some people have an inner monologue and some people don't. I am not someone who has an inner monologue, at all. I just see images, colors, shapes, and emotions. If I'm thinking about something, there's no words. So it's always super hard for me — I always know what I want the lyrics to feel like, but I just never know what to say. I think that that kind of comes across in my music: I'm usually trying to grasp at a feeling rather than tell an actual story.
Being a musician and relating so closely to the music side of things tends to bleed into how I write my lyrics. It's really easy for me to say, like, “Oh, G to E minor to B minor to D feels good.” When I put those chords together, that’s how I feel. It's not English. But it's how I feel. And I think I do that with words. “Birthday Party” was one of those songs that came together immediately, just because I was feeling those words. I don't know what any of it means. It's not an actual story, but it’s just a feeling that I felt.
LUNA: What was your creative process for this album? How did it differ from past projects?
QUAKE: This album was definitely created a little bit more in isolation. I really just wanted to tap into my own thoughts and my own process. In projects of the past, I've definitely utilized a lot of different people to come in as writers and co-producers and stuff like that. I mean, I definitely had a fair share of people helping me out on this. I don't want to not give them credit. But this one definitely started out as me trying to get in my own bag a little bit.
LUNA: Okay, I want to ask you my fun question — this is the “pentagram” question. What are the five objects that one would use to summon you?
QUAKE: Let’s see… guitar, sunglasses, Doc Martens, half a cig, and a smoothie. I've been really enjoying smoothies lately. I think if you arranged those five things on the floor, I would immediately be like, whoa. That's for me.
Okay wait, does that make me look like an asshole? I feel like I sound like the most typical male rock musician of all time. Let’s replace the Docs with… shiny balloons.
LUNA: Shiny balloons sound great. To close, what do you hope listeners take away from Dog?
QUAKE: I think it's up to them to find whatever they want to find in it. I would hope that they could find an acceptance of exploring their own life and brain, to not be afraid to go to the darker places and explore the multitudes within them.
