It wasn’t too long ago that you could expect to see the name Konklin adorning fliers for shows in various part of DFW, with their smarmy and disaffected mythos in tow. The premise was simple: The anonymous founding members of the band died in a mysterious accident, and the unlikely trio had risen up in their place to carry the torch.

Over time, even those personas dissolved, eroded by creative demotivation, work, and a marriage. However, that's nothing a little shake up couldn't solve. Amidst the chaos of the previous band, the drummer for Konklin, Alexi Dollar, utilized his new found vacuum of free time, filling it with songwriting of his own. It didn't take make convincing for the rest of the band to pivot. Dollar explains, “Essentially Konklin had always wanted a change in sound. Since the beginning we've talked about going in different directions with it. We just never really did- the writing style remained the same, and although we loved the sound and the songs we got really burnt out on it.” He goes on to share that the formula wasn't working out anymore, with the members’ interest slowly waning into apathy. “Eventually we started saying every show was our last (never really as a joke).
Meanwhile, while we are playing our ‘last shows’ I had started writing some songs. I think I had like 2 or 3 that I wrote when was drunk and one of them sounded really rad, so I showed Scott and we started planning out ‘ASPNTBD’ (Alexi’s side project name to be determined)”

For a lengthy period of time, the future of the project, one the would eventually become known as Soggy, was just as uncertain as the name. The personal lives of each member were clogged with peripheral events. For the better part of a year, the project sat in limbo. “We jammed sometimes and did a trial show at Broketopia because Scott couldn't make it.
Writing was a whole thing that took months for me to figure out an effective process. It turned into writing a cool riff and developing it into a full song, add lyrics that I had written prior or snag some lyrics from Sean to round it out. It's basically like putting together a puzzle.” It stayed that way until May, with the interim months peppered with a few acoustic shows featuring Alexi solo. In the weeks leading up to their EP release, they started to perform as a full band. “It was always meant for full band, but I did a lot of acoustic trials of the songs at Midway and different venues before performing with the full band. We actually just finished the writing process when we recorded with Michael Briggs recently. It forced us all to finish everything by giving ourselves a recording date. And it really came together great given all our preparation.” Dollar says, on their debut EP that dropped on May 5th.

The final product is one more straightforward and self-serious than the final iterations of Konklin, trading wild solos and frenetic lyrics for more emotional, contemplative pieces that don't sacrifice too much of the energy. Dollar divulges more, saying “The direction is a bit different than Konklin. It's much more melodic and has a systematic form with a lot of changes...way less ‘jammy’. It's really opened our horizons as musicians, we feel less restricted and like we can do just a whole lot more with our sound.”

Header image design by Christopher Rodgers