Richmond, Kentucky shoegaze unit Calvary have been making a mark on their local scene over the last few years. Their lush three guitar attack is backed by a stellar rhythm section and breathtakingly beautiful vocals and they recently released a six song E.P. called “Aurora” that’s an absolute banger.
I caught up with guitarists Hunter Hicks and Dylan Riddell to talk about their early musical experiences, how the band formed and the making of the new record.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you all as kids and what artist or band did you all enjoy the most?
Hunter-Growing up, we listened to a lot of different things across the board, Avenged Sevenfold, Kiss, Skrillex, early 2000s third wave emo, basically a lot of stuff that is nothing like how we sound. Our actual influences for Calvary are bands like Hum, Whirr, Nothing, My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive.
CMM-When did you all start playing music and writing songs and what led to the formation of Calvary?
Dylan-Hunter and I (Dylan) wanted to play music together, and we would send each other really bad voice memos of song ideas. We started meeting with our first drummer around October of 2022. One of the first songs I remember playing with him was “Another Space Song” by Failure. We met our bassist, Carter, in December of the same year and that cemented our first lineup. We were playing more rock-ish songs at the time, definitely not “shoegaze” yet. Ollie didn’t join till 2023, after that we started really writing Calvary songs.
CMM-The band recently released an E.P. called “Aurora” What was the writing and recording process like and were there any particular pieces of gear you all used to get the sound you all were looking for?
Hunter-Ryan recorded the drums at Anagram Sound in Lexington, everything else we did ourselves at home on GarageBand. We used a Focusrite 2i2 and a couple SM58 microphones. For amps, we ran a Fender Twin Reverb, a Roland JC120, a Fender Champion 100, and a Peavy head going into a Hartke cab for bass. Our awesome friend Zachary Hamilton mixed it and made it sound great.
CMM-If the band could do a score for any film director, who would it be and what would the film be about?
Dylan-I’d like to soundtrack a Gregg Araki movie. I’m a big fan of Mysterious Skin and Nowhere, and his movies often include shoegaze songs (Ride/Slowdive/etc).
CMM-Anything coming up?
Dylan-We are currently getting back into the writing process, we’re open to shows but none are currently in the works.
