Photo Credit: Rachel Malvich

Barely Civil finished recording their stellar sophomore album, I’ll Figure This Out, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It’s a record steeped in anxiety and isolation — emotions we’ve all become increasingly familiar with.

The pandemic shut down the music industry and upended Barely Civil’s plans for promoting their new album on the road. Then came the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Protests enveloped the country as a national reckoning with racial injustice came to the fore. Suddenly, an album release didn’t seem so important.

I recently spoke with Barely Civil frontman Connor Erickson and drummer Isaac Marquardt as we isolated during a cold Midwestern winter. We talked about I’ll Figure This Out, the disorienting year that was 2020 and trying to navigate pandemic life as a band on the cusp. 

Andy Witchger: In addition to your music, I’ve been following your Culver’s 1312 project, which is a weekly update of events related to protests and unrest in Wisconsin and the country as a whole. You include news, literature and links to donate to local organizations and charities. How did that idea come about?

Barely Civil: We recorded our latest album in January before lockdown, and before we really knew the scope of this health crisis. We went into recording with a plan of attack for release and how we were going to approach the album cycle, but that all got turned around as things fell apart with our country and our own community. 

We had a discussion about releasing music at that point, and we decided we don’t really deserve the limelight at the moment — we don’t really deserve to be on people’s radar right now with everything going on. There are much more important things to care about. 

We struggled with how we were going to approach it. If we were going to continue promoting and releasing a record, we needed to do something to use our platform in a way that was positive and beneficial. That’s how Culver’s 1312 started, from a desire to do something bigger than release a record. We wanted to put our efforts into something of benefit rather than just pretending that everything is fine.

AW: I’m in Minneapolis, where we’ve had the murder of George Floyd and protests related to that. It seems like you’re experiencing much of the same in Milwaukee with what happened in Kenosha. 

BC: Yeah. The protests have slowed down a bit, but for a while it seemed like every day there were protests and demonstrations. I took part in some of them. Seeing the community come together to open a discussion about what’s wrong with the world… it was very eye opening, empowering and very surreal. Obviously, everything right now feels surreal, like it never could have happened or never should have happened. 

AW: I found you guys through I’ll Figure This Out and have been working my way back through your earlier work. How did the band form? 

BC: Isaac and I have known each other since we were five. We grew up playing music and doing dumb things together. When we got to high school, we met our current bandmates and just started playing music. It started out with covers and shows at our local bowling alley. Then we started writing and trying to figure that all out, but we graduated and were going to part ways.

We didn’t think we’d still be a band, so we thought it’d be fun to write a record and see what happened. We ended up writing We Could Live Here Forever using songs we’d been working on for years and also a few new ones. We tracked that whole record in five days in Indiana. Once we finished up with that, we had to get ready to move and start college. 

But then James Cassar, our friend and manager, started sending the album to everyone he knew. We ended up getting picked up by Take This to Heart Records. That was insane because, at that time, nobody knew or cared about us at all. 

Being with Take This to Heart changed our whole perspective on what we could do as musicians. It reinforced that this was something we wanted to do, something we wanted to pursue. Because of that, we really hit the ground running on I’ll Figure This Out. It became something we put all our effort into. We would tour or get together to practice and write every time we were off from school. It became our whole lives after not knowing if the band would keep going at all.

AW: I look back on when I was 18, and I’m confident I would destroy any piece of art I created at that point out of embarrassment. It’s impressive you were able to craft such a cohesive album your first time out. How did you end up working with Chris Teti (The World Is a Beautiful Place) out in Connecticut on the next album?

BC: We were trying to figure out what to do next because the studio where we recorded our first album shut down. We had a few friends who’d recorded with Chris in the past, and we talked to our manager James about the possibility. Our label reached out and Chris was willing to do it. It was a really cool moment for us. We were all huge “The World Is” fans growing up… we still are to this day. We were beyond excited when we found out that we’d be working with him.

AW: Obviously, you haven’t had the chance to tour the album yet, but what sort of response have you received?

BC: The response has been far greater than we anticipated. When we found out the world we would be releasing it into… we dropped all of our expectations. We come from a background where the best way to promote your record is to be on the road, so we got really nervous about it. 

We were unsure about how to promote it and how to get our music in front of people, but it really took off on its own. People latched onto it in a way we didn’t expect. In a way, it was a really well-timed record in terms of the content related to isolation and distance. I think that’s what a lot of people are feeling right now. Due to that, a lot of people really cared for it. It’s a cool thing to have people care for your music. It’s also a weird thing not to be able to meet them and play for them.

AW: The loss of live music during the pandemic has been really hard for a lot of people. Obviously, it’s posed huge problems financially for bands and venues. Many of us miss those cathartic experiences of seeing live music on a regular basis. What are you most looking forward to about the return of live music?

BC: I love playing shows, and I love traveling, but my favorite part of touring is to go out on the road with bands I really love and watch them play every night. Like you said, it’s really cathartic and meaningful to be at a show and singing along to music you really love. To be able to do that every night, it’s insane.

We had a couple tours that were in the works for this past summer with some of our favorite bands ever that didn’t happen. It was really disappointing. Now we’re hoping we’ll be able to pick up where we left off. Hopefully, soon enough, we’ll get to see those people again and get to play some shows.

AW: Who were some of the bands you’ve toured with previously that you were really excited to work with?

BC: The big ones for us were Future Teens, the Sonder Bombs and this band from Kansas City called Mess. Another one is from Minneapolis, Heart to Gold. We really do love all the bands we’ve gotten to tour with, but I think those are the big ones we were into before we met on the road.

AW: You’ve already alluded to it, but, lyrically, there seems to be a lot of loneliness and anxiety on the album, which is something we’re all dealing with. It’s definitely present on your first album as well. How have those anxieties shifted as your songwriting progressed.

BC: Our first record was written in that transitionary period between being a kid in your home town and leaving for college and being alone for the first time. 

I’ll Figure This Out is about another transitionary period, shifting from college to a real-world setting where you find out that being alone, being an adult, is what the rest of your life is going to be. Once you leave college, it’s understanding that now you have to find a job. Why do you need a job? So that you can live. Why do you need to live? To go to your job and to make money. It’s just this weird circle that feels very counterintuitive and unproductive. That’s really where the anxieties shifted. 

AW: So, I noticed that street names play a big part on both your albums, which helps create a sense of place. 

BC: We’ve always had a pretty strong fascination with the distinction between place and space. On We Can Live Here Forever, we have two songs called “Stark” and “Kent.” Those are streets we grew up on in our hometown. On the new album, we have “North Newhall,” and that’s a street that I lived on during a very strange time in my college years. While we point to specific places, and the songs have to do with what those places represent, when those titles are absent the songs become more about the broader, grander space that we all occupy. 

AW: I lived in Milwaukee as a kid. One of the things that caught my attention was the song “North Newhall.” I actually grew up just a few blocks from there, right by UW-M. I moved away before high school though, so I never got a feel for its music scene. What has it been like developing as a band there?

BC: Milwaukee has a really cool way of taking care of its musicians. It fosters really strong, supportive artistic communities. We have support from 88.9 Radio Milwaukee playing our music on the radio, we have friends in bands who provide us with resources. 

We don’t have a practice space and recently did an Audiotree live session. We were scrambling to find some place to practice leading up to it, and we had friends just offer up their spaces. I think that’s what’s really cool about Milwaukee. There are just a lot of artists who want to help other artists. We’ve really benefited from that, and I hope that’s something that we can feed into and lend our support once music comes back.

Barely Civil’s I’ll Figure This Out is available now from Take This to Heart Records and on most streaming platforms.

Andy Witchger (@andywitchger) is a naturalist from Minneapolis. You can find his writing and photography in Rolling Stone MX, Bring Me The News and on his mom’s refrigerator.