Artist Interview: Gabbo

Artist Interview: Gabbo

Posted: by The Editor

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It’s been a big year for Maryland activist and indie pop artist Gabbo. After releasing a B-sides and demos compilation last year, they released a new single in the excellent “Sweetgreen” and announced a signing with Honeycutt Records to release their debut EP. The Popdosemagazine caught up with Gabbo to talk local scenes, the intersection of politics and music, and coffee advice.


The Alt: So how did you end up on Honeycutt Records? 

Gabbo: Sure, so I received an email from Chris Crowley, who is like one of the original founders of Salty Artist Management, which is an artist management company they sort of helped with marketing, promotions, tour booking, all of those things. Chris reached out to me personally to my email and asked about my interest in doing some sort of like label release for the EP, and this was after I put out the EP myself as my senior project following graduation last year. So like May 2020, I put the EP out, and Chris saw that it got really good reception, even though  I didn’t do any real promo. I emailed — I might’ve emailed The Popdosemagazine — people who do like previews for albums and I really — I was just like, “Thanks for listening.” Everyone, their plates are so full with all of the new music that was coming out back then, and during COVID it was kind of a clusterfuck with everything. But, thank God Chris emailed me and when he did he was like, “yeah we’d love to work with you and and chat with you a little bit about what a release together would look like” —and it was really like seeing Mitski’s name in his signature line, and Palm – all the bands, the musicians that Chris has worked with. Andrew Baker, the other half of Honeycutt, is another promoter, label management person who he is working with, and so the two of them formed Honeycutt. That was their idea with another girl named Lanny, and she does sort of like more online organization like getting the Google Drive folders organized. She’s helped out a ton and yeah we signed a contract. It is a very lenient contract; it’s like the EP and then,whatever else we think about maybe we want to do in the future, kind of thing. So it’s all up in the air from the EP. The EP itself comes out August 7th. Yeah and I’m like the debut EP, debut release on this label which feels wild. I’m so grateful, so grateful.

Alt: I can see how some of those big names might be pretty rad.

Gabbo: Yeah so much dancing by myself around my house as like a response to seeing some words on my phone. I’ll see them and I’ll be like, “I gotta give myself a pat on the back,” but it lasts for about two seconds and then I’m like, “Holy shit, that’s terrifying.”

Alt: I just want to make sure I understand you correctly, but this is going to be, then, a rerelease of the EP?

Gabbo: So, yeah, the deal with that is while I was studying abroad in the fall of 2019 I was at Newcastle University and I recorded all of it. And then that spring I mixed it at the studios at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) myself, and I mean — I have my degree in music tech, I have worked on pro tools so much at this point, but I can’t say I’ve — I’m not a master at mixing — like I know that getting help from people who have experience with that, it’s not this negative like someone’s trying to control, I hate that sort of twist on it. Henry Stoller of Slow Pulp –– he’s the bassist from Slow Pulp –– and he also does mixing and production for them — and probably a couple other bands — he helped me next, and we  talked on the phone; we texted about the mixes, what we wanted them to sound like at the end of it all, and you know, he would send me a rough mix and I’d be like, “okay here’s a note, here’s a note, I really like this” and we just work together on all of the final product of the EP. It  was an honor, an honor and a privilege.

Alt: I know you just put out last year also that B-sides and rarities comp — obviously “Sweetgreen” is on there — so can we expect the other demo songs from that project to appear in finished form?

Gabbo: Yes, some of them will, definitely. The EP itself is four songs and “Sweetgreen” is the third song there. There were a couple of other demos on there that you’ll probably hear on the EP and, beyond that, as far as like, past EP stuff, we’re also working on remixes of the songs from the EP, and a couple of my close friends are doing some of those remixes, and I have some of them and they sound really, really cool. It’s really exciting. Very, very cool.

Alt: How different was it writing for a solo project, as opposed to the Moon by Moon stuff?

Gabbo: Good question! So solo work has always been really easy. I mean you don’t really have to — there’s the process of my own imposter syndrome and me being like, “do these words make any sense?” But everyone deals with that, I think. Working in a group and in Moon by Moon, especially, I mean we were all full time students, I had a job on the side, Etai had a job on the side. We were very busy all the time, and so we would have to go out of our way to find the time to spend together to write and practice, and when you’re playing with a band and you’re doing live shows, you really want your live sound to be — you want to practice enough so you guys don’t sound like shit in person, even though your studio stuff sounds good, you know because we’re all music tech students, we were like a will produce something really beautiful — and with solo stuff it’s a little less of that because I can do whatever I want when I’m performing live. On my IG live that I did on Wednesday, I just got my keyboard and my looping pedal and a delay pedal and that was it. Whereas, you know, on the actual songs there’s like a live grand piano, or maybe drums, or in person I don’t really have to worry about playing in that group dynamic and I think it’s a little bit easier to just free form it — you know going blind a little bit and just have fun doing a DJ cover set of your own music, basically.

Alt: How did you get started writing music and putting out music on your own? How’d you get into that?

Gabbo: Being from the Eastern Shore of Salisbury, Maryland, I always had this like weird — I’ve always vibed with Taylor Swift when I was younger. I really liked what she was doing back when I was really young. The Jonas brothers were very influential. Interestingly enough, High School Musical had a huge effect on my childhood — Seriously! Zac Efron, the dream that I had about Zac Efron in second grade was what did it. I wrote a song. The next day, I had the song playing in my head when I woke up, and so I quickly wrote down all the words and whatever and I learned quick to play it on the top three strings of the guitar. Second grade. And then I went around at recess and a capella forced — made all my friends and even teachers listen to me singing this weird pop song, a capella, that I wrote about Zac Efron. Olivia Rodrigo is doing what I want to be doing! I wish I were Gabrielle, in High School Musical the TV Show thing. It’s very, very cool and so funny that that movie in particular has such bearing over American culture, specifically pop music. So yeah, from second grade on I was like, “Alright, I know what my life goal is: I want to make music and that’s it.” Everything else is just sort of on the sides. I mean it’s like music and relationships always have been the most important aspects of my life and they kind of go hand in hand, anyway. Yeah, second grade on, and then I guess ninth grade I finally stepped into like a real studio, and this was — it was my dad’s friend — my dad is a salesman at a steel manufacturing company, so one of his salesman friends has a studio or had a studio, Kevin. And I went to their studio. I brought my ukulele and my acoustic guitar and I recorded the first split that I would put out on Bandcamp, and that was with a guy named Colin Waller who is like three years older than me, but he was in that scene of Salisbury, where we were all like showing up playing whatever. I would get invited by him or some other folks to go to someone’s house you know and just play my guitar and sing. He helped me with that first Bandcamp release, which was very fun and very cool. It’s fun to go back and listen to, now because it’s been so long and it’s cool that I have music from 2013 on my band camp. My soundcloud goes back even further, like 7th grade.

Alt: Sorta in that vein, what was the music scene like in Salisbury?

Gabbo: Oh it’s kind of a loaded topic. I have a lot of personal… beef, I’ll just say beef! The culture that resides on the shore in the music scene — and I’m sure in a lot of the other little niche groups — there is just this feeling that you have traveled back 20 years in time and all of the societal norms from 1992 are still relevant: so racism, homophobia, blatant sexism, abuse and manipulation, and a lot of really harmful things that continue to happen to — in my experience — I was a young woman, a very young girl, I was 14 doing shows with like eighteen, nineteen, twenty, beyond — adults. When that’s happening and you’re on the Shore, no one’s really checking to make sure it’s cool. It’s just kind of like: “oh my God we’re playing music, this is so cool we can do whatever we want. I’m gonna…” Yeah, so there’s that about it. I still, to this day, have a lot of good friends that I’ve maintained from the shore who are still putting on shows. Still performing, still recording and there are a lot of really talented folks from the Shore, who either leave because they can’t stand the culture over there, or they stay and I text them about how horrible it is. And I won’t say that’s the case for everyone, because not everyone is — not everyone is like trying to, I guess, make it big the way that I always really felt that I wanted to. Like the sort of — I don’t know when I was younger, it was really about being a pop star, like rock star-level. Now I’m working at a coffee shop and I’m like I don’t — I don’t know what is going to happen. But with the mindset on the Shore, there are a lot of people who played music who just, you know, they didn’t really see themselves actually pursuing music as the one thing they wanted to do with their lives, it was like a side hobby thing too. There are just a lot of confusing, confusing things about the Shore. When I left, I changed my music project name; so I was in a band called Frank when I was like 14, 15. That was the first band I was in. I was with three older men, one of whom assaulted me. And then, after that I was solo for a really long time, really until Moon by Moon. I was not working with other people because — it’s just weird, leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and I would perform my solo project music with a group of close friends, during like a 11th and 12th grade, but after that point I just hit it solo. Then I met Etai in my sophomore year and that when Moon by Moon started to become a thing. Yeah, Salisbury is just a lot. It’s a lot. It’s so much. I don’t like it. You cross the Bay Bridge and you start seeing Trump signs. I was living in Annapolis, which is close to the shore, but not exactly over the bridge yet, and even in Annapolis you’d get a little bit of that weird backwoods, just not good culture, not the type of place that you want to be living or performing. It’s just frustrating. I feel like maybe a lot of people get opportunities robbed from them because of simply existing on the Shore. There are a lot of folks doing things on the Internet and, you know, clothing businesses or jewelry or you know, like having their Etsy shops or their projects doing really well online, but in person around Salisbury, I can’t even speak for what it looks like now either. So, complicated.

Alt: Sounds not ideal.

Gabbo: Yeah not fun. I don’t know. I feel weird talking about it, it gives me a bit of guilt, you know, because that’s where I grew up and I want to be there for my hometown or whatever, but at the same time I can’t be proud of that. Literally today I’m getting messages from an old friend about some folks in the music scene, who are doing just terrible things still. And my response is always like, “I’m not surprised, but I’m really, really sorry that this is happening to you because I understand the context,” and when you go out of your way to talk about it even, nothing is done. I don’t like calling it a boys’ club – I heard it called a boys’ club so many times but that’s not it, because non-men also do it. People manipulate. People lie, do the wrong thing when they’re going through something and they don’t know how to act. And when you have a lot of young people, especially young people on the shore — or you know I’m sure there are areas of Florida, Montana, Illinois, like literally everywhere — where you just have this weird – you want it to be like this liberating, fun experience; you want to have like fun high school relationships. And you want to have fun being in your first band, or whatever. For me, and for a lot of other people, it was like actually looking back as a 22 year old now, I was exploited sexually at 14 by a bunch of adult men who probably still aren’t doing anything now and that’s just frustrating because it feels a little bit like not only was I isolated on the shore, I was isolated from everyone that was already there too, and then after that sort of things thing happens when you talk about it, you know I would go out and perform songs about how these things that happened — Taylor Swift-style. Like name-dropping! After I was assaulted I remember playing at this church in Berlin, called the Pulse, and this dude Corey Dunk ran that show always — and he was a piece of shit but I sang a song about how I had been assaulted, manipulated, all of that, and I was 16 at the time, and I think I remember Corey saying something about how it was a bad performance or something. So you know after that happened, I was just like, “Fuck all of this. I’m leaving.”

The Alt: You had mentioned that, like you had wanted to be like a pop star, and that you don’t really think you feel that way anymore — is that — am I understanding you correctly?

Gabbo: For sure. I mean when I was young, anyway, I had this very glorified romanticized idea of pop stardom as I’m sure all young girls do again looking up to Taylor Swift, Hannah Montana, Demi Lovato, all of these really like big faces, and now you see Britney Spears, the issues that Demi Lovato has had, the issues that Taylor Swift has had with her music. It’s just kind of startling because as I’ve been learning these things myself, I’ve been also watching my favorite celebrities learn these things in front of all of us. It feels very two dimensional like we’re all sort of figuring it out at the same time. It’s inspiring, but it also makes me want to not follow that corporate — as if I could [laughs]. I don’t think I have the name recognition or the money or whatever — the nepotism — I don’t have an uncle who works for Columbia Records or anything, that’s not something I’m interested in, especially with the things that I’ve been through. I know how it feels to have your power taken from you and Billie Eilish can sing about it all she wants! But it persists and and if you’re going to engage with the pop industry, I feel like you have to give it up. I feel like there is an innate sacrifice of power, especially for non-men, but even for men, it seems there is some sacrifice of power, always given when you involve yourself in that sort of like corporate entity. When I interned for Sirius XM for a summer, it was a very eye opening experience as far as the types of music that gets through, and the type that doesn’t.

The Alt: Well that’s actually why I wanted to follow up on that because it’s interesting to me is like you say you don’t want to be a pop star anymore, and I kind of feel like you’re best positioned now than at any other time in your career to be a pop star with the sorts of people, someone like Phoebe Bridges getting to the level of popularity that she is, or even Olivia Rodrigo. Obviously, she’s a Disney star, but a song like “Brutal” is not the kind of song that would be on the radio last year. So it’s just interesting to see those sorts of things shift, and I wanted to get your take on it.

Gabbo: I think I understand what you’re getting at. I believe that it has a lot more to do with us adapting to COVID online. I would say, well, not only COVID, we had the huge protest movement last summer, and for that you’re seeing, and I hope it continues and — God bless it — but on my timeline I’m seeing so much new music by so many people that I would have never heard of, and people who maybe would have been underrepresented prior to COVID. I myself feel grateful for the lull of time that COVID gave us because it allowed Chris to find my music. I think a lot of attention has been given to voices that needed to be heard. It’s a constant work in progress, you know. I mean Olivia Rodrigo’s absolutely killing it, but also going to the White House — it’s to promote vaccines, but girl, just make it TikTok. You don’t have to go get kissed on the head by Joe Biden to do that. That was very funny to me. All of it is very transparent. It just gives me the heebie-jeebies a little. That’s my take. I think a lot has been done, obviously more can be done, but I think the change in just the sound that we’re hearing of popular music, it has to have something to do with COVID and all of just the social, political, everything. There’s an awakening happening —what is it? “There’s no such thing as a coincidence. Our energetic fields are aligned,” like that guy on TikTok.

The Alt: On that on that note, what’s one of the one of the albums that you’ve heard this year that you’d suggest everyone listen to?

Gabbo: Oh, my gosh. One?

The Alt: You can up it if you want. You can cheat on this one.

Gabbo: Can I check my Spotify? My mind is also blanking right now, it’s like there are 10 million and there are also zero. What did I just listen to today? Let’s see: the new Tyler the Creator, the new Jungheim, the new Little Simz, what else? Shoot. Always You is a new band from – not sure where they’re from, they might be from Montreal, but Jerry Paper produced their new album. Care Package, a friend of mine, Hal, from Pittsburgh, they just put out an EP today — really fuckin’ good. Japanese Breakfast.

The Alt: That album is incredible.

Gabbo: Black Midi, Black Country, New Road — I’m all over the place — Fela Kuti has been releasing new mixes this year! I have been listening to so much, so much, so much, and it seems like there is a constant stream of new music this year, too. Like it’s not ending, whereas I feel like last year there were lulls in like October, maybe September, without any music. This year it’s been consistently every month I have a new album to listen to that I’m obsessed with, and I’m vibing hard.

The Alt: I’ve definitely noticed that too. It’s like, “please stop releasing music until i’ve caught myself up.”

Gabbo: Yeah. I’m putting albums in a playlist called “Listen to this, or else,” so that I don’t forget to listen to that album, because I’ll get sidetracked.

The Alt: Along those lines, now that touring looks like it’s coming back, who is someone who you’d like to tour with?

Gabbo: Oh, my gosh I’ve been thinking about this so much. So actually I did a photoshoot for this release with Layla Ku, who is one member of the supergroup Michelle, also a Salty Artist Management band — and they are phenomenal — it’s like Spice Girls 2.0 for the modern times. I love Michelle — touring with them would be sick. They’re about to go on tour with Arlo Parks, who again would be just a trip to tour with. I’m sure that would be a blast. I don’t know Horse Jumper of Love, but they seem like chill dudes. Snail Mail would be fun because I actually run into Ray Brown, their drummer way too often. I just saw him last week at the coffee shop and he came to this place, the old coffee shop, in like April of this year and we talked for a little bit like just random meeting.

The Alt: This might seem a little premature since the album isn’t been rereleased yet, but what can fans expect from you, for the rest of the year?

Gabbo: Great question. Remixes will be coming, and that’ll be really exciting. Aside from that, I I don’t know — from those B-sides and demos that I put out last year I would love to revisit and I have plans fully to — I just haven’t yet — in a studio setting, some of those songs. I’ve been sitting on some covers that I want to just drop on Soundcloud probably, and I don’t know, maybe if, by the end of this year, I’ve got a bunch of new demos that I’ve recorded, I might do another little Bandcamp thing because they’re always doing fundraisers. I love Bandcamp and I will continue using the platform for as long as I’m making music. I’ve always put out music with them. It’s so weird to think about half of my life is sort of documented on Bandcamp or Soundcloud but I don’t feel nearly as partial to Soundcloud, honestly, because Bandcamp — I know people who work for Bandcamp too, and all of the folks I’ve met at Bandcamp are so kind really, just genuinely smart people to talk to about music, about anything, just the platform itself. The one beef I have with it is the live streaming capability which is not one, but you know you win some you lose some you do amazing things for artists, I guess you can’t get the coding on the app for the streaming I don’t know how it works. I wish it worked well.

The Alt: How, if at all, would you say your politics influence or inform your music, or or vice versa?

Gabbo: I would say politics are an inherent aspect of life. If you are not a man, there’s no way for them to be avoided ever, because politics involves the question of the rights of everyone and for me, when I was growing up, I didn’t really think about it like that. And I don’t have a poli-sci degree. I’m not a politician. I have opinions. I hope that’s okay. It’s hard. When I was younger I would write a lot of songs about the way that I was being perceived incorrectly. It’s more like sociology for me, the way that society always seems to function. I’m not sure if it comes off as political in my music – with the EP and with “Sweetgreen,” these are love songs, but some of them do have this little flavor of like, “Oh wow, I’m in a healthy relationship. This person is reciprocating feelings to me. I am not being manipulated, I’m not being gaslit even though I’m afraid that I will be. I have trust issues.” They’re not necessarily political issues, but they do deal with just people who have been traumatized previously and it’s an issue that I just have to talk about because that’s how my brain always works. Beyond the EP, I mean I was writing songs to do with that, to do with — I don’t know, we wrote some actual political folk songs for Moon by Moon. “Lies” is like a Bob Dylan-esque — “they’re selling us lies the corporations are bad.” That’s a really good song, and it’s fun to play because it’s just like making a joke out of it all a little bit. It’s like this very — you would dance to it on the beach, but actually it’s talking about dumping chemicals into the ocean.That kind of thing. It’s important to talk about that stuff! I feel like it is, especially from a person in my position. I’m white, I’m a white woman, and so there are some associations there — or you know I’m perceived as that anyway — I personally I’ve identified as non-binary now publicly and it’s been really nice, but I work at a coffee shop people call me ma’am every day, so it’s weird to deal with that. And you have to write about it. Writing and music has always been my therapy, so I have to write about the issues that affect me which affect so many other people, which I guess makes it political.

The Alt: Sort of along those lines — I mean I’ve heard about it a little bit — but can you describe your activism that you’re doing?

Gabbo: Yeah, so, for when I had the EP out, before the re-release, and everything else on my Bandcamp — all of the proceeds from any donations that I receive on Bandcamp I donate directly to the ACLU. And that includes whatever is pulled for Bandcamp’s fees, so if I get $10 for an album from someone and I actually only see like $7.90 because Bandcamp took 3% or whatever, I sent $10 to the ACLU because who the fuck cares. It’s got some really cool shit in the mail. I got like mailing labels, and stickers, and surveys and actually, a lot of it gets mailed to my parents, who live in Salisbury and do not have the same opinions as me. Last year, I attended a couple of protests for the Black Lives Matter movement. There’s so much stuff happening around DC, I went to a protest in Rockville (Maryland). This year I’ve not been out so much, mainly because I work 40 hours a week, and also COVID has just — I don’t know. I’m sitting back in my chair, looking like an asshole a little bit. And it’s hard not to feel that way, but even just talking about it online and and I guess writing about it — that’s activism. I read a lot. I watch a fuckton of philosophy YouTube — some of it is questionable, but a lot of it is good I enjoy educational content. I love to learn, so even though I’m removed from academia, I still very much feel like that is a part of my life that I want to continue, so I’m trying. I read my books that I still own from college. I keep my social security card in the Audre Lorde article in my textbook. That’s good shit.

The Alt: Is there anyone else you’d recommend? You’ve named a couple people, but people either that you’re reading or watching or anything like that that you feel people should check out?

Gabbo: James Kaufman makes really good coffee on YouTube. Intellectual Media makes really good anti-Ronald Reagan content [laughs]. The H3 podcast — obsessed. And hearing other people’s experiences listening to their music, reading their poetry, reading books, whatever — doing that, I think, and just educating yourself that way is just a really positive thing and that’s all i’ve been doing. It’s all I can recommend, and also just getting off of your own social media, removing yourself from that a little bit, if possible, if you’re not just like working on it all the time which I’m sure you are, we all are a little.

The Alt: Sort of switching gears a little bit, what do you think about the state of the music industry like writ large?

Gabbo: The state of the music industry as a whole. I think, as I said — I mean I sort of talked on it a little bit before, because we talked about my not wanting to be a pop star — and just sort of how that comes about it all comes back to a very small group of people having all of the say, and all of the power, and all of the money and you see it with large record labels. However, I think — “DIY” as we call it — and the sort of underground — we’ve always sort of thrived, and we’ve especially thrived under the circumstances of not being able to see each other for a year. Given the Internet and the access that we have to communicate with other people and see everyone’s lives so transparently. I don’t know! People I love are doing really well — Pictoria Vark, all of these really, really fantastically talented individuals are finally going on tour, finally selling out venues and it’s so cool to see, so I hope for more of that. Maybe it’s just that my timeline looks good, but I really like what I’ve seen this year.

The Alt: So that’s a really interesting perspective, because I just remember when the pandemic first hit my timeline was all these DIY artists and like, “Now that we can’t tour, we’re basically screwed” and it’s really interesting to see that, at the sort of “tail end” of the pandemic, it looks like the DIY thrived, that’s like a super interesting perspective and I’m curious if you think that sort of trend is going to keep up, or do you think that things are going to go back to the way they were pre-COVID?

Gabbo: As long as Japanese Breakfast is playing late-night, I think we’re good. It fucking blew me so hard that she finally played on Jimmy Fallon, because little 14 year-old gab, 15 year-old gab listening to Psychopomp — like even the old like Bandcamp demos — just to see her doing so well gives me this insane amount of motivation. To see Gabby Smith, playing keyboard for her, when I have seen Gabby Smith, sporadically over the course of five or six years, doing all these different projects — working with Frankie Cosmos, doing her own thing as Gabby’s World — and now she’s on Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, and doing these late-night TV spots, it’s extremely inspiring. I don’t know because they’ve done it, I guess — they felt so DIY to me back when I was in high school, and now they’re making it big.

The Alt: She started out in Little Big League on Tiny Engines.

Gabbo: Psychopomp was put out by a label in Frostburg Maryland — shouts out — because the label she hit up — Double Whammy — and were like, “sorry, we can’t.” They missed out. It’s so cool, and I have a lot of hope, if only for Michelle Zauner. Seeing like the Pinkshift shows getting sold out, it is very, very good, very cool, and I like it a lot.

The Alt: This is sort of the final question, so feel free to take this wherever you want: what is the best piece of politically conscious art that you’ve seen in the last year or two?

Gabbo: Crying in H-Mart is political genius and at a time, you know, when we had all of these — on social media anyway — everyone just realizing that anti-Asian hate is a thing, I guess? Even though it’s existed for – whatever, it started trending online, and then Michelle put this book out about her childhood, and it just perfectly synced up. It was weird to see it, but like perfect timing. I think it got her a ton of attention. She was going to get a ton of attention anyway. She’d been writing that book forever. But it was really kind of wild to see how people were already talking about it, and then she had this huge, perfect piece of art to contribute. And now that’s all anyone’s talking about. So that was cool. Crying in H-Mart for sure. I don’t know what else. I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, the new season is definitely political. There’s an episode of the new season where Tim is a guy who brings Johnny Carson impersonators to parties, and his impersonator, this old man, just starts hitting people, and I want to read into it and say that that is sort of how it feels to bring an old man to any party or to have any old celebrity, like an older producer at any sort of function, they’re always going to be just doing dickish shit and you have to keep them under control, even though they’re fully grown adults — they’re like babies, like cats almost because they were just knocking shit off of counters and hitting people.

The Alt: Is there anything that we didn’t ask you about that you feel is important, or that like readers should know?

Gabbo: Uhh, I don’t know. Stream “Sweetgreen,” I guess. Support your local indie scene. Go to your local record store and buy records from them, or buy records from a label’s website, but don’t buy records from Amazon. Don’t buy records from Google Play, or whatever the fuck. Go straight to the source; always cut the middleman. Do that with coffee too; go straight to the roastery. It’s the best advice.

The Alt: Do you have any other coffee advice? What’s the number one thing people don’t know?

Gabbo: A macchiato is two shots of espresso and this much milk foam on top. It is not a fucking latte, guys. It’s not just an upside-down latte!



Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison


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