Interview with Cougar Beatrice on The Blind Hunter

We're honored to partner with Cougar Beatrice to bring you an exclusive look into their latest EP, The Blind Hunter, out wherever you listen to music. Born out of the Charlottesville college scene, members John Gordon (guitar, lead vocals), Gabriel Aguto (guitar, backing vocals), Jimmy Lord (bass, backing vocals), and Matt McDonnell (drums) continue to electrify audiences both on and off the stage with a robust, groove-laden sound that thoughtfully builds upon its influences in blues, alt-rock, and funk. The Blind Hunter is perhaps their most striking exploration of that sound to date, teeming with undeniably catchy ear candy in the form of syrupy basslines, sonorous percussion, slick guitar riffs, and assured vocals. The lyrics are just as sardonic and witty as they are forward-looking and visionary, a stark contrast to the reactionary nature of the group's debut full-length Colors of I.

Boxcar Collective's Zack Holden sat down with all four members of Cougar Beatrice to discuss this latest release, covering everything from cutting their teeth on the fraternity circuit to working with a producer for the first time to adopting Rick Rubin's philosophy of being "process-oriented".

This interview has been edited for depth and clarity.

Zack Holden: To start things off, your debut album Colors of I, which was released in mid-2021, explored the idea of using music creation and performance as a tool to find acceptance and joy following emotional pain. Now, over a year later, would you say the songs on this new EP serve as a continuation of these pandemic-era themes, or do they delve into new concepts altogether?

Gabriel Aguto: I would say about half of the songs relate to times before COVID, like looking back at funny party interactions, and another half is moving past Colors of I and talking about our current experience. I think Colors of I definitely had a lot of the pandemic tied into themes of the songs. It's almost like we're in a post-pandemic time, … but, it's still present. I think at a certain point I started thinking about music and our careers as a little more serious, [beyond] like that college era. But, there's still elements that I wanna bring up in music that relate to those old times.

John Gordon: Yeah, I would say there's very much a return to "college-era" emotions and themes. For sure.

Jimmy Lord: I would say–for me at least–that it's definitely a transition past the pandemic concerns and areas of thought. It's more of [a response to] what kind of music we want to put forth and what kind of emotions we want people to feel from our music, as opposed to before it was really an expression of what we were feeling at the time. Now, it's a little bit more intentional with what we want the music to sound like with the words.

ZH: And so, with all of the music you've released so far, as well as this new EP [The Head Hunter], what would you say that the songwriting and collaboration process looks like for Cougar Beatrice as a band?

JL: I think it's song-dependent, honestly. So, I would say that if one of us gets a good creative idea or something that we want to spend a little bit more time on, we'll play it for the others, and if they like it, then we'll try and jam on it. I think with "Guess I'm Obliged"–that's one that John kind of came up with the most for–he just brought it forth, and we just kind of played that one. I'll let John talk a little bit more about that in a minute. For "Neck Romancer", that was just a bass part that I had started playing by myself, and then Matt and I started fumbling around with it and later got the other boys involved.

GA: I see a majority of our songs doing either one of two things. 1) John comes in with an idea instrumentally where he has a part for all four of us. 2) Jimmy (and occasionally I) will come either with a guitar or a bass idea, and we jam on it for a while. Eventually, we'll get some kind of demo down for it, and I'll tell John, "Alright, sing whatever ideas you have." He'll just mumble something over it, and then I'll try and write some lyrics off that. Afterwards, we refine the lyrics as a group. That's generally how it's gone for these songs. 

Matt McDonnell: These two songs are the opposites of each other. John came in with "Guess I'm Obliged" just ready to go pretty much, and Jimmy started "Neck Romancer" with just this little bass lick that became that full song. But, for all of our other songs it's somewhere in-between that.

ZH: Nice. I feel like sonically the tracks–especially "Neck Romancer"–really recall this early-aughts rock revival, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Strokes, and Arctic Monkeys, but with some bluesy undertones. So, did you have any primary sonic influences in developing this sound?

GA: Those first three bands in particular have been strong influences for us in general, but especially for these last two ["Guess I'm Obliged" & "Neck Romancer"]. I would say "Guess I'm Obliged" leans heavily into early Arctic Monkeys, like a Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not-type of vibe. You know, some kind of bouncy, catchy riff going on and then the driving power chords during the chorus. You said "bluesy". We do definitely take influence from blues, like when we're playing a bunch of our covers we'll toss in some Stevie Ray Vaughn and Stray Cats. That's also a heavy influence for us, but it tends to be more understated in our originals.

JL: Yeah.

ZH: So, when you formed in college, did you have originals that you were working on off the bat, or did you start with covers and then shift into originals?

JG: Definitely covers into originals. It was never really a thought, but I guess it was just the natural progression of things, where you were working on covers so much that it was like, "You know, this is fun and all, but there's no real reason why we shouldn't try to write our own thing. Right? Do you ever just hum stuff in your head? Okay, cool. Well, now you have three other guys who can actually take that idea and make it into something cool."

GA: So, just speaking back to the "forming in college" thing, how I remember it, I met John because we lived in the same dorm. He already knew Jimmy, and I already knew Matt from high school and younger. John would just play music in the lounge; he's been playing guitar all his life, and plays a bunch of other instruments, too. I was like, "You know what, that's kinda cool." I knew my dad played growing up, but I never really got too into it. At this point, I was like, "Well, I mean it's clearly possible, maybe I'll learn." And so, Jimmy and I independently started learning guitar around the same time. Matt had a tiny bit of drumming experience. Then, I saw John over the summer, and I was like, "Hey, do you want to jam together?" I didn't know what it's like for him, like to have this wealth of musical knowledge and experience, so he looked at me kinda seriously and was like, "I'm down, but I would actually like to learn some parts and actually learn the songs." [To which] I was like, "Okay, I'm down." Previously, all that I had done was just noodle over some blues like "dad" backing tracks and whatnot. [Laughing] So, we all just started learning songs. We learned a lot of Is This It?, the Strokes' first album, and John, you know, always the one to know the whole thing, teaches us every part. At a certain point, we got comfortable enough with our instruments to where we started to have our own ideas, and the smallest idea can just well up into something a lot better once other people can give you feedback on it and put it into context by having a drumbeat behind it, etc.

JG: That's exactly it. That's a great summary.

GA: Thank you.

ZH: If you were playing covers first, I'm assuming you probably played a lot of college bars and venues like frat parties, stuff like that. Do you think that informed a lot of the "jamminess" of your music?

JG: Oh, yeah.  [Laughing]

JL: Yeah, one-hundred percent.

GA: [Laughing] You couldn't say that more accurately.

JG: That was very intuitive. That was a great question.

ZH: [Laughing] Thank you. So, when you create songs, you think about how they're gonna sound live in front of an audience.

JL: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

JG: Absolutely.

GA: [Nodding] Mmhm.

JG: It's like kids who play basketball in high school. You've got some kids who play during the regular season, but then you've got kids who are also playing in the summer. They're playing AAU when all the other kids are not, and you just know. It shows when the regular season comes around. It's like, "Man, that kid's been on the AAU circuit. You know, this is what he does." It's like, "Man, Cougar Beatrice. Yeah, you'll see when they get to the venue, maybe, but they came up in the dingey fraternity circuit. They were playing at the bars when they only knew eight songs and had to play for three hours. When kids were drunk and yelling at them and there wasn't a sound system or anything." So, it really informs the kind of act you are for sure, the rooms that you play to.

GA: I think it's so funny you say that. Yes, we were definitely forged in the college bar scene. We've played a lot of frat events, and interestingly enough, to this day our most lucrative shows–including one that we played yesterday–are frat events. It was a fraternity Veteran's Day darty fundraiser, and we threw in a few originals but still mostly played covers. [For our international and non-collegiate readership, a "darty" is a "daytime party".–Zack] That's still a big part of our life, and it's a blast. Maybe it's not as fun or as exciting as playing our own stuff to a crowd that's there to listen to us specifically, but you gotta pay rent somehow, you know? In terms of the two songs that we're talking about here, "Neck Romancer'' very much–as John said at one point–refers to a sense of othership when you're at a party. Everybody around you is drinking and socializing, and you have to keep the conversation alive, be the neck romancer that raises the conversation from the dead, even though you don't really want to be having it. Then, "Guess I'm Obliged"–if you can't tell from the title–is talking about societal obligations in a lot of ways, like trying to prove your music is something worth forgoing a career path for, even though we all went to college and theoretically had "bigger aspirations", so to speak, at one point. There's also a second story in that song with a rivalry between two guys trying to impress the same girl. I feel like [both of those narratives are] influenced by being 24- or 25-year-old guys still sometimes playing in that circuit for younger people. You can relate to being that nervous kid at the frat party–when you were a first year in college and you wanted to fit in and everything–but now you're looking at it from this outsider perspective, all while being more involved than ever in the whole operation of the party. I mean, none of us were involved in frat life in college, [but now we're] talking to the presidents of the frats and everything. … Feeling old. [Laughing]

JG: You look at these kids, and you're like, "Shouldn't you be studying? You should be in bed by now. I know that we're supposed to be playing until twelve or one, but that's late y'all. You've got class tomorrow, I know it. I know you ain't done all your homework by now." [Laughing]

ZH: The Blind Hunter is your first professionally mastered and recorded project. So, I was wondering what made you decide to go this route, and how has it differed from what you've done in the past with your production process?

JL: I think that we were just all ready to throw down the real money and make some high-quality, high-fidelity sounds. I think that we did really well with Colors of I and how it sounded, but we just definitely wanted to try at least once to see what it could sound like in the studio. We had our good friend Orion Faruque who hit us up one day and asked if we had anything that we wanted to record. So, we just went that route.

GA: In terms of how it affected the overall process, I think having a third party involved really took it to the next level. In "Neck Romancer", for instance, you may hear some synth parts. That was all Orion. It definitely influenced us into wanting to explore different sounds in our music. It's barely even just ideas at this point, but we're already experimenting a bit with some more synth sounds for our next project. Just having someone to help direct everything and keep us on track was definitely a huge help because I know at times we would be frustrated when we were recording during Colors of I. We were just spending hours and hours running the same old stuff all in the same room, getting our ears blown off by the drums. We were at our wit's end, but still wanting to get that really good take. When we experienced something similar like that in the studio, because we were literally recording all day long to try and get as much done as we could–

JL: We were there for thirteen hours.

GA: Yeah, thirteen hours. Orion was a very centering force for us in terms of helping us stay calm. The conditions also were better because we all basically had our own room to play in and our own levels in our headphones that we could adjust to exactly what we wanted to hear. 

MM: Being in the studio was nice. I was like a kid at Toys "R" Us again with all these cool gizmos and gadgets.

JG: Yeah, it felt like being a kid for some reason. I don't know why. There was a youthful curiosity and excitement around it.

ZH: I always like to conclude on more of an open-ended note. So, now with a professionally engineered EP under your belts, do you think this affects the trajectory of Cougar Beatrice, and where do you see the band going from here?

MM: To the next project. Each time we create something, we try to make it better than the last. Now that we have this… I don't know. Just on to the next, at least for me.

JL: Yeah, as [this being] our first time doing something of I would say professional quality with outside people helping us out, it took a little longer than we anticipated. However, that's all well worth it given what we have to show for it. That being said, we've been sitting on these songs awhile, and I'm just ready to make some new music. Work on the next project. Play it as many places as we can. Get it in people's ears.

GA: I would say it's difficult for me to gauge what the trajectory of Cougar Beatrice is, but I can only hope up and up. I think there's been a number of milestones, so to speak, like "most we've made from a show", "most people we've played for", or "biggest venue we've played at". I think that has been a pretty consistent uprise over time, and obviously, there's no stopping until world domination. But, we also can't be too goal-oriented, in a way. I know John was talking the other day about Rick Rubin, but that kind of got me thinking that I want to be more of a process-oriented person. Then, the process is just on to the next project and on to the next show we can find. 

JG: Yeah, this project has been done for a while. It's just now getting released, and in that time I, personally, have already been thinking so much about the next round of music that we're gonna be sharing with the world. That's what I'm really excited about from now: taking things in a new direction and just bringing even more joy to people. Spreading the love of Cougar Beatrice and the energy for all to experience. For everything that's going well for us right now and that we can look at and say, "Oh, this is so great that we've been able to do this," I honestly just feel like we haven't even started yet. What you're seeing is the beginning of Cougar Beatrice. We're not standing forward and looking back. I'm just like, "Look at that coming up ahead. That's the real shit right there." … Something that Rick Rubin said in an interview that really stood out to me was, "I've never been a goal-oriented person." This was in an interview. I'll say it again because it's just that important to me. He says, "I've never been a goal-oriented person." Just sit and think about that for a second: the fact that someone who has on paper just accomplished so much [isn't goal-oriented]. So many people in that space have worked tirelessly their whole lives to be able to achieve a fraction of what he's done. I think even saying that, just looking at them as achievements, runs contrary to what someone who's able to do things like that would actually have to believe in order to be able to do them, if that makes sense. You've gotta enjoy the process. With people who are really at the top of their field, especially in music, it's never been about, "Okay, I've achieved this, but now I have to achieve this. Next, it'll be that." It's just like, "I like doing this. This is what excites me, and I just have the utmost belief in what excites me. I'm just gonna to pursue it with everything, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it or how it will be lauded or assessed as an achievement. It's for me, and because it's for me, selflessly, I'm gonna give everything I can to it."

ZH: That's a great answer. To summarize, you don't have goals because you're always living in the moment and trying to do what you're doing right now to the fullest extent.

JG: And paradoxically enough, that'll maybe take you even higher than if you were actually focused on trying to get higher. No matter what, that should be what you're doing. 

ZH: Is there anything else that I missed about these tracks or Cougar Beatrice as a whole? Is there anything that you really want to put out there?

JG: I would like to take the time to say that, especially with the world nowadays, it's great to be doing things like this as a musician, or really an artist of any kind. We have taken a lot of time to talk about ourselves and promote ourselves and obviously work towards the things that we want to do, but really a lot deserves to be said about the people around us who've helped make this happen. We wouldn't be here had it not been for the earliest shows in Charlottesville at Coupes, before we had done anything or probably even sounded great. The belief from people in what we were doing–trying to do things that weren't quite like everyone else and creating a good time for people–has been what's mattered the most. Whether it's through our live shows or through our music that we put out there, if we have helped people get through life any easier, then it's been a success by any metric. That's all that should really matter. That's all I've gotta say. Big thanks to everyone. 

Cougar Beatrice performing at the Amphitheater at the University of Virginia. (PC: The Renegade)