By Abigail Lynn Davidson
This is the third in a three-piece interview series with local indie art-rock trio Modeling. The first was an on-air interview, but check out the second here. This interview was conducted after their show at the Røde House at FORMAT 2023.
Abby
First off, now that the show’s over, did anything surprise you guys about the experience performing here?
Modeling
I was surprised by the turnout, and I didn’t think there were going to be that many people. So that was that was cool.
But it made me a little nervous because we’re not really used to playing in front of that many people. I say that’s that’s it.
I guess I wasn’t surprised, but the lights were really cool. I really enjoyed that whole experience, seeing the visuals back there was just pretty wild, so not really surprised by that though, just because I knew that they had great lights. Just seeing it with our music was cool.
Abby
Festivals bring an audience that you wouldn’t normally necessarily be exposed to, so I was kind of wondering, like, do you guys feel like that happened for you?
Modeling
I really hope so. It’s hard to tell when we’re playing. We’re not really looking out into the crowd and seeing what’s going on out there. I’m just kind of in my own little bubble, but I hope so. We did see a lot of our friends, just a lot of people we knew, which was really cool and a lot of people I haven’t seen in a very long time. So that was pretty awesome, reconnecting with them
Abby
Do you see yourselves trying to perform at other festivals or events like this, maybe outside of the area?
Modeling
We want to get to South by Southwest, which is a very different festival. And then I think we’re just hitting regionally, honestly. And then just expanding out there. I mean, we’d like to play Norman Music Festival. I know it’s a little smaller, but like we don’t play any festivals. This is like our first festival, this one and like Backwoods was the first festival we played when we didn’t have many songs.
Abby
Earlier in the week, I had asked about the differences between working with a big festival like this versus a normal local show. What’s it like now that the performance is over?
Modeling
I really, really like it. I love the communication. There’s a whole team for on stage and a team for off stage. They’re so organized. I got the perfect mix in my ears. Quite professional. The only thing that was very different about tonight compared to us compared to most shows is that they had a surround sound system going. So, it wasn’t just two speakers shooting at you. The mix engineer was doing a bunch of experimentswith making it feel like, you know, you’re in the middle of something, you know, throwing things behind you.
It was cool, so I went out there at the end of “Until it Ends” and the drums sounded really cool out there.
So that’s a that’s pretty unique to just this show. And I’ve never been a part of anything like that. So, I’d say that’s pretty cool.
Yeah, and also, most festivals you do not get a soundcheck and we got one because we have the first set,so I feel very lucky. We probably would’ve been fine [without a soundcheck], but that was very cool to get a real soundcheck at a festival like this.
Modeling
I have some shout outs.
Shout out to Abby at KXUA, shout out to FORMAT for having us. Ohh yeah, and we have to plug some things.
Abby
Oh yeah, go ahead.
Modeling
OK. We just have a tour in October. That is in about two weeks going northeast. You can find the information on Instagram if you want. We’re touring with our friends stepmom. They’re also under the same management as us, so it’ll be fun. And that’s all I have.