Do Right: Catching Up with Ash Reiter and Sugar Candy Mountain

Ash Reiter took the stage with a “Happy Wednesday” greeting as her band Sugar Candy Mountain celebrated the release of their new record Do Right (2018) earlier this month at the Rickshaw Stop. Do Right follows up Sugar Candy’s 2016 LP release 666, a similarly sunny and psychedelic effort that propelled the group to more widespread recognition after their first LP, Mystic Hits, in 2014. Reiter described Do Right as in keeping with the creative continuity of their previous two albums and the band as anxious to release it after a long time coming.

Songwriter Ash Reiter

Sugar Candy Mountain hasn’t been shy with comparisons. A sticker on their vinyl for sale reads of similarities with their favorite bands and chief influences – from The Beach Boys and psychedelic era Beatles to The Flaming Lips and Tame Impala, as well as early Brazilian Tropicalia and the power pop of Os Mutantes. Do Right continues in the Sugar Candy Mountain tradition of diversely affected guitar lines and Reiter’s soft, breezy harmonies. Guitars range from the beachy slides on “Losing Myself” to other breaks of a fuzzy or twangier kind. The psychedelic tones of a track like “Do You Know the Place?” ooze with underwater synth parts and basslines with the same layering of vocal harmony that decorate Pet Sounds and Abbey Road. “Mar-a-Lago,” one of the album’s lead singles, has a really satisfying chord progression and a punchy drum fill before the chorus that seems to make the song. Despite the unsavory association with the Trump Florida vacation estate, “Mar-a-Lago” is a good and fun track and one of the best on the album. When I ran into drummer Will Halsey after the show and talked for a second about the wonderful and reputable Berkeley B-Side and the drummers he loved, his reply to the latter was maximally succinct and yet just perfect: “Ringo.” Carrying over from the record, the wash of Halsey’s drum kit is what seemed to float Sugar Candy Mountain’s live sound. Do Right has some stand-outs that make the album a solid effort of indie rock and Sugar Candy Mountain a staple of the contemporary psychedelic sub-genre. A few days after the show, I was able to chat with bandleader Ash Reiter about the new record, life in the Bay, camping at Hickey Fest Music Festival, and her draws from literature when writing songs.

You guys are living and based in the Bay Area now, right?

Yeah, Will and I live in Crockett and the other two guys live in San Francisco.

From now on, are you getting more into festival season or relaxing for the summer?

We were on tour all of last month in Europe. We came home and did a little festival in Santa Cruz and then our release show, and now this [a show that afternoon in San Luis Obispo], so we’ve been pretty busy lately. We throw a festival called Hickey Fest that happens every summer around, like, summer solstice so that’ll be June 15-17 and that’s kind of our next big priority. We’ll do that, we’ll play it, host it, organize it and everything, and then the following weekend we’re playing a festival in Miami so we’ll fly out for that. Keeping busy.

Where is Hickey Fest?

It’s in Mendocino County on the Eel River in a little town called Leggett at this place called the Peg House. Everybody camps out at Standish Hickey State Park in the Redwoods.

Ah that’s awesome. You guys have had some really cool bands come out, like Mild High Club and a bunch of your friends.

Yeah, Mild High Club has played, Allah-las, Mira, Dead Meadow, a bunch of cool bands.

Cool. I wanted to ask you a bit about college in Santa Cruz and being a musician in college. You started playing in college, right?

I started playing towards the end of my college career. I had a roommate who went to Cabrillo and she was a music major there, specializing in choir and singing and she had me do her vocal warm-ups with her and thought I had a pretty good voice and encouraged me to keep doing music. So I guess my senior year I started my first band and then just have been playing in bands ever since.

So you were playing house shows around the area, or at venues?

It was a little bit of both. At the time there were a few venues that had cool shows, including this place called the Attic that would have a lot of the same type of shows you might see at the Chapel now. And then there was an area towards Big Sur where Folk-yeah fest is. We played with the Dirty Projectors there but we also played house shows at the co-ops and then came into the city occasionally.

Yeah, it’s a similar thing here. So what were you thinking about doing before music?

While I was in school I studied agroecology, which is basically farming… and then modern literature. I’ve always been a big reader, lover of words, so that was just really interesting to me. And then you know, it was nice to have something a little more practical to get your hands dirty and feel like you’re doing something that isn’t totally just cerebral. You can only live in your head for so long, I guess.

Isn’t the name “Sugar Candy Mountain” an Orwell reference to Animal Farm?

Yeah, Will actually came up with that and not me.

So was Hola (2012) your last Ash Reiter record before turning to focus on Sugar Candy Mountain? How did that transition work out?

I guess it kind of got to the point where we were doing both projects for a while and it was starting to feel a little bit exhausting to be pulling ourselves in two directions and really trying to elevate two bands at a time, when you know, Will and I were at the core of both of the bands. So at one point we were finally like, why don’t we be just one thing [because] we already are one thing just divided by a name, so we decided Sugar Candy Mountain made more sense because, you know, rather than me saying, “hey we are Ash Reiter, it’s we are Sugar Candy Mountain.” A band name. It feels a little less egotistical than to claim it all under your personal name.

Did you think about writing songs differently for Ash Reiter and Sugar Candy Mountain? How did your material change?

At the point when we made the change, we were recording 666 so some of those songs had been continued through both bands. Some of those songs, maybe half of them would’ve ended up on an Ash Reiter album but we just figured it made a lot more sense to point all our energy in one direction.

Do you still play Ash Reiter songs live? Where do those songs fit in now?

Mostly in the past. We did an Ash Reiter tour this past summer in the Pacific Northwest and one of my good friends, Indianna Hale, wanted to go on tour and decided it might a cool idea to rehash that project a little. We don’t really play them too much anymore though and kind of sold off most of that stock at this point.

Sugar Candy Mountain 2016 LP 666

With the new record coming out this week – congratulations by the way – do you feel like that album is reflective of where you guys are at right now or a window into a bigger picture of your band?

Umm, I don’t know. The way the albums usually work is by the time it comes out you’re already ready to move to the next one but to me it feels like a very natural continuation to 666, pretty much a solid follow up to that.

Were those both studio records? I know you guys were working at your home studio for a while and then with your friend from Paper Cuts, what was the recording process for this record like?

It was kind of the same. Jason from Paper Cuts, who we record with, moved to LA and started a studio so we did the recordings in LA this time and also did some at home, although we wrote a lot of it traveling. We spent a lot of last year not working and traveling all around and living in places for a month at a time, you know, if I had a friend who said, “Oh you can live here for two weeks” and then we’d go do that, write some songs, record some stuff. So it kind of feels a bit like a travel log. Will and I, the drummer and I, got married in September of 2016, I believe, and for our honeymoon we decided to pack up and do a camping trip all over, as far as Yellowstone and Glacier and everything, and then up the West Coast so that was a lot of inspiration too.

How would you take those raw ideas on acoustic guitar and turn them into fully fleshed out, produced recordings?

Some came really quick and some were more of a puzzle. Some we recorded all the music first and it was a puzzle to find out what the story was or what the lyrics and vocals would do. Others we kind of just put together on the spot. Others we were down to the wire and I put some pressure on myself. I had taken a trip to Mexico for a week right before we had our last recording session where I was supposed to get all the vocals done and we had maybe four songs that didn’t have lyrics yet. I took that time to focus and make sure we had lyrics for that. I think that if you just sit down and do it, it comes. That compromise between waiting for the muse and being available for it.

You said you’ve drawn a lot of lyrics from literature. How does that usually work?

Sometimes I’ll retell a story that I’ve read, or sometimes just colorful language is inspiring. Often when I can’t figure out what to write I’ll just go to my own book collection or go to the library and look at some poetry which gets your mind thinking in that way.

You taught 2nd grade for a long time, right? I know a lot of people trying to make it as artists in college and beyond but also have to balance those aspirations with their financial reality. What was that path like for you and when did you know that you had become a “musician” by trade?

Probably while I was teaching second grade, I guess. There was always the push and pull that the kids deserve a hundred percent and so did music, and I’m living my life at a hundred and fifty percent so each thing is lacking a little bit and I’m tired as hell. So that was a time of a lot of coffee and energy drinks and stuff like that to try and keep up with waking up early to teach and give the kids what they need and then staying up late to do rock and roll. And so at a point I had to decide, do I want to teach or do I want to play music?

Did you ever show the kids your songs?

I would write songs for them most of the time. There were a couple that were, you know, “my songs,” that were appropriate for kids but sometimes I would take my songs and make kid versions or write little songs just for the kids.

So back to Sugar Candy for a second, has your lineup changed a lot or have you been playing with same people now for a good while?

It has changed a lot over the years but I hope to play with this group for a long while. You know, it is hard to find a band that is (a) available, (b) talented, (c) you can relate with on a personal level and finally, can tour. It’s a lot of factors that go into making it work, just like any other relationship, really.

Do you guys find that as you become more successful you’re sinking more money into recording technology and better equipment that is changing your style at all?

Yes and no, we invested in a bunch of stuff maybe three years ago. That’s when I really fleshed out my pedal board and we bought more recording gear, and then at a certain point if you can’t make cool music with what you got then maybe you can’t make cool music.

What are some of your spots in Berkeley that you like come back to and hang out?

The Rose Garden is great. I lived in Oakland for about eight years and we would go running at the Emeryville Marina a lot. Mostly other than that, it’s going to friends’ houses. Those are always kind of the best places to be. And then the houses are just beautiful, walking around and looking at the houses.

Well thanks a lot, I really appreciate you taking the time for this and good luck with your show tonight and the rest of your tour!

Yeah, of course! I’m not sure when we’re playing next in the Bay but I’m sure it won’t be too long.