DURRY on the inspiration for their sound, narrative albums, and their songwriting process

Your newest single, “Who’s Laughing Now,” came out about a week ago. I heard that it started out as a darker song that didn’t really have any optimism to it, and obviously that’s not what we got. Where did you originally intend for it to go?

Austin: The phrase “who’s laughing now” was an ironic phrase. It was saying “you said things would work out and they didn’t. So who’s laughing now?” It’s all just a cruel joke. That was the idea for the original song. The whole thing had that message, whereas now only the front half of [the song] has that message. Then, at the end, it turns and the phrase works the other way. The original had a totally different third verse of the song that was a big downer. When everything went [viral], we switched it up and the story didn’t feel right then, so we decided to give it a happy ending.

When reading your bio, I also heard it in your music. The first thing I immediately thought of was Weezer. Which elements did you want to incorporate from your inspirations? I know some bands like Sublime have a storytelling element where their lyrics are just a story, and then some of them are just to dance around. So did you jigsaw it together or did you kind of summarize the vibes of all of those bands?

Austin: Our writing is very narrative driven. There’s always somewhat of a plot to the songs, and then the influences we pulled are just to try and suit the narrative. Those bands are like our toolkit. I don’t really know what elements sound like Weezer, but we get that a lot. I love Weezer. Our older brothers were really into Weezer and so that was the first CD I got. I think that ingrained into us somehow.

[referencing song “Big Boy”] Was there someone in your life, either of you, that you wanted to impress?

Austin: I wanted to talk about the struggles that we don’t address with larger people in society. My wife is 5’2” and so size has always played a part in our relationship, like reaching for the top shelf for things. Taryn relates to being a large person as well. Whenever people see us off stage, they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t realize — oh —”

Taryn: “— you’re massive”. 

In your songwriting process, does the rhythm, music or lyrics come first? Or does it just depend on the song?

Austin: I [mentally] write the start of every song while I’m driving. Usually, the words, melody and chords all come at the same time, then I’ll come home and pluck it out and show Taryn an early version. She guides the ship a little bit and then we massage it out from there.

Would you ever think of coming up with a full story with Easter eggs from other songs in an album or do you just want to write for the moment?

Austin: Before this band, I had another band called Coyote Kid. We released three albums and they were all completely cohesive narrative story arcs. It was this fantasy album and they all tied together into one big universe. In terms of narrative albums, that’s the only thing I’ve ever done. [For DURRY], it’s something we would definitely consider. We accidentally almost did that with this album. We were coming up with the order of the album, actually, and we were like, “oh, we could actually make this make sense if we lined it up right.” But then the flow didn’t seem right, so we said scrap that idea and just have it be normal.

Taryn: Wouldn’t be opposed to it in the future.

Anyone you guys wanna go on tour with?

Austin: If we ever got to play a show with Weezer or someone like them, we made it. That would be sick. We’re good. We can die. It’s fine. But any of those big mainline rock bands would be a dream come true. That guy, Briston Maroney.

Taryn: Briston Maroney. Yeah. I like him. He’s great. That’d be sweet. 

What goals do you want to accomplish in the near future with your music?

Austin: Our goal is to make a living and be a band. I would say our goal is to live comfortably and have a good time and that’s the mountaintop for us. Putting on this record, we don’t know where it’s going to go. We’re trying to give it everything we’ve got right now and hopefully launch something big and cool and long lasting. We’ll see.