INTERVIEW: NUISANCE
Tom Crawford chats with BJ Sidel – Dramatic Lovers, Decibully, The Promise Ring, Camden and his Nuisance writing partner Ryan Weber.
In August 1994, William Seidel and Ryan Weber (AKA Nuisance), put their high-school band on hiatusand headed out into the real world for the first time as foreign exchange students. The two comrades snail mailed each other bits of songs written on borrowed instruments and recorded onto cassette players from Central America to Japan and back again for a year. They’ve remained musical partners for the ensuing 30 years, across distance and through circumstance, rejoicing in the process and project of it all. Their new album, Squash Blossom Necklace, is yet another picturesque vista on their collective musical and life journey together... In July 2023, Nuisance vocalist, William Seidel, packed up his life and a modest recording set up and left his home for a year-long journey around the world with his family. During the fleeting few moments when he wasn’t moving across the endless plains or up and down the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast of North America, spelunking in Hawaii, soaking in the sulfur springs of Japan, camping under the Banyan trees along the Australian’s Far North and Eastern coastline, kayaking around Indonesia, or meditating in the forests of Southern India, he was tracking vocals in hotel bathrooms and in the back of an old Japanese mini-van taxi named Muriel. Not only can you hear the authenticity and immediacy of writing and recording amidst the chaos of experience, but there’s a cathartic abandon in the lyrics only achievable through the knowledge that comes with traveling with loved ones and months spent in foreign natural environments.