Please tell us a bit about Chef Salad?
Chef Salad is a duo made up of Jesse Nolan and Tegan Recker, formed out of Cincinnati OH and Covington KY.
How would you describe your music?
We fully embrace the DIY music scene, making our first album out of trash-picked instruments, borrowed equipment, and pirated software. We are inspired from tons of genres, including indie rock, punk, shoegaze, post rock, and folk to name a few.
Why are you called Chef Salad?
The name Chef Salad comes from an abandoned mall we were exploring early in the bands formation, walking past looted stores in a dead food court, there was a sign that only said "chef salad". We thought it was funny, so we chose that name right then.
Can you give us an insight into the creative process for your recordings?
The creative process for writing our songs usually stars with just a cool riff that we find instrumentation for, then expanding upon that riff for different parts of the song structure, and finally adding poetry that we have wrote that fits the song.
Do you play live shows, if so, what are they like?
We have plans for playing live, but want to make sure our live performance is tight, and interesting. The live set is coming together, and we hope to be playing shows in the OH-KY area starting early next year.
Please tell us about your latest work?
Frogman was our Debut album, recorded in the basement of our 6-roomate townhouse. For us, it was a starting place to prove our abilities in songwriting that we could push off for later concept projects. There is not much of a central theme to Frogman, just a nice collection of our songs from the earliest days.
What can we expect from you next?
At the time of releasing Frogman, we had at least 10 songs in the vault. We are constantly writing and playing music, and have plans for bigger and better projects coming in the not so distant future.
Please tell us your 5 all-time favourite albums?
Our favorite albums include
"Trick" - Alex G
"LYSFLATH" - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
"XO" - Elliott Smith,
"In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" - Neutral Milk Hotel,
and "Fear Fun" - Father John Misty.
Which song would you like to nominate for the Green Banana jukebox and why?
If we were to nominate a song for the jukebox it would be 'People' by Alex G.
Green Banana would like to thank Chef Salad for answering these questions.
Find Chef Salad on Instagram, TikTok and Bandcamp.
Interview by Skreen