Boogeymen, Weightlifting, and DIY with Drew Stier
Making music in New York comes with a lot of baggage no matter who you are. From finding a suitable living situation to figuring out how to get gear across town, the city can be difficult for anyone. It’s the kind of setting that can leave an artist desperate for any kind of institutional assistance, and––as desperation almost always invites exploitation––all too vulnerable to losing control of their work and vision.
I sat down with Drew Stier, who records and performs under the alias Golder, and spoke about the difficulties of being a DIY musician in New York, growing up, and interacting with the New York indie scene, all of which, in some fashion, are at the heart of his new album Weightlifting. Speaking with him, you slowly become aware of a mind that both prospers and suffers from the necessity to seek out the inverse of every thought or feeling in pursuit of developing a singular understanding. He struggles with this, but, as he explained to me, struggling is the only thing he really finds meaningful.
How long has Golder been going? How did it start?
It started in 2020. Or that’s around the time that I adopted the moniker. I had made a lot of music I never released before adopting Golder, but I think when you pick a name it sort of makes things come together, and you start settling into a lane. So in September 2020 I started releasing stuff onto SoundCloud and this student-run-doomed-to-fail-start-up-thing streaming and discovery site called Quadio that was basically like an early-days Facebook, when you could only join with a student email address. Nowadays, especially at places like NYU, I feel like everyone has some form of a “music streaming and discovery start-up” going. Like people that have never actually been to a DIY show that are trying to basically fake their way in and have something to put on their resumes, but the thing about Quadio was that is was run by the grandchildren of this wildly rich CEO, so, without much more development than the average college music stream and discovery start-up they had just so much more funding and outreach. Campus outposts all across America with student representatives from various music business programs––which, nowadays, are essentially free-labor factories given the internships required of you to graduate.
But basically any idiot could look at their business model and figure out it was doomed and never going to be profitable and that you were never going to make any money off it, but what I figured out was that it didn’t take that much effort to game the system. You could get to the top of the charts on the site pretty consistently if you knew how to do it. So it became kind of fun to drop music and have eight people like it and then do whatever algorithmically was necessary to hit the top of the streaming list. And I just kept doing that. And honestly I was at the top of that site’s discovery page for like two months with just like twenty listeners. And that’s basically how Golder started, which is sort of fitting in retrospect given how fucking stupid and funny it was. Like the absurd amount of money going into this thing everyone knew wasn’t going to work, and then finding some way to game it, that was just appealing to me for whatever reason.
So would you say that type of humor is at the core of Golder?
I think it’s just the absurdity that I’m drawn to. Even the broader New York scene right now seems to be trending in that direction. Like why could I rule this music platform funded by one of the vastest American fortunes ever amassed, that’s now supporting their rich grandkids’ ‘music dreams’ and I can just win it over and over again by gaming the system. Of course it didn’t amount to any type of real victory, and of course the company doesn’t even exist anymore, but in that moment it was very funny to me. And maybe even funnier was that there were tracks that I put tons of effort and time into and just refused to put out on any standard streaming platform and instead put out on this stupid, niche thing that I knew was going to fail.
I mean it probably also functioned as a stepping stone in my own way as well. It’s scary to put stuff out on streaming. Or like it used to be; today people just treat it like posting on instagram, and post stuff and take it down, or constantly change their name. But even just three years ago, it felt a little more significant to put things out on Spotify and maybe that’s how we got over that fear––by going through the motions of dropping music on a different, more obscure platform.
In relation to Quadio, a music discovery site that was funded by one of the largest fortunes in American history that happened to have grandkids going to NYU, do you think the New York DIY scene is influenced by these large pockets of private wealth? Are there a lot of kids in the scene that come from money like that?
I think an element that is not as well understood is that there are a lot of kids that just still live with their parents. So if you’re a trust-fund kid who gets an allowance from their parents to live in some apartment, it’s not that entirely different from kids from less wealth just living at their parent’s house. Like the advantage is pretty similar. A lot of kids, especially in the Brooklyn scene, are New York natives, and having access to their parent’s home puts them in a pretty similar position to say a trust-fund kid if we’re talking about time allotted to work on music versus time spent having to worry about making enough money for rent. I don’t really know how I feel about it. I’m personally just a bit of a masochist so working and not getting money from my parents and, like, actually struggling, is in some ways a little more satisfying and freeing to me, but it’s also hard not to envy the time and ease of people that have more resources, financial or otherwise.
In terms of how having a wealthy family might impact your success beyond just allowing you time to practice and gig more, something I didn’t fully understand until maybe last year is that Brooklyn and Manhattan are separate scenes. So thus far we’ve been growing mostly in the Brooklyn scene which is much less transplant-y, and also, I think, a lot less unique in a lot of ways. The sound of the Brooklyn scene and the ethos and the general success of people is not that different from what you would find in a place like Allston, or Philly, or D.C. I think Brooklyn, just because of the amount of people here, produces a lot of music and bands, but I think it’s a lot less unique than the Manhattan scene which is a completely different ball game, and, given the real estate, influenced way more by money and spending money. Like the biggest DIY band in Brooklyn, for the most part, is still broke as fuck. Whereas in Manhattan it costs way more to play but the possibility of profit is way higher and the possibility that you might get connected with someone who can help you financially is also higher. And I think that’s more where you start to run into the nepo-baby crowd or whatever. The Dimes Square people that want to be in Vogue and Perfectly Imperfect. People who want to be like globally cool and who, more than likely, have immensely wealthy parents and who can afford to be out all the time in Manhattan, which, as everyone knows, is fucking expensive. And the only way you gain traction as a performer is by being out in the scene as much as possible. So the people most capable of doing that in Manhattan are, of course, the wealthy.
So it’s confusing. The sound of Manhattan is, in my opinion, a bit more unique right now, and the opportunities available to a band that succeeds there in comparison to Brooklyn are just so much more, but it’s so hard to do it if you’re broke. And the scene in Brooklyn is more fulfilling and organic feeling, but the sound feels very homogenous right now and there just aren’t the same paths for musicians available.
Regarding the necessity of going out and taking part in a scene in order to grow and succeed as a performer and band, what is your perspective on that kind of dependence on being out and partying in relation to maintaining your own mental and financial health?
It’s definitely something I’m struggling with right now and something I don’t think I’ve gotten very close to figuring out. I think something that has been helping out, at least on the financial front, is I do have friends that are a bit wealthier than me, or friends that are helped out by their parents, who can go out more consistently than me, so they’ve been making a lot of connections sort of on my behalf. And so the last time I went out in Manhattan I think I only paid like eight bucks for the whole night because we were getting listed, or someone knew a DJ, or a bouncer. And that’s kind of the only way I can go out in Manhattan.
In Brooklyn it’s different obviously. Like when I go to those DIY shows I could maybe get on those lists but I would feel bad about doing it. These are your friends and you want to support them so they can support you, and the money is going to the bar that is essentially making no money, but you want the bar to keep hosting shows so you basically just gotta put a little money into the scene there.
In regards to my mental health, I’m doing alright I think. At least in regard to going out. I mean I’m having a lot of fun. I think the thing that’s really falling apart right now is my body. Working long shifts at the coffee shop and then carrying gear, standing up for practice, commuting wherever, it’s all adding up. So if I’m not going out, and I’m missing shows, it’s just because I’m laying in bed sore and aching. Which is hard to explain to twenty-two-year-olds who are always just like ‘Get the fuck up. Let’s go!” I feel like being like ‘I’m tired’ is just not a valid excuse here. Which is awesome but also obviously hard if you’re working a job and your body is breaking down on you.
Beyond helping out the scene, and encouraging others to come and see you play, how necessary is it for your own art for you to be out hearing other people and speaking with other people? Do you find that it improves your creativity and the music you make? Or does it sometimes work against you? At the end of the day, in my eyes, a certain level of rest is necessary for good creative work to be possible. Does going out get in the way of that ever?
To be honest, I don’t think I’ve taken on any serious creative work since I finished Weightlifting over a year ago. It just didn’t feel as important if that makes sense. And that has actually been terrible for my mental health. I mean everyone knows that you only endure the suffering of being an artist because you have to. That you need to create things in order to feel okay, so you take on whatever discomfort is necessary in order to be able to prioritize creating. I definitely have to be actively creating in order to feel okay about myself and be able to negotiate my place in this whole thing, and after putting out that album I had to do a lot of things like performing, which isn’t exactly creative, but it’s also incredibly important to getting your stuff out there.
I think, on the whole, it’s probably hurt to be out so much. I feel like I’ve already taken so much in. So much input, you know, from just daily life here. And that’s certainly enough to be making shit. You don’t really need more input. And the only way to get better at making stuff is simply by making stuff. When I’m out, I feel like it’s sort of obligatory sometimes. I probably only need to go out once a month to get any kind of creative stimulation. And the rest of the time I should just be at my place recording.
I’m finally getting back into that place though. I’m prioritizing making things over performing and going out a bit more. And that feels good. And when I go back to listen to some of the things I’ve been making I can definitely hear the influence of all the people I’ve been hanging around. All the bands and DJ sets. It definitely sounds more Brooklyn-y than the last record which I recorded while I was still in Manhattan.
The thing that’s most important, in regards to influence, is just being around people that are doing the thing that you want to do. So like if you want to be playing live, you gotta be going to tons of shows. If you want to be at home recording, you gotta be around people who are also recording. We’re just herd animals so you just have to pick who you hang around wisely.
Alright, so let’s talk about Weightlifting a bit. That album came out in December. Could you tell me about the process of making it? What was the idea behind it? Why is it called Weightlifting?
I think during that point in time, I was very much trying to understand my place in all of this. Like when I was at NYU it was very easy to get caught up in all the systemic problems of the world. That’s all I feel anybody wanted to talk about. And as a white guy at a place like that you sort of end up becoming a kind of straw-man. And that never really bothered me that much but it definitely led me to think very critically about my relation to all these systemic problems as someone of privilege. Like I just started putting all this shit onto myself. And it got basically to this breaking point where I was just caught up thinking about these issues all day and I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t creating and I wasn’t doing anything about the issues either. And it became this question of how much of this is my fault and what can I even do about it? Because I felt like I couldn’t do anything about it, really. So that was part of the Weightlifting idea. Trying to make sense of all that.
And then another part was the simple decision to be an artist. To leave college and say I’m going to make art. That’s a heavy thing to do because, on some level, you know it’s not a great decision. But you do it because you have to. It’s not a good career move to make but you have to. And that was definitely a weight on me. Making that decision.
The last thing was sort of related to Camus. His writing on the Myth of Sisyphus. How there’s this weight that you put on yourself that you must push off for no real reason. Like weightlifters. Why are you actually pushing all that weight that’s going to cause you pain? Why push the boulder if you know it’s not going to actually do anything? That it’s going to roll down on you again. I think it’s because struggling itself is just the most fulfilling thing you can do. Not the payoff, but actually just the struggle. The weightlifting.
I think the album is actually pretty optimistic. A lot more than the record we made before it. It’s coming to terms with coming out of college and realizing that I’ll probably be pushing the same boulder around for the rest of my life. And I think I’m okay with that. I think I actually enjoy it.
Regarding your first point, grappling with your relation to systemic issues in the world and still finding the mental freedom to create, I think that’s something that a lot of people struggle with. The thought that your privilege and complacency has added up to systemic problems, and that people might be viewing you through this lens, I think that can lead to both artists feeling unable to create as well as spaces feeling somewhat closed off. Have you experienced this?
I mean you enter these niche spaces, like on college campuses, where it can be very difficult to make yourself heard or feel valid as a human being if you come from a certain level of privilege. And I think because of the internet people get very mixed about societal spaces and structures, and you find people curating their entire world in somewhat closed-off fashions. Like if you bounce from one NYU class to another as a white guy, you might find yourself at some sort of disadvantage. Obviously nothing like that affects your role in the world but there will definitely be people who will be like “Fuck you,” off rip, which can be very disheartening. But in the end those niche spaces are just not the whole world. And when you enter into the larger world and market you realize that there are massive biases against these people protecting these niche spaces, and that your privilege and opportunities are most definitely related to perpetuation of these biases. And that distaste directed toward you might not be related to you as a person, someone who was just born to a particular set of circumstances, but the privilege and opportunity afforded by those circumstances is most definitely a product of something that disadvantages other people.
Do you think this thing we’re talking about, this issue of privilege and the reactions it creates within people, both of and not of it, can be destructive within the DIY space? DIY, like a college campus, can often be a pretty niche and selective environment. Do you see a similarity there at all?
I mean it’s hard to say because DIY is still a very white male-dominated space. It’s kind of a huge problem. It’s crazy to see the stars that have come out of DIY compared to the faces that you might see at an actual show. Like the market is doing a better job of diversifying. If you think of who are the biggest DIY stars of the past ten years the first one that comes to mind is someone like Mitski, but when you go to a DIY basement show you’re just not going to see too many people who look like Mitski. It’s pretty messed up to experience that difference and it’s a testament to the reality we’re presented with. How these places get portrayed by various media outlets versus what they actually look like are so different.
I think it’s destructive for DIY spaces to be that homogenous. I don’t think things like wokeness are even that present in the conversation. Look at Midwestern emo or any other regional scene and it’s all pretty much the same. That’s not to say there aren’t prominent LGBTQ queer and trans spaces that are really blossoming and making vibrant communities around things like punk music, but I think when we’re talking about something like indie rock, which is the scene I would say we’re most the part of, it’s still horrifyingly homogenous. Which sucks given its music that appeals to a very large group of people. And if you just look at the stars that end up coming out, it’s pretty clear that white guys aren’t better at making this music than any other type of person.
I do feel fortunate though. Even though our crowds are still quite homogenous, the very specific scene we’ve been playing with, and the bands we’ve been trying to associate with are a lot more diverse than the scene overall. And that makes me a lot happier and more comfortable. And the more diverse the bands are the more diverse the crowds are going to be. You can’t really control who ends up coming to your show, but to the extent that we’ve been able to put fem-fronted acts on the bills, and play with diverse bands, we have been able to diversify our shows a bit more. And that’s something we all strive for. I mean Golder, the group of kids I play with, are a pretty diverse group in themselves. It’s kind of insane, when you walk around New York City, that anyone would have a band of just white guys honestly. It’s just not what the city looks like. No hate for groups of white guys that grew up together or whatever, but if you’re putting a New York band together from scratch it just seems unlikely it would end up looking like that.
I think the idea of diversity is interesting in the indie world when thinking about authenticity given how white male dominated the genre has been. Like what if your influences are simply a bunch of white guy indie rock bands, and that’s the sound you feel most like yourself when creating? Is that an authentic expression or is that a reluctance to broaden one’s perspective? Do you think that’s a potential shortcoming of the genre?
I think things are improving in the indie world. I think we’re legitimately on a better trajectory, so maybe the possibility of that happening is getting lower and lower.
But I think if you make music that’s true to yourself––like truly, truly, true to yourself––it’s going to appeal to a very broad audience of people anyway. People are people across the board. In different communities and places. If you make music it’s going to correspond with your place within the social structure and your archetype, and that type of thing will resonate across generations and continents and everything else. Unless you’re like fucking Pat Boone and the reason you’re making music is to make it palatable to a different social class, it’ll come out in an authentic fashion and relate to people of different walks of life.
I wanted to ask you about the idea of persona. I approach art as a fiction writer for the most part, which means, at least in my own head, I’m afforded a pretty wide distance between creation and creator. I can write a character who does disgusting things or has awful thoughts, and because of the aesthetic agreement necessary to make fiction work, people will not conflate the character’s mind with my own––hopefully. And this allows me to explore a very wide range of ideas and people, and seek out humanity and empathy in unlikely places as well as express things that would be difficult to articulate if limited to my own life and experience. But making music seems different to me in this respect. At the end of the day it’s you that ends up on the stage and at the mic and unless you’ve conducted some very extensive and creative personifying, I feel like it would be very difficult not to conflate the things you create with you as a person. I’m curious if you feel this safety to explore these strange, disparate, and extreme crevices of experience with your music? Do you ever fear being unfairly judged for something you’ve created in this respect?
I think you’re always going to worry about being judged to some extent. But I have maybe counterintuitively noticed that performing is helping me a lot with that thought. When you’re alone in your room writing music, who are you kidding, you’re the only one hearing it and you’re the only one who has to live with those thoughts and emotions. Whereas on stage, over time, you realize that people want something that’s authentic but the act of performance itself is an exaggeration. People want to see you more into it than maybe you’re feeling. Like if you’re feeling like shit, you can’t go on stage and be a downer. You still have to go on stage and get the energy up. You can’t let being down impact your performance. And I think, because of that, the act of performance is an act of falsehood. And it’s really that that has been difficult for me to deal with in regards to the issue of persona, in comparison to maybe being judged for writing something too extreme.
For the most part the music I have written thus far has been a pretty close POV to my own life. But since I’ve started performing more I think I’m getting more comfortable with writing from other people’s perspectives. Or at least allowing that filter process to occur of like, yeah, I do feel these things, but maybe I don’t feel them in a way I could personally articulate so I’m going to write from someone else's viewpoint. Because the more I get better on stage, the more I understand that the person up there is me but it is also not me at all. And I’m starting to develop more of a separation between this is Golder and this is Drew. Which has allowed me to think, okay well what if it’s not Golder either? What if it’s someone else instead? I’ve always admired songwriters who can write from the perspective of other people. Because in the end you know it’s all yourself, but it’s a mark of a good songwriter to channel your feelings through others.
In regards to exploring something strange or extreme, I think people truthfully prefer extremes. For a while one of our most popular songs both live and on streaming was “Buy You Something Nice,” which is a pretty extreme song. The last lyric is something like “I’ll tie you to the floor,” which is essentially a violent act against a woman and a pretty insane thing to say. Like yeah I didn’t want her to leave me so I tied her to the floor. That’s not an okay thing to feel or say in real life, but I think when you do dare to go there in music people respond to it because it connects to something. And I think it’s the job of the artist to excavate all these emotions that people have, even the ones that are confusing.
But there is a fear of doing stuff like that. Like as a white guy, you have this boogeyman woke person in your head that’s like “You can’t say that! Leave that to people who are allowed to say stuff like that!” But I think that boogeyman is really just in your head and like maybe on Twitter a bit. But they have no real influence. The people that are like “Oh man these old writers are so problematic, and their books and songs are so bad,” are really just this tiny minority. Because people aren’t stupid. And they understand that art is different from your own personal views in the end. I just don’t think people like that influence art in the same way we’re often led to believe. For the most part people don’t even talk to me about stuff like that lyric I was talking about. People just accept that that’s what the song is.
But maybe people who want to judge––because perhaps there are some real boogeymen out there––don’t even understand the process. Like people that don’t make shit. They probably just don’t understand the process of writing. Shit just pops into your head and you don’t always know where it comes from. And you could go back later and be like, I thought that because this happened in my life. Or maybe this. But in that moment, when you’re holding the pen, I feel like it’s not that related. And more creative people are more understanding of how things arrive during that process and know that there’s that disconnect. Or like the thing said in order to truthfully explore a feeling will not be in tightest accordance with what the feeling is actually made out of.
I think that concept of the boogeyman is something many young artists end up getting fixated on. You spoke about experiencing this in relation to the concept behind Weightlifting. What do you think that fixation is all about?
I think it’s just a manifestation of the inbuilt resistance to creation that everyone has. Like the more that you’re someone that has to make stuff, the stronger the force against making stuff in you is going to be. And the harder it is to overcome that. And I think people are just going to latch onto any excuse. No matter what. Like this is the reason I can’t create stuff. And it’s an incredibly powerful force. I’ve definitely been a victim of that and I think everyone I know that creates stuff has been a victim of it in some fashion. I don’t think it’s a unique feeling to like white guys either. Like you might have the woke SJW boogeyman in the back of your head but I think a person of color is going to have the racism they’ve experienced similarly on their shoulder saying, “You’re not allowed to make that. Nobody cares.” So maybe I feel like it can be a false othering sometimes. And because it seems like it’s coming from a different perspective doesn’t mean it’s not a manifestation of the same force. Sometimes I think being at the pinnacle of privilege, spaces will make you feel like you’re the boogeyman, but truthfully I feel like we experience life the exact same way. I mean it’s a lot easier if you’re from privilege of course.
Your point about the clashing forces of creative desire––the need to create and the impulse to stop yourself from creating––I think is a very important one. The longer I continue to write, the more I see people who were once very convicted and talented fall off for various reasons. And it’s always difficult to see, but, I think as I get older, it’s becoming less difficult to understand. Sometimes writing and artmaking can very much feel like a mental illness: a compulsion to sacrifice wellbeing in order to create space and time to make things. Simply, as you’ve already said, it is not a good career choice to become an artist but it’s something you do because you have to. That’s a very similar outlook on the world to like an alcoholic when you think about it. And being a good artist, or one who achieves some level of longevity, I feel, is a matter of learning to cope with this. Personally, I believe it’s easier to cope with life being a little bit harder, and being a little bit poorer but still being able to create, than it is to cope with a compulsion to make things but, for whatever reason, a decision not to do so. But it’s not an easy decision to make by any means.
Without a doubt. If you have to do it you have to do it. It’s weird. Like last year was the first time I think people really acknowledged what I was doing. You know they were like “You’re doing it. You’re making music.” But I’ve been telling people all my life that’s who I am. That I have to create and make music. And last year was this complete shit storm for me where I very much did not feel like a musician. Like problem after problem after problem. So many good excuses for myself not to create. And also performing became this massive thing. And also I’m a self recording and producing artist so it takes so much fucking time for me to make music and I don’t even really have the space to do it. But so there were points where I was like this is the best year of life because I was finally starting to get some kind of recognition, but at the same time it was probably one of the worst years of my life. At least since I’ve really dived into music. I wasn’t making shit. I probably wrote twenty to thirty songs over the course of a year, which is very low for me. Like if I get kicking I’ll be writing multiple songs a day and producing a bunch. So it was kind of this miserable stand-still time for me. Like when an album comes out, and you’re a bandleader, your time just gets sucked up by so much bullshit. Booking, playing, constantly doing stuff. It can make it really hard to prioritize making a song that you know you’re going to throw away.
I think that period has ended, thankfully, and I’m a little more settled in with a better income and schedule and all that. But it was difficult. I felt like I’d roped so many people into this thing and so I was responsible for it going well. So I had to put aside the things that made me happiest, which is just making songs.
I don’t know, I guess that’s just part of being a musician. Or being a DIY musician. I’m sure people know, but it’s just so much harder to stand even the slightest bit against the dominant power structure in music. Even making music that’s just slightly different than the exact music currently playing on the radio, it’s going to be double the work and get a shit ton of doubt from people. I’m saying if you’re more or less being cooperative with what is popular, and you look like the right type of person and all that, even the slightest deviation will still be severely punished. And DIY is just so far beyond that. We like to think that we create this other system, but, I don’t know, it’s just exponentially more difficult. You’re lugging your own shit around and trying and trying to get people to come to shows in shitty places with no toilet paper or whatever. Payout is awful. No one has a manager. It’s just way more effort. And it’s all to justify making the kind of music that you want to make.
Because as an artist there’s no I’m going to sort of make what I like. I know what the music I like sounds like and I’ve spent years and years honing in on a sound tuned exactly to my taste. And it has essentially nothing to do with the market at all. So you’re just left with this hope that maybe things will swing your way, or you’ll amass enough people together that the market will be like, “Oh, you have an audience.” And maybe they’ll give you money. But, still, they’re not going to invest into it unless they can determine that your sound can be replicated and sold by much better looking, more easily digestible people.
It’s just something you accept going into it. Or it’s not, and you get blindsided. That happens a lot too. Like someone making a good album and then it’s like, alright man, time to start performing. You gotta promote it too. You gotta go to shows that aren’t yours either to meet people. All that for essentially a tenth of the success that would be afforded to someone almost immediately for making a playlistable song that slots in well with what’s popular.
But you would never want to make music like that. I mean, what’s the point? It’s just shit anyone else could make.
Photography by Argil Tool
Interview by Jake Hargrove