> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://see-saw.fun/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # gash are the best band in eau claire - URL: https://see-saw.fun/gash-are-the-best-band-in-eau-claire/ - Published: 2026-11-11T17:22:24.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-11T17:22:24.000Z - Description: On the importance of band Frisbee sessions, DIY curation, Yeat live, their new album, and reaching a new level in the Brick era. - Author: Evan Minsker - Tags: interview \[*A version of this article* [*originally appeared in* Volume One](https://volumeone.org/articles/2026/07/21/395729-basking-in-gash-summer-album-on-the-way-and-an-eaux-claires-coronation?ref=see-saw.fun) *on July 21\. It’s been expanded to include more of our conversation behind that article and an additional chat from their album release show on September 25.*\] The five members of gash were sitting, once again, outside their de facto HQ in Eau Claire on a beautiful summer evening. It’s a practice space and de facto studio in a decades-old manufacturing facility. “The spot,” they agree to call it. This is where they recorded the new album [*at least you know what you're laughing at*](https://gashrash.bandcamp.com/album/at-least-you-know-what-youre-laughing-at?ref=see-saw.fun). It’s out September 25 from the venerated indie label Fire Talk and its Angel Tapes imprint, but on this June evening, they hadn’t yet revealed the news. Days before the album rollout, Nyberg audibly chuckled when asked if he’d ever consider signing with a record label. “It would be nice to get hella paid,” he joked. Breckelle Bathke was outside by the door for a smoke, and while we caught up, Ricky Christenson and Eric Simmons (the two Erics) rolled up separately on their bikes about 10 minutes apart. Mitch Smuhl walked out fresh from restringing his guitar; band founder Logan Nyberg wandered out last wearing a shirt repping Pardoner. It’s too nice to be hanging out in the basement, so we chat next to a “no loitering” sign and a directory that lists the businesses that occupy this building. The word “gash” is hand-scrawled on a blank slot for a unit these musicians do not occupy. This is the fourth night in a row members of the band have been at the spot. They’ve got to practice before their July tour, which in itself is a run to get them ready for their set at Eaux Claires 2026\. Touring looms large in gash’s DNA. The annual Rash Fest lineup, starting with its origins at Nyberg’s punk house the Rash, has always featured sick bands they met on the road. So their inclusion in Eaux Claires feels like a sort of coronation. “Sometimes, everyone just knows what the best thing is, and right now in Eau Claire, that band is gash,” Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon said in a [promotional video](https://www.instagram.com/p/DY49FhQo86o/?ref=see-saw.fun) for the fest. The significance of this moment was lost on some of gash’s homies. “Two people were like, ‘Was that you talking,’” Christenson said. “I was like, ‘No, bruh, that’s *Bon*.’” By having gash play first on Saturday, the team behind Eaux Claires are setting the tone with searching, enormous, enveloping, and wonderfully unpredictable rock music. More crucially, they’re acknowledging the DIY lineage these five have championed for so long. “I feel like there’s a lot of punk history in Eau Claire, and nobody fuckin’ knows about it,” said Smuhl. “We’ve all done so much for DIY and what that brings to Eau Claire. It feels really nice that \[the message is\] like: ‘There’s more than what people think is going on here.’ That’s important to highlight.” A rare positive of being alive in 2026 is witnessing the beginning of Bathke’s era of gash. Her voice, either unhinged or peaceful depending on the moment, has come to define their current sound. She’s always been a crucial ingredient of gash’s world as an artist and Rash Fest collaborator. “I was literally being an emo bitch last night because I was like, ‘I miss the old gash sound from before when I was in it,’” Bathke said. “‘I want it to sound like *that*, and the reason it’s different is because of *me*.’” She’s too close to see what’s clear to the rest of us—that gash has become immeasurably more powerful with her voice in the mix. Nyberg concurred: “That’s how we all felt.” They’ve always been restless, so meeting them in their *at least you know what you’re laughing at* era is a moment to cherish. “There will always be an old gash sound,” Nyberg said. “We’re always working at new stuff and not trying to do the same thing. We could write a bunch of sick butt rock-style ‘[Shenanigans](https://gashrash.bandcamp.com/track/shenanigans?ref=see-saw.fun)’ songs, but doing different stuff is more fun.” “That might be the magical sauce of gash,” Bathke added. “We don’t really care to stick to one thing. Because we can do it *all*, baby. We’re very open to experimenting that way, which I think more people should do. What do you have to lose from trying some weird fucked up shit?” --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2026/11/000661220003--1-.jpeg) gash, photo by [Troy Hoyt](https://www.instagram.com/thebirdmanpics/?ref=see-saw.fun) **This current iteration of gash is pretty new compared to what it’s been before. Can you spell out where the project started? When did you start using the name gash?** Logan Nyberg: Yeah. I mean I think I always was doing ever since I was in high school—doing GarageBand guitar demos. I lived in California for like a year and I moved back to Eau Claire, almost nine years ago now. I came back thinking, *I'm gonna do a band called gash*. I had a couple of demos that I was gonna do. So I had kind of formulated this rough idea of what it was gonna be. Like nine years ago, it was conceptually birthed, I would say. **You all being on the new Eaux Claires lineup feels significant, especially since the last one was so long ago in your band’s creative lineage. Have any of you been to a previous installment of the fest?** Breckelle Bathke: Funnily enough…OK, you know the granola bar company KIND? They were doing a giveaway for Eaux Claires tickets. I got an ad for it. I was like 20 years old, so that was year two of the fest. I think arguably, I probably went when it was at its most hyped. I was on break at Culver's where I worked, and I got this phone call that was like, “You won the giveaway, bro!” They also gave you a year's worth of granola bars. And I got all sorts of KIND swag. **Do you still have it?** Breckelle: No. It was maybe some sunglasses, a little gym bag, a little umbrella. I would never have paid for it myself. Mitch Smuhl: I went that year. I got free tickets because my mom went to a raffle. The only person that showed up, her and the bartender hung out for a while and then the bartender was like, you know what? Here you go. And she couldn't go, so I got two free tickets. Breckelle: I was underage, but I snuck into the beer tent. But I had a sick time. They also put me in like a local hotel, which I've been to a billion times. It’s a hotel that my family would use to do birthday parties. It's like five minutes from my house. ## Sign up for see/saw a punk and rock’n’roll newsletter by evan minsker Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. **Between Rash Fest and your radio show, I think of gash as the region’s best curation collective. Am I right in thinking that you find a lot of bands on the road whenever you tour?** Logan: Yeah. We’d hear about ’em. We’ll play a show somewhere and be like, “You’ve gotta see *this* band.” Breckelle: Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Ricky Christenson: [Ira Glass](https://iraglass.bandcamp.com/?ref=see-saw.fun) was one of those. We played with them in Chicago and it was so mind-blowing. Logan: We used to throw shows at my house—that was called the Rash. That was kind of our little counterculture to the Bon Iver, like, folk. A lot of the proper venues and DIY houses were doing softer indie stuff, which I’m fine with, but I like other stuff that expands beyond that. From going to shows in other places and seeing what music could be—and how it could blow your mind—I wanted some of that energy to Eau Claire. So I would book shows, bands that I thought people would be into or have some type of experience with. You don’t have to be into some super niche genre. It can be accessible in that weird way. **When you play with bigger artists, do you get that those bands want to show *you* off—put you on, give you a share of their platform?** Logan: Sometimes in surprising ways, like people message us, or our music will get shared by someone that I'm like, *They fuck with us apparently. Who knew?* Ricky: Wednesday posted our song. Mitch: A friend screenshotted that and sent it to me. Logan: Yeah, I didn’t hear about that, but that’s cool. That’s the best part of music for me—maybe for all of us. We make something, and we’re all music heads, so we fuck with music in a heavy way. When someone that we like likes what we’re doing, so it’s this mutual validation thing, like, *Oh nice, I guess we’re on the right path here.* Mitch: Sometimes when we played with this band [Pardoner](https://pardoner.bandcamp.com/?ref=see-saw.fun), they were one of my favorite bands of 2017\. They played the Masonic here, they had us play with them at Turf Club, it was really fucking cool, and at first I was like, *Oh we’re going to do this thing with Pardoner, that’s crazy.* And then the second we met them, we all just bro’d out and had a great time. Ricky: They came here on the Fourth of July. We were gonna do it in the backyard, and then it rained. So we did it at the Masonic, and then we partied with them afterward. I did a shotski with them, and I kind of forgot about it. Then the next morning on the Pardoner Instagram, I saw a photo of me doing a shotski with them. **When people ask me to describe your band, I feel like there’s not the easiest genre signifier. It’s gash music. What do you all tell people when they ask what kind of band you’re in?** Logan: It is tough. I just love to say “rock.” Mitch: It’s so much easier to be like “rock’n’roll.” Logan: You could bro down with someone and be like, “You fuck with like ’90s angular math rock? You like Touch & Go Records?” Mitch: You could talk to some dude’s dad about Polvo. It’s tough. Logan: It is kind of tough to figure out how to explain what we are to people. Eric Simmons: We all come to music with our own style, and we just use our influences like that—our varied styles. **To that end, what’s some music that you really love that you feel is more of an individual influence than a collective full-band influence?** Logan: Eric was obsessed with Yeat for a little bit. \[*everyone laughs*\] Eric: I saw Yeat. That was a pretty crazy experience. **That’s gotta be a specific crowd.** Eric: Yeah, it was. Ricky: Twelve-year-olds, bro. Eric: It was really weird. Ricky: It was me and Eric, moms, dads trying to connect… Logan: With *Roblox*/*Minecraft* children \[*laughs*\]. Eric: It was definitely uncomfortable, but once the music started, I understood. Everyone was just jumping, the bass was incredibly loud, and it was just so fun. It made me feel like a kid—which, everyone was a kid there, and I was like, *Oh my god, this is crazy*. But it was weird at the same time. Logan: We have our group chat, we’re always sending music, trying to discover new things. Breckelle: I have a couple things to say on this. As a fan and believer, watcher, supporter, cheerleader of gash, when you all came out with “[Shenanigans](https://gashrash.bandcamp.com/track/shenanigans?ref=see-saw.fun),” y’all were heavy into the butt rock, nu-metal, Korn. Heavy on the Korn. Mitch: Dude, I had a Korn CD in my car for like seven months. Breckelle: And I would say the newer stuff we’ve just been jamming, we’ve been listening to a lot of King Crimson, and that shows in your riffing. But the throughline, and the common denominator between all of us, no matter what different things we listen to or bring to influence the sound, I think is a spiritual understanding that music is really sacred and we can all flow in this sick creative space together if we just put our minds to it and we just freaking do it. Eric: We jam a lot, you know? That’s a big part of our sound, just in practice. Breckelle: And friendship. Eric: And we'll come out and play Frisbee in the parking lot. Logan: Talk shop. Eric: We listen to each other, and when we play, it helps develop our sound. We kind of flow off each other. **Long hangs before actually jamming?** Mitch: Sometimes! Breckelle: Any band could take this and run with it: I think we need to do something together, such as stretching, Frisbee’s great…I think we all need to be on a similar energetic wavelength for the chemistry to be really tangible. Do you remember that warehouse we played around Halloween? We huddled pre-show and we prayed. We did like our version of praying. And then the fucking power cut out, and I am a firm believer that the power cut out because our energy was so strong. Then it came back on and everyone was like, “YEAHHHHH!” Mitch: I think we give all everyone a great deal of patience when we’re practicing and writing and rehearsing, but we’re here so much and we rehearse so much. It’s kind of an obsession for us. So we take it seriously, but like what Brickelle was saying, it’s friendship and our energy. Everything's chill, but taken seriously without any of the bullshit. **You’re always doing Rash Fest there. How’s your relationship with the Masonic in Eau Claire?** Mitch: Steve loves us. Logan: Steve loves us, yeah. Mitch: One time he was talking to me and he was like, “This ballroom is so beautiful.” He was drunk. It was like the end of the night at Rash Fest. I’m looking around Rash Fest and I’m seeing this eclectic room of beautiful weirdos. It’s Halloween and everyone looks insane. And we're a little spookier, you know, like all the lights, everything's crazy, people are drinking, it’s just a whole thing. End of the night, he was teary eyed and just was like, “This is beautiful. I love everyone who came.” Breckelle: I think he was pleasantly surprised by the energy. Mitch: He was just telling me about all the people he met and how grateful he was and he was talking to me about how beautiful that ballroom is and he was like, “All right, see you again next year.” Like the last few times we've done it there. It's like every time at the end of the day, when we’re cleaning up: “See you guys again next year.” He wants us to do it there it seems. So we have a good relationship. Ricky: It’s a great space for it, too. Logan: It’s great to have them. ![gash, photo by Troy Hoyt](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/ca/31caa30b-1a72-4fa1-a48d-e09f6cd6259f/content/images/2026/11/183537_web_gash_2026_troy_hoyt.jpg) gash, photo by [Troy Hoyt](https://www.instagram.com/thebirdmanpics/?ref=see-saw.fun) **How much of *at least you know what you’re laughing at* was recorded together, and how much of it was chunks recorded separately?** Logan: The album kind of started from demos that I would just do by myself and kind of show everybody. Usually, it’d be one idea—not a complex thing. And we’d just kind of add to it, and eventually, we’d just stick to the one idea. Usually, we’d learn the song and then record the song. This time, I already had it recorded in demo form. So the songs never really left their demo phase. If you could hear it side by side, how it sounded at its first conception to how it sounded on the album, not that much is different. All of us were in the room when we were recording and listening over it, but not a lot of writing together. It just kind of came out. **We’ve talked about how much of the band is about your connection in the room. Was reaction to each other part of this album’s additive process?** Logan: Yeah, definitely. There would be times where someone would record something and would kind of add another vibe, and then someone would be like, “Oh, I want to rerecord my part now to match more with that. **Otherwise the record was sketched as one piece with the intention that it’d be an album? These aren’t like loose scattered ideas that came together in this form?** Logan: Well, a lot of this new record is an invitation-slash-introduction for Breckelle into the band. What I thought at the time was the easiest way to get Breckelle to open up to being in the band and being creative was like if I make these ideas and am like, “OK, try this.” And then she’s able to work her own voice into these songs. So a lot of these songs are Breckelle trying to figure out how she fits into gash in a zero pressure environment. It’s recording, you know? If you don’t like something that you’re doing, whatever, we’ll get rid of it and try it again. **I’d seen gash in the pre-Breckelle era, but the new lineup feels so definitive to me.** Ricky: I agree. Logan: That’s how we all felt. Mitch: Brick’s already done so much art and weird vocal stuff on the records. Breckelle: Heavy Rash Fest collaborator. Logan: It was seamless. Like a fucking glove. Ricky: It’s such a natural fit. Breckelle: I was literally being an emo bitch last night because I was like, “I miss the old gash sound from before when I was in it! I want it to sound like that and now it's different, but the reason it's different's cause of me!” \[*laughs*\] What do I do with that feeling? I worked through it. **The reason I wondered about your intention with these recordings is it seems like you all have a lot cooking at any given moment. Did you ever have moments where it was like “*this* song is for something else, these songs are for the album”?** Logan: A lot. We have a lot of recordings. We recorded in Chicago last year at Electrical Audio. These two kids from Philadelphia went to school at Drexel and they did internships at Electircal, and if you do an internship, you get a free day of recordings. So they both squashed theirs together and asked us if we wanted to come out. I don’t know how they found us, but they were so fucking sick. It was pretty cool. So we recorded some songs that aren’t released—eight songs of us playing as a live band. And then 10 or so songs that we were working on at our practice space. I was trying to figure out how they could fit together, but they didn’t fit. Maybe in the future, the next release, that’s where those will live. --- *see/saw is a reader-supported publication. 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