snooper and the sweat equity of world building

Snooper is an extremely fun band to watch load out their gear. Blair Tramel is standing on the loading dock behind Memphis’ historic Overton Park bandshell speaking very earnestly and seriously about the stressful nature of a friend’s job, but I’m too distracted to follow because she’s casually gesturing with the big cartoon stage dumbbell. Connor Cummins picks up their toppled street light and throws it back into the hitch so effortlessly that he’s either immaculately ripped under that longsleeve or, more likely, it’s made of cardboard and weighs nothing. Their giant bug mascot, just seen jumping around the pit thanks to Tee Vee Repairman’s tour driver, sits crumpled and deflated in a box.

These final quiet moments of Gonerfest 22 felt like watching the Sesame Street Live load-out. Once we all pile into the van, we’re talking about our shared affection for Green Bay punk luminary Timebomb Tom and the seemingly legendary Jeff Mahannah artwork for Spodee Boy that got completely scrapped because of how its particular depravity made its subject feel. (Jeff drew a horse shitting in Connor’s mouth, and mysteriously, Connor did not like that.) Big Bird’s social circle would never. Probably.

After everybody figured out their next steps, Connor and Blair and I end up outside the Lamplighter. Sitting outside while Mod Lang started up their set, Connor remembered playing a show here in 2019 with Safety Net; G.U.N. couldn’t do it. “We got wasted drinking rum with [Matrix],” Connor said. “Nobody came to the show and we all had the best time. We all just played for each other and had a fucking sick time.” There were three people at the show. Blair added: “It was absolutely debaucherous.”

Year in and year out, Connor and Blair have always found themselves traveling from Nashville for Memphis punk shows. Sitting on the curb with those two outside a tattoo spot called Skin City Ink—both still wearing their stage clothes—we talked about some of our punk mutuals from across the country. Connor and Blair are deeply rooted in this shit; they were going to see bands and geeking out over their fair share of obscure records before they got to where they are right now—a new peak of their powers.

Snooper absolutely destroyed their headlining set around the release of their new album Worldwide. The album’s glitchy grittiness finds them expanding out their sound. Industrial murk meets their tried and tested bouncy propulsion. They’ve never been better live; nonstop touring will do that. Nobody who saw that band at Gonerfest could stop talking about their new secret weapon, Citric Dummies’ Travis Minnick on drums, who has taken the new material into the ionosphere, brother. A group of hunks seemed to show up specifically for Snooper; something about their eboy outfits and unadulterated glee in the pit gave them away. Literal kids were dancing right by the front of the stage waving glow sticks. It was a show for everyone. The great Bloodshot Bill stopped over and interrupted our sidewalk chat to give them props.

Gonerfest is special because it levels the punk rock class system. Some bands on the lineup actively live in punk houses while others have publicists and label contracts. The vibe was broadly appreciative and enthusiastic; there were no combative onstage outbursts this year. But when you’re on the way up, you get haters—especially in the loudmouthed and principled landscape of punk music.

The truth is, Snooper is in an impossible spot. Regardless of how they’d categorize themselves, they’re widely considered the biggest egg punk band in the world. Depending on who you ask, that’s either awesome or some kind of deep betrayal to the Coneheads and CCTV’s barely released masterworks. Snooper do not chase mystique; they tour broadly, release their music widely, and are accessible to their fans. Connor and Blair caught a stray in Martin Meyer’s egg punk eulogy for, of all things, their supposed lack of ambition, work ethic, and intentionality. The op-ed was an argument about a subgenre’s laziness and oversaturation, but targeting Snooper specifically for not working hard enough on their craft doesn’t hold water. Their U-Haul hitch alone was stuffed end to end with handmade ambition. 

Honestly, I wasn’t planning to bring any of this up. But Connor and Blair have punk bonafides, which means they’re unafraid and perhaps naturally inclined to talk their shit. Every late night I’ve ever spent outside a Memphis bar has been defined by too-loose scene politics shit talk. Why stop now?

Does anybody want some chewable vitamin C?

Blair: I feel like we’re operating an open-air…

Connor: Holistic non-drug market.

Blair: That’s what it’s like on tour is me giving out wellness vitamins—not for their own wellness, but for me. Like, “If you get sick, we’re all fucked.” 

Do you think that instinct is focused on how the work can’t stop, or does it come from somewhere else?

Blair: I’ve been a teacher for a long time. I’ve done middle school, high school, and most recently, little kids. So that’s in there, and being on tour has been hard in a way, because it’s five people and you’re like “I trust you in taking care of yourself.” But caring for other people in that way is part of who I am. 

Not to stretch, but that does seem to translate to the show.

Blair: Well, I love a little task, too—putting up the lights on the mic stands every night and doing like the papier-mâché props and everything. Like, I'm taking care of you guys because now I'm giving you more to look at. 

You just closed out Gonerfest with a vibe that was pretty unique unto itself—how some fans seemed to show up specifically for your show and brought a specific energy. Do you think you’re cultivating something unique to your fandom or do you feel like that’s being closed-minded to other punk shows?

Blair: That’s such a nice, kind thing to say that I almost feel hesitant to take that compliment. I think what we’ve wanted with the band this whole time is to create that sort of thing for people. I went to punk shows for so long and never really felt that in punk music, necessarily. I didn't feel like it was a huge open community in that way, and so for us, at our shows, when young people come out and it's not really punk, it's not really hardcore—it’s something special. It feels that way to us, and yeah, that’s the highest compliment to me.

Connor: I think in some ways it’s hard for us to take that compliment because we don't want it to seem like we’re putting anyone else down, but everything is so meticulously thought-out—from the setlist that we’re gonna play to how the songs flow together. The breaks and the samples, which we didn’t have tonight because the thing broke before, but normally there’s specific breakbeat samples. Blair takes a bunch of samples from people talking and different situations, like safety and all kinds of different things. 

Blair: Everything to Snooper is so intentional. I think about the way that we've put our social media together and everything. If you go to certain bands’ pages, they'll just post flyers for shows or whatever, and I can’t think of a time where I haven’t been obsessive. Of course if somebody made a show flyer, I want to share it, but if there’s an opportunity to make it myself or to make it part of the world building that is Snooper, I will do that. I think we’ve created a very intentional space. That’s what I love about being in this band is like the world building around it. People have chosen to live in this world with us in a fun way.

The way people make fan art for your band reminds me more of how people make fan art for wrestlers or anime characters. The iconography is very much at the front of what you do.

Connor: Other bands, because they don’t have an intense visual element, it’s more centered around the person who’s doing the songwriting or singing or whatever. And I think for us, we kind of want to be in the shadows, which isn’t a reality anymore. That’s more how it was in the beginning—just have the art be the wall that separates you from the band. 

Blair: There’s a certain type of niche Snooper fan for sure. [Pulls out a gray square bead art keychain.] Do you know what this is?

No.

Connor: [Pulls out a matching keychain.] When we got them, me and Blair couldn't figure out what they were. Someone handed them to us at the Palladium show, and then our guitarist—who hasn't been in the van very long with us—was instantly like, “That’s Super Snooper.”

Blair: It's funny because I was super insecure about using the Bug at first because—you know Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared? A lot of times people are like, “Oh your art's like that.” And I'm like, “No!!!” I like that, whatever, but I didn’t want it to be cartoonish or gimmicky. But it is a bug. It’s such a simple thing that attracts a certain type of person that will come up to the merch table and be like, “Hey, can I show you my dice collection?” I’m like, “Yes, you can!”

Connor: But to go back to the other thing too, I would say Snooper is built out of us just being super obsessive about everything too. Since the beginning of the band—coming from Goner culture, and we used to go to hardcore shows and hardcore culture and stuff—I'm really obsessed with: There's gotta be a test pressing that has alternate art. Like if there's multiple pressings, it's gotta have different art. 

Blair: When we started the band, I felt the need to change stuff all the time. I hadn't toured, so you think that when you do something, it's out in the world because it's on the internet, but when you go in person to a place you've never been and you don't bring the Bug, people are like, “What the hell? We wanted this thing!” And they're ready for it in a way that I wasn't expecting. So I've had to learn how to chill on certain things. Like the Bug, I felt like for sure, we're gonna do it once and then we're gonna switch it up every time. But it's been cool to see what people naturally latch onto. We have this silver guy that’s come into the picture a bit, so we did a funny video where this guy left us to be like a DJ in L.A.

Connor: And there are aliases. Most people haven't caught on yet, but I think they'll figure it out later. On the lathe Unknown Caller one, there’s two silver people. One is DJ CD-93, and that’s me. And then you’re…

Blair: DJ DSNTG3TIT. [laughs]

You talk about being visually-oriented, object-forward artists whose variants can mark a moment in the band’s timeline. Don’t those objects serve the same purpose for your fans—tactile, physical reminders of getting revved up in the pit at your show?

Connor: For sure.

Blair: It’s a lot of fucking work to bring all the visual stuff, and I remember when we first started doing it. Connor joked—and I love when you said this—he was like, “If you would have told me that I would be in a band that has a puppet or props, I would have been like, ‘What, you need something cool to look at? I have a cool guitar.’” Now, Connor will not do a show without props with Snooper because it’s part of it now. 

Connor: You changed me. Since this band started, we've had to turn down so many shows. Me and Happy [Haugen] drove 17 hours to New York just to have the props for one show. Immediately, the next day, [Blair] you flew in because you were teaching. We played the show, drove like 30 hours round trip, not enough money, but it was just like—we had to have it for the show. When we played Punk Rock Bowling, it was like we couldn't say no because we were playing with Devo, and we were like, “Should we just do a set without the stuff?” And we were like, “No, we'll just drive the van straight to Vegas for the one show and then drive it straight back to Nashville.”

Blair: But we’re about it. It does make a difference, and when people pay for a ticket and stuff, they want to be in that world for a minute.

Connor: Especially overseas. We get to a place two days early and Blair just sources all the materials and builds all the props every single time we go overseas, because we have to. It's part of who we are. I don't think we'll ever play a show, no matter how much money, if we don't have our stuff. We can’t do it.

In addition to the props, when I saw you play last year, there was a lot of coordinated movement—spins, jumping split kicks, that kind of thing. So you all clearly have a focus on showmanship outside of the Bug and the props.

Connor: Well, I mean, it goes back into the…that's like my only—it's not a gripe that I have—but like with the whole like Devocore/egg punk stuff, it's like people would talk so much about Devo, and I'm like, cool, it sounds like Hardcore Devo…

Wait, we’re gonna talk about the haters?

Connor: Everyone brings up “this band sounds like Devo” and I'm like, that’s cool they sound like Devo, but the world of Devo is all of the music videos, all of the props, all of the story behind it.

Right, I mean there was that whole argument about ambition. Sorry: Can we talk about the haters?

Blair: I love talking about the haters!

So there was that whole argument about lack of ambition within egg punk, and when you guys were tied into it as the primary target, your world building is specifically why that argument seemed off.

Blair: The thing about all that is we really don't care that much. And the fact that someone would be like “they need to work harder on their music” clearly doesn’t know anything about us. 

Connor: Let’s be honest, the thing we’re talking about specifically, I think, was about us signing to Third Man. It seemed like they—the person in question, the anonymous perpetrator—were accusing us of selling out, which is a classic dialogue that's been around forever. The thing about Third Man, I understand, I guess now, that other people look at Third Man like this crazy label based around—I mean, it is based around—the famous successful person Jack White. But for us, it’s like: I worked at the warehouse, our old drummer did sales there, [Blair] raised some of their kids.

Blair: Babysat from, like, birth.

Connor: And for us, it just felt like the local label. Nobody was like, “We’re gonna be rich and famous signing to Third Man.”

Blair: To be quite frank, I think it was such a low blow. Truly, you can quote me on this: I have been supportive of that person and all the people that are hating on the band. And I have been so supportive to throw shows for those people, house those people, and it's just really ironic that I can support, and when I’m in a supporting position, it was fine. I think that it’s really so lame that when I’m outwardly saying, “Hey, I’m inspired by you, so much so that I’ll book a show for you or make a flyer for you or do art for you.” Or whatever. And then the second that I'm focusing on my own thing—the second that I'm there trying to do what you're doing—suddenly the tone switches. You were cool with me when I was booking shows. It’s such a funny thing.

The tradition of sowing division within punk.

Connor: Yeah, it’s been around since the ’80s.

Probably the ’70s.

Blair: And I think that those people would love to still say, “Oh we’re cool, it was just feedback!” But we work our asses off, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t because we really care about what we’re making.

Connor: The other thing too is when that came out, what bummed me out the most is I agreed with a lot of his points. I do think there is a laziness to just totally ripping something off, but I mean that’s not happening in that one genre of punk. That happens in every genre of punk.

My read on that whole thing was “the right way to do it is the way I do it,” which feels like a pretty common type of punk guy. I don’t know, punk rules in basements and punk rules on big stages. You guys have recently done both DIY spaces and bigger rooms.

Blair: Playing a small show and then translating it to a bigger stage is hard. I think that egg punk and microgenres like this one, being on this tour even with the Hives has felt really hard. And of course I’ve felt really insecure because it's hard to translate something kind of niche to a big stage.

Connor: Also without losing yourself or trying to accommodate and be like, Well, we should change certain things to be more accommodating to these people? This is kind of a stretch, but when Suicide opened for bigger bands, they would get booed off the stage every night and get shit thrown at them. It’s like, what if Suicide tried to accommodate those fans? It would be horrible.

Blair: I think the insinuation is “Snooper’s selling out” or something. People within this subgenre feel as though it needs to exist in this tiny space, and I love that about it too. There’s something so special about that. And I think it feels as though we're traitors by taking this to people who don't necessarily fall into it naturally.

But punk is an accordion, right? Hardcore exists really small and then can expand out. Egg punk is doing a similar thing. … Sorry, let’s pause—do you identify as egg punk?

Blair: So many people do and keep putting us in that, so I don’t want to…sure. We’ll be that. [laughs]

Connor: No, no, no, I think egg punk is fine. I’ve said this before, too, like I used to read these zines about like ’80s post-punk bands and when they got called post-punk, they hated it. That blew my mind. I can’t even imagine, like I would have to be like, Well, OK this band is kind of coldwave. It’s just easier to categorize: it’s kind of a post-punk band.

The idea that Snooper should make itself arbitrarily smaller because “egg punk should be small or is already over” are takes that aren’t interested in engaging with the work itself.

Blair: I think the craziest part of all of it for me was that people really cared on the opposite side of things. Someone wrote a manifesto about—not to toot our own horn—how important our band was to them. It was a 10-page document. Someone wrote a thesis statement at their college about it recently and sent it to us in the mail. About this whole thing! I think people really were hurt by it who bought into the Snooperverse. We’re making whatever the fuck we want to make and no matter what it feels like, we’re gonna be pigeonholed into that genre. “Running” isn’t an egg punk song. It’s kind of goofy to us. 

Gonerfest is this mix of bands that are theater ready, and then you’ll see some strictly-for-sickos shit at an aftershow. Dogmatic “there’s a right way to exist in music” arguments don’t really mesh with the reality of how events like this work.

Blair: I think the critique that I took from it, which was a bummer, was like: I’m having fun making music that I want to make, and I’m making this world that I want to make, and it’s such a fun thing. Someone being able to say that I’m not working or being thoughtful enough about it is so messed up. I think that’s just so lame. Imagine telling someone who’s enjoying what they’re doing that they’re not thinking about it enough. And then I got really in my head. Even with [Worldwide], I've had such an amazing time working on these music videos for this record, but I was getting really in my head about it not being “serious enough.” That is not who I am. I never was thinking about anything, and then someone bringing that awareness to stuff was a bummer. It’s been hard to move past that.

Having grown to the point where you are now, Snooper’s aesthetic and creative trajectory has looked pretty organic from the outside. 

Blair: We have no idea how we got to… everything that's happened with Snooper has been so outside of our control. 

I mean, it’s labor. You guys tour nonstop. How many shows did you play last year?

Blair: I think it was 176 total days on tour. 

That’s how you got here, right? If you put yourselves in front of people’s faces that broadly across that many days of tour, you’re probably going to reach a different level.

Blair: Not to like…but we do it because we love it. We do it because we really are about the world that we've built for Snooper. We’re living in that world.

But going back egg punk as elastic—this music that can exist big or small—the early influential egg punk works were put out in a very guarded way. 

Connor: Which it has to be said, they’re acting like they didn't know what they were doing by dropping singles or cassettes where you couldn't even get them. Then why even put them on YouTube? 

Blair: We just want different things. I think about like Arab on Radar—they took all their videos off and there’s a certain protectiveness. I haven't felt the need to be so guarded with Snooper.

Connor: Even talking to Ben Wallers from Country Teasers recently, I did like a cover and he was like, “I'm so embarrassed of the lyrics I wrote.” He was like “that's when I was drinking,” and I think it’s OK to look back and be like “I didn't like what I created” or “maybe the social aspects were different.” I think it's OK to go back and be like, “I feel a little embarrassed, maybe the music I was making felt like kids music at the time.” But then why shit on everybody else about it?

My first writing sucked because I was just starting.

Connor: Especially with my earlier bands, I’m embarrassed by a good amount of the stuff. But I would never have someone come up who was like, “Hey, I loved this band they used to be in.” And then respond like: “You’re a fucking idiot because you like that music. You need to listen to my new shit because that stuff was made for babies.” It’s like, what the fuck?

Blair: Martin Meyer telling me that I need to be more thoughtful about my music is like: You don’t tell someone to grow. Oh you know what? We’re growing all the time as a band. And I think that’s the double-edged sword: Is that pissing you off? That is what’s happening. We’re making different music already.

When you hear about people struggling with their old music, it feels like it boils down to where they’re at with themselves.

Blair: Hayley Williams plays “Misery Business” every time because people love it and people have connected with it. You can’t choose what people connect with sometimes, and sometimes things take on a life of their own. Like “Running,” “Fitness”—I hate lifting the weight sometimes. I’m like, God. It feels sort of gimmicky to me at this point, but people will ask for it and they go crazy. It’s fun, and as soon as people get into it, I’m re-inspired by the community that’s into it in front of me, and then we have fun! We’re not doing anything that doesn’t feel genuine to us and the community continues to build around these things.

Connor: What keeps me grounded is that in the beginning of Snooper, none of the 7-inches had synth on them. People would refer to us—before egg punk—they called us synth punk all the time. Did you even listen to the music or are you hating just because someone told you to hate on us? You didn’t even form an opinion. “I don't like that synth punk band.”

Blair: I think genres and categories make people feel safe, but it's the psychological thing of people like to identify things. It's what makes us human. I think it feels weird to people when they can't classify something. We've been on so many hardcore shows and people are like, “But you're not hardcore.” And I'm like, “Great, then I'm just me now.” Because if every subgenre of everything is gonna be like, “But you're not actually,” great! I’m literally making exactly what I wanna make and that’s awesome. I used to care so, so much about that shit, and I think Snooper is a safe place for people who are always going to things and feel like “you’re not punk enough, it’s not hardcore.”

Connor: Even when I was a kid in noise, punk, and d-beat bands, older punks who would only listen to classic punk would be like, “You guys are posers, you're only into super niche stuff.” And then the other extremely d-beat noise punk people would be like, “You guys are posers, you guys aren’t going hard enough.” Then later in life when you’re playing in a post-punk band, they're like, “Oh man, I liked when you were playing in hardcore bands.”

Blair: I so badly wish I could go back in time and find 20-year-old me at a show and be like, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. One day you’re gonna be in a band and people are still gonna be trying to ice you out of genres, but it’s gonna be okay.”

When you released that Spodee Boy track “Moonrise Canyon,” that’s the perfect example of you making something for yourselves. It rules because nobody was asking for it.

Connor: I used to always have my hardcore band and then there was a solo project and then a post-punk band. When Snooper started, we started working on it all the time, and it was basically like, All right, now I'm gonna try and blend all the things I love together. That’s Worldwide. But I was feeling very scared to do it, then that stuff came out and they were like, “This band sounds like CCTV.” I'm like, You guys don't even listen to the songs!

Blair: I think the hard part for me was the bullet that Martin was trying to get to, it was more aimed towards Connor’s songwriting. It’s a female-fronted band, so I was the one that kind of became the person where it was like, “What’s your response?” And it felt so clear that it was intentionally trying to be hurtful to the songwriter of everything. Connor writes very specific music, and I’m Connor’s biggest fan musically. And that sucked. Connor writes everything at home. I love what you make so much that I make weird vocals to it. It has just been genuinely great. And I think that people hate on you because look at this band—look at how far we’ve come. You’ve worked your ass off for this because you love playing music.

Connor: We also just made the stuff we wanted. In closing: Everyone always says that we ripped off CCTV and Coneheads. Uranium Club was much more the inspiration—way beyond CCTV and all that stuff. The Music for Spies 7”? I wasn’t trying to rip off the Coneheads.

You were trying to rip off Uranium Club!

Connor: I liked Uranium Club! ’Cause it sounded like the Ramones played really fuckin’ fast.

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