Anberlin bassist Deon Rexroat on adapting bands to books ahead of KC’s Phase Fest this Friday
Anberlin’s Deon Rexroat. // photo credit Jacob Moniz
“After 12 years of essentially non-stop professional playing, I think I lost my desire to grow as a musician a little bit. I learned a lot by [playing at bars after we broke up], but it also kind of got me back to my basics of why I loved playing music in the first place.”
Anberlin’s dissolution and reunion has been a major discussion point in the alternative rock realm in the late 2010s and early 2020s. After two EPs of brand new material in 2022 and 2023, frontman Stephen Christian took a step back from the band, and everybody thought “this was it.” But he came back to the foursome with some names to replace him, names he thought could perform the songs just as good as him.
Memphis May Fire’s Matty Mullins was one of them. Mullins has now released three songs since joining the Florida natives in October 2023, and more seems to be on the way.
Bassist Deon Rexroat spoke with us about the group’s tenacity to push the envelope creatively, beyond just releasing music and playing shows. KC’s Not Just a Phase Fest—beginning at 3 p.m. this Friday at Legends Field in KCK—is the group’s next venture.
The Pitch: I guess I’ll start with this graphic novel you wrote, titled after your hit track “Godspeed.” How did the inception of that begin and how long has it been a project?
Deon Rexroat: We were approached by Sumerian Comics last year to take part in a collaboration with them and I immediately jumped at the idea just because I’ve been a lifelong comic fan, and just a nerd in general. So I started working with them on story ideas, they pitched a couple. I didn’t really know what to expect. I hadn’t seen what they had done with other artists, so I’m thinking it’s supposed to be some type of Scooby-Doo thing, like we’re a band going around solving mysteries.
After their pitch, I realized it could be anything we’d want it to be, we can just be the characters in it. It doesn’t have to be anything about music. So I pitched a story back to them, which ended up being the plot of the comic. We are technicians traveling to a big luxury resort space station…obviously, it’s taking place in the future. We’re on this big starliner that’s going to this big space resort to go work, and on our departure, Earth is seemingly destroyed behind us as we take off. So, essentially, humanity has to start over again and turn this resort into a civilization. The story goes from there.
It was super fun. We worked on it for almost half a year, as far as the script goes, finalizing art, things like that. The guidance of Nathan [Yocum] from Sumerian with the storyline, his artist, Giusi [Lo Piccolo], who did all the art – the way they brought the story to life was so much fun. It was so rad to do something that has kind of been a lifelong goal of mine. I was very happy to be a part of it and very thankful that they helped take that vision and turn it into a reality.
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All five members of the band are characters in it?
Six actually! We have Stephen and Matty. It’s kind of fun seeing artistic representations of each member of the band.
The guys just kind of let me run with it. Every time I would show them a little piece of what was coming in, everybody was just very supportive and extremely excited with what was happening. They kind of let me just work with Nathan and do my thing, and I let Nathan do his thing, and we just wanted to represent the band as they are. One thing that was important to me was to make sure that the way the characters were talking was close to the way guys would say things in real life. I wanted Matty’s lines to sound like something he’d say, I wanted Christian [McAlhaney]’s words he used to be words or phrases he’d actually use. It was important to me that, if we were going to do this I didn’t want it to be generic or plug-and-play. I want personalities that exist in us in real life to be a part of this.
Anberlin’s Deon Rexroat. // photo credit Jacob Moniz
It feels like, post-reunion, the band has been really out there trying stuff. Lockdown Livestreams, two EPs/LP, new songs with Matty, this novel, guitar and bass tutorials on YouTube. How often are you guys thinking of new ways to surprise and adapt to your fans?
It’s a totally different world than when we started with this band. Unfortunately, you can’t just write songs and sell albums anymore; it doesn’t work that way in the digital age. It’s kind of about becoming creative with your outlets and keeping fans engaged, apart from just going out on tour and playing shows. The way we look at it, as far as the graphic novel, for example, is that it’s a piece of merch. KISS has been doing this since the ‘70s. Making merchandise that isn’t necessarily music-related, but it’s something the band created. All these things we’re doing are kind of outlets for the band to show different sides of us creatively and artistically.
The things that make us a band and make us write the songs comes from the artistic energy inside of us, but it doesn’t stop with music. Nathan [Young], our drummer, is an insanely talented artist and photographer. He’s kind of the art director of the band, the vision of creativity behind our band. All these things we’re doing are all just about engagement. The livestreams were a necessity really, everything was shut down. We couldn’t go out on tour. We hopped on the livestream thing very early. I saw the Dropkick Murphys do one and I immediately called our manager and said “we have to do this.”
We had just gotten back together and done our first tour in 2019 since 2014, then the world shut down and completely killed that momentum. We didn’t want to just sit around for an entire year and hope that people knew and remembered that we were back together. It was all in the name of engagement, but we got to flex a lot of creativity with those livestreams. Nathan was the visionary behind each one, he would come up with a script or theme for each stream. I think that’s kind of been our mantra with everything we’ve been doing, from guitar tutorials, books for our music, the graphic novel, the livestreams. We want to keep it interesting for our fans, we don’t want to just do the same thing over and over again. It takes a lot less work to just go out there and tour and play shows, but it doesn’t really fulfill us creatively to only do that.
Talk about the time between November 2014 to October 2018 when Anberlin was dissolved. What did you do during that time and how were you able to adapt to a life without Anberlin? Was music still a part of it?
I was still playing music the whole time. I was doing it more and more casually. After 12 years of essentially non-stop professional playing, I think I lost my desire to grow as a musician a little bit. The focus was just always the next tour or the next album. I would try to keep myself sharp and learn new things as a bass player going into each album. New techniques or new influences that would help me write better for the songs that were being recorded. One of the reasons we stopped was because it almost just felt purely like a job. There was a certain amount of enjoyment that was lacking towards the end.
So after we played that final show in 2014, I started just going around and playing at bars around my city. I was learning old blues and 70’s rock songs, things like that. Jamming with these different guitarists. My brother, who is a drummer, plays regularly with a lot of musicians around town, so I would just hop in and play with these guys. I learned a lot by doing that, but it also kind of got me back to my basics of why I loved playing music in the first place. I grew up on blues and classic rock songs so that helped me connect with the thing that made me love music. So I was playing music a lot during those four-and-a-half to five years. Christian and I have a side project that we are sparsely active with called Loose Talk and we were playing shows as that band here and there. I started working on a different side of the music industry. I was working for a merch company representing different clients and record labels, getting merchandise made for online stores or tours. It was interesting learning a different side of the industry and talking to different managers and bands.
In that time, too, I had my first kid, which was awesome. It would have been tougher had we been touring that whole time to have my first child, but I felt really blessed that I was able to spend a lot of time with her in those first few years she was alive because we weren’t touring as heavy, or at all.
You guys didn’t play Kansas City during your final tour, which made me very upset, but you’ve come here four times in the last year with Matty, and had one at The Truman in 2019 with Stephen. You did play Warped Tour in ’14 right before your final tour. What are your thoughts on its resurgence?
We are playing the Long Beach and Orlando dates at Warped Tour this year. Super excited about it. We’re a little over a month away from the Long Beach date. I tuned into the livestream a little bit last weekend just to check out the D.C. date and it looked like it was fantastic, just a sea of people enjoying this music.
Anberlin’s Deon Rexroat. // photo credit Jacob Moniz
They’re livestreaming that?
Yeah! So you watch it on Amazon Video, but it was a one-and-a-half to two hour delay. They also had two different channels on Twitch, which were pretty much in real time. When Memphis May Fire played last weekend I wanted to see their set, obviously, with Matty being in the band now. It was rad, I watched the whole thing with my girls. They wanted to watch Mr. Matty sing with another band, it was funny. I’m excited about it. It looks like it’s going to be a really good time, and we had a lot of friends there last weekend who said it was a blast.
We’re doing the side shows for both dates, as well. That’s going to be cool, to play more than just the 30-minute set at Warped. We’re going to be playing a venue show attached to Warped, too. Really excited about it.
What does the future hold for you guys? Is that something you are actively planning and thinking about? A new LP down the line? Are you going to continue working with Matty?
We are actually actively working on a new album right now. We’ve got nine songs written. Matty’s going to be writing and singing on the album. We’re trying to get into the studio later this summer to get that done so we can hopefully get it out the first part of next year. We’re going full force. The second leg of our Never Take Friendship Personal 20th Anniversary tour starts right after Warped Tour ends next month. Obviously we have Kansas City this weekend for Phase Fest, and a few more festivals and international tours for the rest of the year. Next year, we’re just going to keep it going. We’re looking to co-headline with a few different options. We want to be on tour with friends at this point, you know? We want to get on tour with people we don’t get to see often because we all have bands. So we’re looking to co-bill with some really good friends next year, go out and have a blast and enjoy the road together.
Will the new LP be on the same record label?
That’s the plan for right now. We’ve been very happy with Equal Vision, they’ve treated us great. They’re really great to work with. It’s a really cool moment for me, personally, to be on Equal Vision, growing up listening to bands like BoySetsFire and Saves the Day. It’s really cool to be on that label. We’re label mates with Hot Water Music, which is incredible. Another Florida band but I’ve been a fan of theirs since their first album. It’s cool to not only be on a label I grew up listening to records from, but also to be on the label with a band I grew up idolizing.
They’re also great people. They’ve been really good with the EPs and LP that we’ve put out. And the re-record of Never Take that we did with Matty. That’s the plan right now, to stick with Equal Vision and keep it rolling.
Are there long-term plans with Stephen? I noticed he isn’t out of music totally, he’s got a record coming out next month.
He’s still writing music, he’s still singing and recording. Stephen mainly didn’t want to tour anymore. That was really what it came down to. He’s got so much going on, I mean he’s got a daughter that turned 13 this year. He’s got a lot on his plate. He doesn’t want to be on the road right now. He pops in here and there and does songs with us at shows if we’re playing at a hometown show. Obviously, we’re still family, still tight. We are continuing to tour and it’s not something he wants to engage in at the moment.
I think I already know the answer to this, but I’d be remiss not to ask – will Stephen be making a cameo appearance on Friday?
That would be cool, but I think he is actually out of the country at the moment on a family vacation, so he will be very far away. I’ll put it this way: if he did make a cameo, that’s going to be an expensive plane ticket for him to get there.
I’m sure you guys have heard this before, but I think you’re one of the only, if not the only, rock band from the 21st century to go 7-for-7 before you broke up. Was this something you found intimidating about coming back? Obviously you guys aren’t afraid of changing things up.
When we went into writing Lowborn, knowing that it was going to be our final album, it was intimidating. There were a lot of internal conversations about what it should sound like. At first, we didn’t want to do a typical Anberlin album, or do this and that. When we took that pressure off ourselves we ended up writing what became Lowborn. We were very happy with the way that album turned out and the reception that it received.
When we came back in 2018 and first started talking about playing again, we had no intention of writing any music. It was something that just happened organically. When we did start writing new stuff towards the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, it was kind of the same thing. We said “we can’t sound too Anberlin” and “we’ve got to really grow.” And again, we just looked at ourselves in the mirror and said, “What are you doing? Quit trying to put yourself in a box creatively.” Our mantra has just become “let’s just try it and see what happens.” We’re not afraid if something sounds like Anberlin because we are Anberlin. Being afraid to be who you are or dance with the one who brought you is kind of a pitfall for a lot of artists. When you try to sound a certain way it can come off very contrived and dishonest. We’ve just been not afraid to experiment but not afraid to be ourselves. That’s essentially the way we approach all of our new music these days.
What was the band’s process like to transition away from Aaron Sprinkle again for the EPs? What were you looking for exactly? Stuff like “Circles” and “Two Graves” were not things I think people envisioned with an Anberlin return, and they showcase your personal abilities really well.
We had done so much with Aaron that he was almost like a member of the band towards the end of our tenure with him. We really wanted to shake things up as far as having fresh ideas come in, things like that. Not to say that Aaron wouldn’t have been spectacular in the role of producer for the EPs and the new music. We’ve since talked about maybe going back and doing some work with him in the future. Being that we had broken up and come back, we did want to try and mix it up creatively in that respect, as far as who was going to produce and engineer.
We kind of took on the role of producing it ourselves and just working with friends. Our friends Tim [McTague] from Underoath and our friend JJ were pretty instrumental on the music side of the production and engineering for the EPs. Our buddy Chad was the vocal producer. He would come in and just work exclusively with Stephen on the vocals. That’s essentially how we did things on Lowborn. We worked with Matt Goldman on drums, Aaron Marsh from Copeland on guitars and bass, and Stephen recorded all his vocals with Aaron Sprinkle.
Working with one person creatively rather than letting ourselves work with multiple creatives seemed a little confining. We’ve been doing this long enough that we’ve trusted ourselves to take on that production role on our side. It was just a long arc of self-discovery and figuring out what we want to do. Like I said, our motto is “let’s try it and see what happens.” What would happen if we just recorded all this at home? Didn’t go to a studio, didn’t go work with a producer somewhere. We’ve been pretty excited with the way everything turned out and the way fans have reacted to it. We’re going to stick with that for now and see where it goes.
I read that “Dissenter” was the final song you guys recorded for Lowborn. Did leaving it with that one play a role in the direction you guys wanted to go for the EPs? Obviously, there are slower cuts, which I believe were originally Anchor & Braille tracks, but the rockers feel like natural transitions from “Dissenter.”
Like I said, we’re not afraid to experiment. A song like “Seven” for example – the first time I heard it it didn’t sound like us, but it kind of did, so let’s do it. We’ve always had those elements to our songs since the first album, when you listen to ‘Change the World’ or ‘Glass to the Arson.’ It didn’t feel like we were trying to be a heavy band, it just felt pretty natural that we would try something like that.
Having Matty come in on vocals with his ability to scream the way that he does, it shaped it as a very different song, as well. Vocals, lyrics, everything for that song was fully written before Matty even came into the picture. A lot of people are saying Matty is trying to change the band into a metalcore band, but really Matty is back there trying to get us to write “Time and Confusion: Part 2.” He wants the Anberlin that he fell in love with, he wants the more pop-punk vibe that we’ve had in our repertoire for years. “Seven” was literally an experiment; we wanted to try it. In all honesty, too, just the way that group of songs came together was over such a long period of time. They came together one by one, so that’s why it’s a pretty eclectic mix musically.
We actually wrote “Banshee” in the green room at the studio where we were doing the livestreams. We would have these long days of production rehearsals, setting up, a lot of “hurry up and wait” while our crew and the film crew would get everything set up. There was always a guitar around and Christian, Joey [Milligan] and Stephen were just sitting back there and started playing around with the song and it ended up becoming what you hear. That goes all the way back to 2020. Over the course of four years, these songs took shape and came together and finally got fully released on the two EPs.
You mentioned a couple Blueprints for the Black Market tracks. Do you ever go back and listen to it at all?
On this past tour back in March, we were sitting on the bus one day and somebody put on a track from Blueprints and we just went down a rabbit hole and listened to the entire album. Obviously, we’ve grown and changed a lot as a band since we wrote and recorded that album. When we started writing those songs we were 21 years old. Things have changed a lot for us, as far as artists go. It’s an album we’re very proud of. It was our first foray into being Anberlin. It was our debut, it was what we were presenting to the world, saying “this is who we are and what we sound like.”
In all honesty, one of the things we were talking about was, for that being our first album, it sounds really good. We got tones and everything that we’re still proud of to this day. A lot of times, artists look back at their first or second albums and they go “Ooh, man. My opinion of what guitar tones or snare sounded good was terrible back then.” With the guidance of Aaron Sprinkle, we made a really good sounding album sonically.
Are there a pool of songs that you guys have recorded that Matty can’t do because of limitations? It feels like his range could work with everything. Was “High Stakes” a result of that or just something you happened upon when going back to some old Never Take demos?
Joey has this cache of old demos that we never used. In the past, if Stephen didn’t hear something or something didn’t jump out at him we didn’t record the songs. We were trying to work purely off artistic inspiration. There was this one song that, when Joey gave Matty the Dropbox with 100 or something demos, just struck a chord. One day we get a message from Matty and it’s just a file that says “High Stakes.” The moment I played it I thought it was awesome. For me, it was almost like hearing Anberlin for the first time again. It was a throwback to what we were doing back in 2004 and 2005, as far as our writing goes, and also just hearing a different vocal style over that was incredibly cool.
Anberlin’s Deon Rexroat. // photo credit Jacob Moniz
Music has definitely changed from when I was a kid. EPs felt like “we have a few tracks but not a large collection yet, let’s release it”, but now it feels like maxing the number of releases is a part of many groups. Is the three release, slow-drip pattern the long-term plan for the band?
We want to go back to doing a full album, drop it all at once. We tried the model with the EPs and it worked for that time, but I don’t know if we want to continue that. I feel like dropping nine to 10 songs on somebody all at once, and having that excitement as a listener. If a band that I like puts out a new single and it lets me know there’s a new album coming, then the day the album comes out I have been sitting with the single for a couple months, then get nine new songs all at once. There’s intention behind it. We want to be very intentional about the next album and give fans that feeling that it’s something that we feel when artists that we like put out full new albums. You sit there and just dive into the album and listen to it from beginning to end. You get all this new material that you’ve obviously never heard before.
That feeling is rad and something you don’t really get with four songs on an EP, then six months later getting another four songs, then two new songs to go with these eight songs that already got released. The slow drip worked for what we did already, but we’re ready to really bombard people and give them nine to 10 new songs right out of the gate.
I end all my interviews by asking an artist what the best thing they’ve listened to lately is. It can be something that just came out or something that was released all the way back in the ‘60s.
The Hives have a new single called “Paint a Picture” and it’s a ripper of a song. I saw them play at Coachella in 2012 and they were hands-down top-five. It was one of the best performances of the whole festival. It just came out yesterday [June 17]. I think that they’re a really interesting band because they have a very particular, unique sound that I think only they can pull off. The vocals, the guitar tones, everything is very much their identity. I was stoked to see that drop. I was actually just thinking that nothing has really come out lately that’s really grabbed me. Stuff has come out here and there and I’ll get into it for a little bit, but it’s rad when a band that you’re listening to and are already a fan of drops a banger of a track.
Anberlin plays at Not Just a Phase Fest at Legends Field on Friday, June 20, with Taking Back Sunday, New Found Glory, Hawthorne Heights and Hoobastank. Details on that show here.
