Skylar Sarkis (Growing Stone/Taking Meds) - Sound In The Signals Interview

I recently had the chance to interview Skylar Sarkis of Growing Stone and Taking Meds. We talk about both projects, his podcast, as well as his previous band Such Gold.







First, thanks for the interview
No problem, it’s a pleasure.

For those unfamiliar you used to be in Such Gold. Can you tell me  a little about your time in the band, why you decided to move on, and how you formed Taking Meds?

I joined in the spring of 2011 and played with them for about two and a half years. It was by far the most exciting time in my life; getting to travel all over the US and abroad and play shows every night. I miss it a lot. I guess I decided to leave because I never thought I was best at writing that sort of music so I started to question my own role in the band. I didn’t like what I was contributing and I wanted to make other shit. There’s kind of an expectation when you’re a certain type of band that you’re going to make a certain kind of record, and I guess I just didn’t want to deal with that. We pretty much started Taking Meds while we were on tour in 2012 because we wanted something to do with Ben’s guitar parts that didn’t work for Such Gold. Then we finished the demo over Christmas break and released it while we were in Europe that winter. So Taking Meds was formed while I was still in Such Gold with Ben and Jon, who are still in both bands.


Taking Meds has been playing some new songs live this year. As far as new releases what all is in the works for the group?

Those songs are from a full length that’s going to be released through Broken World Media. We’ve hit a ton of road blocks trying to release it but, so far as I know, it’s at a pressing plant right now and we’ll be able to announce a release date relatively soon.

You are also doing a project called Growing Stone and you just released a new EP for that project. What was the recording process like for the project and how long did you work on it?

Well, basically I had most of those songs on a hard drive while I was in Such Gold. After I left the band, I moved to NYC and lived with Jon (from SG) in his studio in Bushwick for a little while. That’s where I finished writing the record and started recording it. We finished three songs earlier so I released a demo last year, and then added the other three songs and released them this year. So it was pretty much a two year process, although that’s just because we kept leaving it and coming back to it. Once I decided to make it an actual project and give it a name, we started to work faster. I definitely plan on having another release either late this year or in 2017.

I really like the song "Fly Blood And Lilacs". Can you tell me a little about the song writing process for that song in particular?

Thanks. I wrote that song about a really bad car accident that I was in and recorded it while I was convalescing from the accident at my mother’s house over the summer of 2012. Such Gold was on tour so I was just really bored and had lots of time to write. We used some of the original stems, so if you listen at the beginning you can hear the crickets outside my bedroom window. That’s one of my favorite parts about that song.



You also have a podcast. For those who haven't checked it out yet can you tell me a little about it and what inspired you to start a podcast?

That podcast is one of the first efforts that I’ve made with my friend Nate (who I call Shades) to make some kind of comedy content. We had a tumblr called Tinderboyz that was pretty funny but we got tired of doing. After that, we tried sketch writing and video editing and a bunch of other shit before we eventually settled on doing this mock-relationship podcast. Basically we find people on Craigslist who are super attention-hungry… like people who want to be on reality shows or Judge Joe Mathis or some shit like that. Then we just have them on and get into these characters that we pretty much always play around each other for a laugh. Then we just improv with the Craigslist people and talk about their relationships and embellish our characters. It’s really fun. Oh, and it’s called Love Corner, you can find it on Soundcloud.



I guess that about wraps it up. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else you would like to add?

Just that I’ve been working with a collective of musicians in New York called Odd Gift Records, check us out at oddgiftrecords.com