Ian MacDougall (Nice Surprise – guitar/vocals/bass)
SPB: Is Nice Surprise primarily a two-person project? What is the origin story?
MacDougall: Nice Surprise is myself, Ian MacDougall on Vocals/Guitar/Bass and Stuart Sikes doing the recording and drums. It was pretty much born out of quarantine boredom and our love of fuzzed out punk/garage music. I’ve recorded and interned in the studio with Stuart Sikes (Grammy award winning! producer of bands such as Cat Power, The Walkmen, White Stripes, Loretta Lynn, Rocket From the Crypt, as well as my bands the Riverboat Gamblers and Broken Gold) We’ve worked on several projects together and hang out quite a bit outside of toiling on music things. After last year was basically put on halt for both of us work-wise -- me touring with my other band Band of Horses and his recording schedule -- He hit me up one day asking if I had any songs laying around that we could put down to check out the drum sounds in a new studio space he built out at his house. I had quite a few that I’ve accumulated over the years and we landed on the two that became this first 7”. I emailed him some guitar and bass tracks, he laid down the drums and then I re-recorded everything and sang on it and there you go! We were really stoked with how it turned out and figured we’d share it with the world.
Going forward we plan on throwing some more things together and just releasing short run 7” EPs. It’s low pressure and super fun to work with Stuart in a different configuration. Usually he’s behind the board making things sound good but now he’s behind the kit as well. I’m really excited about what we could put together going forward. Its super fun to bash away without overthinking every little detail and just have a good time with playing songs.
You can check out our first 2 song 7” here.
