Street: Who came up with the band name? Mark Kane: Uh, I don’t want my mom to know I came up with the band name. But we were all in Hill eating lunch just throwing around names. We were almost Dead City Kicks. Thomas Krane: I wanted girls to wear shirts that said, “I heart DCK.” Aaron Kirkbride: Then for our first show at Mar Bar we picked one name with no intention of keeping it, and they actually made promotional materials, and we told people about it and they came, and after that, it wasn’t like we decided it was the greatest band name, but… Riley McCluskey: It shows us.
Street: What does it mean to you? RM: I hate it. It means we were idiots when we were freshmen. TK: I like it because it shows we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Street: Do you put Slow Dance Chubby on resumes? RM: “SDC” AK: If they ask you say, “I’ll tell you what it means, but then you have to give me the job.” TK: I always told them Slow Dance Chubby. I thought it was funny. MK: I don’t have enough interviews for it to matter.
Street: What is your role on campus? AK: Melting faces. RM: Frat party entertainment. TK: Flagship band. RM: Facebook spammers. Luben Li: That about sums it up.
Street: Who is the band diva? Emily Orrson: Riley is a little prince. MK: No one is like, “I need my honey tea or I can’t go on!” EO: That sounds like Riley to me. RM: I actually said that exact line yesterday.
Street: If you were shipwrecked on an island, who would you eat first because their instrument is musically unnecessary? TK: Well the bass, because Riley can just play it! MK: Yeah, I went abroad for six months and nobody noticed.
Street: If your band was a reality show, which would it be? MK: I think of myself as something of a Kim. RM: I definitely see Luben as a Khloe. LL: No, I am Lamar.
Street: Can you tell us about the newest member of Slow Dance Chubby? MK: Last year, Emily’s previous band, Red Giants, “disbanded” — they all graduated — and we have keys now so we can play a ton more songs. RM: We recorded this EP this summer and put a lot of keyboards on it just because we had time to. Then we realized we couldn’t really play any of the songs because we didn’t have a keyboard player. So it made sense for her to join.
Street: Is Emily the band’s Yoko Ono? Everyone: Yes.
Street: What are your fans called? AK: Chubby Chasers. They chase the chub.
Street: Tell us about the new album. RM: We recorded with this guy named Raymond Richards who recorded the Local Natives album that I think we’re all pretty big fans of. EO: So we can sue him if we’re not as successful! RM: It’s awesome because we were working with this really legit producer. TK: We only found out about him because we loved that album so much and so we were just like, what if we hit him up? “We really want to do an album with you. 'Gorilla Manor' is awesome.” And he was down. He really worked with us. EO: Dreams become reality.
Street: You guys have a new EP coming out, right? RM: The EP is called "Sinkhole" and it turned out great. We are releasing it November 5th on iTunes and Spotify.
Street: There are two types of people at Penn… EO: Dominant and diminished.
Street: What are you going to miss most about Penn? RM: Being in Slow Dance Chubby. TK: Definitely. MK: Even if we continue to play music, the crowds won’t be as drunk and, you know, into it. EO: Yeah, people won’t be forced to listen to us.
Check out "The Comedown," the first track from their upcoming EP, Sinkhole.
