Beauty School Dropout has packed more into its first five years than most bands do in their entire careers. Championed by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, the trio—lead singer Cole “Colie” Hutzler, bassist Brent “Beepus” Burdett, and producer/guitarist Bardo Novotny—has performed at Madison Square Garden and Lollapalooza, and worked with a Grammy Award-nominated producer on their upcoming full-length debut album, Where Did All The Butterflies Go?
As they prepare to rock Chicago audiences with a gig at the Vic Theater on July 12 during the Idobi Radio Summer School tour, I sat down with the band for a rambunctious conversation about moments on previous tours that were memorable for all the wrong reasons, their unfiltered thoughts on deep dish pizza, and put their beauty school bona fides to the test.
First things first, I just want to say “Fever” is a terrific song. The vibe I'm getting is like Led Zeppelin meets Cheap Trick meets Fall Out Boy.
COLE “COLIE” HUTZLER: I love it.
How did that song come about?
COLIE: We were kind of searching for a North Star when we started this album, just in terms of where we wanted the sound to go. We had started writing, but we hadn't found a definitive direction. And there was a week when we were up in Northern California, and it just came. There wasn't really anything out of the ordinary. We were just writing like we usually do, and once the vibe got kicking, we put on Forza actually, because we were just like, ‘Okay, we want this album to be fast and driving and equal parts sexy as it is energetic and full of adrenaline,’ and from there, it just kind of all came together. That became the North Star for the rest of the album. I mean, as soon as that song was written, we were like, ‘Oh, okay, this is it.’
BRENT “BEEPUS” BURDETT: To add to that too, the night before we wrote that song, we watched Meet Me in the Bathroom, the documentary about the New York music scene when the Strokes were coming up and we were just inspired to the nines.
BARDO NOVOTNY: One of the lyrics actually is, “Meet me in the bathroom.” That was pulled from the documentary.
Colie, you mentioned that the band has a typical songwriting process. Walk me through how it goes.
COLIE: Man, usually someone picks up the guitar and we all start saying yes until we have something good enough to record. Then we're like, ‘Alright, cool.’ I wish it was a little bit more interesting than that, but we kind of do this every day, and that's it. Someone plays three chords, and someone else is like, ‘That's either really cool,’ or ‘That is not it.’
BARDO: I think to demystify it for people that don't write songs every day, the songwriting process for us—and a lot of other people—is a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall until you see what sticks. It really is that thing of, you don't know what you're making, because you are pulling just sound waves out of the ether and making something that feels good. It really is the closest thing I could think to magic in real life. You're creating a feeling out of just invisible waves.
The discovery of it is really fun, you know? I think we were constantly inspired by other artists and references, and we always like to bring something to the table. It may be a poem that we see, or a movie we watch, or a video game trailer, or whatever, another song we hear. And it's just awesome for us to hear that and be like, ‘How can we chase that?’ And we all have our own influences that we grew up on, subconsciously, that get thrown in the pot, and it's this giant pot of soup of just trying things.
You collaborated with outside co-writers on some of your songs. How does that change the dynamic?
BEEPUS: For this upcoming record, we wanted to bring in a lot of friends. A lot of the co-writes are just people that we like as humans. That's important to us. What's the point of making music if you can't make it with your friends? So we just brought in auxiliary friends to come help us create the vibe. And I think that's also what made this album extra special, the energy going into every day was, ‘Let's just make something sick with our friends.’
This is your fourth time in Chicago—any special memories of those previous trips here?
BARDO: We've had only good shows in Chicago. Lollapalooza. We've gotten to play the biggest arena in the United States twice, United Center.
COLIE: We got to take a tour of the Bulls’ locker room.
BARDO: That was sick.
COLIE: That was really cool.
BARDO: We’ve played Subterranean twice now.
COLIE: We did the Beat Kitchen.
BARDO: Fun fact, Chicago has been, I think, since the dawn of the band, weirdly enough, the number one market for us. It was always number one until we went to London for the first time, and then immediately London surpassed it, but I think Chicago's still up there in the top three.
As long as we’re taking the North American crown, I think we can be proud of that.
BARDO: Chicago’s rad. We love Chicago. Beautiful city, amazing history, really cool.
BEEPUS: I think Chicago has the best of everything, some of the best thrifting, food, top five festival for me, for sure. Lollapalooza’s insane.
COLIE: Shoutout, Layers Chicago. It's a thrift store over by Subterranean. They have the best thrift that I've found on tour ever.
Did you get a chance to try some of Chicago’s culinary staples?
COLIE: These boys love deep dish pizza.
BEEPUS: Oh no, should I roast myself?
COLIE: Yeah, you gotta roast yourself.
BEEPUS: The first time we were ever in Chicago playing Beat Kitchen, we just had deep dish pizza. It was the first time for me, and it wasn't the best place, I think, in Chicago, to get deep dish. So I walk on stage and go, “Deep dish pizza sucks,” just to see what the reaction was. And I got booed. I learned my lesson, but everyone was pissed. It was awesome.
BARDO: I didn't expect them to be pissed. I thought it was gonna be this, ‘Oh yeah, it's a tourist trap’ kind of thing. Like, ‘Yeah, look, it kind of sucks,’ but no, apparently they really feel strong about deep dish pizza.
BEEPUS: I love Chicago dogs. I think we just had a bad representation of deep dish at the time. I'll try it again.
BARDO: We went to one…it started with an M.
BEEPUS: Malnati’s.
Lou Malnati’s.
BARDO: It's weird, because it was recommended to us, but its low-key was super-touristy. It’s like I was walking into Chuck E Cheese. I've had deep dish multiple times. I'm still waiting for it to amaze me.
BEEPUS: I will say, we love everything else in Chicago. (Laughs)
BARDO: Everything else is amazing. Deep dish, the jury is still out. We were open to be amazed.
The fact that Chicago is still one of your top markets after you went on stage saying that deep dish sucks is really a testament to your talent.
BARDO: We never got invited back to Beat Kitchen. We're banned.
The second half of this year, you’re playing Warped Tour, the Idobi Radio Summer School tour, dates with Blink 182 and Alkaline Trio…how are you mentally preparing for the next few months?
COLIE: I feel like we've been mentally preparing this whole last year. Now we're just ready to hit the road. We've been home for a long time, and we struggle to be—I don't want to say stagnant, because we're definitely busy and doing stuff. But I think there's a certain level of displacement that comes with being on the road that just keeps you in a forward-moving inertia.
BEEPUS: Yeah, we're just excited to play shows every night again. That is why we do this at the end of the day. Everything else, for me at least, is to play shows and go on tour. So now that our year is stocked, I'm ready to thrive and go camping for six months. It does feel like work when you're like, ‘Alright, we have one day to drive 14 hours.’
BARDO: But there’s also the adventure of it. We always say we're like pirates.
BEEPUS: Cowboy space pirates, actually.
We all know the story about the Van Halen rider with the brown M&M's (which has a practical reason behind it). If each of you could make one bizarre request on your tour rider, what would it be?
BEEPUS: I would do something similar and do like Lucky Charms, marshmallows only.
COLIE: Orange juice with no pulp.
BEEPUS: But it's strained by them.
COLIE: We’ll have them remove the pulp
BARDO: A massage therapist.
Awesome. Those all seem pretty reasonable to me. I mean, straining the pulp—
BARDO: A massage therapist seems reasonable? (Laughs) That seems expensive. I'm excited for the day we can have a massage therapist on the road with us. Actually, I don't know that sounds a little weird, I don’t want that.
COLIE: A physical therapist maybe. I get rocked after the shows. If I could have someone who could actually help me rehab, that would be super-nice.
Five years in, what is the biggest Spinal Tap moment your band has ever experienced?
COLIE: Oh my God. There's so many.
BEEPUS: Yeah, what's our getting stuck in an egg story?
COLIE: I feel like one of them has to be the Madison Square Garden story.
BARDO: Oh, for sure.
COLIE: That was definitely up there. I don't know if you're familiar with the union policy at any of these arenas, but you're not allowed to actually load your own gear in.
BARDO: You’re not allowed to touch your own gear. Not even load. If you touch your gear and they catch you touching your gear, they can find you upwards of $100,000 because it's a union rule.
COLIE: It's absolutely absurd. We were playing MTV Fresh Out the same day, and we're on a pretty tight schedule, so we got there early to drop our gear off, and stagehands came out to help us unload—not even, they just do the unloading. And we're like, ‘Ok, we'll be back at this time.’
We get back an hour before it's time to build, probably 30 minutes before we're going to go on stage, because they also told us we weren't gonna have a proper sound check that day. But 30 minutes before we're supposed to go on stage, we're getting ready to build the rig and do the whole setup, and nobody knows where our gear is. It got lost. It was lost just somewhere in the arena of Madison Square Garden. And we're all like, ‘Oh…my…what?’ And they're looking at us like, ‘Amateurs.’
BEEPUS: And they were on lunch break. Let me just add that they're not allowed to touch anything while they're on lunch break too. So no one will help us.
COLIE: It was just bureaucratic failure across the board, and we were struggling, trying to figure out what to do. And 7:08 rolls around, we get the text, they found it and they have a tractor coming.
BARDO: It was stuck under some semi-truck or something. Keep in mind, our gear, they think it's pretty recognizable. But in an arena, in a sea full of just black boxes, they're like, ‘What does your gear look like?’ ‘Well, it’s black, like every other box in here.’
BEEPUS: Also, Bardo, didn't you have food poisoning?
BARDO: That was the next night. I got food poisoning at that show.
BEEPUS: Don't eat the lobster ravioli at MSG. To add the end of that, we had ten minutes from finding our gear, to build it, to actually be on stage playing the set. So in between us crying because we're so stoked that we're about to play MSG for the first time, building our stuff and then just playing, we did it. There was no other option but to succeed. But, yeah, stress, roller coaster of emotions, very Spinal Tap, and Bardo getting sick from lobster ravioli. I think that really nails it.
BARDO: I had nothing left in my body to get out. That was the worst food poisoning of my entire life. Literally, a nurse had to come and give me an IV. It was terrible. We had a show the next night, and we put a trash can on stage, just in case.
As much as I’d love to continue diving into that, I want to talk about your full-length debut album coming out this year. You wrote almost 100 songs for it. What was the deciding factor in narrowing it down to an album?
BEEPUS: I think that it was just really a process of elimination of what didn't belong. When we were talking, it was easiest to see what didn't fit on the album. The first nine songs we all knew, they were singing to us, like, ‘Pick me. This is the song.’ And we all agreed. Towards the end, we were choosing the last three, and Neal Avron, who we did the album with, was a huge help. Since he's done so many incredible albums, I think we really leaned in on him to help us lock in what completes the album.
We just had so many songs that we'd written for it, everyone had their final favorites, and we just wanted someone that's GOATed in the space of making albums to help us complete our vision. The last 10% is always the hardest.
Any plans for the remaining 80-something songs in the future?
BARDO: We delete them. (Laughs) There are some that I think we really still love, that maybe could see the light of day for the next project. We backlog things or pitch them to other people, or they just live in the archives for our girlfriends to hear.
And show up on the anniversary box set in a couple decades.
COLIE: I just saw, I don't know if this was a meme or not, but I just saw a thing that was like, Metallica is apparently dropping like, 400 songs that they haven’t released yet.
Yep, it's a 15-disc box set for an album that they released in the '90s.
BARDO: The thing that no one asked for, everyone gets. (Laughs) Although, if you're a Metallica fan, that's really cool. I would love to do something like that. They have the type of fanbase where you could do something like that. And that actually would be a really cool thing to get. If Green Day released a 400-song box of unreleased demos, I would buy that. Totally. A lot of them are probably bad, but maybe there's some bangers, you know what I mean?
COLIE: Just take a year of not doing anything but listening to it. That's my retirement plan.
BARDO: How would you even find the time for that? You’d have to pay me.
COLIE: We're taking notes, though, that's our next move. We're gonna drop a 400-song box set.
I’m here for it. You've described yourselves as creative soulmates. What is the key element that makes Beauty School Dropout more than the sum of its parts?
BARDO: Our differences actually make us what we are. I think that's our biggest strong suit. We all come from very different backgrounds. We had some Venn diagram overlap of things we were inspired by growing up, but also very different. Cole is from way more of the hardcore scene. Beebus loves the pop punk era. I was way more into indie, alt rock, and a lot of electronic stuff, and we kind of met in the middle with a lot of our differences, and that makes our sound the unique thing that it is, versus, if I was just making all the music, it would sound, trust me, so much different. But it inevitably has to change because we're compromising. And I think that's that weird superpower
COLIE: I think this deep into this band, like we've been together for five years now, there's a lot of trust now. We've been through so much together that there's just like a mutual respect across the board that we are excited to just go hang out and make music, because there's no pressure to get your idea to win anymore.
I want to close this conversation with a little pop quiz. I took some questions from an actual cosmetology school practice test and I wanted to see how well you would have done if you’d actually gone to beauty school.
Question 1: In which part of the hair is chemical wave solution absorbed fastest?
- At the scalp
- Where hair density is greatest
- At crown
- Where hair porosity is greatest
COLIE: A.
BEEPUS: I'm going D.
BARDO: I think the last thing you said, the porous.
You got it, it’s D! Next question: To remove lightener, hair should be rinsed in water that is:
- Very hot
- Hot
- Tepid
- Cold
BEEPUS: Cold.
COLIE: Cold.
BARDO: I'm gonna say cold.
It's tepid.
BARDO: Dammit! I wanted to pick that one because I like the word.
COLIE: Tepid, is that like mid?
BARDO: Yeah. Timid water, water's a little shy.
COLIE: I'm gonna start using that as my new word for mid. Tepid.
The correct way to test the color of a foundation is to blend some of it on the client's:
- Jawline
- Earlobe
- Nose
- Cheek
COLIE: D.
BARDO: I’d say earlobe.
COLIE: D, right? Because foundation is usually like…
BARDO: But to test it?
BEEPUS: I would do the jawline.
BARDO: I’m gonna go with either jawline or earlobe. Because you're testing it, you just want to see how it looks.
COLIE: Oh, maybe.
BARDO: I like earlobe.
BEEPUS: I like Bardo’s logic.
BARDO: Logically, if we had to do this, like, test this out, I'm gonna test out your earlobe.
BEEPUS: I've just never had to test it on my earlobe before. All right, let's go earlobe.
You should’ve stuck with jawline.
BEEPUS: Fuck! I'm at Sephora way more often than you guys.
COLIE: I honestly could not imagine why it would be jawline.
BARDO: That’s not testing, that's committing to putting it on your face.
Last question: A client who has athlete's foot requests a pedicure. What should you do?
- Use strict sanitary precautions to avoid spreading the infection
- Treat the client with medicated powder and then give the pedicure
- Give the pedicure as requested
- Refer the client to a doctor for treatment
BARDO: Or E, just say fuck no.
Beauty School Dropout plays at The Vic Theater (3145 N Sheffield Ave,) on Saturday, July 12 (doors open at 4pm, show starts at 5pm). Tickets ($47.88) are on sale now.
