Mo Lowda & the Humble has been a staple in Philly’s alt rock scene for years, and we learned that they’re not using this quarantine as an excuse to slow down. With various projects that have been on the backburner for a little while, they’re using the free time to their advantage and jumping back into the home studio. We learned how exactly they feel about dating other musicians and what they can’t wait to do when they all see each other again all while very narrowly avoiding burning their house down while on Zoom with us.

This is our icebreaker question. Some people really love to debate it and some people absolutely hate it. We keep saying we’re going to cut it out eventually, but: do you think that everything can be classified as a soup, salad, sandwich, or individual ingredient?

Jordan: Food-wise…

Bre: Dominy tried to argue that the world is a sandwich because at any given time there are probably two pieces of bread on opposite sides of the Earth. So when you think about it, the Earth is one giant sandwich.

Jordan: Tell them that makes no sense whatsoever.

Jeff: What are we talking about, like where are they starting? Antarctica?

Jordan: There’s gotta be a bunch of bread in between, too. An infinite club sandwich. That’s a great band name.

Bre: They also argued that the Earth has a crust which makes it kind of like a sandwich.

Shane: Comparing it to a sandwich doesn’t necessarily make it a sandwich, though.

Bre: Then think of something else, like pizza. What’s pizza?

Jordan: Not a sandwich. Not a soup. Not a salad.

Emily: No, pizza’s a sandwich. [the amount of times I’ve said this is gross at this point]

Jordan: No, it is not.

Bre: It’s open-faced.

Shane: I don’t think an open-faced sandwich is even a sandwich. I think they need a new name.

Jordan: It’s only half of an open-faced sandwich. What makes a sandwich is the two pieces of bread. Correct? That's the whole point of it being an open-face. If it's just one, that's not an open-face. [I don’t think I can keep reading the words “open-face”]

Jeff: That’s just a piece of toast with some shit on it.

Jordan: Piece of toast with some shit on it.

Shane: What about a paella? Or like - stir fry or gumbo or something.

Jordan: Yeah, WHAT ABOUT THAT? [we have a new winner for who got the most heated over this question]

Bre: So that’s a whole new debate, because people have argued for stews, chowders, and soups as all different categories. [RFA leaned very into this]

Jeff: I think the difference is in the thickness.

Shane: There's noodle dishes, there's rice dishes. I don't think those fit in any of these categories.

Emily: Salads!

Jordan: What about a cookie. What’s a cookie?

Bre: A cookie is… a salad.

Jordan: HOW?

[at this point Kirby joined the chat (he’s a DJ now) and I felt bad for him because we were all yelling at each other and the conversation had taken on the same energy as debating politics with your parents at Thanksgiving]

Bre: You joined at the perfect time because we’re in the middle of a really important question. Do you think all foods can fit the categories of soup, salad, sandwich, or individual ingredient?

Kirby: I think yes and no. You have to look at the flavor profiles of each individual aspect of sensuality and being.

Shane: Ogres are like onions.

Bre: Individual ingredient.

Emily: Some people don’t care about this question at all, and some can debate it for like, a half hour. I don’t have the energy for you to keep going.

Do you think that being musicians has helped you in the relationship department or do you think people get turned off by that and won’t want to date you?

Shane: Turned off. Turned off for sure.

Jeff: It’s probably the worst move you could make if you’re also trying to be in a relationship.

Shane: I don’t date and I never will.

Jordan: I don’t know about that -

Shane: Yeah, I don’t know about that either.

Jordan: But it’s a very difficult lifestyle to maintain something real, as I’ve found at least.

Jeff: You also have to be okay with coming in second place, too. Most people who really care about music will make that their first priority forever.

Jordan: Usually we're on the road, though, for almost half the year, which doesn't bode well for a sustained relationship.

Jeff: It’s difficult even when you’re not traveling, though. If I have the inspiration to work on something, I want to do that. I’d rather cancel on a date to go write a song at any point in time. No date will ever be as fun as writing a song. [at this Bre and I exchanged a heartbreaking look]

Shane: Every artist has written a lot of songs about that kind of stuff or has gone through that kind of shit because of the lifestyle choices that they've made.

Emily: Then it sounds like every stereotype about musicians is true.

Shane: What are they?

Emily: [where to begin???] Uhhh BUSY? Emotionally unavailable?

Jordan: Yep, go on.

Kirby: Sounds about right, continue.

Jeff: I think if you extrapolate, you realize that these are true about any person that's like, an entrepreneur or something. It just comes down to building the path in front of you, and that has nothing to do with any of these structures that were already in existence. That requires passion, dedication, and that is in direct conflict with trying to prioritize another person your life.

Kirby: I don't think this necessarily has to be about a musician. Look at a painter or any kind of artist or even any business owner. I think you just have to kind of open yourself up to being in a relationship or wanting to make time for that.

Jordan: You do see musicians - and touring musicians - who start to take that leap into something really committed, like getting married. But the next thing you know is they're coming on tour with us too. The kids are coming, too. I don't know how that could ever work. I know people have made it work later in life. But where we're at right now, just like gypsies essentially, being on our own time all the time is such a liberating thing and I think absolutely necessary for someone who wants to do what we're doing. The number one thing I tell people who ask, “how do you make touring work?” I'm like, don't get a 9:00 to 5:00. Definitely don't get married. I just don’t see that working for me.

Shane: It's full commitment. You need to live in the thing you're doing 24/7. So anything that takes away from that time takes away from your artistic growth.

Bre: Then do you feel content with putting your personal lives second to your professional lives? Are you content not experiencing that?

Jordan: Everybody has sacrifices for whatever they’re doing. Maybe some people sacrifice the opposite. A lot of people sacrifice what we're doing to go make money and have a safe life. You know how many people give up on their dreams in this 10 year, 15 year span of our 20s, early 30s? That is their sacrifice - they sacrifice to see us doing this every night and having an absolute blast. Our sacrifice is that we don't have normal lives. Other things come along with it, like a committed relationship. Who doesn't want to love and be loved? Like you're just kind of insane if you don't want to get intimate with that feeling. And that's not to say we don't want it, it's just that it's one of the things that we put to the side for now. We're chasing something bigger than that for us right now.

Shane: You can’t have any dogs either, which is kind of the same thing.

Kirby: I think that might even be harder.

Jordan: Kirby used to be our dog.

Kirby: Yes, part Labradoodle.

[at this Kirby also pulled out a harmonica and blew out my speakers]

Shane: That worked perfectly with the hat. [should probably mention Kirby was wearing a tasteful wide brimmed hat]

Kirby: It’s my Lumineers look.

[a collective band “HO HEY” came in here, and Bre and I just: …]

[I think this is going really well]

Who’s your favorite band when you want to impress someone, and who’s your favorite guilty-pleasure listen?

Jordan: Phoebe Bridgers, but I don’t think that’s that guilty.

Shane: I don’t know, we love music so much that I’d never be embarrassed of anything that I like. I fucking love Madonna. I love tons of pop music. Tons of whacky ass shit.

Kirby: Jimmy Buffett.

Jeff: I think that question is more applicable to trying to be cool in your early twenties. Like when you're scared to admit that you like something dope because it’ll conflict with your own music or your own image. I think no one gives a fuck about that anymore and people will just listen to whatever.

Jordan: My first answer is always My Morning Jacket. Maybe that’s both answers.

Shane: I would say Neil Young for me, because his music's my favorite. I think he’s a true artist with the way he goes about things and the lifestyle that he creates and how he feels about his music. Then I’d talk about him for probably thirty minutes and never get a call back from this date.

Jeff: If you’re trying to be cool all you have to say is Miles Davis.

Bre: A lot of bands have been admitting that they listen to jazz, like, really late at night.

Shane: I listened to Bill Evans at 6:00 in the morning last night.

Kirby: Jazz is the shit.

Jeff: If you’re a musician you definitely can fuck with jazz. It’s got everything in it.

Jordan: What are some answers you guys have gotten from dudes that are clearly trying to -

Jeff: Connect.

Bre: A lot of the time guys try to name some band I’ve never heard of, like someone so underground, so they seem cool because no one else knows about them.

Kirby: I just talk about the millions of dollars I have to impress them. I’m getting rich.

Jordan: I know there’s memes about this left and right but a lot of people resort to Tame Impala when they want to sound cool.

Shane: They’re like the biggest band in the world and people are like, “I’m weird. I’m into some craaazy shit.”

Emily: We get that answer all the time.

Kirby: If only if I'm trying to be cool in front of a girl, I'm like, “I don't even listen to music. I listen to Terry Gross on NPR.”

Jordan: And that’s true.

Have you ever used being a musician as a pickup line?

Shane: I did.

Jeff: I think that relates back to the other question. Nowadays I don’t think that shit’s very impressive. People hear that and they think, “I’m staying away.” To someone that’s younger it might make them seem cooler, but to us since we’re older and people are looking to settle down so it’s not like they’re super impressed by it.

Shane: Everyone’s seen too many movies, so they know.

Jeff: The folklore and the fantasy and all these fucking BuzzFeed articles about how shitty musicians are to be around all day really fucked us.

Shane: “Nine times musicians said WHAT?”

Emily: If you were on a dating app, what would your bio say?

Shane: Mine just says “Very wealthy” and has a picture of me with a toucan in a Hawaiian shirt. A puppet toucan. I’ve gotten like, four matches in four years. Well - someone did message me recently and ask what I did besides look like Ryan Adams.

Jordan: I would just cite my Grinch impression. [this was a tease of an answer because we asked three times and he wouldn’t do it]

Shane: Wait, it just says “in parenthesis, MY GRINCH IMPRESSION?”

Jordan: No, no. There are prompts on Hinge, and one is “I get along with people…” and my answer was “Who want to hear my Grinch impression.”

Emily: We want to hear it.

Jordan: Nope.

On a relatively serious note, how has the quarantine been affecting you?

Shane: We did a couple weeks of livestreams. Jordan and I have been working on his solo record. We’ve just kind of been getting our ducks in a row. Figuring out how to get money and eat dinner.

Jordan: I grew out that giant mustache behind Kirby. Kirby can you point? [Kirby’s background on Zoom was a picture of Jordan’s face where his hair had also been photoshopped onto his face like a Billy Ray Cyrus-looking mustache. Beautiful.]

Jordan: We’re going to do more livestreams soon. We’ve been working on the solo record. Kirby got that hat.

Kirby: I’m a hat guy now.

Jordan: It’s a weird time for everyone, there’s no getting around that.

Bre: Has the distance positively affected you guys at all?

Jordan: I think people will just be much more grateful for things when this all over. Probably no one in our lifetime and for a long time before that has had to deal with something like this, really just cut off from other people to this extent. And I’ve been seeing memes and stuff about being antisocial, like “I was quarantining before the quarantine” but fuck that. We really provide energy to one another as a human race. And I think a lot of people will just be more receptive to that afterwards, or at least I hope.

Bre: Have you felt a lot of pressure to create during all this downtime? Or are you kind of just settling into the “this is a pandemic, we have to cope with this” sort of mindset?

Shane: I would say so, yeah. But also - we're always on the road and traveling and stuff. So it's kind of nice to take a step back and actually have the time to get the things done that we want to do because we record our own records and stuff and mix ourselves and stuff. And it's really, really hard. It's fun, but it's hard to be out for 20 days and come back and have to be in the studio for 10. So to have the time to just only be in the studio and do things like Jordan’s record, which we probably would have gotten pushed back another year or two or longer.

Jeff: The greatest benefit is like, there is a slowing down of society that allows you to do things like make a record that you've been putting off. I know for sure my attention span is increased. Like I have a tendency to get a video or something and not really watch the whole thing. You watch a part of it. I feel like everything's slow enough that I'm not missing something else by paying attention to one thing. I think the option-paralysis of like the fleeting attention span is kind of being honed in, which is super helpful because everyone nowadays is overstimulated. But we now have the time to actually see what we're looking at. So I think overall, society is a little more present, which is something that our generation needs to learn to keep after this whole thing.

Kirby: I don't know about you guys, but I think the first week all this started I kind of like felt like I was grieving. Our whole tour was canceled and we had a whole bunch of stuff beforehand that got canceled like all in the same week, and kind of trying to figure out a new flow of things was weird. But after finding a new way to create and get into that flow, I just feel like it’s taken me a little while. But I’m starting to be more productive because for a while I just wanted to, like, watch twelve hours of Ozark.

Jordan: This whole thing reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode. It's the one where this guy works at a library - or maybe a bank - and he loves reading. But he never, ever has enough time to read all the books that he wants. He just works himself to death. Anyway, he goes in the bank vault and the world ends around him. And he's the only survivor because he was in the vault and he finally has all the time in the world to read every book he wants to. Everything is stopped. But in the craziness, his glasses broke. Sure, he could go try and find some glasses that might work, but it's just this feeling of like “now I have all the time in the world and now I can't do the things that I wanted to.” But we don't have the broken glasses. We have a weird, tiny little bubble that we're living in. You just gotta make that make that work.

Kirby: Nice imagery.

Emily: I keep reading this quote that says, “You’re not working from home, this isn’t a vacation. You’re surviving a crisis. It’s okay to not be productive.”

Bre: Have you found any quarantine hacks that are getting you through this?

Emily: Kirby’s a DJ now.

Kirby: I’m a DJ now.

What’s your opinion on dating other musicians?

Jordan: It’s probably a good move becuase they understand.

Bre: Everyone else has said it’s a bad move. We talked to one guy the other day who said he specifically doesn’t date other musicians because he prefers if his relationship is like an escape from his work life.

Jordan: Yeah - actually, I’ve had bad experiences. But, I think in the long run it’s probably the right move.

Emily: We talked to another couple who’s been doing music for like, fifteen years, so they’re at the total other end of the spectrum.

Jeff: It might be cooler to date someone that's in a totally different genre than you. The only string that’s held between you two is the fact that you're both passionate about the subject. If you find someone that's just a super huge music lover in general, that's probably the best thing. If you’re a musician and the other person just like music probably more than you as a listener, it could work.

Bre: I guess maybe this is just a question for Shane since he has Tinder, but would you ever make a song by your own band your “Tinder Anthem?”

Shane: That’s a horrible look. I never used to have any evidence on there that I even played music at all.

Kirby: I tell people that “it’s just for me,” if they ask. I play music just for me.

Shane: This was my question.

Jordan: We have updated our MySpace song quite often. For a while it was always that one song, it went… “I never knew…” [here he kept singing that song by The Fray that took a group effort to come up with the title of] Girls loved that one. It’s a white person anthem.

If you were going to go on a really good first date, with absolutely no limitations, where would you go?

[I need to disclaim that we can’t, for the sake of good journalism, include any text with this answer because what Kirby said was just too incredible and it won’t translate well. So instead, we overlaid his answer with one of his new DJ tracks. Enjoy.]

What are some red flags that you look out for when dating other people?

Jordan: Nazis.

Kirby: They voted for Trump.

Emily: Now I’m realizing it’s kind of weird that no one else we’ve interviewed has said that…

Kirby: Lesbians. [0% serious I promise] There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just that they’re into women, I’m into women, so they aren’t into me…

Jordan: I don’t know, Kirby. From behind you’ve had me fooled.

Kirby: Once I was walking to a grocery store and my hair was a little bit shorter - but still kind of long. And I'm walking past a mother and her son. And then I walk past and she's like, “Oh, let the nice lady through.” And I turn around and I had a goatee and really quick she goes, “Oh, I mean, this man.”

Jordan: There was that one time I kissed your neck.

Kirby: We said we weren’t gonna talk about that.

Jordan: Okay, redact that? Can you?

Emily: Absolutely not.

What are you most excited to do when the quarantine ends?

Jordan: I can answer for Kirby. Kirby cannot wait to fucking hug someone. [my small heart broke when he said that]

Kirby: DUDE! I’VE BEEN TRYING TO HUG FOR THE PAST THREE WEEKS :(

Jordan: Kirby’s so bummed out that he hasn’t been able to hug any of his friends. It’s fucked up.

Emily: The title might be in here somewhere. I’m upset.

Kirby: I wanted to hug people, but I also want to kiss people. But I also want to eat at a restaurant, for Christ's sake, I can’t take it anymore.

Jordan: I’m just excited to see people again. Go to bars, play shows. Get shut down by women - at least having the option to get shut down. I miss socializing.

Jeff: Playing shows.

Bre: I can’t wait to go to bars. I didn’t get to have a solid rebound because this happened immediately after my breakup. I wanted to hit bars with Emily.

Emily: My last pre-quarantine gig was The Districts so that was a nice send off but I’ve been sad ever since.

[Here is where the fire alarm started incessantly going off. They were making wings and Kirby’s face got really bummed from his little Zoom box because he’s separate from the rest of the band right now. But you can’t have wings if you burn your house down.]

Jeff: Son of a bitch. Oh my god.

Shane: It’s just a smokey oven.

Kirby: I went to college with those guys! “Smokey Oven.” [I really hope so because if not I don’t want to feel responsible for distracting them from properly checking on their oven temp]

So.

Mo Lowda & the Humble has proven that, no matter what, they’re a band first and Tinder comes second. Their answers might have broken our hearts but we’re certainly not going to tell them that. Would we date again? Of course, but now we know they won’t bring us on tour with them should we ever get married. Kirby, if you’re reading, we’ll take you up on that dream date scenario any time…

Check out their playlist below for songs that came up during our talk, songs that reminded them of things they brought up, and songs that make absolutely no sense.

The Date Where Mo Lowda & the Humble Nearly Burns Their House Down In The Middle Of It