Interview: Live Your Afterlife With glimmers

Interview by Lindsey V. Britt / Photos by Sophie Harris

Atlanta’s pop-punk-rock band glimmers is taking over the alternative scene by having a positive impact with their endless good vibes! Maggie Schneider, Alex Downtain, and Jeremy Russell make up the three-piece band, who are currently gearing up for their recently announced summer tour starting this June after playing Afterlife At The Altar at the iconic Masquerade venue in the heart of ATL.

Your new song “Back To Hell” is about a friendship breakup, what inspired you to write a song about a subject rarely talked about, especially in music?

Maggie: I feel like friendship breakups can be just as hurtful as a romantic breakup, and I feel like it’s something we can all relate to in different moments of our lives. It was something I was going through at the time, and it didn’t feel good, so I thought why not write a sassy song about fake friends, you know just to kind of handle it in a kind of fun way. I sent it over to the guys and they were super about it.

Alex: It was a good time.

You also released a song last year called “Jaded”, but I’m curious, is the lyric “I’m not Hayley” in reference to Hayley Williams?

Maggie: It is haha! It is very bold I will say. I think especially with tonight’s show, women in rock music, they need to be respected and loved for their unique qualities and voices. So the song is almost to us a love letter to Hayley Williams, cause we love Paramore, that’s always been a huge influence of ours. But also to show that we’re all different, we’re all beautiful, and have different talents and unique perspectives.

You released an EP last year titled Human Furnaces, what was that songwriting process like?

Alex: It was really fast! 

Maggie: It was!

Alex: We had “Little Mistake” and “Scared To Lose” done prior to us really working on that, but we in a little under less than two weeks, it was like a week, a week and a half to write and record that whole EP, and we did that actually at my house in my home studio.

Maggie: A lot of long nights.

Jeremy: Chaotic but it was a good time.

Alex: We set a time frame to do it and we’re like you know what, we’re going to get it done.

Maggie: We were all in from like 10 AM till 2 in the morning most days Jeremy was in early doing drums. It was fun though; it was a good challenge. I think it taught us that we could do it in that much of a time frame, but I think it also made us value taking our time.

Jeremy: It made me think that I never want to do that again.

Alex: It also made us realize we don’t have to do it that way, ever again actually, which was nice.

What is the difference for you between writing an EP vs a single?

Maggie: I mean with an EP we always try to make everything cohesive and think about the themes of the songs both separately and together, the artwork, kind of have everything tell a longer story. I think with singles the fun experience of writing and releasing singles is you kind of have a lot of freedom to promote it how you want, it’s kind of like a clean slate. Jeremy, what do you prefer, do you prefer writing just the singles or putting out a full body of work?

Jeremy: With the way that we do it we have a good bit of songs already recorded, so over time we are able to release them as singles and then make it a collective at the end, but it gives us a lot of time to actually promote it.

Alex: And to bounce off that, like we had “Back To Hell” over a year ago, so we’ve been holding on to it waiting for the time to release it. It feels like how we work on it we’ll do a song at a time now.

Maggie: And then when it makes sense to put it out as its own longer project then we can do that.

Is there going to be another EP or even an album later this year?

Maggie: I would say so! Maybe a little bit longer of a project than we put out before, so I’m excited.

We’re doing this interview at Afterlife At The Altar at The Masquerade in Atlanta, which you are headlining with Natalia Taylar with support from Caroline Reilly, and Zoe Bayani, how excited are you for the show tonight?

Maggie: Man, it is so exciting, and this is our first time here which is super cool, cause I think they opened this new room here about a month ago if that. We grew up playing shows here, and we’ve played all three other rooms, so we thought why not get together, have a bunch of badass women a part of this bill, and kind of have it be a themed party.

Do you have any plans for touring coming up?

Maggie: We do, we’re going to announce it soon. We’re going to go to some new cities…

Jeremy: Are you spilling the beans right now?

Maggie: I am not spilling the beans; I’m not giving all of it away. Definitely going to some new places, going to some cities that we already know and love. I would say expect something in the summer.

Speaking of touring, is there a city you want to play in that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

Jeremy: Any of the Northwest like Seattle, Seattle is a big one for me, I haven’t been up there yet.

Alex: I wanna play Colorado.

Maggie: I think the only region that we haven’t hit is the Pacific Northwest. I love New York, we got to play there for the first time in October, so I really hope that we go there again.

I noticed your Spotify top listener city is London, do you have any plans to do some shows in the UK?

Maggie: I would love that, that’s been a dream. 

Jeremy: We need to make it happen like they view live music over there so differently; it is like a totally different scene. It’s beautiful, we need to go.

Maggie: I would love it; we’ll make it a bucket list goal.

If you could collaborate with one band, who would it be and why?

Jeremy: This is going to be fun; I could guess for y’all.

Alex: Yeah, why don’t you guess for us.

Jeremy: Four Year Strong.

Alex: I want that so bad.

Jeremy: Umm I don’t know, Maggie’s is kind of hard, you’ve got a lot of good favorites.

Maggie: Okay here’s one, I love Knox. Knox is one of my favorite artists and such a great writer. I’d also say Demi Lovato, I love Demi so much.

Jeremy: Jason Butler would be cool, letlive., Matt Honeycutt from kublai khan, that would be dope too.

Maggie: Butch Walker!

I heard glimmers are fans of The Band CAMINO, what about them are you inspired by?

Maggie: I love how The Band CAMINO writes their songs, cause they always have kind of a bit of country crossover but still in the indie pop rock type of space.

Alex: it’s a perfect blend.

Maggie: Yeah, it just makes me happy. I remember discovering them, it was on a sad girl hours type of night, was feeling bummed, and I listened to “Know Me” which is my favorite song of theirs.

Alex: It’s a great song!

Maggie: And I immediately fell in love and checked them out. I love how much they’ve grown and just their ability to write songs that I think everyone will like, it’s just a really great crossover band.

What is the craziest playlist you have seen one of your songs get added to?

Alex: There is a playlist “Little Mistake” was added to, it was like ‘Get Shredded, Get Ripped’, and I was like let’s go!

Maggie: There’s been a few that are called ‘Driving With The Windows Down’ like different driving playlists and I find a lot of inspiration when I’m just driving around on a nice day, so I love when we’re on people’s road-trip playlist

Alex: But what was the craziest one that you’ve seen?

Maggie: I think there was one that was like ‘Emo Female Aggression’ or something random. It’s really fun to go on Spotify and see what’s added.

If you had to pick a TV series to live your afterlife in, what would it be?

glimmers: New Girl!

Maggie: I like New Girl.

Alex: Jeremy, what’s yours?

Jeremy: Umm, I don’t know Fallout just came out it’ll be pretty cool, I played Fallout a lot, I like the idea of like a post-apocalyptic.

Alex: I do too, it sounds scary.

Jeremy: It does sound scary.

Maggie: I don’t know if I want my afterlife to be scary.

Alex: I’ve already died, I want to be spooked some more haha.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Alex: Hmm, I don’t know.

Jeremy: Dragon Ball Z?

Alex: Absolutely, I would want to be a Super Salyan, that’s what I want, I want that ability.

Maggie: What a wide range of TV shows.

Final question, do you have a recommendation? It can be literally anything, movie, store, food, anything. 

Maggie: Do we wanna all do food?

Alex: I’ll go first.

Jeremy: Olive Garden.

Maggie: Oh, that was going to be mine.

Alex: When you’re there you’re family. I think right now my favorite place to eat is Maple Street Biscuit Co. I’m a biscuit nut, I will do anything for a biscuit.

Maggie: You’ll risk it for the biscuit.

Alex: I will risk it, I will risk it all.

Maggie: There’s a bakery in Atlanta called Saint Germain, it’s so good, they have all of these French desserts and everything. Chocolate mousse is like my favorite dessert ever! So I say Chocolate mousse from Saint Germain.

Alex: Their Macarons are awesome!

Jeremy: Coyote’s Mexican Grill in Decatur, GA, oh it’s so good!

Thank you so much for this interview! Is there anything else you’d like to mention before I go?

Maggie: Well, we have new music coming out in the summer so stay on the lookout for that, upcoming tour dates, we’re just happy to be here!

Make sure to check out “Back To Hell”, “Jaded” and “Human Furnaces” along with the rest of glimmers amazing discography available now on all streaming services. And catch glimmers on tour this summer!

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