Clubhouse talks latest singles “Ohio”, “Always Been You”, and finding comfort in vulnerability

OCTOBER 18TH 2023 | by MADISON NORTH

Photo by Markus Reichert

Max Reichert, Ari Blumer, and Zak Blumer, better known as Clubhouse, are an Indie band that if you don’t have on your radar, you definitely should. The band started gaining traction back in 2020 when their song “Weekend” started growing on Tik Tok. Since then, it’s only been uphill for the trio as they released their debut album, Are We Going Too Slow? back in 2021. 

Luckily for us we were able to sit down and talk with the band about their latest singles, the progression of their sound, and just what making new music has meant to them.   

RAMBLE: So I guess the first thing would be how did you all meet each other and become a band?  

Clubhouse: (Max) So we met in elementary school, we grew up like 5 minutes from each other so we’ve known each other our whole lives pretty much. We started playing in Zak and Ari’s basement in middle school and have just been a band ever since and started Clubhouse in college…We just decided we wanted to take it more seriously and then we moved out here, and here we are.  

RAMBLE: When did you guys make that transition where you realized, “hey we’re a group of friends who made a band, but we could take this to the next level”?   

Clubhouse: (Zak) We always wanted to make music that we actually enjoyed listening too, at first we didn’t really know what releasing a song was like so we started trying that in college and I think a lot of that had to do with just that reception of those initial songs, from not only our close friends, but a lot of the college town and just our peers in general seemed to be into it and that just made us even more excited to pursue it…If that support wasn’t there it may have been more difficult but it just felt so natural to just keep going.  

RAMBLE: Did you guys all go to the same college together as well? 

Clubhouse: (Zak) Yeah, we went to Ohio University in Southeast Ohio. It was really their support and OSU (Ohio State University) which is in Columbus, Ohio, which really helped us get off our feet.  

RAMBLE: Did you guys do a lot of house shows around there and play at college bars?  

Clubhouse: (Max) Yeah, we played a lot of college bars. (laughing) I don’t know if we ever did a full house show, I guess we did my house show cause my little brother’s high school graduation party so I guess technically we’ve done some house shows. 

RAMBLE: That counts!  

Clubhouse: (Max) (laughing) Yeah, normally just college bars and venues around college bars and stuff…We got lucky and were able to open for some bigger acts at some of the bigger venues around Columbus which was really fun and I think it was just good experience to be able to play live shows as much as we got to when we were in college..I think it set us up for the future really well.  

RAMBLE: Where’d you come up with the name Clubhouse?  

Clubhouse: (Ari) The house that Zak and I grew up in there was this building, but barely a building, attached to our back deck that was separated from the house is was pretty small…the only real thing that my family really had in there was an office space for my mom and when she stopped needing it we basically took it over in our teenage years…And when we were looking for a band name and just spitballing some stuff back and forth to each other the word clubhouse came up and it felt like it embodied this youthfulness and comradery that we felt went along with that little shack but it also tied in with that youthfulness and comradery that we wanna build with our music as well. 

RAMBLE: Was that always the name or when you guys were in middle school you had a different name and then you kinda switched it up? 

Clubhouse: (Zak) (laughing) Well originally when we first made music together Max wasn’t even willing to sing, he played keys at the time I think…So as a part of that transition and just being in bands with other people along the way and different levels of taking it serious we definitely had some other names, they’re not as smooth as Clubhouse. 

Clubhouse: (Max) (laughing) I’ll say one of them…So I was grandfathered into this band. Zak and Ari started a band in middle school called Mirror Image because they’re identical twins. 

RAMBLE: Oh wait, that’s kinda cool though. That kinda sounds like DJ’s though a little bit. 

Clubhouse: (Zak) Yeah there’s a way to make it cool but it was pretty cringey at the time.  

RAMBLE: (laughing) I like Clubhouse though, it’s good vibes. 

Clubhouse: (laughing) Thank you. 

RAMBLE: I first found your guys music back in 2020 through Tik Tok and I think it’s interesting because a lot of music that I’ve cultivated towards I found through Tik Tok and smaller artists…How do you guys think Tik Tok has impacted the way we find music and listen to music?  

Clubhouse: (Max) I think there’s a lot of pros and cons with it because there’s never been a better platform for the ability to get your music in front of as many people as possible…However, I think there’s cons with it too where it feels like maybe the music has become a little more disposable…I feel like there’s this insatiable hunger for new music…As artists you have to release so much more music then you used to have to at a constant rate so that’s been something we’ve been trying to navigate…I think you kinda have to to cut through the noise, there’s just so many talented artists out there competing for people's attention. 

Clubhouse: (Zak) It also definitely makes it more of a visual argument…You have to have some amount of visual to argue “hey listen to this”...It just means that musicians need to pivot and learn that someone that can help them with visuals, whether it’s them or someone else, is a huge part of the team and the ability to have that and create high quality experiences that are both audio and video is ideal.  

Clubhouse: (Max) Yeah I feel like the ratio of what you needed to do as an artist used to be like 75/25 focus on the music and then figure out the visuals…And I feel like now it’s if not 50/50…The visuals almost play a more important role.   

RAMBLE: I think it’s interesting that you guys brought up the visuals cause when I was on Tik Tok I found your song "Always Been You" and the second I heard it I was like “this song is good” and saved the audio immediately…You would post it to movie stills like the “Before Sunrise” trilogy and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, did you guys pull inspiration from movies like that for the song or was it more these lyrics relate to this movie?  

Clubhouse: (Max) I’d say it’s closer to the second thing you said but I think we’re just always drawing influence from our favorite things that we’re consuming, those movies are two of my favorite movies so I think when I’m writing love songs I naturally think of some of my favorite pieces of art that inspire me. 

Clubhouse: (Ari) I would also say that those movies in general, the way they display love is in more of a raw, genuine, the little tiny details matter and I think that that was what we had in mind when we were writing the lyrics for “Always Been You”, you know we talk about eating breakfast at noon and technically random or maybe uninteresting stuff to somebody but to you when it’s about the person you really care about all those details matter.  

Clubhouse: (Max) One of my favorite parts about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is at the end where they decide it’s worth going through all that stuff and breaking your heart but it’s worth it to do it again if they had the opportunity to. I think that sums up just so much of what that song means to us…All three of us have been in pretty long-term relationships and we all kind of collectively wrote it about our significant others and naturally when you’re in a multi-year relationship with someone you’re gonna experience highs and lows and I think we wanted to portray that…Those kinds of movies sum those kinds of feelings up too, the “Before Sunrise” trilogy as well…That movie is about a real love, there’s not even really a soundtrack it’s just like dialogue and I think that’s so cool, it really gets down to how these people connect and it’s in such a real raw way…I strive to make art that feels like that.    

RAMBLE: I would say I also felt that with your single “Ohio”. The writing in that one and “Always Been You” feels very different from your debut album. When you were sitting down writing  “Ohio” did it feel cathartic, cause it felt like a very personal track.  

Clubhouse: (Zak) Both of these songs went through different innerations of instrumentals and I think what kept us going back to them was the true song and story no matter what instrumentals underneath it. I think “Always Been You” had like 30 versions…I think we just wanted to get it right because the lyrics were more raw than ever and we wanted to make sure that the instrumental accompanied that and really pushed that forward. 

RAMBLE: How would you guys say that, as I mentioned before, the sound of these two singles feels different, even song-writing wise from your debut album, how would you guys say that your sound has evolved since 2021 when that first came out versus now?  

Clubhouse: (Max) I think we’ve grown as songwriters and I think we all kind of collectively decided we wanted to be more honest and vulnerable in our lyricism. I think we hid behind a lot of metaphors and hid behind some stuff in the previous EP and I think we just really wanted to talk about what was on our minds and what we’ve been feeling these last couple of years. Ohio, it’s about home, it’s a love letter to our hometown but it’s also about the uncertainty of what we feel moving across the country and being away from everyone, and is this gonna pan out, are we wasting our time…It was more of an internal reflection of just our life and where we see ourselves going in the future, ya know are we gonna move back home with family eventually and what all that entails and I think that’s a topic that we wouldn't have considered doing in our previous EP. We were just in a different state of mind in writing music for a bit of a different reasons and I think we just wanted to write about what was directly on our heart this time…I think we’re just really proud that we were vulnerable..I could just stand by these songs forever and say “I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve and if people love it, they love it and if they don’t, then whatever I love it”.  

RAMBLE: I saw you were teasing new music on Tik Tok and Instagram, what can you tell us about that?   

Clubhouse: (Max) Yeah we got a new song coming out, I don’t know if we can give you a date unfortunately…But next month for sure…We got a new one and it’s another one that I’m just really proud of in terms of our lyricism and just the subject that we wrote it about and we wrote it about missing old friends so that’s about as much of a sneak peek I can give you right now but we’re really excited about it and I think it’s some of the work that we’re most proud of.  

RAMBLE: Based off of the two singles that I’ve heard and the one that you’re talking about, would you say that theme of, well I would assume you guys are writing an album, would you say it’s nostalgia in a way?  

Clubhouse: (Zak) For sure, just general rawness…We’ve been through a lot of shit, everyone has, but we also have and I think we wanted this bundle of songs to really open ourselves up vulnerably and then use the instrumentals to accompany that with sort of vulnerable more live sound and yeah absolutely nostalgia is apart of that, as we get older nostalgia is just more of our lives in the best way. I think there’s just a lot of good memories and a lot of good things we love about back home for instance even though we’re out here. 

Clubhouse: (Max) Yeah it’s nostalgia and reflection, I think the last couple of years, especially during the pandemic we had a lot of time to reflect on things… I think as we’re reaching more into our adulthood too I think we’re able to reflect back on things and how they’ve made us who we are. It felt like the right time in our lives to write these kinds of songs.  

RAMBLE: My final question for you guys will be, what would be one word you would use to describe Clubhouse’s sound?  

Clubhouse: (Zak) I could probably try this one; carpe diem.  

Clubhouse: (Max) Yeah, that was in my head too, I’m glad you said that. And then to have a little paragraph under carpe diem…I think we want our music to feel like music you can live life to the fullest to, and whether that's loving your partner to the fullest…Just going after life guns a blazing, going after what you want…Music to live life to. 

Listen to our interview with Clubhouse below.