5 Questions With: Bike Lane
With a new record out, the duo stop by for a chat.
Fate. Coincidence. Sliding doors. Kismet. We all know the words, and most of us have a story. A chance meeting that led to romance. Maybe to have a front-row seat to history in the making.
Of being in the right place at just the right time.
Or maybe the universe aligns to put two people in the same place at the same time— in Los Angeles. And maybe those people wind up making a record.
That’s not a movie; that’s the origin story of Amaya Lim and Blake Knutson’s Bike Lane.
In a recent edition of her Record Store newsletter, Lim outlined how the pair ultimately came together:
Blake and I met in the fall of 2018 when we were both living in Berkeley, introduced by a close friend at a late afternoon backyard party. I remember meeting him, which is really saying something because today I forgot what month it is, and yesterday I couldn’t remember the word for popsicle.
We exchanged numbers, and both got busy, and by the time I reached out to say that I would love to hang out and make music sometime, he had already moved down to L.A.
I figured I had blown it, and I was resigned to never working with him.
In the fall of the next year, I started a band called Buttermother with some college friends. When we decided to record some of our songs over winter break, my guitarist and bassist said they knew a guy with some recording experience down in L.A. Against incredible odds if you know anything about this city, that guy turned out to be Blake.
With Lim in the Bay area, and Knutson in L.A., putting the record together involved a lot 5 hour drives up and down I-5. After releasing “Out Of the Blue” and “Bad Dream” as singles earlier this summer, the duo dropped their full-length debut, Wake Up In The Weeds, this past week.
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For better or worse, one of the things I like to do when hearing a record for the first time is to try and pick out any influences other artists may have had.
Being a regular reader of Record Store, I thought it might be especially interesting here—and indeed opener “Garden” has a dreamy quality that feels like the early morning sun and something not out of place on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour—but ultimately decided to forgo that and enjoy the album on its own.
And it is enjoyable. “Out Of The Blue” is pure pop at 70 miles an hour. The tempo slows for “Bad Dream,” a track oozing heartbreak from every note.
I-5 might be a relatively straight road running north-south, but over the course of 8 tracks, Wake Up in The Weeds takes a few twists and turns, taking us through more pop, some folk, and even a few notes of Americana, finally ending with the expansive “Strawberry Milk.”
On “Garden,” Lim declares, “I am a force of nature.” And indeed it was a separate force of nature that put the two of them together, the result being a great debut record well worth one’s time.
Connect with Bike Lane here: Spotify | Amazon Music | Instagram |
5 Questions:
1. Describe your style in 1 sentence
Blake: “The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.” It’s a quote from Auden, and had a big impact on me — I try and fail and try again to make my music have those qualities.
Amaya: “Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark.” That’s a line from a Lorde song. I write about my life and what happens to me, so people see themselves showing up in the work a lot.
2. What was on in your house growing up?
Blake: The Grateful Dead and the Smashing Pumpkins
Amaya: Sheryl Crow, the original Broadway cast recording of A Chorus Line, Barbara Streisand, and Joan Baez
3. What're you listening to these days?
Blake: Dan Reeder, Swamp Dogg, Courtney Marie Andrews
Amaya: Cocteau Twins, Madi Diaz, Grace Ives
4. What are your 5 Desert Island Discs?
Blake: Suck it and See by the Arctic Monkeys, High Violet by the National, Every Which Way by Dan Reeder, Actor by St. Vincent, Good Kid Maad City by Kendrick Lamar
Amaya: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, I Was Born Swimming by Squirrel Flower, In Rainbows by Radiohead, Sleep Well Beast by the National, and Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen. Honorable mention to Middle Cyclone by Neko Case.
5. If you could collaborate with anyone (living or dead), who would it be, and why?
Blake: Jack Johnson — he seems like a wonderful human, and it would be a great time regardless of the result.
Amaya: St. Vincent, because I want to know how weird she actually is offstage and also because I think we’d be great friends.
B-Sides:
The story of the 1970s NYC Teen Punk Scene As Told By Those Who Were There.
“It made me realize your life can be anything you want. If you want to know these people, if you want to experience this music, even if it seems out of reach or not allowed, you can just do it. You can write your own story.”
Smart Studios Is Now An AirBnB
The pressure in your ears changes when you walk through the Studio A threshold, which has soundproofed walls and sliding glass doors dividing the room on either side. The noise from East Washington Avenue traffic disappears completely inside. The former control room was once filled with soundboards, guitars hanging from stands, double-decker keyboards, screens, tangled cords, turntables, speakers, microphones and drum sets.
Now it’s an inviting sitting area with a long dining table. Allen has plans to turn the back wall, which is where bass speakers used to sit on still-there concrete slabs, into a built-in bar. Through the sliding glass doors on the opposite side of the room, you enter the former performance studio that’s now a living room. Allen’s autonomous robot vacuum sits on its charging port next to a giant outlet panel where electronic music equipment would have been wired.
Thank you to Amaya Lim and Blake Knutson for their time, and thank you for being here.
Kevin—
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thanks so much kevin !! glad you enjoyed the record