This interview series is a summer-long series spotlighting the bands performing at Asbury Jams every Thursday at The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Produced by ElmThree – Asbury Jams brings rising local, regional and national touring bands from the jam scene to the City that Bruce Built.
All it takes is one moment in time to change the course of your life.
Underground Springhouse was just another band playing covers at local bars in the famed Athens, Georgia college music scene. Then everything changed the moment they released their first original song, “Joyfell.” The song skyrocketed on Spotify and currently sits at around 2.6 million streams on the app. This moment changed everything for the band. They decided that there was something more to this band than late nights in beer-soaked college bars. They took a huge chance, foregoing post-collegiate careers, to literally take their show on the road. In doing so, this band of friends have created a burgeoning career that has taken their infectious multi-genre style of music thousands of miles from home, finding like-minded musical souls in colleges, bars, clubs, and theaters.
Recently we caught up with Charlie Haas (guitar/vocals), Jackson Thompson (Bass/Vocals), and Max Motley (Keys/Vocals) of Underground Springhouse to talk about hitting the road and finding fans in the most unlikely spots, finally hitting Asbury Park, the Athens music scene and the story behind their unique name. They perform at Asbury Jams at The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ with Chalk Dinosaur on July 3.
Let’s start with the easiest and most likely the most over-asked question you guys get — what’s the story behind the name of the band?
Charlie Haas: So I had heard about an “underground springhouse,” and was like, “Oh, if I ever start a band that’d be a cool band name.” [An underground springhouse] is an old school icebox where a creek is running under a small house and that they would use to keep things cold in the creek [this was] before refrigerators. We were doing a duo gig and the bar owner said, “What’s your band name?” And I just said Underground Springhouse, and everyone rolled with it and it stuck.
Underground Springhouse comes out of the Athens, Georgia/University of Georgia music scene. This is a scene that saw REM, The B52’s and Widespread Panic emerged from. Tell us about what it was like playing in this venerated independent music scene in this college town and how did it foster you guys becoming a band?
CH: It was definitely a great place to start a band. There’s so many opportunities to play live music all around Athens, and there’s so many bars that are willing to let you come play covers. We were willing to play for little-to-no money and a bar tab, and just did it enough times until we didn’t suck anymore. I think that’s why a bunch of good bands come out of this town. There’s fraternities and sororities who book live bands for all kinds of events. There’s so many bars to play in. There’s great venues in town, too, that have pretty low barriers of entry. So it just encourages a lot of student bands forming. There’s so many opportunities for them to play, and there’s so many bands that switch to other bands. The bands are friends with each other and play shows together. There’s a lot of small bands there, but it’s a small area. So you can be a big fish in a small pond which is kind of nice. You don’t get lost in the sea of musicians like in Nashville, or even even in Atlanta. It’s a smaller scene, but it’s lively.
What were some of the first covers you played?
CH: When the band was first getting started and we were playing in those Athens bars, it was “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and one of the big ones was “Bartender” by Rehab.
I haven’t thought of that song in a long time … and for a good reason. Of your sets, what was the big, burn the house down cover?
CH: Gosh … probably, “All Along the Watcher Tower” or something with three chords that we could just be drunk and play the pentatonic scale over.
I saw somewhere that you all had this plan of when you graduated college, Underground Springhouse would cease to exist. What changed your minds?
Jackson Thompson: I wasn’t in the band when I graduated. I was actually not far off from going to law school. I had already gone through the application process, been accepted to places, and I was about to go to school somewhere. Then Charlie called me one day and said, “You want to join the band officially?” I needed to think about it for a second. But really, the idea was like … there’s great chemistry, there’s great trajectory, I’m young, and it’s going to be fun as hell. I can do school later.
Max Motley: I’m similar to Jackson. I was just having a great time, and it seemed like it had the legs to keep going. I’m younger than Jackson and Charlie, but as school was wrapping up for me we were beginning to play out of town. This isn’t just restricted to [local] bars. I’m having a great time. If this can keep going I wanna take this as far as it can go. I was an economics major and I was not like, “Man, I gotta go get a job doing economics right now!” I was loving playing music, and this has a little momentum, so let’s ride this as much as we can. And now here we are.
CH: I really wanted to continue doing it. I was probably the push to get us through COVID and keep this thing going. We were just a college cover band doing it for fun. Then I really wanted to put our own original song out. The other guys were like, “Yeah, maybe we could do that.” I really wanted to do it and so I just booked us a day in a friend’s basement studio. I was like ‘Guys, I booked just a studio day. We’re doing it.” They’re like, okay. Then we recorded our first song, “Joyfell.” I mean, it’s two chords. It’s a very simple song. I [taught] the song to the guys in the studio that morning  and then we put our first song out. It did really well on Spotify. So that kind of gave us a sense of maybe people like this and we can do this as a career one day. So let’s just keep working at it.
I think the initial reception from the first song that we dropped carried us a long way, because we probably wouldn’t have gotten as invested as we did if we didn’t have a positive response like that.
Yeah, I mean 2.6 million streams for “Joyfell” on Spotify, is not something to sneeze at. What do you think contributed to you guys just blowing up like that? And were you completely just taken aback by the response you got?
CH: I think it was just the right place and right time. At that time of my life there were so many people in the same walk of life, the same age, similar interests. They’re all congregating in huge groups every night. So a couple of big parties or bars put [the song] on the aux. There were a couple of bar owners that we had a good relationship with — we would play at their bars for cheap. — and they would put it on the aux in the bar. That was really encouraging to us because we’ve still dropped music that is as good or better than that song. But it being the excitement of “Oh, Underground Springhouse dropped their first song. We all got to go listen to this.” I think, propelled us a long way.
MM: It’s amazing that people are into it. I feel like a lot of other bands and artists can be really self-critical. And then you have a show, and people come out, and that’s pretty cool that people care, and want to listen to the music and come out to the shows. So yeah, I’m definitely taken aback by how we get to play for an audience and have people listen to our stuff. We spent a long time just doing it for basically for nothing and with no aspiration of it ever growing beyond being a bar cover thing. So yeah, it’s pretty cool that people enjoy it enough to listen and spend money on it.
Jackson when you when told your parents with that you were not going to law school — did you tell them about the 2.6 Spotify download?
JT: I’m waiting for that BMI check when it comes in. It is fat.
One thing I really enjoy about you guys is how you put in such an eclectic mix of the album. There’s country, reggae, there’s pop, there’s jam, there’s Southern rock … just all kinds of sounds just melted together like. Is that a conscious decision to be an eclectic band? Or is this just sort of like just arose and it just kind of cosmically came together.
JT: I don’t think that we’re consciously doing that. I think we all actively like all that kind of stuff. It’s one of those things where you just happen to write a song that’s in a certain vein. We have a pretty good habit of not saying no to ideas when we’re getting together writing and bringing new songs to the table. I think it’s mostly because everybody digs what the other person is bringing to the table. It’s just nice to be in a group of people who are like-minded and open minded, because it lets you play different kinds of music which is nice and keeps things fresh. I don’t think any of us want to play one or two genres and just be done with it.
You’ve got a slew of dates coming up. How does it feel to hit the road and go out into new markets and try and win one person at a time in that audience. Do you guys find that to be a daunting task? Or is that something that really gets you going?
CH: Kind of both. For sure it’s exciting, and it’s fun, especially when we’re hitting new cities. We have no idea what we’re getting into — this could be awesome and we might sell a hundred tickets … or we might sell none. It’s a fun kind of gamble, but it has a lot of highs and a lot of lows. But when you’re in the right band with the right group of people, and you have fun together, you can weather the highs and lows a lot easier than when you know it. Those lows can hit hard, and if you’re not within a band with your friends and you get along then, it can definitely be tough. But, we all just are always laughing and having fun, and have learned to just not worry about the expectations of how successful is this show gonna be or not. Sometimes you think it’s going to be a bummer of a show, and we’re a thousand miles from home, and we don’t know anyone in this town. [You think]Â no one’s going to show up, and then you have a great crowd of people loving it and it turns out to be one of your favorite shows. Or, you expect some show to be killer and we’re gonna sell 200 tickets tonight, and then you only sell 80, and then you feel bummed. We’ve gotten good at not putting pressure on ourselves nor letting turnout determine how much fun we have. So we end up just having a good time either way. Traveling on the road across the country with all your best friends is a pretty awesome thing and not a lot of people get the chance to do it. Whenever it gets tough, you just remind yourself that what we’re doing is awesome.
MM: It’s great getting to hang out with all your friends and play music and have that be your work. It’s definitely not lost on any of us how lucky we are to just get to do it at all.you know, we’ve got musician friends. We can drive somewhere like New Jersey, and have people come to a show. We can go to a place I’ve never been in my life, and have people be in the room. It’s pretty wild.
What’s been the market that you drove to, or the club you drove to and you thought there was no way people are showing up and you end up getting blown away by the response?
MM: We played in Vermont two weeks ago at the Waterbury Center, Vermont. I’d never heard of it and I had no idea what to expect there. The show was great.
JT: The one I always think of is a town called Farmville, Virginia. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and there’s just a college there — Hampden Sydney College. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but every time that we go there’s just a great showing there. Max stole the one that was at the forefront, maybe because it’s the most recent, but the Zenbarn in Vermont was also crazy. It is just amazing when you go somewhere and there’s no reason I would ever be here if it weren’t for me playing this gig right now … and there’s a guy here singing a song that I wrote like that’s, you know, it’s nuts.
CH: Probably Port Chester, New York. That was a pretty awesome show that we did at Garcia’s [at the Capitol Theater]. That one made a little more sense that there was a decent turnout just because it’s Garcia’s, and we did a Grateful Dead set. The Deadheads will come out, even if they don’t know you. So that was really awesome. Steamboat Springs, CO was another one that was really surprising because of an awesome crowd.
You will definitely love playing Asbury Park — your music will be a hit with the Asbury Jams crowd.
CH: I can’t wait for that. It’ll be our first time there, also. We’ve been seeing comments like this for a while. We’ll drop all of our tour dates, and people will say, ‘Oh, man, hit Asbury Park next time.’
We’ve talked about a lot of music. Is there any new music like on the horizon — EPs, full lengths or even singles?
MM: We may have a single coming out in like a month or so. We just had a call with our manager, and we’re kind of trying to make that plan. As we speak, we’ve got some stuff recorded and it’s pretty much ready to go. We’re kind of trying to figure out the right way to release it. Do we drop these as singles, or as an EP? We’ve got some more studio time booked for August, where we’re gonna try to record a full length album so we’ll probably drop some singles in the interim, and then hopefully have that album ready to go kind of by the end of the year.Â
Are you guys gonna be workshopping those on the road?
MM: Yeah, we’ve been doing that.
JT: We’re terrible about getting into the studio because we’re on the road so much. When we get home we’re tired.
So the big overarching goal for you guys is by the end of the year you’re hoping to get into the studio to start a full length. That’s what you’re hoping for?
MM: Yeah, I would say so. We’ve got seven songs ready to go. I think those are gonna be trickled out as singles and then hopefully we’ll drop the album. We got to record it first, but I know we’ve got a week in August booked and so hopefully we’ll make some good progress.
Where do you guys want to see yourself in a year?
JT: Playing as many festivals as possible.
MM: I definitely agree with that plan. Hopefully, we’ve got a new album out. Also continuing to see growth in the places that we’re going to. Hopefully, just people are still liking the music and enjoying it, and wanting to come out and dance.
CH: I echo both of these. I would love to be playing festivals. I hope we have an album out next year at this time that we’re just mega proud of, and that people are listening to a lot and enjoying. Hopefully that leads people to the rest of our catalog, too, and I just hope we can reach as many ears as possible. Also record all of our live shows and put them out on Nugs.net. So even if you can’t make it to a show you could listen to it at a later date.
