This interview series spotlights the bands performing at Asbury Jams every Thursday at The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, New Jersey, throughout the summer. Produced by ElmThree – Asbury Jams brings rising local, regional and national touring bands from the jam scene to the City that Bruce Built.
The music of Space Bacon is as wholly unique as its name. The band, born out of Fordham University in the Bronx doesn’t just write music, they construct intergalactic symphonies fusing traditional jam sound with electronic futurism. Their exploration of sound expands your understanding of the jam genre, and you’ll find yourself mesmerized on the journey their music takes you.
We sat down with Kevin LeGall, bassist of Space Bacon, to discuss the origin story of the band’s amazing name, their song composition, what he loves about being in this band, and more as they get prepared for “Space Beach” a beach-themed show at Asbury Jams at The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ with Sqwerv.
Space Bacon’s is one of the greatest band names of all time; let’s get the origin story.
It actually started at Fordham University with me, Jack [Willard] our original guitarist (who left three or four years ago) and our keyboardist Chris [Gironda] who’s still in the band. I was playing for my roommate’s band, and then they came to the show. We’d been talking about starting a band for a while. Jack did this thing where he would just kind of combine stuff together and ad-lib. He was just like, “Yo, you look like a mix of Kevin Spacey and Kevin Bacon, I’m gonna call you Space Bacon.” Then that stuck.
That’s how it happened. It’s funny because I was in a band called The Mags. It wasn’t called the Michael Albert Groscia’s, but we took my friend’s initials and made it the Mags. I was in a band called Short Bus, and that was [because of] my friend Chris Busson’s last name. So, throughout my whole career of playing music, I feel like the more successful projects have some stem to someone’s name in the band, and I guess I’m [for Space Bacon] I’m the focal point for that origin story.
You guys have created a wholly unique sound. Yes, it can be classified as jamtronica, but these feel more like electronic symphonic compositions as opposed to just songs. Take me inside Space Bacon’s creative process.
As a musician, I get so used to playing our songs that I don’t really look at it from that perspective. In terms of the creation process I would say that I’ve created maybe two or three songs. The bulk of it has always been Chris, or Fred [Rylands]. They create a lot of the material. They’ve been doing it for a while. There are two ways of thought with this. Either Chris or Fred brings an idea to the table and then the song is already structured. There’s an A part, there’s a B part, and maybe someone just brings a riff. Maybe there’s a C part to it. So how much it’s fleshed out. Usually it’s never 100%.
There’s some input, or people tweak it along the way. There have been certain songs that we’ve created over the years that actually spawn from jams. The first one like this was off our first EP, Node, called “Scroll.” That was a jam from a show of Garcia’s in maybe 2015; a long time ago. And then, going to this iteration of the group, we have a song called “Ecumenopolis” that came from a jam from a festival in 2023. The inspiration from the music can be from a jam itself, or it could just be from a member bringing it to the table. The song gets constructed in the back burner, whether it’s my house or at the rehearsal space. I never think a song is really fully fleshed out from our perspective until it’s put on the test course for a little bit.
No song has ever, I think, come out of the gate perfect. There are always two or three shows where we’re like, “Hey, maybe we could shorten this a bit [or] maybe we could increase this a bit.”
That’s my next question. Over the past year, I interviewed Chris Wood of The Wood Brothers and he discussed their creative process. When they cut a song they record it in the studio and put it on record. Yet, before they go on the road they completely reinterpret it. When I spoke with Daniel Donato, he mentioned how he road-tests all his music before recording a new album. How do you approach this?
Our first EP was 2016, that was Nodes. Those were four songs we worked on for quite some time, so those were definitely road tested. With Cones in 2021, I would say all but maybe one or two songs were road tested. We are working on some new material. It’s been in the pipeline for a little bit, and it’s interesting because there are some songs that we recorded and then brought out to the road.
Some of them, like “Snake Charmer,” was a song; if you go back to how it is in the studio recording it’s going to be different from how it is road tested. But we also have songs on this upcoming album that we haven’t played live at all. So it’s going to be really interesting to see it from that perspective — to see if those songs evolve or change a little bit once we perform them live. We’ll see if we change how many times a verse or chorus happens, or maybe a drum fill, or maybe a bass line will change over time. Music is meant to be very fluid.
I’ve played in punk bands and ska bands. I love that music, but there was a certain point where I just gravitated away from it because it’s the same thing every time. I appreciate when I see other jam bands perform [where] it’s never the same show twice. I think music itself kind of evolves and takes on a life form of its own.
Some genres are a little bit more static and concrete, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that, based on how we interpret music, our songs and material will always evolve. Whether it’s the show in Asbury Park or a show from 10 years ago, or a show 10 years from now it’s always going to evolve ever so slightly.
You can only pick it up, pick it up, pick it up so many times, right? Ska jokes aside, will you be playing some of the new music in Asbury or any other dates this year?
I think we just have to find time to do it. We have Wonder Bar this week. We have Beanstalk in Colorado in August on my birthday, then we have Shrimp Fest and Brooklyn Bowl. We don’t have many dates announced for the fall, but it would be really nice to get some of that new material out there. I think the fans would appreciate it, too. We have the material we have in the studio.
We still have songs that we create for fun. We also juggle daytime jobs so it’s very hard to find time to really get into the creative mindset. So I hope that with fewer shows we can create and have more content and more songs, not just on this album, but stuff we’ve been working on. Creating new music is the fun part of being in the band. I hope in the next few shows we’ll be able to showcase new music, whether it’s recorded or not.
You mentioned, Garcia’s before. So, I have to ask about last year when you headlined Brooklyn Bowl for the first time. Was that truly a watershed moment for the band?
It was definitely a special moment. I’ll just take a second to go back in time. We used to play Garcia’s [in Port Chester, NY next to the Capitol Theater] maybe once a month starting in 2013. Not once a month, maybe two times a quarter, give or take. We were always there. All our friends came out to the shows. This Thursday, we’re promoting the show as Space Beach. We had Space Beach 1 and 2 at Garcia’s. We really did a lot of events there. Garcia’s was our home turf for a very, very long time. We were always appreciative of that opportunity, because bands really need a place to really find their sound.
From the start, we’ve been incorporated with Garcia’s and the Capitol Theater and all of that. After college, we all migrated to Brooklyn and we were always going to shows at Brooklyn Bowl. Eventually, Sam, our drummer, started working there. We were always opening up for big bands there like Spafford, Pigeons, Breaking Biscuits. Headlining Brooklyn Bowl was one of the most incredible moments. That was home base for us. That show is probably one of the most memorable ones, and we’re really excited to be going back there on Friday, October 23rd, with Dizgo who’s a really good friend of ours. That’s a really killer combo.
Have you guys played Jersey before?
So, funny enough, we were a band for 11 or 12 years before we played New Jersey. Which is crazy, because we’re always in New York, we’re always in Philadelphia, or Pennsylvania. We did Debonair Music Hall [in Teaneck, NJ]. We always wanted to do Asbury Park. When I was younger I saw The Bouncing Souls there. Asbury’s always been a special place for me personally, especially when I was in college, so it’s just really awesome to be playing Wonder Bar and being at Asbury Park. I feel like that’s definitely a big check mark for us.
You mentioned that this show would be dubbed “Space Beach”—can you talk about the theme for the show?
It’s gonna be fun. We have some covers that are beachy-themed. I think we’re gonna wear some [beachy] stuff. Hopefully the fans come prepared wearing bathing suits and fun stuff. I mean, [Wonder Bar is] at a beach, so people might just come right off from the shore and just walk right in with their flip-flops.
What do you love about being in this band? You’ve juggled this band with a full-time job, but you’ve also dedicated over a decade to Space Bacon.
[Pulls a copy of Creem Magazine from this desk.] I love reading through some of these and just hearing stories of bands just getting in the van, and just playing shitty places to five people, and rocking out like it’s Woodstock. Having a job is cool and all with health insurance and all that. Part of me wishes because I’m very confident in our music… well, there’s a little backstory. In 2020, we were really supposed to push it. We had a big tour lined up every weekend. I think I would have quit my job because I had a really bad one back then. Sometimes I go back, and I think, “What [would have] happened if the world didn’t shut down, and we were able to do this full-time?”
I reflect on that, and I’m like, I think when you make music a job it can become different. I’m very fortunate that Space Bacon, for me and for the other members, is a passion project. We don’t have to play 100 shows a year just to pay rent. We’re able to do this when we feel comfortable. And we’re very fortunate for that.
True. But even with passion projects, people will put them aside after a while. You guys, however are continuing to play live and are putting out new music. Why keep going?
In high school, I played in a punk band and we did a lot of shows. In college, I played in many bands. Then later in college we started Space Bacon. We didn’t think 13 or 14 years from now, we would still be doing it. I think the reason why we still do it is because we just have a lot of fun. We have a lot of fans and a lot of people who really appreciate our music. I think as long as they keep on coming, we’ll keep on playing.
We were playing in Boston, we hit a lot of traffic, and it was Thanksgiving weekend. I was just like, “Oh I’m so tired of this. I have to work. I’d rather be with my friends. Then some guy comes up to me and says “Hey man, I gotta show you my tattoo.” He pulls down his pants, and it’s just a giant dripple, which is our logo. And I was like – that’s why I do this. People really care that much. We have people that have tattoos of our logo, and that’s really meaningful. The tattoo on someone’s ass, sure, it’s great, but just people really care about us that much where they travel to see us, they get ink on them.
It’s really hard being a musician. We’re very fortunate to be at where we are, where we can just fly to Denver, and we have a couple hundred people see us, or we’re gonna play Asbury Park for the first time, and we have a lot of people coming out, and that’s really cool and awesome. I just hope that this project can continue as long as we can. If people show up we’ll keep on playing. And even if we’re not playing shows, like, I think we’ll just keep on writing music and just having fun. At the end of the day, it’s just about being friends and hanging out and doing cool stuff, and making music and playing in front of people is definitely really cool, at least in my book.
My final question for you is: what are five things that you’re stoked for for this band for the rest of 2026?
One of them is playing Asbury Park. You know, like I said, we… I’ve always wanted to play Asbury Park. Being a big Bouncing Souls fan and seeing them at the Stone Pony or Summer Stage is just really cool. It’s, you know, this has been on our bucket list, so that’s number one.
We’re playing Beanstalk Festival in Colorado on my birthday, that’s gonna be great. Colorado shows up and we have a lot of great fans.
We’re co-headlining Brooklyn Bowl with Dizgo. We headlined there last year, and it’s really nice to keep that tradition going.
We’re working on a new studio album, so hopefully that’s released in 2026. We just want to get it out there and have fans listen to new music, so that’s exciting.
And on a personal note, I’m getting married in December.
