[Transcript edited for clarity]

Absent Sounds: This is Weadee. And I'm Weajue. And you are currently tuned in to another episode of Absent Sounds on CJAM 99.1 FM in Windsor and Detroit. Today we are joined by a special guest.

Jade Litri: Jade from Oso Oso.

Absent Sounds: Woo, woo. Who we are gonna be interviewing during his stop in Toronto, doing their show with Spanish Love Songs. Okay, so our first question is, well, today is Earth Day, so happy Earth Day to all those who celebrate.

Jade Litri: Happy Earth Day. I totally knew that, by the way.

Absent Sounds: Just kidding, I know I didn't click Google to find out that way. But we're talking about tour, and I know sometimes, well, as a world famous musician flying in private jets and all, having a private jet parked right outside the venue, how do you plan to surpass Taylor Swift and her carbon footprint in the next 24 hours?

Jade Litri: Oh man, I don't know about that. If we had the chance, probably by just the amount of plastic water bottles that we drink. I don't think any of us have a reusable one, we just throw them out the window too. I tried to do the reusable one, but it's just so hard to wash on tour, and by week three your water is pretty nasty.

Absent Sounds: Is there any natural phenomenon you've ever witnessed that really put you in an awe-inspiring place?

Jade Litri: I don't know about awe-inspiring, but this summer there were the wildfires. I live in New York, so it was pretty insane. I have a dog, he's a little Boston terrier, and I get super paranoid all the time, like, "oh shoot, something's wrong with him."

Absent Sounds: Does he have an anxiety disorder?

Jade Litri: He probably does at this point.

Absent Sounds: Our cat does too.

Jade Litri: He acts like a cat, my dog. But yeah, that happened, and it was pretty wild. I instantly went to Bed Bath & Beyond, they had a closing sale, and got this twenty dollar air purifier. I've never experienced an earthquake or anything like that, but it was funny, we drove out to San Diego to start this tour from New York, and when we got there it was raining and hailing, which for there is crazy. And that same day, in New York, there was an earthquake, and I'd never experienced one before. All my friends and family were like, "this is crazy," and I missed it.

Absent Sounds: That's a once in a lifetime chance to die.

Jade Litri: In an earthquake. I'm sure I'll have more in the next fifty years. We're all gonna die.

[Musical break]

Absent Sounds: For the rest of the interview, we're gonna talk a little more about Sore Thumb and what it means. If you were back in that era of your life, what's a memory that always makes you smile?

Jade Litri: In that specific era? Oh man, there's almost too many to name. Shortly after recording that, I got to hang out with my cousin for a month straight, and he passed away two months later. I'll always remember the very end of it, we drove to Pennsylvania, and then he was going back home, and just saying goodbye to him. At the time it was like a goodbye after hanging out for a month, so it was a good, hearty goodbye, a hug and "I love yous." I'm always grateful for that, because if it was just a random day we were hanging out, that wouldn't have happened. You don't think about stuff like that usually, so it was nice.

Absent Sounds: Are you good at saying goodbyes?

Jade Litri: Now I am. Now I definitely am, I'm way better.

Absent Sounds: We call ourselves memory hoarders, we love to collect memories any way we can. So what do you usually do to keep hold of memories so you don't forget them? And music is not an answer.

Jade Litri: For sure. If it's something like a date, you grab a movie ticket or a concert ticket, I really love physical concert tickets, but I feel like that's going by the wayside. I also like to take little videos on my phone, on tour, fifteen second snippets. A lot of my ideas, even for music, I'll just take a little video and sing into my phone, then go through and see all the videos and be like, "oh, that's a song idea." One recently was just a really nice day I was sitting on the boardwalk, and there was this plane that looked like it was flying into the sun, so I took a little video of that. Not really a good answer.

Absent Sounds: No, that's a great answer. I was just talking to a friend, I have no space on my phone anymore, even though I've taken off all the videos, there's just photos now, I take too many snaps.

Jade Litri: Did you know there's a whole album of recently deleted on your phone? If you delete the videos, they still stay on your phone for like thirty days, so if the space isn't clearing enough, you could find that album and clear out the extra stuff. I'm bad with storage too.

Absent Sounds: So the first track is Computer Explorer, and the question for it is: what computer browser do you use, and why?

Jade Litri: Let me just check real quick, I gotta answer truthfully. The reason why is just because I'm like an eighty four year old man with technology, I'm really bad at it.

Absent Sounds: Do you change your wallpaper, do you have a background?

Jade Litri: I have, but hold on, I'll show you real quick, it's just my dog, every three months it'll be a new picture of him.

Absent Sounds: That is acceptable.

Jade Litri: But that feels like next level technology for me, like, "oh, I know what I'm doing now." It's just Safari.

Absent Sounds: Basic. We'll psychoanalyze you from that.

Jade Litri: It's always trying to get me to do the Google one, Chrome, but I don't know, that's too much. I'm just like, "no, this one seems fine, and it came with the phone, I'm okay with it."

Absent Sounds: Maybe it won't track your data, who knows?

Jade Litri: Well, I was gonna say, yeah, they're probably selling my information to Amazon or something.

Absent Sounds: Number two, when you have nothing to do, what do you choose to fill your time with? Can't be music.

Jade Litri: I like to go on really long walks with my dog. Honestly I can't take him on the beach anymore, because if he gets a taste of sand he drops his jaw and will straight up scoop it up like a cartoon, and then for the next three days it's like he's constipated. We just walk down this little block called Ocean View, it's like a two mile block, up and down. I like to go for bike rides too, been trying to do that more. I would say smoke weed, but I've been trying to do that less as I get older.

Absent Sounds: What's a mishap that's happened because of you that you're convinced had nothing to do with you? Do you take the blame for most things?

Jade Litri: I think when it's my fault, I'm pretty good at being like, "hey, I was wrong." I'm definitely not the scapegoat. I did book us in a really sketchy motel one night, I should've checked if they had trailer parking but I didn't try, so I took the blame for that. If I think of a better one I'll come back to you.

Absent Sounds: The next one, Father Tracy. When I was listening to it, I thought this definitely sounds like a really personable guy I would want to meet in real life and just talk to. Can you give us an impression of Father Tracy?

Jade Litri: Oh man, Father Tracy. I think he'd just be trying to offer somebody a drink. I think the drinking aspect to him kind of puts the eternal damnation part in a more compassionate lens. That song for me was trying to come to terms with, I think I grew up pretty religious, and you have this moment where you're like, this is so responsible for a lot of bad stuff, a lot of hatred in the world. I was trying to come to terms with the fact that not everyone who's super into that and super religious is super conservative, trying to reconcile that, trying to see past the surface of what makes a good person.

Absent Sounds: That makes a lot of sense. Skipping Give a Fork, but number five, All Love. This is a question I really wanted to ask, it reminds me of Alt-J, you know when no one knows what they're really saying? When you sing this one live, do you actually say the lyrics?

Jade Litri: We actually never play this song live. It's about finding out that somebody I was close with, who I'm not really close with anymore, their mom was sick with cancer. I came back home for a weekend and found out about it, and it was just feeling for them but knowing it's probably not a good time to hit this person up right now. That's what that one's about. I would sing all the words if we did play it live.

Absent Sounds: Weajue was convinced you guys just make up the words on the spot as you're singing.

Jade Litri: It's crazy. My roommate, he does it for Apple Music, not Spotify, he goes through lyrics and makes sure they're right. There was someone, maybe Kid Cudi, recently complaining they got his lyrics wrong on Apple Music, and my roommate came home like, "I think I'm gonna get fired."

Absent Sounds: I actually didn't think there was a real person behind that, good to know it's your roommate. Fly On The Wall, this is our favorite song, along with Describe You. There's a lyric where you say, "don't know what I want, just kneading." You did a Reddit AMA where you said you're a dog person, but kneading is more of a cat person thing. Does your dog knead on you?

Jade Litri: That's pretty good, I was gonna say, "damn, you guys got me, dog person." But that was kind of like kneading, the way you'd knead clay or dough. It is a cat thing for sure, but it was the idea of shaping your life the way you want, figuring out how to, kind of realizing it's impossible to know what you want your life to be from day one, but as you experience more, it shapes itself out.

Absent Sounds: As an old man, do you feel like you know what you want your life to look like now?

Jade Litri: I don't, but I feel okay with that. I feel good about my life right now. I think when I was in my twenties, I'm thirty one right now, I just feel good, I know what's important now, and I didn't always. Not that you're supposed to. I think that's part of your twenties, you mess up and realize it's good that I messed up so I won't do that again, I'd rather make mistakes then than later. I know it's not all gonna come to me at once, but I think I know what's important to me, and I feel good about those things, and I feel like I have the tools to have a nice life.

Absent Sounds: One fun fact, Weajue and I are professional fly killers, when we worked at camp we would run around with our fly swatters and kill every fly we saw.

Jade Litri: Did you go electric or analog?

Absent Sounds: Analog.

Jade Litri: I've gotten a couple straight up just with paper towel in hand, I try to flex on my roommates with it.

Absent Sounds: Show them the blood after you do it?

Jade Litri: No, I'll just put it away.

Absent Sounds: I like to show them on other people's necks. So if you were a fly on the wall, how would you avoid being squished by professionals?

Jade Litri: Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know if any flies have tried this strategy, but they see faster than us, that's why they're so good at moving. I think I'd try to latch onto the swatter with my little fly legs, hook the swatter, but I feel like you'd still get smashed if it was into a wall, though in thin air you'd go through the holes. That would be my strategy, and then I'd die probably.

Absent Sounds: My other strategy was just to go up their nose so they can't squish you.

Jade Litri: That's good, because that's also just a hard part to deflect, if I was to go up your nose I could probably go up your nose.

Absent Sounds: Describe You- Give us three words to describe yourself.

Jade Litri: I'd say goofy, shy but extroverted. Does that make sense?

Absent Sounds: Yes it does. I always call myself an outgoing introvert, so if anybody's in a room full of introverts I'll be the person to say, "okay guys, you wanna do this?"

Jade Litri: I feel the same way, I think I'm shy, but I have no problem, if somebody comes up to me I'll say exactly how I feel about something.

Absent Sounds: When needed.

Jade Litri: Yeah, and when not needed too.

Absent Sounds: Even better. How often do you die?

Jade Litri: Do I die? Feels like I've died four times in my life.

Absent Sounds: Were those all connected, the same day?

Jade Litri: No, no, years apart. But I feel like I've experienced deaths, and then you're reborn, or not reborn, but you know what I mean.

Absent Sounds: If you had to choose how and when you die, but it can't be in your sleep, how would you like to go?

Jade Litri: That's a good one. Probably older, definitely. Right now I'm like, no, I wanna live long. Maybe hopefully if something crazy happens with the world and weather and climate change, that'd be a chill way to go out, go out with everybody, go out with a bang. Or, I got a better answer, find out about some crazy government conspiracy or uncover extraterrestrial life, and then get killed because I know too much.

Absent Sounds: That's true, that's a good one, you'd be like the subject of some Netflix documentary, "what did he know?" Gosh, that's like the other guy, I don't remember his name, I was talking about this on the Topshelf Discord server, there was a guy who made a record about aliens and then disappeared on the plains of California, and they were like, "he knew too much, he made the record."

Jade Litri: Oh man, coming down, I'm gonna instantly regret that answer. Have people in suits just following me for the next week with earpieces.

Absent Sounds: What's that place in the US where it doesn't really exist, like Area 51?

Jade Litri: Area 51.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, my Area 51 is Pensacola, and I feel like every band I love is from, or knows, or has a song called Pensacola. What is Pensacola for you?

Jade Litri: I didn't know how many bands had a Pensacola song. That song came about piece by piece, but it all fits together in an interesting way. It started at the studio one day, I did the drums and that piano thing, and thought we could write something cool around this. Then did the bass, so the music came first, and I was humming to the chorus trying to sound out words, and kept sounding out "Pepsi Cola." I was like, well, I'm not gonna write a song about Pepsi. But I had that, and then I was thinking of Pensacola, and it reminded me of a time, I had a friend in Pensacola I met through touring randomly one night, and ended up back in Pensacola and was like, "hey, do you wanna hang out?" I hadn't talked to them since I hung out with them in Pensacola, and they were like, "I don't even live in Pensacola anymore." That was kind of the "some places aren't quite like you remember" line. And then there's this thing where I get weird inspirations to write about for some reason. I used to work in a warehouse with this guy named Jerry, I don't mind saying his name, hi Jerry, he got a DWI or something so he always had to ride his bike to work, and he lived further than me, and I was like, "you're riding forty five minutes a day." That combined with, when I lived in Pennsylvania there was a time I didn't have a car and was really in the woods, so there's nothing you can do. All that, thrown in with the idea of not having a car, and then when I was recording I was pretty broke at the time.

Absent Sounds: Thirty nine dollars.

Jade Litri: Yeah, exactly, so you see how all the bits and pieces come together. Now I don't know if people from Pensacola like the song or not, now they have a weird song about them.

Absent Sounds: We were stranded in some place in Detroit, nobody knows where. Actually, that was the day they closed the tunnel, so it was crazy bad.

Jade Litri: What did you do, did you just end up staying?

Absent Sounds: We got a taxi and it cost us eighty dollars to go over the border, literally five minutes. It was horrible, I was so mad because we went over the bridge instead of the tunnel that time. There was this random guy screaming, it was midnight, two girls walking around Detroit, it was horrible, never doing it again. Anyway, what's your story about being stranded somewhere?

Jade Litri: I have a good one. We did a tour years ago, like 2016 or 2017, and our van died on the last day or two, we put the wrong oil in it. That wasn't me, but if it was me that would've been a good throwback to that other question, I would've never admitted it, because everyone was miserable, it was the end of a three week tour and everyone was stoked to go home. Nowadays we'd be able to figure something out, get a car, but we really had no money, we didn't know what to do. We were waiting in DeKalb, Illinois for about three days, trying to get a rental car and pack everything in, but they were unavailable. By our third day in a motel we were running out of money we made on the tour, so we ended up getting a U-Haul, there were four of us at the time, we put all our gear in it and all got in that front little bench, all packed in. I still have an old selfie in my folder from it. That was a pretty miserable three days, the most stranded I think I've felt in a while.

Absent Sounds: We're almost done, two more questions for you. Nothing says love like hydration. I was looking up what the full saying is, if there's nothing says love like something from the oven, so what says love for you?

Jade Litri: What is love for me? Gatorade.

Absent Sounds: And if something came out of the oven, what would be your pick?

Jade Litri: Salmon.

Absent Sounds: Are you more of a salmon person than tuna?

Jade Litri: I gotta be honest, if you put me somewhere where you gotta eat something for thirty days straight and you can't leave but you get to pick what you eat, give me salmon every day. But tuna, I'm a big fish person. I grew up pretty close to the water and had family members who fished and would bring home stuff they caught, so from a young age I was like, "fish is great, I love fish."

Absent Sounds: Like a cat, obviously.

Jade Litri: This is the expose, he's really a cat person.

Absent Sounds: That's the title of this, he's a liar.

Jade Litri: Oso Exposed, cat guy.

Absent Sounds: Says he loves dogs, he does not. We're gonna send this to your dog.

Jade Litri: Oh dude, my dog won't care, he misses me for probably two days when I leave and then literally forgets I exist.

Absent Sounds: I was gonna ask what you had to drink with your dinner today, it wasn't Gatorade, I assume.

Jade Litri: No, no, no. When I eat it'll probably just be water, or seltzer, or if there's a tea in the back sometimes we get iced tea.

Absent Sounds: Iced tea in the US is different than iced tea in Canada, you have to explain what iced tea is for you.

Jade Litri: Okay, so Eddie, our guitarist, is really into these, he's been putting them on the request thing, it's called Liquid Death, have you heard of it? It's this water company in the US, canned water with a crazy design on it, kind of like a skull, looks like something you'd drink if you ride motorcycles. I think the whole thing is they made it so it looks like it would be alcohol, so if you wanna feel not weird about being sober at a bar you just order one. But then they branched off into different seltzers, and he gets this iced tea with agave in it, not a lot of sugar, it's really nice.

Absent Sounds: What's the iced tea in Canada? When I drink iced tea I think Nestlé, with the brown one.

Jade Litri: I have a feeling the Nestlé here is probably way better than in the States, is it super sweet?

Absent Sounds: I don't know, the one we used to drink was at camp, and that was disgusting, it was watered down because we made it out of the kit and put tap water into it for the kids.

Jade Litri: Oh, I used to love the powder stuff though, especially the lemonade, back in the day.

Absent Sounds: Lemonade is your favorite Gatorade too.

Jade Litri: Oh, lemon lime. Yeah, that's it. This is actually a very contentious thing with me, the lemonade and the lemon lime are two different flavors.

Jade Litri: They look the same, but I like the lemon lime.

Absent Sounds: Can you tell the difference by taste?

Jade Litri: So easily. No, I'm just kidding.

Absent Sounds: Our final question for you, what was the last time you rode on a carousel?

Jade Litri: I think the last time was 2018, this place in Pennsylvania near where I lived called Knoebels, it's like a little theme park, kind of like Six Flags but a little smaller, still some good rides.

Absent Sounds: We don't have Six Flags either.

Jade Litri: Don't worry, it just feels like everything there is a death trap. I don't know if you're into roller coasters, but Six Flags is not for the faint of heart.

Absent Sounds: Do they have insurance over there, do they make you sign waivers?

Jade Litri: They honestly might. But this place was just a little amusement park, and there was this game, all my friends who lived up there were like, "you gotta do the carousel, there's fun games," a ring pops out, and if you get the brass ring you win. So I'm doing it, first time, plastic ring, plastic ring, third time around, the brass ring, I got the brass ring. I'm so excited, the rest of the ride I'm just holding it up. Then I get off and give the brass ring to the ride attendant, and he's like, "oh nice, you won." I go, "oh sick, what do I get?" And he's like, "no, that's it, dude." I was like, "what?" I was kind of, not mad at my friends, but I was like, "whoa, you were hyping this up all day and you don't even get anything."

Absent Sounds: You almost broke your finger for the ride and everything.

Jade Litri: Yeah, they were like, "you get the brass ring." I was like, "what?"

This is Jade from Oso Oso, and you're listening to CJAM Windsor Detroit.