motel void

MOTEL VOID: You are no newcomers to the scene – on the contrary, you’ve been active on the Bay Area scene for a quarter of a century. Could you briefly look back at the projects you’ve been involved in?

DEVEREUX SCALES: Jeremy and I originally connected in the early 2000’s through a mutual friend and collaborator, Pat Toves (who also recorded with us on drums for our most recent session, in Summer 2025). Pat and Jeremy were a part of Passing Lanes, which was—in my opinion—one of the great “could have been” bands of its era. Pat had amazing songs and a very clear vision, it seemed. But, that project unfortunately succumbed to all the usual deterrents of bands: personnel shift, relationships starting and ending, and major moves.

Around the same time, Pat worked with me and my ex, Anna Crane, on a project we called The Afterparty. These early 00’s projects were very much in the indie rock production aesthetic that Pat favored at the time, which was fairly stripped down production, typically recorded to 4-track tape.

When I met Linda Cleary in 2004, we started a band called Fake French, which was heavily inspired by the band Low—specifically their album “I Could Live in Hope,” which we both loved. Linda was new to the Bay Area after being part of an art collective in Seattle, called Beep Repaired, where she had developed her own lofi aesthetic, using toy piano beats and 80’s-era cheap synths. Her thought with Fake French was to work in that Low-inspired space of harmony vocals and slowcore shoegaze, but to add in electronic elements, which for us meant a MicroKorg and novel-for-its-time use of an iPod for prerecorded beats and ambient elements for our live shows—some of which we collaborated on with Stefan Mendez, a producer in Seattle that Linda knew well. As we built momentum with Fake French, I asked Jeremy to join as a bassist for live performance. You don’t know until you look back, but this was such a fertile time for us all, creatively, and we played a lot of shows that we were all really happy with.

MOTEL VOID: You put Devereux Scales together at the turn of 2023 and 2024. The eponymous debut album was released in June. Could you describe how it came about – both in terms of songwriting and the recording process?

DEVEREUX SCALES: Jeremy and I stayed in touch irregularly over the years, as we had both shifted focus to our families and careers. When I reached out to Jeremy in 2023, I had a creative itch of sorts, but didn’t envision what we’re doing now. Jeremy invited me to his rehearsal space so we could “mess around with guitar pedals,” which I find funny in hindsight, as it’s possibly still the primary undergirding of the whole thing here. For me it had been a long layoff from music in general, so I was energized by that first session. Given the gear-driven focus, and a little prompting from Jeremy on Ride as an influence, it gave me a clear point of entry to start writing songs.

I sent over a demo for a song called “Run it Over,” which Jeremy was excited about—although, funny enough, we’ve never recorded a version of that one we liked enough to release. But that got the whole thing in motion. I wrote Mirror in the Deep and Automatic in rapid succession, and Jeremy contributed Quillia and Waiting. So within a couple of months we were already halfway into prepping an album and felt really good about the shared songwriting language we were developing. I remember joking to Jeremy that we could have been doing this together for the last twenty years! I don’t think either of us realized we’d have this kind of writing chemistry, but that’s the way of things sometimes.

We actually recorded the self-titled album in Summer of 2024! Jeremy has summers off and we decided to book a few days at Soundwave Studios in Oakland, which is a daily rental facility that was gracious enough to let us camp out there for a few days. It was a bit of an odd setup, but we had an isolated room and plenty of space to set up mics for tracking. The goal was really just to record full band demos to book shows with, but I was never happy with the mixing work I did. It felt like if we worked with a good engineer, we’d have something more release-ready. Luckily we found Danielle Goldsmith at Tiny Telephone, who did an amazing job reclaiming the tracking session into what we released this past summer.

For songwriting in general, Jeremy and I have a great workflow. One of us will either write something complete, or we’ll start with some germ of a song, meet up, and work through the remaining arrangement. This has been the most fluid writing dynamic I’ve ever been a part of, and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

MOTEL VOID: However, you haven’t slowed down – around Christmas you released a new single, It’s Always in My Heart. Is this a standalone single, or does it foreshadow a larger release?

DEVEREUX SCALES: As we did in summer 2024, we also took time this summer of 2025 to record a full length record. Sadly, we’ve had some bandmate turnover, which is why we asked Pat to come up from LA to track drums with us.

Rather than recreate the same dynamic that led to a year-long process from tracking to release on the first album, we scheduled time at Tiny Telephone to record from day one. What an amazing experience. For Jeremy and I, it was great to reconnect musically with Pat, and to get the benefit of his producer’s ear. I think every song on this record benefited from his ideas, and the whole session was a wonderfully collaborative process, with Pat, but also with Danielle on the board, Ben on bass, and Linda on synth and added vocals.

With this second album, we wanted to make a leap forward in focus and attention to detail, and to really produce something that could conceivably be in conversation with the albums that we had loved in our formative years. Recording in a traditional analog studio, where we could make use of the tape machines and all of their incredible vintage gear, we felt a sense of communion with these nostalgic styles, which informed everything about the recording process.

I think it was a really successful effort, and we’re excited to keep releasing singles, and an eventual full album release, which we have titled (thus far), “Drain to Live.” I would expect that release cycle to finish before we hit the studio again in summer 2026. We already have several demos to work with, and I feel like we have another step of evolution to make in this future session.

MOTEL VOID: How would you describe the Bay Area scene? Do you have any favorite venues or local bands you’re close to that you could recommend?

DEVEREUX SCALES: Things are so different than they were when we first started playing shows back when. So many of the venues we remember are gone, though many remain; and some that were so-so then are amazing today. In the styles of music we favor, I haven’t found a consistent scene presence here, although there are great labels here, like Smoking Room, or Slumberland.

I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t yet gone very deep in our return to playing live. I think our idea of success today is different than it was twenty plus years ago. We don’t have the same hunger to do this more than every 6-8 weeks, and with bandmate turnover, we paused on booking for a while as well. Suffice it to say, it feels more DIY now than it did then, and I don’t know that it’s a bad thing. The tools for artists today are very powerful at all levels: production, promotion, and distribution. The venues are there, but I think you need to really make it a compelling reason for people to get out of the house. I don’t think there’s a lot of casual engagement with live music here currently—people come out more purposefully nowadays.

For favorite venues, I think the smaller clubs, like Ivy Room or Stork Club in the East Bay; Makeout Room, or Kilowatt in SF, are places you can consistently see great bands. Obviously Bottom of the Hill remains at the forefront for touring acts below the theater-sized venue draw. Honestly, there seem to be more great places to play than there are crowds getting out consistently. I’m happy to say that the Bay Area remains a stop for major touring acts, at places like the Fillmore, Great American Music Hall, August Hall, or the Independent. And of course there’s a major state of the art arena in SF where I recently saw a line of kids down multiple blocks out to see Billy Eilish, as an example.

The culture in the Bay Area has changed a lot in the last twenty five years, and that’s seen things skewing away from more experimental, or communal scenes. So many great artists we’ve known have moved to more affordable cities in that timeframe. But, to put this in a positive frame, I still think this is the most amazing place in the US, and I haven’t given up on the underlying frontier mindset here. That goes back a long long time, and I don’t think will ever fully go away. This remains a place for taking chances.

MOTEL VOID: What are your biggest current inspirations?

DEVEREUX SCALES: The most inspiring thing to me in recent years is just how open the world of music has become to a merging of styles and inspirations. You can see the way the younger generation experiences music is very different from the very linear progression that everyone grew up with before the 2010’s. I think that’s opened up music in such an interesting way, where previously incongruous influences from different eras can interoperate creatively. Recent major bands are so delightfully weird to me. When I hear bands like Wet Leg, or Geese, it gives me hope for the future. I’m always interested in people that slip around the corner of expectations artistically. I can’t remember a time where so many artists seemed to be wholly on their own wavelength.

MOTEL VOID: Are you planning any concert touring for 2026?

DEVEREUX SCALES: Maybe? I think the opportunity would be limited western US touring. We have reasons to be in LA, Portland, and Seattle, and could make it to friendly environs in SLC if we were inspired. Never say never, but I think we’re past the days where any kind of extensive tour would make sense. We just want to focus on producing music we’re proud of, and living creative lives.