Ruin:
You got any questions for me?

Of Reverence:
Yo. Who is Puppy Alphabet?

Ruin:
Puppy alphabet is a cartoon dog, as of like summer last year, a year ago? it's like, summer already!

As of a year ago, plays guitar, as of a month ago performs original songs for live audiences. Primarily so far furry rednecks, and furries and rednecks.

Of Reverence:
Yo.

Ruin:
yeah.

Of Reverence:
So like, what-

Ruin:
I love everybody :)

Of Reverence:
What does Puppy Alphabet use, what is Puppy Alphabet's process like?

Ruin:
I'm ruin, I've been Puppy Alphabet, but now Puppy Alphabet is a band. And that's maybe gonna be the main thing, but that's up to fate to determine.

So I'm Ruin, some people call me Bailey. Government calls me Bailey. Most of the time. Sometimes they fuck it up. (Laughs) Honestly.

But, uh, I’m Ruin, I write songs, I've been writing songs since I was a kid, I sing, I’ve been singing since I was a kid. I vocalize to sing, I've vocalized to self-soothe since I was a kid. I use poetry to process my emotions - To make my experiences understandable to myself, and recently I've been trying to share some of my songs with people.

Because I love singing, I love songs, I love poems. I really love writing songs. I love songwiting, I love songwriters, I love all the songs that have been written. And I love so dearly all the songs that have yet to be written, I want so badly to make a lot of them real, and I'm doing that.

And I really love the songs that are on the tape I’m about to put out, like probably after this interview. Like next thing probably. And I love the new songs I’ve been working on. I was thinking, on the drive over here, and I wrote a song.

Fucking thrilled about songs I haven't written yet, I feel very sentimental and protective [about them], but also excited... in a anticipating catharasis way about songs that I wrote five or more years ago -- I had a burst of songwriting in my early twenties, teens, and some of them I never really finished.

Some of them I think are really solid and I want to work them into something more complete, and someone who’s helping me with that is LIlith, who plays the drums. I also play guitar. I’m like pretty good for a year on guitar, and I’m trying to get better--

Like I tell people that, I'm kind of bad at guitar... for now.

You know? Like I'm not that good at guitar... yet.

I intend to shred, just be patient with me.

Lilith is drums, enough said, tbh. Um.

Of Reverence:
- Oh, What influences and inspires you?

Ruin:
Music, right, obviously. The resilience of the human spirit. Human, for... lack for a better word. There’s better words, but I would have to make a whole list of them.. All the different kinds of spirits that are resilient.

But also grief inspires me. The... everybody that was not strong enough to withstand the ravage of this cruel and uncaring world any longer. That's like super emo, but I was emo really early. I like didn't listen to a lot of music as a kid, cause I'm honestly kinda tech illiterate, and I like it that way… it’s like for my own health, genuinely. My family’s very musical I’ve got like threeq siblings were always fuckin’ practicing, so like I did not want to listen to more music at the end of the day. So I really listened to a lot of the music that my older brother was interested in-- cause he had speakers and I didn’t-- and he lived across the hall from me, so I heard like Ben Folds, Five, Bright Eyes, and probably a bunch of shit I didn’t like. I used to like Modest Mouse and now I’m better, I like some of their songs now. I like some Beatles songs but I’m not like a Beatles fan

Of Reverence:
So. What are the plans for Puppy Alphabet.

Ruin:
I want to get to a point in my life where I can um. experience reality [laughs] expereince the world and experience life, and create and... no other... actions.

Oh! Shit I'm gonna keep fuckin’ writing songs until I can't turn thoughts into words, into recorded language, until I can turn it into music that can be heard and experienced.

Until I am 100% incapable of that, If I am capable of any part of that process, I'm continuing to do that as long as this body draws breath.

And I need a bassist too. (Laughs) Lmao

Of Reverence:

Yeah, I wanna wrap it up. Any parting thoughts?

Ruin:

Rock and motherfucking roll
But that's what comes last and what comes before that. I love all my friends so goddamn motherfucking much. I love my family, I love my immediate family. They're a bunch of weirdos and I'm starting to really get along with them, and it's good, because it sucks when that's not what's happening. And that was a lot of my life, a lot of our lives, y’know.

Yeah, uh, I like genuinely and like in a fairly literal sense, I believe that sound is physical touch, I think that's a reasonable belief to hold, I think there’s an argument to be made-- as my dad would say there's some truth to that-- for me it is true, and I genuinely love every person who listens to my music because my music is a real manifestation of my love and it's an act of care and affection to anyone whose ears and brain it enters if you're listening to my songs and/or reading this, I love you. Word.

Ruin:
I realized I didn't say nearly enough about influences and inspirations. So, I take a lot of inspiration from my brothers, all the music I've heard from them throughout our childhoods and throughout our lives now. I've been listening to a lot of my older brother playing jazz piano, he was going hard at that for a while before he realized it wasn't gonna work for him as a career. Now he’s doing a different kind of career in music.

Both my older brother and my younger brother, my youngest brother is still a little too young to have a career-- y’know I was too young to have a career. I do have a career now, I've got a few careers, at least a couple- definitely at least one. I love to ramble. Both of my brothers have careers in music. And they’re both very passionate about music. Heard a lot of jazz piano, and my younger brother singing.

It irritated the hell out of me cause our voices were so similar, and I didn’t want to sing like how he sang, I wanted to do different things, and I would feel it in my throat when he was singing. And I was like stop. And I couldn’t get away from music sometimes, too. But genuinely I’m grateful now.

I'm grateful to my mom for making me take piano lessons when I was a kid, and grateful to everybody in my family for being musical. My like music instructors over the years I want to shout out Kit Johnston? Ask me later to make sure you have it spelled right, cause I don’t want to spell that wrong. All the voice instructors that I had. Except for one of them and I won’t name names.

[smokes]

Sort of a different direction but… Puppy Alphabet. I've been describing it as folk rock to people. And then a more detailed explanation of it would be it's somewhere between folk punk and indie rock with a hip-hop influence that's not an afterthought, it's just my background really. So there’s like jazz and blues, y’know I really like folk songs, singing them at summer camp. That’s the rich kid shit I was able to do from having a rich uncle y’know.

I really liked singing songs with all the other kids, I like the communal experience of music, and like sharing music with other people. And performing music live has always been a part of my life.

It's always been feeding my spirit, but not enough, like morsels. Like scraps for the dog under the table. I’m a dog that speaks, I’m a dog that can talk, and I got shit to say.

I got feelings and I know how to articulate them. I could have written a list of fuckin’ musical influences I have, but it was in my poetry notebook that got stolen, and I have a photo of it, but it was on my phone that got stolen. But if I get Raba to give me Code’s number and Code to get me Zave’s number-- I sent Zave the photo and they could probably send it to me, and then I would have that list again. But I also used the list to make a playlist of influences. And you can include that in the interview if you want, It’s a playlist of some of the songs and artists that I’m influenced by. It’s not perfect, and there’s probably some shit in there that shouldn’t be in there, and there’s some shit that definitely needs to be in there that I just haven’t thought of yet. But I might update it. (Pause) And I like listening to it. I listen to it in the car.

Alright so we’ve got these demos that we’ve recorded in Easy Nasty. Easy nasty studio, it’s a beautiful [redacted] and a beautiful lil’ square of fuckin’ [redacted location].

And if you fuckin’ doxx me, I will [redacted], cause I think that’s legal here. I’m not sure though I’m in the north now. But no, if you come there to [redacted] I wish you the best of luck in that endeavor, cause you’re going to [redacted] need it cunt.

Of Reverence:
Yeah.

Ruin:
In any case-

Of Reverence:
Easy nasty is going in, [redacted] is not going in.

Ruin:
Don’t put it in. Yeah don’t do it. Maybe delete all that shit about [redacted] too, cause that’s a good editorial fuckin’ decision. Can you just like bleep out the part of it and then have this in it?

Of Reverence:
Yeah totally. Now we can say it as much as we want.

Ruin:
Yeah [redacted]

Of Reverence:
Yeah I fuckin’ love [redacted] Yeah I hate it but I love it. I love it but I hate it.

Ruin:
Don’t I know it. Don’t leave in the part about how its like [redacted]. That’s too specific, like even like [redacted] or any mention of [redacted].

Of Reverence:
(Laughing) Like all those times you just said [redacted]

Ruin:
It’s gonna be so fuckin’ funny. Uh, no what the fuck was I saying…

Ruin:
We recorded these fuckin’ demos at Easy Nasty Studio. [ Redacted reference to things they are going to remove in editing.] No but like Easy Nasty. Lilith and I we just fuckin’ like. I was recording these demos of just me and guitar, and I was like doing it in swag city. I was in the virtual realm with swag city.

I was recording vocals with just my vocals and guitar, and posting them in swag city. And Lilith is a swag city member, a swaggot. (Laughter) Lilith is a true swaggot, Lilith is like the anti-president of the swaggots. And that just means, like bottom bitch-- what’s the word for that? Is that it or is it something else

Of Reverence:
Honestly that sounds right. It doesn’t sound like the same thing, but it sounds right.

Ruin:
Well that’s what Lilith is to swag city. But also Lilith is drums. And she was like, “Yo, I actually have a place we can play drums, like I can play drums and you can play. And we could like jam and we can even record because I have a little field recorder,”. And we go out there, and Lilith has some ideas. And we just get-- first take, second take on some of these songs. And its like, that fuckin’ works, yeah, for the demo? That’s perfect. That’s better than we need. So I think these are fuckin’ listenable honestly.

But we’re trying to make an album, the Puppy Alphabet debut album. EP, LP, whatever, that doesn’t actually mean anything anymore because that’s for like an antiquated format of music, but like, audio files are sentimental or whatever. At least to some of us, so I get it.

Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Dude what the fuck am I talking about-- I’m stoned as fuck and I’m sleep deprived to hell and back. And I’m trying to get the word out, get the words out that debut album’s coming. I wanna make it fucking good, so there might be more demos before that happens. And I don’t know what’s going to be-- I’m not trying to get too attached to a particular vision because I want to see what life breathes into it.

Of Reverence:
When can we expect the Puppy Alphabet LP, EP, or whatever?

Ruin:
If it takes me a year, something went wrong. If it takes me a year, get on my fuckin’ case. Tweet at me every day, be like “Hey… You said a year and it’s been one year and a month and three days. And this is my 3rd or 34th day of messaging you about this? And I’m going to continue doing it until the fucking LP, EP, whatever the fuck is released because you said that this would be ok. You consented. Like explicit verbal consent to this interaction this behavior.”

And I would really like the practical dilemma of how much getting pestered like this is seriously interrupting my day, my life, will force me to resolve it by the only means made available to me, which are finishing the fucking album and releasing it. And even if it has to suck, y’know, you did that to all of us by bothering me. And I want it to suck less than I want it to not be real. Wait. I want it to suck more than I want it to not be real. And that’s actually the truth the other thing I said was a lie. Because it was the truth inverted. The truest lie.

Love you.