An Interview with almost monday

photo: Cole Ferguson/Hollywood Records

Last year, almost monday fulfilled a career ambition when “Can’t Slow Down” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart. 

The danceable pop/rock single – off the San Diego trio’s totally infectious 2024 debut album Dive - also landed among the top 10 most-played songs nationally at the format (including local stations ALT 98.7 and KROQ/106.7 FM).

The achievement followed three EPs and several previous singles that made minor radio inroads. In '25, a deluxe edition of Dive was released including bonus tracks "Sequoia," "Holiday" and a new version of "Jupiter" featuring Jordana. 

On May 17, almost monday will perform alongside previous tourmates The Driver Era at the LA County Fair in Pomona, and then open the first leg of Young the Giant’s North American arena tour from May24-June 27.

Singer Dawson Daugherty, guitarist Cole Clisby, and bassist Luke Fabry checked in last month through a video interview.

The tour you have coming up with Young the Giant sounds exciting.

Dawson Daugherty: [Young the Giant is] a band that I remember growing up and listening to. ‘Cough Syrup’ was such a formative song in my younger years. I’m super excited. They’re a super cool band and Cold War kids will be there too, so it's pretty rad.

Is it an added bonus to go out on tour with bands who are also from Southern California? Young the Giant is from Irvine; Cold War Kids are from Long Beach.

Dawson Daugherty: They’re Southern California guys. Yeah, I think so. Probably more than anything, it’s commonality. Once you’re on the road, you have some stuff to talk about and bond over. We haven’t met those guys yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing them out there.

Since this interview will preview your LA County Fair show in Pomona with The Driver Era, I wondered whether you’d played many county fairs before.

Cole Clisby: We played the San Diego one a long time ago with Switchfoot.

Dawson Daugherty: Oh, true. The Del Mar fair.

Cole Clisby: That was literally our first big show with more than a couple hundred people…That was pretty memorable. I just remember we were all pretty nervous for that.

The latest single “Leaving is Easy,” is a reflective acoustic guitar-based ballad and somewhat of a departure for the band. How did that song develop?

Dawson Daugherty: We were in Nashville writing with our friend Chase [Lawrence of COIN]. It just organically came up and was one of those songs that really grabbed us all in a way [like] some of our earlier work. It’s really different and touched us in a different way. On personal levels and as a band, it felt like something that really just resonated. I think it was important for us this year to start with something that felt ‘heart first.’ almost monday, for us, is so much about playing music live…the energy and having fun. It’s who we are.

In this song - not that I don’t think it'll be beautiful live - it was so much more about ‘this just feels right.’ Rather than, ‘This is going to be something in a live room that we want to play.’ With that being said, I think it was important for us to have the beginning of this year be marked with ‘this is where we’re at and this is how we feel.’ And just letting the heart be the thing that led this year.

It displays a different side to the band.

Dawson Daugherty: Yeah. Sonically, it’s super different for us, which is so fun. I’m sure a lot of artists feel this way, but it’s so fun to depart. We have endless amounts of people we admire and love and sounds we admire and love. [To] dip our toes in this sonic lane, was really fun.

For the previous single, “Lost,” how was the experience of shooting the music video and getting to live out your spy movie hero fantasies?

Luke Fabry: Our friend and director came out to a European tour that we [did]. We just went out a couple hours a day and shot in every city that we were playing shows in…there was never really a true through line, but it was so fun [when] there was actually a point in the video where Dawson jumps off a bridge in Amsterdam.

And people were like, ‘What’s going on?’ But surprisingly, we did some stunts and there’s police and people were fine with it. So, it was really fun to cosplay your Jason Bourne fantasy.

Paris was one of the locales too, right? I remember seeing the Eiffel Tower in a shot.

Cole Clisby: That was the last shot of the shoot. We did like six countries or something.

The video reminded me of that old Beastie Boys clip for “Sabotage.”

Dawson Daugherty: [laughs] Yeah! You nailed it, dude. We love that video.

You were nominated for an iHeartRadio award. How important has the support from local radio stations such as KROQ and Alt 98.7 FM in LA and 91X FM in San Diego been for the band?

Dawson Daugherty: I’m always shocked. We’re from San Diego, so you would hope [91X] would be supporting the hometown boys. But with KROQ [too], it’s really awesome. As we’ve gotten to know more people over there, [we’ve discovered] they’re just really great people, they love music and that’s all you can hope for.

[Alt 98.7 PD] Lisa Worden, [Alt 98.7] DJ Stryker - all those people over there are just really cool…last year we saw that on [Alt 98.7 FM], ‘Can’t Slow Down’ was the [fourth] most played song last year in LA. That was super surreal. More than anything, we say ‘thank you’ to them.

[The song’s cowriter, Sam Hollander, also posted on Instagram that it ranked as the #3 Most Played song at Alternative radio nationwide last year]

Earlier this year, the band did a tour Down Under. Did you get much surfing done while you were there?

Cole Clisby: Yeah. We surfed a bunch. Australia’s pretty prime for a band who also surfs because you can just surf and then play the show. We had played in Sydney briefly before, but this was our first proper tour of Australia [and we were] able to hit Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth as well.

Then also New Zealand for the first time. It was pretty special to be able to go surf a world class wave like Snapper Rocks [a renowned, high-performance, right hand point break] on the Gold Coast and then go play a show that night. So, it was a pretty great experience for us.

Which one of you is the best surfer?

Dawson Daugherty: Cole is ridiculously good; Luke's a great surfer too. Luke was ripping it.  

Cole Clisby: Luke was out the back getting some bombs.

Dawson Daugherty: Luke was like on the peak at Snapper, dude, just fucking, hitting that shit.

Turning to the ‘Dive’ album: With hindsight, are you satisfied with how it turned out overall and was received by fans?

Luke Fabry: Yeah. I think something that we talked about before we put together and conceptualized ‘Dive’ was: to be a real band, you need an album. We were putting out a bunch of EPs and singles. It’s like a really big statement to put out your first album. In some indirect ways, it established us more as a band that has something to say and that had a consistent piece of work, which was really cool to do.

And it gives us and lets us build more of a world around it too, which is really awesome. In those ways, I think it impacted the band in a really positive way.

photo: Cole Ferguson/Hollywood Records

Did you intend the album overall to sort of a love letter to Southern California and beach culture?

Luke Fabry: We wanted it to be a snapshot of what we were at the time, so when we’re all old, [we can tell] our grandkids that ‘your grandpa was in a band.’ You could share something that was honest and of the time.

We get the question a lot: ‘Does growing up in San Diego come through in the music?’ In a lot of ways, it just is what it is. We have a song that we all love called ‘Life Goes By’ and it becomes more meaningful, the more we tour because it talks about really simply just going to the beach and the simple pleasures of life. Because that’s who we are, it comes out and as we get to see more of the world, home is always our North Star.

Looking over the credits, I was really impressed that you had Elisa from Naked and the Famous doing some background vocals on a few songs. How was it to have her add harmonies?

Dawson Daugherty: She’s a really, really dear friend of ours. We adore her and she’s great. I’m actually at her house right now, which is random, but, in terms of a voice of a generation, of a moment in time, we call it the ‘golden age of indie pop’ - bands like MGMT, Foster the People, Naked and the Famous, Two Door Cinema Club - we were listening to those band so much in junior high and [while] surfing. I literally had The Naked and Famous as my alarm clock [song], waking up to go surf at 5:00 a.m. To have her voice be a part of our songs is just super cool.

And what’s [also] cool about it is, not just because she's like great and amazing, but she's become such a great friend. When you get to work on music and have your friends on it, it's pretty epic. That’s the dream. You make music with your friends and put it out. There's nothing really better.

It’s cool that you brought that up. I love that.

One of my favorite songs on the album is ‘Sunburn’ due to the breeziness of it. When you were writing that, did the 1972 hit ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by King Harvest have a sound you wanted to get or did that just come out accidentally?

Dawson Daugherty: That was not anything we thought of. I remember people said it sounds like ‘Dancing in the Moonlight,’ and it was not anything conscious. That wasn’t a reference point. That song is insanely great, but I remember seeing a ton of people make that comparison, and I was like, ‘That’s cool.’ It’s just an amazing song. I don't think we were thinking about that song at all while making it. That song is really good. I love that song.

Another standout for me on the album is ‘Life Goes By,’ especially the driving, rocking pace to it. Were you guys seeking a Strokes-type feel on that at all when you did it?

Cole Clisby: I remember when we did that one, we were really trying to go back to our San Diego surf rock roots and draw inspiration from that with the guitar tones and stuff. That's a favorite of ours for sure.

I was immediately drawn to the illustrations on the ‘Dive’ LP dust jacket. Who did those cartoon illustrations for each song?

Dawson Daughtery: Our friend Dave Bower. He goes by @OldSweaty on Instagram. He’s so funny. So many of the people we’ve gotten to work with, we’re just fans of them and then we think it’s impossible to work with them. And we just send an arrow in the night, a flaming arrow into the sky, and then somehow, they answer the call and are down to work.

Dave, he's such a legend. I’m glad you brought him up because we all feel that he really brought ‘Dive’ physically to life in a visual way. When I think of ‘Dive,’ I see Dave’s work, so it's really cool.

Was the album’s title track your tribute to the Beach Boys and Four Freshmen and the whole beach thing?

Dawson Daughtery: Yeah. I like to talk about the Beach Boys as a massive influence on us. I don't know if anybody would be like, ‘almost monday is like the Beach Boys sonically.’ But I think their essence is something that we're deeply inspired by. When their [recent] documentary came out, I was so moved by how one of  them was saying their goal was to just bring joy to people. And I thought that was such a pure goal.

I like to be centered on that goal…[The Beach Boys] are hugely an influence and sonically, doing those harmonies. The Four Freshmen - We had them to this arrangement. We wrote this little tune and then they brought it to life vocally on their arrangement…the modern iteration of the Four Freshmen.

Have you guys started work on a second album?

Dawson Daugherty: Yeah, we’re deep in it. Super excited to be working with [‘Dive’ producer] Simon again. And then we have some songs with our friend Chase. We’re literally legit deep in it. Very excited. I keep having moments every week where I can't wait for people to hear it. It's something I'm really proud of and it's all coming together and the world of it is really fun, big, and exciting.

A shorter version of this Q&A originally appeared in SoCal News Group newspapers as part of a special section spotlighting the LA County Fair. Find it at dailybulletin.com.