Lake Inferior: Taking on the town

Derek Torres of UNC’s resident electro-pop outfit Lake Inferior plays bass during a performance. DTH File/Jordan Lawrence

When most music lovers think of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, the first things that come to mind are the town’s venues and the prolific scene. But Lake Inferior, an artist on student-run label Vinyl Records, proves that UNC is a contributor to the town’s pool of talent.

Diversions Assistant Editor Linnie Greene sat down with Lake Inferior’s Nasir Abbas, Logan Hornebuckle and Derek Torres to hear about the band’s new album, Pegasaur, and why falling trees can be a guitarist’s worst enemy.

Diversions: So what’s different about this EP versus your last one?

Nasir Abbas: The first EP we recorded in our apartment, so we had a lot of time to fiddle about and mess with our computer. We self-produced it, so it kind of took a while to do that kind of stuff.

Logan Hornebuckle: It basically gave us a lot of time to over-think and overdo everything, and we kind of resented that, but now, this past time, we had certain time limits because time is money.

NA: We were in an actual studio, recording tape.

LH: If we didn’t get done at a certain point, we had to keep paying to keep doing this. That was an extra kick in the pants, I guess.

Derek Torres: The second thing that’s different other than that is that our first EP, if you heard it, if you notice it’s like a hodgepodge. You could listen to track two and track five and be like, ‘Is this the same band?’ And that came a lot from we were just writing songs, and we were just like writing whatever or playing whatever because we hadn’t really found a sound yet. You can hear it.

But when we went into this Pegasaur thing we were like, ‘alright, we’ve got to have a theme.’

NA: The first one’s kind of like a sampler platter, and this one’s kind of like …

DT: A four-course meal.

Diversions: How did Lake Inferior form?

DT:  Me and Nasir have known each other since we were 11.

NA: Yeah, we played in some bands in middle school and high school.

LH: Dax (Beaton) and Bo (Beard) who aren’t here and I, we knew each other in high school in Greensboro. It all started out when Dax and Bo started. You know Dax had some demos and Bo had been playing drums for seven or eight years and just picked up a guitar and really wanted to do something creatively, but while playing guitar, and they were called The Moose And Me.

DT: Who was the moose?

LH: I think Dax was the moose.

NA: Which is really, really weird because the band that me and Derek were in in high school, we had this pop-opera-long thing, and Derek’s character was actually a moose, so I think it was just meant to be.

LH: And I’d just started playing drums, and Dax had asked me if I just wanted to just jam with them.

NA: And then I met Dax outside the WXYC ’80s dance. I actually don’t remember meeting him, because I was kind of, you know, inebriated. But you don’t have to put that in the interview.

LH: Weren’t you also crying in the parking lot? You got kicked out for dancing.

Diversions: How has being a student affected the band?

LH: I don’t think it really has.

NA: It’s kind of like going to parties and stuff and going to different things around and hearing what people like and going, ‘Oh, what is this? I like this, I want to dance to this.’

I want to make music that people can put on, at least for this album it kind of was. I don’t know if this is like always — but something that people can put on and just kind of groove to, put on at a party and just enjoy.

Diversions:  What are your plans after you’re all graduated?

LH: I think we kind of all want to relocate at some point. Why not? We’ve established ourself here, but I guess our next short-term goal is to really establish ourself, to kind of spread the love throughout the South, out into the rest of the country. You know what I mean?

DT: We want to get paid for doing this. Just like, really want to make a living. I don’t want to work a day job.

NA: It’s just some of us are still in school. It’s hard. We can’t really put together tours or anything because we have to work around that, but hopefully when we all graduate we can start to tour a lot.

LH: We want to be self-supporting enough so we can put all our energy into it and not have to worry about a part-time job or this exam the next week or this paper that’s due.

NA: It seems so distracting sometimes. A lot of times I feel like school is getting in the way of the band for me. I don’t know. It sounds really bad, especially if you’re going to print this in a school paper, but all I really want to concentrate on is music and the band stuff. And I have to write this stupid paper about music when I could actually be making music.

DT: A funny story about the Vinyl thing — when we heard about it, we all talked about it for like three or four days, and we were like, ‘This is really important, we should try to do this.’ But Bo was in Boone, and I ended up going to Boone, too. It’s like three of us were in Boone or something, and Bo calls me and he’s like ‘I just broke my hand.’ A tree had fallen on him or something. It was crazy.

LH: They were in the river.

NA: And a log just fell on his hand.

DT: A log fell on his hand and it broke bones in his hand and I was like, ‘Oh my God, man!’ At that point our friend, Adam Graetz, he knew our songs really well and he can play guitar, so I’m like, ‘Don’t worry Bo, don’t worry, Graetz can probably play for you at the show,’ and Bo apparently didn’t know about the Vinyl showcase so he just got like really upset. He was like, ‘I just can’t believe this, like you guys are about to replace me like that.’ There was miscommunication for like three days before the Vinyl showcase. Bo was like ready to quit the band.

NA: But he ended up playing with like a broken hand.



Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.