Spotlight: old neon

Written by: Chris Arencibia

As Autumn is now in full swing, it’s the time of year to get a Jumpstart on holiday shopping, think about the Highlights of your year, think of Eulogies for things we’re leaving in the past, and get Lost in thoughts of Warmer Weather and all the Better Things coming in the new year.

Ahead of the busy holiday season, the stress can add up quickly. Just think of all the time Wasted On Waiting in line at over crowded stores. It's common to feel Barely Alive with everything that needs to get done, the cooking, gift buying, the stress of constant family and friend visits - but hey, At Least We’re Not Alone, right? It would be nice to have someone to Save Me From Myself from all the plans I’ve already scheduled, but alas, we have a busy season ahead of us.

But don’t worry - Skylyne has some tips and tricks for getting through the season. Take plenty of breaks. Visit your favorite coffee shop. Maybe reconnect with your old friend Natalie? Ask yourself what helps you relax. What Do You Love? Get out there and try new things. Today is Screaming Your Name, just go out there and take the day. With the right attitude, you can power through this holiday season and maybe even enjoy it.

I Won’t Stay on this topic too long as we have much more important things to get to. This week we had the honor of chatting with one of my favorite people and favorite artists out there - Drew Sipos from Old Neon.

Old Neon is a pop punk band with indie, emo, and pop influences from Pittsburgh PA. The five members played their first show together in December 2021 and have worked since then to build a dedicated local following and a catalogue of songs that check all the pop punk boxes. Titled Can't Fucking Wait, their 15 track LP dropped June 23 2023.

Without further adieu, let’s get right into it. We Can’t Fucking Wait.

SKYLYNE: I’m sure you’re asked this a lot, but where does the name “Old Neon” come from?

DREW (OLD NEON): A book! Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace.

SKYLYNE: You’ve been involved in a ton of projects in the past - what led you to pop punk and your current sound?

DREW: There’s a lot that I love about this genre and I’ve been into bands in the scene for as long as I’ve been listening to music. Fall Out Boy is in my DNA. What I love about our current sound is that it’s a mix of all of our preferences. My writing/performing style has a pop slant to it, and the other guys bring their own complementary styles. When it comes together we get something that, in my opinion, sounds current but also kinda timeless… I don't know, that’s the goal anyway!

SKYLYNE: I think that definitely comes across, there's that obvious classic pop punk influence but everything sounds fresh and modern at the same time. So post college you went home to Pittsburgh during the peak of the pandemic. Obviously that was such a strange time for all of us in the music industry. Can you walk me through what that was like and how Old Neon came to be?

DREW: Graduating into the pandemic was tough, I had a lot of plans/opportunities to work in the live music space that just evaporated and I had no choice but to move back in with my parents. A familiar story to a lot of the class of 2020 people. Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people had it worse than I did at that time but it was one of the hardest periods of my life, going from the most social and opportunity rich chapters of my life to the complete opposite.

I decided if I couldn’t do anything else, 2020-2021 was going to be my year to just save up enough money to start my life for real, I called it “THE YEAR OF BAG SECURITY^tm.” I drove for DoorDash and Instacart and got a real job and saved pretty much everything. Eventually I was able to rent a shitty duplex, a step in the right direction. This was the first time in my life in a long time that I wasn’t in a band or surrounded by musicians all the time.

Old Neon existed before I joined the band. Sean Atkins, our guitar player, started it with our bass player Chris Homa. One night as I was doom scrolling on Instagram I saw an ad that the band was having auditions for a singer. There was a link to their SoundCloud where they posted some demos with their old singer. They sounded pretty good! Emo stuff with some pop-punk elements, the songs of my people. I went to audition for them and we clicked. I was just happy to be making music with people again, I didn't expect to find some of my best friends in the world and have so many new opportunities come up as a result of the band. Down the road we added our current drummer Zach and our guitar player Mike.

SKYLYNE: The pandemic definitely changed a lot of people's trajectories, but it seems like you ended up in the right place. You’ve gained a lot of traction very quickly in a genre that’s tough to break out in. What does your strategy look like when it comes to building a fanbase?

DREW: Our philosophy with releasing music in the early days was “fuck it, put it out.” We just needed content out there for people to discover, and we really had nothing to lose starting from pretty much zero. We gave ourselves a few months to record/produce/mix the songs, then for a time we released 1 track every month, always looking ahead to the next one. This way we always had something to talk about and something to work on as a band. We also played as many shows as we could around the city. I think the live shows are the biggest component to growing our fan base. Our goal is to give you a SHOW and to interact with you and have fun, not just play our songs and dip.

It really is a team effort, none of us could do what we’ve done so far (or what we plan to do) by ourselves. Everyone’s got their own role to play in our relationship. For instance I’m writing like half of the songs and working a lot on recording and live production, but I hardly touch things like merch or booking for tours/shows. Everyone really pulls their weight and then some, and it’s been amazing to feel like I’m part of a team of people who really care about what we’re doing.

SKYLYNE: Love that, it seems rare to find bands where everyone has a part in the business, but that definitely seems to work best in the long run. Some of your biggest success has come in your live shows, opening for bands like Knuckle Puck, The Spill Canvas, and Dangerous Summer, plus sharing a festival stage with acts like The Interrupters, Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday, Waterparks, and so many other huge names. How crazy is it playing with some of those pop punk icons?

DREW: I’m really grateful for the stuff we’ve done so far! My favorite interaction I’ve had with another act so far has been with Origami Angel at Four Chord Music Festival, we just straight up GOOFED around back stage. Success to me is a moving target. The pandemic taught me that all we can really do is take the next right step for ourselves and eventually get to a better place, and that’s all I’m trying to do with Old Neon.​

SKYLYNE: Has anyone ever compared your music to another artist that you found kind of insulting?

DREW: Nah, everybody has their own musical background that they’ll use as a reference when hearing our stuff. So to be compared to another artist who’s found success doing their thing is pretty much always a compliment to me, it shows me you care enough to put us in the same conversation as another artist you like, even if I happen to disagree with the one you pick. The one kind of annoying comment I get all the time is “you were a theater kid weren’t you?”…. I mean it’s TRUE lol but I thought I was doing a great job hiding my past!

SKYLYNE: I mean, something that embarrassing is bound to show through eventually. Speaking of, theater kids love making non-theater songs sound like theater songs. What’s a non-pop punk song that you think would be way better as a pop punk song?

DREW: Bro I’m in a wedding band and my favorite pre-show thing is singing jazz standards or Motown and shit like that with the pop punk voice. The new people in the band are always like “is he actually gonna sing like that...” The pop punk voice has the power to elevate or absolutely DESTROY any song. Like imagine if Tom Delong sang September… I think it would do both those thing at the same time. Final answer: "The Way You Look Tonight" by Frank Sinatra in the style of Taking Back Sunday. LOL

SKYLYNE: You have the power to make that happen. Now I’d like to provide you with an opportunity to publicly dox someone. Can you tell us who “Highlights” is about? Full name? Address?

DREW: While I can’t dox an ex (trust me I’d LOVE to I just don’t know where they LIVE) I CAN tell you the story of how "Highlights" came to be. "Highlights" started as an instrumental, it was the first song I’d successfully written for Old Neon. I’d tried some other stuff before but realized I wasn’t really writing for our lineup. For this one and pretty much all the songs since, I limited myself to only what we would have on the most barebones gig: 2 guitar parts, 1 drum kit, and bass. Then I was like “what would absolutely bang in a mid-sized club” and eventually came away with the instrumental.

With the lyrics I knew I wanted the title to be one word and thought “highlights” was a pretty catchy title. I started building backwards from there and actually wrote the last line of the chorus first “...if you’d be there for life or you’d just stick around for the highlights.” The first verse is about someone who you used to be friends with but now you don’t really like them anymore because of the person they’ve become, but you feel like you have to stay friends with that person because the break up would be too messy. “I can’t take it how we have to fake it, and I know you hate it too that’s how it is keeping up appearences.” The chorus is about how despite you being DONE with this person, you can’t get them out of your head. The second verse basically tracks how you’re feeling after the inevitable falling out, a lot of “What are they thinking about me? Did I do something wrong? Does it even matter?” I think the bridge kinda speaks for itself, but it’s from that feeling of being a better friend to someone than they are to you.

SKYLYNE: Ugh, fine I respect it. Now the most important question - if you were to play a set in Fortnite what would the show look like?

DREW: Pretty much the way it looks now lol. We already have two 6-foot-tall-whacky-inflatable-tube-men from Amazon that join us on stage, and our pits in real life already have people doing the default dance sometimes.

SKYLYNE: Drew, it's always a pleasure. Here’s your spotlight - tell us what you have going on and what’s coming up.

DREW: This is the part where I say “big things comin” over and over again but then never actually release anything right? Our first album "Can’t Fucking Wait" is out everywhere. The major platforms don’t looove that we did a swear in the title so it’s grown largely by word of mouth. Give it a listen if you feel so inclined, and stay tuned for our next album titled “I Love You Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek”

Live shows coming up:

- Erie, PA 11/22

- Erie, PA 12/15

- Pittsburgh, PA 12/16 (Ticket Link)