Sego’s return home for Logan City Limits
Originally from Provo, Utah, drummer Thomas Carroll and singer/guitar player Spencer Petersen now live and create in Los Angeles.
The two musicians have been playing together for about seven years, according to Petersen. Their band, Sego, has been together since 2014.
Carroll grew up with a dad who was a drummer, and naturally gravitated towards those footsteps. The two friends joked it was in Carroll’s lineage, as his grandfather, uncles and brothers all drummed as well.
Petersen grew up doing orchestra before eventually joining the band scene.
“You get seduced by band world and scenes, and it kind of takes over,” Petersen said on a phone call.
In Utah, Petersen and Carroll would go to Velour Live Music Gallery in Provo to watch other bands, then go home and work on their own skills. Inspired by their favorite artists, they heard new sounds from musicians around them.
“On a local level when people are accessible, when you get immersed in that from a band perspective, you quickly broaden your influences, and your inspirations, and thus it makes your own sound so much more distinct,” Petersen said.
According to Petersen, a friendly competition happened between local bands who pushed each other to be better — leading to personal evolutions.
After moving to LA, the two friends were able to get into the city’s music scene and meet keyboardist/guitarist Kathleen Frewin and bassist Alyssa Davey.
The four rehearse in a warehouse they share with a couple of other bands and create music they describe as “art-punk.” They create songs based on personal inspirations, and each band member writes when they feel so inclined. Just like moods can change, so can their sound.
“That’s why I call it art-punk. There’s like a refinement and a complexity to it all,” Petersen said. “But there’s also sloppiness and kind of an irreverence to it all. I’ve never felt exactly like a super-pro instrumentalist, and so I think the marriage between that kind of grungy, punky technique mixed with more of the refined creates a lot of the sound.”
The group is always creating, and they have a digital graveyard full of lyrics and music that could be called upon for future songs.
“We always kind of keep building ideas and throwing them in the bucket. And then going through and figuring out what works for the next record,” Petersen said.
Just last spring, Sego stopped in Provo in the middle of a tour to record an album they had been working on.
This record is still being released, with the second track dropping on April 14, just a day before Logan City Limits. Titled SURRENDER, the song feels up-beat, though lyrics are a bit more existential. It perfectly matches Petersen’s description of Sego’s music — having complexity with an irreverent flow.
“We feel comfortable kind of experimenting,” Carroll said. “We also want to play at our best, because we do feel like Utah is a home base for us. And it’s where we cultivated and grew up.”
The group is excited to perform for Aggies on their next Utah tour, and look forward to getting some skiing in this late in the year.
You can find Sego on Spotify and on Instagram @sego.