DJ Velvet Einstein recently spoke with singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Zac Little, of Columbus folk punk band, Saintseneca. Tune in on Sunday, November 4th @ 11AM to hear their discussion about John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, memories, and the nostalgia of radio.
Memory is the common thread running throughout the band’s fourth album, Pillar of Na. Following 2015’s critically lauded Such Things, the new album’s name is rooted in remembrance, referencing the Genesis story of Lot’s wife who looks back at a burning Sodom after God instructs her not to. She looks back, and God turns her into a pillar of salt. “Na,” meanwhile, is the chemical symbol for sodium. “Nah”is a passive refusal and the universal song word. It means nothing and stands for nothing. It is “as it is.”
Songs like the epic, flute-accented title track have been in the works for 11 years.
And then, in the sometimes-frustrating heat of trying to find the songs, other tracks poured out of Little, like the springy “Ladder To The Sun,” which he says he didn’t see coming at all. “That was catharsis,” he says. “I was feeling frustrated, lost, and burnt out by the whole process, wondering where I was in my life at that moment. Writing ‘Ladder To The Sun’ felt like a productive cry.”
The words “Who says you’re right?” present a challenge to authority. “No one remembers the day they are born, you gotta take someone else’s word for it,” Little says. “Everyone trusts someone.”
