It’s rare to meet a band and learn they’re doing extraordinary things with an instrument, but The Happy Fits are redefining what’s possible with a cello. Not long after the genre-surfing trio pulled in their biggest crowd ever on Sunday at Sea.Hear.Now Festival, I met up with Calvin Langman (electric cello, vocals) Ross Monteith (guitar, vocals), and Luke Davis (percussion, vocals), and it was clear right away we’d hit it off. Calvin began the interview with a humorous, booming announcement: “Is it recording? Your King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard shirt is sooo coool.” The Happy Fits are cool too and attuned to a wide range of music; surely one reason their sound is so brightly eclectic. The classically-trained cellist – who’s always “MacGyver-ing” his instrument, according to his bandmates – confirmed that his standing posture while rocking on cello is indeed unique to him. “Very! It’s a new invention. It’s called the Block strap. It’s by this guy that teaches at Berklee named Mike Block – legendary cellist. I take his strap that he just made and I made modifications to it to make it so that I can jump up and down. Because I got my first one in 2016 and broke it when I was jumping up and down too much. Once a year, Mike gets an email from me and I’m like, ‘Mike, I broke your strap again. Can I have another one?’” When asked if he’s the only one playing this way, Calvin Langman said, “Yeah, definitely for rock, I haven’t seen anyone else. I’ve seen a few other rock cellists who use a few distortion pedals and it’s sick. 2Cellos, but they don’t stand up. They stay seated.” He grinned competitively. “So take that, 2Cellos!”
The Happy Fits
The Happy Fits
The Happy Fits
When I mentioned the full and well-rounded sound The Happy Fits achieved even without a bass, drummer Luke Davis was pleased. “That’s actually great to know because we worry about that every single time we play live. That’s one of our biggest things as we’re growing as a band and continuing to play: how do we translate what we’re doing on the recording to live? So with that, a lot came with the cello, figuring out: how do we make this cello work where it’s not going to feedback every two seconds or sound thin? So having that between Ross and Calvin, just working through that over the years, we feel a lot better about it now. But still, at the same time, we’re like, ‘how do we get it more…full?’” Calvin chimed in, “Basically it involves doing the most unnatural things to the cello. Like I have to stuff it with foam and cover the f-holes with tape.” “Gaff tape!” Ross and Luke said emphatically. When I called it “real cello innovation,” Calvin replied, “Yeah, definitely. I’m very proud of this tiny system I’ve made and I’ve learned so much from sound guys across the U.S. who always give me advice on how to make it better. Definitely this one guy in Boston, he was the one who gave me the idea for the setup I use now where I have two channels going out of the cello. It makes it so that there’s no feedback and I have this dirty distortion on it.” Luke shared, “It makes it a lot easier for us too ‘cause a lot of it is in our monitors. We get the cello, and when he has the distortion on, the feedback on it is usually like, unbelievably bad. So having those two channels, he just gives us the clean channel, we’re able to hear it perfectly clearly, but out front, people hear all the effects and everything.”
The Happy Fits
Calvin then leaned in to tell a funny story. “Our first show at Penn State, we were booked, and we were getting paid like $750 and it was like the most money we’ve ever seen, and we were like, ‘oh MY gosh.’ We went to their student center. There was no sound guy there. We brought our own board. I’d never played cello in a live setting before. And for the hour that they booked us, it was feedbacking for like thirty minutes” – “at least thirty” interjected Luke – “And we were just trying to figure this out in front of all the kids at Penn State. It was a bad cringe.” The trio laughed contagiously. Luke said, “I was just saying dumb stuff. I was trying to talk and trying to fill time. And the funniest part was, at the end of the set, this guy comes up and he’s like, “Alright, are you guys in the band? When’s the show?’ And we’re like, ‘We just did it,’ and then he went, ‘Oh,’ and then he just walked away.” It’s hilarious to picture since The Happy Fits attain such polished acoustics now. “It’s such a weird thing,” Calvin shared, “‘cause I’ll post on social media and TikTok, and randos will see it. And they’ll be so mad, like, ‘Why are you putting tape on your cello?’ and ‘You’re holding your bow wrong,’ and all that. I have this pickup that holds onto the bridge, and the vibration of the wood is what is amplified to the audience. So that’s why it sounds a little bit different than an actual cello. Because with an actual cello, you hear the air vibrating, and then it hits your ear. With the pickup, it’s just sensing the vibrations in the wood and then transferring that. So you tape the cello right over the f-hole where the sound reverberates through. If you tape it, less of the reverberation will go through and then hit the pickup again and reduce feedback. You just get a cleaner, deader sound basically. Really, I live off of gaff tape.”
Given all the modifications, I wondered if he aspires to have his own signature Calvin Langman cello someday. “One hundred percent. I’m excited and I can’t wait for the five customers who will use it! But I’m very excited.” With a lot of awe and smiles, The Happy Fits then discussed how Sea.Hear.Now – their first show in two years – brought in their biggest crowd to date. Luke explained, “It was not only our first time playing two new singles, but also our album that we released in August 2020 [What Could Be Better] because we haven’t been able to play that live yet. So with all that too, we were just stressing the whole time.” Ross felt the same. “We were stressing the whole last week, because this was our first show back, and it had to be a big music festival. So in our first song, we were like, ‘Okay, this is a good size crowd. You know, it’s not packed. This is pretty relaxing.’ I was terrified, so I was looking down the whole time, and then I looked up halfway through our second song, and it was like three times the size of that crowd, and I was like ‘Oh no!’” Where did these people come from?” Calvin asked comically. “Did they come from the ocean?” “And the energy quadrupled,” recounted Luke. “People were dancing, jumping around, screaming, and we could hear people singing. We didn’t expect that. I mean, we’ve played a lot of shows around here, but we figured most people at the festival wouldn’t know who we were.” “I’m usually trying to just soak everything in,” reflected Calvin. “I’m just doing double-takes like ‘I don’t want this moment to end!’” “We really feed off the crowd’s energy,” said Ross, “‘cause if they’re having a good time and they’re energetic, it makes it much easier for us to be interactive. Calvin is the one that really leads the crowd, and you can tell that when the crowd is a lot more energetic, Cavin feels a lot more free. And the energy just keeps reciprocating and growing, which is great. It doesn’t happen all the time.”
The Happy Fits
The Happy Fits
The Happy Fits
“Yeah – you can’t plan it.” the seasoned cellist agreed. Ross stated, “I feel like a part of me was really nervous because of the amazing bands that are on the bill. I kind of half-expected that everyone coming up to watch us would just come up cross-armed like ‘Prove yourself to us!” you know? But it really wasn’t that way at all. People seem to be happy to be back at shows and out on the beach and it made it so much easier for us.” Before we all returned to that sunny scene on the sand, I asked The Happy Fits which song they enjoyed playing most at Sea.Hear.Now. “For me…” pondered Luke, “…‘Too Late.’ That was the biggest interaction we saw of fan feedback from the crowd.” “The first song we released ever,” noted Calvin. “And it seemed really fitting for Sea.Hear.Now,” continued Luke. “It’s a little bit of beachy vibes. Obviously we’ve played it now a lot, so we feel really comfortable playing it. Just for people to be jumping around and going crazy…especially when Ross stopped, took that second break, and everyone just started screaming…” “I teared up,” Calvin recalled. “We pause naturally in the song,” said Ross. “But the reason it went on longer today is that I was checking my tuning, because my tuning sounded off. It was a beautiful accident.” “I thought you were getting emotional! I didn’t know you were just tuning,” exclaimed Calvin. “Start bawling onstage?” Luke joked. “That was a crazy moment. We’re still definitely in the fever dream of, ‘am I going to wake up tomorrow and we haven’t played it yet?’ To come out and have the energy be that crazy was insane.” And just like we’d recommend, he added, “We’ve got a show on Friday, December 17th at Asbury Lanes, so definitely, if you wanna come hang, come hang.”
Article: Olivia Isenhart
Photos: Shayne Hanley
