Singer Eric Nizgretsky and guitar player Zack Kantor have been playing together since they were kids. Then Eric met bassist Manny Silverstein and drummer Adam Holtzberg, and soon Loose Buttons was born. The New York City indie rock band are getting ready to release their latest EP, Sundays, and are celebrating it by playing a residency every Wednesday of this month at Pianos in NYC's Lower East Side. We had the chance to catch up with band at the Arlo NoMad and got to know them a little bit better.

Read more about this Big Apple breakout below.

Hometown: New York City

How did the band get together?

Eric Nizgretsky: Zack [Kantor] and have known each other since we were like 10 or 11 years old. We've been playing music together ever since. Then we went off to college. I went down to the University of Miami, and Zack went to Wesleyan [University]. I met these two guys at the University of Miami [Said pointing at Manny Silverstein and Adam Holtzberg.], and we all gelled. And we still play music to this day.

Eric and Zack, you have been playing together since you were little. How have you seen yourselves improve since those earlier band days?

Zack Kantor: It's pretty night and day honestly. [Everyone laughs.] I mean, some people like the night. But we were pretty bad back in the day. We wrote some good songs, but they sounded really bad. So technically we've gotten a lot better, but it's also with the songwriting as well. 

Eric, Manny and Adam, did you all go to music school down in Miami?

Nizgretsky: Yeah, so Manny was my freshman year roommate, and I begged him multiple times to join the band. And I courted Adam also, and he finally agreed.

Since you guys went to music school, how do you think that helped your sound now? Or did you just break all the rules you learned?

Nizgretsky: I definitely think we broke a lot of the music school rules. Especially in Miami, there wasn't a rock scene at all. We broke those rules and played loud when we were told not to play loud. So yeah.

Adam Holtzberg: I think it's a mix of both. I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but some of us were in the music business program so we used some parts of that schooling for this part of our band life. I'm sure Eric learned a lot about press and how to actually promote our band, and I think I was the only one who went to school for a performance degree. And I don't know how much that's helped me here.

Manny Silverstein: I studied music engineering but was a jazz principal in Miami. But I think that playing jazz is way harder than playing rock music just from a technical standpoint. And I do think it helps if you spend four years playing jazz and just, by nature, you get better at playing he easier stuff, too. I think the misconception sometimes is if your band plays really simple stuff, you're just a bad musician and can't play the harder stuff. But if you can play the harder stuff, you can play the easier stuff. 

Kantor: I wouldn't call this easier per se. I just don't want people to think that playing rock music is easy.

Silverstein: Just from a technical standpoint, jazz is harder to play than our indie rock songs.

Kantor: That's very true.

Holtzberg: It's like holding a really weighted bat and taking the weight off I guess.

Let's talk about Sundays. What's the most memorable song you worked on?

Nizgretsky: I feel like all of us have our own song that we find special. "Am I the Only Reason," for me personally, was just a special song because when Zack brought it in, it hit me. And lyrically, it allowed me to write in a way that I never really wrote. And it allowed me to say," I fucked up a lot in this relationship as well. A lot of it was my fault." But then we have songs like "Between Brick Walls," which is kind of really defines our sound really well.

Silverstein: I agree that "Am I the Only Reason" is the one I remember the most for a reasons. From a recording standpoint, it was the second one out of the four we did. So it wasn't like the first one where it was like, "What the hell are we doing?" but it was also still exciting. When you the fourth one, it's like, "Are we done yet?"

Holtzberg: It really coincided with you breakup.

Silverstein: As far as our personal lives, the week we recorded that song, Eric had just broken up with his girlfriend, which is what a lot of the EP became about. I was in the middle of starting a brand new relationship, almost the exact same time. So it was a crazy weekend personally. These were happening in our lives, and we were recording the most sentimental song on the EP. So that's the one that stands out for me as well. 

One thing I quickly learned while setting up this interview is that you're all still working full-time jobs while being in the band. How do you handle balancing everything?

Holtzberg: We're all fired today. [Everyone laughs.]

Silverstein: We really hope this train shows up quickly when you're doing an interview at 1PM on a Monday.

Nizgretsky: Yeah, at the same time, for us, it allows us to enjoy the band more because our lives don't necessarily depend on the band succeeding. We can just have fun doing it.

Kantor: And we're all fortunate that we don't have jobs that are so intense where it would be like, "We can't play a show. I have to go to the office." None of us have jobs like that. They're decently lax and a decently schedule where you know everything in advance. We can get away with doing this today whereas a lot of other people wouldn't.

Holtzberg: We're all somewhat in the arts field.

Kantor: It helps when your boss gets it and isn't like, "You hooligan in a rock band." [Laughs.] That will be our next album name, You Hooligan in a Rock Band.

Nizgretsky: I like that. It rolls off the tongue nicely. It allows us to have fun. I always say this but I really don't look at these guys as my bandmates. I look at these guys as my best friends and my brothers. So for me, we can get into a room and have fun and just play music. I don't have to feel like I have to be in a business partnership with these guys and make music like that. I make music with these guys because they get me.

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