Heading North on their new songs, playing the Roxian Theatre, and loving My Chemical Romance.
Heading North is the February Band of the Month! The swag-pilled pop-punk act have been tearing up Pittsburgh music venues and releasing awesome songs since they started two years ago. In a phone interview, I had a great conversation with the entire 5-piece band! We talked about their new songs, playing the Roxian Theatre, and loving My Chemical Romance.
Heading North is: Asha Edson (Singer), Aedan Symons (Lead Guitar), Mike Stolarz (Drums), Cee Frink (Bass), and Hannah Kozak (Rhythm Guitar).
Live Shows
Josh: What venues has Heading North played?
Asha (singer): Oh good golly. Our first ever show was in my ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend’s basement. You can imagine what that was like for me. We’ve played BottleRocket Social Hall quite a few times (that’s where we had our EP release show), Mr. Small’s Fun House, Spirit Hall, Pittsburgh Winery, Lawrenceville Distilling. We played Roxian, which was crazy.
Josh: That’s huge.
Asha (Singer): That’s how I feel too.
Josh: I was going to ask. What was it like opening for Punchline at the Roxian?!
Asha (Singer): Surreal. We had a green room. Everyone was so nice. The guys from Punchline were super sweet and really took us in – it was really great.
Hannah (Rhythm Guitar): It was such a fun night, from the moment we stepped into the building until we left.
Original Songs and Recording
Josh: Tell me about your two recent singles, “Expired Kohl’s Cash” and “Good Grief, Idaho.”
Asha (Singer): I work a retail job and we have a tip jar because we do gift wrapping. Someone put expired Kohl’s cash in my tip jar. It’s worse than garbage because it once had value and it no longer does.
Josh: Wow.
Asha (Singer): That was kind of the start of my villain origin story. I’m a 23-year-old with endless critiques of late stage capitalism. So I wrote a song about it. We’re all pretty young. We work jobs that aren’t necessarily the things we wanna do. “Good Grief Idaho” is an unincorporated territory in Idaho that my roommate and I found on a map and we thought it was a crazy name.
Josh: It’s a real place?!
Asha (Singer): It is. I don’t know if anyone lives there, it has a population of like, two raccoons or something. I describe it as a love letter to the personification of death. It could be a song about a shitty partner or something. It’s such an emo song where it’s the sort of allure of death and dying that sort of crops back up again and again when things get hard. It’s very different from “Expired Kohl’s Cash” (laughs).
Aedan (Lead Guitar): I’ll come up with a riff or something. I’ll send it to the band and be like, “Hey, do we want to use this or something?” And if everyone likes it, I just throw it in a folder of ideas. “Expired Kohl’s Cash” has been around for a minute. I wrote that in the summer of 2023. It’s always changing.
Josh: The songs are always evolving.
Mike (Drums): Especially in the live setting.
Cee (Bass): After we put out the songs, we still wind up changing small parts. We keep improving and changing little pieces of how we play, just to keep the live energy going and make it a unique experience.
Josh: I also want to talk about “Polarity.” That’s an awesome track.
Asha (Singer): Hey, thanks. That’s my favorite Heading North song, like forever and always.
Josh: What was it like recording the vocals for that?
Asha (Singer): Oh gosh! It was arduous. I’ve been singing my whole life. “Polarity” for a while was one of the harder songs for me to sing. The first verse and melody was written on my phone when I was 15. I wrote it on the bus and I always wanted to use it for something. It was really awesome to record it.
Favorite Songs To Play
Josh: Are there any favorite songs you guys like to play live?
Aedan (Lead Guitar): It’s a tie between “The Mon” or “Toss/Turn.”
Hannah (Rhythm Guitar): I would say my favorite is probably a tie between “Uncanny” and “Polarity.”
Cee (Bass): My favorite is “The Mon” because that’s my favorite bass part I’ve ever written, and it’s just so much fun to play.
Mike (Drums): I think for me, it’s got to be “Two Steps Away.” We always close with that song, and Asha does a thing, where generally, especially if the crowd’s able to and has the space to kind of go crazy, we’ll get everyone really low during the bridge, and when it kind of drops out and goes hard at the end, everyone just goes crazy and moshes and dances and jumps around and that’s always the coolest thing to see.
Asha (Singer): I honestly probably wouldn’t have said “Two Steps [Away],” but actually now that Mike says that, it definitely is “Two Steps [Away].” We almost always end up going so hard on it because it’s the last song of the set and we can just expend the rest of our energy.
Mike (Drums): I hit 20% harder on that.
Asha (Singer): I move a lot more because I know that I don’t have to conserve any energy beyond that (laughs). It’s a very fun, funky song. Sometimes I’ll run into the audience and mosh around and it’s a great time.
Josh: It just looks like you all get along so well and you’re actually having fun as a band.
Asha (Singer): Mike is shaking his head (laughing), but that’s a lie. We’re very good friends. Practice normally doesn’t start for a solid hour and a half after we intend it to because we just talk to each other. Making music just comes very naturally for this group.
Josh: It does sound natural. It’s really exciting to see everything you guys are doing.
Asha (Singer): Thank you, it’s exciting for us.
Music Inspirations
Josh: Are there any bands that inspired you to play music growing up or even now?
Aedan (Lead Guitar): We all love Paramore. They’re my favorite band of all time. Blink-182 is a huge influence for a couple people here too. Asha is the biggest My Chemical Romance fan I have ever met.
Josh: I heard “I’m Not Okay” earlier today in my car.
Asha (Singer): We covered that at our first ever show.
Mike (Drums): We did a Halloween cover set through the WPTS Pitt radio station. We did an all MCR set. The full goth look, the eye shadow, and the black fits with the red ties. Asha had a bat belt buckle.
Asha (Singer): I was very lore accurate Gerard Way.
Josh: You took this seriously.
Asha (Singer): I take My Chemical Romance more seriously than anything else in my life.
Mike (Drums): I would say a big strength of ours is that we’re pulling a lot from outside of the pop-punk genre. I think it’s maybe the easiest way to summarize our sound is to call it pop-punk or rather swag-pilled pop-punk as we call it. Maybe you could compare it to Paramore. I would say we’re bringing from a lot of different places.
Josh: I can see it now, Heading North opening up for Paramore.
Asha (Singer): Don’t even say that. That makes me feel sick, but in a good way.
Upcoming Tour
Josh: So what’s next for Heading North?
Hannah (Rhythm Guitar): We are gonna be going on a little tour the first week of March, super excited for that. We’re gonna be hitting D.C, Baltimore, Philly, New Jersey, Richmond as well. That’ll be our first longer run that we’re super excited for.
Josh: That’s really exciting.
Asha (Singer): It certainly is exciting, and stressful (laughs), but what exciting thing isn’t stressful? And then you know, writing more songs, hanging out, playing more shows, vibing. Mike says vibing.
Josh: Is Heading North celebrating Valentine’s Day?
Asha (Singer): I love Valentine’s Day. I do a lot of graphic design stuff. I love hearts and they’re so cute. So I am considering purchasing conversation hearts like those little candy hearts with Heading North things on them.
Josh: This was so much fun. Such a great time.
Asha (Singer): We appreciate you so much. Thank you for getting us to practice a half an hour earlier than normal.
You can see Heading North live on February 8th at Haven or March 1st at The Pocket in D.C.! Check them out on Spotify and keep up with the band on Instagram and Facebook.
Check out January’s Artist of the Month here!
This content was provided by a local, independent contributor to Made in PGH, a lifestyle blog.
