Impediment have long been a staple of Nashville’s DIY scene, spanning punk, jangle pop, shoegaze, and a vast variety of other genres over their career. They’ll be playing a free show at the East Room on Thursday, March 19th at 7:30pm to end their US tour. I caught up with them over Zoom as they were driving from Indiana to Detroit to talk influences, balancing projects, and their forthcoming love letter to Nashville.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
WRVU: So, how’s the tour going? Are y’all having fun? What are some fun stories from the tour?
Happy: Yeah man, it’s been really, really fun… I got electrocuted last night, too. That sucked.
WRVU: How did that happen?
Happy: They had Christmas lights hung up and one of the bulbs was popped and they just had the positive and negative out, and I just didn’t see it and it just like got me straight in the neck. And I kind of like crashed out. I was like, what the fuck? Bailed on putting up the banner and all that shit that we usually have. But it was pretty funny.
WRVU: You didn’t die, at least.
Happy: So true. No deaths, yet. A quick taste…
Lawrence: We’ve been sort of low on showers.
Jackson: A lot of sink showers.
Lawrence: I don’t believe it was my fault, but I got one shower in at the last spot we just stayed at and the water never went down.
WRVU: I’m going to dedicate most of the published interview to Lawrence’s shower habits.
Lawrence: Not going to be much to write about. Gonna be a short article.
Happy: But we promise we’re having a great time.
WRVU: Tell me about how Impediment started.
Happy: So technically it started six years ago or seven years ago when I was still in high school. We played a couple shows, and we were about to start doing a lot more, but then right after that, COVID happened. So we took two years off, and in those two years, we just wrote a bunch, couldn’t play shows or anything, couldn’t tour. And then right after coming out of COVID, we were all doing other bands as well as doing Impediment. I was touring a lot with a different band. But now we’re trying to do a lot more.
We’re sitting on an album right now that’s going to come out later this year that we just recorded in the past couple months with our friend Billy Campbell back home in Nashville. It technically started seven years ago, but it kind of feels like right now is the actual start, because we’re actually in the studio, actually getting to play shows, and actually getting a tour.
WRVU: On your Spotify description, you describe yourselves as Tennessee twangle pop. But the live EP you released, as well as your Ramones cover set at DRKMTTR for Halloween, seemed very punk oriented. Are you trying to define a certain sound right now, or not stay locked into a certain sound at the moment?
Happy: It’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing, because we always say that we’re trying to be jangle pop, and then when it comes to the live set, we’d like to be as loud and as fast as possible.
With the record, I’m trying to blend a little of both. It’s not going to be just loud, electric, as fast as possible. I really like to discern the difference in the album by focusing on what suits the song best. How do we elevate these to the next level? And then the live show, though, I want it to be as fun as possible for us, obviously, but I also want it to be as fun as possible for everybody who comes to see it.
In my experience, as much as it’s fun to see those kind of shows where you just kind of stand there with your arms crossed and watch someone sing and pour their heart out—that’s great, in its own right—I just want to be able to have an experience for people where they can come in, get blasted by too many amps, and just have a good time.
Lawrence: I was made to believe that this was a punk band in the early days. But throughout our history, we’ve been shoegaze, punk, jangle pop, we’ve been country. Now, the songs haven’t changed when we’ve been these different genres of music. But, we have spiritually been all of those. We’ve run the gamut. Just never let them know your next move.
WRVU: Has working on different projects influenced the eclectic mix of what Impediment is and can be, or do you try to keep the projects separate?
Happy: Definitely. I played in a punk band for a while, and I love the energy, and I love playing fast. I love directly engaging with an audience with that punk mentality of like, let’s go loud. Let’s be fast. Let’s be abrasive. But also, the blueprint for Impediment is The Replacements; they were a punk band, and then they turned into alternative, like R.E.M.-y, and then they turned very singer-songwriter towards the end.
Jackson here plays in a band called Budge, and Budge is kind of like 90s indie pop, and he’s bringing that to Impediment now too. So it’s kind of like having this melting pot of as much different stuff as possible within the band as well.
WRVU: Other than The Replacements, what have been some other major influences over the years? Have they changed or remained pretty consistent?
Happy: The Replacements have been the most consistent. The Clean are huge influences as well. Teenage Fan Club is a big one.
Lawrence: I’ve heard a lot of Pavement in Happy’s songwriting, but Pavement’s my main engagement with those styles.
WRVU: I have a question for Lawrence, because I gotta get one for the fans at Vanderbilt. How do you balance being a student at Vanderbilt with pursuing a music career?
Lawrence: It’s kind of a strange experience. I’ve been marking up this reading about AI psychosis, trying to keep these boys safe from the forces of evil that would take their mind. It’s doable. I think Vanderbilt students are concerned by the prospect of discomfort, to a certain extent. You hear a lot of kids graduate and talk about, “If I don’t get an $80,000 consulting job, I’m a failure.” And I think that you can actually kind of fuck off and your life will still rock. You just have to redefine success for yourself. This feels like succeeding to me, to be in this band with these guys and play these shows.
WRVU: What can you tell me about the album that’s coming out soon? What story are you trying to tell with the album? What was the process of writing that music?
Happy: I’m trying to do a very Nashville-centric album. We’re all from Nashville or have been in Nashville for a long time. And it’s obviously changed a lot. I want to have an album detailing what that feels like, as I grew up going to shows at houses and stuff like that, and also as someone who has been playing with these guys for so long in so many different capacities.
The songs kind of pour out, as corny as that is. I’ll have an idea for a song or a melody. I’ll get a structure down for it, get some words down, bring it to the band, and they’ll write their own parts and apply themselves to it. Lawrence has written some of my favorite bass parts, and those are all over the album. Sean, the drummer, has really helped out a lot with figuring out the different rhythmic patterns that we can use.
It’s going to be called Titan Up because we’re diehard Titans fans, unfortunately, for better or for worse. But it’s just kind of a love letter to this place that’s given me so much as a hometown.
Lawrence: One of the benefits of waiting seven years to put out a debut LP is we’ve been playing all of those songs for a long time, but they have spanned different iterations of Impediment, when we were “Shoegaze” or “country” or whatever. But Happy’s also featured a lot of different singers and guitarists from all over Nashville that we’ve acquired over our years of working with other bands.
Happy: We’re trying to get as many of our friends on there as possible and make it an extremely collaborative album, because collaboration is a big thing for me.
We’re going to Detroit right now and I was just like, “Hey, let’s cover a Stooges song tonight, why the fuck not?” And we’ll see what happens, but that’s kind of also an Impediment MO—let’s see if we can pull this off, fuck it, you know? That’s how this album feels.
Lawrence: Happy always gets whoever we play with, whether we’ve met them or not, to get up and sing a song with us. Even if they haven’t heard the song before, Happy makes them listen to it on Spotify and then sing it. It’s a cool, collaborative, DIY-until-I-die type shit.
WRVU: Obviously, the Nashville that people who aren’t from Nashville think about is pretty different from the Nashville you experience as a native or a local, especially in the underground and DIY scene, which has probably changed in different ways than the Broadway scene has changed. What can you say about how the underground and DIY scene have changed and how that’s impacted Impediment?
Happy: Obviously on the surface, Nashville has changed in appearance—the amount of people, tall and skinnies being built, four houses built on one property. But I have a hard time when people say “Nashville sucks now,” or, like, “I don’t like all these people moving to Nashville,” because, why don’t you like people moving to one of the coolest cities in the South? It’s your place, you should want to share it with people.
And despite all the changes that Nashville has undergone, no matter what, people still always show up for each other. The flood happened, which was my first memory of a natural disaster, and my mom pulled us out of school so we could go volunteer, give out water and pack sandwiches. And then when the tornado happened six years ago, my friend James called me up and was like, “What can we do to make this better?” In high school, in the DIY scene, there was a house fire that burned down my friend’s whole house, and they lost everything, and there were three or four benefit shows.
There is this spirit of wanting to help as many people as possible by being there for each other, and I’m trying to capture that as well with the record. There’s so much bad stuff in the world. The biggest thing you can do is be there for each other and help each other.
WRVU: What are your favorite bands to play on a bill with in Nashville?
Happy: Off the top of my head for me, Total Wife, Baby Wave, Swimming Sisters. Those are some of my favorite bands to play with. I don’t know about y’all.
Jackson: Finger Foods. Superhero.
Lawrence: Soot as well.
WRVU: What are your favorite venues to play in Nashville?
Happy: Always gotta put some love to DRKMTTR. They do so much for Nashville, and they have been for 11 years now, 12 years, maybe even longer. But I really like the East Room. The Blue Room, obviously. Shout out Ryman 2. There are all these other DIY spots, too, that have popped up.
Lawrence: Mostly we like to play the Ryman though, the original Ryman.
Happy: If the Ryman ever sees this, please let us play.
WRVU: What have you guys been listening to while you’re driving across America through crazy windstorms?
Happy: A lot of Ween. This morning we woke up and instantly played some Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder. We’re going through Indiana to Detroit right now, so that’s why. We did an hour of Beatles and Beach Boys yesterday, which was sick.
Jackson: I needed that. Needed that.
Happy: We listened to a bunch of Oscar Lindsey and Finger Foods yesterday. Shout outs to the team.
Lawrence: A lot of Big Time Rush.
Happy: And today we’re going to be bumping that new Book Not Brooke album that just came out today. That shit is so gas.
WRVU: Hell yeah. Any other fun tidbits you wanna share with the fans?
Brad: We had a nice little Indian food dinner last night. It was so fire.
Lawrence: India Garden, Bloomington, Indiana. Shout out. Garlic naan was busting, chicken tikka masala was busting, the camaraderie was there.
WRVU: Thank you guys for taking the time. I’m really looking forward to the show next week.
Happy: Yeah, it’s going to be so sick. Thanks so much for everything.
Come see Impediment, alongside Superhero and Most Improved, at the East Room, March 19th, 2026 at 7:30pm! Free show, bring your friends!