Almost 15 years ago, guitarist/vocalist Joshua and drummer David De Leon started playing Beatles covers in their Glendale family garage. Then the Guitar Hero-raised brothers made their unofficial public musical debut, “just for hilarity’s sake,” in a family band with the not-so-family-friendly name the Callipygians (which “means ‘nice ass’ in proper English,” notes Joshua), with their mother on lead vocals and their father on bass, at their grandma’s 75th birthday party.
Before their Better Days deluxe vinyl record release showcase at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records, when it’s jokingly suggested that the brothers — who now play in the indie-pop band One Outta Ten, which they founded in 2017 by “mostly just doing a bunch of Arctic Monkeys covers” — reunite the Callipygians for their grandma’s upcoming 89th birthday, Joshua chuckles awkwardly, “Um, maybe. We’ll get to that in a second…”
Oof. Bad joke. One Outta Ten are visiting Licorice Pizza to promote their new album, Better Days, which was actually largely inspired by the grief stemming from their dad’s 2023 death — meaning that a proper Callipygians reunion will never happen, obviously. But before we can even apologize for the faux pas, Joshua jokes, “No, it’s OK. We can hold a seance or something,” with David pointing out that their late father “would be disappointed if we didn’t at least have a couple of laughs” during their candid LPTV interview.
Better Days grapples with some heavy stuff, much heavier than people as young as One Outta Ten’s members should ever have to experience, but it’s a surprisingly celebratory record. When asked how they managed to write such a cheerful album about death and loss, the band’s dark humor comes through in guitarist/vocalist Tyler Loftus’s deadpan answer.
“You make the demos before the bad stuff happens!” he quips. “So, you have a bunch of happy songs that you’re ready to write, and then something bad happens to you, and then you’ve got the happy song to write your sad song on top of.”
“I was going to say you frontload the first half of the album with party bangers, and then the mid-shift to just all sad songs,” jokes Joshua.
2023-2024 was not a good time for One Outta Ten, even if they ultimately got a really good album out of it. “Everybody was just going through this period of loss in different ways,” recalls Tyler. “And also, it was right when it felt like we were getting back to some sort of normalcy after COVID, and we were so optimistic about this time. Then we got hit with this giant wave of reality.”
Along with the death of Joshua and David’s father, Ray, who’d been hugely supportive of and influential on the band, just a few months later the De Leons lost two of their aunts and a close family friend. “So, that was three deaths over the course of how many months? Six or five? Three, two months consecutively? And I was like, ‘OK, I really want this to stop. I can’t keep going back to Forest Lawn like this!’” David says wryly. During that time period, Tyler’s grandma and dog also passed away, then bassist Mark Marquez’s dog suddenly died, and on top of all that, the group’s musical equipment was stolen.
“It felt like a year and a day, that kind of thing,” says Tyler. “I remember the day after [Josh and David’s] dad passed, we all went to their house and it was the day that we had that random hurricane in Southern California. And there was an earthquake when we were all sitting around, and it was like, ‘This is unbelievable. It is so surreal. There’s no way to make sense of this, other than to try to think about it and sing songs about it on a stage.’”
“It’s just one of those things that just keeps piling up and it’s hard to process altogether, but during that time, we all had each other and we all knew that we’re all going through very difficult times,” says Mark. “It was nice to have people that you connect with very closely emotionally that are also going through similar things.”
And so, in light of all these tragedies and setbacks, those aforementioned poppy demos the band had been working on took on new meaning and new shape. “We just had all of these songs and we’re like, ‘Well, we know what these songs are probably going to be about now, whatever they were going to be about before,’” says Tyler.
“I feel like I had all these emotions with nowhere to go, super-raw,” recalls Joshua. For instance, the album’s title track, which Joshua had written “when we got all our shit stolen” in February 2023, morphed into a tribute Ray, when he died six months later. “The [original] lyrics were corny and terrible, and then my dad died and it kind of felt like stream-of-consciousness. I scrapped the entire previous first verse, or the first draft of it, and I was just vomiting on a page, and it was all grief. It was like tears mixed with vomit. But it was good. It felt really cathartic. I feel like everyone has had their little cathartic moment on songwriting in this album.”
One Outta Ten have enjoyed the cathartic experience playing Better Days’ songs live, especially when their live shows help forge a stronger bond with their fans. “It’s so incredible to see that connection being made, and then also see them jumping around and having fun a couple minutes later,” marvels Tyler.
“It’s crazy to be playing these songs that we wrote together, and I’m looking in the audience and people are like crying,” says Joshua. “It’s sad and it’s so beautiful, but it’s also like to know that something that we made speaks so directly to people who have either have gone through it. One of the kids was telling me she listened to our album after her dad passed away, and she said it was really powerful for her. I think about that a lot.”
Feeling a new lease on life, so to speak, One Outta Ten, a band with self-described “musical ADHD,” are already thinking about making a one-off City Pop EP. But they also “want to do something productive” and record a metal record that David says will “channel a lot of our activist and political energy.”
“We’re pretty against the current establishment. We do not fuck with Donald Trump at all. We’re pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, for free Palestine,” Joshua asserts emphatically.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever done [political music] like this before, honestly,” says David. “I think we really want to share this message that there is a better world to fight for, but you have to do it now. And I think the best ways to do it is to call out whatever is out there that’s wrong, but also to poke fun and punch up, to show that whatever monsters we’re facing right now, they’re nothing. We are perfectly capable of fighting back.”
“And also get involved in your community,” adds Tyler. “One of the best things about being part of a band and a smaller band is playing with all of these people, getting to know all of these people and having an opportunity and a platform to be able to talk about shit that matters and fundraise for things that matter and try to make a difference. It’s tough when you’re driving through your own community and you’re seeing ICE vans all over the fucking place. It’s really tough. Being part of a group of friends that care about the same shit that you care about, you can try to build something up with and make pieces of art that hopefully speak to something. It used to be about partying when we were kids, and then it was about loss as we started to grow up. And as we continue to grow up, it’s about all of those things, but also these more serious things that matter.”
And so, One Outta Ten, who’ve sadly had to grow up fast in the last few years, are facing a possibly grim Trump-era future with their trademark optimism and resilience. “So much happened, but it happened, and it’s like, there’s no way that it won’t keep happening,” says Joshua matter-of-factly of their recent ordeals. “In a way, I feel more equipped to deal with life, now that it’s happened. Every day I look back and I’m like, ‘That was the worst day of my life [when my dad died], and there’s no way that it can get worse from there.’”
“Better Days isn’t necessarily the future, and it’s also not necessarily the past, and it’s not necessarily right now. It can be any time,” keyboardist/guitarist JT Hamel sums up of the album’s title and the band’s overall positive message. “I think a lot of those ‘better days’ that we’re referencing in these songs, it’s like the memories of the people that built us and gave us these tools. And now we’re equipping them with this album to propel us towards even more better days.”
