The artist project Puzzwacky made its debut performance in early April at the El Cid. Still unreleased to the ears of mass audiences, we are left wondering: Who is this “Puzzwacky” that we keep hearing of?
Puzzwacky is the artist project from the creative minds of USC students Jack Romero and James Cain. Romero appears as the frontman clad in black leather and chains with powerful pop vocals, while Cain brings the mastermind production behind their electronic sound. Together, they meld their unique technical backgrounds to immerse the audience into the queer electronic pop world of Puzzwacky.
Seamlessly fitting together, the duo appears as two parts of one moving machine. Cain’s concentrated contemplation perfectly complements Romero’s exuberance as the pair bounced off each other’s answers throughout their interview.
As seniors of USC’s Thornton School of Music, the members of Puzzwacky quickly approach graduation. Ahead of their big day, the pair cue us in on what’s to come next.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Let’s dive into it. Tell me, what is Puzzwacky?
Romero: James actually had a really good definition of it as kind of a musical tour of our combination of interest in music. How do you describe it? How was that little blurb that you wrote?
Cain: Yeah, let’s see if I can remember it. It started –the influences start mostly in the 80s with kind of house and queer pop like Soft Cell.
Romero: Frankie Knuckles.
Cain: Pet Shop Boys. Yeah, Frankie Knuckles. But then also kind of draws from early 2000s synth-pop stuff like Kesha and Lady Gaga and then some indie sleaze like Peaches and Avenue D.
Romero: With the indie sleaze a lot of that focus was on the lyricism behind that and the tongue-in-cheek type of humor throughout it, which is kind of what separates the sleaze from slut pop if that makes sense; Slut pop is more that Kim Petras vibe, whereas synthy sleaze pop, I like to describe as kind of this ratchet Americana type vibe, if that makes sense.
And then, when it comes to just the entity of Puzzwacky, it is purely just unadulterated confidence. It’s not bratty, but the b—y side of both of our personalities. More so mine, James is not that b—y. And it’s not necessarily rude, but it’s definitely in your face, aggressive in the best way possible, and just fun and funny.
Describe Puzzwacky in six words.
Romero: Kink.
Cain: First one I thought of was club.
Romero: I wanna say c—. That’s the main word The tag is, “Puzzwack the c—.” So, the word c— is our center focus word.
Cain: If we only had one word, then it would be that. Well, it’s not really one word but like in your face. If there’s a good one-word synonym for that. I guess just confident.
Romero: I’m gonna say confrontational.
Cain: Intense.
How did you start working together on this?
Romero: So, I was taking singing lessons with Chris Sampson who’s a fabulous mentor of both of ours. He’s been guiding us a lot through this project. I originally started these lessons to talk about indie rock music and get his take on it and my writing because he’s just a brilliant man to ask when it comes to music in any capacity. And I was showing him all my stuff I was writing and you know, I loved it and it was stuff that I still connected deeply with. But I could tell that Chris liked it a lot and he was obviously guiding me and supporting me and giving me great feedback. But, I just felt like I could click something harder.
We were talking one day as most of our lessons ended up just us chatting and I was telling him about how, a couple years ago, the [end of] sophomore year, me and Evan Pruett, who’s another producer, sat down and wrote two songs called “kNAUGHTY” and then started one called “Vogue! Marie Laveau!” And I really fell in love with writing that then, but I didn’t really care to explore it too much because I thought it was a fun thing we just did. And then I was like, ‘Oh, I also have some electronic music that I did if you want to hear it’ to Chris and Chris said, ‘Yeah.’ I showed it to him and he sat for a good 30 long seconds in silence and was like, “I’m gonna be honest with you, Jack, this is way more divisive to me. As a professor and mentor, I want to support you, whatever you want to do, but I’m going to be honest, I really liked this.’ And I took that and ran with it.
Right after that lesson, I wanted to get cracking on it and then I wrote the chorus to the first song we worked on together, “Barbianque,” which is quote, “I’m so hot / I’m so gay / I’m a Barbie / I’m on K.” And then I think it was two days later, I asked James if he wanted to work on that song and then less than a week later, we sat down and the song just clicked so so f—ing fast. And then I showed that to Chris, he loved it and we just decided to start working on the whole project and now we’re 14 songs in.
So, was “Barbianque” the first time you two worked together?
Romero: Yes! After I wrote the chorus idea down I pitched it to James and later that week we began working on it from the ground up together. We were decent friends and housemates beforehand but as sessions together began picking up we became great friends. It was fabulous to have our music and our friendship grow together.
Jack, you’ve had a very committed rebrand from your solo work to this project, even changing your Instagram handle to @puzzwacky. What has this departure from your past work meant?
Romero: It’s honestly kind of become everything. For the past five months, it has become one of the only things I’ve really thought about. We already have merch that we’re developing, all designed by a girl named Julia McKay, and she has also been a huge collaborator in the project. When it comes to collaborators, we have garnered around a 26-person team that is fully volunteer-based, just because they believe in the project as much as we do. So it really is everything. It’s been all-encompassing in both of our lives. We would have so many sessions: two or three nights a week and then all day on Sunday. My dad even bought me a German license plate that says “Puzzwacky” on it. It’s on the front of my car.
Cain: I’ve been spending the majority of my time working on this stuff for the past five months, and it’s been really fun. Right now, we’re in the stage of getting together live performances and trying to connect with some labels.
You’ve briefly mentioned the potential of signing onto a label. How has that process been?
Romero: We’ve been in communication with a few. I don’t want to jinx anything, but we’ve been in communication with a few of them. I feel like that’s just the route that we want to take with it because it makes the most sense. Our goal is to be able to have these things released through it and with that backing. However, I feel like if time gets the better of us, I think we’re just gonna start doing it on our own because honestly, how it’s been working so far on our own has been fabulous. But we’re still in cahoots with a few of them – setting up some meetings. We have another mentor who is named Barbara Cane, and she’s the vice president of BMI [Broadcast Music Inc]. So I met with her a few weeks ago and I absolutely fell in love with her. And she’s also helping us develop this, not necessarily the persona, but just how to use what we have in our persona and each other to our benefit when it comes to the project. Because it started as James and I working on stuff together, and then I was going to release it. But then it turned into a very collaborative project. Every single meeting we have, we do it together now because we’ve described everything, as most artists do, as these songs are very much our children.
It seems like you have a unique collaborative relationship creating this artist project. What is your creative process working together?
Cain: I feel like most of the time Jack will come to me with some lyrical ideas. That’s usually the inspiration for the starting point for most of our songs.
Romero: Like a song title.
Cain: Yeah, and then we’ll find a few references of, what I’ve mentioned earlier, those eras and genres of music and do some listening and decide what we like and what we want to take inspiration from. Then usually Jack will write and I’ll produce the track simultaneously. Sometimes I make a track and then Jack will spend some time with it and write over it and sometimes the lyrical ideas just come as the track is being built. But overall, it’s a pretty collaborative process. Jack will inform a lot of the production decisions that I make.
Romero: So musically, that’s kind of how it’s built. We would have the beginning of the session, we track vocals for a song that I toplined after he produced it and then the second half of our session would be creating – that’s what these six to eight hours Sundays would be just tracking and then writing and going back and forth.
But as for the outward persona and identity, it’s all based on kink culture and queer pornography. So it’s a lot of leather, a lot of chains and just very fun party, dance, 80s if that makes sense. It’s a lot of cruising references like we have a song called “Cruise 2 Lose.” And cruising is one of those segments of queer culture that is still just purely and truly gay. And so it’s kind of just grasping at those concepts and ideas. Personally, I’ve been influenced a lot by artists such as Bob Mizer, who basically pioneered the queer porn industry, and he was just a beautiful artist and photographer. Mizer was one of those guys that owned this compound and he would find these queer men who were kicked out of their houses simply because of coming out and give them a home and a place to stay and offer them work and just all this beautiful stuff. So a lot of it is just the positive aspects of queerness. Then, of course, with the aesthetic of BDSM, leather chains, red, silvers, blacks, all that stuff.
Recently, you held a focus group for Puzzwacky. I’m sure there was both a lot of anticipation and excitement around people listening to the project for the first time.
Romero: It was fabulous. Originally, the idea was that me and James were going to sit down with just Chris and talk over everything and get his opinion on everything. And then it turned into – we’d collaborated with like five other producers and writers for some of the songs, and then it was going to be us and Chris, as well. Then I was in one of my meetings with Chris and he basically just told me, ‘The room has 50 seats, and you’re more than welcome to fill them up, but you don’t have to.’ And James and I talked and we decided that it would be the best idea because also when it comes to pitching the labels, the more info you get, just the feedback is the most important thing. And I made a Partiful and I sent it out and the event sold out within three days, which was fabulous. Especially when it’s something that quite literally nobody has heard before. For it to sell out that fast was just amazing and getting support from not only friends but the friends of friends because I asked a lot of people to bring obviously someone that doesn’t know us that way they can hear it and see what they think of it. And the feedback was very, very, very positive.
You’re both also seniors at USC. So, as you are launching forward with this project, you are also about to graduate. How does it feel?
Romero: Honestly, I was nervous about graduating until we started this project.
Cain: Yeah, I’m pretty excited. I’m really looking forward to being able to spend a lot more time on this type of stuff. And yeah, I think there’s a lot of potential behind it, so I’m excited to see where it goes.
Romero: And also a lot of support behind it already from not, even just our friends, but mutual friends and stuff like that. So after that, I think that’s very validating in the fact of just adding to the confidence that we both share behind this whole brand or this whole artist project, I should say, not brand. Well, I guess it is a brand. But anyway.
We’re at the end here. If the readers take anything away from this, what do you want them to know about your new project?
Cain: Be ready for something different.
Romero: That’s kind of our biggest thing people have told us. I don’t want to sound like a b—-, but everybody’s said they’ve never heard anything like it. Which is huge, you know, and it’s one of those things where most things have been done before.