Interviews – 7th Level Music

Interview: Ben Hozie of BODEGA

I recently chatted with Ben Hozie, guitarist, lead singer, and co-songwriter of Brooklyn art-punks BODEGA (who play at Schuba’s in Chicago tomorrow night) while he strolled along Park Avenue in New York City after having left a classical guitar lesson. Our conversation covered everything from the band’s attitude toward performance to the Zen of airports.

7th Level Music: I’m really looking forward to the Schuba’s show.

Ben Hozie: Yeah, that should be good.

7LM: I’m also really looking forward to seeing (guitarist) Madison [Velding-Vandam] and (bassist) Heather [Elle] with The Wants (who, along with Chicago’s Jungle Green, will open the Schuba’s show).

BH: Their band is super cool, super fun.

7LM: The first couple tracks I’ve heard are really good.

BH: They’re a really fun live band, too. It almost becomes a techno show. They have these super hard edge grooves.

7LM: I’ve been listening to the [BODEGA] albums again and again building up to the show, and I keep thinking that Heather might be your band’s secret weapon.

BH (laughing): Yeah.

7LM: Her bass grooves, every time I hear them I think, “Damn, she is laying that down!” Everybody in the band is just killer. I know that you and Madison and (original drummer) Montana [Simone] and (co-lead singer, percussionist, keyboardist, art director) Nikki [Belfiglio] and Heather all met through the art and music scene there in New York City, isn’t that right?

BH: Yeah, we all had a bunch of different bands at the time who all knew each other. We were also doing different kinds of things, making films together. Like any creative world, everybody is doing a little bit of something.

7LM: Is that how you also met (new drummer) Tai [Lee]?

BH: No. I actually met Tai because Tai came to one of our shows. She was kind of into the band, and Tai’s a super smart person so we were talking about philosophy and hanging out. I asked, “What do you do?” and she said, “I’m in this show STOMP.” She was a drummer and dancer. I think she came to another BODEGA show and we realized she was wanting to do something away from STOMP and it just so happened that was when Montana was wanting to focus more on her fine art. She does sculpture and paintings. So that was a very easy transition. It was like, “Why don’t you just quit STOMP and be in our band?”

7LM: Speaking of philosophy, that’s one of the things I love about your music – your approach to radical honesty and impermanence and presence. I’ve been writing a book about impermanence and presence and I reference “Truth Is Not Punishment” in the book. That’s such a powerful tune.

BH: Thank you.

7LM: On the new album, Shiny New Model, one of the first lines is, “Ben, what’s the deal with all these ATM’s?” I couldn’t help but think that came out of a real conversation.

BH: Of course. For whatever reasons, I’ve been obsessed with ATM’s. In our band before BODEGA, Bodega Bay, we even had two songs called “ATM.” I make films, too (Pretorius Pictures), and in almost all my films I make sure to have shots of ATM’s, not only because I like the way they look but I think they’re a potent metaphor. Somebody eventually got around to asking and I thought, “Well, I gotta answer them.”

7LM: By the way, I watched Little Labyrinth. Nicely done.

BH: Oh wow! That’s great. Madison and Nikki are in that one.

7LM: It was really nice. Another thing that song reminded me of is that I’ve been reading all this stuff and kind of obsessed lately with this idea of “non-places” like airports and hotels where people don’t really reside in them, and I’ve been seeing all this information on how everything’s becoming the same. How every coffee shop has to look like a Brooklyn coffee shop now and how our phones make every place into the same place, and I love this love-hate relationship with technology that you approach in your songs.

BH: I kind of romanticize those places. It’s one of my favorite things about tours, hanging out in airports and motels. There’s something really dreamy about all the glass. It’s kind of awful in some sense, but I kind of enjoy it. There’s something very Zen about being in those places. It’s like, “Nothing is happening here except for a bunch of transitory moments.”

7LM: I also love the way that you and Nikki and everybody else incorporate so much art and sexuality into the songs and the performances. I think a lot of that’s missing from a lot of live bands right now.

BH: Yeah, especially in the indie rock world. We’re still too much into that 90’s thing where you just wear your work clothes onstage and it’s not cool to try hard. Not only is it not fun, but that’s a privileged position. If somebody’s paid money to see you, you’d better entertain them.

7LM: Yes. I read a quote from Benny Goodman not long ago that pretty much says the same thing. If you’re gonna get up there, you gotta bring it.

BH: The sexuality of it, that can mean a lot of different things. One of the things that’s gotten so boring about rock and roll is that it’s not sexy. Obviously, it became sexy in a really gross way. We all know what that means, but sex is an essential part of what rock and roll is. The idea of a liberated sexuality. That was one of Nikki’s main ideas when we started the group, “We have to be sexy, but in a new way.” Whatever that means. We’re always experimenting. That’s always a loaded word, but I think you can smell what I mean.

7LM: Speaking of your music and art, I saw the clip of the [Paris] fashion show with “Name Escape.” That was perfect. Seeing all these dudes who look exactly the same coming out during that song, I thought, “This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

BH (laughing): I gotta tell ya, that was one of the most surreal moments of my life. Sitting with all these high-fashion people and to hear a song we recorded in our practice space being blasted in front of all these people and to feel like, “How are we here? What ripple in the Matrix did we accidentally blip into?”

7LM: Speaking of Paris and Europe and that part of the world, I listen to BBC 6 Radio a lot and “Jack in Titanic” was all over that station. They loved that track.

BH: Yeah, thank God for BBC 6. They made it so we can tour Europe now.

7LM: I can’t remember, have you toured Europe already?

BH: Yeah, five or six times now. We tour there more than we do America because, for whatever reason, we have way more fans over there now.

7LM: Have you discovered countries where you’re popular and you wonder, “How did you hear of us?”

BH: Yeah, France is like that and to a certain extent the Netherlands is like that. It all started with the BBC 6 thing. I also think that maybe since Europe’s smaller, information travels faster. We have a lot of support in pockets of America, but for however long it takes us to get to Minneapolis or Nashville, everywhere in-between has not a fucking clue.

7LM: Getting back to your film work, I loved “I Am Not a Cinephile,” and when I found out you were a film maker, I loved it even more.

BH: That song came from me hanging out with academic film people. That’s kind of my background. I studied film history and film theory and film philosophy in college, and I do genuinely love that stuff but I remember having a dinner with a couple older guys who were so obnoxious in their cinephilia in a way that was not even aware of the joys of cinema. I just left that dinner thinking, “If that’s what cinephila is, I don’t like it.” There’s a good documentary called Cinemania, have you heard of it?

7LM: I’ve heard of it somewhere.

BH: It came out ten or fifteen years ago. It’s about this group of people in New York who go to every single repertory screening every day in New York City and they’re still doing it right now. If you go into a lot of art houses of New York, you’ll still see these characters. They have such an OCD regarding cinema, they’ll be like, “Okay, there’s a [Jean-Luc] Godard playing at eleven at MOMA, but if I take a cab I can make it to the one-thirty [Stanley] Kubrick over in the Bronx, and okay, there’s a thirty-five millimeter John Ford print showing…” and I don’t know how these people can afford it because they clearly don’t work. They just sit in the movies all day. The movie really shows you how these people are just addicted to the screen in a weird way. They have incredible taste in movies, obviously, but it’s like, “Haven’t you seen them already?” It’s really bizarre. Godard is kind of a hero of mine, and there was a month where they were showing every single Godard film at Lincoln Center in New York, even the TV stuff and the stuff that’s not available online. I did what those people do. I was there for every screening, five a day. It was amazing, but I kept seeing all these people and I would be like, “What’s wrong with these people? Are they such losers that they have nothing else to do with their lives?” But then I realized, “Oh my God! I’m one of them!” It’s a complicated song.

7LM: Do you have any favorite misheard versions of your lyrics?

BH: Yeah, I do. There are some pretty funny ones, but the best one is our song “Name Escape,” and some guy thought it was “Name a State.” He thought I was saying, “Name a state,” and he was like, “Delaware! New Jersey!” “Name a state!” “Alaska! Hawaii!” I was like, “That is an insane interpretation.” It was pretty stupid, but it was amazing. That’s what he heard. He even bought the record. He kept hearing it that way. I was like, “Are you not listening to the rest of the song?”

7LM: I know the name of Bodega Bay came from The Birds, do you have any other favorite [Alfred] Hitchcock films?

BH: Yeah, my favorite Hitchcock is The 39 Steps. I like British Hitchcock, like peak British Hitchcock. It’s really witty and it has all the charm. That movie feels miraculous to me in a way because it still feels super modern and abstract like his stuff got, but it feels a little more like it was off the cuff in a way. It feels somehow more beautiful to me because it feels like he was in the act of self-discovery when making that one, whereas at the end when he was in masterpiece mode through the Fifties and early Sixties, he knew what he was doing at that point.

7LM: Have you seen 1917?

BH: No. Nikki saw that last night. She said, “Do you want to go?” and I was like, “You know what, I don’t wanna go see that.” I really don’t like war movies. I haven’t seen it yet, but to me it looks like a theme park ride. Maybe I should because I’m sure it will win movie awards.

7LM: I haven’t seen it either, but the big thing about it is that it’s one long continuous shot.

BH: Like [Hitchcock’s] Rope.

7LM: Yeah, as a result of that, Rope‘s been getting a lot more attention lately.

BH: It’s (1917) not actually, just like Rope isn’t actually [one long shot]. There are several movies that are actual long shots with no stitches together, like [Aleksandr Sokurov’s] Russian Ark had no splicing or no dolly into darkness and then pull out again. Have you seen the Bi Gan films like Kaili Blues or Long Day’s Journey into Night?

7LM: No, not yet.

BH: They also have this Hail Mary long take. It’s way cooler in Kaili, because it’s kind of like what I was saying about The 39 Steps, “How did you pull this off with this cheap technology?” He’ll get on the back of a car and he’ll ride a mile or two, and then the camera will get off the car and follow the character into a house, and then it’ll strap onto a motorcycle and this camera literally has travelled probably ten kilometers. It crosses a river even, and there are no cuts. It’s kind of a dumb movie in some ways, and it’s clearly a young person’s movie. No one would think to do that if they were a tasteful film maker, which is why it’s awesome.

7LM: Yeah, you’ve got to push the envelope. On the new EP (Shiny New Model), I noticed how some of the grooves were tighter. I don’t know if that was a conscious decision to experiment with different grooves or song structures or not.

BH: Yeah, we wanted to change it up a bit. Make stuff that was maybe a little bit more melodic, the production’s a little lush. One funny difference is there’s a kick drum on the record, whereas there isn’t on [BODEGA’s first record] Endless Scroll. I think having the sub-frequency adds to the feeling of grooviness. It’s still a kick drum on its side, but even just hitting a kick drum with a mallet on its side gives it that oomph. That was the first time we actually recorded in a studio with a classic console. The first record was just on a tape deck in a practice space.

7LM: I read that. I thought that was pretty damn cool.

BH: No matter what’s going to happen with technology, there’s nothing like a live group playing to tape. It’s still always going to sound good.

7LM: I absolutely agree with you. There’s some stuff that’s so overproduced that I sometimes think, “Why not just come to the studio and rock out?”

BH: Well, if the toys are there they’re going to get used. That’s the thing about technology. That’s why you can’t make something like an atom bomb and not use it.

7LM: Outside of music and film, what else are you fascinated with or interested in?

BH: I’m interested in all kinds of things. Philosophy’s my biggest passion, not as big as film and music, but maybe on the same level. Me and Tai have a little philosophy group that gets together once a week and talk about any kind of theory. I love history. I love gambling. I’m very into cards.

7LM: Who are some of your favorite philosophers?

BH: Right now in the group we’re reading [Gilles] Deleuze, who’s probably not one of my favorites actually, but it’s fun to read. I’ve really been into [Martin] Heidegger recently. In terms of classical philosophers, I love [Immanuel] Kant. That was my big guy when I was younger. So almost anytime I read something, I’m like, “Oh, what would Kant say about this?” That’s just where my brain goes. It’s not like I would necessarily recommend Kant to anybody. He’s a little bit of a bore if you don’t take him in his historical context properly. I’m a big fan of [Søren] Kierkegaard, even though I’m not a Christian. I think of veganism, that’s something I’m really passionate about, as being a thing like Kierkegaard’s faith in an irrational god. Even rock and roll is like this, you choose this mode of being, this principle that you have, and then you just will yourself toward it, even if you can’t really justify it to anybody else. All you have to do is justify it to yourself. I’ve always thought that was really beautiful.

7LM: That’s a perfect way to wrap this up. That’s beautiful.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Patrick Tilley for arranging my chat with Ben.]

Interview: Shonen Knife

Shonen Knife (L – R: Atsuko, Risa, Naoko)

I’m still a bit stunned that I was able to conduct an e-mail interview with pop-punk legends Shonen Knife this week, especially with them finishing their North American tour and about to embark on their Australia / New Zealand tour. Many thanks to them for taking the time to answer this humble writer’s questions, and to Andrew Scott for setting up this treat.

7th Level Music: First, I want to say thanks for stopping by Chicago’s Subterranean during your “Sweet Candy Power” tour. It was a fun show. I read your blog posts about the tour and also wanted to thank you for writing about the Mitsuwa Market. I didn’t know about it until I read your blog. Do you always stop there when you play Chicago?

Naoko: Yes, we do. There are some Japanese supermarkets in the U.S. When we have time, we try to stop there and eat lunch and buy Japanese food. I love Japanese bakery. I often buy Japanese pastries there.

7LM: I also read how the night before the show at Subterranean that you played the stage at a Hardee’s restaurant parking lot in Springfield, Illinois. I saw photos from the show and it looked like you had a great time and there was a big crowd. Were you surprised by the size of the crowd?

Naoko: I was very surprised and glad for the big crowd. It is the only restaurant which has a stage in a big parking lot. People there made lots of effort to make a fun event. The audience was very positive. They came to the venue to have fun. The atmosphere was very peaceful and happy. It was a great event.

7LM: Were there any other shows during the tour that were especially fun or surprising?

Naoko: We had very good reaction in all cities in Canada. It was the first time after a few years to come to Canada. The audience seemed to be enjoying our show a lot and I was happy, too.

7LM: I know you’re off to Australia and New Zealand next. Do you have any favorite venues there?

Naoko: I love all venues but especially I like to play at music festivals. We’ll play at The Lost Lands festival this time. I’m looking forward to playing there. I also like to play in New Zealand. It will be a rare chance to play there for us. Our audience in Australia and New Zealand are very cheerful and friendly like people in North America.

7LM: The new Sweet Candy Power album is very good. The title track got a big cheer from the Chicago crowd, and I wondered if there are American candies that you love that you take back with you to Japan? Also, are there any Japanese candies you wish you could get while you tour the United States? I, for one, love Japanese green tea candy and buy it whenever I can find it.

Naoko: I bought Halls throat candies during the tour. “Candy” we say “amé” in Japanese means “hard candy” in Japan. We have various kind of hard candies in Japan. I don’t have any special brand but love natural mint candy which doesn’t use artificial sugar. Green tea candy is good, too.

7LM: One thing I noticed on the new album is that it has a lot of different rock influences – punk, pop, garage, British metal, and more. Did you decide to play the different styles before recording began or was it something that you explored as you worked on the record?

Naoko: I wrote all the songs in [the last] 10 years. I listen to various kinds of rock and am inspired. I especially like 1970’s and 60’s rock and R&B, funk, disco music. Everything began from when I write songs.

7LM: The Subterranean show was the second time I’ve seen you live. The first was in Tucson, Arizona during the Ramen Adventure tour in 2017.
I remember Risa saying during that show it was only her second time in the U.S. I’ve never been able to learn how you met Risa. She is a beast behind the drum kit. How did all of you meet? Risa, how did you start drumming and who are some of your drumming influences. Do you have any thoughts on the passing of Ginger Baker?

Naoko: Risa plays the drums in her family band called Brinky. Her father plays the bass and her sister play the guitar and vocal. They covered Shonen Knife songs. Our manager and I found them playing our songs through YouTube. Risa was a high school student at that time. Then there was an opportunity that Brinky opened for our show. We got to know each other.

Risa: When I was 14 years old, I started to form a band with my friends. I was asked to be a drummer from my friends. Then I started to play the drums.

I was influenced by Atsuko because she is the original drummer of Shonen Knife because I’m a fan of Shonen Knife. I set cymbals and tom toms like her. Other than her, I like John Bonham, Taylor Howkins, and Chad Smith.

I was listening to Cream a lot when I was a child because my father liked them. I’ve never seen Ginger Baker’s drumming. If I go to heaven someday, I would like to see him playing the drums directly.

7LM: I know Atsuko makes your show outfits. Atsuko, do you design the tour shirts as well? You were all out of my size (medium) by the time you got to Chicago, but I’m glad you sold many of them.

Atsuko: I’m inspired by 60’s and 70’s fashion. Naoko designs some T-shirts in these days and for [our 2019] U.S. tour T-shirts, Miyoko from Good Charamel Records, which release our albums, designed it.

Naoko: I’m sorry that we had many sold out sizes. We will prepare enough next time.

7LM: I always like to ask bands this: Are there any bands back home that you think more people should know? Are there any other bands from Osaka or elsewhere in Japan you think your fans would like? I recently discovered High Rise and Bo Ningen in the last few years and think both are great.

Naoko: I like Extruders and Convex Level. Extruders is a very unique band. Their music is one and only, I think. From Osaka, Yellow Machinegun is cool. They are all female band of 3 pieces and play hardcore.

7LM: Lastly, outside of music (and candy and ice cream and capybaras), what else do you love to talk about or what other hobbies do you enjoy?

Naoko: I like to play tennis and watching men’s pro tennis matches. Atsuko also likes it and we have matches when she comes to Osaka or I go to Los Angeles where she lives.

Thanks a lot!

Thank you, Shonen Knife.

Keep your mind open.

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Interview: Steve Davit

Multi-instrumentalist Steve Davit is well-known for his bass and saxophone work with Marian Hill, but he is also a fine solo artist in his own right who blends jazz with electronica, hip hop, and even video game music-influenced cuts. His first EP, Coniferous, will be out soon.

I spoke with Steve Davit about Coniferous, his work with Marian Hill, jazz, video games, and dreams.

7th Level Music: I’m really looking forward to this new EP.

Steve Davit: Yeah, me too. I’m just about done with the third track. I just need to do some mastering tweaks, making sure it sounds right, and finish up the fourth track.

7LM: Is it going to be four tracks?

SD: It’s going to be four tracks. For physical copies, there’s going to be a bonus fifth track that’s like an improv type of thing. Timeline wise, I don’t think it’s possible to get an actually produced fifth track before I’m going to release it, which is sometime in March. It’s a little nebulous now, but Marian Hill is going on tour in April. I want to have some stuff ready for that, so I came out with four tracks. I figure, if and when I write more music, I’ll just make another EP.

7LM: How long have you been working on this one?

SD: I didn’t intend to make an EP, so it didn’t have a set start date. I’ve been writing music for a while. Early last year, maybe late early 2016. It basically started with me being upset that I hadn’t written any music in a while because I had been doing a lot of touring. I had released an album in May 2012 for my senior project, but I hadn’t released any music since then. So every year, I’ve been like, “I’m going to write more,” but I never did. So I set a challenge for myself that for sixty days I would write a groove every single day.

7LM: Oh wow.

SD: A groove could be four bars, it could be just a drum beat, a drum beat with chords, or [something] more fleshed out. A lot of the beats [were from] me on a plane or in an airport beatboxing into my earbud microphone. I’d record that on my phone and translate that onto my computer. From that I had maybe ten that I thought were pretty cool. I showed them to (Marian Hill’s) Sam[antha Gongol] and Jeremy [Lloyd] because I needed some feedback from the outside world, from people whose opinions I respect, and I trust them. They said, “These few are really cool. You should make an EP.” I thought, “Huh. Okay!” A lot of the music is a long process of having the idea, letting it germinate, [and] building a way to more efficiently write music and create sounds. It’s kind of nerve-wracking that I’m finally putting stuff out there, but I’ve found that it’s really resonating.

7LM: You’ve kind of already answered a question I was going to ask you. I know improvising is a big part of your songwriting structure, and I was wondering if improvisation was part of the process for the EP.

SD: Improvisation to me is, obviously, played out a lot on the saxophone. Some times I would come up with melodies on the saxophone that were cool, but then little germinations would come from it as I would think of some groove. I’d start working with a kick drum pattern here, and that wouldn’t be quite right so I’d tweak that, and then I’d have this beat and [I’d] try to come up with some saxophone line that sits on top of that. That was where the next level of improvisation would come. With Coniferous, that whole drum craziness thing started off with me having an idea for a five-pattern over a three-pattern and then I thought, “What if I remove every other one?” or “What if it’s all weird, rhythmic stuff that just turns into something cool?” I thought, “I should do something with this, because it’s really cool, but I don’t know what.” Sometimes I’ll improvise something and then cut that up and be more meticulous about what it ends up being. That said, a lot of it does stem from me having an idea, recording it, and then translating that or keeping it as is. It’s all over the place, really.

7LM: You mentioned you went to Jeremy and Samantha. I don’t know how you got hooked up with them. Did you know them from way back when?

SD: Yeah, we were high school buds. I knew Sam but didn’t talk to her much, because she was a grade ahead of me and she was a girl. Jeremy was in the jazz band with me in middle school [and] a bunch of my high school friends. We’re all still pretty tight, which is really nice. It’s been great having that connection to Sam and Jeremy. After college, they knew they wanted to work together. I would help them record stuff. Sam and Jeremy would still write, and I would record and try to make it sound good even though I had no idea what I was doing. They made some other tracks where they needed to find a cappella horns, and I said, “I’ll just record it for you.” I sent them twelve minutes of stuff and that turned into “One Time” and “Got It,” and it just kind of grew from there.

7LM: Your set with Marian Hill was one of the best my wife and I saw at Mamby on the Beach last year.

SD: Thank you.

7LM: You mentioned in an e-mail that your bass rig was having trouble at that show.

SD: Yeah, something happened. I had to unplug my bass because it was making this loud popping noise. Mid-song I’m switching cables. [My bass] just stopped. It wasn’t making sound. I thought, “This is bad,” but I was able to fix it. I’m glad it didn’t show.

7LM: Yeah, no one noticed.

SD: I love performing the music. I don’t contribute to the songwriting or production, but I really like the music. I like being able to interpret that music and perform it live. Festivals are great because people are there to have a fun time, and a lot of them don’t know you so you’re winning them over, and you can see the crowd growing over time.

7LM: That was a crazy festival. Did you have any other odd stuff that happened on that tour?

SD: Nothing that crazy for me, but there was one festival…I play with a clip-on mic on the saxophone. I put that down and pick up the bass and switch back and forth. Sometimes, when switching, it will fall off. So I go to play this solo, and I lift up my horn to be all dramatic and the mic pack just slides off and I grab it and I’m able to clip it and be on for the next downbeat. Sam was like, “I’m really impressed you got that together in time.” She was frozen. She didn’t know what to do. At one point, this is the most terrifying thing, the microphone cable, as I was picking it up from the stand, got hooked on the stand and hooked on one of the keys of my saxophone and it popped out. You don’t need to know much about the saxophone, but if a key pops out it’s bad. Luckily though, it was one of the lowest keys. The lower the key, the lower the pitch. So if that key is just flopping around and not connected, it doesn’t affect any of the higher pitches. I was lucky that I could still play the song without affecting it, but there was this thing jangling around and I was freaking out. There are some songs where I don’t play so I could run backstage and jam it back in and go back out. It worked, but I needed to get it fixed. It was partially messed up for a good two weeks. I’ve been performing for a while, and I know that the audience doesn’t know what you know. If you mess up, they don’t know as long as you play it off. I’m usually able to keep my cool when catastrophic things happen.

7LM: Speaking of audiences, have you discovered that your music is popular somewhere you never thought it would be popular?

SD: Yeah. It’s kind of tricky [because] my current stuff is so new that I don’t have enough data or reach to figure out who found me organically or who found me because I’m with Marian Hill. There are tons of Marian Hill fans who are all over the globe. We have an amazing fan account from Brazil. We’ve never been to Brazil, but this person has their own Marian Hill fan page. The first time we went to France, they were singing along. We were like, “What? We haven’t even been here before and you know our music in English! This is crazy!” Even age range-wise, we have parents with their kids who say, “I love your music. I took my daughter here,” and then you have twelve-year-olds who are in love with Sam. For my music, I haven’t done too much to actively push my stuff out there, so the fact that you came across it is pretty awesome.

7LM: I got a press release about “Forward,” and I was telling everybody that was easily one of my top dozen singles of the year. It just floored me.

SD: Thank you.

7LM: Do you have any influences your fans might find surprising?

SD: Yeah, it’s funny you say that. I was listening to a random mix of songs on Spotify and this one track by Stereolab came on called “Brakhage.” That is one of my all-time favorite songs, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. It’s just a phenomenal song, but it doesn’t necessarily seem to influence a more jazz / electronic musician. That’s kind of a strange influence.

SD: But yeah, I have a lot. Frank Zappa, Medeski, Martin, and Wood…

7LM: Those guys are great.

SD: Bela Bartok, Brian Eno, Steve Reich. Steve Reich is one of the most influential. I got really, really into rhythm and phase shifting and layering rhythms on top of each other, which is what sparked the initial thought of Coniferous.

7LM: I really like how you blend jazz with a little acid house and some electro stuff. It’s a really cool sound you’ve put together.

SD: Thank you. I’ve always known that it’s important to listen to a wide array of styles of music. My Dad liked a lot of music. He started his jazz world with Keith Jarrett. Pretty much all the jazz music I listen to came through him. I met up with Medeski, Martin, and Wood. One of the big points that they like to stress is how much world music they like to listen to. I met Bob Moses, who’s a phenomenal drummer. He’s full of crazy ideas. He’d play a solo improv with bamboo sticks, a snare drum, and a weird V-shaped triangle thing. That was back in 2010. It was getting me down non-traditional paths of music and tying that into connecting with a wider group of people. It’s one thing to play really weird sounds and noises and stuff, and ten people in the world like it. There’s a way to take what that thing is trying to say and share it with a thousand people. I can’t remember who it was, but somebody was saying there are so many people in the world now that, for the most part, you can find a million people who like what you’re doing. I just want to be able to make music that’s still me, but comes from a lot of different areas and can reach people. Not be too far out of left field, because I wouldn’t want to listen that necessarily. I want to do something that I’d want to listen to over and over again, and hopefully other people will find it and listen to it.

7LM: I read that you’re a big-time gamer, and I was wondering if video game music influenced you as well?

SD: Yeah. For a while in college, in my free time, I worked with my freshman year roommate and a couple people who were in a video game design class. Their whole job was to create their own video games, and I always jumped on the opportunity to write music for them. A friend of mine, Andrew Aversa, has this sample library company called Impact Soundworks. He started getting me into the idea of making money composing for video games. I went down that rabbit hole for a bit, but decided it was too annoying working for someone else telling you what music they wanted without knowing how to communicate what music they wanted. I would make something and they would say, “Well, I don’t know. That’s not quite right. It’s needs a bit more of this…” A group of people’s senior project was to create a video game that was playable and had music and all these different sound effects. I was in that course as an independent study. I was supposed to have another guy working with me, but he dropped out so all the music and sound effects landed on me. They kept telling me to redo this one track. I had one track for six weeks and I said, “Guys, I want to start making other music.” They were all, “No, this one is really important.” I thought, “I’m just going to make my own stuff and be the boss of what I’m making.” It has influenced me, though, because I listen to a lot of that music. There are certain melodic sensibilities within that, so it’s still in the back of my mind because games have played a big role in my life. I think as I start to make more music I’m going to start pitching to music houses and other places that license music. So, instead of writing specifically for a video game, I’ll say, “Hey, which of you people think this music fits with your game or movie or TV show or whatever?” A good friend of mine was saying “Forward” sounds like the opening theme song for a new Seinfeld.

7LM: Do you have any favorite video games right now?

SD: Zelda: Breath of the Wild is too addicting for my own good. Video games are too easy to access. I deleted all my computer games so I can actually be productive with music. A friend of mine and I have always played Super Smash Brothers together. He recently started streaming video games online. He was having a lot of fun of that. I said, “Hey, I heard this Zelda game is one of the best games ever made. Let’s get it and share it together.” I got it recently and started playing with him. He said, “You can hold onto it for a bit.” I said, “All right.” So I played it a little bit, and I kept playing it. If I’m not careful, it’s going to take over my life. I’m putting heavy restrictions on my video game playing, but Breath of the Wild is absolutely phenomenal.

7LM: I just dug out my old Sega Genesis.

SD: Oh nice.

7LM: In a weird way, I’m thankful I don’t have the cables yet to hook it up to my high-def TV because I’m going to have to ration it so hard.

SD: Oh yeah.

7LM: Is there anything else outside of music you’re really passionate about or just love to talk about?

SD: The biggest one is dreaming.

7LM: Oh very cool.

SD: Yeah, the psychology of sleep and how it affects your life. I’ve been keeping dream journals since at least 2005. I’ve recorded over two thousand dreams. I’m very into dreaming, controlling your dreams, using your dreams to enrich your life and be creative. I’ve come up with some music and in dreams. I’ve come up with game ideas and artwork in dreams, story ideas. I recently found out that dreaming about traumatic events in a normal functioning brain will actually decrease the emotional response to that event. Dreaming is kind of an overnight therapy. There’s a book I’m reading called Why We Sleep (by Matthew Walker).

7LM: Thanks for this. It’s been great.

SD: Yeah, thanks, man.

Keep your mind open

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you make like a tree and leave.]

Feltworth interview – May 30, 2017.

“Kids rock” legends Feltworth were kind enough to let me interview them recently about their inevitable foray into serious rock music. I learned a lot about their influences, how they met, and what kind of barbecue Cozy prefers.

7th Level Music: I’ll start with one for Manny and Dezi. How did you two decide to start a band and how did you meet Morris and Cozy?

Dezi (left) and Manny with their new single – “You Turn Me On”

DEZI: Manny and I have been playing together for as long as we can remember. Cozy answered an ad we put out in a music paper. We thought he was too crazy to be in our band but he brought Morris with him and when we heard Morris play we begged him to join. He didn’t want to but we said we would take Cozy if he joined so he agreed.

7LM: Cozy, I know you played some saxophone on Feltworth’s “Super Duper” album, so do you plan on bringing it back with the new rock-oriented material?

DEZI: That was just for the photo shoot. That whole album is predominantly MIDI sounds. If you think you hear a sax on the first record, it’s a fake.

COZY: Bring it back? Bring it back??? Have you not heard of The Saxpocalypse©? Every song in the 50’s: sax solo. Every song in the 80’s: sax solo. If you follow my math you’ll realize that the Saxpocalypse© is nigh! Every thirty years the sax takes over for 10 years. All artists/all genres. This is no different for Feltworth. I’d be shocked and disappointed if the band erased all of the major sax I blew all over our next LP.

MANNY: Ctrl-Alt-Delete-Sax. Ok, actually I don’t mind a little sax…Little Richard, Springsteen’s Born To Run album, “Let’s Dance” by Bowie. Dezi says sax makes all music sound like the Saturday Night Live band. What was Steve Albini’s quote? “New York’s alright if you like saxophones?”

7LM: Your agent has stated that you guys are performing and putting your music out there for free. Is this right? I think it’s great to see people making art for the sake of art. How did this decision come about, and was it a difficult one?

DEZI: I was initially defiant when we were being booed by kids and moms but I did have a bit of a freak out when it hit me that we had closed the doors on a lot of our money making opportunities. I think I have arrived at a place of acceptance.

COZY: Wait, I’m not being paid for this?

MANNY: I like to think we’re in our “investment period.”

MORRIS: It could be argued that we have been releasing children’s music under duress. Lately we’ve been composing and recording our music freely. “Freely” is not quite the same as gratis, if you catch my drift.

7LM: How has the crowd response been so far? Was it difficult to make the transition from playing to crowds of children and their parents to crowds of hipsters, old school rockers, and music bloggers like yours truly?

DEZI: As I said, there was an excitement in the chaos of the bad press and poor reaction. I guess we are hoping to reach music bloggers like you. We are currently at 230 Instagram followers so go tell your nerd friends.

COZY: It’s weird. The moms still come backstage after the shows to meet (and greet!) us it’s just this time around they get a little more dolled up – no more worries about baby barf!

MORRIS: If I never have to play to another whinging three-year-old again, I certainly won’t complain.

7LM: A follow-up to that: Are you surprised that people are surprised you guys decided to make a rock record? It seems like you guys have been hinting at this all along with your cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man” and how the cover of your self-titled album was a parody of Boston’s self-titled debut.

DEZI: The Boston parody was for our 4th album, Beanbagtown, which I think is musically the best of our records. We had the most freedom to produce it the way we wanted. It wasn’t as big a seller as the first few, but it did get some good critical reaction. Maybe that gave us the confidence to take the step.

MANNY: Right, I guess there have been hints through our children’s records that we appreciate rock and pop history, so perhaps some parents may have caught on. I attempted to do a more kid-centric version of an early Velvet Underground track by renaming it “All Tomorrow’s Birthday Parties” for Beanbagtown, but that was left in the can.

7LM: Do you tend to write grooves first or lyrics first? Or does it depend on the song?

DEZI: Who says “grooves”? Ew! Anyway, music first most of the time although songs where you start with the lyrics often tend to be the best. It’s just harder to do. I have more musical ideas. I don’t often find myself in a coffee shop with a journal.

MANNY: I sometimes see Morris in a coffee shop with a journal. Or maybe that’s the wine list. But yes, usually music first for me as well.

MORRIS: Understandably, most of my lyrical contribution has been cloistered within the bound confines of my diary. With that in mind, even the most untrained ear can hear the inherent tension as I express myself on the keyboards.

7LM: Morris, is it just me or do I hear touches of Jerry Lee Lewis in some of your playing on “Forget This Feeling?” I also wondered if you were influenced by some of the great French jazz pianists like Martial Solal or Jacques Loussier since you grew up in France?

DEZI: I think Morris is more influenced by Jerry Lewis than Jerry Lee. He is originally from France after all.

MORRIS: I will always have a soft spot for the music I grew up on, but I will not lean back on the fundamentals of greats like Solal and Loussier. America in all of it’s youthful bravado and naïve innocence has unveiled its charms clumsily. “He shook my nerves and he rattled my brain…” Does that make sense when I express it in English?

7LM: I know you’ve done some gigs with Animal Eyes, Situation Bad, and a few other indie acts. Are there other bands you’re hoping to jam with soon?

DEZI: We share a rehearsal space with those bands. I wouldn’t say we are fans per se. Most of our favourite bands have human beings in them.

COZY: Quite frankly I’m hoping to take over for Gregg Allman in the Allman Brothers Band. Rest easy, MidnightRider.

MANNY: Hmmm…I’m not big on jamming. I guess it’s fun though. Animal Eyes are a half-decent KISS cover band. Not alot of room for jamming with those guys. The only brothers I’m interested in are the Hudson Brothers…kids music to rock cross-over geniuses.

7LM: You guys have a wide variety of influences ranging from the Beach Boys and Beatles to the Clash and Joy Division, so I’m wondering what range of material we might hear on a future full-length album?

DEZI: I like those groups. I don’t know much about Joy Division, but I know about them and I know a few songs. I would say we are less nihilistic. Cheap Trick is a good example of a band I wouldn’t mind being confused with. If you ask me, Robin Zander is the best singer in the world.
COZY: Cheap Trick YEAH! Anybody that has a drummer named after bread (Bun E. Carlos) is okay in my book! I would also like to write more songs that are closer in style to the band Bread. They are so mellow it’s HEAVY. Heavy mellow!

MANNY: I think the material on our album will kinda bridge the gap between pop/rock and rock/pop. I prefer New Order to be honest.

MORRIS: I think that we shall have to strike a happy balance between “agreeing to disagree” and “having our cake and eating it, too.”

7LM: Speaking of influences, Cozy you mentioned barbeque is a major influence on you. Do you prefer Kansas City style, Texas style, Memphis dry rub, or another type?

COZY: Texas all the way! I mean, you’d be a fool to think otherwise. My idea of heaven on earth is the family special at Salt Lick BBQ, Driftwood, Texas. ALL YOU CAN EAT for $24.95!!!! I have an endorsement deal with those guys. Twice a year they slather me up in their Whiskey Barrel BBQ Sauce and all I have to do in return is mention them in interviews. Mission accomplished?

7LM: Which Indiana Jones film is the best?

DEZI: I saw the second one but not the third one. So, the first one – Raiders of the Lost Ark. Karen Allen is the shit!

COZY: Who?

MANNY: When I was a kid, my friends were all going to see Poltergeist, but I was nervous to see such a scary film so I tried instead to convince them to see Raiders of the Lost Ark… for the third time. No luck. But yes, the first is the best.

MORRIS: Am I the only one who finds the late River Phoenix captivating in “The Last Crusade?”

7LM: Lastly, is everything okay between you guys and Tame Impala?

DEZI: They are one band we can agree on on the tour bus. Except when we saw them play live, the dude had bare feet.

COZY: We plan on getting our manager Skip to drop the hammer on ’em. See you in court guys, may the best lawyer win!

MORRIS: Okay!? We’ve already got two domesticated rabbits, a monkey (?), and a cat. I think there’s plenty of room for Impala in the Feltworth camp.

7LM: Thanks for your time. I wish you all the best.

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you go.]

Oliver Ackermann interview – May 11, 2017

L-R: Yours truly, Oliver Ackermann, Lia Braswell, Dion Lunadon

Oliver Ackermann, lead singer and guitarist of A Place to Bury Strangers, was kind enough to chat with me before the band’s performance at Chicago’s Thalia Hall on May 11th opening for the Black Angels. We talked about the tour, the New York music scene, bassist Dion Lunadon’s upcoming album, shoegaze bands, and where to get good tamales.

7th Level Music: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. I’m really looking forward to the show.

Oliver Ackermann: Cool, man. Thanks so much. We’re psyched to be coming there. We’ve been doing some crazy things at some of these shows. Definitely with the energy of Chicago, I’m sure it’ll be crazy.

7LM: Have you ever played Thalia Hall?

OA: No, is that place cool?

7LM: It is very cool. It’s a converted opera house, so the acoustics in there are great.

OA: That sounds so rad.

7LM: It is a very cool venue. I’ve been told the restaurant there is amazing, but I’ve never eaten there.

OA: Oh, cool. Hopefully they give us a discount or something like that.

7LM: If not, I can recommend a place. A short walk east is this really good tamale restaurant (Dia De Los Tamales – 939 West 18th Street).

OA: Really good tamales? That sounds delicious.

7LM: If you get there early enough, I highly recommend that.

OA: Awesome. Maybe we’ll hit that up.

7LM: The other day I was describing your music to somebody, and I said it’s kind of like a Zen master whacking you with a stick on the head.

OA (chuckling, as he’s clearly never heard that before): Okay.

7LM: The reason I came up with that analogy was because the last time I saw you guys was in Detroit when you played with Grooms and Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor. Rick from the Sisters and I were at the back of the venue chatting, and you guys come on and as soon as your set started it literally knocked the sound out of our mouths.

OA (laughing): Awesome.

7LM: I got to thinking about it, and your music has that effect on people where it shakes people out of things.

OA: Sure. That kind of makes some sense. There are those shows that you go to and have your mind blown and we’re always trying to hark back upon those moments.

7LM: I remember the first time my wife and I saw you was at one of the Levitation shows. You played at the Mohawk. You completely floored us, and I had a similar experience. By the end of it, I was standing there thinking, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” It was great.

OA: That’s awesome. Right on.

7LM: How influenced is your sound from living in New York and being from that area, if at all?

OA: I don’t know. I wonder that, too. Sometimes I feel like we have no influence from that. I’m so busy in New York and we don’t always get to do things, and there’s so much crazy stuff going on, but I guess that must be an influence as well. There are a lot of great creative people that can definitely drive you, but I feel so disconnected from the scene.

7LM: I was watching some of your videos, and I noticed this reoccurring theme in the videos, and some of the lyrics, about how technology separates us from each other. Maybe I’m overreaching here, but it seems like you touch on those themes a lot.

OA: Sure. Definitely. That’s pretty funny you bring that up. That’s definitely a theme of some of our music. Sometimes you want to go a little old school, and you kind of miss some of those days of just being able to wander and go meet your friends if they were there, or having to go knock on their window. I think it brings us together as well, so maybe that’s just part of it.

7LM: Is Lia (Braswell) still drumming with you guys?

OA: Lia is drumming with us, yeah. That has been awesome. That’s definitely been a big influence on where our sound is going.

7LM: How did you two meet Lia?

OA: (Bassist) Dion (Lunadon) had seen her play in a friend’s band, Baby Acid, and said she was a wicked drummer. We were looking for different people to play with, so we invited her over to play drums, and she was amazing.

7LM: I saw her play with Lindsey Troy of Deap Vally and she killed it.

L-R: Lia Braswell, yours truly, Lindsey Troy

OA: Yeah, she’s incredible.

7LM: Did you and Dion meet when he came on with Exploding Head?

OA: We actually first met in Los Angeles. I was out there doing some sort of job for a friend and I didn’t have a place to stay. He was staying at this house with some friends of his. I spent the night at the house because he offered a place to stay. We met again back in New York when he moved there in 2007 or so. He was in the D4 and a bunch of killer bands.

7LM: A friend of mine wanted me to ask you what your favorite shoegaze bands were, and I know the Jesus and Mary Chain is one.

OA: Yeah, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, of course all those bands. Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, Heaven Piano Company, Alcian Blue was really good, the Cocteau Twins, the Emerald Down, Mallory. There’s a bunch of good shoegaze bands.

7LM: Have you heard the new Slowdive stuff?

OA: I’ve only heard a couple of the songs. It sounded awesome, though. I’m super-psyched to hear the whole thing. What do you think of that record?

7LM: I like it. I’ve heard the first two singles. In some ways it’s like they just stepped right out of a time machine and in other ways it sounds like they’re moving in this cool new direction.

OA: Yeah, for sure. I’m excited to hear the whole record and maybe if they make another record after this what comes out of it.

7LM: I have a few questions I always ask bands I interview. One of them is, do you have any influences that you think would surprise some of your fans?

OA: Oh, for sure. I like a lot of different music. What do you think people would be surprised by?

7LM: Well, the reason I always ask bands this is because I once heard an interview with Rob Halford of Judas Priest and he was asked this question. He said, “You’re never gonna believe this, but I’m a massive Hank Williams, Sr. fan.” Ever since then I’ve been intrigued with hearing about what influences people have that others might not realize they have.

OA: I love Hank Williams, Sr.

7LM: Yeah, me too.

OA: Yeah, totally. That stuff’s awesome. I don’t know, in this day and age is anyone going to be surprised by anything?

7LM: That’s a really good point. Another question I always ask is, do you have any favorite misheard versions of your lyrics?

OA: I wish I could remember, because there sure are some funny ones out there. It’s kind of cool because when you hear them a lot of times they kind of morph into what makes sense for the people. I really like that. It turns personal for them, which is kind of the point of our music.

7LM: That gets back to the thing I believe where your music changes people’s perceptions, especially live.

OA: Totally. That’s the goal for a lot of our music. It’s a state between life and fantasy and to be able to let go of some of your thoughts and troubles.

7LM: When I saw you in Detroit, you came out into the audience with your instruments and I loved how you made this cool moment where you brought this technology into the crowd, but instead of technology pushing people away it was this big communal thing.

OA: Yeah, that’s a great thing. I think that’s pretty awesome. Not everybody will do that to connect with the audience. We always welcome anybody and everybody to jump up on stage or pull us down or whatever to connect and make it a communal event.

7LM: Do you write grooves first or lyrics first? Or does it depend on the song?

OA: It depends on the song. We always try to reinvent writing songs all the time we do it. It depends on what’s inspiring you. Sometimes it starts with an idea and some lyrics, or sometimes the music brings out a whole story or a mood. Even more recently, we’ve kind of been writing all of it at once. It’s kind of a weird, wild thing. I’ve always fantasized about having a band where you didn’t have any songs written before you played the shows, and you would play a whole bunch of songs at that moment. You start to do this thing where you unconsciously tap into a really pure experience and it draws you in a different direction. You’d dig deep and reveal some things maybe you wouldn’t be comfortable revealing in that moment.

7LM: If you ever do that, I hope I can get to one of those shows.

OA: Right on.

7LM: I’m one of those guys where if I go to a show and the band gets up and says, “We’re gonna play a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard before.” I’m the guy in the back saying, “Fantastic!”

OA: Awesome. I always like that, too. At least to hear some sort of challenge. It’s all about the excitement at that type of show. I’m sure there’s band where I’d be disappointed in that, too.

7LM: Well, the opposite of that is that after we see you guys tonight, we’re driving down to St. Louis to see Tom Petty and Joe Walsh.

OA: Oh, wow, that sounds awesome. That should be so cool. I’ve never seen them.

7LM: Speaking of new stuff, Dion’s new album (self-titled) is out next month?

OA: Dion’s new album is out next month. I’ve heard it. It’s fucking awesome.

7LM: I’ve heard the two tracks that he’s released so far, and I thought, “Holy crap! He’s gunning.”

OA: Oh yeah, it’s so powerful.

7LM: I’ve always thought that about him. When I saw you guys in Austin the first time, it was two songs into your set and he body slammed his bass on the stage so damn hard and I thought, “Holy crap, we’re really in for something.”

OA: Yeah, he’s hit himself in the head a couple times, bled all over the place, climbed up on some things that everybody else would be scared to climb on. I’ve seen him do some crazy things.

7LM: Are you your own guitar tech? I’ve seen the way you handle that thing.

OA: Totally. Yeah, we are all our own instrument techs.

7LM: That’s fantastic. It reminds of when I was in a garage band in college, and our guitarist would cut holes in his guitar and take it apart to get different sounds out of it. I see you getting the craziest sounds out of your guitar by mauling it.

OA: Yeah, you gotta play your instrument to the fullest.

7LM: Where are you off to after Chicago?

OA: We’re going to Minneapolis. We’re playing First Avenue. Purple Rain, Prince, it should be awesome.

7LM: Well thanks for all this. Break a leg tonight. Not literally, of course.

OA: For sure. See you tonight.

APTBS at Chicago’s Thalia Hall May 11, 2017.

[Thanks again to Oliver Ackermann, Lia Braswell, Dion Lunadon, Burgers Rana, and Steven Matrick for being so groovy, arranging this interview and my press pass to the Thalia Hall show, and for the lighter.]

Keep your mind open.

Partner interview – January 22, 2017

Josee Caron and Lucy Niles, otherwise known as Partner, were kind enough to sit down for an interview in the Schuba’s green room before their first-ever appearance in Chicago on January 22nd. I learned about the origin of their band’s name, their love of pop music, that Josee Caron has a delightful laugh, that Lucy Niles has a mischievous smile (and is willing to destroy a coffee table to open a bottle of beer if necessary), and more.

7th Level Music: I discovered the two of you when I almost got to go to [Chicago’s] Riot Fest last year.

Lucy Niles: We almost got to go, too.

7LM: I was researching bands, and you were the second band I looked up.

LN: Oh, nice.

7LM: I heard “The ‘Ellen’ Page” and went, “Holy cow, I have to see these ladies,” and after that I found “Hot Knives” and I thought, “Yeah, I have to track these ladies down.”

LN: You found them.

Josee Caron (laughing): You were sold.

7LM: Yeah, two songs in and I was in.

7LM: So it fell through and I couldn’t make it to Riot Fest, but then I found out you two couldn’t make it either. I’m sorry you couldn’t make it.

JC: It’s all good. The visas were delayed. There were a bunch of applications and the processing time just took longer, but we used that time to find who was going to mix the album and stuff. We took that week to finish the record and got it sent off, so it was really a blessing in disguise.

7LM: When’s the record coming out?

JC: We don’t really know.

LN: We’re looking for…(looks at Josee, and then points at a mini-fridge) Actually, you go. I’m going to grab one of these beers.

[Lucy will spend the next few minutes attempting to open a bottle of said beer without a bottle opener since one (for reasons unknown) wasn’t in the green room.]

JC: We’re looking for an American label to help us put it out. We’re kind of working behind the scenes right now. Everything’s done. It just needs to be mastered. It’s mixed by a guy named Chris Shaw. He is known for working a lot with Ween, and he mixed the “blue album” by Weezer. We wanted our guitars to sound kind of similar. We don’t know when it’s going to come out, but sometime this year, likely the fall.

7LM: So you two were first in Mouthbreathers?

LN: Mouthbreathers, yeah.

7LM: [And] I found a great clip of you two in Go Get Fucked.

LN: Oh wow! Where did you find that?

JC (almost rolling with laughter): What?

7LM: You were playing at some deli or something.

JC (still laughing): Yes! That is crazy!

LN: Who posted that? I thought our friend was the only one who had that! That’s awesome.

7LM: It was hysterical. It was a set where, Lucy, you dropped a drumstick halfway through it and kept going. I thought, “That’s the greatest thing.”

LN: Yeah. That was a long time ago.

7LM: The name alone is amazing.

LN: That’s sweet.

JC: That’s how it all started, actually.

LN: That’s when we were younger.

JC: We were younger. We had a lot of energy.

LN: We used to get drunk three times a week and practice. Actually, [touring bassist] Kevin was in that band, too.

7LM: I’m really intrigued with how you settled on the name Partner. I didn’t know if you approached it from the noun or the verb, as in to partner or team up with someone.

JC: Definitely the noun.

LN: It was kind of an elaborate joke. We were kind of making fun of “normy” adults.

JC: We both worked at cafes and lots of the people there were like, “My partner…” It was a word that we heard a lot. To describe our relationship, we’re not partners.

LN: We thought it was funny because we’re not partners. Obviously everyone thinks that we are, but we’re not.

JC: So it’s very tongue-in-cheek.

7LM: I was going to ask you to finish this sentence: If we had two bucks for every time someone thought we were a couple, we could buy…

LN: A lot of weed.

[Laughter erupts.]

7LM: I figured it was something like that.

LN: I guess we could buy some other stuff, but that’s probably what we would buy.

JC: We just love the word, because we have partners. It’s just tongue-in-cheek because we’ve never…

LN: My tongue in your cheek?

[More laughter erupts.]

7LM: Tell me about the five-piece, because you’re touring as a five-piece, right?

LN: Yeah. We’ve got Kevin [who] plays bass and he also does a lot of administrative work. Brendan plays drums and does most of the driving. Dan plays third guitar, and he’s a great bandmate. We’ve had various other friends of ours fill in, and that’s pretty much our core group right now, but we keep it open if one of them can’t make it then we have other people who know the songs.

JC: This is our solid touring line-up. We all moved to Windsor together.

7LM: Is this your first tour in the U.S.?

LN: Yeah.

7LM: How’s it going so far? I know this stop was fairly early.

LN: Great.

[Lucy manages to knock the cap off the bottle of beer by banging it on the edge of a coffee table, forcing her to chug most of said beer before it spills all over the floor. She then attempts to open one for Josee in the same manner, but all of us decide she needs to save her hand – and teeth – “until we can get group insurance,” says Josee.]

7LM: Where are you off to after this?

JC: We’re just doing three dates, still getting our feet wet.

LN: We did Hamtramck (Michigan), which was awesome.

7LM: Was it good, then?

JC: It was awesome.

LN: It was so great. We ate delicious pizza.

JC: We played a little record-book shop called Lo and Behold.

LN: With a bunch of really cool, like-minded folks. It was pretty crazy. It was the night after the election, so we were pretty interested to go and see what everyone had to say. [There] were a lot of queer kids and queer kids of color who had a lot of interesting input. The next day we played Kalamazoo, which was awesome. The American punk scene is pretty cool to be observing.

7LM: I was going to ask you two about bands up your way that you think people should know about.

LN: A lot of our friends have sweet bands. [Looking at Josee] Who’s a good active band right now?

JC: Towanda.

LN: Toward are a sick, sick, sick band from Montreal.

JC: They kind of have an L7 vibe.

LN: We love this band from Winnipeg called Trampoline. Our friends have so many cool bands. I’m going to forget someone. Protruders are cool right now. Our friends are always starting good bands.

JC: We’re from Sackville in New Brunswick. A lot of our friends’ bands started there.

LN: It was like a snowball effect. There were a lot of people that happened to be playing in bands, and then everyone who didn’t play music started playing music because everyone else was doing it. It was very accessible, and there’s not that shitty, macho vibe to the punk scene at all. It’s very inclusive in Sackville.

7LM: I’d heard that you guys had a really collaborative thing going up there.

JC: Yeah.

LN: We had fairly limited resources, but the resources that were there were awesome. We’d share gear, share a shed, and take advantage of the radio station. Everyone had a lot of energy. [It’s] a beautiful spot.

JC: Yeah, we’re really lucky to have art all the time there.

7LM: Are there any bands that your fans might be surprised to find you’re influenced by?

JC: Yeah.

LN: Our fans would probably be surprised by most of the things we like. We don’t really listen to cool music anymore. We’re really into exploring super bizarre music, and not necessarily cool bizarre music.

JC: Yeah, I listen to music for different reasons. I got different things out of it. I listen to a lot of pop music. I love to do research and listen to really good songs. I really love Rihanna. Anti is such a great album, obviously.

LN: All the best albums last year, in my opinion, were the mainstream popular albums. What a crazy year for music! Beyonce, Solange, Frank Ocean, all that shit. So crazy, so good, so much more avant-garde than most punk music, I find.

JC: We’re really excited about that.

LN: We love mainstream music, and really not mainstream music.

JC: We’re constantly in pursuit of true expression, unfettered self-expression.

LN: Sometimes really weird or bad-sounding synth, but when you can tell it’s exactly the statement someone wanted to make…

JC: Yeah, we’re really into exploring that.

7LM: I always say that as long as it’s good, I’ll listen to it.

LN: Sometimes when it’s not good, we’ll listen to it.

JC: As long as it’s pure.

7LM: Do you have any favorite misheard versions of your lyrics? Do people come up to you and say things like, “I love your song ‘Hot Wives?'”

LN: All our wives are hot!

JC (laughing): Hot Wives!

LN: There’s probably some good ones.

JC: People have trouble hearing the words because most of our stuff is live. We don’t have a lot of content, so people don’t really have the opportunity to mishear anything. It’s just a mess anyway.

LN: We try to be as audible as possible.

JC: So they can hear all our punchlines.

7LM: Lucy, who do people say you look like?

LN (pointing at Josee): So she’s Ellen Page, obviously. I’ve gotten [Dinosaur Jr.’s] J. Mascis. I think it’s the hair and the glasses. People say that I look like my sister sometimes.

JC: Yeah, you really do, and your Mom.

7LM: I get Christopher Walken a lot.

LN: You look like this guy Anthony we know.

JC: Yeah! From the cafe!

LN: She looks like a kid from a horror movie, the Ring girl.

JC: When I used to have long hair. That used to really bug me, but I’ve embraced it now.

7LM: You should rock that. Easy Halloween costume.

JC: Yeah, start a goth group.

7LM: I’m not sure if you’ve done this, but if you go to Google and type in “Partner band,” one of the most common things to come up is this exercise…

JC: Yeah, the partner band!

LN: Yeah!

7LM: So what’s your favorite weird exercise?

LN: We should start doing that. We should start exercising.

7LM: That’s a whole video right there.

JC: We’re going to start getting into dance soon. Lucy has a more natural talent for it. It’s going to be a steep learning curve for me

LN (nearly doing a spit take): Because I learned that dance last week? A friend one day taught me this line dance to “Chattahoochee.”

JC: I was pretty impressed.

LN: It’s pretty sick. I’ll teach it to you.

7LM: Where can people go to find your stuff? Your Bandcamp page, obviously…

JC: On my Dad’s YouTube channel, TheStones1965, you can find tons of bootleg vids of our live performances that I did not give him permission to post.

LN: We do have a Twitter, and we also have an Instagram. You should absolutely check it.

JC: It’s all partner_band across the board. You can find us there and send us messages.

LN: And failing that, you can catch us wherever we’re playing.

JC: We’re going to go shoot a video for the first track that we’re going to release off the LP. We’re going to film that in February and it should be out in March or April.

7LM: Will it involve elastic bands?

JC: No. Hell no.

LN: It’s called “Comfort Zone,” so we won’t be exercising.

7LM: One last thing about the new record, was it you two in the studio playing everything?

LN: No, that was our original dream. Our EP is all us.

JC: Yeah, so everything you’ve heard is all us.

LN: I played drums, she played guitar, and we both played bass. [On] our new record, we had our friend Simone TV play drums. She’s a big Toronto drummer in tons and tons of different cool bands, Kevin played bass, I played guitar, and Josee played fifty more guitars.

7LM (motioning toward Josee): I caught of video of you rockin’ a double neck.

LN: We might have the double neck tonight.

7LM: Double neck guitars, and if a band has Orange amps it’s going to be a rockin’ show.

JC: We don’t own amps. We’ve gotten this far not owning any amps.

7LM: Wow! Nicely done.

JC: Well, Lucy owns one. It was her graduation present.

LN: My Dad bought it for me for graduating. Thanks, Dad. Well, we’ve got a hundred dollar Peavey amp.

JC: It’s communally owned.

LN: Brandon has a lot of gear in his basement, and that’s where we practice. We really depend on our friends.

JC: And other bands. Shout out to all the bands who have ever helped us.

[Shout out to Mar Sellars for setting up this interview and getting me press credentials.]

Keep your mind open.

Screaming Females interview – June 26, 2016

Many thanks to Screaming Females who were kind enough to invite me into their tour van for this interview before their June 26, 2016 show at the Brass Rail in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

7th Level Music: Is this your first time in Fort Wayne?

Jarrett Dougherty (drums): Yeah.

7LM: You’ve got one more gig to go before the end of the tour. How’s it been?

Mike Abbatte (bass): Pretty good.

Marissa Paternoster (vocals, guitar): Smooth.

JD: Yeah, it’s been pretty easy. We did three weeks, and then the two weeks off, and then this is the end of another two weeks after that. We went down to Florida and then back up the coast over the three weeks, so the drives were really easy, and then we just went through Canada for a few days, and then Michigan, Wisconsin, and Chicago, and now we’re here. It’s all been pretty easy.

7LM: You’re off to Pittsburgh next?

JD: Yeah.

7LM: Where are you playing there?

JD: It’s a venue we haven’t been to yet. Cattivo.

7LM: If you can get to the Warhol Museum there, it’s amazing.

MP: We got a tour of it the last time we were there from…Andy’s nephew?

7LM: Oh, right on.

JD: Yeah, Donald Warholia.

MA: Warhola.

JD: Warhola.

MP: It was awesome. There was so much stuff to look at, it was overwhelming.

7LM: Weren’t you in Australia earlier this year, or maybe last fall?

JD: We’re going for the first time. It’s at the end of our summer, so it’s the end of their winter.

7LM: You get there in time for the good weather, then.

JD: Yeah, they said it’ll be a little cold when we first get there, but by the end of the trip spring will be kicking in.

7LM: I imagine that’s hard to change your logistics of planning for packing and moving all your gear.

MA: I have not thought about packing.

MP: Yeah, I haven’t thought about it.

MA: This is the first I’m thinking about it.

7LM: Oh, I’m sorry to plant that seed of panic in your head.

JD: Mainly the panic’s been about how long the plane ride is to get there. Marissa doesn’t really like planes, Mike doesn’t like that he has trouble fitting in the seats, and then I just get really bored, but that’s not nearly as bad as compared to what they’re going through…but at the same time I don’t want to be bored.

MA: I’m a giant so I’ll end up sitting like this (turns sideways in the driver’s seat of the van).

MP: And I’m crazy, so I’ll be having a nervous breakdown.

7LM: Have there been any countries where you were surprised to discover how popular you are? Have you ever heard from fans from some place where you never imagined we’d get played there?

MA: Florida.

MP: (laughing) I wish it was another country.

JD: Well, yeah, other than Miami, already for the Australia stuff, it’s pretty amazing. We’ve already been getting all these e-mails from people who are like, “I can’t believe you guys are coming here.” We’ve done a number of tours in Europe, and there we have really good experiences and a lot of the shows are really good, but it’s a lot of promoters who are just good at having people that come out to shows regardless if they know the bands or not because the promoter’s like, “Everybody should show up for this one.” But, already for Australia it seems like there are people who are excited about us getting there. We did a bunch of interviews the other day for Australian things, and people were like, “Oh, yeah, I saw your band at South by Southwest one time. I’ve been waiting for you guys to get here for years.”

7LM: That’s fantastic.

JD: Yeah, so that’s pretty exciting already. I feel like the number of people who said they were excited about our band is equal to all the people in Europe who know who we are.

7LM: I was wondering about your songwriting process. Grooves first or lyrics first? Or does it depend on the song?

JD: Always grooves first. Yeah, for sure.

(Marissa and Mike bump fists.)

JD: Occasionally, Marissa will come in with a song that’s pretty formed already, lyrically. For the songs we’re working on coming up, eventually it will be a new album, but we’re just writing the songs right now, Mike brought in a song like that as well. But the vast majority of stuff is us getting together and just playing music together.

7LM: One of the things I love so much about the stuff you guys play is how you’ll sometimes go from a song that’s quiet and just heartbreaking and then you’ll make this right turn and it’s like a punch in the gut and you’re hitting so hard and knocking walls down. I wondered if there were songs on the new record or ones you can think of where you came in thinking, “Okay, this is going to be kind of a mellow heartbreaker,” but then one of you thought, “You know what? This just needs to be like a kick in the junk, or vice versa.”

MA: (laughing) With the new stuff that we’re currently writing, it all has just come together naturally.

MP: Yeah.

MA: There hasn’t been a song where we went into it thinking one thing and then it turned out completely different – that I can think of.

JD: The one I can think of that most dramatically represents that is on Ugly. The song is “Expire.” When Marissa first made a demo of that, it had this very…

MP: (chuckling) It was like a merengue.

JD: Yeah, it had a very arpeggiated Latin acoustic guitar feel, and then it turned into something entirely different by the time we were done.

MP: (laughing) That’s probably a good thing.

MA: I don’t remember that at all. “Hopeless” (from Rose Mountain) had a bit more of an Americana vibe to it and then we took that and made it more straight-ahead. We turned it into like a Weezer song.

JD: We had a couple ideas about that one, too, that included thinking about the beginning of Stop Making Sense. David Byrne comes out to do “Psycho Killer” with just the boom box and that idea stuck in my head, that you could do a song in that fashion. So when we were working out “Hopeless,” I was thinking about playing very robotically, like a drum machine. We even tried to drop a drum machine in on that first part of that track to see if it would work, but we couldn’t get one work that mixed with the vibes of the instruments. So we left the drums, but I was trying to play like a drum machine.

7LM: Nice. I know on Chalk Tape you three basically wrote the stuff out on a chalkboard and kind of went with “First thought, best thought,” kind of thing?

JD: Absolutely.

7LM: Did any of that carry over into Rose Mountain at all on any of the tracks?

MP: Chalk Tape was like a vacation away from overthinking things, and then we revisited overthinking everything when we got to Rose Mountain – which is not something we necessarily dislike doing, I think.

MA: Wait, Chalk Tape was before Rose Mountain?

Everyone else: Yeah.

(Laughter fills the van.)

MP: Because Ugly was such a big project and there were so many songs, and we demoed everything five thousand times. We demoed songs at different speeds. We like doing stuff like that.

MA: It’s true.

MP: I mean, I do. It’s fun for me. So Chalk Tape was like a little bit break from that and we threw caution to the wind and just had fun. Demoing stuff is fun for me. With Rose Mountain we definitely were very focused on melodies and songwriting and analyzing our demos and getting rid of things that we were like, “This is extraneous, and that’s unnecessary. It doesn’t benefit the song in any way.”

7LM: What are your favorite misheard lyrics? Do you have any that just crack you up?

MA: We have a couple.

MP: One I can’t say.

7LM: No, you can say it.

JD: About our band? (Looking at Marissa) You like those misheard lyrics about the Fall Out Boy video.

MP: Yeah, it’s just “don-don-don-loora-loora.”

MA: Yeah, it’s like “Ooo-lee-ooo-rah.”

JD: We watch that video a lot because they attempt to animate what they think these nonsense words mean and it’s really, really good.

MP: Misheard lyrics from other songs?

7LM: Or from yours.

MP: There’s this one song we have called “Pretty Okay,” and I say, “You make me feel so enlightened,” and our friends in a posthumous band called Full of Fancy thought I said, “You make me feel like Steve Martin,” which I think is a better lyric.

MA: The next line is “A lady found God in her purse,” and another friend of ours said it sounded like “A lady found God in her puss.”

MP: It’s a little risqué.

JD: We didn’t say it! They just thought we said it.

MA: I just said it. It just came out of my mouth.

MP: I think Full of Fancy did that, too. It was always them.

MA: No, it was probably (producer Steve) Albini.

7LM: It wouldn’t surprise me. Are there any bands that have inspired you that you fans might be surprised by?

MA: (no hesitation) Fall Out Boy. We love Fall Out Boy.

MP: (laughing) Yeah, we love Fall Out Boy.

JP: Just the one album, though.

MP: I celebrate two albums.

JD: I mean, collectively, we like the one album.

MP: Yeah, that’s true.

JD: I love a lot of hip hop. I don’t know if people think that’s weird, but it definitely doesn’t seem like it’s attached to Screaming Females. In high school I listened to a lot of world music and jazz and stuff, but I think a lot of that comes out in my playing, and I think people who are familiar with music like Fela Kuti and Gangstarr, could hear that I play drums more like what those artists think of rhythms like instead a punk band.

7LM: Are there any bands you’ve played with on this tour that you think your fans should hear more of?

MP: The first night of tour we played with two of the coolest bands I’d seen in a long time.

MA: Chipped Nails. They were cool as hell.

MP: Chipped Nails from Montreal. It was like their second show ever. They were so good, I wanted them to play forever. They played for, like, ten minutes.

JD: They played this really hypnotically repetitive, slightly funky groovin’ music that was completely atonal and nonsensical, and it was amazing.

MP: They were really good.

7LM: I’m all over that.

MP: They don’t have any Internet presence yet.

MA: They have no music. It was their second show.

JD: Everybody in the crowd, their jaws dropped like, “I don’t know what I’m witnessing.” They were bopping their heads. It was the grooviest show of all time.

MA: We did a couple shows with our friends in this band called Vacation who are really, really good.

JD: Yeah, they’re from Ohio.

7LM: I’ve heard of them somewhere.

JD: Yeah, they’re on Don Giovanni, which is the same label that has been putting out stuff for a long time. They’re from Cincinnati and Columbus and have been playing shows for years and years.

7LM: I go to Columbus a lot, so that’s probably where I heard of them.

JD: Have you ever been to Ace of Cups?

7LM: No.

JD: Okay, it’s a cool venue there. Our friend, Evan, who plays in Vacation is usually working the door. So, if you ever end up there, you’ll probably meet Evan.

7LM: Finally, I thought this would be fun to ask you – Who are your favorite scream queens?

MA: What?

7LM: Your favorite Hollywood scream queens.

MA: What’s that?

7LM: Horror movie stars. Screaming females, literally.

JD: Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween is the classic.

7LM: Oh yeah, of course.

MA: I don’t do movies. I can’t sit still that long.

JD: (looking at Marissa) Green Room?

MA: Maeby from Arrested Development? I don’t even know what her name is.

MP: Yeah, me either (Alia Shawkat). I’m not much of a movie buff. I don’t know too much. I like Hellraiser, that’s a movie I enjoy. There’s two female characters in there. I don’t know either of their names. The woman who’s seducing the men and bringing them to the guy’s room so he can reanimate them. She’s cool. I don’t know what her name is (Julia – played by Claire Higgins), but I like her style. She’s ruthless. She doesn’t give a good damn. Yeah, I think that might be my favorite horror movie. I haven’t seen the others, but I do really like the first Hellraiser.

7LM: Once I was at a horror movie convention and saw Doug Bradley, who plays Pinhead, and Robert England, who plays Freddy Krueger having lunch together.

JP: Whoa!

MP: My girlfriend at the time really wanted to get into the franchise, and I think we got up to the third one and I was like, “I can’t watch these, they’re so bad.”

7LM: They get progressively worse.

MP: The first one’s so cool, and the second one was okay, and by the third one I was like, “What’s happening?” But my friend, Mark Bronzino, who plays in this metal band called Iron Reagan, he was like, “Yo, Marissa, Hellraiser 14 is pretty good, you should go see it.” And I was like, “I’m not gonna see it.”

7LM: Well, they’re remaking it.

MP: The first one?

JD: The fourteenth one.

7LM: They probably are.

MP: I don’t know, apparently it’s pretty good.

7LM: Thanks again. Is there anything you want fans to look up, or anything you want to plug?

JD: Screamingfemales.com is the easiest place to find our real tour dates, because now there are tour date aggregators out there all over the Internet that put up tour dates from five years ago. That’s the best place to find information about us, but we’re pretty easy to get in touch with. You can literally e-mail us and one of us will probably answer you.

7LM: And you’re all on Twitter and Facebook for sure.

JD: Yeah, so if you’ve ever encountered the Internet, you can probably find us.

Keep your mind open.

[We’ll scream for joy if you subscribe to us.]