Karin Park blows the venue in Hoxton London – twice!

Karin Park has been impressing us with her live shows ever since her London album launch where, despite a sudden power cut, the Swedish electro ice queen performed, unfazed by the unexpected glitch.

The new album Highwire Poetry also won Karin more brownie points — listening to the album on loop, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before UK audiences discovered the Swedish sensation. Live shows at London’s Shacklewell Arms and Manchester’s Castle convinced us further that Karin was an icon in the making.

Continue reading Karin Park blows the venue in Hoxton London – twice!

KARIN PARK Interview

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Swedish electro goddess KARIN PARK is a rare phenomenon. She has distinctive killer recorded and live vocals. She has a killer look. She has killer lyrics that push the boundaries of imagination and sensation. She and brother David give killer live performances. To match her high-level professionalism, she demonstrates sincere appreciation for her fans and colleagues, and profound consideration for other artists, having been a critical voice of support in our pussy riot commemoration concerts. One could argue that it is her upbringing in Japan that may have sparked her imagination and professional ethic, but one could also argue that it is simply her natural charm and energy which she has successfully projected into her work. Either way, the music world is a better place for having Karin Park.

No stranger to the music industry, Karin is onto her fourth album with 2012’s “Highwire Poetry.” Needless to say, it’s one of those albums that stays with you. Having supported the likes of Gary Numan, SBTRKT and Azari & III, she’s also due to support Toronto’s Dragonette in Zurich in April and we’re hoping to see a lot more of her in 2013.

We meet up with Karin on the terrace of the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, the London venue where she was preparing to give a live performance and where just the day before she brought down the roof with a pounding DJ set at our FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT. After reminiscing over the previous day’s activities, we move on to talk her love of music, creative evolution, and Japan.

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How did you get into music?  What was your first love of music?

I grew up in church – my parents are Christians – so the first music I ever heard was us singing ourselves. There were always people playing and singing in our house, but it wasn’t until I was 12 when I heard Depeche Mode that I had a musical “love” – something that I really, really loved. Of course I listened to singers like Whitney Houston, like all girl singers do really, but it wasn’t until I was 16 that I started to make my own songs and actually found my voice. I could’ve sounded like anyone else before that. I was quite technically good and was singing all the time, but it wasn’t until I found my own voice that I discovered that side.

So, did you never sing solo in church?

I sang solo as often as I could – I hated when the others were singing at the same time as me. I didn’t take singing lessons, because if you did then you had to sing in the choir. I wanted to sing solo. I had my first performance when I was 4, so the singing part came really early, and then as I got older I realized that I could actually write songs. Writing just started to mean so much more to me. I decided that I wanted to go deep and not sing anyone else’s songs – I just wanted to do my own thing.

Why did it mean so much to you?

Because I discovered that my voice can be something much more original, and instead of just singing the song I could live inside of the song in the music, which is a completely different sensation when you’re onstage. I can never get into a song in the same way as when I’m creating it myself, because it has to come from the heart.

What were you writing about?

It was just what I was thinking about or frustrated with at the time – quite childish, I guess, and it’s still quite childish in a way, because it’s about basic human feeling. I can’t decide what a song’s going to be about – it’s just what I really care about at the time. When you try to write, you just open up to something and you just have to roll with it. Sometimes I’m like, “I don’t want to write about this – it’s stupid!” but I know this song is going to be, because that’s what I really feel.

What were you creating your melodies on?

When I lived in my one bedroom flat when I was 16, I just had a guitar and I wrote songs on that. In the beginning, I didn’t really care about what my sound was, I just wrote with whatever I had at hand. I didn’t know everything from the beginning – I just did whatever I felt at the time and didn’t think too much about it, and I hate the sound of acoustic guitar but that’s what I had then. I felt really lucky that people liked my songs. So, I was like, “Hang on, let’s do stuff I want to listen to.” Then I started to care more about the sound, so I developed it slowly.

So, you were developing your tastes over time and figuring out what you wanted to create?

Yeah, I’m much more into rhythm and bass. When I heard Kelis’ album “Tasty,” I realised I could have so much fun with rhythms. I didn’t want to do the same thing, she’s soul and I kind of liked electronic music – so I did a lot of research to try to find my exact sound.

So many musicians say they block out other people’s music when they’re creating, but you were looking for inspiration?

Yeah, I’ll just steal from everyone and make it into my own thing! [laughs].

So, your career evolved in Norway?

Yeah, I’m Swedish but I moved to Norway when I was 20 and I’ve had my whole career in Norway. I lived in Bergen – you know, Kings of Convenience, Annie… all those guys are part of that scene.

I love a lot of Scandinavian electro, alternative bands. Why do you think there’s so much edgy music coming out of that part of the world?

Climate and nature – there’s not much to do there. You can’t go to the beach 6 months of the year, and you have a lot of time… In Bergen, it rains 250 days of the year, so the studio is the best place to be. Musicians there are hardworking and they build off each other to create a scene.

When you were in Bergen, did you have a sense of that creative intensity? Was it easy to build a network there?

Yeah, because there’s a lot of open honesty there. A lot of musicians come from Bergen. Everyone knows each other – they have open mics, they have studios in the same houses, they meet each other all the time, you can meet artists everywhere in cafe’s… But, I don’t live there now. I live in Sweden, together with Kjetil (Kjetil Nernes, lead singer of noise-rock band Årabrot) in an old church in the countryside where I’m originally from, and also part time in Norway – I split my time between the two. But, most of the time, I’m here in London. I’m everywhere!

So, you spend a lot of time in London for your music?

Yeah, I have my label here. We’re doing a lot of promotion and shoots lately. Also, I like the fact that there are so many different subcultures here, and so many different people who are into their individual thing and are very nerdy in their field. You don’t have that in Scandinavia because there aren’t enough people – there’d be one person in every genre. But here, it’s like people are into the weirdest stuff – they’re used to hearing alternative music and make references to all these different street things, all the different types of dubstep, drum and bass… so not only those genres, but the small genres within the genres. And I just love the melting pot of different cultures. Where I live in the church, it’s like only Swedish people there – they don’t know much about the world I live in, so I want to take all this experience to Sweden and try to educate them about it.

And your brother David plays with you now – how did that partnership come about?

We didn’t really know each other that well when we were growing up. He took care of me when we were really small of course, but when we got older, we didn’t really hang out much – we didn’t live in the same city so we didn’t see each other. When I lost my drummer from my old band, I called David because he is a light and sound engineer who can do a little bit of everything. I asked him, “Do you want to try? We might argue all the time, but let’s try for two weeks and see what happens.” It worked really well, so I said to him, “Let’s try for a couple of months.” He was used to deciding all sorts of stuff, so I made it clear to him from the beginning that I was the boss, and I think that’s what makes our balance really good because he knows that I have the final say. Our tastes gradually got closer – we both like a heavy sound and he listens to a lot of metal, as well as jazz and country and other stuff.

It’s cool that you found a point of overlap…

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So I get the impression that you are very comfortable thinking outside the box – have you always been creative like that?

Yes, I think I’ve always been open-minded. We moved to Japan when I was 7 years old – my mum and dad took the whole family and just moved to the other side of the world when no-one in my family had been outside Sweden before. They were just like, “Ok kids, we’re going!” It was a really brave thing to do. My sister was 1 year old when we went. She was so disappointed that she didn’t remember any of it that she moved back there, and my younger brother did as well – but after the Fukushima incident, he moved back home because he has children. We speak Japanese in my family…

Japan has a very distinctive culture. Would you ever want to go back there?

Yeah, definitely. Japan has a lot of soul. I have a really strong connection with Japan, and I understand the Japanese culture. Actually, when I went to China I was like “What?!” – Sweden and Japan are much more alike than China and Japan…

So you didn’t have much exposure to pop culture or role models when you were growing up, but how did that affect you?

I always felt that I had to lock down my personality. I felt that maybe I was a little too wild sometimes. Especially when I came home from Japan, I was completely different from anyone else and people looked at me as a very different thing. It wasn’t easy, so I just tried to blend in. I didn’t try to shout it out loud, but just tried to “be.” I didn’t know how exactly to do it – I just tried to be normal. I didn’t understand that clothes say something about you. I thought, “Can’t I just wear whatever I want? Why does everyone have to care?” In the end, I was wondering, “What makes me so different from everyone else? We don’t look that different. We aren’t that different… Well, we look different I guess…” And then I thought, “Oh! Just wear the same things as other people!” That was the result of not knowing any bands. When you grow up, there are so many fashion codes. You don’t realize they’re there, but they exist. And if you didn’t grow up with any codes, you don’t know them. I definitely didn’t know anything about that.

So, your childhood in Japan was really liberating…

In Japan, we lived almost in the jungle. We were 30 people in a missionary village, completely isolated from other people. We watched a little bit of TV, but not much. We had to find out our own things. I felt very free when I was there, running around in the woods – I felt like a beast. And then I felt completely locked in when I came home because I realized I couldn’t do what I’d been doing. I moved back to a small countryside school. So, it wasn’t about trying to lead fashion, it was just about making people think I wasn’t crazy. That’s all I wanted… people to love me. My family was encouraging, but everyone else was like, “What are you doing?” So, I had the music which saved me – that was the only positive thing. Then I moved to Stockholm when I was 15 to live alone, and that was just perfect because I could do want I wanted. It took me a long time before I realized that maybe it’s actually a good thing to be different…

Yeah, I guess it’s about building your own self-confidence, isn’t it? There’s still way too much pressure on girls and women to conform to fashion stereotypes. You mentioned that it takes a while for audiences even in London to get used to your short hair look onstage…

Yeah, it’s weird… but I don’t know if I’d have it any other way either, because it’s quite nice. I like that now…

You’ve evolved your music quite a lot over the years. Did it ever scare you to experiment and switch direction? Or were you pretty confident with that process?

Well, in 2007, I had a kind of musical identity crisis. I knew what I wanted and I knew that I didn’t want to do the thing I had done, but I didn’t quite know how to attack a new record. Then I was misdiagnosed with cancer. They called me and said that I had a really aggressive type of cancer in the uterus. I asked if I was going to survive and they said, “Uh, we don’t know what to say – can you just come in?” You’re not really supposed to tell people they have cancer on the phone. From that message, I felt I got a clear view suddenly, because all the stupid things in life like what perfume you’re going to wear kind of disappears and only the most important things are left. So, instead of being depressed about it, I started to think very clearly really fast. When I arrived at the doctor’s, it turned out that they thought it was going to develop into cancer but if I had an operation I’d be fine. So, I did that, and that was part an emotional period after being depressed for a while. So, getting that sort of thing actually just straightened me out completely, then I kind of knew: “Ok, now I know this is what I’m going to do – I’m going to work with these rhythms, I’m going to dance on stage, I want to move around, I want to be alive.” You don’t really think when you go to the doctor that that’s the way it’s going to go. It made me quite fearless I think: if I’m going to die, it’s not really a big problem, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done a lot of cool stuff, it’s not such a bad thing, my mum’s going to be sad but I’m going to be fine… So, if I ever get that message again, I know how I would react.

In terms of knowing what you want as an artist and in your life?

Yeah, I’m happy about that. I told the doctor I wrote a song about it, because they were shocked that someone told me on the phone, but I said, “It’s fine – but just don’t ever do it again.”

How are you feeling now about where you’re at, after that journey?

I feel I get to do cool stuff right now and I meet a lot of cool people who I admire who like the album. I go out into the world and get to eat these nice foods from all these different countries. It’s very exciting and I’m very grateful. I have been to the States but would like to go to Poland, Estonia, Romania… In Western media, you never really hear what’s really going on in East Europe…

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If you could talk to yourself when you were growing up, what advice would you give to yourself? Or to other young musicians now?

I just want to say to people, “Do stuff!” Instead of watching TV, there are so many things to do. Your imagination is the most important tool. I look at the world sometimes and how people live. It’s so easy to paint yourself into a little corner: “I must do this in my life…” so you can’t really don’t do anything. But, you can do everything – that’s what I think about every day. You can actually do it. Don’t be lazy, just do it.

Yeah, talking about not putting limitations on things, when I think about yesterday’s Pussy Riot concert, we prepared that in 3 weeks which seems crazy now…

I really admire that you did it. You actually did it!

Thanks to you guys, of course. I did it out of frustration – I just couldn’t bear watching my own country’s music community do nothing. We needed more action, we needed artists to stand up together and protect ethics.

If people go out there and do stuff, it’s because we need it. It’s important not to blame the men who live now, because they are also a victim of the patriarchal system. When I look at a lot of men now, there is hope, but I think the whole patriarchal system needs to be broken down a bit. Men go out and do stuff. But I think women aren’t encouraged to go out there and do stuff because they don’t have as many role models – but that’s what we need.

Yes, it’s important for women to have strong role models – whether it’s a singer, politician, mother, sister…

And, even if you don’t have a political agenda, you can do something. You have to do what you want to – do something!

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BO NINGEN say FREE PUSSY RIOT

Next up in our ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT photo campaign is London-based Japanese band BO NINGEN AKA Taigen, Yuki, Kohei and Mon-chan. We took this shot in the beer garden late night just after they played a full set as a full band inside a tiny upstairs room of a pub in Manchester! Smallest room we have ever seen a band perform in. The room next door was the bathroom, occupied by the night’s DJs. Radical…

Continue reading BO NINGEN say FREE PUSSY RIOT

ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT Photo Campaign – KATHLEEN HANNA

Here at SHATTERJAPAN, we are launching today a new photo campaign called ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT. We give all the musicians and artists we come across a chance to voice their thoughts and feelings about the imprisonment of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (“Nadya”), Yekaterina Samutsevich (“Katya”) and Maria Alyokhina (“Masha”) of Russian group Pussy Riot. We will post all the photos we receive one by one, right here on SHATTERJAPAN’s dedicated PUSSY RIOT blog.

Continue reading ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT Photo Campaign – KATHLEEN HANNA

FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT 9 Sept

This Sunday 9 September, the UK will see a Free Pussy Riot benefit concert take place in central London. Events kick off at 530pm at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen with a DJ set from Zoetrope, with main proceedings beginning shortly after 6pm.

LINE-UP: Zoetrope (DJ), Lisa Gornick (Speaker), Vuvuvultures (DJ), Kerry McCarthy MP (Speaker), SKINNY GIRL DIET (live), Night Works (DJ), Pratibha Parmar (Speaker), NEUROTIC MASS MOVEMENT (live), Novella (DJ), GAGGLE (live), Esben And The Witch (DJ), PEGGY SUE (live), New Young Pony Club (DJ), Karin Park (DJ)    * See FB events page for set times

Continue reading FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT 9 Sept

PATTI SMITH brings her love to Manchester and to Pussy Riot

Walking past the long box office queue outside Manchester’s Academy, one woman is shouting, “I LOVE Patti – Hurry up, will ya!?” The touts are out in force, because this is one hot gig and on-the-door sales are moving fast. There’s a curious energy in the air – that of enigma and history, indescribable yet palpable. Edging my way to the front side of stage, all gazes are on the glowing ear-to-ear smile and twinkling eyes of the one and only Patti Smith, who looks like she wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else on the planet. We suddenly find ourselves in the Patti Smith living room, leaving our cares at the door. We have a 2-hour set before us, no support, just pure Patti and her phenomenal band. Continue reading PATTI SMITH brings her love to Manchester and to Pussy Riot

MARK MAGIDSON & RON FRICKE Interview

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Producer Mark Magidson and director/cinematographer Ron Fricke, have established an international reputation for making visually stunning films that investigate the human condition in epic, dialogue-free documentaries. Their previous film BARAKA became a worldwide hit, and their latest film SAMSARA looks like doing the same. We spoke to the pair about the ideas behind their film and the technical aspects of shooting on a large format film in the age of digital miniaturisation.

How do you go about starting a film like this? You clearly don’t just grab a camera and your passport and see what happens. Did you start off with a script?
MARK: Scripted is a little strong. It’s conceived. Samsara is a word that means birth, death and rebirth, or impermanence, so that’s the kind of imagery that directs the research, and the concept directs the research towards the imagery and locations. So that’s how you start. We had a structural element, which was the construction of the sand mandala, which we filmed in Ladakh, and that was the structural anchor, which ties it in with the themes of impermanence. Once we had that, we were feeling pretty good about filling in the rest of it.

For a documentary, it’s quite a luxury to know your beginning and end.
RON: Yeah. That was really great. The next project will be a good way to get that in place. That was a good lesson.

How did you make the decision on what to fill up the middle section with, because there is a massive variety of images from the sublime to the almost ridiculous.
MARK: You are looking for a big range. You are looking imagery that is highly visible, using the experience that we have, saying that’s something we’d really like to film, or not, as it doesn’t quite make it as it is not interesting enough. Those are the decisions you make. You pick the locations that are going to yield a number of that kind material, then try and access it.
RON: We made sure the locations are going to yield a lot of data and imagery for us before we dragged all that gear there. As Mark said, once we had that opening and closing, because the hardest part of making a film are how to open and close it, but once we had that… we’ve got the film, then we just had to follow the thread of the concept. When we got to certain locations, if things didn’t work out, there were other things. There were a lot of happy accidents on location where we found subjects that were just as good, or better. However, we did do a lot of research to move around the world. It wasn’t like we just packed up and said, let’s go.
MARK: It’s just too expensive to bring the equipment and crew anywhere. You’ve just got to pick your targets real carefully. We are also a relatively manageable size. We had four or five on the crew, depending on the trips. We did make some decisions on location that were quick decisions that were ambitious.

Does that come from the experience of your previous films?
MARK: It comes from feeling strongly enough about a subject. One example that comes to mind: we were in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, and we happened to be in the hotel book store, of all places, and we found this book on the tribes of the Omo Valley, that region in the southern part of Ethopia, just on the border with Kenya. It was a spectacular photographic journal, a really thick book, filled with amazing imagery of portraits of these various tribes. We wondered how we could get down there because it wasn’t very far. So we just changed our schedule and made it a priority. We were able to get down there pretty fast, and brought the crew down, and got all those portraits of people with the face paint and Kalashnikov rifles, which was all from there.

You said previously that you got a lot of ideas from YouTube.
RON: Yeah, from the Internet.
MARK: It’s absolutely true. It’s an amazing resource for research. It seems like everything is posted on there. The thousand hands performance, which is so iconic to the film and closes the film, and there is a little snippet of her at the beginning; it’s another structural element, along with the sand paintings. One of Ron’s friends found that on YouTube.
RON: My neighbour came over and knocked on my door and said, “You’ve got to see this.”
MARK: [Olivier de] Sagazan, the guy who puts the clay on his face, was another one we found on YouTube. The Filipino prison dance…

Kevin Macdonald’s LIFE IN A DAY film explores similar ideas to your film, but actually getting all the footage off YouTube.
MARK: Right. It’s about interconnection around the world.

How difficult is it getting access and permission to film, given some of the places you shot?
MARK: There are two aspects. Getting access to the locations is difficult. It’s a process that you have to take it one step at a time and just try to knock down barriers. More often than not we were successful, and a few times not. It’s really identifying material within the frenetic structure that is of a certain visual level.

Was there anywhere specific you couldn’t get into?
MARK: The one that got away was North Korea. We almost got in there to film these performances they do every summer, where people are dressed up like Busby Berkeley dancers. We got really close but couldn’t get over the hump. Pretty much everywhere else we could access.

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The film is almost like one of those big coffee-table books. The images have a lot of movement in them, but they are very still at the same time.
RON: The portraits in particular are based on still photography. These great still photographers like Karsh and Irving Penn get the essence right out, looking into the eyes of their subjects. It was a theme with Tut: he was staring at you from eternity, the connection there, between us all. The landscapes and the portraiture are based in working with a 65mm camera, as well, as it gets the essence of the location for you. There is a bit of it being, as you say, still. We tried to move the camera as much as we could. The idea of the whole film was the flow and interconnection of things.

There’s a lot of time-lapse shots with camera movement in the film. How did you achieve that with such large cameras?
RON: We had a MoCo system that we’ve been using over the years and created the software that gave us a pan, a tilt, a dolly and a lift. We’ve got it down so we can set it up really quick and programme it with all the short cuts built into it. It has a preview system. You give it the heads and the tails, how many seconds you want on the screen then watch it at 24[fps] as it moves the camera, then you shape it, turn it on and go away.
MARK: To shoot star fields, you’ve got to run it all night to get a ten-second take, whereas some of the other shots you can accomplish in 40 minutes.
RON: We’ve become pretty good at it now, so we know what’s going to work.

Was shooting on 65mm film always your first choice, or did you look at other options such as IMAX, 3D or digital?
MARK: We looked at digital, at the 2K digital standard in 2007 and felt it wasn’t ready, and felt that it would be outdated, as digital always inevitably is, in short order. We’d done three other films in 65mm, and said this is our only real option as it’s still the best way to do this.

How much gear did you have to take with you when you travelled?
MARK: It depended on the trip, and we had different types of stock and different film speeds, but we took enough of each. That’s one of the headaches of shooting on film now, the borders and the X-ray issues that you’re worried about. You don’t want to take more than you need because it’s a hassle to get to get it out, and you don’t want to run out either. You have that experience, and once in awhile we had to get some extra shipped in if we had a really great location but most of the time we were right.

Did you also think about shooting on film because it will last? Your movie is a record of contemporary humanity, and film will last at least 100 years, whereas digital — one EMP and it’s gone.
MARK: It feels really good to have our imagery recorded on 65mm negative. That’s a good feeling when you collect that imagery in the field and get it back home. It feels very solid.

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For the editing you digitally scanned all the film?
MARK: We did a telecine at very high quality for editing, which is a really nice way to edit. It was actually good enough that we could project it on a decent size screen and see it, without going through the scanning, the process we did later to output the film to the final version that is showing, which is a whole different, much higher tech, more expensive process than the telecine. It was scanned at 8K.

There aren’t any digital cameras that come close to that at the moment.
RON: Not yet, but give it a year.
MARK: There’s tremendous resolution in the film stock and it ends up in the digital file when you scan it at 8K. The file for the film was 20Tb, so there was a lot of detail in there.

There is also a lot of latitude that you get with film that digital is only just starting to match.
RON: And there is just detail in the 65mm neg that gets into the concept of the film and brings out the essence of these landscapes and portraits. There’s such a level of latitude, if you really know what that means, that reaches into the highlights and shadow detail. You’re always feeling safe and grounded. You know what this emulsion is going to do. You kind of walk around like this film emulsion. After being on the road for three years, doing it, we just turn into these mean, lean, photographic machines. It was just a short cut. You’d just look at the location and you’d know where to put that camera, what to shoot and what not to shoot. You were just after the essence of the place and not shooting a whole documentary about the place. It was about putting that together in a flow – a global flow.

Can we talk about how you approached the editing and scoring of the music?
MARK: The editing was done silently. We had that imagery. We had that structure and that structural component, and you are really making the film with the reality of the imagery, which has an essence. It’s non-fiction and has an essence and energy within it, and you have to become very familiar with everything you’ve got, to make the film with. How to structure it and put it together, how the imagery wants to flow together and connect, and find those really cool connections that you couldn’t have written, where the imagery links up, or says something, or takes you through transitions that are really powerful and meaningful. That’s an exciting part of the process. You’re back from all the travel, you’re in a controlled environment. It’s a really nice place to be.

Most editors like to work to a rhythm when cutting; did you set up a rhythm that would help the composers?
MARK: It’s the cutting rhythm, the composers had to come in and compose to the sequences – the three, four or five minute sequences. There’s all this technology in music, and they’ve got a four minute sequence of images, and they lay that on in ProTools, their music software, and they can see the length the music’s got to be and they’re composing music to that length. You then end up with a really nice piece of music that’s not edited to every cut in the film, it’s just a real piece of music. That’s a nice way to deal, where there’s also some space in there, where you don’t have a rhythm exactly to the edit. It just works as a piece of music. It works independently and comments on the edit. It allows the viewer to experience it with a little more space.

SAMSARA isin cinemas now.

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AUSTRA – PART 2 Interview

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Toronto band Austra’s live shows are nothing short of magical – fans of the band will know what I mean by that. Within seconds, you will be entranced by the band’s stage presence and smooth, dark, lilting and edgy sounds. You will be impressed by lead singer Katie’s vocals and intense energy, as well as the fabulous harmonies of sisters Sari and Romy, Dorian’s tight bass and Ryan’s playful electronics. But, what gives the band its soul and sexiness are the drums – you will be seduced by the stomping beats of drummer MAYA POSTEPSKI and her laidback “I can do this in my sleep” attitude. Performing live, Postepski sits coolly at back of stage – her cockpit – pounding out those iconic Austra beats like a walk in the park while keeping the rhythms and tightness of the band in check, taking the image of the cool, sexy, talented drummer to another level. This band would not be the same without her, you will start thinking – and you would be right.

Female drummers have been overlooked and ignored for far too long in the music industry. Many have had to fight long and hard to break down stereotypes of what female percussionists can bring to the game – to prove that their gender has nothing to do with their invaluable contribution to the band and its success. Some of the most talented and iconic female drummers have suffered such terrible prejudice that they were eventually forced out of the band altogether – just look at the fate of Patty Schemel, former Hole drummer, whose life was completely blown to pieces after her scandalously calculated expulsion from the band by the then-producer Michael Beinhorn. Despite his criminal tactics, Beinhorn controversially went on to receive a Grammy nomination in 1998 for the band’s most successful album to date “Celebrity Skin” (Schemel’s face and name adorns the album sleeve even though the drum tracks are not actually hers – she was replaced during recording by an unknown male session drummer after Beinhorn set her up) – not an atypical industry story, as Courtney Love has resignedly confessed. Love later took her comments a step further, calling Beinhorn “still a nazi fuck” at a screening of 2011 documentary Hit So Hard which details the producer’s relentless bullying of Schemel and the awful tragedies that ensued. The commercial industry, it seems, continues to embrace industry males above and beyond female musicians and ethics.

Getting back to Postepski, not only is Maya one of the best drummers out there right now, finding herself ranked alongside other iconic drummers, she is a powerhouse of energy and productivity – a master remixer, producer, multi-instrumental percussionist. In addition to Austra, she has been a key member of TRUST, and continues her own project Princess Century. Ever humble, we get to know her better in this interview, where she tells us about her passion for the drums, sleeping in ex-asylums and why singer Katie Stelmanis saved her life.

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Well, let’s get to know you a bit better – we like to have the artists speak openly about their backgrounds and what drives them. So much of mainstream journalism is just regurgitated information…
I don’t know why people do that. It’s like: just use your brain a little bit…

Well yeah, exactly.
I’d never become a journalist if I wasn’t actually interested in investigating things. But anyhow, that’s another discussion…

So, what’s your family background?
My family’s from Poland and I was born in South Africa. My parents were working there – they lived there for like 10 years and they had me. It was getting really weird there, so they were like, “We need to get out of here.” They applied to emigrate to Canada and Australia, and Canada just responded a couple months faster… So, I would’ve either ended up in Canada or Australia, but I ended up in Canada…

If they’d moved to Australia, do you know which city?
No…

So, it’s that path of life that never happened and that you’ll never know…
Yeah, it was kind of random. I was thinking maybe I’d be a surfer or something! Or maybe I’d end up a drummer, who knows?

Your parents are both Polish by origin?
Yes.

Did they speak Polish with you?
They did when I was a little younger, but I think they really tried to assimilate themselves into the new country. So we still spoke it a little bit, but when they were in Austria my parents spoke German, and when they lived in South Africa they learned Afrikaans. So, I guess they’re just into being wherever they are. It’s kind of cool – I guess I respect that because if I moved to Sweden tomorrow, I’m not going to just get by on my English just because everyone speaks English – I think you have to try to get into wherever you are.

Are your parents inspirational for you, in terms of branching out, not staying in the same place?
Yeah! I mean, without getting too political, I think a lot of cultures get stuck in themselves. I found that a lot of Polish kids at school wanted to be my friend just because I was Polish, and I was like, “That’s kind of not a good reason to be my friend…” It is if it’s because you’re an artist or writer or whatever, not because you’re from a country. So I find that kind of a small, closed-minded way of thinking about things. And yeah, I guess my parents were always kind of international and interested in other places and other things, and they were never scared of that. They ran away from their country because it was communist and they hated that. So yeah, I think that they are brave.

Talking about being an artist, you’re quite the musical multi-tasker. But, how did you get into music and why did you decide to focus on the drums?
Well, I went to this art school when I was a kid – all through high school, actually – so it was for kids who were into music, dancing or acting and stuff. I was really lucky to go there, because it was a very untraditional education and I remember it was like a fantasy world – it seemed like we could do anything we wanted. I took mime class when I was like 8 – that’s pretty weird. And I had been playing piano since I was 3 or 4, so I had this strong musical background. And when I was 10, I had to choose what major I wanted to go into, which was your class that you do for 4 years. So, you choose art, drama, dance or music, and then there was a brand new category this year that I started called “percussion.” And I was like, “I don’t want to dance, I don’t want to sing, I don’t want to paint, I don’t want to act, I don’t want to play violin…” Then I was like, “Huh, what is this percussion thing?” I honestly took this form to my mum and I checked “percussion” and she didn’t even know what it was – she was like, “What IS this?” But she signed it for me and I just went to this class honestly not knowing what the hell I was going to do.

My teacher Adam was awesome, and I was really intuitive with the drums from the very first day. He did this very simple exercise where he played a rhythm and we played it back – we went back and forth and there were only like 8 of us. So we were just playing, copying him, and I was getting the rhythms perfectly because I played piano and it’s highly repetitive, but all the other kids didn’t get it and I got it straight away every time. I was actually very proud of myself. I thought, “I’m very, very good at this,” and when you’re 9 years old that’s a really big feeling. I was terrible at math, I was terrible at writing, I didn’t really care about that stuff, and so I was finally good at something at school and I was like, “Wow!” It just felt so good to be exceptional at something, finally. It just felt like I was special all of a sudden.

Yeah, it’s important, isn’t it, for kids to have access to the arts and to know they can excel in anything, even something different from the norm?
Yeah, it makes me so sad, because later on I started teaching drums to kids privately. I didn’t do it for too long – maybe for a year because then the band picked up. They were so interested in learning and practising and they were telling me, “I never do anything at school – I don’t feel challenged.” I was like, “Man, this sucks!” Kids are like sponges – all kids, no matter what they do or where they’re from – they just want to do something they’re good at, whether it’s dancing or singing or anything, you know? And so, if I have kids someday, I think I’m going to have a non-traditional education for them. The public education system’s just not good enough – I mean, there’s just no money in it, right?

Yeah, talking about education in Canada, the student protests this year were really intense – some very brave people over there looking out for the kids of the future…
Yeah, that’s all happening in Montreal with the university students – that’s really cool. But that’s Quebec: that’s like totally different, because Quebec has its own spirit. It’s incredible! They’re just so revolutionary – they’re so not afraid to just get into the streets and make a noise.

So, when you were drumming as a kid, did you already envision making music your future?
Yeah! All I remember from when I was a kid was that I left this class the first day and I was like, “I’m going to do this with my life.” I was a 9 year old girl playing the drums and I had this realisation. I don’t know, I guess other people have had that too when they’re young – just this overwhelming sensation that you’ve found what you’re supposed to do. I didn’t really care, I knew that somehow I’d make it work. And now that I’m a little bit older… yeah it’s tough and it’s been a long, hard road to get here, and I’m still not entirely satisfied with every part of my career, but you just have to keep going. What I always tell myself too is: if this ends, that’s fine – at least I tried and at least I got somewhere. There are always going to be normal jobs out there – they’re just not going to go away. So if I’m 36, and I have to go back to school for a couple of years and become a real estate agent, I’m fine with that. But I try not to think about that. You get hung up on that stuff like, “Man, I’m not making any money, I’m not having any savings, I’m just kind of living like a pirate…” but you have to not think so much about that, otherwise you can drive yourself crazy.

Yeah, it’s really tough. You made a brave decision.
It’s not a good future – I still don’t know if I’m going to ever make any money from this – REAL money – but I’m okay with that right now. It’s tough, but you just have to keep going and I’ve always believed that people who work hard will be successful and so far it’s paid off.

Did you have any role models, growing up? Anybody who spurred you on…
Yeah, in high school I was in this jazz band and this guy Arden was really, really good – he was always practising after school. He was like, “I’m going to do auditions to be in an orchestra” and I was like, “Wow, that’s so cool!” So, I would practise after school with him sometimes, and eventually I had the same teacher as him and did an audition to go to the University of Toronto to study classical percussion for orchestra. I got in, so I stayed there for 4 years, got a degree in percussion, and that just really made me go to a next level – you learn something about listening, I mean REALLY listening. I feel that a lot of musicians don’t really listen to who they’re playing with – they’re kind of in their bubble: “I’m playing drums, I’m going to listen to the drums…” You should just listen to everybody because it’s incredible. Playing with different people over the years, you start realising that most musicians don’t know what they’re doing.

So, are you quite fussy now about who you play with – can you tell straight away if it’s clicking?
You can tell within the first 10 seconds.

Wow! That’s fast…
But, there are also different objectives with every band. I like to play with people who are really listening and play really ‘in time’ who are willing to practise really a lot. I’m quite strict with rhythmic things and it’s hard because that’s not what everything is about. So I’ve had to learn to loosen up a little bit about that, because I’ve become a bit of a perfectionist after practising with an orchestra for 4 years – you get into a really nitpicky mentality: “That pianissimo violin note was just a hair too soon…” even though 99% of the audience won’t notice. Being in a band is a totally different mentality – there are different goals: you want to create a vibe, an ambiance, a feeling rather than playing a ‘perfect song.’ So, I’ve learned to compromise and just loosen up a bit.

So, does that mean you get to be a lot more creative now?
Exactly. And when you’re working with a strong singer, you start thinking about the song as an overall mood, rather than these little pieces of information that all fit together perfectly. It’s also a smaller ensemble, right? When you’re playing to an orchestra, there are like 50 people sometimes so you have to worry about each little ant being in the perfect place, whereas with 4 to 6 people it’s more about “Can we make this feel good?”

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So, what are you up to right now?
I’m in a small town in Michigan with Austra – we’re recording in the middle of nowhere. It’s a really cool studio that our manager told us about and there’s all this old gear and analogue synthesisers, so we’re just kind of messing around. We’re just sitting in the studio all day because it’s like 50 degrees outside and we’re just playing with all this old crap…

Nice! So, are you actually recording or just trying stuff out?
Well, there’s a lot of that but we’re actually recording, yeah. We’re just kind of making demos. We don’t know if we’re going to keep everything but we’re definitely going to try and keep stuff.

So, what’s the recording lifestyle like? It must be pretty different from being on tour…
It’s funny because we’re always together in close quarters for 24 hours a day on tour, and we’re kind of doing the same thing right now. I mean, it’s a little different, because we all have our own bedroom and we sleep in the same building – it’s kind of like we’re at summer camp! And that’s cool because it means we don’t have to stay in a hotel and we get to go swimming in the lake – we’re going swimming every day. Today is our last day here, so we’re just going to review everything we’ve laid down and do a rough mix to take home with us. And tomorrow we’re going to drive home and keep writing. Maybe we’ll go for a swim later!

And at least you get some sleep, right?
Oh my god, I’m still in my bed right now! We’ve been sleeping SO MUCH lately. This is like early morning for me. I’m in a bunk bed right now – just me and 2 giant bunk beds. We’re barely like an hour and a half outside of Chicago, but that’s like nowhere in America.

Wow, so it’s very intense…
Yeah, but it’s really good. I feel like we’re all working at maximum efficiency because there’s no driving to the studio, meeting up for coffee… we all just roll out of bed and make a coffee and work.

And when you’re on tour, you make a point of not staying in regular hotels? When we talked in Manchester, you said you were excited to stay somewhere in nature…
Yeah! Sari, one of our backing singers – her job is to book us hotels. She always tries to find us weird places to stay – or weird hotels that were converted from insane asylums into hotels! There’s one in Amsterdam that’s really, really cool – we stayed in this room once with 8 beds. We were checking in and we’re like, “So, there’s 7 of us” (because we have a tour manager) and they were like, “Okay – so you’re staying in this room.” And we were like, “Um… but there’s 7 of us…” but they were like “Yeah, yeah.” And we were like, “What the fuck??” So we get into the room and there were 8 little single beds all in a row… and they’re all connected! So we all slept like little matchsticks next to each other!

They were connected?? So you couldn’t even move them around?
No! And the bathtub is like really deep – it’s like you can drown in it. It was so cool…

And this was a converted asylum or something?
I think so. But when I met you in Manchester, we were staying in the Peak District.

How did that go?
Well, it was pouring rain all day when we stayed there, but we just stayed at this inn in the middle of the Peak District. It was like a pub, so we just drank cider all day and went to bed at 8 o’clock drunk – because we couldn’t go outside.

You’ve done quite a bit of moving around on this tour, but which city did you particularly enjoy?
It was really nice to be in Barcelona actually at the very end of the tour, because my girlfriend used to live there, so she showed me around and we stayed in an apartment, and I didn’t have to worry about getting lost. It was my first time really seeing that city properly and I really love it – I think it’s amazing.

Can you see yourself relocating one day? Or does it depend on what’s going on with the band?
At this point, if I suddenly was to buy a house, if I had money, I don’t know where I’d want to live. I feel like after travelling around the world so much, you just want to live everywhere. I mean, I love Toronto, which is where we’re from. I just feel like I don’t know at this point – it depends on where my life is when I get there I guess. I like everywhere! I want to live in this corner, in that corner… I could live in Sydney or New York or London… I don’t even care anymore…

It sounds like you’re really into the big cities?
Well, I don’t know why I said those 3 things actually because I feel like I would have to live in the country! I mean, I’d like to ideally have a small flat in a big city like London and then live in the country.

And only go into the city for work or shows?
Yeah. The thing about being an artist or a writer is that you don’t need to be in the city all the time.

In fact, it may drive you a bit crazy being in the city the entire time…
Yeah. I grew up in the city – I love big cities, it’s a vibe I really like. But the older I get, the more I appreciate the stillness and quietness and isolation, in fact. Not forever – I just appreciate those things after all this moving around, you know?

Yeah, definitely. So let’s talk about your creative relationship with Katie – you’ve known each other for a while…
Yeah, we’ve been working together for like 9 years.

Almost a decade!
It’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had with a girl! It’s like our joke.

It’s so inspiring to see creative relationships that work well and evolve, where you respect each other and don’t end up in some massive breakup…
Yeah, I don’t like that. I’ve recently gone through one of those with my other band, Trust. It’s so awkward and sad and drama, whereas Katie and I kind of keep it real all the time.

It’s pretty difficult to find the right collaborators and you’ve worked on different projects. You were also in another band with Katie before Austra…
Well, when I was 17, I met Katie and our friend Emma and we started a band called Galaxy – it was a riot grrrl band, so we did that for 3 or 4 years. Then we broke up and Katie started doing her solo stuff and she wanted me to play drums live with her. So, I didn’t write any of that stuff, but I always kept going with her. And then eventually after a few years, it became Austra and we added more people. So, that was kind of lucky – Katie and I just met and we never stopped working together, so we kind of grew up together in that way. And we had all those shitty tours that we went through – sleeping on people’s floors, dragging gear across Europe on boats and trains. It was hell, but also at the time we were so motivated. If I had to do that right now, I’d be like “Fuck this…” and I’d probably never do that again. But I’m 5 years older now and you get comfortable with all of the luxuries, right? Like now we stay in hotels, have a driver and a tour manager. Now we’re just these lazy princesses, even though, by any normal human being’s standard, it’s not nice.

Was Austra a natural evolution or did you guys actually plan the band’s concept and setup?
No, it was like Katie doing her weird music and then she picks this weird band. Like, I was at one point playing stand-up drums, marimba and glockenspiel and singing backup – it was just a circus! And, we had this awesome guitar player. The band switched around so many times, and so now the 6-piece that we have is a very kind of ‘normal’ setup: 2 backup singers, a bass player, a key player and a drummer – it’s WAY more traditional in my mind, even though it’s still kind of ‘out there’ by most people’s standards. Most people were like, “Who IS this? It’s like a circus…” So it was never calculated. It was all just like, “Oh, we met Dorian the bass player… Oh, and then we met Ryan…” – it was super natural.

Austra has gathered a very loyal following because you’re known now for your brilliant performances as well as the music – you’ve got the whole package. Were you aware that the crowds love the setup?
No, it makes me really happy to hear that, because I think that my band is really great and everybody in it is really special. I’m glad to hear that people like us together.

Yeah, for sure! People are really appreciating each of you individually in the sound and on stage…
Yeah, it makes me happy that people know that it’s a band and it’s not just Katie with a bunch of studio musicians.

Yeah, talking about musicians not receiving credit, drummers – especially female drummers – have tended to be overlooked or boxed by the media which makes it hard for them to be taken seriously by the industry. Do you think this is getting better?
I don’t know. I still watch music videos and even concerts sometimes. I try not to watch anything to do with us, because I find it kind of weird – I don’t like to read press or any of that stuff. But sometimes I see videos of us and it’s not anything to do with the band, it’s just a stupid camera person who only focuses on Katie’s face – that’s not interesting first of all, by any aesthetic standard, and then it’s just weird how camera people don’t cover the whole band… It is a project that incorporates all of us, so it’s weird to me when people with cameras only focus on one person.

Let’s talk about you on stage. You all look like you’re having so much fun, and you’re probably the most laidback drummer I’ve seen live…
I think that on stage I just try and relax and have fun, and just enjoy playing my instrument. I really love playing drums so much that I think it’s kind of relaxing – it’s like having a glass of wine and a cigarette.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a musician talk about being on stage like that!
It is! And not because I want to seem casual, but I just feel calm and so happy, you know?

Yeah, that’s impressive. So, if that’s your relaxation, what stresses you out? And what else do you do to blow off steam?
There’s lots of stress on tour. I like to do lots of stretches before I play and I like to go for a run usually after soundcheck before dinner. And yeah, I kind of like to be alone, because there’s so little alone time on tour. Before I get on stage, if I have a lot of things to do, I get a little stressed out – if I have to do some little photo thing or do my makeup, or if there’s lots of friends backstage, I get stressed out sometimes.

I guess that’s the good thing about being a band and not a solo artist – you can understand and help each other, especially I guess with Katie?
Yeah, the whole band is really intuitive with each other at this point. It’s like we don’t even have to speak to know what we’re feeling. Everyone in the band is really sensitive to everything, really gentle and open.

Now there are a lot of electro bands coming out of Toronto or Montreal, Austra is one of the bands heading that new wave electro sound. But, I heard that when you and Katie started up, you found it tricky because people didn’t really get what you were doing…
People thought we were like freaks! I think people thought we were really interesting and they could appreciate that Katie’s really good at singing and that I was good at drumming, but they were kind of baffled by us as a duo – they were like, “What the fuck are these girls doing?” But, when I look at an old show I’m like, “Wow, we were total freaks.” Now the band seems so much more dumbed down or traditional or something… I still feel like Austra’s going to go back there though. I think in the future it’s just going to go crazy – it’s just going to go into full opera mode! If we could get like a set designer, I just think it’s going to go crazy!

The Austra opera – it’s doable. Electro opera!
People love that stuff!

Yeah, it’s true. Your performances now are so honed and tight that it’s exciting to imagine where Austra’s going to head in the future…
When we first released Austra, I was like, “I don’t know what people are going to think of this – it could go one way or the other.” But when “Beat and the Pulse” comes on, it’s like we’re really cool… It’s like “the nerds made it!”

Yeah, what I love is that you guys also really care about your look – you have a perfect combination of music and edgy videos (“Lose It” is a surrealist’s wet dream, “Beat and the Pulse” was controversially censored by YouTube for some very tame bearing of female flesh). The UK industry has become quite stale so it’s great to have inspiration from bands from North America who invest in creative videos, style and sound…
I don’t know why a band wouldn’t do that – that’s where you can have fun, that’s where the magic is, so why make a shitty, boring music video?? It doesn’t make sense – it’s totally weird… when you could be making something fun and imaginative. I’m happy to hear that there are a lot of bands coming over from North America, and Canada has a lot of incredible talent, so I’m glad that you guys are open to it because the UK is a very important market for bands from North America – it’s kind of like if you make it in the UK, you’ll be fine for a little while.

So where do you feel you’re at? Are you breaking the UK market?
Well, it’s hard to tell – we haven’t done a huge tour of the UK ever. We did a bigger one this summer, but I just think we haven’t spent enough time out there. But, hopefully with the new record, we can make sure we’re over there more often because it’s such an important place for music. All or most of my favourite musicians, bands or DJs come from the UK. It’s such a small place in the world, but so important for our music history – for some reason, there’s such an incredible amount of talent on this tiny island!

And how is the Toronto music scene these days? I guess you don’t get much chance to be there since you’re on the move…
Over the past 2 years, we’ve been away so I don’t know any Toronto bands. I haven’t seen a show in Toronto in 2 or 3 years because we’ve been on tour, so I’m out of the loop to be honest. Every time we go to Toronto, I’m like, “Holy crap, that city’s changing so quickly… wow, that bar’s closed, there’s all these new restaurants…” I don’t know what’s going on in Toronto, but apparently it’s good from what I hear. It’s fun to be away for so long and come home, and you’re like, “Wow, it’s been 2 years…”

So do you have a timeline for when the new Austra material will be coming out?
Yeah, so we’re doing demos now, then we’re going to go back on the road one more time – we have a tour in September. Then we want to record in the fall – in October. And if everything goes smoothly, we’ll have something out in May or June… spring/summer…

It’s a long haul, isn’t it?
There’s so much lead time, right? Like press, and when you’re putting a record together a lot of other things happen


So, how are you feeling about the new album?

After this week in the studio, I’m SO excited – I wish I could tell you how excited I am! The new material’s sounding – I mean, it’s just crazy – it’s like all my dreams for Austra coming true! And also we’re collaborating more, so it really feels like a lot of different spices are being put into the pot, not just one.

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Austra is proving to be a very successful collaboration, but working with other artists comes with its ups and downs and there was some controversy with the other band you were in, Trust. Has that blown over now?
I wouldn’t say it’s over… I have a really good attitude about it – I love working with Robert, but we’ve had a bit of a falling out. I wish him the best of luck on tour. He’s a very talented person and I just want to work with him again one day, but it’s just not the right time right now and that’s it. I’m doing one thing; he’s doing another. Hopefully we’ll meet up someday again in the middle.

You sound very philosophical about it…
I’m really proud with the work we’ve done – he’s my colleague and I wish him the best. I just can’t be in 2 bands at once – that’s just the reality of it. Too bad, eh…

It makes total sense if you’re being stretched too thin. And of course your Austra backing singers Sari and Romy are doing their own thing too?
Yeah, they have an awesome project called Tasseomancy. We’ve all kind of sacrificed our own things to focus on Austra. I have a solo project called Princess Century which has been a bit on the backburner for a while, but I’m releasing a record I think in the fall. I made a record last year and it’s being made right now: it’s mastered and it’s done – I just need to get it out, and it’s coming out on a little label in London called Kennington Records.

That’s cool, we’d love to hear some of the tracks…
Yeah sure! It’s really introspective – it’s like my journal. I don’t really write a journal, so instead I just write tracks. It’s terrifying! Onstage with Austra and Trust, I’m super confident, but with Princess Century it’s the most terrifying experience of my life.

So, it’s very personal? All your thoughts go in there?
Exactly. And then if it’s a good song, I donate it to Trust or Austra!

I’ve often found that artists have 2 sides to their personality: the ultra-confident person who’s enjoying their music and the other person who’s kind of fragile and introverted. Do you relate to that?
Yeah, that’s why I’ve got a therapist! I think any good artist puts on a very good mask, and I’m trying to break away from that and just be more honest with all of the work I do, but it’s hard. I mean, the work I do is very pure – I don’t hide anything. But when you’re onstage, or in interviews or meetings with people, it’s easy to put on this shell that’s like, “I’m cool, I’ve got my shit together, I’m doing everything.” But really, I’m just like a little ant – I’ve just got a little ant inside here that’s like “Hello!” and I’m in this big shell. I think a lot of musicians are like that – they can easily pretend to be totally cool.

Yeah, it’s hard to stay confident. Many musicians suffer from a kind of creative block and go through sometimes long periods of not even playing their instrument. What would you say to artists who are struggling to be creative?
Yeah, I went through that maybe 4 years ago. I was like, “I need to get better, I need to just work, I need to write, I need to…” and I just kept talking and talking and talking about it. And my best friend, Jenna – she’s a painter and quite successful – she told me, “You just have to try every day, go into your studio and try and write a song, or try and write a drumbeat, or try and write anything… anything you do that sucks, at least you know you tried.” So, if you’re a writer: try and write a story, a poem, whatever! Even if you chuck it in the bin, eventually you’re going to do good stuff, right? So that’s what I did – I went into my studio every single day for like 8 hours and the first month or 2 was like crap… terrible crap. Then eventually, I just kept doing this routine and really good stuff happened – REALLY good stuff! And then, I started working with Robert [Alfons] and then we wrote a record. And all of a sudden, we had things happening, and it just goes and goes – it’s like a train, once it starts, it just goes…

I guess it’s like when an athlete is training…
Yeah! Like, the first time you go for a month you’re going to be stopping, but if you train for a month, you’ll be totally fine to run for like half an hour. I think it’s just discipline and not pitying yourself, and not being like, “Oh poor me.” Just shut up and do it! It’s a really harsh approach, but a lot of people talk and talk and talk… Go play your instrument and get good at it! Go write a story! Go write 25 stories and get really good at writing! Just stop talking – and do it!

Yeah, everyone really struggles in different ways and the key is to find your own rhythm that works for you…
Yeah, I made a routine every day. I like to work in the morning – that’s my power time. Some people work at 5 in the morning. I found that my best productive work was from 9am to 5pm, so every day I worked from 9 to 5 and I treated it like my job. You’re committing to yourself, you know? It feels so nice to give yourself power – like, “You know what? I’m not going to go out for lunch with my friend today – I’m working…”

Yeah, building your own rhythm and structure is really hard, and it’s important for people around you to understand that. Do you have a good balance now?
I don’t think I’ve actually found a balance. It’s really extreme being on tour because you’re giving 100% to your music all day, every day. I’ve had to teach myself to stay in touch with people and communicate better, and make sure I call my mum every couple of weeks. Time and space are so different on tour as well – anyone who’s gone on a long trip knows that suddenly a week goes by and it’s like, “Whoa, I forgot!“ I think the people I’m closest to in my life just get it now when I don’t call for a couple of weeks or don’t send an email back right away, but it’s not very nice and I’m still struggling. I think what my problem is right now is that I give everything to music, so it’s difficult for me to keep a good romantic relationship. Not just because I’m not in once place, but it’s because I’m not willing to give up all that energy, you know? And it’s selfish for sure, but I’ve been given this moment in my life to really do something that my dream is, so I’m okay with it because not a lot of people get here, and I feel like I can’t just fuck it up – I want to do it 100% right now.

Some people in the band have longterm, committed relationships, and I’m just not that good at it right now – I’m kind of like, “Ok, I can give 100% or 0%.” So, I’m figuring it out. I’m seeing someone right now and we’re sorting it out a little bit, but every month is different – some days are good and some days are not so good. Luckily, she’s also a musician and she’s toured so she kind of gets it more than a normal person would – she gets when I don’t call for a few days, because sometimes on tour you’re just exhausted and you can’t go on Skype at 2 in the morning after your show. So, we’re figuring it out but it’s not easy…

I guess that’s just the way it is when you’re really into what you’re doing – it can be challenging. And your mid-20s can be a very intense period if you have dreams you want to pursue…
I’m 26 – an old lady! I always wanted to be successful by the time I was this old…

Well, you’re doing pretty well!

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It’s great that you and Katie can be such brilliant role models as artists but also with being openly gay. Do you think role models are important, particularly for kids?
Yeah, I’m so happy that Katie’s so open. I think it’s important she’s a role model for certain people – I mean, she never ‘tried’ to do that, but it’s cool that she’s open and talks about it. And I think it’s really important because, growing up, I was like, “I don’t know anything – I’m gonna watch The L Word!” I grew up in the suburbs, so I’d just watch The L Word in my room. It so terrible… but it was something, right? I just wanted to see girls making out…

So, meeting Katie must have been a major turning point for you…
Yeah I didn’t have any friends in my high school. I was friends with Katie and Emma and I was like, “These girls are saving my life! They’re gay, I’m gay, and we’re in a band – this is so empowering!”

Especially as it was a riot grrl band…
A couple of years into the band, I didn’t even know what that meant. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing…” I was just this girl from the suburbs and it just felt really cool, and these girls saved me…

I guess music really changed your life. And on that note, let’s end with a message of advice for people who want to do what you do?
Get on with it! Go do something!!

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<< READ PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW HERE >>

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THE JEZABELS – PART 2 Interview

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Hayley Mary is the lead singer of award-winning Australian band The Jezabels. The first time I met Hayley was backstage at KOKO in February where I had a wee chat with the rest of the band before witnessing them set the famed London venue alight. Tracking their progress, we joined them again at The Ruby Lounge Manchester a month on, where Hayley acerbically spoke out on stage against the indifference shown by British press towards the band, apologizing for not talking much on stage, having been pegged as “too Australian” for British music journo taste. This was all prior to the band’s Australian Music Prize (Amp) win and their Garbage support slot announcement of course. Since those announcements, the mainstream British media and public have been playing catchup on a band who has long struggled to break the UK but who has successfully held our attention as one of the tightest bands out there, not to mention one of the nicest we’ve ever met. Considering their widespread success in Australia, we’ve been shocked by how little radio play the band still gets and how few people have even heard of them in the UK.

The night before Manchester, we had already captured our first glimpse of the Jezabels/Garbage lineup in Wolverhampton: earning themselves a barrelful of new fans, The Jezabels impressed the crowds to make way for Shirley Manson’s dramatic entrance and killer set. Now, sitting serenely together backstage at the Manchester Academy in an unusually zen atmosphere of calm, with the comforting hum of Manson and crew in the background, smashing the stage in their typical flamboyant style, Hayley and I chat all things Garbage, women in music, ethics and top tips on how to survive the touring lifestyle. Reflective and relaxed, Hayley gets right down to dinner and chat, leaving tour manager Neil to beaver away on his laptop and fellow Jezabels Sam Lockwood, Heather Shannon and Nik Kaloper to enjoy well-earned beers after delivering a blistering opening set. Oh, and we receive an unusual offer from Sam part-way through…

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So, you’re on tour with Garbage! What’s the atmosphere like backstage?
Oh, it’s pretty chilled. I mean, they’re big venues so it’s not like you’re in each other’s faces. We’ve got our own room, Shirley’s got her own room, the Garbage crew have their own room and so do the Garbage band – so everyone can have their own space if they want, but in the hallways it’s a free-for-all. They’re very talkative and lovely people, so it feels like you could go in and talk to them. I just went and stole some cokes from them actually because there was a diabetic selling merch, so I thought…

Your merch person?
No, theirs – not that anyone who’s a human being wouldn’t be fine with giving some cokes to a diabetic, but I think that if he wasn’t diabetic they would also be fine with it.

So how did the whole Jezabels/Garbage connection come about? Did you indicate that you wanted to support Garbage or were you approached?
It’s probably a bit of both. Well, I have no idea what their process is or the level of involvement they have in choosing the supports. But I have heard and did confirm with Shirley today that when you have females in the band, you have a little bit of an “up” on the other possible supports. So, it helped – well, it didn’t hinder, let’s put it like that.

Right, they’re known for that I guess.
Yeah, you can sort of tell. The more I think about it the more it makes sense, but I don’t know if they would have thought about it this much. I guess all the people working with us and them were like, “semi-pop, semi-alternative female-fronted band…”

Because you maybe have a similar vibe?
Yeah, but the music is not actually that similar so it won’t be TOO similar, so it’s good.

I guess the lineup was decided behind closed doors…
Yeah, I mean doors that I could open but I really can’t be bothered. At this point I’m very satisfied with not knowing…

It’s exciting, because you didn’t know about the pairing until quite late in the day…
Yeah, we knew there was a possibility of it but we didn’t know we would.

So now you’re actually in the midst of the tour, are you feeling more blasé about it?
It’s not blasé, but it’s all about your actual experience on tour because there are so many subtleties that could make it suck but they’re not here – all subtleties point towards it being a really great experience. Like, straight away all of them were really nice and introduced themselves and were not intimidating – I mean, they’re intimidating as musicians but not as people so that’s a good thing. With the whole team that they’ve got working for them, you can tell the niceness kind of trickles down and everyone’s nice and helpful. That really helps, because it’s hard when you just feel like you can’t ask for a bottle of water, you can’t ask for anything and you’re just there ignoring them.

Yeah, and that’s all about the atmosphere created by the headlining band, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s just about the atmosphere being really good, and the fact that they’ve given us plenty of time to sound check – normally the support doesn’t really get to sound check. They’ve just been really good. I mean, I guess it helps that it’s just a 2-band bill.

Yeah, it’s interesting because back in Australia of course you guys would be a headlining band but here you’re supporting Garbage on an international platform. What do you think you’re learning from them or even with them through that experience?
A lot. Again, when we first started touring – just little tours supporting Australian bands – you learn from the people you’re supporting about how to be good and professional, how to treat support bands, treat your crew and stuff like that. I think that kind of continues here, and you see musicians who have been doing what they do for over 20 years and they’re really nice – still! They’re not all tainted and bitter and diva-ish. I think that kind of proves that that’s definitely the best way to go about it – you’re not trying to have some power trip over people.

Especially for a lead singer, I’d assume it’s quite hard not to fall into that trap.
Yeah, it’s a struggle to tame the diva within… but we must try.

But, it’s legitimate on stage, isn’t it? I mean, if Shirley Manson toned it down on stage, people may start questioning her performance…
Well that’s the thing! She’s got to have this persona but not really BE it.

It’s the ultimate trick to be able to click into your other persona as soon as you step on or off the stage…
The stage is a powerful place. It can transform people, I reckon. Just quietly…

Are you talking about yourself or other performers as well?
Everyone. Anyone. Shirley Manson… I mean, look at when she comes on stage, it’s like, “Fuck… fuck ME!” Did you see her when she came on stage??

Yeah… of all the stage entrances…
…hers was the bomb!

Yeah, and she doesn’t even need to really DO anything …
She just walks on and like, “Yeah…”

Yeah, she just struts on and looks at the crowd as if she’s saying, “Yeah, go on then… adore me!”
I’d never seen them live – and I know she can sing on record but it doesn’t always translate live. And you know what, she came on at the first London show, and I went, “I don’t CARE if she can’t sing!” [laughs]

She can just stand there…
Yeah. That’s enough for me. And then she COULD sing and it was like, “Fuck! Alright! She’s great!”

Yeah, and she hasn’t really aged…
No! It’s mental!

I think she must love what she’s doing so much that it keeps her fit…
I think so.

And the energy she has is incredible, because it’s a long set…
Yeah, it’s a long set. It does provide inspiration when you see people you knew growing up – I was in year two: I was 6 or 7 when they released their first album.

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Before I forget, a guy in the audience wanted me to tell you that he loves your hairstyle…
Really? It’s quite bad at the moment. I’ve just let it go – I might just let it go forever…

…and he was talking about what a crazy music period the 90s was for kids in the UK, with the Britpop battle between Oasis, Blur, Pulp, the emergence of the Spice Girls…
We’re in Manchester talking about the 90s. That’s cool!

…and then there were much darker bands like Garbage and Placebo…
Yeah, alt sort of stuff – I feel like the word “alt” IS the 90s. And Doc Martens! These [points to the Docs she’s wearing] are fake because I don’t wear leather. I’m going to buy some vegan ones…

So, was 90s music a major influence on you?
I loved bands like Concrete Blonde and I did grow up with Garbage songs around – they were pretty massive, you couldn’t NOT have heard them. You see, I’m strange because I’m really influenced by the 90s, but I’m also one of those people who’s actually really into the 80s. I know that’s a paradox, but I’m really into the 80s. It’s a strange thing because – I don’t want to talk about Shirley Manson again but I did just have a conversation with her about all this stuff, and so it’s kind of relevant – Shirley was talking about whether it’s easier or harder for girls today in music, and she thinks it’s harder because something happened in the “noughties.” There were heaps of alternative girls in the 90s – the Alanis Morissettes, the Skunk Anansies (Oh, we’re also supporting Skunk Anansie by the way, which is funny…). But there were fewer females in the alt scene after the 90s. I guess the alt music and the darkness allowed women to come into a realm that wasn’t necessarily objectifying themselves – it was still sexy. But pop – where most women still are in music – is a different thing altogether. It’s arguably still objectification because a lot of them don’t write – they’re there for aesthetic purposes and I’m not saying aesthetics are a bad thing, but you know, but they’re good-looking and they sound “nice…”

So you’re basically saying that if Shirley Manson were to do now what she was doing back then, it would be harder for her maybe?
Maybe. There are still not a lot of alternative women – like, most women are still in pop I guess. I don’t know what happened. I think that maybe because the 90s was a bit of a reaction against the 80s, then there was a reaction against the 90s.

It’s very interesting because there is a timeless quality to tonight’s show….
I find them a timeless band – I do…

But BOTH bands have an air of timelessness. Maybe this goes back to the type of music? You both do quite different things but there is a connecting point, isn’t there?
Definitely. And although those things can draw from, say, a decade – like, if you looked at our band you’d probably say we draw from the 90s – musically, you can draw from everything and everywhere. I think a lot of the time people think the image of a band defines them but they often sound like a lot of things – like, Garbage are rock, pop, alternative…

…and they have transitioned a lot.
Exactly.

Congratulations on getting the support slot for Skunk Anansie, by the way – that’s so exciting!
Yeah, we have good people, angels watching over us…

So, is it a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle on this tour? Pampering by hotels? Warnings not to trash rooms?
No, they just go: “Breakfast isn’t included…”

That’s tame…
I think it might be different for Garbage, but then again they’re not in a hotel – they’re in a bus. I don’t know where all these things come from. I think there was a generation of rock ‘n’ roll where the systems were not developed yet – that’s where the stereotype of throwing TVs out of windows comes from. You’ve got to remember that it was the 60s – things were happening, revolutions, etc. Now, we’re all postmodern – you can sort of do what you want… So musicians have become less rebellious…

Things have really changed – the commercial and independent industries which were traditionally at war have become almost one and the same, to the point where everything looks so clean-cut and commercialized…
And Adele is the pinnacle of both. She’s the biggest independent act – she’s great. She’s indie AND she’s the biggest-selling artist in the world. I mean, what can you say? I’m sure there’s some Christian artist that I’ve never heard of that’s bigger-selling but… Yeah, I think she’s good – I think she writes from the heart.

In terms of how female musicians are doing, some female musicians do talk openly about how important they feel it is for women to make their mark in this industry, but I’m always surprised by those who insist that it’s not an issue anymore…
They’re having a laugh, I think. It’s like history existed and it doesn’t just STOP when you make it official that we’re equal – it takes a long time to transform.

Right, but what I often hear is: “Well, we’ve got Adele now so everything’s fine…”
Yeah, but then you’ve got the argument about pop… There’s SO much to talk about… like why we commercialize “the other” – and that has been black people and women in the arts for a really long time. We’re so obsessed with buying this emotion of “the other” that maybe having successful women in the arts doesn’t necessarily suggest that it’s equal between the sexes at all. It’s like saying racism is not an issue in America because there are successful rappers. It’s just ridiculous. Rap music, black music, R&B dominates pop music but that’s arguably objectification by white consumers so it’s not necessarily significant…

And then you have commercially successful female artists like Nicki Minaj out there, who – going by her shows in the UK at least – boasts a very white following.
Yeah. Well I mean, Nicki Minaj is really white in a lot of ways as well. It’s like in the 50s and 60s when Elvis was blacking it up. Nicki Minaj is like Lady Gaga but slightly more tanned… she’s drawing on a lot of really white traditions as well. I think it kind of blurs. It certainly appeals to that demographic it seems…

Totally. But this is what you guys also have to deal with, isn’t it? You depend on people buying your music…
Yeah, you do.

So, how are you finding it in the UK now? Because when we met in Manchester the last time, you felt the press response to the band wasn’t great…
I still do, but it’s funny. It’s really because – like any human being, in human nature for some reason – insults stick more than compliments. There possibly ARE more compliments than insults, but when you get a criticism you notice it and you’re like, “Right, ok.” You don’t notice any of the good stuff. I also talked to a lot of other bands and the UK’s just hard and weird. Like, these guys [points to the other Jezabels] even in London were like, “We’ve never had a reception like this – what’s going on?” because, you know, you’ll go to any other place and people will be like, “Waaahhh!” and then you’re here and they just fold their arms.

If you look at INXS for example…
How they’re also Australian…

Yeah, they also had a rough time when they got going… It could be that Britain is difficult for certain bands to break?
It is difficult to break because it’s got a fickle industry and very critical people – I’m pretty sure they invented criticism. But that’s cool, I’m down with that. However, being an Australian in Britain, there is a kind of stigma, a kind of cultural cringe.

So do you hear the phrase “Australian band” being thrown around a lot?
A little bit. I think it came from one of our first reviews where people said, “I felt like I was watching Crocodile Dundee” or something…

No way! That’s quite severe…
And it was like, “Are you serious?? Really? Is that REALLY what you felt like – or did you just not come and know that we’re Australian?” Like literally, I don’t know how you could get that from us at all, apart from the accent and we hardly talk.

That’s just how irresponsible the media can be though. They might not even go see the band live, and might not even know who the band is…
Totally. They’ll just read a review and absorb it and that’s all they’ll know about that band. Yeah. If you read about this band, some people think we’re emos – which I find quite funny – but that’s more accurate than “Crocodile Dundee!” And I do have a black fringe, to be fair, but that’s about it…

They may have seen you at least!
Yeah, they saw a picture and they know our nationality… Exactly. But hey, it’s fine. I don’t mind being Australian, but the truth is that that whole aesthetic that people associate with Australia – the blokey, bogany Crocodile Dundee – is so wrong. I mean, Paul Hogan is to blame for many stereotypes. No one calls them shrimps, I’ll have you know! We call them prawns. And a few other things: none of us carry knives – it’s illegal; we don’t wear those hats; the majority of us live in cities and wear shoes; there are no kangaroos in our backyards; and we have women in our country – contrary to popular belief, there are some girls.

Well, now you’ve toured various corners of the globe, England must seem pretty provincial?
I love England – I love how they’re kind of bastards. It’s great. My Dad is Scottish and so I kind of have that hatred for England. But I also have love for the British people in general and how they have this dark humour and can just cut straight to the point, whereas you go to other places like America where they’re very “nice” but you’re not entirely sure of what they’re really thinking. So on any day, as much as I say it’s pretty hard in the UK for bands, you’d rather honesty.

At least you know where you stand. Like, you knew where you stood at that point, didn’t you, back in Manchester?
Yeah, we knew we were going to have to kick and scream in this country and we still do and that’s fine.

But you’re definitely more at ease this time round, aren’t you?
Well, we’re supporting…

Exactly, you don’t have that same pressure maybe…
I think we know we’re playing to music lovers on this tour. Garbage fans are a mix between alternative goths, really normal people, people who love music, and young people who’ve just discovered it and it’s not intimidating at all because it’s Garbage fans: they’re just awesome and weird – weird and awesome but also really normal. So we’re just like, “Yeah, it’s going to be fine.”

And you’ll get more attention now, won’t you, off the back of this tour?
Off the back of this, yes.

What impressed me the first time I met you guys at KOKO was how tight a team you are not just on stage but also backstage – Heather mentioned that the two of you pretty much grew up together…
Yeah, I’ve known her for probably 15 years, but we’ve been friends for about 10/12. And we’ve been doing this, writing together, for about 7 or 8 years and playing in this band for about 5.

Are you pretty much like sisters?
Yeah, it’s a bit more like sisters than friends even. It’s like… Heather.

Does that help in terms of honesty?
Not in a bad way – it’s just almost a taken-for-granted situation which is good and bad, but it is what it is.

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The Jezabels/Garbage lineup seems all the more appropriate when you look at that great piece you wrote for Q on misogyny in the music industry, and the recent report where Shirley Manson called the music industry a “dinosaur” and impressively halted an Atlanta show to throw out a male fan who punched a female fan. You’re both on a similar page when it comes to ethics…
I think that’s what I meant before. I haven’t followed her statements but I think I can just tell… You know what I mean? I mean, I don’t even know if that’s a gender issue – that’s just crazy that someone punched someone.

Yeah, she’s clearly not interested in hiding her views or hiding behind her stage persona even when she’s on stage – it’s cool that she suddenly let the “diva” fall to one side…
Well, if you can call it the “diva” element of someone like Shirley Manson, the cool thing is that it’s not a “pop” diva – it’s a “staunch” diva. I feel like that is all part of her whole thing – it just comes across. Like, I haven’t heard any quote but I already know what her views are. You know from her songs, her attitude and how she carries herself, the way she talks to girls, the way she talks to us – you can just TELL.

Do you think it’s important to ask yourself as a musician: “Who am I going to be? Am I going to be a role model for young kids? Am I going to behave professionally? Or am I going to be a brat?”
Very, I reckon. I mean there’s relevance to the rough rockstar or whatever. Because if music’s getting too sterile one day and everyone’s too professional, maybe there’ll be a wave of that coming and it’ll be very important. But I think you find out very quickly that musicians are not cool – they’re nerds. They’re very hardworking people. They might get involved in some substances at points, but generally they have to get visas all the time, be in a different country every day – that takes organisation and discipline. If you think about the actual reality of musicians’ lives, they’re not cool – they’re working very hard and not sleeping very much. They’re cool in another way but they’re not like rockstars. So I think it’s really important to realize the reality of it and how you’ve just got to wind your neck in…

Talking about keeping your feet on the ground: In your acceptance speech for the 2011 Australian Music Prize (Amp), you took the opportunity to make some excellent points on the principles behind the award, because there was really some bizarre controversy surrounding that…
That speech was actually in particular reference to the criticisms of the shortlist including us, Gotye, Kimbra – it‘s quite indie but successful indie. Do you know Triple J? It’s like the dominant alternative radio station in Australia – it’s government-funded and national. The shortlist for the Amp was called “Triple J friendly” so we were sort of getting criticised in amongst this group which a FEW bloggers called a “safe” shortlist – because it’s not supposed to be about commercial success, it’s supposed to be about excellence. But when we won that, the criticisms didn’t stop – they got worse and it was like, “Well, now you really are just picking on us…”

I guess those criticisms came from Australia, because there wasn’t much negative press about it over here…
Well here, we’re not successful – we’re just an emerging thing. Whereas there, I guess we don’t need help in people’s opinion and so they felt like we were actually TOO popular to perhaps win that award or something? I couldn’t quite work it out…

But your album did really well over there. So, if it’s an award for “excellence,” isn’t that still relevant?
This is the crux. A lot of people think that “excellence” and “popularity” are mutually exclusive. However, what I said specifically in that speech is that they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive. We recognised that there are a lot of people out there making albums, and we thanked people. Just because an album sold well doesn’t mean it’s not good, but I guess a lot of people think that if something’s commercially successful, it’s bad…?

I guess every country’s industry has different issues… But, how was the local media response to your speech? In the UK at least, the mainstream media aren’t generally interested in what artists have to say – it can even be the kiss of death for a band to voice their opinion.
See, Australia’s a little bit different. There is a little bit of a tall poppy syndrome in Australia actually, so if you show yourself to be a real person that’s down to earth and aware that you’re not the bee’s knees just because you’re semi-successful, they like you for it.

So why was it important for you to deal with the Amp criticism and put it out there?
Well, I wrote that before I knew we’d won it. They said, “The Amp’s coming up tomorrow. Write an acceptance speech in case it comes out so we can send it off to whoever, so it can come out as soon as it’s announced.” And it wasn’t really that we expected it, because we were over here and we weren’t in the hype of it all…

That’s right, you were here on tour…
But I think it’s just that you hear a lot of people assuming a lot of things about you, like: “You assume you deserve it (for a start). You assume that other people don’t deserve it. You don’t know anything about the industry. You don’t know anything about all the albums that came out. You’re just a dumb musician.” – there was a LOT of that being written. The whole criticism of the award was basically tailored to the idea that: “Musicians shouldn’t be allowed to be judges anymore because this is who is getting awarded this, and only critics and industry people should be allowed to, because they actually know what music’s about.” So, musicians were getting a pretty hard rap and so were we – we were getting really criticised and everyone was saying our album was crap. Well, not EVERYONE – this was just a few angry people. So we wanted to thank people but also acknowledge that it was a hard decision and you can’t please everyone.

But you weren’t ignoring it either, because that would certainly be tempting for a lot of bands…
Well that’s easier, definitely.

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If you were talking to yourself in the early days, what nuggets of advice would you give yourself?
Hmm… Part of me would say don’t read reviews because the good ones don’t satisfy you either.

Do the bad ones prey on you?
The bad ones annoy you because they never get it [laughs]. And the good ones, they don’t get it either because they were just ready to praise you, so it’s like, “Why am I not satisfied?” And then you realise that you will never be satisfied and that’s bad. So: Don’t read reviews.

What else have you learned, apart from keeping away from reviews?
Be nice to people …except Neil – don’t be nice to Neil! [laughs]

Your tour manager?
Find the whipping boy and only be mean to that person!! [laughs] It’s ok, it’s mutual [laughs]… No, seriously…

So, seriously, is there someone you can go rage to when things get on top of you? I guess you can’t really do that within the band, because you’re all in the same boat…
We get pretty negative sometimes. I would advise people to avoid negativity, but that’s not something I do – that’s something I SAY to do. I don’t know… I talk to my manager, I just vent and he just listens and then I go, “Sorry…” And he’s like, “That’s fine, as long as you don’t tell other people these things.”

Well, you guys have definitely won our award for the nicest band around…
HAYLEY: There you go!!
SAM: We’re actually really rude!! Do you want me to be rude to you..?? [room erupts in laughter]

Well, sure, if you want it on the record…?!
Ah yeah…

So do you always get on with each other all the time?
HAYLEY: Yeah, it’s just this all the time… [laughs]
SAM: It’s mostly like this…

So, what’s the most annoying thing that’s happened when you’ve been on tour?
Well, I think that “not-sleeping night” was good… We just recently played a show in Miami which started at 1am – we drove to the airport from the show to fly to New York so we landed out at 2:30am, checked in at 4am, flew at 6am, arrived at 8 or 9am, played at 12:30 or 12:50pm… and then we did press for the rest of the day! So, I think that when you actually book a schedule where you can’t sleep, that’s not good. That was a one-off.

So another valuable piece of advice: Try and fit sleep in.
Sleep’s good because you don’t get enough anyway on tour but when you literally don’t allow for it, that’s bad. And mealtimes – because the times when you haven’t been able to eat are the worst.

Yeah, people forget that being on stage and on tour can be very physically demanding…
You need to sleep. Yeah, sleeping and eating. And, another thing I’d say but don’t do is: Exercise – because that keeps you from being miserable.

Being on tour, it must seem endless and you must lose track of time – what do you do to get a break from the craziness?
Well, you get really obsessed with Wi-Fi. Like, if there’s no Wi-Fi you get really upset. You get quite anxious. Wi-Fi is important. And you get sick of the word “Wi-Fi” so you invent codes like “wing-wong.”

What did people do in the days they didn’t have the Internet?
Well, they were rockstars and they were known as arseholes because they slept with a lot of people, remember? Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The internet allows monogamy to exist – coexist with rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s chilled it out. Ok, so internet safety…
Well, if monogamy is saving you… but, that’s a whole new discussion…

Top tip for a lead singer?
Warm up and warm down.

Vocally?
Yeah – sleep, rest. Actually: vocal rest. I’m actually really bad at vocally resting because I’m a talkative person, but yeah… Don’t drink – don’t drink too much. Be healthy, actually.

Wow, this is like a new generation of musicians isn’t it? Where have the rock-n-roll-trashing-hotel-room days gone?
No Wi-Fi back then! No Wi-Fi, no Spotify… no… What else ends with “-fi”?

Well, you’re doing really well back at home and the buzz is very good over here this time. Plus, Shirley Manson is promoting you!
Yeah! She is, actually!

Has Shirley given you any great tips?
You know what? It comes back to the question about how important role models are… just musicians in general but females as well. You learn a lot just talking to them and just seeing a band that’s a lot further progressed – Garbage have been around for a while. And Shirley was just like, “Don’t worry about it.” And that’s what every experienced musician says: “Don’t worry about it – you’ll never be happy with what people say about you anyway, so you just have to keep doing what you’re doing…”

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<< READ PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW HERE >>

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SICK OF SARAH – PART 2 Interview

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Some will be surprised to hear that Minneapolis-based band Sick of Sarah has been around for a while – in fact, they formed in 2005. Since then, they have generated a loyal following, pumped out 2 albums and replaced a drummer, namely Brooke Svanes. Welcome to Sick of Sarah, AKA Abisha Uhl (vocals), Jessie Farmer (guitar), Katie Murphy (guitar), Jamie Holm (bass) and Jessica Forsythe (drums).

The band have been working hard to build a Brit fanbase, catapulting themselves towards UK venues. This year, with some dates supporting Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey’s LA band Uh Huh Her, SoS is finally receiving some well-deserved UK attention. They even went on to blow UHH off the stage at the Shepherds Bush Empire London – memorable not only for singer Uhl pulling up her shirt over her head, driving the mostly female crowds wild, but also for SoS’ blistering live performance. In short, these guys deliver high-energy shows with Uhl ruling the stage and loving the direct crowd contact. Oh, and their music happens to rock – big time.

So, to get to know this band a bit better, here’s some interesting trivia: Lead singer Abisha Uhl grew up in Okinawa, Japan, where she lived until she was 18. They recorded their last album 2205 in a Texas studio where Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs left them behind a piece of paper with the number of a therapist and masseuse. The band’s house and rehearsal space 2205 Grand Ave has served both as a rotating home for each member of the band over the last few years and as a central creative hub – this location has become such an important symbol to the band’s identity that every member has a tattoo “2205” on their inner wrist (watch Jamie getting hers here). They’re in the middle of shooting a feature-length documentary about the band.

We caught up with 4 out of 5 of them backstage at the Shepherds Bush Empire London. After speaking to Jessie and Jamie backstage in the cosy confines of their dressing room, we picked up lead singer Abisha and guitarist Katie from the merch desk and headed outside for a very entertaining chat. Here’s Part 2 of our exclusive Sick Of Sarah interview, where Abisha and Katie talk Japanese pop stars, and how to stand tough against sexism in the music industry.

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So, Katie you grew up in Minneapolis…
KATIE: Yeah!

…but Abisha you grew up in Okinawa, Japan?
ABISHA: Yeah, I moved from Japan to the States when I was 18 and I met Katie a few years after that.

It’s cool that you spent time in Japan, because as you know we are SHATTERJAPAN!
ABISHA: Yes! I was super pumped when I heard the word SHATTERJAPAN… I was like, “We HAVE to do this interview – it’s SHATTERJAPAN! Japan! Japan!” I have serious pride…

Serious pride in Japan? That’s cool. I conceived the project in Japan actually because I felt visibility for female artists over there wasn’t good enough…
ABISHA: Yeah, it’s hard…

So did you spend most of your time on military bases? I guess you didn’t spend much time say in Tokyo…
KATIE: You’ve got a military brat over here!

ABISHA: We’d stay round Narita airport area, but I hung out in Yokosuka a bunch of times, then Yokota, Misawa, Osaka… Tokyo is huge – it’s crazy. Okinawa is very villagey – I mean, Naha (capital of Okinawa) is a big area, but where I lived was all military bases. So I was a little sheltered…

And you stayed there until…
ABISHA: …until I was 18 years old.

Wow, Japan must have had a massive influence on you? Moving from Japan to the US must have been like entering another world…
ABISHA: For sure. I mean, my parents are for the most part American so we would go stateside every summer and I would spend a few months in Washington State – so I had the American experience there. And on the base, I had my American experience but also got the Okinawan.

And what about culture – were you also quite shut off from music when you were in Japan?
ABISHA: Absolutely. I was definitely sheltered from a lot of music. But, what I was influenced by was my siblings, for the most part. My brothers were in bands and they played out in Naha, so I would go. From a very young age, my brothers would be playing in shows, they played guitar and sang – and they’re really good, instrumentally-wise…

KATIE: Her brothers are really good!

So, did you jam with them sometimes?
KATIE: Oh they’ve done stuff, I’ve seen it…

ABISHA: Yeah we’ve done some stuff… but I had my own kind of route that I wanted to go down: I was very poppy. I grew up listening to a lot of Utada Hikaru…

Oh wow! Yeah, she’s really poppy…
ABISHA: … and Puffy!

Oh yeah, Puffy! They were so much fun, but also edgy – poppy and edgy…
ABISHA: And Amuro…?

Amuro Namie!!
ABISHA: Yeah, yeah – you got it!! So, I grew up with [sings] “It’s automatic!” [everyone laughs]

KATIE: I’m laughing, just because I like hearing about stuff she did before I knew her, you know?!

Amuro Namie: Body Feels Exit (1995)

PUFFY: Ajia-no-junshin “True Asia” (1996)

We’re talking about the cheesiest of Japanese pop music! But, these women were fierce – I mean, Amuro was a trendsetter and so was Utada Hikaru…
ABISHA: Utada Hikaru was a trendsetter for sure: she was the Britney Spears of Japan! She was awesome – like, her hair was awesome! And her vibe! When “Automatic” came out… yeah, it was kind of cheesy, looking back at it now, but at that point I was influenced – I was like, “Dude, this chick’s cool!” [sings] “It’s automatic!” And that one song by Utada Hikaru “First Love” was a beautiful love song!

Maybe you related to her a bit because she had that Japanese-American vibe… She was born in the States, right?
ABISHA: Yeah. She grew up in the states – she’s bilingual…

Have you made Katie watch Utada Hikaru? Her videos are quite stunning…
ABISHA: I think you might’ve seen a video…

KATIE: A long time ago when we met Abisha showed me some Japanese artists… If she was really into something, I’d have probably heard about it…

Utada Hikaru: Automatic (1998)

Utada Hikaru: First Love (1999)

So, are you seeing a new side of Abisha, Katie?
KATIE: No, this is actually an old side of her I haven’t heard in a while! From when I first met her…

ABISHA: Actually, do you know my friend Olivia Lufkin? I went to school with her – she did Kanebo (= a huge Japanese cosmetics company) and the theme song for the France soccer cup. So, there was Olivia Lufkin, and then I went to school with her sister Caroline Lufkin…

KATIE: Ok, I DID hear about this! She did “Where’s my love?” See, I remember!

ABISHA: Oh god, Caroline Lufkin! So good…! Both of those girls are amazing. So I grew up in a very musically influenced environment for sure with my siblings and my school…

Olivia Lufkin: Kanebo commercial (1999)

Caroline Lufkin: Where’s My Love (2005)

What about you, Katie?
KATIE: Honestly, I’m pretty much the only musician in my family. I didn’t really grow up listening to anything besides what was on the radio…

ABISHA: John Fogerty!

KATIE: When I turned 16, I started listening to Jewel and that’s when I started playing guitar – fingerpicking and stuff like that. I liked the melodic feel of it… I liked the singer-songwriter thing. And then I started listening to classic rock like John Fogerty, The Eagles… We all have completely different influences.

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So how did you guys meet?
KATIE: I met Abisha through a mutual friend… I was in college and I did coffee shop gigs playing cover songs, that kind of thing: Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, anything… I met Abisha, and the day I met her she brought her guitar to a friend’s house. She started playing some of her original songs and that was the first time I’d ever written music to anything – I’d never written anything before besides random stuff on the piano. We sat and we played guitar together for like 3 hours, so I was like, “Wow.” I’d never thought about being in a band – I just liked to play – but then she was like, “Let’s start a band.” I was like, “She’s fun! I want to hang out with her!” So we went to this party and she started saying, “Oh, me and my band are playing at this party…” I was like, “Who’s your band?” and she said “It’s you!” She had 3 songs and I wrote stuff to them, then we played a show. And then Jessie showed up and said, “If you actually want to be a band, I’ll play bass for you” and we just started!

So, with you being an all-female band, do you think that you get treated differently in the music industry?
KATIE: There’s a big difference, for sure. I think just because we’re women, people expect you – for whatever reason it is – not to know how to play your instruments. You’re expected to not exactly know what you’re doing because there’s always a man to rely on in some band, somewhere – you know, a man holding it up with the bass or with the drums or someone who can play some ripping guitar licks. You know what I mean? There’s always one that holds it down and is the strong point. But with us, I think it’s all 5 of us, so I think it’s beneficial in the sense of the whole sex appeal.

You know, I’m not stupid – I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, these girls are cute – let’s see what they can do” and they don’t expect much – a lot of people don’t, I know that. That’s why it feels good when people show up – knowing that, because of what society’s said or whatever it is, their expectations are lower but then they come to the show, we play our stuff and they’re like, “Wow, you’re actually good!” They don’t realise that it’s an underhanded compliment. And I’m not going to call it like, “Well, I’m a woman, it doesn’t matter” – I say “thank you” because I do appreciate it, I appreciate the compliment. But it IS different, because for some odd reason, people have lower expectations of girls with instruments because we’re women, so we have to look sexy, blah, blah… but we very rarely wear skirts, we just like to rock… but at the same time, I can’t disregard the fact that that helps us. I’m okay with the fact that people come to our shows because of how we look…

You’ve played a lot of Prides and recently L-Beach… but do you feel you’ve been pigeonholed as a “queer band?”
KATIE: Honestly, instinctively, I think people assume that if you’re a woman and you play guitar you must be a lesbian – it’s a huge cliché, stereotype…

Kind of like women who play football…
KATIE: Right – like, “you HAVE to be a lesbian, you MUST be.” I mean, if you’ve gone as far as playing professional football or professional basketball “then you MUST be a lesbian…” The thing is, though, I don’t mind being pigeonholed personally, because I’m a very proud lesbian. So I never hid that from the beginning, because I knew that that was going to be involved when I started being in music, and people were going to ask questions because it’s assumed. We’ve had so much support from the LGBT community – we embrace it, we enjoy it, we feel good about it, honest to god, because those are my people. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and I guess it doesn’t hurt to be compared to Tegan and Sara…
ABISHA: No, absolutely, of course not! So many people are like, “Why don’t you tour with Tegan and Sara?” I don’t know! Ask them. That’d be great…

KATIE: That’d be something! Maybe the names are too similar, I don’t know. But being pigeonholed, considered cliché or stereotypical doesn’t bother me, because I believe all of those things kind of exist for a reason. You know, I kind of seem like a lesbian, and I’m not mad that you think so. You know what I mean? I’m not mad when people assume that, because I walk kind of tough and that’s how it goes. And as far as our band goes, we all have different looks, we all have different appeals. Some of us date men, some of us date women, and if a certain group of people want to embrace us, then that’s fine.

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What message do you have for artists out there who are trying to do what you do?
KATIE: Honestly, I didn’t learn what sacrifice was until I did this – and it’s not in a huge, epic sense because there are harder things to do than tour and be in a band – but I’m saying that when you continually sacrifice for your passion, when you want your career and your passion to coincide, the more you fight for it, the more you give to it, the better it feels – the more fulfilling it is. I used to be a hell of a lot more materialistic than I am now, but I’m happier now than I was before the band started. Honestly, record anything you’ve ever written – it doesn’t matter if you think it sounds stupid because you can use it in a different song, you can place it with anything else. And there’s always more you can give, because it’s ultimately worth it. I don’t make a million dollars a year, I don’t make shit, we’re all broke as hell, but we’re all really happy. If you wish on a star, wish for happiness. I used to wish for specific things, then my bass player told me to wish for happiness, and that’s what this is. It’s rough, but it’s totally worth it, you know?

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<< READ PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW HERE >>

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SICK OF SARAH – PART 1 Interview

[tabs tab1=”Intro” tab2=”Background” tab3=”The Band” tab4=”Message” count=”4″]
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Some will be surprised to hear that Minneapolis-based band Sick of Sarah has been around for a while – in fact, they formed in 2005. Since then, they have generated a loyal following, pumped out 2 albums and replaced a drummer, namely Brooke Svanes. Welcome to Sick of Sarah, AKA Abisha Uhl (vocals), Jessie Farmer (guitar), Katie Murphy (guitar), Jamie Holm (bass) and Jessica Forsythe (drums).

The band have been working hard to build a Brit fanbase, catapulting themselves towards UK venues. This year, with some dates supporting Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey’s LA band Uh Huh Her, SoS is finally receiving some well-deserved UK attention. They even went on to blow UHH off the stage at the Shepherds Bush Empire London – memorable not only for singer Uhl pulling up her shirt over her head, driving the mostly female crowds wild, but also for SoS’ blistering live performance. In short, these guys deliver high-energy shows with Uhl ruling the stage and loving the direct crowd contact. Oh, and their music happens to rock – big time.

So, to get to know this band a bit better, here’s some interesting trivia: Lead singer Abisha Uhl grew up in Okinawa, Japan, where she lived until she was 18. They recorded their last album 2205 in a Texas studio where Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs left them behind a piece of paper with the number of a therapist and masseuse. The band’s house and rehearsal space 2205 Grand Ave has served both as a rotating home for each member of the band over the last few years and as a central creative hub – this location has become such an important symbol to the band’s identity that every member has a tattoo “2205” on their inner wrist (watch Jamie getting hers here). They’re in the middle of shooting a feature-length documentary about the band.

We caught up with 4 out of 5 of them backstage at the Shepherds Bush Empire London. Up and up the winding stairs we go until we knock on the SoS dressing room door, where we first find guitarist Jessie and bass player Jamie chilling out after their set. Here’s Part 1 of our exclusive Sick Of Sarah interview, where Jessie and Jamie talk music, prejudice faced by girl bands, and Pussy Riot’s detention.

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Hi guys! So, please introduce yourselves…
JESSIE: Hello! I’m Jessie and I play guitar for Sick Of Sarah.
JAMIE: And I’m Jamie and I play bass.

The band is based in Minneapolis, but did you both grow up there?
JESSIE: For the most part… I was born in Illinois and moved to Minnesota when I was 5.
JAMIE: Yeah, I grew up like 5 hours north of Minneapolis and then moved there when I was 18.

So how did you guys get into music?
JESSIE: My older brother played guitar and piano and stuff. My parents bought a piano when I was like 7 so that was my first instrument. Then I played violin, and then I picked up the guitar and drums – my little brother played drums – I was about 10 when that happened. And then I played flute at school as well…

Now you’re focused on guitar, but do you still keep up the other ones?
JESSIE: I still play piano and I can play the drums – I can carry a decent beat, I’ve pretty good rhythm. And bass and guitar of course go hand in hand too…

So, how about you, Jamie?
JAMIE: My dad and older brother played guitar – I have a brother and a sister – and I was a kid who wanted to do the things that my mum did and the things that my dad did, so I wanted to play guitar too. I’d hide in my basement and write stupid love songs, even though I hadn’t dated anyone… My brother actually found one of them and he was like, “Ahhh, I love you…! – Did you write this??” I was like 16 and thinking, “Do I admit it or not…?”

And did you?
JAMIE: Yes, I did!
JESSIE: “Oh, You’re just darn cute!!”

And what would you say were your influences getting into music?
JESSIE: I guess my first major influence was probably Kurt Cobain before he died. I was kind of getting into Nirvana and loved playing all the Nirvana songs, and then he died and I was devastated. He was my first. Joan Jett was definitely an influence of mine… Babes in Toyland, L7 – the girl bands in the 90s were huge influences of mine.

JAMIE: A lot of mine was older stuff. My dad listened to a lot of folky stuff – a lot of Bob Dylan – he loved John Prine, he loved a lot of stuff like that, and he’d play a lot too. So a lot of my influences were stuff that my dad would play and sing to me, like old, old, old stuff that I don’t even know. At night, he would sit there in our bathroom and sing to me and my brother and sister before we’d go to bed – that was kind of a ritual we had.

That’s a pretty cool dad…
JAMIE: Yeah…

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You mentioned girl bands from the 90s. As an all-female band yourselves, how do you feel the music industry has treated you?
JAMIE: It’s a double-edged sword, honestly…
JESSIE: Yeah…
JAMIE: I mean, there are certain aspects where we’re given more attention because we are all female. And then there are a lot of times where we’ll walk into a venue and we’ll be treated like crap where nobody thinks we can do anything because we’re all female, and generally that’s turned around by the time we leave because they enjoy our show. But, I definitely think there’s good and bad taken from that sort of thing.

And do you think this is a very common experience for women in the industry?
JAMIE: Yeah, probably in every aspect of it – whatever position you’re in in the industry.

In terms of your band setup, is there a backstory to your former drummer Brooke’s departure?
JESSIE: She really wanted to move to New York and we kind of weren’t financially in a position for all of us to do that. It was something she really wanted to do, so we were just like “Hey, do it!” And then also, we were in between our first record and starting to write our second one, and she was just like, “Oh well, we can all just file share,” but…
JAMIE: …she was just at a different place than we were at that point. She really wanted to move there and explore some different things too – and she’s done it and she’s involved in some other stuff out there that’s she’s really happy about now. So, she’s happy for us, we’re happy for her… it worked out well.

Yeah, and then you found Jessica – was it important for you to find a female drummer?
JAMIE: We did definitely want to find a female drummer and we were slightly worried about being able to do that, but it came super easy because we’d played with her old band which was from Des Moines, Iowa – we just asked her to come up and try out and we didn’t even try out anybody else. She was it.

She is awesome…
JAMIE: Yeah and she’s been amazing. It’s worked out super well. We realise how lucky we got in finding her that easily.

You have a large queer fanbase and some of you are also queer yourself…
JESSIE: I don’t know WHAT you’re talking about! [everyone laughs]
JAMIE: Jessie’s boyfriend doesn’t like her to talk about it!
JESSIE: Yeah, my boyfriend “Nick” does not like it!
JAMIE: “Nick” hates when this question comes up!

…well, I didn’t want to assume…!
JESSIE: I don’t know WHAT you’re talking about! [everyone laughs again]
JAMIE: No, “Nick” is awesome!

…but the band’s mostly queer?
JAMIE: Definitely more queer than straight.
JESSIE: We are an equal opportunities band!! [laughs]
JAMIE: I guess for us, no matter what your sexuality is, it’s so much not about that – it’s not our focus at all. And it’s not that we’re trying to shy away from those questions, even – it’s just that we want to write music because we love to write music, and we just don’t feel like that’s a thing that we’d focus on as far as what we do.

Do you find that you’re pigeonholed because of that?
JESSIE: Yeah, we do get pigeonholed, but we definitely embrace the community because it’s great and we love it and it loves us, and so we’re not going to deny the fact that there’s this great community that we’re part of. But also, with being any professional musician who wants to not necessarily just appeal to one certain demographic or culture or whatever, we want to be universally diverse and not be gender-specific or gay or straight -specific…
JAMIE: And we’re not an entirely gay band, and that’s not what we’re striving for…
JESSIE: Yeah… I’m straight! So… [room erupts in laughter]

Uh Huh Her seems to have been pigeonholed in a similar way, and I wonder if it frustrates them a bit. But, is this boxing issue getting better in the States?
JESSIE: Well, everybody wants to put everybody else in a box, you know what I mean? Even Tegan and Sara when they were starting out in the States – there’s a large percentage of lesbians that follow them and it’s cool for younger generations that are just coming up. I think pigeonholing is an old-fashioned thing to do, while the younger generations are just like, “Whatever… so they happen to be gay…” And yeah, it’s cool for really young queer kids who are just coming out to have someone to identify with who’s “in the spotlight.”
JAMIE: Tegan and Sara have definitely been an example of a band who has gotten that mainstream – they’ve crossed over. They’ve been given that chance to tour with a lot of mainstream, bigger bands and it hasn’t been necessarily a gay/straight thing or whatever. They’ve definitely paved the way…
JESSIE: Yeah, they make great music…
JAMIE: Is it where it should be? Absolutely not. But is it getting better? I think, gradually, yes. It’s edging towards where we want to be.
JESSIE: It’s funny, speaking of girl bands – even though the Murmurs weren’t an all-girl band – here’s the funny thing: when I was a freshman in high school and that song “You Suck” came out, that was actually when I first heard of – well, discovered – Leisha Hailey. I’ve kind of been following her for years and years and years, and she was in that queer movie All Over Me too. So it was just interesting from an outsider’s perspective to watch her career grow. And all of a sudden, we started playing with them, and it was like, “I remember YOU!”

And it’s not the first time you’ve played with Uh Huh Her…
JAMIE: We played with them at a Pride Fest, in the States – that’s where we first met them.
JESSIE: In Minnesota, yeah.

Talking about Tegan and Sara, they did a brilliant music video with Margaret Cho – we’re dying to see you guys do something with her too…
JESSIE: Oh god I love her! I’ve seen her show 3 times – well worth the money!

JAMIE: Yeah, she’s hilarious.

And what’s the Minnesota queer scene like?
JESSIE: We have the third largest per capita gay population in America. I mean, there are larger cities that have more gay people but in comparison we have the third largest per capita.

So do you think that you guys will be coming over this side of the pond more frequently?
JAMIE: Yes! I do think so, because last year was our first time and now this year even it’s twice and very close together, so I think we probably will. Even the response since last year has been a lot better so I think it’s definitely going to grow a lot faster. Especially doing the L-Beach Festival.
JESSIE: Yeah, that was great.
JAMIE: We had such an amazing time there and we met a lot of people. We hope to do that again and to have the opportunity to do things like that a lot more often too.

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What message of advice would you give to people wanting to be successful in music like you?
JAMIE: For anyone trying to get into any sort of artistic thing, it’s obviously super hard. The thing about it is there’s no definite plan or outline of how to do it – you can only do your research, ask questions, get involved with other people who are also involved in it and learn from them. And just make sure that you’re putting forth so much more effort than you even think you need to attempt to get there, and understand that even people who are at these high levels don’t know what they’re doing. Everyone’s just experimenting with all sorts of things. So the number one thing I would say is: it’s about the effort you’re putting into it, getting to know these people and doing your research. And anyone can do it. If you think you can do it, figure out how to do it.
JESSIE: And believe in yourself, practise and just work really hard.

And what do you think of the fact that members of Russian band Pussy Riot have been locked up for performing protest songs in public and are facing up to 7 years in jail for “hooliganism?” (* the women were later sentenced to 2 years)
JESSIE: I would say: Good for them for believing in the cause so much that they’re willing to go to jail for it, I think that’s fantastic, because clearly there’s something going on that they need to be that radical to make that much of a statement. I mean, how can you get 7 years in jail for “hooliganism”?? I’m pretty sure that people do worse things than that…

>> READ PART 2 HERE >>

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PATTY SCHEMEL Interview

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In an industry where band drummers continue to be overlooked by the mainstream media and business elements, it’s nothing short of an industrial crime that very few female drummers are welcomed into the drumming hall of fame, to be remembered and referenced for generations to come, to serve as an inspiration to young aspiring musicians. For good reason, PATTY SCHEMEL is one of those select few. And the 2011 documentary “HIT SO HARD” (aptly tag-lined as “the life and near-death story of Patty Schemel”) pays homage to one of the best drummers the industry has ever experienced.

“Hit So Hard” was a story waiting to be told, and you do not have to be a HOLE fan to appreciate the impressive talents and struggles of a woman who found herself living on the edge, left with the ultimate choice between fighting for her life or being resigned to the tragic fate surely awaiting her at the time.

The feature openly explores the links between Schemel’s troubles and her chaotic lifestyle during the Hole years (1992-1997) as well as her internal conflict over her sexuality. We are given an indepth insight into Schemel’s psyche and her experiences as a woman cracking under the pressure of the mania that comes with intensive touring and recording.

We’re left with no doubt whatsoever that as a musician of very high calibre, she was just one of many, many victims of the patriarchal bullying which took place and still is known to go on in the music industry, Courtney Love herself in a press event for the documentary naming and shaming producer Michael Beinhorn (“still a nazi fuck”) as the cause of Schemel’s untimely expulsion from the band during the “Celebrity Skin” album recording. Particularly unfortunate for Schemel was Love’s compliance with the decision at the time, suggesting that there was a real manipulation of the band taking place with critical business decisions being passed through a lead singer who was notoriously temperamental, for the most part not entirely lucid, and out of the loop with the conspiring mechanisms surrounding her. Add to that Love’s state of mind following Kurt Cobain’s suicide, followed shortly by the tragic overdosing of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, and her concerns for Schemel’s safety in light of her worsening addictions, and the fates were already conspiring to give the band and Schemel a severe kick in the teeth.

It’s an inspiring story, as we follow Schemel’s recovery from career disaster and the depths of Skid Row homelessness all the way to her mentoring young musicians at LA ROCK N ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS, running dog care business DOGROCKER, working with musicians including Pink, Juliette Lewis and Linda Perry, drumming for new LA band THE COLD AND LOVELY, and meeting her eventual wife Christina Soletti with whom she now has daughter. Patty Schemel is indeed one of the fortunate few – not only in terms of earning herself the status of a top-class drummer, but also in terms of saving her own life. I’m sure that she will be honoured to no longer be remembered only as “that Hole drummer” but also as a role-model to women and artists.

In the depths of the BFI Southbank building, we meet and greet Patty Schemel who is having a rare moment of chill in the Green Room. There are few people that I meet and feel a sense of awe for, but Schemel lights up the room not so much with her legendary rock presence, but rather with her smiles and grace. She has survived, she is grateful and humble for any and all support, and she’s passionate to contribute more. I sense this incredible force of energy as I shake her hand and thank her for making the time. “Hit so Hard” was at the time being screening at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and she couldn’t be prouder or more appreciative. As we sit down, the only thought spinning in my head is: this will be a moment I shall not forget.

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It’s an emotional experience even just to watch the documentary. But how was the filmmaking process for you? It must have brought up a lot of memories…

During the making of it, there was a lot of footage to look through and it took quite a bit of time during one summer – the summer of ‘07 – to go through everything. So, every day I would go to the director David’s house and look through everything, and describe the scenes and footage. I’d leave there every day being transported back in time and then you have to come back to reality. Some days were harder than others, depending on the content, whatever we were looking at and the story that it lead to…

What in particular did you find emotional?

I guess for me, when I’m backstage just completely numb and altered, in the throes of my addiction… those scenes were difficult. And also, there’s some footage of Courtney in the crowd at the show in Chicago when she does one of those famous stage dives…

Yeah, that was quite shocking…

Yeah, it’s very disturbing. Back then, that happened often and I guess maybe the way things were then was part of being in that punk-rock scene. But to see it now as an adult, every time I see it, it’s so disturbing and it just affects me… like, “Whoa…”

You talk very openly about your sexuality in the film. How did the music help you to come to terms with that?

When I was young, I knew I was different because I was gay, and I chose the drums which was such a masculine instrument to pick – I wanted to be a drummer, and that was my outlet for all of that confusion and anger. Punk rock was where I went to find other people like me, so having that outlet for all that confusion and those feelings was really important. Also, having my parents that were supportive of me…

Yeah, your mum seems incredibly supportive from what we see of her in the film…

Everyone loves that part in the film! But, even though she was saying, “It’s ok to be gay,” it was so tumultuous within me to talk about it and to think, “Will I ever fall in love? Will I ever get married?” – and I did.

You talk so frankly about your addiction and your recovery. That must have been very tough for your mum – how familiar was she with the issues?

She was familiar with addiction and the process. There are a lot of parts of the interview that didn’t make the final cut, where she talked about how she didn’t expect me to live through it… She’s very supportive today of course and relieved, and she helps other parents as well.

Wow, that’s very cool. In the film, you openly admit that the drugs came first with you back then. But reflecting now on those dark days, how important for you is your health, family and love?

At this point, I’m so grateful that I had my career with my band and played music and that I still play music, but the simplicity of a day at home with my family is so important, and I love a schedule – that’s what early recovery gave me, like: “Get up, have the coffee, do the dishes…” All that stuff is so important, you know… my job is to go out and walk the dogs, and then have my shows at night…

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Do you think it’s important for young people to have cultural role models? And for musicians and artists to come out if they can?

Yes! Yes! Because when I was growing up, I looked to people I talk about it in the film like Patti Smith, Klaus Nomi, David Bowie and Boy George, who were playing with gender, and those were the people I was drawn to. I needed to know that there were others out there, and to find those other people like me – and these people were cool! And so today, when I talk about being gay, it doesn’t identify me 100 %, but it’s a part of me.

How does it feel now being referred as an icon or a musician role model?

Yeah… it’s uncomfortable… just simply put!

It’s not what you went out of your way to achieve…

No, no, no!

How important do you think it is for artists to be open about addiction and to help other artists?

I give back to another group called Musicians Assistance Program that fundraises for other musicians that don’t necessarily have funds to get in to treatment. I think it’s important to show that you can survive drugs and alcoholism in your chosen career, that you can survive through and continue to be a musician in that environment.

Talking about “giving back” to the music community, how important is it for those who have been through the industry to mentor young women and warn them of the traps?

Extremely important. For me, what it does is it brings me back to the beginning when I started to play drums and reminds me to stay grateful for what it gave me – it took me around the world and provided me a sort of focus and release, and introduced me to a whole new world of people and music. And what I’ve been doing with the girls rock camp (www.rockcampforgirlsla.org) is to share that with girls that are beginning to play. Mentoring them with other girls shows them that it’s about playing music, but it’s also about communicating with other women and that shared excitement about creating together – it’s about networking.

So what we do is we give them the opportunity to get to know each other and ask them, “What would you like to do in your band?” and they sort of find each other in that. One girl might say, “I’d like to write a song about skateboarding” and another says, “Me too!” They silkscreen their own t-shirts, make their own fanzines and come up with their own identity as a group.

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How has the process of being in a band changed for girls since your day?

In the ‘90s when we were playing, touring and just starting out, everyone had their fanzine – it was about touring and passing out your fanzine, mail order, PO boxes… Nowadays, it’s online, so everyone communicates on Tumblr or they write on Facebook: “Hey, I’m looking for a girl guitarist who’s into Siouxsie and the Banshees.” You can find people that way, or you can create your music online with other people and then put it out, never even needing to be in the same room. So, in a way, the Internet provides a great avenue for girls to find each other.

But face-to-face interaction is definitely important…

It is! It’s important for the girls to see each other, even down to what kind of style they’re wearing, like “Those boots are cool…”

After all your experiences, what advice would you give to musicians inspired by you?

Oh, that’s tough… If I could tell myself back then, I would say: Practise more – definitely! And really try and experience everything that comes your way – really experience it, don’t forget the special stuff, and be grateful.

And stand up to pushy producers?

Yeah! Don’t be a doormat!

 

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