Emily May 8/16/21 Emily May 8/16/21

Interview: Heavenly Reyna

Heavenly Reyna - Press Photo (credit Jeanne Dee)-2.jpg — Heavenly Reyna

Interview By: Emily May | Photo by: Jeanne Dee

Using her music as a cultural bridge to bring people together, LA-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Heavenly Reyna was raised in 48 countries as her family traveled the globe and documented their adventures as travel bloggers. She began violin lessons at 23 months, piano lessons at 3 years old, started writing songs at 4, and began her travels at the age of 5. Having grown up in a musically rich environment, Heavenly was a lover of music in the womb. Raised in a trilingual household, speaking and crafting songs in English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, she cultivated her musical skills throughout different cultures during her worldly travels. She has been called a “prodigy” and a “phenom”, having wowed crowds across many cultures with her incredible musical talent. Heavenly shot a lead in two movies and a pilot that was released in 2020 and sings 5 of her songs in one of the movies. She did a TED Talk, starred in the Brat series “The Talent Show”, won a Best Actress Award for her dramatic lead in the film “Rose”, was featured next to Ariana Grande in her “God Is a Woman” music video, appeared on MTV songwriting with Bebe Rexha, featured singer in Halsey’s as well as Lindsey Stirling’s documentaries, and won several film festival awards for writing/filmmaking/editing her Music Videos of her original songs. She played a lead in a TV series pilot and is working on her debut EP with Grammy-winning producer Mikal Blue. Having gone by the moniker of Mozart Dee for her childhood and young adult life, she is thrilled to now be releasing music under her name-Heavenly Reyna. She has done extensive live performances around the world at such venues as Carnegie Hall, House of Blues, Disney Hall, Six Flags, Four Seasons Hotels, Royce Hall, and Hilton Hotels and is a winner in the International Songwriting Competition and winner in the Unsigned Artist songwriting competition. Although the pandemic was hard on many in the music industry, Heavenly became a partner with Twitch TV, which has helped her to move forward with her music career despite industry restrictions over the past year and a half, as well as grow an intensely loyal fan base. With more music, music videos, and an EP on the way, Heavenly Reyna is certainly an artist to watch! You can connect with Heavenly Reyna via the following links.

You have said that you were born with a love of music, learning the violin at the age of 23 months and the piano at 3. You also grew up in a trilingual home and traveled the world with your parents starting at the age of 5 and performed and sang in many different countries. What can you tell me about your childhood and how world travel and different cultural immersions have affected you personally and musically?

I have always loved music. My mom says I even kicked in time to the music when I was in the womb! Growing up trilingual and traveling the world as a digital nomad with my family was unique and wonderful, but it seemed perfectly normal to me at the time. It is all I had known. My mom went to weekly community singing sessions for pregnant women and we went to music classes when I was three months old as well as Kindermusik classes as a baby. I grew up in a very musically rich environment and loved going to concerts even as a toddler. I started learning the violin at two years old because all the kids in my neighborhood played violin and we had an amazing local teacher who taught everyone. Seeing everyone else play made me want to do it as well and I was lucky enough that the teacher let me start early a few years early. I had an innovative piano teacher as well. Sometimes it was challenging taking a piano around the world with me but we had a full digital keyboard in our small camper van. Finding child-size violins in foreign countries, shopping in different languages, and finding people that would teach online when Skype was just starting to be used was also tough. But music was important to me, even at five years old, so when we started traveling non-stop around the world, we found ways to adapt. Being around such enriching global environments and having the freedom to explore and listen to all kinds of local music definitely impacted me greatly.

You started writing songs at the age of 4 and became really serious and prolific about songwriting when you were 10. What drew you to songwriting and how do you feel it has evolved for you over the years?

My mom says I just always really liked to write and make up songs. When I was about 3 or 4 years old, I was enrolled in a Kindermusik writing music class because I was really interested in creating music. That taught me some basics really early on. I really didn't like rote learning that is typical with classical piano training, so I studied with a jazz piano teacher whose method helped me get to know chords and expand on the basics of creating music. That was my passion even as a little kid. I got even more passionate about creating music and writing songs around 10 years old. I was living in Asia where I did a lot of karaoke, and I joined a choir at my local Chinese school. When I was 13, I was accepted to the same music school program that trained Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez in Dallas. There I worked with many songwriting teachers who helped teach me the craft of songwriting and song creation. I was also lucky enough to have many opportunities to perform in some amazing venues. From that point on, I’ve really just learned by doing. I’ve worked with some amazing professionals in L.A. and around the world and I am thrilled that some of my songs are in movies and on TV. I have more than 100 unreleased songs, and I just keep creating!

From 1st-4th grade, you traveled around Europe with your parents for 7 months out of each year and lived in a village in Spain for the other 3 months. What can you tell me about that time for you and how did spending so much time in Spain help you to connect with your Spanish roots?

I love, love, love Spain and I am really grateful that I was able to spend so much time there growing up. I would not have such a deep connection to my Hispanic heritage, language, and culture if I had not grown up there, going to school in a local Andalusian village. My roots are there and also Barcelona, where I spent much time every summer. Flamenco dancing starting at five years old and participating in all the amazing community and cultural holidays and events that the whole village participates in really became ingrained in my consciousness on so many levels. I went back when I did my 10-city European tour, and it was as if time stood still and I never left. That village girl, and that village life, lives within me no matter where I am, and I think you can hear it when I sing in Spanish!

At the age of 12, you and your family moved back to the US when you were presented with the opportunity to star in your own tv show about travel, leading you all to travel more around the country to get to know your home country better. What was that experience like for you and having been abroad for so many years, what was it like for you to travel around and become familiar with the US? Was it easy to adjust?

I think I adjusted fairly quickly as we stopped every two years in our travels to stay at my grandma’s house in California. I had stayed connected to those friends even as I traveled. With the internet, I could stay connected with various friends around the world even when I was traveling in another country. I love traveling and exploring new places, be it another country or across the U.S. Some of it was a cultural shock, but I adapt quickly to new environments, and it was wonderful to travel all over the U.S. and finally see it. I was almost 13 when I traveled across the U.S. and had been living in Malaysia before we returned. SE Asia is a very different lifestyle and environment, but I think it was the perfect age for me to explore my home country.

Aside from singing, you also act. What led you into acting and what can you tell me about the films you have been in and what you enjoy about acting? What was it like for you to win a best actress award for your role in 'Rose', as well as getting to feature 5 of your songs in 'Fame At A Deadly Cost'?

I fell into acting by accident. My first acting job was for a Japanese TV show. I met the producer and film crew in Croatia, and they asked me to be a part of the show. Then, when I was performing my song “Ashes” on the violin at a GRAMMY night gala, a casting director saw me. She was casting the movie Rose, where the lead was a teen who is a violin prodigy. She and the director ended up casting me in the role which I ended up winning an award for! That was definitely when the “acting bug” bit me. I really enjoy acting and really love doing films. I love that acting and songwriting are collaborative efforts. It is hard sometimes to juggle both careers, as they both take a tremendous amount of time and effort, but I do love them both. I also love when I can combine both like I did in Fame at a Deadly Cost. I had the best director, cast, and crew, and they ended up using five of my original songs!

You recently were made partner at Twitch Music. With the music industry having been so devastated during the pandemic, what can you tell me about your partnership with Twitch and finding ways to move forward with your music despite the restrictions? How have you utilized an online presence to grow your career and gain a loyal fan base?

I absolutely adore Twitch and my community there! The music industry and the film/TV industry were devastated because of the pandemic, like so many other industries. It was very hard for me because I live with my parents who are high risk, so I felt very isolated and sad that I wasn’t able to connect with friends or perform. Finding Twitch really was a lifesaver! It is really hard work, with really long hours where I’m singing. It is very tech-heavy to get started and I had a lot of challenges in the beginning, but I stuck with it. I started going viral on it and just broke over 2 million channel views, which is crazy. I have found the most amazing, supporting community and friends there. I've also been working with producers around the world from my tiny bedroom studio, so that has me stretched thin, but I am grateful to have found new ways to connect to the world and create and perform music. Twitch allows me to be my quirky self and I love the chat because I can connect with people in real-time.

Having performed live many times throughout your life, what was it like for you to adapt to livestreaming instead?

Livestreaming music is so different from performing live in many ways. I didn't really like livestreaming at first, but I had only tried it a few times on Instagram. The pandemic made me push past that resistance and try Twitch. I didn’t really have any real equipment when I started, just my mac webcam. I kept trying and met some really generous people on Twitch who believed in me and helped me. Now, I have so many deep bonds with my Twitch family, and I think I like livestreaming more than any other way of performing – or at least as much as performing in person! There is a special intimacy to connect virtually, partly because of the chat aspect and partly because the audience chooses the song choices. Sometimes mistakes are part of her performance – especially with “live learns” - and I’m a perfectionist, so that was hard for me at first. Being live for many hours, five times a week, and learning new songs in many new genres, will lead to mistakes. I think making mistakes in public and still being supported by my audience has been very healing for me. Performing on a livestream is very vulnerable in many ways and long hours can be a challenge vocally, especially when you can’t rehearse everything, but that spontaneous and close connection makes it very special.

What can you tell me about your new show Dark Springs that you created on Tik Tok with 3-time Emmy winner Bernie Su? How did you meet Bernie and come to work with him?

I met Bernie when I auditioned for his award-winning Twitch show "Artificial." I got called back, but ultimately didn’t end up getting that job – but Bernie and I hit it off, stayed in touch, and then co-created Dark Springs! Right now, Dark Springs is on hiatus, but it was so much fun making it as it’s completely interactive.

You have also received acclaim for your music videos! How would you describe your process in creating your music videos and what inspires your approach to and ideas for them?

Yes, I have! It’s really exciting because I do them on no budget, don’t have much experience as a director, or have really had professional filming equipment! Like my songs, my music videos just pop in my head and then I have to figure out how I can do what I want to do with no money! That is the biggest challenge.

You recently released your new acoustic single "EXIT." What can you tell me about the song, as well as it being your first single released under your birth name? What led you to decide to stop performing as Mozart and start performing as Heavenly Reyna?

“EXIT” is a quirky breakup ballad that compares a traffic jam to the moment in a relationship where you realize it is not going anywhere in a cathartic and empowering way. My Twitch audience loves the song and urged me to release it. I had always wanted to use my real name, rather than my nickname, but “Mozart” was used to protect my identity when I was younger as I have been a public person since the age of five. Now that I am older, I am thrilled to be going by my real name Heavenly Reyna - it feels so right!

What has the experience been like for you to work with Grammy-winning producer Mikal Blue on your upcoming EP? What can your fans expect from the EP?

I really love working with Mikal Blue! He is a very talented and supportive artist and producer. I think my fans will love my upcoming singles as I’ve been very busy and have a lot of songs I want to release, but I’d love to work on releasing the EP in the near future as well!

What's next for you?

The next step is creating the produced, official version of “EXIT” and doing the proper music video. I have some big surprises in store and already have the next two songs ready to go!

Emily May 8/4/21 Emily May 8/4/21

INTERVIEW: Mackenzie Shivers

Lissyelle x Mackenzie Shivers 2-2 copy.jpg — Mackenzie Shivers

Interview by: Emily May

NY based singer, songwriter and pianist Mackenzie Shivers has always loved music. From a young age, she told her mother that she had music inside of her that needed to come out and has always written and performed music as a means of expressing her emotions. She wrote her first song at the age of 4, started taking piano lessons at the age of 5, and grew up singing harmonies with her sister. She has released three full length albums, 2014’s Neverland, 2019’s The Unkindness, and Rejection Letter, released in April of this year. She has also released 3 EPs, 2016’s Living in My Head, 2017’s Ravens and 2019’s Holiday EP, Midwinter. Last year, she took what she thought would be a short vacation with her husband to a friend’s home in Cape Cod at the onset of the worldwide pandemic. They ended up being there for 3 months, and the change in scenery and the serenity of the resort town inspired her to write what would become her most recent album, Rejection Letter. Although she would normally write songs on her piano, the only instrument she had with her was a nylon stringed guitar that her father had gifted her, causing her to focus on honing her skills on the instrument and exploring it in ways she had not done before. Her time in quarantine allowed her to shed the self-imposed pressures she normally operated under and guitar tutorials by UK singer-songwriter Laura Marling inspired her to experiment with alternate tunings and take a much more freeform approach to her playing. Although Shivers had already written the 13 songs that she thought would comprise Rejection Letter, she returned to New York with a new batch of songs and worked with her producer/engineer Kevin Salem to rethink the approach to recording the album. In the interest of safety and social distancing, they decided to record the album piecemeal. Her bandmates Yuka Tadano (bass) and Cody Rahn (drums) recorded their parts separately, while she joined via FaceTime, and her cellist Oliover Kraus sent in his parts virtually from LA. Shivers sees Rejection Letter as her way of combatting her nature as a people pleaser, taking ownership of her voice and her ability to speak up and speak out, and embracing her rebellious spirit as an artist. Shivers has created a 3-part music video series for the album, comprised of videos for “Martha’s Vinyard”, “Afraid”, and the soon to be released “Butterscotch”. She also recently took part in The Woodstock Sessions, recording several of the songs live with a grand piano. With plans to release more music, Shivers plans to release an EP and then head into the studio to record a whole new batch of songs. You can connect with Mackenzie Shivers via the following links. Photo credit: Lissyelle Laricchia.

At a young age, you told your mom that you had music inside of you that needed to come out, having written your first song at the age of 4 and started piano lessons at 5. What can you tell me about the pull you felt towards music from a young age and about singing harmonies with your sister growing up? In what ways do you feel that writing and performing music has helped you to express yourself and release your emotions?

It’s interesting you bring up both my sister and my introduction to music because my first memories consist of those two things: visiting the hospital just after my sister Sarah Wells (Swells, as I call her) was born, and playing a Muppet Babies keyboard at a friend’s birthday party. I was just shy of three years old in both memories. Singing with Swells is my favorite thing to do. We grew up singing together all the time, and I didn’t realize how special it was until I became an adult. We can harmonize together without thinking, without rehearsing. It’s completely effortless and a reflection of how close we are. When we both lived in NYC, we’d perform together as The Shivers Sisters. In terms of growing up playing the piano and composing, they were always my outlets to express feelings I didn’t quite know how to approach otherwise. Sadness and pain especially. When I was sad, I played the piano. When I was heartbroken, I wrote songs. And I still do. It’s a way to process. But now that I’m older, I’m learning other ways to process and cope with these feelings. Therapy has helped me a lot. I truly believe it’s allowed me to be a better songwriter. Music is still cathartic, but now it’s not my only outlet.

You took a vacation to Cape Cod to stay with friends right as the pandemic hit, leading your planned week-long vacation to turn into 3 months. You have said that you found the change in scenery and the serenity of the environment to be very inspiring, which led to songs pouring out of you. What can you tell me about that experience?

I find few things more inspiring than being on the water. The light was constantly changing and different every day. I tend to be a prolific writer when I’m in motion, whether on a train, plane, or in a car, and I think the movement of the water inspired me to write a lot. I found it to be a powerful reminder that nothing is stagnant and change is inevitable. That was especially poignant during the pandemic.

Although you typically write songs on the piano, the only instrument you had with you was a nylon-stringed guitar gifted to you by your father. What was that experience like for you, exploring that instrument in ways you never had before and writing songs in a different way? Do you feel it changed the way you will approach songwriting going forward?

It definitely changed how I wrote! I was playing chords and progressions I don’t usually gravitate towards at the piano. The textures were new and the ways my fingers formed chords were new. Writing on the acoustic guitar gave me confidence and emboldened me to try writing on different instruments going forward. The piano will always be my main instrument and I will always compose on it, but now I’m eager to play around with the electric guitar and try writing on that. The sounds will be completely different, and who knows what songs will come from it. I find that exciting.

You have said that in quarantine, you shed any sort of self-imposed pressure that had always imbued you as a songwriter and that you experimented with alternate tunings, guided by online guitar tutorials from singer/songwriter Laura Marling. What do you feel that you learned from those tutorials and how did they lead to a newfound sense of fun and joy for you?

Piano lessons shaped my first two decades as a musician, but I haven’t taken formal lessons since college. So these Laura Marling tutorials were like taking guitar lessons except much more casual and incredibly fun and cool because, you know, it’s Laura Marling and she’s doing it on Instagram. She would demonstrate different tunings and then teach a song or two in those tunings, so often times I would learn the chords and then would find my own voicings or chord progressions in that tuning and a song would be born from it. That’s how I wrote “Martha’s Vineyard” and “Gold,” two songs on my latest record.

You recently released your 3rd album Rejection Letter, and before heading to Cape Cod, you had already written the 13 songs you thought would comprise your album. You returned to New York from Cape Cod, however, with a new batch of songs. What can you tell me about your shift in approach towards the album and having to rethink your approach to recording your album with your producer/engineer Kevin Salem?

Originally, the record was going to be tracked live with the band. But we didn’t feel that was the right way to go once the pandemic hit for several reasons. Safety was the biggest issue. But I also had these new songs that I hadn’t rehearsed with the band yet because we were all in lockdown! The album ended up being about half and a half - songs written pre-pandemic and songs written during. So Kevin Salem and I had a meeting and asked ourselves, “How can we make this album right now? And how can we do it safely?”. A record is always a moment in time; a slice of life. So we decided to record in a way that reflected the times we were in: everyone recording separately. But we still wanted to be able to record in studios and use professional recording equipment, so we tracked at two different studios in the Woodstock area, The Hidden Quarry and Kevin’s studio The Distortion Tank.

What can you tell me about the recording process for the album and the decision to record the album piecemeal, with you and your bandmates recording your respective parts separately? How would you describe that experience for you, on having to just focus solely on your part rather than having everyone playing together in a room?

I started things off by spending a week with Kevin in the studio, so I was able to just focus on my parts instead of multi-tasking like I do when we’re recording live as a band. And that gave me the freedom to explore and try lots of different things. We really dug into the sound and made sure we had a very solid base for the band to record over. Then Cody Rahn came up to Woodstock to record drums after my parts were finished, and Yuka Tadano followed on bass. We were all given more time and attention than we do if we’re recording together live, and I think that’s reflected in the final product. A couple moments that are my favorites are Cody on “Mess” and Yuka on “Kids.” They really shine.

In what ways do you feel that the process of writing and recording the songs for Rejection Letter helps you to combat your nature as a people pleaser and take ownership of your voice and your ability to speak out and speak up? Having also described this album as you at your best and most complex to date, showing new sides to you a darker, angrier, and moodier side, while still feeling whimsical-what do you feel you learned about yourself in the making of this album?

I learned that I am a very multi-layered person, and there are so many aspects of myself to discover, explore, and embrace. We as humans are multifaceted and complex, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. On Rejection Letter, I shared things that were a bit uncomfortable, like questioning whether or not I wanted to become a mother and then having difficulty conceiving. Those topics aren’t discussed very much in music or in life, and it’s important to me to not shy away from things just because they’re messy or considered taboo. It’s a part of my story, and it’s honest.

You have talked about taking a lot of time to reflect on the shifting state of the world and how you want to move through life in this new phase of Covid that includes vaccinations and re-openings. What does that look like for you and do you feel that your views of life and the world have shifted significantly post-Covid from what they were before?

I’m trying to put a lot less pressure on myself than I did pre-Covid. I’m more mindful of how I use social media, I’m trying not to compare myself to others, and I’m allowing myself to rest. And I’ve discovered that when I do that, it often fosters a lot of creative energy. Before the pandemic, I tied my self-worth into things like how many people came to my shows or how many people engaged with my social media posts. I don’t want to do that to myself anymore. I’m working on being kinder to myself, knowing that my value as a person and an artist is not based on things like ticket sales or Instagram likes. But it can be hard. I’m still finding that balance with social media in particular. I really like connecting with people on Instagram, and I’ve met some wonderful people through that platform. But I don’t like fighting against the algorithm for visibility. That’s especially hard when I’m promoting an album. The rules of social media and its algorithms are always changing, and it’s easy to feel like you’re never doing enough. And that’s an unhealthy mindset to be in.

What can you tell me about your concept for a 3-part video series for Rejection Letter and how you chose the songs to do videos for? You most recently released the video for "Afraid", the second video in the series, which was influenced by Brittanie Bond's haunting and evocative images for her photo series "we move lightly". How did you come across her work and what can you tell me about working with her, Marco Pitruzella and dancer/choreographer Candice Schnurr and the idea behind the video?

The videos match the singles - “Martha’s Vineyard”, “Afraid”, and then “Butterscotch” will be released soon. I worked with Lâle Teoman on two of the videos and Britannie Bond on the other. I wanted to work with them because I thought their aesthetic really matched what I was going for - whimsical, moody, surrealist. I’ve worked with them both before and find them to be incredible collaborators and people. As far as working with Britannie on “Afraid” goes, I’ve known her for a long time and was already familiar with her “we move lightly” photo series. She told me she also had video footage to go with the project that featured dancer Candice Schnurr. So she and her partner Marco Pitruzella created this film just for “Afraid” out of that footage. And I love how it came out and think it captured the grief, longing, and internal struggle depicted in the song so beautifully.

You also took part recently in The Woodstock Sessions to record several of the songs from the album live with a grand piano. How did that experience come about and what was it like for you?

Applehead Recording has hosted The Woodstock Sessions since 2013. They invite people to sit in as artists play a set and record it live. So it’s essentially a creation of a live album at their studio. But when Covid hit, they re-worked it so that artists came in and performed a set without an audience, and it was recorded and turned into videos. The studio owner knows Kevin Salem, and I had also recorded at Applehead before, so we were all connected in that way. When they found out I was recording a new album, they thought having me in for a pandemic session would be great. And it was a complete blast. I just released this video for the album’s title track.

What's next for you? What are your goals going forward?

I’ll be releasing an EP, and then I’m going back into the studio to record a whole new batch of songs. So it’s safe to say lots more music is on its way! My goals are to continue making and releasing music and to stay very much in love with the process of it.

Emily May 7/1/21 Emily May 7/1/21

INTERVIEW: The Sound of Aja

The Sound of Aja

Interview by: Emily May, *Photo credit: Travis Shinn*

The Sound of Aja, a collaborative project between married couple Aja and Hugo, was created to celebrate music from the past century. Their upcoming album, 100 Years of Song, was recorded at their apartment in New York and features collaborations with friends from all over the world. What started out as them covering a couple of song requests from friends morphed into such an enjoyable process for them that they decided to expand their list of covers into an album, which explores and interprets 10 classic songs from the past 10 decades. “This is a dream concept for me,” says Aja. “I get to indulge my passion for music and art across what has possibly been the most fascinating century of human culture and development. And I can do it with my family, loved ones, and dear friends, far and near, thanks to today’s tech. I feel ridiculously fortunate and eternally grateful - the project absolutely has gotten me through these dark times.” The 100 Years of Song album features an eclectic array of covers of songs from the likes of Nat King Cole, John Martyn, and Nik Kershaw, going all the way back to a spiritual first recorded in the 1920s. Collaborators across the record include Ben Christophers (Bat for Lashes), Gary Clark (“Sing Street,” Danny Wilson), Hugo Dunn-Vereker (Michael Brook, Wrenne), Christopher Given Harrison (Sonos/Arora), and Gregor Philp (Deacon Blue). The Sound of Aja has released their first single from the album, the Kern/Harbach 1993 classic “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, in January and in April, released “Bang Bang”, a reinvention of the Cher hit from 1966. Most recently, The Sound of Aja released their single “Old Cape Cod”, a 1950’s summer song originally by singer Patti Page, honoring the original while taking it into a Bossanova-inspired, electronic and cinematic direction. With plans to release an album of original music in the new year, they have given their listeners plenty to look forward to! You can connect with The Sound of Aja via the following links.

Did you both grow up in a creative household? What inspired your interest in pursuing a career in the arts?

Aja- I’m very close to my parents and we spent a good deal of time in my childhood absorbing and relating through film, television, books, and music. My mother managed a bookstore when I was very young and I spent the first 8 years of my life or so in the bookstore just consumed by inspiration. You could find my content in a stack of new discoveries at the end of each day.

Hugo- No. But I was obsessed with music from the age of 3, causing grief until my long-suffering parents would buy me the latest single I was obsessed with. Went to a British boarding school aged 8, and I believe my first ‘band’ performance was aged 9 or 10 at school. It’s all been downhill since then.😃

While living in LA, Aja wrote and created a sitcom, and you have both separately developed tv and film projects as producers. What can you tell me about that aspect of your career and in what ways do you feel that tv and film tie into music? Do you still write for tv?

Aja- I tend to think about creativity in terms of creating and inhabiting other worlds. Exploring these mediums helped me to learn skills that I still infuse into all of my work. We come at this project from a world-building point of view. I can see the characters, the environment, the journey, and the story in every song.

Hugo- Back in the day, I wrote and rewrite some scripts and tbh I salute anyone who can get any movie made! I was lucky enough to have several in development at the LA studios with very interesting names attached. But it was like watching paint dry, though the paint is usually a lot quicker. It was so refreshing to go back into music and produce satisfying work relatively quickly. Forgetful, perhaps, of lessons previously learned, we are sloooowly writing the script for a 1970’s- and UK-set musical comedy; and I’m working on a couple of stage musicals, one with Rolfe Kent and Joanne Harris, both legends. And yes, our musical taste and, hopefully, our work is very cinematic - visual ideas inform the song treatments from the get-go.

You have described art as an expression of hope and belief in humanity. In what ways does that expression manifest itself in your art?

Aja- In every way! It all about sharing the journey, growing, and relating to the human experience that we all share. I want people to see themselves and their own journey through the work that we do so we might all help lift each other up.

Hugo- What she said. Uplifting, cathartic work is what we strive for, and especially because of and over the past 18 months.

You have talked about traveling a great deal before Covid and how connecting with different cultures and glorious humans who are not like you was a transformative experience. What can you tell me about your experiences in traveling and in what ways it has transformed you? Where did you travel and where are you hoping to travel next?

Aja- The first year of our relationship, Hugo and I traveled extensively and it was sort of a way of introducing each other to our various friends and family and getting to know each other’s communities. Then Covid hit and we took all that we collected and focused it into this project. I think the work we’ve done will take us so many more places literally as we share our music, and figuratively as we explore new “worlds.”

Hugo- Luckily and naturally, my long-term, long-distance music colleagues fell in love with Aja on first meetings during our travels; so when things shut down, we opened up the lines of communication and collaboration and have been blessed with their brilliance. When we can, we are also keen to bring the music and ourselves to far-flung places, embracing Asia, Africa & Latin America, for instance, and are actively seeking collaborators in those regions.

What led you to move to New York?

Aja- NY is where it all happens! Every block is jam-packed with new stories and whole worlds unto themselves. It satisfies my lust for life and allows me to connect to people from across the globe simply by walking outside our front door.

Hugo- My younger kids are on the east coast, so it was a no-brainer for me and a relief that Aja wanted to live here. Now they are away at school and college, so they probably would be fine if we lived in Timbuktu, but at least we know we are not too far!

What can you tell me about the concept of your new music project The Sound of Aja? What has it been like working together on the project and how do you feel it helped you to get through 2020?

Aja- I wanted to approach music in a much more complete way than just writing and performing songs and I was looking for a way to do that after leaving Los Angeles and starting the next phase of my life. We were introduced in late 2018 professionally as we had a lot in common in the way we saw music and performance and how it could transport the experience beyond passive listening. We knew instantly that we wanted to share everything and that all-encompassing expression naturally worked its way into our decision to create this project. Words can’t express the fullness I feel in having the opportunity to live and create in every way with my partner. We strive to grow ourselves and have been the missing piece for one another in more ways than I can count. This challenging time of Covid was the alchemical pressure and compression we needed to galvanize what we were creating.

Hugo- She’s really quite nice, isn’t she? It’s been heaven, a delight, to learn music through each other, and each other via the music. It was an absolute godsend that it could happen during the hurting times of the past 18 months.

You are currently finishing your album 100 Years of Song, a reworking of songs from the 1920s to the present day. What inspired you to explore, celebrate and re-evaluate songwriting from the past century, which you have said is possibly the most fascinating century of human culture and development? How did you go about deciding which songs to cover and what was your process of reworking the songs? What can you tell me about the virtual collaborations you did with artists from elsewhere in the US and internationally?

Aja- It was the easiest way for us to travel when we couldn’t do any traveling! In the process of getting to know each other, we shared our favorite music with one another and studied the origins of our favorite artists and songs. We started by covering a couple of various songs as requested by a dear friend and enjoyed the process so much we wanted to expand it. We, like everyone else living through the last year, continued to question how things were done in the world, how society is changing, and wanted to related to people from different eras and see how they used art to express and grow through their respective cultural shifts. Universal themes emerged and we sought to bring our voice to some of those cultural themes. Of course, we missed our friends and family terribly so we found excuses to work with them remotely every chance we found and the result is a project infused with love in all forms.

Hugo- The concept simmered at first and then burst into life: luckily, we were commissioned to create a cover of a Donna Summer deep cut for an outside project. We loved the process (that song will be a digital bonus track on the album) and during the work, I realized that, at heart, Aja is not just a great vocalist… but a natural actor. She loves to interpret, mimic, explore travel through time and place in photographs. She wishes we could live at Downton Abbey 100 years ago, plus in Paris during La Belle Epoque, London in the 60s, New York in the 30s, for instance. We figured it was a no-brainer to have her travel through music, inhabit characters in 10 songs from the last century - and “100 Years” was a nice round number. The song choices were organic - some very well-known, others not so much - but that’s not to say some didn’t take a long while to jump and down and say “Pick Me!” We’ve been so fortunate to produce and arrange the songs with some of our favourite humans, in and out of music, exceptional talents all - especially Gregor Philp (Deacon Blue), Gary Clark ("Sing Street," Amazon/NY Times’ “Modern Love”), Ben Christophers (Bat For Lashes), and Chris Given Harrison (Sonos/Arora) who comprise our “home team.”

You have talked about your love for recording and about how you wish you could spend every day of your life in the studio. What can you tell me about the process of recording the album during Covid, which affected studio recording for many artists?

Aja- I really miss the formal studio environment and working studio engineers. It’s just a really magical and inspiring process. But being able to create quality recordings in our home studio was a tremendous gift during Covid of course and now forever after…

Hugo- I am sh*t with technology. Always have been. I’ve been in studios my whole life and avoided touching any buttons for decades! But music is my lifeblood, so… I love to produce by picking a song and coming up with a vision, a concept; having what Chris (above) calls a “Hugo Fever Dream” where I describe in a way TMI precisely what I hear in my head. Then send countless notes on structure and tone and references to our clever and patient muso colleagues. Then it’s back and forth for weeks or sometimes even months, depending on schedules, developing the mood, story and musical bed, before I’ll record Aja’s vocals in our wee apartment. The latter I can only do thanks to the aforementioned brilliant collaborators having spelled out how to do it right, as if to a small child. Vocally, Aja will try different characters and if we are not feeling it, we have the luxury of leaving it, coming back to try again anytime we want. When we got the “character” right for Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, she literally did it in one take. At first, we were frustrated by the lengthy recording process, but it was COVID! People had an awful lot going on, some very awful. And everyone was trying to reimagine their work and creative lives in the new, distressing context of 2020+. So, we learned a lot, faced some fears and have now fully embraced this way of doing things: we have been working on the last 4 songs on the album concurrently with different members of the team; writing a new The Sound of Aja original; recording jingles; and now music for a game.

You have said that you have been working towards this album in one way or another your entire life. In what ways?

Aja- Because of the way we’re approaching this project, it has no other option but to incorporate all of what we’ve collectively been through. It’s a collective opus and a process of creative romance.

Hugo- Yes, it feels like everything we have ever learned is going into The Sound of Aja. And all the love. No pressure for it to be good, then!

"Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" was the first single you released from the upcoming album. What inspired your take on the song? What can you tell me about the concepts behind your lyric video, which imagined The Sound of Aja as one of the original performers of the song in the 1933 musical 'Roberta', and official music video for the song, as well as the experience of shooting the music video in your apartment during Covid?

Aja- In our approach to researching and exploring the arts in the 1930s we found it helpful to organize around this imaginary character. We could use her to tell the story, and to live the experience through. Every day we had so much fun creating artifacts to tell the story of the love lost as expressed in the classic song, and posted many of them on socials.We used found newspaper clippings and old photographs from the time (or frommytime as a model) and adapted them to our characters. We incorporated each line of the song through new artifacts each day as a way to build anticipation and the lyric video formed itself magically through that process. All we had to do was put them all together et voilà! A historical fiction genre song was born!

Hugo- See above. Aja has basically lived dream lives across time and space, so she is incredibly good at inhabiting other skins. Once we had the concept, we had an absolute blast seeing and representing what our slightly naughty actress was going to do every day.The home video in the apartment, on lockdown, was a different matter. We definitely had to face fears on that one, and we learned a lot; andsorta quiteliked the result. We shot another video the same “day” and, apart from the footage we filmed at 3am, we ended up throwing out the rest and starting yet again. Recently, once things opened up a little and we could travel safely, we had the good fortune to shoot several ‘projects’ over 3 days in LA with an amazing team, led by Travis Shinn. Professionals! Love ‘em! It’s just a wonderful experience, to have one’s own game raised by others’ generous talents. We cannot wait for people to see the results.

You have talked about looking through images of NYC during the 1930s for "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and discovering the work of Berenice Abbott. What can you tell me about her 'Changing NY' project and how her photos helped you to so easily step into that time and place?

Aja- I have always loved photojournalism and street photography for its ability to transport you to an entire world in one image. Ms. Abbott was inspired by the artists and the beauty of Paris, and came back to New York to tell the story of this city in pictures. It was a dark time during the depression and the timing allowed her to participate in a government grant program that invested in artists and their valuable contribution to keeping the soul and economic health of the country alive during hard times. Obviously, the relevance for our own times was not lost on us. She documented without flourish, or a need to put her own artistic lens on things and preserved this gorgeous city in striking clarity. The project sits available to us all to access for free on the NYPL digital arts collection. We can travel back and walk the streets of NY as they were in all their stark industrial emergence. It’s like a beautiful time capsule, and I’m so grateful to all the moving parts that needed to happen for that to be preserved for me to discover and enjoy, learn from and incorporate nearly a century later.

Hugo- I’ve learned a lot over the past 18 months from Aja’s fascination for the photographic image. She also takes a great photo, in front of and behind the lens. I do not. Unfortunately, she has persuaded me to lurk in the background in some of our new images, but no doubt I will learn to love it and become a prima donna.

The idea to cover your most recent single, "Bang Bang", was born from your friend Dany Garcia encouraging you to do a modern take on the song and to take it somewhere it's never been? What can you tell me about the track and your take on it?

Aja- It’s such an amazing hook, but a simple song and quite short in most versions. She described it as an “exciting promise that doesn’t ever deliver”. We wanted our version to feel like it takes you on a real journey and delivers on that promise.

Hugo- Yeah, the song is strange, unique, written by Sonny Bono in 1966 for his then wife Cher who had a massive hit with it. The same year saw the release of Nancy Sinatra’s cover, which had a rebirth decades later when Tarantino used it in his Kill Bill Vol. 1.There have been a lot of covers, but what struck me at first was how they all sounded similar, people didn’t really play with the rhythm or structure. There was a relatively recent version by Audio Bullys, a hit in the UK I think, where they at least sampled Sinatra’s version heavily and put a fat dance beat behind it. But we wanted to expand the story a bit- which you’ll also see in the video - and respectfully build on the original, with and for contemporary ears and eyes.

You also released a lyric video for "Bang Bang", the graphics for which were created by Hugo's son Pirate! What was it like working with him on the video? You have said that the video encapsulates how you see NYC-the lights, architecture, buzz of life and swell of music. What can you tell me about your love for NYC and how it inspires you? What can people expect from the official music video that will be released with the full length-version of the song in August?

Hugo- The lyric video is part of our homage to the great master of classic movie title sequences, Saul Bass. We worked with great friends in LA at BLT Communications, who went above and beyond (and then some) during Covid on hugely exciting animated sequences for the full video. And we have finally completed the live action elements (with Travis, again) that help us to dive into the campiness of 60’s classics like Bond or The Pink Panther.

Aja- So Pirate was able to take the beginnings of that animated work and expand on them for a lyric video - a movie trailer, if you will, for this really fun song. He’s so talented and was able to pull it off at lightning speed. My favorite part is when the horn section is visually interpreted through the energy of the lights and movement of the buildings of NYC. It’s a Gatsby dream of lights and jazz horns bringing the personality of Manhattan to life. I can’t wait to see New York like that again!

What's next for you? What are your plans and goals going forward?
Aja- Now that we know each other quite well (!) through this journey, our next step is to release original music written and imagined from the hearts and minds of The Sound of Aja.

Hugo- The first original(s) will be on the album representing the 2020’s. The full album, after lots of singles, will be out in the new year - so we just about squeeze into the 100 years! And next: maybe sleep? Maybe leave the apartment?

Photo Ladies 6/3/21 Photo Ladies 6/3/21

INTERVIEW: The Accidentals

front of tunnel normal faces.jpg — The Accidentals

The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May

Sometimes bands can start out in the most unexpected ways, which was the case for Michigan band The Accidentals. Formed by Savannah Buist (violin) and Katie Larson (cello) while in high school, the self-described musical soulmates live and breathe music. Writing deep and catchy songs from the very beginning, it didn't take long for them to gain a loyal and devoted fanbase, referring to their core supporters as "The FAMgrove". Releasing their first album Bittersweet in 2013, funded by a successful crowdfunding campaign, Buist and Larson met drummer/percussionist Michael Dause in 2014 and recruited him into the band, cementing their lineup. Upon finishing high school, the band toured extensively, playing 200+ shows a year that included various festivals, and shared the stage with artists such as Brandi Carlile, Andrew Bird, and The Decemberists. On the heels of their 2016 release, Parking Lot EP, the band signed a deal in 2017 with Sony Masterworks label and released Odyssey, an album they have described as a culmination of 6 years of being a band and that signaled a new chapter for the band. In 2018, they began work on their 4th full-length album Vessel. When the pandemic hit, and the music industry came to a halt, the band paused work on Vessel in lieu of their pandemic EP Time Out, which was written during quarantine over zoom with legendary writers like Tom Paxton, Kim Richey, Dar Williams, Maia Sharp, Mary Gauthier, and Jaimee Harris. With the music industry opening back up, The Accidentals will be completing Vessel, slated to be released in the fall of this year. The Accidentals also host workshops around the country in an effort to inspire other young musicians, and in 2020 they formed a non-profit called Play It Forward Again and Again, providing instruments, lessons, and mentors to aspiring musicians. With plans to release Vessel, tour the album and write new music, they have plenty of exciting things in store for their fans! You can connect with The Accidentals via the following links:

Savannah and Katie- You both met and started playing music together in high school and have talked about the tremendous support you received from your local music community. What can you tell me about the local musicians who took you under their wings when you first started out and gave you pieces of knowledge and genre that inspired you to keep exploring? What did you learn in those early days that you have carried with you over the years?

Sav: We were really lucky to grow up in such a music-and-arts-loving community. I got my start in a family band with my parents (both are professional musicians who met in Nashville, where I was born), who taught me to improvise. There’s a huge festival scene in Michigan, and at most of those festivals, you’d find me under the workshop tents, learning traditional fiddle tunes from other violinists. There was also a weekly jazz jam that I took my electric violin to jam at, and the cats there were incredibly welcoming and accepting of a young kid who wanted to learn more about the genre. There was also a strong orchestral presence at our public high school, where I met Katie in the after-school “alternative styles club” (where we would cover Led Zeppelin, Coldplay, and more on our orchestral instruments).

After we were thrown together to represent the alternative styles club for an upcoming concert, we quickly became friends and from there a duo. Katie and I swapped skill sets - she’d written original music and played multiple instruments, but hadn’t performed live or improvised as much; meanwhile, I’d grown up in a live improv scene but didn’t write original music or play multiple instruments. We inspired each other and helped each other grow.

Once we had established ourselves as The Accidentals, we played all over the place - coffee shops, breweries, wineries, bookstores, anywhere that would take us. As a result, we met a lot of local musicians in the community, who took us under their wing. They’d have us open their concerts, or connect us to local studios and engineers. Whenever we needed help, we didn’t hesitate to ask someone in the community to teach us a bass riff or lend us an instrument. We still do that to this day. It’s actually our motto - “Ask for what you need.” No one ever does anything alone. To collaborate is always more fun than to compete.

Katie- You have said that it still blows your mind how many things you and Savannah did before graduating from high school and that you both basically spent a lot of time saying "yes" to things. Was that a conscious decision on both of your parts starting out, to say "yes" to every opportunity to see where it led you? Are any of the opportunities especially memorable?

At the time we met, neither Sav nor I envisioned a career in the music industry. We were introverted overachievers with a lot of random interests. Sav was writing novels, playing travel soccer, and studying biology in her downtime. I was obsessed with documentary filmmaking, graphic design, and movie soundtracks. When we started playing music together I saw an entire new world open up. Music had the ability to introduce us to people, places, and experiences we would have never found ourselves in contact with otherwise. We ended up playing on a ferry in the middle of Lake Michigan, playing in a swimming pool, at weddings, electronic music festivals, punk clubs, onstage with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, teaching ukulele workshops to kids, jamming on live radio with a bagpipe player, etc. We performed before a movie at the Traverse City Film Festival and the directors from an indie documentary called One Simple Question asked if we’d be interested in scoring music for the soundtrack. It’s like Tina Fey’s quote: “say yes and you’ll figure it out afterward”. One of our first gigs was at Horizon Books in Traverse City. They cautioned us they didn’t have the license for cover songs, so we’d have to fill an hour and a half with original songs. We said yes and wrote 13 songs by the end of the week, which became the material for our first album. At times it was overwhelming, but we learned something valuable every time.

What can you tell me about bringing Michael into the band and how do you feel he has helped to mature and evolve your music, as well as your desire to "just try everything"? Michael- What can you tell me about joining the band in 2014?

Katie: We started playing with percussionists and noticed it completely changed our live show. Instead of trying to cover all the rhythmic parts, we had space for the arrangements to open up and the energy to jump off the stage. At the time we were writing original songs and mashing up gypsy jazz covers with versions of Muse and The Strokes on violin and cello, so finding someone who was as weird as us and willing to come on board full time was a challenge. When we met Michael, it clicked instantly. We were able to embrace a whole new level of energy, three-part harmonies, and more dynamic arrangements.

Michael: I had met Sav and Katie at a music festival in northern Michigan during the summer of 2013. I fell in love with their newest record at the time, Bittersweet, and listened to it almost every day for a while after. We became friends over the internet while I was in my first year of college, and when the summer of 2014 came around, they said they were looking for a drummer to play with them for the month of July. They asked if I was interested, and I said yes almost immediately. I had been sitting with their music for so long, I pretty much knew the songs by heart, and after playing with them for a month, they asked if I wanted to drop out of college and come on the road with them. It was an easy yes from me.

You have long operated as an indie/DIY band, crowdfunding early tours and albums. What can you tell me about signing with Sony in 2017 and releasing your first major-label album Odyssey. You've referred to the album as a culmination of 6 years of being a band. How do you feel that the album and signing to a major label signaled a new chapter for the band?

Sav: It’s funny - it’s been a total ride. Odyssey was definitely the culmination of 6 years. It was a snapshot in time of us signing with our first major label. We were nervous, excited, and when I think about it, incredibly young. We learned so much from that time of being signed. Particularly, we learned who we were, and who we weren’t. At this point, we are back to DIY - but definitely operating at a different level than we were. We’ve been able to work with some of our favorite producers of all time (John Congleton, Tucker Martine), play insane shows, travel the country, and meet amazing people. We’ve also learned to maintain who we are as a throughline, no matter what. There are lots of hands in every musical cookie jar. It can be really difficult to know which voice to listen to as a result. The key is to know who you are first, and what your goals are - then trust your instinct.

You have talked about how the music industry can feel very intimidating, having to constantly push past your introverted tendencies. How have you learned to exist in that realm over the years while still protecting your energy and making time for yourselves? What are your self-care practices?

Sav: One of the best things Beth Nielsen Chapman ever told me was to think of your favorite color, and imagine a bubble around you in that color, whenever you need it. I still use that all the time.

We may not seem very introverted - being in this industry requires some social flexibility after a while - but all of us very much get in the van after a show and put on noise-canceling headphones and read books by booklight and don’t talk for a while. Our idea of a party is playing Settlers of Catan at the AirBnB while doing laundry.

So yeah, being in the music industry - a world of noise, networking, and constant new faces - can be overwhelming. We’ve gotten pretty good at setting personal boundaries and being open and honest about our feelings. Once everyone is clued into a person’s emotional state, we know how to protect them better. There’s a lot of looking out for each other on the road.

Savannah- You have said that you are all incredibly accident prone and found that most of the accidents you get into lead to things you didn't even know were meant to be. What can you tell me about these "happy accidents"?

I think about it best in terms of zooming out. We’ve had lots of accidents. Everything from trailer theft, car crashes, tornadoes, breakdowns, wildfires, floods...I remember one time we were telling some of these stories at a school workshop in Arkansas, and one of the kids raised their hand and said, “Why are you so unlucky?”

What I realized in that moment is that you could look at every accident in two ways. On one hand, you think, “How are we so unlucky that we keep getting caught in natural disasters and vehicular malfunctions?” On the other hand, you think to yourself, “Man, I’m lucky to be able to continue despite that.”

I remember after the trailer was stolen from a parking lot in Tucson, we lost $70,000 worth of equipment overnight. Michael and I turned to each other and, somewhat nihilistically, joked, “Well, at least we got that particular scenario out of the way.” We played a show in Phoenix that night with our remaining equipment. As we sang the line “Sometimes I will lose all I have just to see what remains” from our song Crow’s Feet, holding the instruments we had fortunately brought inside from the cold on the night of the theft, we looked out to a crowd of music lovers and gathered exactly how lucky we were. Accidents themselves aren’t always happy. You have to choose happiness. Sometimes accidents make you even more aware of the happiness you might’ve been taking for granted.

You just released your new EP Time Out this month and have said it probably would not have been written if not for this time we're in now. Having described it as being a lot like the 5 stages of grief, what can you tell me about the how the idea for EP came to be and the guest artists you co-wrote the songs with? In what ways do you feel like the process of making the EP has helped you to process what has been going on in the world over the past year?

Sav: The TIME OUT EP is the culmination of co-writes we did with Kim Richey, Dar Williams, Tom Paxton, Maia Sharp, Mary Gauthier, and Jaimee Harris. It came about really serendipitously. Katie and I had moved part-time to Nashville to do session work and co-writing in January of 2020, and our first co-write was with HOF songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman, who showed us the ropes. When the world shut down, obviously our plans did a total 180 - instead of flying to Portland to record the rest of our album Vessel with Tucker Martine, we drove back to Michigan and tried to reconcile with the fact that our income for the rest of the year had disappeared. It didn’t take long for us to start planning how to bounce back. I started digging into live-streaming, and what started as a list of what not to do quickly became a 40-page manual on how to livestream to different platforms, notably OBS. I posted the manual to Facebook and it quickly made the rounds, picked up by Hypebot, Bandsintown, and the Recording Academy / Grammys, as well as circulating to lots of familiar venues. Club Passim in Cambridge, MA reached out and asked if I could talk to an artist about how to perform a livestream on their page - that artist ended up being Kim Richey. I was geeked. I’d been listening to Kim Richey’s music for years, and it was mindblowing to even be able to talk to her, as Katie and I had seen her sharing the stage with Brandi Carlile at Ryman Auditorium only a few months prior.

Naturally, the conversation led to the idea of a virtual show together, and then a co-write. The song Wildfire was written in two zoom sessions, before we had even met in person. Once the song was finished, we knew it needed to come out ASAP. We shelved plans for our albumVessel until we could tour it, and got to work on TIME OUT.

Other co-writes came about in different ways - Tom Paxton reached out to us after hearing us perform on our weekly zoom call with our booking agency, Fleming Artists, and now we write every Monday. We’d been writing songs with Maia Sharp back in Nashville, and those co-writes transferred seamlessly online. Dar Williams was a good friend already - we had opened and performed with her at the Birchmere as teenagers - and we were blown away when she accepted the invitation. Our friend Sharon Corbitt, who had connected us to Beth and Maia, organized the write with Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris, which led to us writing a song three days before Christmas called All Shall Be Well - a great sendoff for an EP all about dealing with grief and learning to heal after a turbulent year. It was therapeutic for us, since at least personally for me I was feeling creatively burnt - I was too busy compartmentalizing my feelings to fully talk about them, but something about music brings your truest thoughts to the forefront. Every co-write began with an honest, heartfelt conversation, and though the process was always different, the results were the same - we always walked away with something we were all really proud of.

The three of you basically built a studio and did everything for the EP yourselves-the engineering, production, playing and recording? What was that process like for you and how do you feel that it tested your commitment to each other and the music?

Sav: This was a new chapter for us. Michael and I both have academic backgrounds in audio technology, but this was like a final exam. We sketched out the attic space (hence the name Atticus Blue Studios) and figured out where to build. We used stacks of unsold CD boxes to build partitions. We thumbtacked blankets to the ceiling to pad the sound. We used our touring gear provided by our sponsors, Shure, Fender, Takamine, Boss / Roland, and more, to set up and record. Ultimately, we were really lucky to be able to utilize the time in a productive way, and to have the sources to make it happen.

I won’t say it was easy, though. We are all Type A personalities. We are perfectionists to a fault. Each of us carry different insecurities, and we had to learn to accept those insecurities within ourselves and each other. We also learned that we each have different strengths. As a result, we learned to rely on each other a lot more. What it eventually came down to is that we couldn’t make a record like this if any one of us had ego. The space had to be mutually respectful of each other’s thoughts and talents. The song had to be served in a way that gave it meaning. We wanted to be really intentional with this music. As a result, I feel like we’ve come away from this year as stronger people, and a stronger unit, than we came into it.

Michael: One of the silver linings of not being on the road last year was the time we had to really learn and work out how to record in the best possible way. I was able to dig into mixing more and have a really good feel for it now. We also dug into the engineering side of things in a big way. We would have whole days where we wanted, for instance, to get the best cello sound we could, so we spent a few hours moving mics, putting up blankets, taking down blankets, changing microphones, muffling the cello itself, trying every possible option to make sure we found what we were looking for. Like Sav said, we’re all perfectionists, so we had to settle on a sound eventually! It was an intense and informative time, and I think we came out of these recording sessions having learned some really useful skills.

You temporarily shelved Vessel, the full-length album you were working on, to release your Time Out EP. What can you tell me about the album and your decision to temporarily put it on hold?

Sav: We’ve been working on Vessel for a long time. Years, in fact. We recorded a portion of it with dream producers John Congleton and Tucker Martine, and we were excited to finish it out with them. COVID changed those plans. We ended up recording the rest of it ourselves. Right as we finished that project, the songs that would comprise TIME OUT started coming to fruition. Obviously we wanted Vessel out into the world - it had been a long time coming. But our gut told us to wait. The TIME OUT songs needed to come out when they did, capstoning a long year of isolation, wildfires, protests, quarantine, and loss. We hope that the EP can be used as something of a healing balm before we hit the road again in the fall to tour Vessel - an album all about perspective, and the way it influences your perception of time.

That’s also a good takeaway from the long year. Time is so fickle with this band. Sometimes it feels like we’re moving at breakneck speed; other times we feel like we inch along at a snail’s pace. More realistically, it’s more like a plane - when you’re on one, you don’t feel like you’re moving; when you see one in the sky, it crawls along; in reality, it’s moving incredibly fast. All viewpoints are true and real - it’s just a matter of where you’re standing. That’s what Vessel is all about.

You have said that pre-pandemic, you were moving through life at a break-neck speed, worried about "getting there" instead of being present for the journey. For the first time in 8 years, you didn't have anywhere to be. Having the time over the past year to reflect on your journey over the years, what have those reflections been like for you? What can you tell me about the experience of having to suddenly stop and to redirect your focus from touring to songwriting during the pandemic? What did you learn over the past year, personally and artistically, and do you feel it will change anything for you going forward?

Katie: When everything shut down last spring and we landed home, we dove straight into recording, putting together music videos and 20 female cover songs on Youtube, starting events like Book Club on our Patreon, and live-streaming. A lot of summer festivals hadn’t cancelled at that point, so it seemed like we may be back on the road within a few months. We started doing short, once a day “check-in” livestreams we called “Daily Breathers”. Our friends on the frontlines and in hospitals were putting their life on the line every day and we were starting to feel useless to society sitting in our houses. The daily livestreams were our attempt to send some comfort to those who needed it. We lit a candle, we played a song, we recommended books from our local bookstore, and we shared one thing we were grateful for every day. After living in transit for so long I was immediately grateful to be sleeping in my own bed, able to do laundry any time I wanted to, able to cook homemade meals, wave to the neighborhood kids riding their bikes, plant flowers, walk in the woods. There was gratitude, but also a deep anxiety. We were working 10+ hr days and feeling the weight of the world build up. Once we started getting opportunities to co-write over Zoom, it forced us to set aside time to write. That’s when everything started sinking in for me. We were still new to co-writing and didn’t know what to expect, but when we got on Zoom with Kim Richey and started writing “Wildfire”, memories and feelings started flooding in. Our intention wasn’t to write a song about lockdown, but our shared isolation and nostalgia informed the songwriting. Once the song was done I went through 5 hard drives of tour footage taken between 2014-2019 to edit the music video, and reflected on so many of those candid moments that flew by in our late teens and early 20’s. One of our biggest lessons for the year is that we’re not in a rush. We can sit on new lyrics, process our emotions, re-cut a song 6 times. We’ll get back on the road later this year, but as things pick up pace we’ll carry that with us.

Savannah- What can you tell me about the manual you wrote during the pandemic on using OBS and Streamyard software? Did you expect it to become as popular as it has? What were some of the main lessons you learned and mistakes you made that led you to want to help others in this way?

If a future version of me time traveled back to March of 2020 and told me I’d become a live-streaming engineer with a 40-page manual under my belt, I would’ve laughed in my face. Everyone picked up one weird skill during quarantine, and that was definitely mine. It mainly started as a way to keep everything organized for personal usage. We were testing out live-streaming to different platforms, and it was getting really hard to remember how to do everything and all the steps without writing it all down. Then once I started trying to actually write that down in a detailed manner, it went from being personal to being more instructional.

Lots of musicians were struggling to figure out how to transition to the live-streaming format at the time. It was really hard watching so many friends lose so much income and feel like they didn’t know where to start. Publicizing the manual for free made sense, especially since the program I was writing about - OBS - was, and is, free to the public. From there it got picked up by multiple publications and circulated around the scene. I did tons of zoom consultation calls with venues and musicians and even spoke on a few panels for the Recording Academy / Grammys. I remember being on one of those panels with Rick Beato and Adam Neely and almost peeing myself (huge fans of both of them).

There were lots of mistakes - lots of technical minutia. We messed up all the time at first. Getting audio to translate the way you want it to sound from one computer screen to another is really tricky. Every musician had to become a sound engineer and a lighting engineer on top of playing the music. Luckily, I also had lots of people making suggestions and edits to the document, and even some of the platforms I was writing about reached out to tell me about new improvements and fixes they’d added. It’s funny - there really is a community in almost every niche thing out there, and a lot of those communities are just endearingly collaborative and kind. I really liked getting to be a part of this one.

Having talked about how you lived and breathed music from a young age, what can you tell me about the workshops you teach in schools across the country? What inspired you to open your nonprofit Play It Forward Again and Again last year, to help kids in school and make sure that the opportunity to play music exists for all aspiring musicians?

Katie: We were incredibly lucky to have supportive music programs in our public school. A duo called The Moxie Strings taught a workshop for our high school orchestra class and inspired us to become a band. Now when we tour and stop at schools, we try to encourage students to get outside of their comfort zone. We talk about songwriting, mental health, improvisation, alternative strings, etc. One time we had an epic jam session with a tuba player who turned out to be an incredible soloist. One time we wrote a song with a class about video games. Every workshop is different. Music was extremely important for our confidence, teamwork and self expression. We meet a lot of kids who can’t afford to rent an instrument or pay for lessons. Our goal with Play It Forward Again and Again is to provide students with an opportunity not only to play an instrument, but to be paired with a local musician who can mentor and provide support.

What can you tell me about your side projects outside of the band? What else do you have going on?

Katie: Sav and I have always loved arranging and recording violin/viola/cello/bass on other people’s records. We moved to Nashville part time at the beginning of 2020 to do more session work and co-writing, and luckily we’ve been able to keep it up over this last year from our home studio in Michigan.

Michael: Right before the pandemic hit, I put out a record under my project Treeskin called “Learning”. I was hoping to be able to do more of a push behind the record, but the world had other plans, so I’m hoping to move forward and put out another record under that name in the next year or so. I have a few projects with friends as well; a sea-shanty project with my friend Ben Traverse, and a yet-to-be-named collaborative project with fellow Michigan musicians Seth Bernard and Dan Rickabus (of The Crane Wives). After really digging into mixing and engineering this last year, I’m also hoping to start heading into the studio world and get my feet wet as a producer and engineer between bouts of touring in the near future.

What's next for you? What are your goals for the year?

Katie: Now that our Time Out (Session 1) EP is out, we are getting ready to release and tour our next full length album, Vessel! We’re co-writing new songs every week and looking forward to share new music.

Photo Ladies 4/19/21 Photo Ladies 4/19/21

INTERVIEW: Lizzie & The Makers

Lizzie & The Makers

The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May

New York musician Lizzie Edwards grew up surrounded by music. With a grandfather who was an opera singer, a grandmother who was a classical harpsichordist, and a father who was a sideman for artists such as Chuck Berry and was in a band himself, it seemed inevitable that a career in music would find Edwards. Going to concerts with her father from a young age exposed her to many different kinds of music, but the genre that made the biggest impact on her was jazz, with its ability to allow one to get lost in the music and allow it to take them over. Edwards studied music theory and classical piano at The New School in NYC, as well as music and English at Dartmouth College, and upon graduating from college she worked at The Jazz Foundation of America. During that time, amongst other things, she worked as a caretaker for two blues and jazz singers, Abbey Lincoln and Sweet Georgia Brown, who inspired her to develop a love and appreciation for the blues, later incorporating those sounds into her music. Later, she worked as a sound engineer at the legendary Brooklyn venue Pete's Candy Store, and organized Bourbon Fest, a day fest that she was supposed to play with a band she was in at the time. When her band broke up a week before the fest, she received offers from some of the venue's regular musicians to form a new band to perform, and thus Lizzie & The Makers were born. Although parts of the line up have changed over the years, The Maker's have solidified their line up over the years and currently consist of guitarist and songwriting partner Greg McMullen (who has been with Lizzie from the start), Brett Bass (Gregg Allman, Bernie Worrell) on bass, Steve Williams (Sadé, Digable Planets) on drums and Rob Clores on keys. Having sung with bands in the past, many of which heard her powerful vocals and labeled her a rock or power singer and tried to make her a certain type of artist that didn't fit who she truly was as an artist, caused her to struggle over the years to find her voice and stay true to her authentic self. Since that time, she has been finding her voice as an artist and has found a group of musicians with which she can shine as her true self. Lizzie & The Makers have been working in recent years with legendary producers Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie, Tin Machine) and Mario J. McNulty (David Bowie, Prince). Most recently, the band released "Mermaid", the first single from their soon-to-be-released new album. “It was right after Mardi Gras and there was still glitter, beads, and pieces of costumes in the streets, littering the wet, black pavement,” says Edwards. “I was nursing a broken heart and just started journaling as I was walking around. Pete’s Candy Store is like my home away from home, so I went there for solace, old friendships, and just started writing what I saw around me to try to process why my relationship with this person had suddenly shifted from close to distant.” The band also released a music video for the track that was mostly filmed at Art Factory Studios in Paterson, NJ and reflects the somber yet powerful sentiments behind the track, “emerging from a dark cave and going toward the light,” Edwards says. Recorded at Mission Sound Recording in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the new music threads shoegazey, psychedelic layers throughout its core. “I think we’ve been on this kind of ethereal tear,” mulled Edwards. “It’s almost like when we wrote these songs they went through a David Lynch portal, they and came out a little bizarre.” Infusing elements of art-rock, dream-pop, and a celestial atmosphere Lizzie & The Makers have spawned something entirely their own. The band is focused on their album release, with plans to also create some online live stream events and do some interviews that will also see them perform a bit. With plenty for their fans to look forward to, make sure to follow Lizzie & The Makers to stay up-to-date with all upcoming album and live performance news! You can connect with Lizzie & The Makers via the following links:

Your grandfather was an opera singer, your grandmother was a classical harpsichordist and your father was a sideman for artists such as Chuck Berry and was in a band himself. Growing up in such a musical family, what kind of influence do you feel that had on you as an artist and your love for music? Did you know from an early age that you wanted a career in music?

I think from an early age I knew that I loved music and it was in my blood a little bit and came naturally. It wasn't until later that I really wanted to pursue it as a career. I think it was something I just loved doing and it was therapeutic. As an angsty teenager, I loved playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff, and that was kind of how I would channel my mood swings (laughs). I think it wasn't until around then, at 12 or 13, where I thought "You know, I really want to sing and pursue this professionally."

You frequently went to shows with your father from a young age and have said that you developed a particular love for jazz. What was it that drew you to jazz in particular? Do you have any favorite memories from that time?

I think, growing up in New York City, I was just lucky to have access to a lot of great jazz clubs. When going with my dad, he would explain to me...I mean, it's not necessarily the most accessible genre of music, depending on what kind of jazz you're listening to. Cole Porter might be more accessible than Thelonious Monk. But when going with my dad, he would always tell me about the artists and give me their history. He knew so much, and so I think that kind of was part of what drew me to it. Also, I felt like there were a lot of female vocalists that I could really relate to and identify with, who I got to see perform live. I think I saw a little bit of myself in them and it kind of inspired me to pursue music, by seeing these strong female examples. I also just like the ability to get lost in jazz and kind of just close your eyes and feel the music and let it take you over. I feel like that is a genre that really does that and it's a little mysterious too, sometimes.

You studied classical piano and music theory at The New School in NYC, as well as music and English at Dartmouth College, and after college, you worked for The Jazz Foundation of America. How did that opportunity come about and what was that experience like? What kind of influence did it have on your singing and writing styles?

My dad actually had done some work with The Jazz Foundation. I was looking for a job and they had an opening to work on a program they had called 'Jazz In The Schools', which employed out of work older jazz musicians as teachers in schools because music programs had been cut. It was a really cool program that brought music to underfunded schools but also provided employment to these struggling musicians. It was just a perfect fit and I got to talk to the musicians a lot. I also worked for a little bit as a caretaker for Abbey Lincoln, the late jazz singer, and would go to her house and helped her buy groceries and walk her dog. She would tell me stories and sit at her piano and play for me and it was really an amazing privilege. I also became close with another female blues singer who goes by Sweet Georgia Brown. I think that talking to the two of them is really when I got into the blues and really started to find my voice there. After spending so much time with musicians like the two of them, when I started writing, finally, I found that most of the songs I wrote were blues progressions. It just kind of came out of me, so they definitely inspired me creatively and just in being a confident woman. They had great stories and it was a really, really rewarding experience and probably the best job I've ever had. It didn't feel like a job!

You've talked about struggling in the past with bands wanting you to sing in a key that didn't work for you and just how people wanted you to be a certain way as an artist. What has your journey been like in finding your voice as a singer and being true to yourself as an artist and not giving in to the pressure to be something you're not?

I think people have kind of their first impressions, just based on what they look like. So, there's that, right off the bat before you even open your mouth to sing that you have to deal with. I think once I sing and people hear that I have a powerful voice, they label me as a rock singer or a power singer. I like to sing soft songs too (laughs), and there are a lot of jazz songs I love to sing that aren't about blowing it out on every verse and chorus. I do think, at first, it's hard to find your voice and you're seeking approval from people and from the band. I worked with a lot of instrumentalists who are really talented and was always very intimidated by them. I feel like at first, I was trying to fit into this box of being a powerful singer or a rock singer. After a while, I just felt like I was following a script and not necessarily being true to myself. The more I wrote and explored music, I think I started to really develop my voice. It was challenging, but I would say it's probably like that for a lot of artists. You have your influences and you have mentors who want you to do a certain thing and you want to make people happy. After a while, you kind of start to listen to your own soul and try to translate your influences through yourself and into your own voice. It was a process, but I finally got there (laughs)!

A few years back, you were working as a sound engineer at the legendary Brooklyn venue Pete's Candy Store and put on a day fest called Bourbon Fest, which is how you have said that Lizzie & The Makers was born. What can you tell me about that impromptu formation of the band and the early days and how you have progressed as a band since then?

I actually had been singing with a blues band that was supposed to headline the festival that day, and the band broke up, like a week before the show was supposed to happen. So, it was really just a lot of timing and being in the right place at the right time with certain people. I think I was talking about how the band broke up, and through the rumor mill of the tiny venue, other musicians who play there found out and I would do sound for their set and they'd come up to me and said "Hey. I heard you need a band. I want to be in it." That's what Greg said to me, the guitarist in The Makers, and it just kind of was natural. Everybody who played there, or who worked at Pete's Candy Store, conglomerated characters from that scene to form a band. I think it just went better than we expected it to (laughs), for it is a last-minute, one-week advance show. Greg really motivated me to start writing and maybe have another gig and see where this goes. We did go through a few bass players at first because I find that the really good ones are in really high demand. We'd have someone playing bass for a couple of months and then they'd have to go on tour with someone, so we'd have to find someone else. Even my dad sat in as our bass player for a couple of gigs, because we had a last-minute need for a fill-in. Eventually, we found a drummer who was initially in the beginning years of The Makers. We were at a show at Spike Hill where Brett Bass, our current bass player, was playing and Greg said to me "That's the guy. That's the guy you should have in your band playing bass." I heard him play and said, "You're right." He joined us 6 months in, I think and has been with us ever since. Throughout the years, as our sound has changed, we've needed different things, from our drummer and guitarist-we used to have a rhythm guitarist and now we don't. We even had backup singers at one point and now we don't, so it was like a little puzzle and we were replacing pieces of it and seeing what worked. We found Steve Williams, who is our current drummer, I think it was three years ago, and it just really clicked. Our keyboard player has been with us for about 6 years. But other than that, it's been me, Brett and Greg, since the beginning. I think it makes a difference. We can all kind of read each other's minds at this point, so it helps.

You recently released "Mermaid", the first single from your upcoming album, and is described as emerging from a dark cave and going towards the light. What can you tell me about the track and the process of writing it? You've talked about how you journaled different thoughts you were having. Do you typically journal when songwriting?

I would say that is definitely how I would start an idea for a song. I try, first thing in the morning, to open up my notebook and I'll pick a random word from the dictionary and use that as my theme word and just write for 5 minutes. Once I get a lot of pages of those down, I'll go back and look through them and certain sentences or words will pop up and I'll think "Oh. That's an interesting idea." I kind of had a few passages of that which inspired the original idea for "Mermaid", and I had written a blues progression. Going back to the blues, I felt like we had a lot of rock and roll songs and not a lot of blues songs and I really wanted to write a more bluesy, soulful song for us. I brought my chords to Greg and he made it really groovy. I was going through a break-up at the time, I think, and it was at that confusing stage where you know it's ending but you're not really sure why or what happened and are trying to figure it out. I had some ideas for my journaling, but I went back to Pete's Candy Store where everything started and just sat at the bar and observed people and listened to their conversations and was kind of describing the decorations in the bar metaphorically. While I was listening to the track that Greg created, it just kind of came out. The story, I guess, is really just about longing and confusion and feeling like you keep ending up in this same place and you don't want to be in this sad place but you always somehow come out of it ok. And kind of getting lost in those feelings of sadness but resilience while also remembering the present and reality and being in touch with reality. So, like, this dreamy state of love lost but also being very aware of my surroundings and literally sitting at the bar, but just in general, in my life. And there are other things I have going for me and that this man is not the "be all, end all" of my existence (laughs)!

You all worked with producers Reeves Gabrels and Mario McNulty and have said that on "Mermaid", they had you sing the melody differently than usual and laying back a bit on the vocals, and showing vulnerability. What can you tell me about working with them and the influence they have had on your music and sound?

I think a great thing about Reeves and Mario is that first of all they loved our sound the way it is. They didn't really want to change too much. In working with producers, Greg and I really wanted to make sure we weren't going to work with someone that tried to change us. Being authentic and being ourselves were really important. But we knew that Reeves and Mario already liked the music and would have really good advice, as far as little details that maybe we didn't think of. Maybe a guitar riff should start out slow instead of really loud and tumultuous right at the beginning of a solo. Or with my vocals, one song, in particular, I felt it was like a soul song, so I was singing it in an Aretha-style vocal and really, really powerful the whole time. Having their perspective and having them be able to listen to the song and listen to the lyrics and add a new perspective to it, outside of mine and Greg's, was really interesting. Their experience working with amazing musicians and bands, they know how to create the arc of a song and I think that's why they wanted me to come in gently and not so forceful the whole time. One of the things they said was "You have nowhere to go and you want the song to build", so it was those little things, like in "Mermaid" but in other songs too, that just really helped to sharpen our sound. It was the missing link or missing ingredient in a recipe that we'd been looking for to really electrify these songs we've been working on.

You all also released a music video for "Mermaid". What inspired the idea behind the video?

I have to give all of that credit to the directors of the video and the studio we worked with called Alpha Wave Studios. I came to them with a song and really no idea. One of them is a really good friend of mine named David Malone, and I said "I need a video. Here's the song. I don't know what I'm doing." I knew I wanted to have some shots of the band playing live but that it would be cool to have a little storyline. He and his co-workers just ran with it and listened to the song and said "Ok. We have this idea. We're going to go to this place and there are Edison bulbs everywhere and it's going to magical. There's darkness and lightness and we'll get you on a trolley and we'll make a bar and you're sitting at the bar." They knew I had written a lot of the lyrics of the song sitting at Pete's Candy Store, and so I really had nothing to do with the concept. It was so lucky that they were so inspired by the song to kind of just come up with this whole storyboard. I really hope to work with them more. It's the same thing with the single artwork that we have, and even with the band. I usually don't give a lot of direction. I just give them the music that I have and let their creative flow run freely. It's worked out so far (laughs)! But yeah. They just felt inspired and came up with a story almost right away.

You have said that you all have been on a bit of an ethereal tear in writing the songs for the upcoming album, describing them as having gone through a David Lynch portal and coming out a bit bizarre. What can you tell me about the upcoming album and the process of writing the songs and the direction that the music went?

Greg and I have always been really big fans of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti and Greg does a lot of ambient guitar work as a solo musician. We've always had a fun time creating songs like that with each other. We never played them live. I felt like we always thought we needed to be rock and roll or be in a certain genre. People will ask "What kind of music do you play?" and I can never really answer that question accurately (laughs). I think that we finally felt confident enough to start bringing the ambient music and songs out. I think I was concerned at first because people can't really dance to it and it's not blowing you out and is not raging rock anthems, and asking "How are people going to respond to this? Are they going to fall asleep?". We wrote a couple of songs that were really rock and there were heavy guitars and powerful vocals, but a lot of pedal steel and howling and these other weird sounds. I think people liked it and, to our surprise, they liked it even more than the stuff we'd already been doing. We really started to indulge that part of our creative brains together. Again, I think that's why it makes working with Reeves and Mario a perfect fit, because Mario, having worked with David Bowie and Prince, there's always this weird, to me, outer space sound cloud surrounding their songs. It's not just a rock song and it's not just a blues song, but there's always something a little eerie or unsettling that happens, or there's a chord that you think is going to end or resolve a certain way that goes the opposite way. So yeah. I think that the more we write together, the more our songs take on that shape. I think that's really becoming our voice now. Our keyboard player Rob is great at just adding these bizarre tones that really take it to another planet and make it more than just a pop song or rock song.

You lost your father to Covid in April of last year, which I am very sorry to hear. You have talked about how he was memorialized in New Orleans alongside some other legendary blues and jazz musicians. What can you tell me about The Krewe du Jazz float that was transformed by Casey Lipscomb and other local New Orleans artists and to know that he had been memorialized in that way? I'm sure that was really nice to hear about.

Yeah. I was in shock, I think, for two days. I mean, my dad was an amazing person and really touched a lot of lives. That memorial is one of many that, throughout this entire year I feel like every week or so there's something else like that we hear about happening. People we haven't even met, who my dad worked with or helped or inspired, memorializing him in beautiful and touching ways. I remember, it was actually my former co-worker, who is now the executive director of The Jazz Foundation of America, who emailed me and my mother and brother to let us know that was happening. It felt like that is right where he belongs and felt perfect, but also just really...I don't know. I've always been in awe of my dad, but that really took it to another level. I think my little brother beat me to it. He reached out to the artist and said "I'll pay whatever I can to get that panel sent to me once you're done with it." I wish I had asked for that first (laughs)! It just speaks to the kind of impact he had on the music industry and on The Jazz Foundation and just on how much he loved music. He really loved all kinds of music and helping people, and so to see that appreciated in the form of a memorial was really touching and moving. He deserves it.

You also recently did a duet with Rembert Block for 'The Love Hangover'. What can you tell me about that, as well as the non-profit Sounds of Saving that the donations went to?

Rembert and I are actually neighbors and we've been singing together for about 5 years now. Time is really hard to measure (laughs)! This was an event that we had both done before and is usually done live and is done live at many venues around the world, simultaneously. They still really wanted to do something this year, but it all had to be virtual. It's always done the day after Valentine's Day and in February, and even now still people aren't really playing live. We reached out to each other, since we're neighbors, and figured that would be the easiest way to do a duet. She had picked the Richard Thompson song "Keep Your Distance", which we felt was appropriate due to Covid (laughs). There was a Buddy & Julie Miller version that had really tight two-part harmonies and so we thought that would be perfect. Sounds of Saving is really, and I don't want to paraphrase it too much, an organization that supports music but also supports bettering your mental health through music and the impact music can have on someone who is suicidal or depressed and how it can uplift someone and how music can really create hope in the most hopeless situations. Being able to perform and raise money for that, especially during this time when it's so easy while being isolated to feel down and hopeless, was really important to us. Rembert and I also have another group we're in, a female trio, so this was kind of us maybe laying down the groundwork for music to come.

Following "Mermaid", you all plan to release a single every month leading up to the release of the new album, so what can you tell me about the next single that will be released? What else you all have coming up?

I believe the next single to be released will be a song called "Bottle". It's another very blues-inspired song, but it has some weird, unexpected turnarounds in the chord progression, which I really like. It's about kind of a similar theme. It's feeling, like, a hurricane of emotions and being out a bar by yourself but you're broke so you have to go home and hope you have more to drink at home. The line I borrow a little bit from "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World"...the chorus is "Tell me how, darlin' how. I'm just trying to find my place in this bad world. Tell me how, darlin' how do you make it as a woman or a girl", so I think there's a lot of expression of how hard it is. I think I was having a hard time being a female in the rock genre, but just also in general. I'm definitely a feminist and do think that there's a lot of sexism still in music, but also just in general with the "Me too" movement. I hate bringing up "Me too" because it's been going on for so long, but just when you have that feeling of "Oh god. This would be so much easier if I were a guy." Like, what am I going to do? I'm going to go out and drink. Oh, I'm too broke to drink, because I don't make enough money because I'm not a guy, so I've gotta go home (laughs). It opens with this message, this SOS alert that Greg and I heard on the radio while driving from Austin to Houston. There was a tornado warning, so it opens with that message of kind of the alarm going off saying "There's a tornado coming. Move inside and close your windows." So, I guess in the song I'm kind of the tornado and trying too not get too angry and to keep pushing forward and not let my rage get the best of me, but it's there nonetheless. And trying to find the answers, somehow, somewhere (laughs).

Do you have anything else coming up or are you just focusing on the album release?

Yeah. We're focusing on the album release. I think we're going to have some online livestream shows coming up and some interviews where we'll also perform a little bit. We'll definitely post about that when those happen. They are in the works but not scheduled yet. Hopefully by June, when we release the album, we can have a real outdoor show!

Photo Ladies 4/7/21 Photo Ladies 4/7/21

INTERVIEW: Losers

Losers Photo by Ben Madle_DSC_2009f.jpg — Losers

The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May
Photo credit: Ben Madle.
All questions answered by Tom Bellamy.

Sometimes you have to experience the dark to see the light, and for the UK genre-defying band Losers, they have re-emerged from a dark period having found their light. The band was formed in 2007 by Eddie Temple-Morris and Tom Bellamy as a remix project. The addition of guitarist Paul Mullen in 2010 saw the band veer away from dance-oriented music to more guitar-focused rock music and they became hailed by critics for their ability to blend the sounds of indie electronic music and guitar rock. Their music has been used in dozens of TV, film, videogames, and sports placements including Game of Thrones, The Blacklist, Hercules, The Killing, and as the official theme music for BMX Championships London 2012 Olympic Games. Two albums into their career, a desire for inspiration led them to move to Berlin, where they signed a publishing deal with BMG. Although they experienced momentum as a band in their Berlin studio under the production of Bellamy, they found themselves in a downward spiral as a band around the release of their 2016 hit album How To Ruin Other People's Futures. Although the album received critical acclaim, it was a low point for the band. “How To Ruin…was angry and bitter and resentful,” Bellamy explains. “It was a difficult time for us as a band and the music naturally reflected that. After pain comes transformation and so our music transformed with us. We allowed light to come in and the music began to have a completely different energy. If How to Ruin…was pig-headed and enraged in a corner, our new music looks to the world with open arms, embracing the entire spectrum, confident and composed.” In February of this year, the band released their cover of the Tears For Fears hit "Shout", giving it a more somber and dark sound. “All three of us are huge fans of Tears for Fears and "Shout" is just a classic,” says multi-instrumentalist Tom Bellamy. The song was prominently featured in the hit TV show A Discovery of Witches (S2: Ep 4) on Amazon Prime, AMC+, Sundance Now, and Shudder. “After the last album [2016’s critically-acclaimed How To Ruin Other People's Futures], we felt it would be creatively rewarding to deconstruct some of our favourite songs. We found that this was a great way to learn about how other people make music, to absorb some of their ideas and in turn help us to develop our own songwriting. We went back to school!” The darkness and pain that they have experienced as a band have given way to enormous growth and transformation, with their songs sounding more expansive and balanced than in the past. With big plans and new tracks plotted for release throughout the year, Losers are ready to regain their position at the forefront of the alternative rock world. “We grew up a bit, took some time to reflect and we wrote enough songs to realize that we were more eclectic than ever and that was a pleasant challenge for us to have," says Bellamy. “We want to take our fans on an interactive, genre-bending audio-visual expedition via new and innovative platforms which we hope to announce soon. We will be setting up live performances from the studio, ‘behind the music’ studio breakdowns, and giving away remix stems amongst other things to make sure we reward our fans after such a long time away. Very exciting times ahead indeed.” They most recently released their latest single "Lost In Translation", about reconnecting to ourselves and the world around us. “Life can feel so lonely when we see other people and things as separate to ourselves, trying to escape from something that didn’t exist until we created it,” says Bellamy about their new single." "The track is about feeling not at home, no matter where you are or who you’re with, but then realizing that home is within. It’s not until we step back and see ourselves as not separate from the world, but in union with it, in love with it, that we can really see beauty. It’s so important to remember to pause and not to dwell on the negative narratives we all tell ourselves.” With plans to perform their live shows as a 2-piece going forward and work to maintain the new momentum they are building, Losers have shown they are back and ready to dive headfirst into their new music and innovative fan experiences. Losers are DJ Eddy Temple-Morris, multi-instrumentalist Tom Bellamy, and guitarist Paul Mullen. You can connect with Losers via the following links.

Losers was formed in 2007 and evolved from dance-oriented music to a guitar rock sound when Paul joined in 2010. Having always been fans of bands who "reinvent the wheel" and push the envelope in terms of their sound, what has driven your evolving sound as a band over the years?

What drives us is our passion for music. The joy of experimenting with sounds we’ve never used before and put together different combinations of instruments to create new soundscapes. We still get such a buzz from creating. It’s highly addictive!

After releasing your first 2 albums, you made the decision to move to Berlin to be more inspired and signed with BMG Germany. What can you tell me about that decision to move to and live in Berlin and what inspired you the most about the city? What can you tell me about your Berlin studio?

Living in London simply wasn’t sustainable for us. Berlin was affordable and of course, it was full of new inspiration. The electronic scene definitely had an impact on us. We didn’t go to clubs much but it’s everywhere you go. It just soaks into your veins. Our studio is in a high-rise building on the outskirts. It’s home to probably around 200 studios and rehearsal rooms. It’s incredibly inspiring. There’s never a quiet moment. If you pop your head out the window you get techno mixed with classical mixed with psychedelic rock mixed with opera. It’s amazing.

You experienced a tough couple of years as a band around the time of your third album, How To Ruin Other People's Futures, which led to a metamorphosis for the band. In what ways did the pain and difficulty of that time lead to the transformation of the band and your music? What has it been like for you to let the light in and give new energy to your music?

We live our music. It’s a blessing and a curse. I often say that pain is also another word for growth and we had a lot of growing to do. I personally got too attached to an image of myself that I don't want to let go of. The pain is in the "not wanting to let go". Anyway, we shed some skin and we came out the other side feeling a lot more positive, focused, and energized. It had a huge impact on how we addressed our new songs.

Your music has been featured often in television, film, video games, and sports placements. What has that been like for you as a band and do you have any other opportunities coming up?

We’re incredibly grateful to have had our music synced to visuals so many times. It’s quite unbelievable. The best part was that we never wrote for that purpose, we just wrote for ourselves and music supervisors just liked what they heard. It meant that we could pay for our studio costs and stay afloat during a time when the music industry was crippling for musicians in terms of making money from selling records. There always seem to be opportunities ahead.

In February of this year, you released your cover of Tears For Fears "Shout", with the thought that it would be creatively rewarding to deconstruct some of your favorite songs. You've said it was a great way to learn about how other people make music, absorb some of their ideas, and to help you develop your own songwriting. What did you learn in the process? What inspired your darker take on the song and what can you tell me about having the song featured in the show A Discovery of Witches?

"Shout" is an epic song. It’s full of ideas but when you break it down you realize you can take lots of the elements away and give the essence of the song even more presence. It shows the strength of a great song when you can just take the vocal and put it with a simple piano or guitar part and it still sounds great. That’s essentially what we did. I wouldn’t say our version is dark but it is stirring. I find it very emotional. That just came in the moment from the energy in the room. We were honoured to have it used in A Discovery of Witches.

You most recently released your new single "Lost In Translation", which you've described as a reaction to feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the world around you. What can you tell me about the song and what it means to you? How did you come to feel a sense of union and connection with the world around you rather than feeling separate from it? What effect do you feel Covid has had on the way in which you, and the world in general, have felt connected to others and the world?

I’ve been reading lots of books about consciousness and spirituality. Listening to people like Ram Dass or Thich Nhat Hanh, they helped me to understand some of the negative thought processes I had been having. As humans, we inherently need to connect, but most importantly we need to connect to ourselves. Covid was a good opportunity to look within when the outside world was so chaotic. I think everyone is yearning for connection and hopefully, there will be an explosion of that soon.

You have said that you usually write the music for your songs first and then the words, but for "Lost In Translation", the words came first. Having tried 3 different versions of the music, what was your process like for finding the right music to accompany the words and what led you to settle on the music you did?

Sometimes everything comes together in a day. You can write, arrange and produce the music and lyrics in a whirlwind and it almost took no thought or energy. Then there are other songs like this that take time to sculpt. That’s just the way it goes. After trying various other styles of music, this version just felt right. Music is a feeling. There’s no right or wrong. It’s all about vibe.

How do you feel that working with long time collaborators such as Damian Taylor and Dan Austin has expanded your sound and given it a new sense of balance?

Those guys are both legends. They do things with our productions that blow our minds. We’re incredibly lucky to have them on board. We know our limits as mixers and these guys just have the skills to take music to an incredibly high level.

You have said you will be releasing new music on a regular basis throughout the year. What inspired your decision to release music as a stream of tracks rather than as an album?

To us, everything about releasing songs individually makes sense to us. From a creative point of view and also from a consumer point of view. We can be more in the moment and we can be more reactive and more adaptable. There’s less downtime and there’s more momentum. It’s a win win for both us and our fans.

Going forward, you have revealed plans to focus on an interactive & genre-bending audio-visual experience via new and innovative platforms. One such experience is your new Behind The Music Series Webinar. What can you tell me about the idea behind the webinar and what fans can expect? What other experiences do you have planned?

The idea for the webinars was to give fans an insight into our world. I used to love listening to producers go through mixes on a desk. I wanted to do the same and maybe inspire someone else. It’s an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with our fans. We will also be releasing a live track every 6 weeks and a playlist of songs that inspired the track.

What led you to decide to make the live band a 2-piece going forward? What can people expect from future live shows?

We wanted something new. We’d done the whole 5-piece band thing but it felt like for the new sound, a stripped-back live setup was the way forward. We’re going to be making complete reworking of our songs in order to make a cohesive live set that will get people dancing. We wanna party :-)

You guys have been rejuvenated by a new perspective after a difficult era as a band and have a busy 2021 planned and a clean slate! What can you tell me about your new perspective and your goals as a band going forward?

We want to spread some joy and positivity. It’s time to connect, even if for now that’s through a computer.

What's next for you?

I’m going to have a cup of tea and then continue chipping away at this mammoth campaign we’ve set out for ourselves.

Photo Ladies 3/26/21 Photo Ladies 3/26/21

INTERVIEW: TREASVRE

TREASVRE

The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May

San-Francisco quintet TREASVRE has taken quite the journey to get to where they are today. Having all been friends since high school, it began as a side project for guitarists Jason Zaru and Julian Balestrieri. Evan Dulaney (drums/synth), Sabrina Simonton (keys/synths/vox), and Sam Pena ((bass/vox) later came on board and the band evolved to where they are today. Heavily influenced by the Bay Area scene that they all grew up in, the dedicated musicians that they saw perform night after night inspired them to develop their own musical skills. Although they all bring different influences to the band, the five members have always maintained a collaborative spirit and have decided that going forward, they will approach their songwriting process differently in order to better experiment with their sounds and better manage their time. Like with many artists, the Covid shutdowns altered the way in which the band released their music. They were in the studio just ahead of the shutdowns in early 2020 and, looking ahead to a year without events, decided to release their music a series of four 2-song EPs to give the songs the attention they deserve and have music to release throughout the year. Pairing their releases according to themes, they released "Devils/Echos" first, followed by "Too Late/One of Us", "Believe Me/Outside" and most recently "Heavy Arms/Secrets". Much of their inspiration as a band comes from the concept of the silver lining and finding that hopeful light at the end of the tunnel during challenging times. Having their four releases to focus on over the past year, as well as doing live-streaming events that helped them to reach a wider audience than they normally would have, helped them to combat the dread over thoughts of what their lives and music careers would look like on the other side of this. They have used the past year to evolve and grow both personally and musically. TREASVRE will be releasing two new singles this year, the first of which being set for release on April 30th, and are working on recording their new full-length EP. They also plan to release their new music video for "Devils" on April 2nd. A live band at heart, they are hoping to be back to playing live shows by the end of the year and then planning a tour. With plenty of new music on the horizon, TREASVRE is definitely a band to keep on your radar! You can connect with TREASVRE via the following links. Photo credit: Jeff Straw.

You have all been friends since high school and all grew up in the Bay Area. You have said that the DIY hardcore and metal scene throughout Redwood City and Berkeley have always been a huge influence for you. What can you tell me about the music scene in San Francisco and The Bay Area growing up and how it influenced you? In what ways do you feel it shaped how you operate as a band?

The Bay Area music scene provided some of our first exposure to non-mainstream music and what it means to be a performing artist. Going to local shows as teenagers opened up our eyes to a world full of dedicated musicians who would stop at nothing to be able to create. We were immediately inspired by the people in our communities who got up on stage to play their hearts out for us and gave us a place to go where we felt like we could express ourselves. Sam remembers going to her first show in San Francisco where she saw The Phenomenauts perform, and what an amazing experience that was—the energy of the live performance, the excitement of the crowd, the feeling of the music pounding in her ears. Not to mention the sense of community. Those first local shows that we went to as teenagers captured our imagination, and compelled us all to spend more time developing our musical skills.

One way it’s shaped us as a band is we feel very tied to the Bay Area. We are all rooted here and spent the most formative years of our lives going to shows and experiencing the local music scene. As San Francisco grew more and more expensive in the 2010s, we saw many artists and musicians move to farther reaches of the Bay Area, southern California, and even different states. As a result, we’ve grown somewhat protective of our music community and felt like we have a personal responsibility to help it succeed. As a result, we have always been active in going to shows and supporting independent artists and venues. We know how important the local music scene was for us growing up, we want it to continue to thrive for new generations also.

Having all known each other since you were teenagers/young adults, what can you tell me about coming together to form TREASVRE and experimenting with different sounds to find your sound as a band?

TREASVRE took quite a journey to reach our current form. It all began as a side project of Jason and Julian, who were playing in a different band together at the time. Jason was the drummer for that band, but he wanted to devote more time to writing for guitar, and so the two of them started jamming out ideas in their free time.

Evan was the next logical addition to this new band. The three of them knew each other from growing up in the Bay Area and shared similar musical influences. As they fleshed out more ideas with Evan on drums and Julian and Jason on guitars, eventually they decided that a keyboard player would be a good addition to their evolving sound.

Enter Sabrina. She and Evan had been long-time acquaintances since they were 19 years old. They initially met while Sabrina was sharing an apartment in San Francisco with her childhood friend Cat Jones, who happened to be dating the bassist from Evan’s band at the time. Evan and Cat became close pals, and so he and Sabrina would see each other regularly throughout the years through their mutual friend. But it was still a bit out-of-the-blue when Sabrina got a Facebook message from Evan asking if she was down to jam. Having been primarily a solo musician up until that point, Sabrina jumped at the chance to join the band.

As a four-piece, Jason, Julian, Evan, and Sabrina began writing songs together and exploring different sounds. After some experimentation with synth bass and bass backing tracks, they finally came to the conclusion that a bass player was needed to complete the band. That’s when Sam came into the picture. Actually, Sam had kind of always been in the picture—she and Evan were dating and living together, and she and Julian were good friends since high school too. After a little convincing, she agreed to become our bass player and join Sabrina on vocals. And that’s when TREASVRE really started to become who we are today.

You have talked about how your songwriting as a band is a very collaborative process. What kinds of challenges have you faced in blending your different songwriting styles together or has it been a smooth process? What can you tell me about your desire to change your songwriting process with your upcoming music?

It definitely hasn’t always been a smooth process. We regularly have debates over which sound/vibe/direction we want to take a song, and it can be difficult to try to come to a consensus among all five of us. Our individual musical aesthetics actually blend together nicely. Even though we represent a variety of music tastes, there are several common threads tying them together: heavy guitars, lots of atmospheres, heartfelt lyrics, and rich synth textures, to offer up some examples. But having so many opinions at play during our songwriting sessions can get complicated, so we’ve decided to try a different approach. Instead of working on new music with every band member in the room, we are collaborating together in pairs and then recording ideas that we trade back and forth. So far, it’s going well, enabling us to be more thorough in our experimentation and more effective with our time.

You hit the recording studio last year right before the shutdowns. What can you tell me about getting creative with your release schedule and releasing the music you had recorded as a set of 4 separate short EPs, as well as the themes that surrounded each release? How did you decide the order in which to release each EP?

We literally wrote down all the songs we had recorded on a whiteboard and tried organizing them in various ways until it made sense. It was the beginning of the pandemic, and we were looking ahead at a year without events and wondering how we were going to promote all our new music. It made sense to space out short releases in order to give our songs the attention we thought they deserved, as well as get more mileage out of them during a time when we couldn’t perform live. We ended up pairing up our songs according to their themes: “Devils / Echoes” is about isolation and escapism; “Too Late / One Of Us” explores trust and betrayal; “Believe Me/Outside” tells two different stories about control and surrender; lastly, “Heavy Arms / Secrets” looks at two different approaches to letting go. We decided to kick off our release series with “Devils / Echoes” because we wanted to put our best foot forward, and we felt that those two songs really exemplified our music and aesthetic.

You recently released "Heavy Arms" / "Secrets", the 4th and final release in the series. What can you tell me about the songs? I read that "Heavy Arms" still represents the original message of the song when you first wrote it, but that "Secrets" went through many iterations before achieving its final form as a song. Why do you feel the two processes for the songs were so different?

“Heavy Arms” is the odd song out in our release series because it’s the only song with lyrics written by someone other than Sam or Sabrina. Our guitarist Julian is the primary lyricist on this track, and we all liked his original concept so much that we never really felt the need to stray from the song’s original version. Sure, we’ve tweaked certain parts over time, but we’ve never felt the need to rework it or make any major changes beyond the initial songwriting process.

“Secrets” was very different because the original concept for the song didn’t stand the test of time. Julian plays a role here too because he was the least satisfied out of all of us with its first iteration. After recording a demo and stewing on it for a while, Julian suggested we take a fresh approach at writing the vocals and offered up some rough ideas for a melody. Sabrina took his ideas and ran with them, and together they were able to finally craft the song into its current form. This was happening at a time in Sabrina’s life when she was going through some positive changes; she had plenty of inspiration, and a triumphant-sounding song like “Secrets” was the perfect venue for her to convey her journey through lyrics. Once we had the force of intention behind the songwriting, we finally got to a version we all felt good about.

Evan- You have a love for graphic design. What can you tell me about the artwork you have done for several of the releases and what inspired your designs? How would you describe your aesthetic?

Evan: While I did the final production of the album art, the concepts were definitely a collaborative effort. We knew that we wanted a common theme throughout the album covers, and we knew we wanted a surreal treatment that reflected the themes of each song, so eventually, we landed on the concept of closeups of the human form. First, we tinkered with taking photos, but those didn’t have the desired effect, so I jumped in and made them in 3D. Each cover features a 3D scan I was able to get using my smartphone using Sam as a model, and flowers that I designed myself. My aesthetic kind of bounces around depending on what I’m working on, but for this release series I’d say I was going for a surreal, tense, and dramatic feel for the cover art.

You have said that much of your inspiration comes from the silver lining-the hopeful light at the end of the tunnel during challenging times. Do you ever struggle to see that light? In what ways do the pain and beauty in life inspire you?

We do struggle sometimes, as all people do, to find the good in certain situations. Especially this last year, as we watched our city shut down and our favorite venues shutter their doors, it was difficult at times to imagine what our lives would be like on the other side. We were definitely fortunate to have our release series to focus on—having an ongoing project really helped us stay positive and motivated despite everything going on in the world. We’ve been touched by how our music has been received and inspired by our online community who came together and innovated new ways of experiencing music online. Through playing shows via online streaming, we’ve actually been able to make connections we never would have made before, with people from all walks of life and from all over the world! The point being, you can’t find the good if you don’t look for it. We really believe that perspective can make all the difference, even in life’s most challenging situations.

You have referred to 2020 as a big year of transitions for each of you and have said you shouldn't let the past hold you back from evolving as a person. How do you feel you have grown and evolved over the past year, personally and artistically?

We’ve made some adjustments to how we songwrite over the past year. Evan has transitioned from writing on guitar to using synthesizers instead, and Sam has also been experimenting with different writing styles outside of her comfort zone. Julian and Jason have both been putting a lot more time and thought into music, and working on being more intentional with their efforts. Sabrina has been taking vocal lessons and learning more about using her voice as an instrument, which has given her more confidence to try new things. We’ve become closer as a band in the past year as well, by being forced to really think about who we are and what our goals are.

On a personal level, the past year was a big wake-up call about what’s important in life and what we need to thrive as individuals. Not being able to socialize or do other activities freed up a lot of mental bandwidth for introspection, and we definitely found ourselves asking a lot of big picture questions. Another point of personal growth has been learning to adjust our expectations. 2020 didn’t turn out like any of us planned, and we had to let go of what we had envisioned the year to look like.

As tough as the past year has been for so many people, what does self-care look like for you? What do you enjoy doing outside of music?

Getting outdoors is definitely a big one for us. Whether it be hiking, bicycling, motorcycling, or playing catch in the park, just being outside really helps us feel better. We also love to explore by taking aimless walks, trying new restaurants, or trekking extra far just for a cup of coffee. The Bay Area is a truly breathtaking place and there is so much natural beauty where we live. We are truly lucky that we can go to the beach at a moment’s notice, or climb any of the 49 hills in San Francisco to experience an awe-inspiring view. We try to take advantage of it as much as we can!

What can you tell me about the two new singles you'll be releasing in the coming months, as well as the full EP you are hoping to release by the end of this year?

Release day is coming up quickly! The first single will be coming out on April 30th, more details on that to come. Our full EP is currently in the works and we are excited to watch it slowly come together. We wanted to be more intentional with this longer release, and really craft a story and a vibe that will be impactful to the listener. So, we are spending more time trying new things, fleshing out ideas, and thinking about what it is we’re trying to convey. Ultimately, we want to create a collection of songs that’s moving and memorable.

As a band that was very focused on live shows prior to the pandemic, what has it been like for you to not be able to perform for a live audience? What do you look forward to the most when live shows resume?

Performing in front of a live audience is one of the best things about being a musician, and there really is no substitute. We’ve sorely missed the feeling of the energy in the room when we play for a crowd, and the sense of community we got from being an active part of our Bay Area music scene. But the absence of shows has also had a strange upside, in that it forced us into the world of streaming and opened up so many opportunities for us that we probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. By playing online shows, we were able to meet people from all over the world and reach audiences we never would’ve reached before! It’s also helped us build our social media presence as that has been our primary tool for getting our music out there.

What we’re looking forward to most about the return of live music is the reopening of venues. Small independent stages are crucial to any local music scene and we can’t wait to be able to support them again! We’ll be busy going to plenty of shows as soon as they are up and running again.

What's next for you?

We’re releasing a music video for our single “Devils” on April 2nd! This film was an incredible undertaking involving a team of talented people lead by Bay Area independent filmmaker Michael Beltran. We are thrilled with how it turned out! After that, we will be releasing our next two singles, and we are planning to return to the recording studio over the summer to track our full-length EP. In the coming months, we’ll be busy writing new music for that release, and by the end of the year, we hope to be back to playing live shows. Once that happens, we’ll start setting our sights on going on tour!

Photo Ladies 3/15/21 Photo Ladies 3/15/21

INTERVIEW: LAU

Photo by Yanny Tokyo_2W8A2225 copy.jpg — **LAU**

The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May

Photo credit: Yanny Tokyo

Music is often an outlet for expression, and for Argentian-born and Barcelona-based artist Laura Fares, better known as LAU, she channeled her emotions following the split from her partner of 9 years into her debut solo album Believer. “The whole album talks about everything I went through last year, breaking up after nine years… the disappointments, the lies, the heartache, the sadness, that sense of being completely lost and having to find yourself again,” she itemizes. Her love for synthwave/retrowave music has led her to blend New Wave, Sythwave, and Electro Pop styles with her own melodic hooks to create her sound. Having had a love for music from a young age, she taught herself drums and guitar at the age of 17, and following college in the UK, she became an in-demand songwriter and set out on tour as a session drummer for various artists such as Sam Sparro, Ricky Martin, and Taio Cruz. Fares spent many years behind-the-scenes, writing and performing for other artists, and with Believer, she has decided to start writing music for herself, showcasing herself as a solo artist. “Deep inside, I always knew I was a songwriter,” she explains, “but my career as a session drummer and DJ/producer took me to different places and ended up working with different artists. Now I think it's time for me to truly and openly express who I am, what I'm going through, and what I have to say. I hope some people will connect with that.” In addition to writing and performing music for herself and others, she is also the co-founder of the synthpop label Aztec Records, formed in 2010 with friend Ariel Amejeiras, which has launched the careers of NINA and Bright Light Bright Light, amongst others. In 2014, Aztec Music Publishing was formed as a way of managing and expanding the Aztec Records catalog more effectively to pursue placements in tv, film, and advertisements, and last year, the Spanish-speaking sub-label called Aztec Latin was launched. Fares recently relocated to Barcelona and has been busy recording some collaborations and getting her live show together, with the hopes that live shows will return soon. Believer was released on February 12th via Aztec Records on vinyl, cassette, and CD-R in an original and Deluxe edition. The Deluxe version of the album includes remixes by some of the top producers in the genre like Luke Million, Sunglasses Kid, Droid Bishop, Popcorn Kid, Maethelvin, Highway Superstar, and newcomer talent Austin Apologue and also includes an exclusive cover version of a Haim’s “Now I’m In It”, reworked by Friday Night Firefight. You can connect with LAU via the following links.

You taught yourself drums and guitar at the age of 17 and following college in the UK, you went off on tour as a session drummer for various pop stars. What can you tell me about starting out as a session drummer, as opposed to launching your own music career, and how the opportunity came about? What was it like for you to travel the world at that age, and what do you feel that you learned from your travels and experiences with other artists that have helped you in your career?

I was always fascinated by the drums, so to be a session drummer and tour the world was a dream come true. I moved to the UK in 1999 and I went to University to study music. As soon as I got my degree I got lots of auditions and started drumming for big acts like Sam Sparro, Taio Cruz, Big Black Delta, Ricky Martin, and others. Playing for major artists taught me a lot and was very inspiring. I met some incredibly talented musicians, visited amazing places, and played in some legendary stages and tv shows. It was a fantastic few years of my life as a session drummer, but I realized I needed (and wanted) to create something more permanent, something more "me". So I simultaneously started to develop my producing and songwriting skills with different projects.

You have discussed being drawn early on to the Synthwave/Retrowave scene and feel that the synth-pop sound is a nostalgic sound that immediately takes you back to your childhood. What does that nostalgia look like for you and how do you feel it presents itself in your music?

I think that characteristic 80s synth sound is always very present in my music. I grew up listening to Madonna, Queen, Tears for Fears, Roxette, and they really marked me as a songwriter. Strong melodies supported by lots of harmonies were always something important to me as a songwriter. I also love the aesthetic 80s element, it just brings lovely memories and I think it's timeless.

You recently launched your solo career, after years of writing, producing, and performing for other artists. You have said that a mistake you feel that you have made was not to believe in yourself earlier and to just now launch your solo career. Why do you feel that you lacked self-confidence before now and how do you feel that your experiences over the past year led you to decide that now was the moment to do so?

I think when you're a creator you put yourself in a vulnerable position, as you're exposing yourself and your emotions, and it's always easier to "hide" to avoid any disappointments, and looking back, I think I was kind of doing that subconsciously. I didn't have the courage to present myself as an artist back then. I guess I didn't really believe in myself fully... my voice, my looks, my age. It was a journey that took years... to finally believe in what I have to offer as a solo artist and to trust my voice and my craft. That's why I decided to call my debut album 'Believer'.

You recently released your debut solo album Believer, which deals with everything you have been through over the past year and breaking up with your partner of 9 years. What was it like for you, through the writing of this album, to go on the journey of finding yourself again? What have you discovered about yourself in the process?

It was a very cathartic process to write this album and to pour all my emotions into it. I always say it was like therapy to me. There are some songs in my album that made me cry for 2 weeks non-stop while writing them. But even though it was a painful process, I'm very happy with the final result and I hope people will connect with each song and the lyrics. Each track on the album portrays a different stage in that separation process, from the disappointment and initial disbelief to the more hopeful songs of acceptance and wanting to fall in love again. I finally realized that after all the pain, disappointments, and heartache, I was right where I should be. Life had taken me where I needed to be, to learn whatever I needed to learn about myself and about my music. To find me again after having "lost myself" in a relationship for so long.

What can you tell me about the artwork for Believer and how you met and came to work with illustrator Joe Cramer? What inspired the design?

There's a photo by Yanny Tokyo that I really wanted to use as the cover of the album, but I wanted an iconic 80s looking illustration, so I asked Joe if he could come up with something (he's also based in Barcelona). He did a fantastic job illustrating me and captured the vibe immediately, he got inspired by classic 80s album covers. I'm really pleased with the final result.

You have said that deep down inside, you always knew you were a songwriter. After writing for other artists for so many years, what has it been like for you to write and express yourself through your own songs? How do you feel the two processes differ?

It's been a very revealing and cathartic process, finally using my songs to express my own emotions and to connect with the audience in a more direct way. Finding out where my voice would take me and not holding back. This is a much more personal process now and puts me in a more vulnerable position, opening up my heart and emotions publicly, but it's all worth it. I loved writing for others, but sometimes it wouldn't sound exactly like I envisioned it, whereas, with my own album, I had complete creative control over the sound, lyrics, and aesthetic.

In 2010 you started your label Aztec Records with Ariel Amejeiras and in 2014, Aztec Music Publishing was formed as a way of managing and expanding the Aztec Records catalog more effectively to pursue placements in tv, film, and advertisements. What do enjoy about running your own label and what led you to expand into tv, film, and advertisements? What can you tell me about the Spanish-speaking sub-label called Aztec Latin that was launched last year?

It's been an incredible journey running a label with one of my best friends (and I still love it!). I got to learn a lot about the music business and how to develop artists and point their careers in the right direction. The label started as a passion project initially, and after a few years, we started growing as a business. We now employ over 10 people and have offices in the UK, Spain, and Argentina, and represent over 30 artists worldwide. The Publishing side was very important for us to grow as a business, placing music in tv, ads, film, and games and has allowed us to continue to invest in developing and releasing new talent. Last year we made the decision to launch Aztec Latin to release and promote Synthpop and Electronic music purely in Spanish and it's been going great, we're super excited about it all.

What can you tell me about your move to Barcelona and what you love and find inspiring about the city?

After 21 years in London, I felt that it was time to move on to a new place to have a fresh start, and Barcelona was the perfect choice for me. I have friends here, I speak Spanish, I love the warm weather, the beach, the food, the outdoor sports, so it was an easy decision to make. As much as I love London and I'll always be very connected to that city, I had to listen to my heart and make the change when was needed, so I can continue to be inspired, creative, and happy.

You recently released your first-ever music video for "True". What was the experience like for you and what can you tell me about the idea behind the video? Do you have plans to shoot more music videos?

We had lots of fun filming my first video. It was directed by Lluis Miras and we shot in Barceloneta Beach and in the Gothic Quarter, where I live. I always like to clone myself in my home-videos and we wanted to try the same concept for this one. It took 3 days to film all the scenes and the final scene where the ball hits my face nearly broke my nose... but we got the shot we wanted! We already started planning the next video, but I can't say much about it yet.

What do you hope people take away from your music?

I hope that my music will brighten up their day, or might make them want to dance or help them reflect about a certain situation. Whatever it is, I hope they connect with the music, the lyrics and the emotion I put into all my songs.

What's next for you? What are your goals, post-pandemic?

I'm recording some collaborations at the moment, and I'm starting to get my live show together, maybe do some streaming shows and I keep dreaming of touring again one day. Fingers crossed!

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