Month: May 2020

RSVP HERE: Nihiloceros Livestreams via Radio Free Brooklyn + MORE

Photo Credit: Carlo Minchillo

Mike Borchardt, frontman of Brooklyn DIY punk outfit Nihiloceros, is a stellar show-goer. He is always stage-side, taking photos and promoting every show happening that week on his band’s social media accounts. From the looks of Instagram, he has taken the transition from IRL gigs to virtual shows in stride, continuing to post live stream schedules and Insta-live screen shots.

Mike started what has become Brooklyn’s most supportive band in his hometown of Chicago. They were originally called Samantha, but changed their name to the much more Google-able Nihiloceros. The trash pop trio’s rhythm section is filled out by Alex Hoffman on bass and vocals, and German Sent on drums. They released a self-titled EP in 2017, and are putting the finishing touches on their follow-up EP in a socially distant manner. You can catch Mike of Nihiloceros doing a solo set this Tuesday,  June 2nd on Radio Free Brooklyn’s Instagram at 8pm. We chatted with Mike about commuting during lock down, creative livestreaming, and being quarantined with band mates.

AF: Has Nihiloceros been able to get together or collaborate remotely during lockdown?

MB:Luckily Alex lives right downstairs so he and I have been able to work on music a bit. We’ve built a little recording booth in the basement for a few finishing touches on the new Nihiloceros record. I’m still taking the subway into Manhattan every day for work, and Alex’s wife is pregnant, so we’ve been trying to socially distance the “upstairs people” from the “downstairs people” as much as possible. I’m definitely the black sheep pariah of Nihiloceros Castle.

German has been quarantined with his family in New Jersey. I haven’t seen him since our last show the first week of March, but we’ve been talking through musical concepts we are excited to start exploring. German drove back into Brooklyn a couple times to go play drums in isolation at our rehearsal space. Alex and German are both in the middle of home construction projects, so they’ve also been swapping notes on demolition and rehab. German and I have been workshopping prototypes for new merch, including Nihiloceros soap and Nihiloceros Chia Pets.

AF: What are some of the things you’ve done to support bands and venues in lieu of not being able to go to shows?

MB: It’s been really important to us to stay involved with the scene as we all navigate this crisis together. I’ve written a handful of songs for some quarantine compilations (Dim Things, Shred City, NYC Musicians for NYC) all to raise money for Artist Relief Tree, Food Bank for NYC, etc. We’ve done a series of video sessions and livestreams for a lot of the venues like Our Wicked Lady and The Footlight to help them pay their staff and hopefully keep their doors open on the other side of this. Everyone should check out the work NIVA [National Independent Venue Association] is doing through #SaveOurStages to drum up congressional support and secure funding on a national scale for all these stages that make up our DIY tour circuits.

Alex and I are both lucky to still be working, so we’ve been buying merch and music from bands as much as possible. And also obviously we’ve been catching and sharing as many artists’ livestreams as possible. From a photography standpoint, those screenshots on the phone aren’t as fun, but they’re much easier to edit.

AF: Do you have any creative tips on screen shooting live streams? What’s your approach to live streaming like?

MB: I think we are all still trying to figure that out. I remember the first week of the lockdown, we played a couple shows on the Left Bank Magazine Virtual Music Fest, and we all spent a lot of time looking to see if we had hit the right button, if we were live, if people were watching, and asking viewers if everything sounded okay. In the weeks and months since, I think we started to figure things out. I believe Ilithios was the first I saw who just shut up and put on a great show. Since then, I’ve tried to make our livestreams be more like a real performance and less like my dad trying to use the internet.

We also always try and partner a livestream with an organization or label/blog/venue (BandsDoBK, Ms. Understood Records, Songwriters Salon, etc.) as a vehicle to raise money or awareness for something we care about. Gillian Visco (Shadow Monster) and I came up with a super fun weekly music hangout stream idea called #TagnSplit that’s been touring around the community for a few weeks now. We got some stuff we are working on with Bloodless Management, Street Wannabes, as well as some live podcasts in Staten Island and Philadelphia and St.Louis. And this Tuesday night 6/2, Nihiloceros is going live on Radio Free Brooklyn to play some songs and talk about ways we can all help out.

AF: You’re an essential worker and still commute to your job everyday. How has navigating the city been during this time and has the experience changed your perspective of New York City?

MB: Taking the subway into the city everyday amidst the pandemic has definitely been an experience I won’t soon forget. It’s been a constantly evolving situation that I’ve witnessed ranging from terrifying to extremely heartwarming. On one side there’s the Mad Max post-apocalyptic Manhattan streets and the homeless camp territory wars on the subways. But at the same time I see a heightened sense of care and humanity as we reach out and help one another, and as we take responsibility to safely share our limited social spaces. The other day, a stranger pulled over and got out of her car to give me her canvas bag and helped me gather my groceries that had fallen, broken eggs all over the sidewalk, and humus that rolled into the street. This pandemic has had a real polarizing effect, but it has reaffirmed my perspective of NYC and everything that defines it. Everything great and everything awful about this city will still be here after this crisis is over. And that’s kind of comforting to me. Though hopefully we carry forward a little more of the good than we do the awful.

AF: What do you think life in NYC as a musician will be like post-lockdown?

MB: I think humans have a short memory and an amazing ability to adapt and pivot. That can be both a good and bad thing. We are extremely resilient, but we often don’t learn from missteps and end up repeating the same mistakes. I think our communities will make some adjustments as we ease back into our new normal. I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like. It might be a little while before moshing, crowd-surfing, and hugs make a huge comeback. People are itching to get back out into our creative outlets and social circles, but we are also justifiably apprehensive. It will just take time.

I hope we learn to appreciate what matters a little more, both in and out of music. Maybe we won’t feel the need to scramble all over each other all the time. Maybe we can slow down and enjoy the process a little more. This has been a unique opportunity to reset who we are as artists and who we are as people. It’s an opportunity to rebuild the community the way we want it built. I really hope we continue to build each other up and come to appreciate the journey rather than the destination.

AF: Is Nihiloceros planning to release any new music in 2020?

MB: That’s the million dollar question right now, and I really don’t know the answer. Our new record was almost finished before the pandemic hit. Alex and I had been in the studio writing and recording and it with Chris Gilroy, who drummed with us on the record before German joined the band. We are super proud of it, and were already extremely eager to release it. But as a band that defines themselves so heavily on their live show, it just doesn’t feel right to put it out there without the ability to play and tour on it properly. We’ve had to push both our Summer and Fall 2020 tour plans, so we may hold off on releasing it until we have a better idea of what the future of live music looks like.

I’ve been losing a lot of sleep over this the past few months. We still have to get Stephanie Gunther (Desert Sharks) and Gillian Visco (Shadow Monster) into the studio to do some vocals on a couple songs once it’s safe. Maybe we’ll release a song later this year, and release two records in 2021 since we’ve already started writing new songs.

RSVP HERE for Mike of Nihiloceros livestream on Radio Free Brooklyn’s Instagram 8pm Tuesday 6/2.

More great livestreams this week…

5/29 Ana Becker (of Catty, Fruit&Flowers, Habibi) and Vanessa Silberman via The Foolight Instagram. 8pm est, RSVP HERE

5/29 Dropkick Murphys and Bruce Springsteen via Fenway Park Facebook. 6pm est, RSVP HERE

5/30 Johanna Warren and SAD13 via Baby.TV. 7pm est, $5-50, RSVP HERE

5/30 Psychic Twin (dance party) via Instagram. 1am est, RSVP HERE

5/31 Courtney Marie Andrews via Pickathon Presents YouTube. 4pm est, RSVP HERE

6/1 Brandi Carlile performing By The Way, I Forgive You via Veeps. 9pm est, RSVP HERE

6/1 Elvis Costello, Anne Hathaway and more via YouTube (Public Theatre Benefit). 7:15pm est, RSVP HERE

6/1 Waxahatchee via Noonchorus. 9pm est, RSVP HERE

6/4 Whitney via Noonchorus. 8pm est, $15, RSVP HERE

PREMIERE: Naïka Celebrates Haitian Heritage With “African Sun”

When you listen to Naïka’s music, you’ll feel like you’re in a club on a beautiful summer night during a vacation in a foreign country — though you’d be forgiven for not knowing which country. The singer is of French and Haitian heritage, was born in Miami, and has lived in Guadeloupe, Kenya, South Africa, Vanuatu, and more, and her musical influences are as eclectic as her background.

This is evident on her debut EP, due out later this summer, and includes French and Creole lyrics; she describes it as a “merging of world and pop music.” The collection includes “Vultures,” a sassy, catchy single released in April, with straightforward, classic pop songs, Latin and Caribbean influences, and poignant lyrics throughout, showcasing Naïka’s breadth and depth as an artist.

But the highlight of the EP is “African Sun,” a gorgeous and uplifting homage to Naïka’s Haitian descent. She penned the song — the first she wrote in Creole — in response to riots taking place in Haiti last year, and is releasing it in May to celebrate Haitian Heritage Month. She also plans to celebrate with an online performance.

“I’m very connected to my Haitian roots. [“African Sun”] was a little bit inspired by the instability and turmoil in Haiti,” she explains. “Also, in my life at the time, I was very lost — my music wasn’t getting released and I was still finding myself.”

Naïka, a Berklee College of Music graduate who’s heavily involved in songwriting and production, recorded herself singing the melody on a plane when it first came to her. The chorus contains a message of resilience: “All of these demons get rough/They never know when to stop/Sweeping me under the rug/Bless the high but fuck these lows/But damn when it’s finally done/I’m strong like the African sun/Got everything I need to keep me going.”

“Haitian people are some of the strongest people that I know,” she says. “Haiti is such a vibrant, beautiful country. The media loves to portray the negative sides of it, but it’s just a boiling pot of creativity and potential and beauty, and I just hope to focus people’s attention more on that.”

The EP as a whole, which will come out in two parts, is about “growth and self-development and getting to know yourself and your worth and being confident in who you are,” says Naïka, who plans to follow with a full-length album soon.

“My goal is to bring people together in different cultures and make people open to understanding a culture they’re not familiar with — and that they may not think they can connect with because it’s so far from what they know,” she says. “Understanding and connecting with all types of people is a really beautiful thing, so I hope to inspire and encourage people to do that more.”

Follow Naïka on Facebook for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Jessie Hyde Finds Catalyst for Healing on Debut EP UNSUPERVISED

 

Jessie Hyde had no clue how cathartic making her first EP would be. With a background in modeling, tech, and entrepreneurship (as the founder of Glucose Goddess), songwriting revealed itself after an especially brutal breakup. She knew she had to rediscover herself, and through her writing, greatly influenced by Katie Melua and Norah Jones, she found the peace she long desired.

“Making music and releasing this first EP has changed my life. I gained a connection to a calling that I didn’t know existed inside of me, and it makes me feel more authentic,” the San Francisco singer-songwriter tells Audiofemme. “I found a refuge in music, a new nook in which to ground, extract and sublimate my feelings. Making music also invited incredible people into my life, and I’m so thankful for that.”

Hyde’s EP, called UNSUPERVISED, is raw and barebones in tone and structure, as she sifts through the rubble of her aching heart. A minimalist by nature, she rebuilds boundaries in her life with opener “Charity,” crunchy flickers pulsating against a bedrock of keyboard. A heavenly serenity sprouts from her fingertips, even when her lyrics are coarse and unapologetic. Therein lies her greatest strength.

Elsewhere, she braids together her French roots (she was born in Basque Country and later raised in Paris) with “Petite Fille,” a gritty, fear-confronting setpiece. Then, “Perpetuate” closes the release with a choir of songbirds, whose tender warbles backdrop her liberation as she finally, once and for all, declares her self-worth. “My shadow eats pieces of all the women before me,” she sings, cutting the shackles of the past.

Hyde is a monster of instinct, driven to bend her raw, intense emotions into her songwriting. Over the last seven or eight months, she came to understand the importance of honesty in her work, as well as how to define a singular voice. “Inspiration starts with a feeling. I can’t write unless I am experiencing a feeling. I can’t force it or tell myself that the next song I’ll write will be about this or that,” she explains. “It happens in the moment. A feeling comes up inside me, I find a pen and paper as quickly as possible, and I write words immediately.”

She is also “at the mercy of some sort of creative god when it comes time to go to my keyboard and try to put the words onto a melody,” she admits. “I just write words first; I never know what the song is going to sound like until I get to the keyboard. I get excited and nervous as my hands hover over the keys, and I try out a chord progression.”

The chords, melody, and words fly from her being, erupting from some dark crevice in her soul, and even when the parts don’t quite fit together, there is still a lesson to be learned. She surrenders herself to the process, and whatever will be will be. “I don’t get hard on myself if it doesn’t work. It’s not about me. It’s about something I can’t control,” she says.

As much emotion spins around on only four songs, there is an equal two-ton weight still hovering over her heart. The process of healing, from the dark depths of pain to enlightenment, is never really over. “Writing songs is the best catalyst for healing that I’ve ever found. When I have a rough day, feel overwhelmed or sad, I write a song about it in my bedroom and turn the tears into lyrics,” she says. “I extract the pain through this process, and that’s how I heal the wounds. I’ve been through the most growth and healing of my life since I started making music.”

Fear continues haunting her, however, and it’ll take even more time to mend those wounds. “I was really nervous that [this EP] would be bad. I was nervous [about] what people would think once I made the music public. My fear told me that I needed to find a co-writer, a partner, or someone to make the beats, give me their opinion, stir me into a ‘better” direction.’ I felt insecure and like my work wasn’t professional enough,” she says. “Ultimately, I worked through the fear and realized, you know, I’m just proud of myself for doing it and putting something out and learning so much.”

Jessie Hyde stakes her claim with UNSUPERVISED, a four-song anthology of her life, coursing from songs about “boys boys boys” to “more interesting territory” around womanhood and fearlessness. “I know I speak from pure truth and am not scared of telling things like they are. I have a lot to say as it relates to being honest with ourselves and others, having compassion for our process, and making space for healing and finding our power as women.”

Follow Jessie Hyde on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Skyler Day Strikes a Chord Between Art and Empathy With ‘Six Feet Apart’

Courtesy of The Mixtape PR

There’s a strong correlation between art and empathy, a powerful notion Skyler Day carries into her work as an actress and singer-songwriter.

Day knew the arts were a part of her destiny at the age of six when she discovered her love for singing while making her stage debut as the smallest Christmas tree in her school’s holiday play. She added songwriting to her list of talents at the age of 10 and learned how to play guitar four years later. While honing her musical capabilities, Day was also fostering her passion for acting, informing her parents that she wanted to hire an agent to book auditions. “I told them by the time I turned 11, if I booked the lead in a film, then we would have to move to Los Angeles so that I can pursue my acting career,” Day recalls to Audiofemme. True to her word, the determined child soon landed a part in an independent film, her parents shutting down the gymnastics studio they owned in their hometown of Cumming, Georgia, and made the cross-country move to LA to fulfill their daughter’s dreams.

Day has since become a working actress with roles on TV shows including Parenthood, Law & Order SVU, CSI: Miami, Pretty Little Liars and many more. In between appearances on major network shows, Day continues to sharpen her songwriting skills. With a growing catalog of introspective acoustic numbers, the Georgia native credits country music for inspiring her songwriting style. “I feel like country music really takes care of the story,” she describes. “It’s really the foundation of everything I do. It’s how I learned to write. It’s the reason I picked up guitar instead of some other instrument. I love the storytelling, and that’s really how I fell in love with music in general.”

The 28-year-old breathed new life into her career as a songwriter when she won a 2019 BumbleBizz contest for aspiring female songwriters that included a mentoring session with Kacey Musgraves and a performance slot at a major festival. Citing the six-time Grammy winner as a “huge inspiration,” Day flew to Texas to sit down with Musgraves before her appearance on Austin City Limits and imparted her wisdom onto the budding artist. “The main thing that stuck out to me was ‘write what you love, make the music that you love, and then let the rest take care of itself,’” Day recollects of Musgraves’ sage advice. “I love that, and I’ve always subscribed to that, so it was nice getting some reinforcement.”

For Day, writing the music you love means embracing her empathetic side. While acting allows Day to call on her imagination to bring other writers’ words and ideas to life, songwriting creates a personal outlet for her to share her own stories and experiences. “It’s the art of empathy and I feel like that’s the same with music,” she describes of the commonality between acting and songwriting. “It’s about being dead honest about your experience, and I feel like that translates with songwriting. You can tell the same with acting, you can tell when somebody’s being so truthful. It feels more real and like you’re creating a connection there.”

This focus on empathy shines in Day’s latest creation, “Six Feet Apart.” Penned in her LA home days after the stay-at-home order was put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Day’s emotions toward the situation were bubbling beneath the surface, in need of a way to get out. She turned to Joni Mitchell’s album Blue for comfort, sitting in solitude and letting the lyrics wash over her. But at album’s end, Day noticed something profound taking place outside her window. “It got quiet and then I listened and the birds were going crazy. They were singing so loud,” she remembers. “I was thinking, they’re singing so loud and they have no idea what’s happening in the world.”

Her emotions soon began spilling onto the page, Day reflecting on the people who bring color into our lives, from our family and loved ones to strangers we pass on the street. She captures the heart of the song’s message in its potent closing line: “I guess that it’s simple/Now we know that our hearts/They weren’t made to be six feet apart.” “I hope that people feel less alone in the fact that someone else feels the same way and that we’re all really feeling the same way. I didn’t notice how important everyone is around you when you’re walking down the street or you’re at a restaurant. These people in the world, they fill up our lives and now I’m noticing how much I took that for granted,” Day professes. “I think it’s beautiful to now be so aware of the fact that we really need each other.”

Follow Skyler Day on Facebook for ongoing updates.

ONLY NOISE: How I Turned COVID Blues Into The First Virtual Emo Nite Hosted By Non-Male DJs

The author in her childhood bedroom.

Celebrating the arrival of 2020 immediately took me to 2010. I rang in the new year at Barclays Center with a friend, seeing The Strokes for the first time. It felt appropriate, given how at the end of 2019, I had mentally regressed to feeling like my teenage self.

The year ended on a rough note. I lost my job and months later, a friend died at a very young age. After spending the year working on bettering myself by going to therapy, exercising, drinking less, and leaving toxic relationships behind, suddenly all progress was lost. I was emotionally fragile and reckless, incapable of having a positive mindset. As someone whose work is tied to her identity, I didn’t know who I was without it.

I sought validation and anything that’d distract me from my depression. In a misguided attempt to find happiness, I entered a brief, unhealthy romance with someone. What was meant to be a distraction brought more emotional distress. In a way, it made me feel like I was sixteen again. At that age, I had turned to music to cope, listening to songs that made me feel less alone while dealing with heartache. This time, I decided to do the same. I revisited old favorites that accurately described what I was dealing with, such as “Glendora” by Rilo Kiley and “Title Track” by Death Cab for Cutie. I reminded myself that there was a reason why Jenny Lewis wrote about these issues: it’s common to seek validation from the wrong people, and it doesn’t make me any less of a person to have a moment of weakness.

Music helped, and later things started to fall into place. I was hired at my dream job. I eased up on drinking to cope with grief and depression. I was exercising regularly again, focusing on using it as a designated time to clear my thoughts. My friends were supportive as I attempted to rebuild my life. But just when I was finally feeling like my old self, the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City.

I began quarantining in early March out of precaution, before the city declared a state of emergency. My parents were very concerned, and though the pandemic was still in its early stages, my family urged me to return home with them to Puerto Rico. I initially said no, but after much convincing from my mom, I decided to temporarily move back home with my parents.

Typically, I’d avoid spending more than a week back home. It triggers painful memories from a decade ago, when I desperately wanted to leave the island. I didn’t have true friends growing up and spent much of my time isolated in my room, making internet friends and learning about bands through Tumblr and last.fm.

As a teen, I had no idea that finding solace in music through online communities would shape my future. My childhood bedroom walls are adorned with posters featuring some of the bands I’ve interviewed: Vivian Girls, Of Montreal, Best Coast, and Los Campesinos. I wish I could tell my teenage self, who felt so lost and insecure, that I’d accomplish so many things beyond my wildest dreams at that age. But being back home also felt like I was returning to feeling disconnected from the music-based community I had formed in Brooklyn.

In quarantine, I stopped hearing regularly from friends – it was reminiscent of that loneliness I felt as a teen. My depression returned and made me incapable of leaving the house; I didn’t have the energy to even take a quick walk around the block. No matter how much I accomplished at work, my depression caused me to be very hard on myself, making me think I was going to permanently lose the life I had in Brooklyn. This feeling persisted for two months, becoming worse each day.

One day, music writer Arielle Gordon tweeted about hosting a virtual emo night and after attending with my sibling, I realized I could create an online community of my own that would make me feel less alone. I told my sibling that I wanted to make my own virtual emo night, but with non-male DJs, widening the space for fellow music journalists, tour managers, artists, and anyone involved in music who, like me, were craving that sense of community they’d lost.

After tweeting about wanting to do it, I quickly received a response from Lindsey Miller and Mel Grinberg – both of whom are managers whose work I deeply admire – saying they wanted to get involved. Within two minutes, we had a concrete plan, and we invited Arielle and Rolling Stone editor Suzy Exposito to join. I named it Home, Like NoPlace Is There after The Hotelier’s album – appropriately about confronting depression and dark memories.

Before planning it, my depression was making me feel like my life had no purpose. Planning this event made me realize that others were in need of a community as much as I was, and it was exactly the positive, healthy distraction I needed. People I hadn’t met before began promoting it and were excited for it.

It was nerve-wracking, though. It was the first time I had planned a virtual event. Would it even work? What if something went wrong and the event failed? When it was time for the event to start, there were already 20-something people waiting on Zoom. The number of people kept increasing throughout the night, and the awkwardness of having a virtual emo night dissipated. The Hotelier’s Christian Holden even joined! People made new friends and found a safe space where they could talk about music and joke with each other.

Many reached out later saying it was the most fun they’d had since the pandemic began. That was true for me, too. For the five-and-a-half hours of the emo night, I felt happy and appreciated; I was overjoyed that my fellow DJs felt seen and appreciated, too. The last thing I thought I’d do in 2020 was revisit emo, a genre I have a complicated relationship with due to feeling like my writing about emo wasn’t respected as much as male colleagues’ – not to mention how the genre is often tied to bands that represent toxic masculinity. But now, emo carries a more positive meaning for me. It ties different generations together, and on Friday nights, everyone gets to feel like they belong somewhere – no matter who they are.

With this emo night, I have something to look forward to weekly that gives me an excuse to (virtually) socialize and dress up. While it’ll be some time until things are back to “normal” – if that ever even happens – I’m excited to feel like my regular self.

Follow Home, Like NoPlace Is There on Twitter for ongoing virtual emo night events.

PREMIERE: Heather Thomas is “Waitin’ on the Times to Change” While Quarantined in Austin

Seattle-based drummer and singer-songwriter Heather Thomas had grand plans for 2020. After releasing her sophomore EP Open Up last year, Thomas hit the road, planning a nearly year-long journey with the intention of spending each month in a different city, exploring different music scenes and connecting with creatives all over the country. The ambitious plan put her in Los Angeles, then the San Francisco Bay Area, and then Austin just before SXSW – and that’s where she was when news of the pandemic hit hard, with the announcement that SXSW was cancelled.

“The town went from buzzing with anticipation for the busiest time of year, to a ghost town within a matter of days,” says Thomas.

The rapid closures of businesses and restrictions placed on social gathering thwarted plans Thomas had to “play as much music as possible” and connect with new people. Fortunately, a generous friend (and Austin bandmate) was able to provide a place to stay in the weeks that followed the shutdowns, so she was able to “shelter in place” safely while spending the next six weeks fully isolated.

“Isolation is an interesting reality, and it affects everyone differently, although anyone experiencing it will undoubtedly share some common feelings and emotions,” says Thomas. “If you were following along on social media, people were struggling with disrupted sleep patterns, worries about income loss, anxiety over ‘what to do next,’ and loneliness, along with many other shared feelings.”

One particular day, she finally found herself awake in the early morning—the best time of day to sit on the front porch and catch the warm Texas sun rising while the birds, bugs, and lizards went on with their lives, untouched by the fears of a global pandemic.

“I was inside on the couch when I sang to myself ‘I’m just sittin’ in the living room waitin’ on the times to change’ and I felt like I was probably feeling something that so many other people were feeling,” she recalls. “There wasn’t much we could do to fix things. There was just this feeling of helplessness coupled with the reality that we’d have to figure out a way through.”

The final song, as Thomas anticipated, resonates far beyond the walls of her cozy Texas home away from home. And the simple performance in the video—filmed alone in a bedroom in Austin, Texas on an Osmo Pocket camera, with Thomas sitting on her yellow bedspread, singing her heart out—augments the intimacy of her isolation confessions as well as her incredible vocal strength and acuity. It’s a real anthem for the times, and a song that reminds us that we can still find a sense of peace and togetherness through music.

Thomas was able to get aback on the road recently and is currently in Albuquerque on a shared property. From there, Thomas plans to try and get back to her mission of exploring as many music scenes as possible this year – safely, of course.

“I intended to get out of my comfort zone and learn and adapt, so this is me learning and adapting. I don’t know what the upcoming months will look like, and for the time being I’m not trying to make plans too far ahead,” she says. “But I’ll have to keep moving on. It’s a new challenge, as I can no longer move from place to place, staying with friends for a few days at a time. I have to adjust my timeline and housing needs based on new safety precautions. But there’s no one way to exist in this time, and everyone has to find for themselves what feels right and how they feel the most safe.”

Follow Heather Thomas on Facebook for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Grace Sings Sludge Keeps Creepin’ On in “Friend to All” Video

Photo Credit: Nic Russo

Recently, Grace Cooper officially became a children’s book author – by accident. For the physical release of her fifth solo album (and first recorded in a studio) as Grace Sings Sludge, Cooper illustrated a 32-page booklet, which, she explains, wasn’t deemed long enough to be registered with the Library of Congress unless classified as a children’s book. It is, perhaps, one of the most cryptically-titled children’s tomes in history: Christ Mocked & The End of a Relationship. Its illustrations are both grotesque and delicate: drippy demons and sinister saints; nude figures twisted in ecstasy, or misery, or both – it’s hard to tell which. Cooper’s lyrics are printed out, too, and they’re also a mishmash of the tender, the surreal, the horrific, and the humorous. “I’m either horror or comedy,” Cooper says. “I’m kind of a goofy person, but when I’m making anything, there’s no question it’s going to be creepy.”

Cooper grew up just outside Oakland in the East Bay Area. Her father is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, but she says she was “too shy” to perform around the house and didn’t start making music until her twenties, after getting a job at Amoeba Records. There, she met Tim Cohen, who asked her to sing backup in the early days of The Fresh & Onlys, which got her used to performing in front of others; Cohen introduced her to Heidi Alexander, and eventually, the two formed whimsical garage-pop band The Sandwitches with Roxanne Young, playing their first gig in a bookstore. But all the while, Cooper recorded solo songs in secret. “After the Sandwitches, I just kind of went back to what’s a little more natural for me – recording at home by myself,” she says. That changed when The Sandwitches’ label, San Francisco imprint Empty Cellar Records, offered to put out her next record, and suggested she record it with Phil Manley at El Studio. Manley is well-known in the Bay Area for playing in bands like Trans Am, Feral Ohms, and The Fucking Champs, and Cooper says, “Something just felt right when his name was brought up.”

Though she’s more comfortable recording at home, she took studio prep seriously. “When I record myself, [the songs are] just skeletal sketches, they’re kind of a template and I find it as I go,” she says. “But this time I tried to map out some idea of what instruments I heard in my head, and I had the songs arranged in the order that I thought they should be in. We recorded them from start to finish in that order. We recorded pretty quickly, but somehow the record ended up being something that, in the time that’s gone by since recording it, I’m still completely happy with and I don’t have any regrets.”

Cooper has reason to be proud – she played every instrument on Christ Mocked, save for drums handled by Nic Russo, who also played piano on “Horror For People That Don’t Like Horror,” a nonchalant tale about the devastating embarrassment that comes along with first forays into physical intimacy. Though Cooper says she’s in her “comfort zone with buzzy, shitty sounding stuff,” this album brings out the peculiar beauty of her voice in ways previous DIY affairs didn’t quite capture; threaded with sparse guitar, meandering basslines, or dissonant piano, Christ Mocked is a bit reminiscent of early Cat Power, if Chan Marshall had somehow been more awkward (and obsessed with horror movies, religious iconography, and sketches of nude women). It’s set for release July 17th.

Whatever the professional process brought out in the music, it did nothing to temper Cooper’s weirdo aesthetic. Two of her favorite tracks are spoken-word recollections of vivid dreams she had, describing the travails of an undercover woman and and undercover man who are slowly disappearing (“Borderlands”) and “a condemned Disneyland/a perverted Swiss Family dream” (“The Hackers”). The latter ends with the veiled origins of Cooper’s early appreciation for horror films – she says she remembers watching Texas Chain Saw Massacre with her dad, also a horror buff, when she was just six.

That obsession surfaces again in the video for the album’s second single, “Friend To All,” Cooper’s “hokey noir take on disillusionment and disassociation.” She enlisted old friend Wesley Smith to direct and Jeff Williams to assist; though she hadn’t seen them in nearly fifteen years, it was a natural extension of their old delinquent ways, making gross, darkly funny short films as “Bad Habit Productions.”

“We were all very gothed out,” Cooper remembers. “We would skip school and go steal alcohol from Safeway and hang out on Monument Boulevard in Concord but we would always be doing something creative together. We might have been doing drugs and loitering but at least we were making really bizarre little movies.”

For “Friend To All,” the trio filmed in an garishly orange Motel 6 room and an abandoned incinerator building in Sacramento; Cooper looks put together with pin-up curls, red lipstick and vintage monochromatic suit sets, but in the ominous details, things begin to unravel. She smokes a cigarette, sprawled on a hideous bedspread, barely acknowledging the body wrapped in a sheet in the corner. And then suddenly, she’s naked in a bathtub smearing what looks like shit all over her face, dancing and weaving drunkenly in the street, and wearing a rather nightmarish mask as she tiptoes over trash in stilettos.

“Yeah, I don’t know what inspired that,” Cooper says of the mask. “I needed a last minute Halloween costume one year, and I just cut my pantyhose up and kept it in my underwear drawer. I still have it.” It made for a fitting prop – the song itself is about the disguises we put up in interacting with others, a riff on the old saying “A friend to all is a friend to none.”

If the mask represents someone pretending to be something they aren’t, the derelict buildings where the video was filmed are an astute parallel to the deterioration of those false relationships, crumbling into forgotten ruins. But the layers of symbolism may as well have been incidental – Cooper says she routinely puts on YouTube videos of urban explorers searching through abandoned structures to watch as she falls asleep. “I was very charmed by Sacramento and I really hope it keeps that old school sort of dilapidated feeling,” Cooper recalls. “I was happy as a clam being in this place, just trying to not step on needles and diapers, and there was nobody around. It was right next to apartment buildings too, that’s why there was so much garbage spillover. But it didn’t seem like anybody was really squatting there. The light was beautiful.”

Cooper usually works on her own videos, mostly alone in her apartment, like she did with the video for “Falling in love with him again was the most exciting time of my life,” because “It’s very low budget and I have complete creative control,” she says. Still, she manages to evoke something heartfelt and haunting, always remaining within her own eccentric aesthetic.

“I’m an odd duck – it’s just a culmination of who I am, how I grew up,” Cooper says. While she admits that forging her own path can be isolating at times – especially when it comes to booking shows in Oakland – she’s fine with defying comparisons. “I can’t do anything else,” she says. “I’m gonna keep keeping to myself because I’m happier doing it that way. But I want to be there for the weird outsider ladies.”

Who knows… maybe her odd children’s book will find its way to the right type of kids – ones that film darkly funny movies in abandoned spaces, write strange little songs, and go all-in on their most outlandish tendencies.

Photo Credit: Faith Cooper

Follow Grace Sings Sludge on Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Siv Disa Evokes Unsettling Familiarity with “Fear” Video

NYC-based singer, songwriter, and pianist Siv Disa’s musical style is unmistakable; minor chords and dissonant sounds give her songs a haunting feel, while her warm, soft voice invites the listener into even the darkest of stories. Her latest single, “Fear,” released by Irish singer-songwriter Maija Sofia’s record label Trapped Animal Records, is an embodiment of this distinct sound she’s mastered.

Disa’s delicate vocals, conversational lyrical style, and synths in the song are reminiscent of indie pop bands like The Blow, while the instrumentals and subject matter conjure up gloomier acts like Orion Rigel Dommisse. The video follows the latter thread, showing Disa wandering through an abandoned road, a dark wooden house, and a winter forest as she sings, “I’m a little bit in love with everyone I’ve ever touched/Come a little bit undone then disconnect before it comes to much.”

It seems fitting that the song was conceived while Disa was walking between New York City subway platforms. “I’d just left someone’s place who I was seeing at the time,” she remembers. “It was so blisteringly meaningless. I remember floating out of my body and watching both of us so politely pretending that we cared more about one another than we did because that’s just what everyone does. Seeing someone else carry out the same delusion broke the spell of my own. I worried that even if I could give someone the room to actually matter to me, it wouldn’t grant me the ability to feel connected to another human being.”

Disa describes the end of the chorus — “I don’t really like to think about that too much/There are an awful lot of doors that I keep shut” — as an expression of her “life philosophy” at the time the song was written. “Staying in motion has always been the method of self-preservation I revert to, but it makes you a bit divorced from reality,” she says. “It tricks you into thinking you’re the puppet master of not just your own life, but your entire world.”

Disa says she was more involved in the production of this song than her earlier projects. She and her producer Sam Palmer made their own vocoder, and the spoken lines in the beginning are a crossfade of Palmer’s voice into her own. “From the first second of the song, we wanted to create a sound world that felt familiar, but somehow off,” she says.

She’s directed many of her own videos, including this one, which was recorded at a country farmhouse on an old Kodak Easyshare camera. “Since the budget of this video was about zero dollars, I wanted the DIY aesthetic to feel intentional,” she explains. “Working with that constraint was a fun challenge. I think art that is low-budget is always more effective when it stays self-aware of that.”

She crafted the storyline with the aesthetic of ’70s B-movies and homemade horror in mind, aiming to give off the appearance of “a video that someone might find on a camcorder in their attic, something that enhanced the feeling of the song being both familiar and unsettling,” she explains. “I wanted the viewer to be able to step into the role of monster, victim, and voyeuristic witness as they transitioned from scene to scene.”

Disa is currently halfway through recording a full-length album, making do with the limits on her activity by recording at home on a Tascam 8 track, and is working on videos for some of the album’s songs.

Lately, she’s been learning to take the same experimental approach to songwriting and production as she has to video-making. “Women and nonbinary people are much more likely to wait to release something until they’re as prepared as they can be, whereas men learn as they go and share the products of that process with the outside world proudly,” she says. “I’m always finding new ways to get out of my own way, because I live in a world that asks women to get in their own way.”

Follow Siv Disa on Facebook for ongoing updates.

A Virtual Panel Explores Techno’s Role in Climate Change

Ariel Zetina DJs at Hideout Inn in 2019. Photo Credit: @ColectivoMultipolar

Can techno music be a site for climate activism? That was the big question posed by a virtual panel held on Friday, May 22, where Chicago DJs Ariel Zetina and Club Chow (Kevin Chow) as well as British musician and activist Kimwei McCarthy were happy to weigh in. The discussion was organized by Grant Tyler, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and Mika Tosca, a climate scientist and assistant professor at SAIC.

Full disclosure: I’m an SAIC alum and occasional freelancer for their marketing department. But I’m intrigued by music’s potential and limitations for activating political imagination, and what can I say? This was the most interesting Zoom event I attended last week – and trust me, I went to many. Who’s that culture writer sneaking in to take the temperature of your e-parties and never turning on their camera? It’s me, guys. It’s me.

I know what you’re thinking: Techno’s place in climate action is a pretty big question for one panel. But Chicago seems a natural place to ask. This city has given so much to electronic music, benefiting from its proximity to Detroit techno and pioneering acid house. Hell, we gave you Wax Trax! Afrofuturism is also threaded into the fabric of Black Chicago culture, most audibly in the work of jazz musician Sun Ra, who used science fiction’s escapism and technological critiques to create speculative audio worlds.

Plus, music history is always political history. Techno is no exception. During the talk, Zetina mentioned higher profile techno artists whose work has intersected with social justice politics and especially environmental organizing. Of particular note was the EP Acid Rain by the group Underground Resistance, who were ideologically influenced by the Black Panthers and whose music developed partially as a response to the environmental and economic reality of Black Detroiters in the late ’80s. By Underground Resistance’s own words, techno is “the music for the future of the human race.” Without it: no peace, no love, no vision. But shared modes of expression don’t always point to a shared politics.

“I think there’s a tendency within techno to superimpose a … Utopian discourse,” Chow pointed out, “and [impose an idea of] radical political action on top of raves. But I would argue, most of time, none of that is actually happening.” Got me there, Chow. Happens all the time in punk, too. While he casually noted there are collectives that do meaningful work — mutual aid, building community, and so on — the music is largely apolitical. In his estimate, creating significant change through techno would require a big cultural shift — one that begins with open, frank discussions about who is participating and how, and applying pressure on show promoters to change priorities.

One point the discussion kept circling back to was how well DJ sets have adapted to the constraints of COVID-19. Since they rely on individuals over groups and often incorporate technology-based audio-visual elements, club grooves are thriving (clubs, on the other hand…). Zetina emphasized her work has her flying often, that high-ranking DJs fly in private jets even more, and that there’s a global techno/rave culture that encourages bouncing between countries for events. While not a uniquely carbon intensive culture, high carbon emissions seem part of techno’s modern DNA. Does coronavirus present an opportunity to reimagine the rave as a carbon-neutral space?

Tyler said celebrating DJs successfully connecting with audiences during quarantine ignores why people go to raves: to physically connect with one another. McCarthy responded, “Not to say that we should completely replace live music with virtual reality, but if there’s a genre that could push forward virtual reality concerts, I would imagine it to be techno.” It’s a prescient insight. Creative work rooted in digital technology has long presented world-building opportunities. Alternate realities can be escapes, but they can also pose questions about the worlds we’re trying to escape from and even offer new visions for those worlds.

Zetina used the chat to link an article about Finland holding a virtual concert to celebrate May Day. Seven-hundred thousand people tuned in, and of them, 150,000 created avatars to move through and interact with the concert space. While not techno specific, it certainly sets a precedence for audiences’ willingness to adapt to changing circumstances. And it’s not inappropriate to treat global warming with the same urgency as COVID-19.

As a researcher noted during a recent panel discussion on COVID-19 and climate change at UC-Berkley, “The public health and climate debates are inextricably linked. In our highly connected world, a disease that originated 3,000 or 6,000 miles away can be at our doorsteps in a day or less. So, the way that we mobilize against COVID-19 needs to be reflected in the way that we mobilize against that other big global affliction called climate change.”

Spoiler: the techno panel did not reach a tidy conclusion about what techno should do about climate change. In fact, it maybe posed more questions than it answered. But one sign of a fruitful discussion is identifying some key stakes and possibilities, no? It definitely did — and offered a sick playlist to boot.

If you’re interested to learn more, the hour-and-a-half discussion (and subsequent one hour DJ sets from Zetina and Chow) are available on YouTube.

Nicole Mercedes Celebrates Uneventful Nights Out With “Filters”

If spending so many nights in has got you feeling antsy, let Nicole Mercedes remind you that you’re probably not missing much. The dream-pop singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist’s latest single, “Filters,” is about those nights when you go out and absolutely nothing of interest happens — which, she conjectures, is probably the way things turn out most of the time.

“I feel like that’s the real truth of it — sometimes, you’re just like ‘I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna get dressed and go out,’ then nothing happens and you kind of just go home,” she says. “There’s something kind of nice about that. It’s not even sad. It’s just kind of the regular single life.”
Synths set a fun, dreamy mood as Mercedes sings, “I’ll conjure up a small mess/A filter to see the rest/Of the night through until I’m undressed.”
The video, which shows a man in drag performing the song in front of an empty room, was inspired by a real experience Mercedes had at a karaoke bar drag night in Cape Cod during off-season, when she saw someone passionately sing Kelly Clarkson to almost nobody.
“I just thought it was the saddest, most beautiful scenario,” she says. “No one was paying attention to this person, and they didn’t care, and I thought, ‘Wow, that is such a beautiful moment.’ It seemed like that’s just what they do off-season.”

The song is on Mercedes’ second LP Look Out Where You’re Going — a title inspired by “I Know a Man,” a Robert Creeley poem about a man driving a car. “The poem in general just symbolizes thinking you’re in control and that you’re behind the wheel but then realizing that you’re not,” she explains. “I thought of it as a reminder to look out where you’re going, keep your eyes on the road, make sure you don’t drive off that street.”
The album, which comes out June 5, was largely inspired by the loss of a partnership and a close friendship. “I felt extremely alienated from a lot of friends that I had,” she remembers. “I think a lot of the songs were dealing with being a little weirdo out in the world and feeling a little bit detached and trying to navigate it.” This feeling dates back to Mercedes’ childhood and early adulthood, having been born in LA, moving to Israel at age 10, then living in Berlin before returning to the U.S.
Sonically, her goal with the album was to create “a sound where, even if you didn’t listen to the lyrics, you would understand the mood,” says Mercedes, who produces her own music and partnered with producer Joe Rogers for Look Out Where You’re Going. “It was very important to me for everything to be dream-like and a little bit eerie.”

Even though going out in any capacity is currently a challenge for most, Mercedes believes “Filters” offers an especially relevant philosophy: embrace the uneventful. “I do quite enjoy the feeling of loneliness, and I think it’s something to embrace,” she says. “It’s okay if nothing’s going on.”

Follow Nicole Mercedes on Facebook for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Misty Boyce Dances Through Grief in “Telephone” Video

Photo Credit: Lindsay Wynn

Losing someone you love is a nearly universal human experience, but one that can nevertheless feel impossible to get through no matter how many people have done it before you. That was what dream-pop/indie-folk artist Misty Boyce grappled with when she lost her stepfather to suicide, and what produced her latest single, “Telephone.”

The song, written about two years after his passing, chronicles Boyce’s journey from grief to acceptance, which included meditation, therapy, and an endless “rabbit hole” of other self-help methods. “I was coming out of the darkest part of that, and it felt like I was closing the chapter on the grief period and moving into a coming-back-to-life period,” she remembers. “And so it was sort of about having that final conversation with him from beyond the grave – ‘You can let me go. I’m here. I’m okay and you’re okay, and we’re all okay.'”

Boyce’s soothing voice stands out amid slow-building piano chords as she sings about “grieving the last time you called me to talk but I could not listen.”

The eerie, poignant video intersperses clips of Boyce in a dingy hotel room, trying to reach someone on the phone who isn’t there, and her dancing on a beach with her friend Lia Bonfilio and another actor. Bonfilio and Boyce collaborated to choreograph the movements, which she says happened very organically. “She started following me, and we started following each other, and in one thought, the dance came about from start to finish,” she remembers.

When people listen to the song or watch the video, she hopes they see that “there is life on the other side of loss — that the end is not an ending; it’s a beginning.”

In addition to her solo career, Boyce has accompanied many other artists, from Sting to Sara Bareilles, as a keyboardist. “Telephone” appears on her fourth LP genesis, to be released later this year. The album, as its title would suggest, also deals with religious themes, including a re-examination of the story of Adam and Eve on the tracks “genesis (n)one” and “skin.”

“Both Adam and Eve were responsible for what happened, and yet Eve got the blame for it,” she reflects on the passage. “Adam and Eve was the first ‘bros before hoes.’ Adam was like, ‘Hey, God, you made me first;’ our whole society has just been shaped from that. I’m the root of evil — that’s how I’ve been making my choices for everything from what kombucha I drink to who I choose as a mate — and I’m over it.”

The other experience that shaped the album was a new romantic relationship. “Basically,” she says, “the record is like, ‘Fuck the Bible, I’m in love.'” Sonically, she considers it a mishmash of everything from her jazz background to folk influences like Andy Shauf and Phoebe Bridgers to Billie Eilish’s style.

Boyce also recently released “The Clearing,” a harmony-driven stand-alone single with Doe Paoro. The collaboration was inspired by the #MeToo movement and the LA wildfires, using the latter as a metaphor for the former. “After the fires went out/that’s when the rain came/Whatever we’re gonna be now/we’ve gotta build it in the clearing,” they sing.

“The two of us were feeling a real a lot of destruction happening, and in that destruction, there was an opportunity to rebuild and create something new,” Boyce remembers. “Women have the potential to build the same terrible patriarchal infrastructure, because we are just as programmed by patriarchy as men are, so we need to really wake up and get clear about what kind of world we want to build and be honest about how we can pitfall to the same kinds of power struggles and pride struggles and greed.”

After witnessing abuses of power within the music industry, Boyce is determined to be a positive part of this rebuilding through her own work. “This music is important, of course,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean much if your intentions as a human are unclear or bad. You have such a powerful platform as an artist, and if you’re not using it for good, then get out of the way.”

Follow Misty Boyce on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Future Moons Explore Seasonal Sounds on Debut EP

If you were in your school orchestra growing up, you probably at some point played Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” a series of concerti that takes the listener through each season of the year. Future Moons’ latest EP Seasons is kind of like that, but instead of string instruments, the ethereal duo uses layered vocals, distorted guitar notes, and xylophone tunes to illustrate winter, spring, summer, and fall. Three evocative instrumental interludes between each song round out the seven-track EP.

The concept was the end product of a bunch of journal entries vocalist Kota Wade — who makes music with her husband, guitarist Tommy Oleksyn — wrote to keep her creative juices flowing. “I realized I had written about a lot of nature things and had a lot of different feelings for each season,” she says. “I turned my journal entries to lyrics and put music to it.”

In addition to the natural phenomena it illustrates, the EP presents “a love story throughout the 365 days of a year,” says Wade. “There’s no heartbreak, there’s no climax, it’s just this nice, comfortable love that happens in the span of all the seasons.”

“Entangled,” the first song on the EP as well as Future Moons’ very first single, encapsulates winter, with lyrics that paint the picture of a cozy indoor scene: “sheets all tangled at the foot of the bed / can’t tell where you start / can’t tell where I end.” The atmospheric production, breathy vocals, and piano add to the seasonal theme — almost the auditory equivalent of fog on the windows.

“To me, piano is very wintery. I just imagine sitting by a fire as someone’s playing,” Wade explains. “Winter doesn’t really have its own sounds because winter’s very quiet, so I wanted to be more focused on the lyrics and the intimacy and the love story.”

After an interlude called “Rain,” which portrays raindrops with a xylophone, the EP transitions to the spring song, aptly named “Petals.” On top of dynamic percussions that tie the song together from beginning to end, dark melodies contrast with hopeful lyrics: “two flowers vibing / stunned by the other, when the rain turns violent / we move to each other.”

Using samples of real cricket chirps, “Crickets” takes the collection from spring to summer, which is represented with the second single “Golden,” a song inspired by the Southern Californian mountains. Featuring soft guitars and synth pads, the track was meant “to feel like it was floating,” Wade explains. “So, it’s pretty minimal, a lot of layers in vocals. I wanted it to feel breathy and warm and almost slightly sensual, almost how summer feels, just dripping golden.”

The next interlude, “Wind,” aptly employs wind instruments before the EP closes with “Grey,” which creates a cinematic sound with heavy guitars, drums, and orchestral instruments. Wade’s voice gives off metal vibes as she sings, “I’m dancing on the breeze / I’m floating like I’m free.”

Wade considers “Grey” a throwback to the duo’s previous life as Bad Wolf, an alt-rock band they formed with several other instrumentalists. Last year, Wade and Oleksyn decided to break off and play under the new moniker Future Moons, and Seasons represents their first project since making that move. “We wanted to get more experimental, more modern with different instruments, and it just kind of branched into its own thing,” says Wade.

Wade also has a past life as a contestant on The Voice, which she says increased her confidence in her vocal abilities. “I had pretty much only ever considered myself a writer to that point,” she remembers. “I had been a vocalist in my bands, but writing was definitely what I considered my strength. So it was pretty crazy to go on there and have three chairs turned just as a vocalist. That was definitely a boost of confidence, like, ‘oh, I can do more than I give myself credit for!”

At the moment, the LA-based duo has another project up their sleeves, and its concept is even larger-scale than the last one: it’s an album inspired by outer space. “We kind of did a whole Earth album, with seasons based on Earth seasons in nature, and now we’re going outside Earth to focus on the other planets,” Wade explains. “We’re both obsessed with space – that’s how the new name came about — we just wanted it to reflect us.”

That one’s going to be a tough act to follow, but I’m holding out hope for an album that grants each galaxy in the universe its own song. In the meantime, Seasons will give listeners a newfound way of looking at — or at least listening to — the planet where they live.

Follow Future Moons on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Ami Dang Makes Meditations Mixtape to Harness the Healing Power of Music

In April, Ami Dang’s family held a gathering on Zoom as both an observance of the Sikh holiday Vaisakhi and a prayer session for her aunt and uncle, who had both contracted COVID-19. Dang’s mother requested that she sing a hymn.

“It was an especially troubling time because my aunt and uncle were getting sick,” the Baltimore-based singer, sitarist and producer explained by phone. The request to sing for her family, which Dang had done many times in the past, reminded her of the power of “healing music and religious music,” though sadly, her aunt later died of the illness.

Dang says that, in the beginning of the pandemic, she hadn’t quite known what role a musician should play during this challenging moment. “I get into the technicalities, or the day-to-day of the logistics of being a musician, whether that’s being on tour or whatever, and I forget sometimes how uplifting it is for other people,” she says.

As a result of this experience, Dang was moved to make Meditations Mixtape, Vol. 1, an EP released on May 22 via Leaving Records, comprised of four tracks that were recorded over the course of ten days. It was a project that she wanted to get out into this world quickly. “I think that everyone is feeling their own anxiety during this time,” she says. “That drove me to do these.”

Dang first learned music via the Sikh community and gurdwara, and went on to study sitar and then electronic music and technology. Over the course of three full-length albums, the most recent being last year’s Parted Plains, she has earned critical acclaim and fans for developing a sound that incorporates elements of both North Indian classical and experimental electronic music. Her process of creating music, she says, has evolved a lot over the years.

“I started out processing my sitar and vocals through a handful of guitar pedals and playing these live experimental, distorted, noisy, avant-garde synths,” she says. “I was doing some of those loops live and then moved into using a sampler. For a couple albums, my process started with samples, making patterns out of them and then using those patterns as the basis for the songs.” More recently Dang says she’s become increasingly interested in a variety of different kinds of synths.

With Meditations Mixtape, Vol. 1, though, Dang worked in a different way, given the current pandemic-related circumstances. “It was a very interesting exercise in using what I had at home,” says Dang. “When I work on music, there are a lot of different equations that I think about. I often think about the live aspect of it because I do love performing live. I typically perform live a lot and I’ve toured a lot, but, without any future touring in sight, I was thinking that I don’t have to worry about that right now.” Instead, she says of the EP,  “These are just songs for people to listen to on their own.”

On “Tension Tension Release,” released earlier in May, Dang sings the syllables “ni, ni, sa,” a solfége in Hindustani classical music, to draw listeners into a possible moment of meditation. “I wanted that piece to be all around the breath and finding those moments of tension and really leaning into them and then releasing them either when you sing sa,” she explains. “If people want to sing along with it that would be awesome, or just breathe along with it.”

She adds that, while she did make this particular piece with classical meditation in mind, she had a different kind of experience while singing “ni, ni, sa” as she cooked. “It was just the most relaxing and really grounding cooking experience that I had ever had,” she says. “I think it’s nice to find those moments in your daily life.”

“I don’t want to put out music that dictates how people should listen to it,” says Dang. “If you want to meditate full-on with them, that’s great, but, also, don’t beat yourself up for not being someone who meditates in the very classical sense of the word.”

Elsewhere, Dang says, she composed less for traditional meditation. On “Simplicity Mind Tool,” she incorporated lyrics from Sikh scripture that are meaningful to her. “In the scripture, it says specifically that focusing on the divine is the way to find peace and stability. I interpret that a little more widely. My interpretation of the divine is more about universal consciousness and collective understanding,” she explains. “My feeling is that if you focus on yourself, your spirit and the context of this collective – our community, rather than our stuff – that’s a way for people to find tranquility within ourselves.”

Follow Ami Dang on Facebook for ongoing updates.

RSVP HERE: Romi of PowerSnap Streams via The Footlight Instagram + MORE

Photo Credit: Jeanette D Moses

PowerSnap is a Brooklyn by way of Tel Aviv three-piece punk band that embodies the pure spirit of weirdo rock n roll. The trio is lead by Romi Hanoch (who also sings in Ghost Funk Orchestra) on guitar/vocals with her high school best friend and bassist Noga “Nogi” Davidson, filled out by Mario Gutierrez on drums. Romi writes sad, angsty songs, hooks reminiscent of Billie Joe Armstrong and The Kinks and a vocal snarl like The Muff’s Kim Shattuck or Brody Dalle of The Distillers. We premiered PowerSnap’s music video for “Chemistry,”from their King Pizza Records debut EP Delatancy back in 2018, and they are set to release a new EP tentatively titled Disappointment sometime this year. Romi’s first ever Livestream happens tonight (5/22) via The Footlight’s Instagram at 8pm est (alongside Meg Mancini of The Rizzos, and Brian LaRue of Shelter Dogs). We chatted with her about the challenges of quarantine video making, her dream lineup, and the possible positive effects of lockdown on jaded music makers.

AF: What’s PowerSnap’s formation story?

RH: PowerSnap started with Noga (Nogi) Davidson and myself, when we met on the first day of 10th grade (which was also my birthday day) in a school in Israel. We were both in the Jazz department; me as a singer and her s a pianist. We became friends and a year later started our first band, Bar Vase. After a few years doing that and living together, we decided to follow our dream and move to NYC. We also decided to start a new band – PowerSnap. We had a couple different drummers when we started out; first one was Uri who was Israeli, then Paul who Nogi met through someone from the restaurant she worked at. One night I went to a DIY show and saw Mario Gutierrez play the drums and from that moment, I knew I want him to join our band. A year later, he did. And we’ve been together ever since.

AF: What are some musical and non-musical inspirations for the band?

RH: It’s quite remarkable how all of us have such different taste in music. I like punk and grunge and all that angsty shit, plus a whole lot of Beatles, The Who and other ’60s heroes. Nogi loves ’60s and ’70s stuff but not a punk fan. Mario and I share our love for ’90s punk-pop bands at times, but he’s also big on electronic music (which is noticeable in his solo project Nieces And Nephews). We all love Jack Black as a musician and a human being.

AF: What is your dream line-up and venue for your first post-quarantine show?

RH: Madison Square Garden. Paul McCartney (solo set) opening. Green Day second. We’re third. Top Nachos closing.

AF: PowerSnap recently did a IG takeover of Our Wicked Lady’s Instagram. What other venues and organizations do you recommend that people support during this time?

RH: So many places. Alphaville in Bushwick. Union Pool in Williamsburg (same owner of my favorite bar, Hotel Delmano), The Gutter in Greenpoint. Trans Pecos, TV Eye and Planet X. Also, whoever can afford it should buy merchandise from bands and artists. And of course any organization that helps marginalized communities. If you have it, pay it forward!

AF: You look and sound super cool in the “Seven Eight” video by Ghost Funk Orchestra! How did you get involved in that project, and aside from coordinating so many more people, what are some differences between working with an orchestra versus a three piece band?

RH: The way in which I got involved with GFO is a long and weird coincidental tale. To make it short: moved to NYC, went to an open mic night as a rapper, met some people who liked what I did, got tagged in Seth Applebaum’s FB post searching for female MCs. Meanwhile, met Greg Hanson at a show and heard about The Mad Doctors. Went to The Mad Doctors’ release show, met Seth who was the frontman, told him I was tagged in his FB post and that I rap, he said we should collaborate. Played one show with them as a guest and after that, was asked to join the band. Same story would also answer the question of how we got into the King Pizza Records community, but through Greg Hanson. Life is funny. The main difference for me is that PowerSnap is a band that I am the leader of. I write all the lyrics and most of the songs, I handle the administrative part and all of that hoopla. Ghost Funk Orchestra is a band that I’m beyond honored to be a part of. And that is what I am, a single part in that great machine, run by the genius Seth Applebaum.

AF: GFO has been doing some quarantine videos – what is the process of filming those like?

RH: I got the easy job as a singer. Seth tells us what to do and we do it. He records drums and guitar, syncs it up and sends it to us to record over. Then we send him our videos and he puts everything together. When PowerSnap did a quarantine video, it was a lot more work for me personally, because of the editing. But I love how it came out so please check it out on our social medias! It’s called “Outta Words” and we’re actually working on another one, to be released soon.

AF: You’re doing your first solo live stream on Friday via The Footlight – what’s your livestream set up like?

RH: This is gonna be my first live stream ever and I don’t really know what to expect. I do solo sets sometimes and I sing alone in my room often, so I’m imagining it’s a combo of the two. I’ll probably use my shitty nylon string guitar that I’ve had since I was 11, because I love that beautiful piece of junk. Gonna play five songs – some PowerSnap ones, and probably at least 1 terribly sad ballad.

AF: What’s a positive thing you can imagine for the music industry – and world – coming out of this?

RH: Oooh, that’s a tough one. Hard to tell if this will actually happen, but hopefully when we come out of this, the jaded ones among us will be reminded why we got into it in the first place. The joy. Maybe we’ll go back to appreciating where we are and what we do. I wish.

RSVP HERE for Romi of PowerSnap’s livestream via The Footlight’s Instagram 5/22 8pm est.

More great livestreams this week…

5/22 Low via Instagram. 4pm est, RSVP HERE

5/22 Brendan Benson (of The Raconteurs) via Instagram. 5:20pm est, RSVP HERE

5/22 Margo Price via Youtube. 9pm est, RSVP HERE

5/23 Del Water Gap, May May (of Poppies) & More via Baby.TV. 8pm est, $5-50, RSVP HERE

5/24 Memorial Day Meltdown with Nobunny, Pink Mexico & more via Sofa-King Fest. 12pm RSVP HERE 

5/28 Viagra Boys via Pickathon Presents A Concert A Day Youtube. 4pm est, RSVP HERE

5/28 Questlove’s Potluck virtual dinner party to benefit America’s Food Fund via Food Network. 10pm est, RSVP HERE

Director Amy Goldstein on Filming Kate Nash Documentary Underestimate the Girl

Kate Nash performing live. (Credit: Carolina Faruolo)

When filmmaker Amy Goldstein and British pop star Kate Nash were in the midst of filming Nash’s life and work, the two had noticed a string of new documentaries about women in music, like Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Nina Simone. They were women of outstanding talent, trailblazers in their times. Yet, their stories were told after their deaths.

“We made a pact that Kate would not die in the making of this film,” says Goldstein, “and it would be a great symbol to young women that you can make music and you do not have to be tragic.”

The result is Underestimate the Girl, a documentary about a woman who is not only alive, but goes on to thrive in music and television after a series of setbacks. Nash goes through her own hero’s journey in front of the camera. It wasn’t something that had been planned.

Goldstein and Nash met through their mutual hairdresser when the latter was preparing to play Coachella in 2014. Nash saw Goldstein’s previous documentary, The Hooping Life, and the two began working together.

At the time, Nash, whose 2007 debut album Made of Bricks went platinum in the U.K. and led to multiple awards, including “Best British Female Solo Artist” at the 2008 Brit Awards, was at a crossroads. While her early work had garnered her loads of fans, making her a standout success in the heyday of MySpace, there was also a press backlash. In the documentary, she talks about how some wrote her off as a “silly little teenage girl who was writing in her diary.”

“There’s nothing silly about being a teenage girl,” she says in the film. “That’s actually one of the most deep things in the world.”

Press outlets made disparaging comments about her appearance, like pointing out zits. “I don’t know how you take a young girl like that and put pictures of her and circle things and describe her that way,” Goldstein says. “I don’t know what kind of person does that.”

Nash responded with the punky single “Under-Estimate the Girl,” released as a free download in 2012. She was dropped by her label prior to releasing her third album, Girl Talk. By 2014, though, Nash, now living in Los Angeles, booked a gig at Coachella and it looked like she was on the cusp of a comeback. That’s when Goldstein and Nash connected via their mutual hairdresser and began work on the documentary.

Amy Goldstein, director of Underestimate the Girl.

Goldstein could see parallels between her own work and Nash’s. “This felt very personal to me,” says Goldstein. “As a female director, I go through many of the things that Kate does.” In fact, Goldstein mentions that her agent dropped her when she decided to make a documentary. “I guess I did my own punk album with a movie called The Hooping Life, where we followed six hula- hoopers over six years,” she says.

Initially, Goldstein suggests, the project could have focused on how a young singer who found success via fraught label relationships ultimately transitioned into an independent artist. The story, however, would change. While they were still filming the documentary, Nash learned that her manager had used her credit card to pay for his wedding.

This revelation sets off a chain of events. She has to move out of her Los Angeles home, sell her clothes, find other work. She files a lawsuit against her manager when he refuses to pay her back. Then, she moves back to London.

“It was very painful. It was very hard,” says Goldstein of filming in the midst of this difficult time for Nash. “It’s very hard to point the camera on someone when they’re down.”

“I think, somewhere, it was empowering for her to tell her own story on her own terms, but it was horrible,” says Goldstein. “We definitely tried to make Kate’s life a little easier during that time, but it broke our hearts.”

For Goldstein, this was her first documentary that focused on one person’s story. It was filmed with a very small team. “I shot the majority of the film myself with multiple cameras. My producer recorded sound. We toured with them,” she explains. “We had two amazing editors. it was a very small group of people making what I feel turned into an epic movie.”

The difference though, is that, there wasn’t always a conclusion in sight.  “For a long time, we had no idea what would happen,” says Goldstein. “I don’t think Kate knew either.”

But the singer pushed forward. Nash not only won the lawsuit against her former manager, but she did so on her terms, deciding that the freedom to speak was what mattered to her most.

Shortly after, Nash landed the role of Rhonda “Britannica” Richardson on the Netflix series GLOW, which would go on to become a critical and commercial success. Nash also ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund her fourth album, Yesterday Was Forever, which was released in 2018.

In the end, Underestimate the Girl isn’t just a documentary about a woman making her living as a musician, but one with an empowered, and happy, ending.

Underestimate the Girl will be released through Alamo on Demand on Friday, May 22. A performance and Q/A from Kate Nash will take place on Saturday, May 23, at 6pm PST/9pm EST. 

PREMIERE: Killer Workout Draws on Love of Campy Horror for “Figure it Out” Video

Photo Credit: Brady Harvey

About three years ago, Adrienne Clark and Anthony Darnell, bandmates in Seattle new wave dance pop group Killer Workout, replied to an ad from a man who had bought out the stock of a closed-down video store. Interest piqued, they rolled up to find a garage full of thousands of their favorite horror and sci-fi VHS tapes.

“The guy told us we had to take everything, but I didn’t realize how many VHS he actually had. He had a giant garage—well over two thousand VHS tapes—but we were in a 1998 Corolla, so he gave us 30 minutes to go through and grab as many as we could,” remembers Darnell.

This was the beginning of Clark and Darnell’s collection of campy horror, sci-fi, and action VHS, a passion and aesthetic which has spilled over into their music as Killer Workout—from the band’s namesake to their forthcoming 3-song EP, Four : Three, which references the 4:3 aspect ratio common in ‘80s and ‘90s VHS tapes and television. “The name Four : Three doesn’t tell you too much, but it gives you a clue of who we are. Like, we’re sitting in a room right now with a hundred VHS tapes of horror movies. We’re kind of obsessed,” says Clark, laughing. “We’re big cinephiles and whenever we’re collaborating, we reference films and visual art that could inspire the work.”

This inspiration is clear in video for the song “Figure it Out,” premiering today. It’s one of three music videos the band commissioned from @video_macabro, a popular Instagram personality who cuts up and collages obscure VHS movies and posts it with interesting music. “He’ll take some weird Japanese robot movie that you’ve never heard of and put dark dance music to it,” said Darnell. “It just really resonated with me, so we asked him to do all three videos.”

For “Figure it Out,” the director spliced together scenes from 1979 film The Driller Killer, a slasher flick about an artist who’s driven into insanity and begins killing people with a power drill. The effect is undeniably perfect for the song – the unison eighth-note bass and drum patterns have ’80s vibes, but with a twist unique to the band, which includes guitarist Reed Griffin, bassist/vocalist Jon Swihart, and drummer Bob Husak (who also collects and sells vintage vinyl, books and tapes).

“With some of the newer stuff we’ve been trying to play with structure,” said Darnell. “I thought, we’re stuck in a rut of emulating this [post-punk] sound, why don’t we try and play with some of these elements—make it darker than it typically would be, more haunting.” The EP arrives June 26 – they’ve already released its first single, “Too Late.”

On “Figure it Out,” Clark’s otherworldly keyboard line connects the straight-ahead post-punk vocals to some far-out dimension, while the heavy, reverb-y guitar conjures up a horror movie score – as they say, “Tangerine Dream-style.” Lyrically, this song began as a way to process Donald Trump’s election. Over time, Darnell says its morphed into more of a reflection on the balance between fitting in and standing out, which, against the backdrop of a misfit impaling someone with his drill, adds a layer of deliciously dark humor, a la Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.”

“It’s a song about realizing everyone is a big nerd like you are, so what does it matter [if you fit in or not]?” said Darnell. “I mean, I’m into weird horror movies and sci-fi stuff that a lot of people think is weird or too obscure.  But everyone has these fears and anxieties. So ‘Figure it Out’ has a hopeful message against a dark backdrop.”

Follow Killer Workout on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Aubrey Haddard Salvages Sanity Amid Chaos in “Thin Line”

Photo Credit: Andrea Zalkin

Aubrey Haddard sings about feeling “on display” and “carefully choosing every word I want to say” in her latest single, and those lyrics could easily refer to the past two years of her life. After moving from Boston to Brooklyn, touring her jazz-infused indie pop around the country, and completing residencies in Oakland and southern France, Haddard is releasing “Thin Line,” her first song since her debut 2018 album Blue Part, today.

The single opens with a rich-voiced plea: “Give me a sign I’m not wasting all my time/I’ve got a feeling I’m holding on for life.” There are hints of ’90s pop and classic rock added to her usual soulful sound; she describes it as “guitar-driven rock meets high-energy electronic maximalist pop.”

Haddard wrote the song about “that line between being okay and losing it,” she explains. “Creatives and musicians — but really everybody who puts their passion on the line as their job — probably have to reconcile that feeling of, ‘I’m working so hard but what is this for? What’s the big picture? What’s the big idea?'” But there’s also a positive message to the song, conveying a sense of “being okay with working so tirelessly for something you love.”

Her own struggle to find balance in her life as a musician inspired the single. “I’m very familiar with my own breaking points,” she says. “It’s happened to me quite a few times, where I find myself juggling more than I can handle from just being on the road and self-managing and promoting and being a friendly face at shows and being enough for myself back home, but saving a little bit of myself to still take care of myself.”

During these times, she’ll try to take days off to play guitar, write lyrics, and learn covers just for fun, and her band members also help reduce her stress. The video for “Thin Line,” which features Haddard talking into an old-fashioned telephone and playing with dice and letter tiles with her bandmates, was meant to visually represent the support she receives from them. “We went in with this goofy idea, but I got to do it with these three men around me that support me through those times I’m singing about,” she says.

Haddard plans to release a series of singles throughout the year, which she describes as “all sort of in this fresh indie pop maximalist arena, almost indulging our sense in the studio and seeing how far we could push all these new directions.” This represents a break from her previous work, much of which sounds like it could be from live recordings, with less layers of instrumentation. “While our debut record was really minimalist, these really simple songs, we’ve gone the complete opposite direction,” she says.

The new approach is in part due to the opportunity Haddard had to reflect on who she is as a musician over her chaotic past two years. “I’m getting a lot more familiar with myself as an artist,” she says. “I’m being a lot more patient and taking time to create the best works that I can create, and not really working with whatever comes out of me, but striving to create something I’m envisioning.”

Follow Aubrey Haddard on Facebook for ongoing updates.

ONLY NOISE: The Women of Country Music Offer Wisdom in Times of Crisis

Loretta Lynn’s alcohol-soaked pity party for herself in “Somebody, Somewhere” echoes quite a lot of our newly solo Saturday nights. Dolly Parton reminds us all that wealth is a state of being, rather than the (declining) value of our bank accounts. Lucinda Williams asks the simple, but potentially life-saving question, “Are You Alright?“; Ashley Monroe comforts us, singing “someday you’ll be fine, sweet as wine” on “From Time To Time“; and Kasey Chambers gets to the core of being “Happy” regardless of the circumstances. Really, if any musical genre was perfectly suited to get us through heartbreak, loneliness, and financial hardship, it’s country. And the women of country, in particular, have plenty of lessons to impart on coping with life in chaotic times – particularly those we’re collectively facing as COVID-19 rages on.

Loretta Lynn was a ground-breaker. In her 60-year career, she was brave enough to defy strictly conservative commercial radio stations to sing about abortion, rejecting drunken advances, getting on birth control, and older women desiring younger men (and pursuing them for sexual gratification). In short, she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind – even when it came to doing housework. “Well goodbye tubs and clothes lines, goodbye pots and pans/I’m a gonna take a Greyhound bus as further as I can/I ain’t a gonna wash no windows and I ain’t a gonna scrub no floors/And when you realize I’m gone, I’m a gonna hear you roar,” she sang on “Hey Loretta,” from 1973 LP Love Is The Foundation. While I don’t recommend taking public transportation, her words may help you find your voice if you feel like you’ve been stuck at home with a mop and a stack of dishes thanks to housemates who have no inclination to help with domestic necessities.

I live by Dolly Parton’s saying, “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” which is only one of the many examples of her deep wisdom. Right now, many families in America and around the world are struggling to survive on their savings, government rations (if we’re fortunate enough to qualify) and the generosity of community organizations. It’s a good time to recall Dolly’s ode to her resourceful mother, “Coat of Many Colors.” The story behind the song is true – as a child, Dolly was taunted by her schoolmates for wearing a coat made from scraps of fabric that clearly indicated a lack of wealth in her family, but illustrated the richness of their bond: “I told ’em of the love/My momma sewed in every stitch/And I told ’em all the story/Momma told me while she sewed/And how my coat of many colors/Was worth more than all their clothes.” With many dusting off their old sewing machines to make masks for healthcare workers and neighbors alike, love becomes the thread that holds everything together.

Granted, Shania Twain was singing a love song to her man with 1999 single “You’ve Got A Way,” but some of the lyrics could equally apply to your best friendships. “You got a way with words/You get me smiling even when it hurts,” she sings. “There’s no way to measure what your love is worth/I can’t believe the way you get through to me.” When it feels like the world is in chaos, sometimes you just need understanding, and it goes both ways. We all need to be there for each other.

No one knows that better than Lucinda Williams, who just released her 14th studio album, Good Souls Better Angels. Williams knows all about hard living, sacrifice, and scraping for silver linings, and on her 2009 LP West, she opens with a simple check in: “Are you alright?/I looked around me and you were gone/Are you alright?/I feel like there must be something wrong/Are you alright?/Cos it seems like you disappeared/Are you alright?/Cos I been feeling a little scared.” If you’re like me, maybe you’ve found that the simple act of asking, as Williams did, “Are You Alright?” has even more importance now than it ever has. Every phone call to a friend, Zoom meeting with coworkers, and interaction with those on the frontline begins with this simple act of kindness.

Though “having someone to hug and kiss you” may not be an ideal way to observe social distancing, admitting that you’re not alright might enable people around you to offer you resources and advice, even if it’s just on social media. Though we must remain physically distant, we can still be socially connected.

It usually takes a lot of grief, wailing, and wondering if you can handle it before you see signs of your own granite-hard resolve to live, breathe, and become who you’re capable of being. That suffering and strengthening is illustrated beautifully in Australian country singer Kasey Chambers’ “Stronger,” from 2004 LP Wayward Angel. “I thought it was good, I thought it was fine/I thought it was just a matter of time/The sun would shine/I held my breath, I covered my eyes/Thought I was just clearing the skies,” she sings, capturing that period of waiting and watching we’re all feeling right now. Though nothing makes sense to her, she finds power within (“I’m a little bit braver/I’m a little bit wilder/I can stand a bit closer to the light”), proving that the old cliche is true – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Ashley Monroe’s bittersweet tune “From Time to Time” is another reminder that everything that threatens to break us open and bleed us of all the sweetness of who we are passes. We are loved, even when we feel horribly alone. I think of the lines “Someday you’ll be fine/Sweet as wine/It’s alright to remember” when reminiscing about going out for a meal, or visiting a record store. Those little things that nourish our soul that we miss so much? Let’s remember them and know this current level of restriction isn’t forever.

These resilient women can all attest to the power of music and creativity to make sense of pain, injustice and grief. Music is redemptive, it connects us like an invisible web that reflects the light after rainfall. Even if your singing voice isn’t going to win over record executives any time soon, you’re still capable of singing along.

Tessy Lou Williams Confronts Vice and Heartache with Classic Country Single ‘One More Night’

Photo by Christina Feddersen

Tessy Lou Williams chronicles hard-to-break habits in her new song, “One More Night.”

As the daughter of Kenny and Claudia Williams of the band Montana Rose, Williams was born with music in her DNA. After years of working as a songwriter and live performer, Williams is ready to commit her voice and words to her self-titled, debut solo album, out this Friday, May 22nd. It’s bound to satisfy any traditional country fan’s appetite, and that includes Williams’ latest single, “One More Night,” premiering exclusively with Audiofemme.

The Montana-bred Williams had the idea for a song, about those insatiable vices you need one more hit of, rolling in her head for a while. But a bout with writer’s block sent her into the studio with co-writer Vanessa Olivarez to finish the tune. “It’s about that battle between your head and your heart where you think you feel one way, but you know better,” Williams explains about the song’s meaning. “It’s really not a healthy choice, but you still pine over it. You feel like you need it, but you know you don’t.”

Whether it’s another drink, one more smoke or a past love, told from the perspective of a lonely soul inside a bar at last call, Williams makes those nagging addictions feel universal. “In the writing process we were thinking about it in that bigger picture. We talk about the ‘two more cigarettes in my pack…’ you could be like, ‘I don’t need those right now,’ but you know you’re going to smoke them,” she says, analyzing the song’s opening line. Williams tells the story with mellifluous vocals reminiscent of Lee Ann Womack and Alison Krauss, wrapped around a stunning melody of crisp fiddle and shimmering guitar, creating a classic country sound. “I know I should be gettin’ stronger/Fight the way I feel inside/I tell my heart over and over/All I need is one more night,” she sings.

Williams cites the bridge that proclaims, “Am I fool enough to believe that all I really need is one more night?” as the most personal line in the song, symbolizing a moment of self-awareness. “You realize you’re being ridiculous about the whole situation – you don’t want just one more and it’s not going to be just one more. You try to convince yourself ‘just one more and I’ll be good,’” she says.

Like many of the album’s other tracks, “One More Night” is pulled from the realm of heartbreak. Describing it as one of the most “relatable” songs on the record, Williams hopes that “One More Night” offers a sense of community to listeners who have gone through something similar. “I hope people can listen to it and know that they’re not alone in their experiences, that there are others out there who can relate to their situations. You’re never alone in life and it’s okay to be sad and heartbroken – we’re all there at one point or another,” she says. “We’re all a lot more alike than we think we are.”

Follow Tessy Lou Williams on Facebook for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Natalie Schlabs Provides Hope Amid Hardship in “See What I See”

If your life feels like an endless struggle right now, folk singer-songwriter Natalie Schlabs has a message of hope for you. Her latest single, “See What I See,” reassures people in various difficult situations that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, even if they can’t see it at the moment.

“Are you lost in the dark?/Look again, you might see a shooting star/Honey, you are the sky/you hold the sun /you hold the shadow-side,” Schlabs’ sweet, clear voice sings in a verse aimed at someone with depression. Another verse of the song speaks to someone dealing with a chronic illness.

“I think we can all offer our eyes to someone when they’re having a hard time, imagining they will be OK again,” says Schlabs.

The song is on her sophomore album, Don’t Look Too Close, which comes out in October. Written during Schlabs’ pregnancy with her first child, the album addresses family relationships, friendship, romantic love, vulnerability, and death, as well as “the hope that can still be girded underneath despair” and “the pain of letting someone go and allowing them to make their own decisions, even when you feel it is harming them,” as she puts it. “Basically, a lot of life lessons that come up when you enter your 30s.”

Parenting is a central theme throughout the album: “Ophelia” was written for a friend who lost her daughter, “Endless Love” is a love song to Schlabs’ own son, and “Don’t Look Too Close” is about not wanting your children to see your dark or dysfunctional side.

“Being pregnant, I naturally did a lot more reflection, as well as thinking of the future and what I wanted to pass down. I think that probably led to more honest songwriting,” she says. “I’m exploring the tension of being the best you can for your kid or loved one and knowing you’re a flawed human who is going to fuck up. You realize it was the same with your own parents and loved ones. There is a parallel line there that is interesting to me.”

The album features slow, gentle melodies, layered vocals and guitars, and indie and pop sensibilities combined with Schlabs’ usual Americana style; she says that bands like Big Thief and The War on Drugs influenced the sound. The instrumentals include Caleb Hickman on saxophone and Joshua Rogers, Schlabs’ husband, on bass.

“This time, I was able to see the studio as an instrument to experiment with,” she adds. “I wasn’t afraid to try things like running my vocal mic through a guitar amp.”

The Nashville-based artist’s other passion is cooking; she used to have her own catering business and wrote songs between food prep. Nowadays, her Patreon is dedicated to music, recipes, and even music-recipe pairings.

Schlabs is currently working on creating a home studio as she writes more songs. In the meantime, her music serves as a reminder for those of us stuck at home to believe in better days ahead, and to cherish the people we’re stuck with.

Follow Natalie Schlabs on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Margalee Offers a Tender Slice of Familial Love With Let the Mad World Spin

margalee band
margalee band
Photo Credit: Bill Russell

Concept EPs are something that I would like to see more of. This “tidbit” style of album creation appeals to me for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one, I believe, is that it normalizes the process of creation. By no means am I suggesting making a themed or shorter work is easier than making something more expansive, but I do think that they tend to show the cracks a little bit more, but in a way that adds to their charm. It’s the musical equivalent of a zine, those beloved micro-works known for their ragged edges, both literal and metaphorical.

Oakland’s Margalee have put out one such slice-of-life, a four track EP that is essentially a love letter to singer, instrumentalist, and producer Margaret Potts’ mom. While the band normally makes eclectic rock, this stripped-down experiment, titled Let The Mad World Spin, does not feel lesser, nor does it feel under-produced, which can happen with concept EPs done on the fly (or in quarantine).

Track one, “gratitude for moms,” is a rambling kitchen-counter note given space to expand beyond the page. “[Thanks for] doing all the wifey things that you had to do/I don’t even know what that means/because you taught me that a woman can be anything she wants/and Dad did the laundry” Potts sings, laughing on the last word. Right off the bat we have a sense of this family and the lightness and informality between them. Potts lets the song ramble off towards the end, asking, “What do you call a mother’s love/for a child and vice versa?” Its a worthwhile question, but Potts doesn’t need to provide an answer — finding the perfect metaphor is not the point here.

Rambling, talk-singing, and non-music sounds are mainstays of the concept EP, and “Let the Mad World Spin” is no exception. 60’s and 70’s folk are also some clear influences that Potts pulls to inform certain musical choices, and her voice, which she changes on pin turns, sometimes dips into a throaty warble that would be off-putting if you couldn’t hear her smiling her way through it.

“get yourself a dream” is another strange song. It relies on a lot of repeated syntax, but still holds some great lyrics, like the beginning of the second verse: “like a rusty bucket returning to the same well/yes, the same hell hoping for water/is is possible?” Potts could have just been riffing and happened to land on some quality turns of phrase, but as any artist knows, waiting for inspiration is… well, like being a rusty bucket returning to the same dry place.

One of Potts’s strengths is knowing what to emphasize, but with the precision of a musical theater kid mid-soliloquy. In “blooms,” which starts off rather slow and soft, Potts quickly brings us in another, more energetic direction when she starts in on “I like the subtle power of blooms in a West Oakland garden/how do they manage vulnerability? In a cosmos with black holes/ how do they flower shamelessly?” the whole time, her inflections chase with ease, somehow fitting eleven syllables in that second line without making it sound forced.

“let the mad world spin,” was the immediate standout, the most solidly constructed of the four songs and with a few experimental elements that drew me in immediately, like little high-pitched sound integrated into the song early on before becoming a percussive instrument. It’s a quick little thing at under two minutes, but sums up the themes of the EP nicely: womanhood, personal autonomy, nature and the community found there.

All and all, Let the Mad World Spin is a strong showing from Margalee, a folk-rock testing ground for expressing what I assume was a concentrated burst of feeling for Potts’ mother and her adopted town of Oakland. Short works can, of course, be sloppy, but more often than not, they are a welcome green light for our spur of the moment ideas and how perfection and a three-act structure are not always necessary to create something of emotional and artistic resonance.

Hollis Does Brunch Series Combines Music and Food to Help Those Affected by COVID Shutdowns

Photo Credit: Janae Jones

When talking to musician Hollis Wong-Wear, it feels as though she has all the time in the world for you. This is indicative of the enjoyment she gains from meeting people and creating connections. “I am a very passionate host and I love bringing people together and cultivating a cool vibe,” she says as we chat over the phone. “My sense of self as an artist is inseparable from the community.”

Beginning her music career as one third of the band The Flavr Blue, writing music for other musicians and her band, it wasn’t until recently that she felt ready to create her own collection of work. “I had become this master facilitator. When I work with other people I can take on the responsibility of doing something as a joint venture to motivate me,” the singer-songwriter explains, adding that when it came to creating with her own voice and story it felt akin to an uphill battle. ”It goes back to that insecurity of ‘Why does my voice matter?’”

Her anxiety is more than relatable; in a social media-saturated world, anyone and everyone is clambering to have that big break in their career, whether they’re an artist, musician or writer. Knowing she was more comfortable collaborating and building community, Hollis used those skills to her advantage. She created her unique Hollis Does Brunch series, which takes place in a number of cities across the U.S., and acted as a Trojan Horse to get her used to performing her own music and telling her story. She released her debut solo EP half-life last February. A deluxe version of the EP arrives May 22nd, with two music videos to celebrate – live recordings of her singles “Sedative” and “Back To Me.”

Organizing food-related events was an organic step – growing up in her mom’s Chinese restaurant in the suburbs of San Francisco made Hollis a moth to a flame when it comes to good meals and community spirit. “I think food is kind of like the first art form that I really, truly understood… the idea of gathering people around music and food was a concept that, for me, was a natural connection,” she says. “My end of goal of why I create anything is to bring people together in a meaningful way and forge connections. When we did the [last in-person] Hollis Does Brunch session in Seattle, people brought their kids, their parents and their friends. It was fun and inclusive – people were drinking cocktails and feeding their kids! I want these sessions to feel good and welcome for all.”

When the current pandemic hit the States, it became clear that our lives would change drastically, and that necessary social distancing measures would protect lives. With this in mind, Hollis decided to move her brunch sessions online, creating weekly live-streams and raising money (and perhaps most importantly, awareness) for those most severely affected by the situation. She admits she had some personal motivations, too. “I love hosting and the worst thing for somebody who loves to host is not being able to have any people over to their house! So I thought: how I could scratch my ‘self-care’ itch? How can I extend that in a digital space?” she says. “If I can be a resource to others, that’s a privilege. I’m happy to get into the weeds with live-streaming because it provides that. I wanted the sessions to be about community – less ‘oh they watch me perform!’ and more about bringing in the insights of other folks. My heart hurts so deeply for all of the restaurants that have closed and laid off employees.” By organizing these sessions, Hollis hopes to provide a degree of nourishment both mentally and physically. It’s a symbiotic relationship as it brings Hollis herself a degree of commitment and structure.

Bars, restaurants, diners and cafes all played vital roles in how we lived before the pandemic. They were places of refuge and relaxation; after a busy day we flocked to them with friends, eager to shed our everyday stresses. For students and freelancers, cafes were the perfect hideaway when unable to focus at home. They housed our small ensembles to large gatherings; we shared birthdays, holidays and celebrations there, and in some cultures, wakes to remember lost loved ones. Yet they’ve endured some of the worst effects of the pandemic, the results of which has left many owners wondering if their small businesses will survive, and how they’ll pay workers who relied on tips.

These online brunch sessions raise funds for those groups especially in need during this time, such as Feeding America and the NYC UndocuWorkers Fund. Each organization is close to the heart of one of her guests joining that week; Hollis allows them to explain how they’re affected and why it’s important to extend a hand, as it were, and help lift up their chosen cause.

“One of the live-streams I did was fundraising for undocumented workers in New York City who were laid off, and then it was also fundraising for the restaurant of the chefs that I had on that day,” Hollis says. “After that I used the next session to raise money for two artist organizations in Seattle that are doing a Seattle artist relief fund, and they’ve actually already raised $200,000 and are trying to raise another $700,000 more because of the demonstrated need.”

In fact, many of the people Hollis invites have already begun their own fundraising, and the series helps garner even greater attention. “One of the chefs [Erik Bruner-Yang] that came on is doing The Power of 10 initiative, trying to raise $10,000 to hire 10 employees who will make 1,000 meals for people in the DC area. They’re trying to make that a pilot program,” Hollis says.

Like many who are working to support their local community, Hollis volunteers her time and it’s a testament to her hard work that many groups have received much-needed support in a time where it feels as though there is none. Her live-stream series “is really about giving – I’m not taking in money. The only thing I’m doing is starting a Patreon page, which I did feel conflicted about. But after looking at my expenses I realized I might need to!”

When asked how people can get involved, she stressed that there is no prescribed way to do so, and that simply being present for the brunch is enough. “I just hope that what I’m creating provides solace and support to this moment,” she says.

Follow Hollis on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for ongoing updates.

PLAYING DETROIT: White Bee Releases Debut LP Psychedelic Flight Attendant

Detroit singer-songwriter Shannon Barnes blends her love for future-soul and psychedelic-folk on her debut record, Psychedelic Flight Attendant. Released under the moniker of White Bee, PFA is a labor of love that took Barnes over two years to complete, and survived many peaks and valleys along the way. In fact, right before Barnes planned to start recording, she suffered a personal and band breakup, causing her to question if she’d be able to continue White Bee.

“To be honest with you it was really hard at first,” Barnes explains. “I didn’t think that White Bee could exist after all that. And then I realized, this is me, this isn’t anybody else. These are songs that I wrote and experiences that I had…the whole process of my writing comes from my learning and how I play guitar.” Barnes’ rhythmic guitar style is due in part to one of her biggest influences, Nai Palm, co-founder of Hiatus Kaiyote. She even credits Palm for inspiring her to learn the guitar in the first place.

“When I was 21 I just remember seeing a Hiatus Kaiyote video online for the first time,” Barnes says. “When I saw that, I was like, ‘that’s what I wanna fucking do.’ That was the reason why I picked up guitar.” Although Barnes’ musical journey started long before that, the last seven years have been an extremely formative time musically for the artist, who is now 27. Her appreciation for classic jazz vocalists along with more contemporary artists like Mac Demarco, Tame Impala, Lianne La Havas and Britney Howard is evident in her work.

Barnes leans heavily to syncopated rhythms on tracks like “Antihistamine” and “Beat State,”  which could easily be used as historical bookmarks for the time that she first heard Nai Palm. She said that, for a moment, learning Hiatus Kaiyote guitar riffs and experimenting with songwriting was almost like a drug. “You know that feeling you get when you get excited to go on a date with someone or you get excited for going on a trip?” Barnes asks. “I feel like I had that feeling constantly – it was like all my serotonin levels were tingling all the time because I just wanted to learn more.”

That exuberance is translated into each of Psychedelic Flight Attendant’s eight tracks. The record takes the listener on Barnes’ journey through heartbreak, angst, chaos and resilience.  It reminds us of the beauty that can come from loss or change, and shows us how appreciating someone else’s art can become the most important factor in producing one’s own.

Follow White Bee on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Raye Zaragoza Reclaims Playground Taunt “Fight Like a Girl” for Latest Protest Anthem

Every one of Raye Zaragoza’s songs has a political message. It’s sometimes a very specific one, as in “Driving to Standing Rock” and “In the River,” both about the Dakota Access Pipeline, and often a broader one, as in “Fight for You,” a call for people to speak out about injustice and stand up for the oppressed.

Her latest single, “Fight Like a Girl,” falls somewhere in the middle, advocating for intersectional feminism with lines like “grandma nature, mother moon/show me what to do/they are taking our rights away/policing our bodies.” For the folk singer-songwriter, who is of Native American, Mexican, Taiwanese, and Japanese descent, inclusivity has always been paramount.

Zaragoza has been performing professionally since she was 19, starting off playing two-hour sets in exchange for a piece of pie at an LA pie shop. She worked restaurant jobs until age 23, and for the past four years, she’s been pursuing music full-time, putting out her first album Fight for You in 2017. Later this year, she plans to release her sophomore LP, recorded with Tucker Martine (who has worked with The Decemberists, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, case/lang/veirs, and others). With the quarantine limiting her ability to produce a more elaborate video, she recorded and shot herself performing “Fight Like a Girl” in her own home.

We talked to her about the message behind her latest single and the role of political activism in her music.

AF: What inspired the song “Fight Like a Girl”?

RZ: I wrote this song because I wanted to write an anthem with marginalized women at the center. The voices of women of color have not historically been at the forefront of feminism, and I think 2020 is an important time to change that. I wrote this song around the time that I met Deb Haaland, one of the two first Native American women in congress [D-New Mexico]. It’s women like her that remind me that women are capable of anything. I also really wanted to reclaim the term “fight like a girl” as an empowering term rather than what it meant on the playground when I was a kid.

AF: What do you hope people take away from the song?

RZ: I really hope the song will comfort those who have ever felt disempowered by their gender. I feel my greatest way of contributing to making the world a better place is comforting souls within it. I felt like such a lost misfit for most of my life, and music has given me so much solace. I hope this song will do that for others.

AF: What does fighting like a girl mean to you?

RZ: For me, it means to view the feminine energy within me as a strength rather than a weakness. We all have feminine energy, no matter our gender. And I feel that society has conditioned us to think that this part of us is our weakness. So “fighting like a girl” to me is channeling this energy and using it to become strong, brave, and vulnerable. It also means to reclaim my voice as a woman and stand up for myself!

AF: You describe “Fight Like a Girl” as a call for feminism to include all women. In what ways do you see it falling short of that right now?

RZ: Women of color, trans women, and disabled women have been left out of the conversation of feminism for a long time. These voices have been under-represented in media, politics, events — you name it. It’s important to fight for women’s rights, but it’s also important to fight for the marginalized voices within that identity.

AF: Activism plays a big role in your music. Why do you think it’s important to use your voice this way?

RZ: Sometimes I feel silly calling myself an activist. So many of my “activist songs” are really just me singing about my life and experience. Sometimes it feels that as a woman of color, my very existence is politicized in a way. So, the deeper I go with my own self-discovery and songwriting, the more “political”and “activist” the songs get. Really, I’ve never thought of it as important or something I should do. It just is what I experience and observe in song form.

AF: What issues are you trying to spread awareness of right now?

RZ: Right now, I am most concerned about spreading awareness in regards to indigenous communities in need. This virus is devastating tribal nations. I urge people to learn more and donate at Return2Heart.org.

AF: What are you working on now?

RZ: Working on an album release that will be happening later this year! Also always writing new songs. With all that’s going on, there is so much to write about and reflect on.

Follow Raye Zaragoza on Facebook for ongoing updates.