Interviews – Page 18 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E14: Rebecca Pidgeon

Rebecca Pidgeon, photo courtesy the artist

Rebecca Pidgeon is a singer and songwriter who was the lead singer of British pop band Ruby Blue in the late 80s. Around that same time Pidgeon embarked on her distinguished, professional acting career with her feature film debut in The Dawning (1988) starring alongside Anthony Hopkins, Jean Simmons and Hugh Grant. After Ruby Blue split in 1990 Pidgeon would eventually go on to release her debut solo album The Raven in 1994 launching a prolific career in music in parallel to her pursuits in acting which has lead to roles in films like State and Main (2000), Red (2010) and Bird Box (2018). Pidgeon’s latest album, which released on September 24, 2022, is Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound now available on CD, digital download and streaming on the various platforms one might expect. The album showcases Pidgeon’s multi-instrumentalist skills and richly melodic voice, Fernando Perdomo (bass, guitar, keys), Andy Studer (strings), Matt Tecu (drums) and Satnam Ramgotra (tablas). The use of drone, texture and melody might be compared favorably with the works of Jarboe and Alice Coltrane and likewise has an organic production style that lends the record an immediacy even as its compositions are simultaneously grounding and transporting to a tranquil and reflective headspace. The music connects her artistry with her explorations into science behind her lifelong yoga practice. It’s a unique pop record with evocative ambient soundscapes and delicate folk sensibilities.

Listen to our interview with Rebecca Pidgeon on Bandcamp and connect with the artist at the links below where you can find the places to order and listen to Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound.

rebeccapidgeonmusic.com

Rebecca Pidgeon on Instagram

Rebecca Pidgeon on YouTube

Rebecca Pidgeon on Facebook

Rebecca Pidgeon on Twitter

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E13: ABANDONS

ABANDONS is an experimental rock trio from Denver comprised of guitarist Brenton Dwyer, bassist Nate Colbert and drummer Sam Mowat. The group met through Craigslist ads and coalesced to start writing their first instrumental tracks in 2019 before looking to play shows. It was an odd time in the Denver underground scene with not as robust an infrastructure for bands not playing fairly established styles of music to perform for a potential audience as there had been in years past and then of course the 2020 pandemic hit. During the long period when no responsible person that wasn’t desperate wasn’t playing shows ABANDONS recorded a live EP at Mutiny Information Café on August 29, 2020. The recording is the group’s sole available release on Bandcamp and the entire performance was released on YouTube. ABANDONS hadn’t played many shows in general before 2022 due to the obvious restrictions but the band quickly found like-minded artists in the local post-rock and art rock community such as exists in the current phase of the Denver music scene. Projects like New Standards Men, Brother Saturn, Only Echoes, Moon Pussy and Almanac Man are some of the peers, none of which sound remotely alike, with whom ABANDONS has found some kinship. Its own mostly instrumental, music rooted in improvisation is cinematic, takes strands of post-rock structure, noise rock intensity and its own flavor or vibrantly emotional soundscape-y compositions.

Listen to our interview with ABANDONS on Bandcamp, check out the live video and the EP linked below and follow the project on Instagram and Facebook.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E12: Taleen Kali

Taleen Kali took a fairly unorthodox path to being a performing musician. She grew up in Los Angeles and attended shows at DIY spots like The Smell and Pehrspace before moving to New York City for a few years where she lived near legendary DIY spaces like Death By Audio and 285 Kent and took in the one off house and the like. But she went to Chicago to attend art school and became immersed in the underground music scene there and regularly attended performances by the wide array of noise artists in and touring through the Windy City. Returning to Los Angeles in the early to mid-2010s Kali ended up forming her own band TÜLIPS which was a potent hybrid of punk and and shoegaze. But by summer 2017 Kali debuted her solo act. Across a handful of singles and EPs like 2018’s Soul Songs, Kali has revealed herself to be an imaginative songwriter and lyricist able to translate those concepts to a powerful live presentation with an undeniable mystique. The forthcoming, full-length debut album Flower of Life showcases the work of an artist capable of fusing styles to suit moods and to somehow be both ethereal and introspective and ferocious and gritty often within the same song. The style is very much her own and that of her collaborators but she has truly synthesized elements of garage rock, classic pop, punk, shoegaze and psychedelia to craft her own sound that suits well the heartfelt and heady subject matter of her lyrics.

Listen to our interview with Taleen Kali on Bandcamp where we discuss her roots in music and evolution as an artist. The aesthetics of her songwriting and her appreciation for the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive, the title of one of the singles on Flower of Life. Connect with the artist at the links below and catch the band currently on tour in the US including at the Hi-Dive on Sunday, October 16, 2022 with Tuff Bluff, Galaxies and Princess Dewclaw.

taleenkali.com

Taleen Kali on Bandcamp

Taleen Kali on Instagram

Taleen Kali on Twitter

Taleen Kali on Facebook

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E11: Molly Nilsson

Molly Nilsson is a Swedish born electronic pop artist now based in Berlin. Since 2007 she has been creating a rich body of work including ten albums starting with These Things Take Time (2008) which yielded her first widely recognized single “Hey Moon” and covered by experimental electronic artist John Maus on his 2011 album We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves. The introspective sounds and luminous melodies with measured yet accented beats of Nilsson’s early work and her poetically illustrative lyrics brought to the songs a mystique that has endured throughout the songwriter’s career. Her embrace of a lo-fi aesthetic and organic noise in her songs also gives the music a sense of immediacy and intimacy that other artists at her level of accomplishment, development and influence might have chosen to edit out in pursuit of a kind of fictional purity. This core humanity to Nilsson’s work is one of its perhaps often unspoken appeal and it helps to ground some of the heady concepts she infuses into her lyrics. There is a political element in much of her music that explores concepts of power, our notions of identity and the foundation of what we aspire to achieve and do with our lives and how that is so often driven by the prevailing economic system controlled by the interests of elites until we learn to disentangle our dreams and psychology generally from the ongoing process of commodifying every aspect of our lives. This examination always seems to be carried out in a compassionate and imaginative way and never comes across in didactic fashion. Her 2022 album Extreme (out now on the artist’s own imprint Dark Skies Association) brings together Nilsson’s various impulses and instincts as a uniquely creative musician who imbues accessible pop songs with rich conceptual content that most directly yet not explicitly explores the place and role of power in the world and how it manifests in society and in our own consciousness and how we can challenge the less savory aspects of it in the world and in our own hearts. It’s a thematically deep record that works on the level of a poignant social critique and as pure pop songcraft. It is yet another chapter in Nilsson’s ever-evolving artistic journey and one worth taking in from beginning to end.

Listen to our interview with Molly Nilsson on Bandcamp, connect with the artist at the links below, check out a couple of the videos for songs from Extreme and perhaps see the artist live on our current US tour including the date in Denver, Colorado on Sunday, October 16, 2022 at Glob with Water on the Thirsty Ground and French Kettle Station.

Molly Nilsson on Facebook

darkskiesassociation.org

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E10: Sydney Sierota of Echosmith

Echosmith is a pop band that formed in 2009 in Chico, California. The former and current quartet are siblings Sydney, Noah, Graham and Jamie Sierota (Jamie having taken a break from the band from 2016-2022). Adopting the moniker when the group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 2012 (previously having performed under the name Ready Set Go!), Echosmith released its debut album Talking Dreams in 2013 which yielded the hit single “Cool Kids” about not really fitting in with the popular crowd but being comfortable with being different. Following the performance and touring cycle behind the debut album on a major label, Echosmith found itself saying yes to every opportunity to advance the band and listening to industry people in helping to further their career and that meant long term that there wasn’t enough time to write and develop new material aside from an occasional EP until the group took steps to do so in time to issue the sophomore album Lonely Generation in January 2020. With the onset of the pandemic and the enduring and continuing impacts on tour and thus supporting a new record Echosmith had time to reassess its priorities and reconnect with the ideas and inspirations that initially got the group off the ground into a serious project and during that process went with a more open approach to its songwriting as heard on new singles “Hang Around” and “Gelato” hinting at the new chapter of Echosmith’s creative development.

Recently “Cool Kids” garnered some renewed interest when it was used in TikTok videos by the likes of Demi Lovato, Drew Barrymore, Lindsay Lohan, Addison Rae and Hayley Kiyoko who felt the song expressed their own feelings about looking back and seeing how far they’ve come as people. The trend of utilizing the song has garnered more than six million views to date. Echosmith in response to that did a new version of the song with a new music video with “Cool Kids (our version)” (linked below).

Listen to our interview with Echosmith on Bandcamp, check out the videos for the new singles, connect with the group at the links provided and catch Echosmith live at The Marquis Theater in Denver on November 8, 2022. The national tour kicks off on October 14, 2022 in Atlanta at The Loft and the rest of the dates can be found on the Echosmith website linked below as well.

echosmith.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E9: Gogo Germaine

Gogo Germaine aka Erin Barnes, photo by Tom Murphy

Glory Guitars: Memoir of a ’90s Teenage Punk Rock Grrrl is a memoir written by Erin Barnes under her alter ego of Gogo Germaine. The narrative is primarily set in the 1990s when in a place like suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, pre-Columbine massacre and pre-9/11 much less recent social and political developments, the worst thing that seemed likely for one’s life was to settle for a mediocre life safe from doing anything that feels significant and inspiring. Rebellion against the conformity and sheer mundanity of life seemed to be a pursuit of transgressive sensory experiences like getting drunk and high with one’s friends, having sex at a relatively young age and acts of petty vandalism. All very common rites of passage for the American teenager for the past few decades and most often the subject of After School Specials in the 70s and 80s and Puritanical depictions in mainstream media. Barnes perfectly captures the spirit of that time in life when you feel so much so dramatically all at once and you need a release, an outlet, for that energy. Anyone that grew up before the 2000s will immediately identify with the way Germaine tells the story from the perspective of a young teen and the ways you try to make sense of and navigate your world and have fun and grasp at the things that give you a sense of your own agency as a human even if your adult self might look back and wince at some of the foolishness, ignorance and hubris that were components of your questionable decision-making as you were learning to become your future self. Barnes also sprinkles bits of self-awareness as the narrative progresses in a manner that organically reflects growing up and learning. Barnes sagely does not let the fact of her current adulthood hamper being true to where her head was when she was a teen and that’s what makes the book so believable and readable. Many of the names were changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent. But in naming hangouts and landmarks and vividly describing the people and the situations that were her adolescent universe. Barnes doesn’t sanitize that period in her life nor does she romanticize it either. Rather she tells it from how she remembers it in its full spectrum of experience with an admirable level of self-acceptance of the truth of her life from the truly, yes, glorious moments of adolescence and the low points that help to define one’s life. It’s an honest and often startling story that Barnes lays out in chapters and sections for which she chose a song as a header that encapsulates the emotional resonance of the part of the story you’re about to read. Beginning to end it’s a work of rich cultural and psychological detail that offers great insight into a time and place of American social history generally and of the life of the author whose experiences will seem familiar to many that survived their tumultuous teen years. Barnes’ subsequent career as a band publicist, music journalist and writer brings to the memoir a literary perspective and sense of storytelling that helps to render the book poignant and compelling throughout without compromising its raw and conversational approach.

Glory Guitars: Memoir of a ’90s Teenage Punk Rock Grrrl can be ordered from University of Hell Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble or found wherever books are sold. On Tuesday, October 11, 2022 Barnes will release the book at an event at Tattered Cover Books in Denver at 6 p.m. which will include select readings and an FAQ session. Following that Barnes will further celebrate the book release at The Crypt with a performance by queer pop punk band Velvet Horns and DJ sets from author Josiah Hesse and Brian Polk of various Denver-based punk bands including Joy Subtraction. To further stay engaged with Barnes’/Gogo Germaine’s work she can be found at the links below. As a companion to the book Barnes created a Spotify playlist with the songs mentioned throughout, link below as well.

gogogermaine.com

Gogo Germaine on Instagram

Gogo Germaine LinkTree

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E8: MAITA

MAITA is a Portland, Oregon-based songwriter who released her second full length album I Just Want To Be Wild For You through Kill Rock Stars in February 2022. Growing up in Oregon sharing time in her Japanese-speaking mother’s home and the English-speaking home of her father, MAITA learned firsthand multiple forms of self-expression and culture that perhaps enhances her own personal insight and layers of observation about the American society that many of us navigate. As a youth MAITA didn’t share her songwriting in private as a bit of a shy introvert but got her start performing live as a solo artist at open mics while attending college in Portland. MAITA subsequently developed the full band as a means of more fully realizing her creative songwriting vision and did some touring before connecting with the local creative community as an active participant. And as many musicians across decades have found out once you become a part of your creative community in a real way you find that often people will support what you do in an organic way and you find ways in which you can offer the same often leading to opportunities to expand your horizons creatively, personally and in terms of the reach of your art.

The debut full-length MAITA album Best Wishes released at the peak of quarantine in May of 2020 to great critical acclaim. But perhaps the band is undertaking its first wide national tour in support of the new record. I Just Want To Be Wild For You is an astute, sensitive and nuanced commentary on how we are bombarded by communication and information daily with demands on our time and attention. Through channels like social media there is an encouragement for “engagement,” a model utilized as a route and method of commerce, monetized by tech companies and presented as a form of marketing that takes advantage of a natural desire to participate in society. But it’s a surrogate for actual connection and subconsciously we feel that disconnect and the and methods supposedly designed for us to keep in touch and maintain the illusion of having a connection to strangers and celebrities, albeit fairly passively, end up creating a dynamic of disconnection that can result in massive confusion and uncertainty because those same systems can make our interactions and ourselves feel disposable. The impact of that state of things on our psychology, aspirations and relationships, interpersonal and societal, has clearly been significant. MAITA’s songs from I Just Want To Be Wild For You comment on this phenomenon in a way deeply personal and in the language of direct experience with entrancing melodies and delicate textures with rich emotional resonance. MAITA takes complex feelings and concepts and renders them relatable with a rare immediacy.

Maita performs at The Skylark Lounge’s Bobcat Club on Sunday, October 9, 2022 with Allison Lorenzen, doors 7 p.m.

Listen to our interview with Maria Maita-Keppeler aka MAITA on Bandcamp and find the project’s records at your local record store as well as at the Kill Rock Stars website and follow the group at the links below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E7: TripLip

TripLip is an experimental rock band from Denver formed in 2010. The persistent duo of drummer Patrick Sutton and bassist Kevin “Enji” Schultz have been a mainstay of the Denver underground although with few releases under its belt. Sutton and Schultz came up during formative years in the small town of Elizabeth, Colorado where they formed their earliest bands and played their earliest shows and were in the same social circles as future members of experimental rock band Facial and comedian Sam Tallent and Clay DeHaan who were part of their own bass and drum punk project Red Vs. Black. Around the time of the formation of the band Sutton and Schultz and some of their Elizabeth friends moved into a house at 29th Avenue and California and dubbed it Mouth House, one of the most active and important DIY spaces of that era that included Rhinoceropolis, Glob, Blast-O-Mat/Seventh Circle Music Collective, Unit E, GNU: Experience Galley, TeaHaus, The Wasteland, The Weather Center and Megahouse. With Mouth Bomb Records and the studio where DeHaan recorded numerous records for a few years as well as the ‘zine the group produced that included the calendars of select other DIY spaces, Mouth House was very much a community hub in the Denver and national and even international music underground. Unfortunately, Mouth House came to an end when the police busted a show on Halloween 2012. The group of people who made the space happen continued with the Mouth Bomb Records umbrella to produce events like the Festibowl music festival. During the TripLip’s early touring days Sutton and Schultz met legendary kabuki and kaiju themed surf rock band DaiKaiju from Alabama while on tour in The Yellowhammer State and became fast friends. These days when DaiKaiju tours through Colorado, TripLip has found the appropriate places for the bombastic group to thrill people that show up. Up to now TripLip has no formal released recordings outside of a live EP on Bandcamp but in 2023 the group plans on its first full length album currently in the works.

Listen to our interview with TripLip on Bandcamp and witness their hijinks this weekend with two Denver shows with DaiKaiju on Saturday (10.08) at The Squire Lounge and on Sunday (10.09) at 715 Club.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E6: Jim Ward of Sparta

Jim Ward of Sparta, photo by Tom Murphy, 9/4/2022

Jim Ward is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of art punk band Sparta which releases it’s new album, self-titled, on October 14, 2002. Ward first came to the attention of many while a member of post-hardcore legends At the Drive-In. Growing up in El Paso, Texas, Ward came up through the underground music scene and hung out in the same social circles with Foss whose membership included then future At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Beto O’Rourke who went on to be a U.S. Representative and at this writing is a candidate for the governorship of Texas. Ward had been impacted by a wide variety of underground rock bands of the 80s and 90s including, of course, Fugazi and the energy and political consciousness informed his own thinking and creativity as a musician and songwriter. When At The Drive-In split the first time in 2001, Ward formed Sparta whose music was sonically closest to the sound of his former band than other post-ATDI projects but with more of a focus on texture and melody and maintaining the sharply observed yet nuanced social critique. Sparta has undergone its own periods of hiatus and has stayed together since 2017 but whether in Sparta or with Sleepercar or his own fairly prolific solo career, Ward has consistently delivered a body of work that is both thoughtful and visceral. This interview was conducted next to the parking lot south of The Gothic Theatre within an hour before Sparta took the stage on September 4, 2022, a testament to how Ward keeps it real and down to earth.

Listen to the interview on Bandcamp and pre-order the new Sparta record at the appropriate links below. And to keep up to date on Sparta tour dates and available merch visit sparta.band

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E5: Sleepyhead

Sleepyhead is a rock band that formed in New York City in 1989 at a time when the underground rock of the 1980s in the USA and the UK flowed into what became alternative music by the 90s. But for a brief period Sleepyhead began in the golden age of the indiepop that that one heard in the music of the C86 bands and on Sarah Records. One might have heard echos of the Paisley Underground in the music and of criminally underrated groups like Game Theory and Let’s Active. But Sleepyhead had firmly established its own vibrant musical identity by the time of its 1993 debut album Punk Rock City USA on the even now respected forward thinking pop imprint Slumberland, home to the likes of Black Tambourine, Peel Dream Magazine, Weekend, Papercuts and The Reds, Pinks and Purples. Musical history may remember Sleepyhead in the same company as Chicago’s Material Issue whose own legacy of great pop songwriting and great energy and intelligence and warmth informing the songwriting was critically acclaimed at the time but largely neglected since. With a bit of an extended hiatus following the 1996 album Communist Love Song, Sleepyhead returned with 2014’s Wild Sometimes and a strong reminder of how Sleepyhead’s sharply observed lyrics and creative songwriting concepts remained intact. In 2022 the group, a trio of Rachael McNally, Chris O’Rourke and Derek Van Beever, released New Alchemy, named for the New Alchemy Institute, a research center that did work in organic agriculture, aquaculture and bioshelter design and operated between 1969 and 1991. It was the sort of very pragmatic, sustainability research steeped in the ideas of thinkers like R. Buckminster Fuller that the world could honestly use more of in the face of the multitude of challenges we face with the climate and adapting economic thinking toward something more rational and nurturing not just of the planet but of our own civilization and individual lives. The music is graced with that great shiny jangle guitar work and exquisite vocal harmonies that have made Sleepyhead’s music standout from the beginning and with it a freshness and exuberance that hits the ear as something wholesome and nurturing yet subversive in weaving in heady ideas and focusing on songcraft over adhering to a trendy style. Every song makes great use of space while also brimming with a fortifying denseness of detail and musical ideas. Classic Sleepyhead and a welcome entry in the catalog of one of the great bands of the alternative era.

We had a chance to speak with the band and you can listen to that interview on Bandcamp and to connect with Sleepyhead visit its website where you can find links to listen to their music including New Alchemy. Before the interview you can check out the music video for the single “Pam and Eddie” on YouTube.

sleepyheadrockband.com