Tell me about this weekend and what you've been doing with Tony Molina and Lightheaded–
Maggie: It's been really, really fun and we can't believe that Tony Molina asked us to come on tour with him. Lightheaded we've toured with a lot and they're like our tour family. So that's lovely as always.
Alicia: And they're playing some new songs and they're really, really good…Maggie didn't your high school band play with Tony Molina's Band Ovens?
M: Yeah, my high school band, Tincture, used to open for Tony Molina's Band Ovens. I'm from San Francisco, so it feels kind of like a fun, full circle moment for me.
A: They [Tony Molina] have a full band with keyboards, a 12-string guitar, three vocals… Jangle full in effect. It's just pop heaven basically.
Jed: I'm really looking forward to Joe & John's Pizza in Ridgewood. Which I miss because I lived in Ridgewood for nine years.
A: Jed and I haven't lived in the city for a few years now. Almost five years for me. Maggie just moved, she’s bicoastal now.
M: Well, I just moved to Los Angeles like a month ago.
How has it been making music now that you're all moving around all over the place and based in different cities?
M: Well, we don't get to practice very much. So on tour, I feel like each night is almost like a practice. Then by the time we're maybe four days in, we're kind of tight. So for me, it's a lot of just practicing alone to recordings.
A: Yeah. Jed and I both live in Western Mass and we have struggled to find a really good place to do recording because Jed does almost all of it himself. Although Gary Olsen from The Ladybug Transistor recorded a lot of the stuff on the current album, and that was a really great experience working with him. It's been a little bit hard to find a rhythm now that we don't have the amenities of copious practice and recording places in Brooklyn.
J: Yeah. We were in the same place on Stanhope Street in Bushwick for a long time. I had my set up there and it was very easy and we miss that.
A: I'm happy that I don't live in New York anymore. But it's always a trade off. You definitely lose certain things. Being in a band that's not all in the same places… It's not terrible, but you lose some things.
K: I do miss New York a great deal. I was here for 22 years. So it really is home and probably will always feel more like home than anywhere else. So it's nice to come back. Although every time I come back, I feel my body reacting to the ambient stress that I had just gotten used to for a couple decades. Whenever I get over the Triborough bridge, I go “Oh! There it is!” I just lived like that for years and years. But I love it here.
Could you talk to me about the latest record, How Long Can It Last, and how it all came together? Any favorite memories from making it?
A: It took a while because we didn't have a set place to make the record. We decided to work with Gary this time but before Jed had done everything. We made demos for everything first, which we have never done before. So the process took longer than we thought and was just different than we thought. It felt like forever. But once it finally got completed, it felt really good. I'm really proud of the songs that are on the record. It feels like… not a step forward, but just a good, complete encapsulation…
J: As someone who likes to self record and pretty much always has, It's definitely weird to step into a studio where someone else is behind the board. You definitely lose a little control and you feel the pressure to be more timely, but it's great. Gary is awesome. He's got this great house in Victorian Flatbush as they call it…Ditmas Park. But then we took those tracks, which were drums and the vocals and then we went back to Western Mass and added more.
M: This was my first time recording with Jeanines. I'm not on any of the other records, just this one. So that was cool to actually be a part of it. Not that I did any writing at all.
My favorite song from the new record is “Coaxed a Storm.” Would you be able to tell me more about how that song in particular came together?
J: Oh, that's a good one.
A: It involved a breakup…the song talks a lot about feeling like you're the one who messed everything up and all the bad feelings that come with that. Also the kind of self-pitying feelings that come with that where you're like I'm all alone and there's nowhere for me and I've screwed everything up and no one will ever love me again. But, you know, in a poetic way. Then Jed said the song didn't have a chorus… And Jed was the person who the ending relationship was with…and Jed came up and helped. We both came up with those chorus lyrics.
J: We wanted the song to be like a conversation about our breakup, which is kind of interesting. It was a very Fleetwood Mac song.
What were your first experiences with making music and what sort of sounds you were drawn to when you were younger?
M: I started just learning how to play by learning covers of songs that I really liked. So when I was twelve, it was a lot of Green Day songs, No Doubt songs…I learned a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers… I learned how to play bass that way and then started writing songs that felt sort of that, in that vein. Pop punk-y.
How did you get to Jeanines?
M: How did I get to Jeanines? Well, I was in a band in New York like years ago now called Yucky Duster and Jed and Alicia used to come see us play.
A: Yeah, we were huge fans. But we never introduced ourselves because we thought you guys were too cool.
M: And then my old bandmate from Yucky Duster, Madeline, told me about Jeanines and she was like, “this is my new favorite band in Brooklyn. You have to listen to them.” And I was like, “Okay!.” So then I did and I was like, this is great. This is the first thing I've liked in so long. Then we went to go see them play and I remember watching their bass player at the time and I was like, I would really like to be playing bass for them. In fact, I should. I should be playing bass for them.
J: Alicia, how about you?
A: I grew up playing classical violin and singing in choir. And my mom only wanted me to listen to classical music, but I heard various other music because I was like, alive in the world. But the first pop music that I was really aware and obsessed with was The Spice Girls and Hanson, which I heard at a friend's Halloween party in the fourth grade. Then the next day I went out with my dad to the music store and bought on cassette both of those things. I didn't find indie pop stuff until the very end of high school. I always wanted to play guitar, but it just didn't really happen. I had briefly taken lessons. But then in my late 20s, I picked it back up and Jed is the one who really encouraged me to try writing songs because I had never and didn't think that I could. I'm never consciously writing towards my influences, but my favorite musician is Dear Nora. I'm also probably influenced by the classical music that I grew up on. Like I love Bach, but that’s pretty basic, but it's the best! And some choral music. I think harmonies are the best thing about music.
J: I grew up with jazz musicians and some of my parents' New Wave and Punk records to some degree. And so I grew up with a lot of good music, which I'm very lucky for. But when I was 14, I asked for a guitar, got a guitar, and then my grandfather, a month later, gave us his little drum kit. Then I convinced my parents to buy my little brother a cheap bass because I really wanted the bass. Then I borrowed my older brother's four-track and just started recording songs immediately. I started playing all the instruments at the same time. I was going to be a jazz bass player and I apprenticed for a couple years with this guy. Then I heard The Velvet Underground and I was like, oh! I still love jazz, but then I became a drummer in a hardcore band when I was like fifteen or something with all these older guys. It was pretty funny. But then I just kept on just being a one man band type of guy for a long time. So, The Velvet Underground was my religious conversion experience. Even though I grew up with a lot of great music, [The Velvet Underground] and Motown, and Soul are probably my biggest influences and the things I add the most to this [band].
A: What are your other music projects, Jed?
J: My other music projects… I had my project, My Teenage Stride for years and Mick Trouble, which is like a fake British, Television Personalities type of thing. Oh and I'm also in a band called Creative Writing, so I'm fairly busy with music.
Just because it's close to Halloween right now, do any of you have any favorite halloween memories to share?
M: Back in the day before the pandemic, every Halloween, in the Brooklyn DIY scene, everybody would do cover sets. So all of our friends and bands would choose a band and it would be kind of like finals or something, you know, you'd be practicing up to the wire learning all of these songs to try and really nail it. One year, Yucky Duster did ABBA, which was one of the hardest things that I have ever tried to play. And it still feels like a feat.
J: Oh, that's why you know, “Dancing Queen.”
M: Yeah, that was a really fun Halloween. I still remember a few of the bass lines, but a lot of them have gone now.
A: Well, I guess in the fourth grade when I was struck by the pop like an asteroid. But also one year Jed and his two close friends did a Velvet Underground cover band at our friend Cindy's apartment. And it was like running so, so, so, so late. I was gonna sing I'll Be Your Mirror with them but we didn't go on until 3am and I was so drunk.
J: Yeah and it was so packed you couldn't move.
A: But it was fun. I bought a dress that I thought was kind of mod and I straightened my hair and tried using eyeliner, which I never put on. Those shows were very very fun. R.I.P. to that place.
J: Well, I was gonna dig up a Halloween memory, but I see that someone wrote Henry and James in heart and I thought it was just Henry James in heart. He wrote some classic ghost stories. So I guess we'll just shout out Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, among others. Happy Halloween, Henry James.
