Local Band Interview: Quilt

Here is the first in a series of interviews I am conducting with some of my favorite local bands for WZBC's forthcoming zine. Several more to come!

Quilt’s otherworldly psych-folk evokes the likes of Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas & the Papas. Their self-titled album was released last year, and they just wrapped up a national tour with the Fresh & Onlys. Band members Anna Fox Rochinski, Shane Butler, and John Andrews talk about their involvement with Boston’s DIY music scene, strange incidents from the road, and their goal to play a show where they play the same song seven times in a row.

Anna and Shane, you guys met while students at the Museum School. Where were your first shows when you were getting started as a band here in Boston? Are you still involved with the local DIY scene?

Anna: Our first show was at the Butcher Shoppe basement in Spring 2009. Our second show followed shortly, in the Whitehaus living room. Both of these houses are dear to our hearts. Shane lived in the B-shoppe for years. I did a brief stint there as well, and also lived at the Whitehaus for a bit. These two first shows were totally insane and raucous events which involved a lot of sweating ,and at one point, I was smashing the frets of my guitar with a plastic glockenshpiel hammer thing. I'm pretty sure I was playing out of a weird practice amp and Shane had just gotten hold of someone's half-stack, and so our sonic set up was pretty... unique. Haha. Our founding drummer, Taylor, was singing through a home-made microphone box hanging from the ceiling. We love the DIY scene in Boston, though it is rather beautifully unpredictable, fluid and gaseous in nature, much like an 8th grade science class volcano project.

Shane: Some of my favorite OG shows were at the lofts in Chinatown - we got to play some pretty cool ones down there and feel real grateful for that. I still go to DIY shows all the time in Boston; a lot of the best music that happens in this city is held within it's smelly youthful basements and living rooms.

Your sound is an innovative take on 60s psych rock. Are there any bands in particular that you consider major influences? Any influences that might not be as obvious in your sound?

Anna: I love all sorts of bands. Some of my favorite times are when we're on tour in the van and gettin' down on the highways to each other's favorite music. Personally, I have lately been jamming the Swamp Rats, the Monkees, Sonny and the Sunsets, Can, FJ McMahon, Christine McVie, St Vincent, and the Ty Segall/White Fence record.

John: I think just like everyone, we listen to The Beatles a bunch. Those dudes were rad. I've also been finding myself slowly turning into a Dead Head, those guys were rad too. The Muppet Babies theme song is pretty cool too!

Shane: Oh man, always a hard question. I really love Broadcast; their use of 60's inspired song writing and contemporary sounds really holds it down for me. CAN is probably one of my hugest inspirations - especially when Damo gets real weird. I love this contemporary band out of Finland called kemialliset ystavatt - they use all these traditional folk sounds and tweak them into total oblivion with electronics and twizzlers. I am also a really huge fan of Pearls Before Swine, especially the stuff that gets slightly dissonant and out there. I love this one line Tom Rapp sings in the song Another Time 'did you come back to try again? To die again?' - been thinking about that line a lot in relation to this old Buddhist tale about a turtle and a golden yolk - umm I should stop before I keep going for too long, I have a tendency to tangent.

Your lyrics are introspective, richly complex, and at times, intriguingly ambiguous; I get more out of the lyrics with every listen. Are your lyrics inspired by literature at all? In terms of your writing process, do you generally write the lyrics or the music first? Do the lyrics inspire the melody or does the melody inspire the lyrics?

Anna: In general, the music tends to arrive first, for whatever reason. For me lately the melody has been showing up and then the lyrics craft themselves from there. But I guess it's not always the case. In terms of inspiration, I would say that my background in writing poetry probably has most to do with it, rather than literature specifically, but I think they're mostly just a reflection of my thought processes in general, attempting to make abstract mental and emotional states slightly more tangible and possible to grasp in real-time.

John: I usually write lyrics on aimless bike rides. I just sorta ride around with no intention to go anywhere and im just singing quietly to myself. Lyrics can be inspired by anything. It can be inspired by some deep spiritual lecture on 'being' and they can be inspired by something stupid George Costanza says in Seinfeld. 

Shane: Lyrics come and lyrics go, I just hum a little hum and strum a little strum and sometime someone's like 'uhuh' and agrees.

Vocal harmonies are a major component of your sound. Do any of you have any formal training or a background in singing pre-Quilt?

Anna: I do, I spent most of elementary and middle school singing classical music in a professional children's choir in symphony halls and churches and the like.

John:  I don't at all. I think listening to Harry Nilsson helped me with harmonies though. 

Shane: The hospital room I was born into had really good natural reverb and I was instantly psyched to be on this planet and started to sing.

You recently finished a national tour with the Fresh & Onlys. Any funny stories from the road?

John: The tour was filled with lots of basketball, pinball machines, a 5 hour Sunyata meditation session, French babes making out during Fresh & Onlys set in Canada, my dad getting drunk and playing a song with us on stage, burritos, losing my passport, finding my passport in my pocket, a cool bar in Toronto called "Anna's Place" where we think we met the dude from The Scorpions, Wafflehouse, Harry Belefonte, Daniel Bachman, and in Ohio, we saw a lady get arrested and pushed up against a cop car, and then some sketchy dude walked by holding a screw driver and a license plate. He saw the cops and then ran in the opposite direction.

Anna: Hmm.... we were stranded in Canada for a night, and went to a sketchy casino off the side of the highway that was filled with elderly people and since this was our first time in a real casino, I had to go ask an attendant how to use the slot machines like a total wimp. But then I won ten bucks. Ten Canadian bucks.

Shane: We went to the East Nashville LARP meet; we didn't have any foam swords but John and Anna dressed up as a spaceman and an angel - I'm not sure that the larpers were so into it but as we elegantly settled into the motions of their weapons things started to change slowly. That was the beginning of two weeks of wonder and Tim Cohen's stage banter every night sealed the deal of contentment for all involved. 

What are you guys listening to now?

Anna: At this literal moment in time, I am listening to a lovely old song called "Forever" by Pete Drake. Amazing early use of the voice-box and lyrics so darling and sweet they could melt your fingernails off.

John: I've been listening to Connie Converse lately, if you haven't heard of her definitely check her out, and as usual Michael Hurley and The Grateful Dead, and my dad gave me his old cassettes for my car and i've just been listening to Led Zeppelin too much. 

Shane: Well right at this moment we are in New Hampshire at MMOSS's house sitting in their living room as Doug plays drum machine on a fun-machine and Keven plays 'this could be the last time' by The Rolling Stones. John is giggling lightly and Anna is stringing her guitar but I can't hear it to well. Now Keven is soloing kind of like theme song to a Nickelodeon show and Doug broke into a Herbie Hancock-esque solo and is now playing some Smash Mouth song on the fun machine. Justin just laughed. And then I laughed.

What's up next for Quilt?

John: I really wanna play a show when we play the same song 7 times in a row, and then we get into sleeping bags on stage and fall asleep in front of everyone. Like, I REALLY want to do that. Maybe we will also adopt a highway. We have all been feeling super psychic lately so maybe we will open a fortune telling business. I also want to visit Skip James's tombstone in Philadelphia. If the world ends on December 21^st, then I never have to cut my hair again!

Anna: New full length record later in 2013! New single coming out this spring on a 10" with our buddies MMOSS! Christmas sweaters, new socks, hopefully an oil change for our van, perhaps a short tour here 'n there in the spring, and then summer vacaaationnnn... we're bustin' out the boogie boards.