|
"There's dog shit over here too!" yells Scott Fredette, the currently perturbed founder of Cincinnati's experimental, multimedia-happy Indie Pop foursome Culture Queer.
He and his bandmates are gathered in their fourth-floor rehearsal space in a dingy warehouse located in South Fairmount, the working-class neighborhood wedged in the valley between the West side, Clifton, Northside and Downtown. The low-lit room is huge, an open area big enough for several bands, their equipment, funky old furniture, racks of vintage clothing ... and shadowy hiding corners where visiting pets can do their dirty work without being found out until later.
When a doody-free zone fit for conversing is finally found, Fredette (who sings and plays keyboards and guitar) is joined by drummer/singer Dana Hamblen (also a guiding light of the Fairmount Girls, who use this space for rehearsals as well), guitarist/singer Sam Womelsdorf (ex-Throneberry) and the newest member, Jeremy Lesniak, an experimental music artist who became CQ's first official bassist within the past six months. The band is getting ready for their appearance at this weekend's MidPoint Music Festival and the Pop Montreal festival a week later.
The group started modestly in late 1998, when longtime acquaintances Fredette and Womelsdorf got together to "fuck around" with some music. Hamblen owned the Northside second-hand store Daughter Judy and met Fredette one day while he was scouting locations for a Will Oldham video. Fredette is a video artist who does commercial and music video work at Lightborne Inc., where Hamblen also works.
"When we started out, it was not to make a band at all," Womelsdorf remembers. "We played a long time and wrote a lot of songs before we really did anything as a 'band.'
"
To make the group more multi-dimensional, the idea right from the start was to incorporate video projections filmed and edited by Fredette into their live show.
"We were all bored with playing music," Fredette says. "Well, not playing music, but watching plain music. We set out to do something different, having video behind us and seeing what sort of serendipity happens between that and playing. There was no point to it at all except to just do something a little bit different and not be bored out of our asses, being in the Midwest where their isn't an ocean or mountains ... except the brown goddamn river."
Fredette compiles the quirky, mostly random footage for each performance and, while audiences admire the multimedia gesture, the other band members never get to see how the film works with their performance. They never practice with the visuals and, well, it would just be bad Rock posture to turn your back to the crowd.
Fredette says he usually doesn't make an effort to match the set to the sights.
"It's pretty random," he says. "It's all just sort of guesswork."
But, like the old stoner myth that Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon matches up perfectly to The Wizard of Oz, Lesniak believes the audience can be psyched into seeing connections with the performance and the projections even if they're unintended.
"I think your mind almost plays tricks on you when you're watching the band and the video," he says. "People are like, 'That's brilliant, what do you guys mean?' "
As we talk, the ethereal, layered squall of train-breaks wafts through the open windows from the railroad yard about 30 feet away from the building, as if the interview needed a shrill theramin soundtrack. The sound can also be heard on the band's debut full-length album, Supersize It Under Pontius Pilate, a luscious display of fuzzy, neon Indie Pop imaginatively layered with pulsating electronic and keyboard quirks, creative Rock guitar, a three-pronged vocal attack and fluorescent melodies with an addictive quality usually reserved for illegal drugs.
Incorporating the train-squeal field recordings into the music is representative of their resourceful approach — take from your surroundings, always experiment with new ideas and use everything at your disposal.
Culture Queer's music is less about proficiency and more about spontaneity. The group's process is less "composition" as it is an artsy science experiment.
Womelsdorf suggests that the open-endedness in their writing process — which they suggest now is veering into even more experimental and Noise realms — has something to do with Culture Queer forming at a time when anyone could be in a band, just to have a good time and not to conquer the world.
"It was more like a scene that popped up around a second-hand store than a group of people who could play," Womelsdorf says. "There were a lot of bands who got together just to have fun. There wasn't any pressure to be awesome."
When it comes to being an artist in Cincinnati, Fredette says it's ideal, though not for the usual musician reasons. The arts in Cincinnati are great, he says, but there's a freedom in the economic realities of living here that makes it all the more welcoming.
"I don't think any of us would be doing this if we lived in New York," Fredette says. "I don't think we'd be able to afford it, would we? The fact that you can live in a $200-a-month place, that's a big deal. You don't have to work really as hard to be OK. You have time to rock it and do whatever you want. I mean, Dana has a goddamn house that she's bought and filled with cool-ass shit, so much so that she had to move out! And she still pays for the thing and is playing music and is still buying weird, freaky shit and filling this place up. If we were in some richy rich place, we couldn't do that."
The Queer eye isn't necessarily on "the prize." They appreciate MidPoint, but they're not exactly in it to learn about the music industry or make connections that might lead to a record deal or some other career-bolstering stepping stone.
Culture Queer's focus is on making interesting art for themselves and other people to enjoy. The approach makes their music unique and free of the trappings that come with trying to make your output sound like what's "hot" at the moment.
"How do people even do that, try to sound like someone else?" Fredette asks at one point, incredulous that an artist would heed to the real or imagined demands of "commercial viability" and make music that sounds like something already existing.
"I don't really have any aspirations for getting signed to a label or being 'discovered,' " says Womelsdorf, who was signed to Alias Records when he was in Throneberry. "That's always a shallow side to playing in a band anyway, and to not have that present isn't a bad thing."
"I always feel like, 'I don't trust what you say. You're not my style,' " Hamblen says of some of her industry-related encounters. "I'm so skeptical. Music is so free."
Fredette might have more pressing matters to attend to.
"I only go to a panel," he says, "if it's for probation or something."
CULTURE QUEER (
 Good and good for you: Culture Queer members (from bottom) Jeremy Lesniak, Scott Fredette, Sam Womelsdorf and Dana Hamblen.
|
"There's dog shit over here too!" yells Scott Fredette, the currently perturbed founder of Cincinnati's experimental, multimedia-happy Indie Pop foursome Culture Queer.
He and his bandmates are gathered in their fourth-floor rehearsal space in a dingy warehouse located in South Fairmount, the working-class neighborhood wedged in the valley between the West side, Clifton, Northside and Downtown. The low-lit room is huge, an open area big enough for several bands, their equipment, funky old furniture, racks of vintage clothing ... and shadowy hiding corners where visiting pets can do their dirty work without being found out until later.
When a doody-free zone fit for conversing is finally found, Fredette (who sings and plays keyboards and guitar) is joined by drummer/singer Dana Hamblen (also a guiding light of the Fairmount Girls, who use this space for rehearsals as well), guitarist/singer Sam Womelsdorf (ex-Throneberry) and the newest member, Jeremy Lesniak, an experimental music artist who became CQ's first official bassist within the past six months. The band is getting ready for their appearance at this weekend's MidPoint Music Festival and the Pop Montreal festival a week later.
The group started modestly in late 1998, when longtime acquaintances Fredette and Womelsdorf got together to "fuck around" with some music. Hamblen owned the Northside second-hand store Daughter Judy and met Fredette one day while he was scouting locations for a Will Oldham video. Fredette is a video artist who does commercial and music video work at Lightborne Inc., where Hamblen also works.
"When we started out, it was not to make a band at all," Womelsdorf remembers. "We played a long time and wrote a lot of songs before we really did anything as a 'band.'
"
To make the group more multi-dimensional, the idea right from the start was to incorporate video projections filmed and edited by Fredette into their live show.
"We were all bored with playing music," Fredette says. "Well, not playing music, but watching plain music. We set out to do something different, having video behind us and seeing what sort of serendipity happens between that and playing. There was no point to it at all except to just do something a little bit different and not be bored out of our asses, being in the Midwest where their isn't an ocean or mountains ... except the brown goddamn river."
Fredette compiles the quirky, mostly random footage for each performance and, while audiences admire the multimedia gesture, the other band members never get to see how the film works with their performance. They never practice with the visuals and, well, it would just be bad Rock posture to turn your back to the crowd.
Fredette says he usually doesn't make an effort to match the set to the sights.
"It's pretty random," he says. "It's all just sort of guesswork."
But, like the old stoner myth that Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon matches up perfectly to The Wizard of Oz, Lesniak believes the audience can be psyched into seeing connections with the performance and the projections even if they're unintended.
"I think your mind almost plays tricks on you when you're watching the band and the video," he says. "People are like, 'That's brilliant, what do you guys mean?' "
As we talk, the ethereal, layered squall of train-breaks wafts through the open windows from the railroad yard about 30 feet away from the building, as if the interview needed a shrill theramin soundtrack. The sound can also be heard on the band's debut full-length album, Supersize It Under Pontius Pilate, a luscious display of fuzzy, neon Indie Pop imaginatively layered with pulsating electronic and keyboard quirks, creative Rock guitar, a three-pronged vocal attack and fluorescent melodies with an addictive quality usually reserved for illegal drugs.
Incorporating the train-squeal field recordings into the music is representative of their resourceful approach — take from your surroundings, always experiment with new ideas and use everything at your disposal.
Culture Queer's music is less about proficiency and more about spontaneity. The group's process is less "composition" as it is an artsy science experiment.
Womelsdorf suggests that the open-endedness in their writing process — which they suggest now is veering into even more experimental and Noise realms — has something to do with Culture Queer forming at a time when anyone could be in a band, just to have a good time and not to conquer the world.
"It was more like a scene that popped up around a second-hand store than a group of people who could play," Womelsdorf says. "There were a lot of bands who got together just to have fun. There wasn't any pressure to be awesome."
When it comes to being an artist in Cincinnati, Fredette says it's ideal, though not for the usual musician reasons. The arts in Cincinnati are great, he says, but there's a freedom in the economic realities of living here that makes it all the more welcoming.
"I don't think any of us would be doing this if we lived in New York," Fredette says. "I don't think we'd be able to afford it, would we? The fact that you can live in a $200-a-month place, that's a big deal. You don't have to work really as hard to be OK. You have time to rock it and do whatever you want. I mean, Dana has a goddamn house that she's bought and filled with cool-ass shit, so much so that she had to move out! And she still pays for the thing and is playing music and is still buying weird, freaky shit and filling this place up. If we were in some richy rich place, we couldn't do that."
The Queer eye isn't necessarily on "the prize." They appreciate MidPoint, but they're not exactly in it to learn about the music industry or make connections that might lead to a record deal or some other career-bolstering stepping stone.
Culture Queer's focus is on making interesting art for themselves and other people to enjoy. The approach makes their music unique and free of the trappings that come with trying to make your output sound like what's "hot" at the moment.
"How do people even do that, try to sound like someone else?" Fredette asks at one point, incredulous that an artist would heed to the real or imagined demands of "commercial viability" and make music that sounds like something already existing.
"I don't really have any aspirations for getting signed to a label or being 'discovered,' " says Womelsdorf, who was signed to Alias Records when he was in Throneberry. "That's always a shallow side to playing in a band anyway, and to not have that present isn't a bad thing."
"I always feel like, 'I don't trust what you say. You're not my style,' " Hamblen says of some of her industry-related encounters. "I'm so skeptical. Music is so free."
Fredette might have more pressing matters to attend to.
"I only go to a panel," he says, "if it's for probation or something."
CULTURE QUEER (culturequeer.com) performs on MidPoint Music Festival's stage at Crush at 9 p.m. Friday. See page 30 for the complete MPMF band schedule.
