STRAWBERRY LAUNCH AT ZIGGY’S
BY EJ JOLLYI’ve spent a good portion of my time as a photographer in one place. Having moved twice in the past four years, it’s naturally fallen that nearly every show review I’ve written since joining Out Jamz have been almost exclusively at venues I’d never been to before. Ziggy’s is another under my belt in the greater Detroit/Ann Arbor Michigan area, and I’m liking what I see.
Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti is nestled in the middle of W. Michigan Avenue, the city’s classic American “main street” since its commercial development in the 1840’s (I learned quickly from locals that no one called it Ypsilanti. It was Ypsi. Not only that, but some believed it to have a better arts scene than the nearby Ann Arbor). The venue is unassuming on the outside and easy to miss from the road, but it helps the place feel like a well-kept and loved secret. The inside revealed a hip dive bar, complete with a singular pinball machine and art hanging on the walls from local creatives. The staff was friendly with guests and with each other in a way that’s always more reassuring than at larger shows, and it was easy to get settled in for the evening.
The first opener was Lauren Blackford, an indie artist from the Ypsi area. Blackford is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, and she showcased her skills on acoustic guitar and Ziggy’s upright piano. She still manages to keep her songs fun despite covering more somber ground like a tough breakup. Leaving it up to the audience to decide which cover she’d play, “Ain’t It Fun” by Paramore won unanimously and her voice was perfectly capable of knocking it out of the park. (I was too nervous to be the only person cheering for “Sweater Weather” by The Neighborhood, though it was nice to know someone else remembers the hold that song had on the early 2010s)!
Second up was The Nuts, a Detroit indie rock band who you may never have the chance to see again. This was billed as their final show before an indefinite hiatus, but they do have a full-length album, The Nuts Hang Out, that you can listen to in hopes of their return. (They lugged an entire sofa, lamp and coffee table to the beach for the cover art. You have to admire the dedication.) The crowd was good for them, all shaggy mullets, punk outfits and 70s style glasses. Even though The Nuts describe themselves as indie, it felt very punk rock inspired. Adding to the mix, things got borderline shoe-gazey at times, as one of the frontmen frequently kneeled down to manipulate his guitar pedal mid-song. All this to say, I was questioning what decade it was while watching their set in a good way.
Finally, Strawberry Launch was up to close out their last show of a US spring tour. Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, Strawberry Launch is made up of lead singer Riiza, guitarist Matrianna, bassist Abby, keyboardist Taylor, and drummer Benjy. Earlier in the day, I got to sit down with Strawberry Launch at the nearby Zingermann’s Next Door Cafe (located beside the signature deli) for an interview. They shared their feelings about getting to the end of the tour, their favorite gear and parts of their music, and what they had coming up for the rest of the year.
———
What do you think is the most important thing for people to understand Strawberry Launch?
Riiza: Well…
Matrianna: Dang, this is hard.
Riiza: We’re diving right in. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that we've been at this a long time. Nothing that we've done has been an overnight anything, and being in a band has so many pros and cons to being a singular artist. But the camaraderie and teamwork is great. It's just really amazing. It's a unique position to be in.
Matrianna: We are all in a band together, I guess you can say it's like our job. But we're all also really close friends and hang out a lot and do things outside of the band together too.
How does being in New York City, which has a very unique social/cultural scene, influence your music?
Taylor: I think it's just something that's really cool to be a part of, there's a lot of really great indie bands and great indie music that's coming out of New York right now. And the fact that we can also call those people our friends is really cool. Even though New York is really big and the music scene is bigger than other cities, it still kind of feels like everyone knows each other and is like family, as in maybe a ‘distant cousins’ vibe. Also I think it's just more motivating to have other artists around us that are also working really hard. Yeah, it keeps us on our toes, to keep moving.
Three of you [Matrianna, Taylor and Abby] have degrees in music technology- Can you tell me about how that background has impacted the band as a whole?
Matrianna: Well, that's how Abby and I met because we were in the same program. So I guess, just knowing each other was how we were able to find each other and play music. And also since [Riiza] formed the band by calling me, that happened through somebody I met through my program. So I think if I wasn't in that program, this wouldn't have happened probably.
Taylor: I feel like a lot of artists will go into the studio for the first time ever and some guy will just throw a bunch of [technical] terms at them, or maybe they'll get overcharged. It's kind of nice to have that music tech background, so we know exactly what we want and exactly what we need when we're recording and playing on stage. It kind of eliminates a huge step.
Riiza: I will also say just as a person who doesn't have any of that… When we were first starting out, there were lots of sound guys that did not understand the education that is happening between these three. They really understand their instruments, what they're using, how they're using them, why they're using them, how that impacts our sound. Even the tone of Matrianna's guitar is distinct to her, and what pads and patches and synth placements that Taylor is using are distinct to her. I think that their own interest in the tech space influences just what we sound like and that's such an important thing. After being in this band for a while, it's like there are certain sounds and patches and tones that I hear that feel like us. And ones that don't.
How often are you experimenting or changing up your gear?
Taylor: Pretty often. I feel like every time we write, we're trying new things. And every time we have shows coming up or a tour coming up, we are constantly trying to be like, “okay, how can we make our live set different?” and “how can we switch up the order of songs?” or “where can we add a cool transition?” I work for a guitar pedal company, so I’ve recently gotten more into plugging my synth into different guitar pedals. That’s something that's only really happened in the last year.
Matrianna: Yeah, just experimenting with what we already have. I get some of the pedals from Taylor so I'm like, “okay, I'm gonna see how these sound”. Not buying new gear every time, but just experimenting [with] what different sounds like one pedal can do is fun.
Bass and drums, how are you feeling? Do you like your drum heads?
Benjy: Yeah! On this tour we're using my drums for the first time that we've had to bring around and they've been in my basement for like… 10 plus years. But I did change the drum heads this time. [laughs]
Riiza: It’s also a vintage kit, isn’t it?
Benjy: Yeah, it is this 60s Roger's kit, which is fun. I feel like drums- there’s definitely a lot you can do. We've been debating getting an OCTAPAD at some point, for some sort of backing track.
Riiza, Matrianna, Taylor and Abby: [A chorus of agreement.]
Riiza: But it's been funny on this tour, because I mean- I don't know s*** about drums. But we had a guy in Dallas who was like, so geeked-
Benjy: Yeah, people loved it!
Riiza: And they’re like, “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!!”
Abby: Um…
Riiza: Come on, Fuzz War pedal!
Abby: Death by Audio, Fuzz War- love Taylor for that. That’s all I got.
Riiza, I also saw you had a degree in musical theater and I’d love to hear your perspective as well.
Riiza: No, my secret’s out! I will say- I learned in college that a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs had theater degrees, which I thought was really weird. And then I started to realize that when you are in school for theater, it's really just about learning how to take criticism. And it's about putting yourself in uncomfortable situations in front of crowds and being okay with it. It's just a lot about learning how to have confidence and I think learning how to fail in front of people is very hard, especially when you do something live. I don't think that I will ever get over that, per se. But I think being able to use the elements of ‘how to command a room’ and ‘how to present yourself in a certain way’ and ‘how you turn him nos into yeses’. I suck at memorizing things, which is 50% of the reason I couldn't act at all. And that still is a problem for me [laughs]. Like, we will do the same cover a thousand times and then I will just mess up the words cause I'm thinking about it too hard. But yeah, I've always been a very extroverted person, and the only thing I gained from theater school was being a more polished version of that.
What’s your favorite songs you all have written? Whether lyrically, melodically, or you just think you absolutely killed it?
Matrianna: I love our songs “Videos” and “Emily”. Those are my 2 favorites to play, but I think my favorite that we've recorded is probably “Videos”. There's so many elements to it that I really like and it's guitar heavy, so I really like that. It's pretty different from our other stuff, it's more… like rock-y I guess? And not as pop-y.
Abby: Mine’s “Ready Yet”. That's just like my favorite song of ours, I like the melody, the production on the recording, all the synths are just so sick. And it’s just fun to play too.
Taylor: My favorite song to listen to is “Ready Yet”, as well. Just yeah, the production, the melody- exactly what you said. But my favorite one writing wise? Probably “Bad Luck”, because there's two small synth solo sections, which aren't much, but I've just been trying to push myself more to have moments like those. So that was fun to play around with. And in the intro, I used the randomizer arpeggiator on my OP1 to make these nice little twinkly sounds, which was just random. I was supposed to record just the intro solo at my apartment, and then I was like, “what if I tried this?” So, that was a lot of fun to make that work and make that fit. And to listen to it now and be like, “oh my gosh!”
It’s always the arpeggiator that slips its way in there.
Taylor: Like… sue me…! There's so many arpeggiator moments in our music, but I just love it so much.
Benjy: We were just listening to a few of our songs in the car, and I thought “She” is a sleeper hit [everyone else laughs]. It's good! Like the production of it, there's a lot of- I don't know if it's flute, or some woodwind… or is it just strings? There's something, that's like a melody in the last chorus.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah I think there is a woodwind situation, like synth-type.
Matrianna: But yeah, I feel like the production on that- It has really cool space-like sounds.
Riiza: This is gonna be hard… My favorite to do live is definitely “Sweet Basil”, because hearing them all do the [vocalizes the melody] all together, it scratches a part of my brain that I really like. But then I would say writing-wise… I wrote “Light Blue Sheets” really fast. I saw somebody, and then I wrote it in 20 minutes, and it was done. That came to me very quickly. That happens so rarely, that it just kind of flies out as a unit and we didn't change a whole lot of it. That was pretty sweet. Just lyrically, the words were there and that's what they were. I'm going to have 3 different answers, but to record was “Ready Yet”. There's something about that recording that just has its own magic to it, but I would say my overall favorite song is “Videos”. [She smacks the table.] So I dunno!
You’re at the very last stop of this early spring run, but it’s not your first by far. Anything you’ve learned over the past two years that’s made the process easier?
Taylor: There's definitely some hard moments, like maybe long drives or not as many people showed up as we wanted to, but I just constantly feel so grateful and lucky that we even get to do this. So I try to take in every moment, and that's why I document so much and I'm constantly filming things, because I just want to cherish it and remember it forever.
It’s probably hard then, performing if you feel like it's s***.
Taylor: Yeah, it can be hard. But I feel we've also been doing it so long at this point that we're used to playing through a cold and playing through just feeling really tired. There have definitely been days where I've been like, “I am too tired to play this show”. But I feel like once I'm on stage then that just exits my mind. Then I'm like, “okay, I'm here. I'm on stage. I'm having a great time!” And I see the crowd, and I’m like “oh my gosh, everyone's here for us…!” Just once I'm on stage- okay, we're cooking.
Riiza: It's just like- what a weird accomplishment [that] we've done. You don't realize what a unique thing you do is until you leave New York. We'll meet people at gas stations and restaurants, and they're just like, “oh my gosh, how long have you been gone?”, or “you're a band, what does that mean?” And then you realize that what you do is really a unique and very cool opportunity.
Touring is often a necessity in the music industry to stay afloat as artists- how do you contend with that along with the excitement of travelling and engaging with far-flung fans?
Riiza: I never wanted to be an artist so that we could sit in a studio for a year. Artists who don't want to tour, I'm like “good, then you shouldn't”. We do this band because- I love the live element of what we do, that's the strongest bit of what we do. The first year we were together, all we did was play live. We didn't put anything out. And I think that's what makes our shows, even when they're small, we have people that are so locked in because this is what we're great at. So it is a job and it can be hard, but to me, what is the point of us doing this if we can't tour all over the place and have a great time? Like I don't want to sit in the studio for a year!
Matrianna: I don't want to speak for everyone else but I love playing shows and I like the aspect of being on the road and traveling. It's not something I feel like we have to do- we wouldn't have done it if we didn't want to. I enjoy touring and playing shows every night and meeting fans. I think it's really fun. There's fans we meet in other cities where I'm like, “oh my God, I didn't even know we had fans over here!” Like our Denver show… and even St. Louis was also like that. It's really nice to know that there are people out there that are listening to our music that aren't just in New York or our family.
You’re playing Gov Ball this year, that’s exciting! It’s a huge step, huge stage- tell me about how you’re feeling.
Matrianna: Yeah, I'm really excited! I don't even care if there’s not going to be anybody in the crowd, I just think the fact that we get to play Gov Ball is crazy. Like, I hope there are people in the crowd, but I don't care! I'm just excited that we're playing.
Riiza: It's just my parents.
Abby: Gov Ball was funny ‘cause we found out months before we were allowed to announce that we were playing so we just kind of secretly and silently freaked the eff out together. Then we were like, “okay, now we can't tell anyone for four months” or whatever it was. Then by the time it came out and all of our friends were super excited for us, we were still obviously super psyched, but it was just-
Matrianna: They’re like “how come you didn't tell us?!” We weren't allowed to say anything!
Riiza: Now it's real.
Abby: Yeah, now it's kind of set in. It wasn't as insane as the initial shock.
Matrianna: But now that it's out there, it's like “okay, wow. We actually have to prepare and do it”, but it's really fun.
Taylor: It's just cool and exciting that people take us seriously enough to have asked us to play Gov Ball. Obviously like you said, a huge step and a huge milestone, and I think it's going to be exciting. I think we're gonna learn a lot playing on a big stage and I think that we're probably going to meet a lot of people, like some of the artists that are at Gov Ball. And hopefully it's the start of many more festivals. I do know some of our friends are going to be there, which is really nice, but I think it's also cool that a lot of people in the crowd might not know us. Because no one bought Gov Ball tickets just to see us, you know? They bought Gov Ball tickets to see like, Tyler The Creator. But if they get there early, maybe they discover a new band. And I think that's always exciting, playing to a crowd of new people.
Riiza: We also had to put a lot of our planning on the back burner in order to focus on this [tour]. And so we announced it, and then we had just tons of people DMing us and emailing us about, like “we'll take photos”, “we could do visuals”, “we could do this”, “we could do that”. We were like, “oh my God, we can't make any decisions” because we have to be on tour for a month before! And so we've been kind of planning out the Gov Ball bits as we've been on the road, which has been interesting too. We've been taking meetings in the car and doing what we need to. I don't know- It didn't feel totally real to me, because I think this has been our focus. And now it's like, “oh my gosh, we're gonna go home tomorrow and then our entire lives are going to be preparing for the biggest show we've ever played”. So I'm really nervous, but I'm very excited. It's gonna be sick.
You’ve also gone to SXSW the past two years- from personal experience I know it’s a lot more frantic of a “festival” than people normally picture. I’d love to hear more about your experiences there.
Matrianna: I love it. I feel like if I lived in Austin, I would probably hate it. A little bit. But last year was really fun, and it was our first time. This year since we kind of knew what we were getting into, we were able to prepare and figure out who's playing that we want to see. Because there's big bands that play there too that you didn’t know were gonna play a smaller stage… This year was really fun because Benjy, Abby and I got to see Julien Baker- so that was crazy, that was really cool. But yeah, it's really fun. It's like a vacation.
Taylor: True! It's kind of like summer camp or spring break, but with a bunch of bands and musicians. Like people that we've never met before but I've known online for a while, maybe they live somewhere like LA, which is why we haven't met before. But now everyone's in Austin and we all get to meet and see each other's sets. I just think that's so cool. And it's also really cool to think that over a year ago, when we announced SXSW that was the biggest thing we had going for us. And then this year we go to SXSW knowing that we're playing Gov Ball. It’s just cool to see our growth in that way. Also this year, we played a much bigger stage at Hotel Vegas. 90% of the crowd, maybe even 95%, didn't know who we were probably and didn't know our music. Which again like I said, I love playing to people that don't know us because it's like a chance to win them over, you know. But it was so much fun and it was nice like, obviously even that stage is probably smaller than Gov Ball.
Matrianna: But it felt huge.
Taylor: Yeah, it was kind of a nice test run of playing on a bigger stage to a bigger crowd. So that was a really cool opportunity.
Where are you hoping to go from here? Other projects in the pipe?
Riiza: Yes, we are working on an album. It's getting fun… It's in the early stages at the moment.
Matrianna: Yeah, just working on demos right now. But I think once we're solid on what songs we want on the album, how many, once we're done recording demos… Hopefully, I think probably after Gov Ball, we’ll start laying stuff down and finding producers and stuff. It's gonna be our first debut album, which will be really nice.
Benjy: Our first debut album.
Matrianna: It’ll be our debut album!
Riiza: Our second debut.
Matrianna: Which will be fun, because I know a lot of people are like, “When are you putting an album out?” because we only have EPs…
It’d be very funny if you self titled it again.
Benjy: [laughs]
Taylor: Oh my god, yes!
Riiza: Strawberry Launch- again.
Anything else you feel has been left unsaid?
Riiza: This is our last show.
Matrianna: Yeah, this is our last show tonight. So sad.
Riiza: This is the last time we'll play live before Gov Ball, so that's a really weird feeling. I can't believe this is our last day of the tour, I can't believe we're done, to be honest. And we did it. We survived, everybody was healthy, everybody lived-
Everyone, in agreement: We lived b****!
———
All of who Strawberry Launch was came together during their set. You could tell they’ve been doing this awhile, their stage presence calm and collected, and the group completely in sync musically. Riiza is an engaging frontwoman, who isn’t afraid to jump into the crowd and dance with her whole body. Taylor and Abby often looked to be having a blast, smiling and laughing at one another if they caught eyes. Matrianna and Benjy seemed to be taking everything in, like monks entering a state of zen. More than that, the soundscape they’ve created with their music truly does translate beautifully live. The keys sound like twinkling stars, the guitar and bass like I’m surfing on the ocean.
My personal favorite song of theirs is “The Sun” from their self-titled EP. The melancholic guitar melodies remind me of 90s alternative rock, but at the same time reminiscent of indie rock anchor bands like Local Natives. “I stare at the sun, cause I know you’re staring at it somewhere” could be about anyone- your long distance partner, best friend, or someone you’re grieving the loss of. “You might be in desert land or down in the sea”, or New York, Austin or even little Ypsi, Michigan.
