MEET THE BAND
MEET MARGE
Day or night you can find Marge jamming on ole' Cleedence, beating a little on the drums, or singin' a sweet tune she just wrote up.
MEET KATE
Kate is always ripping it up on electric or folkin' it up on the acoustic. She might even be banging out a new beat on the drums or singing her heart out on the mic.
CLEEDENCE
THE BIG [LOUSY] BANG
Marge: "It was a Tuesday night of Spring Break last year [2018].
We vaguely knew each other, but we had met through other friends and decided to finally hang out together.
I brought my guitar over and Kate and I were sitting in her living room and we were trying and nothing was really happening. We were both so nervous and were just like how do we do this? We both had our journals and were writing ideas for songs, but we didn't
really know how to share our writing with each other.
Then I remembered that I had two beers in my backpack, so was like, 'What if we just shot gun these beers
right now?'. After we did it, we were so
glad we decided to shot gun those beers beers, because it kind of broke the ice for us and made it all so much easier.
That’s when we came up with our first song, Tuesday Night."
Kate: "That was the night we decided to be a band. We both really wanted to be in a band and we were just like, if we just decided it, then we're just talking it into existence.
Then one night we were talking and I said the words "lousy bang", and I
heard it as I said it and I thought it
was kind of funny and then Marge said, "Dude that's not bad. That's a hard yes!"
And thus, Lousy Bang was born.
ROOTS
Marge: "Our inspirations really just depend on what we're feeling that day."
The bands that inspire their music the most are Slothrust, Courtney Barnett, Esperanza Spalding, and Napalm. What really inspires them in these bands is that they're so talented and creative.
Marge: "They [Napalm] really just put it out there with no hesitation. If you watch any of her Paste Sessions,
she plays a Jackson guitar, which are made for shredding in punk or harder music. She plays these bluesy soulful riffs on them. And she does it intentionally and was basically like, 'I don't want to play something that you're supposed to sound like. I want to do something different."
Kate comes from a lot of folk influence in her family, like Gillian Welch and The Wood Brothers, while Marge comes from more of a
METHOD TO
THE MADNESS
Marge: "When we play together, we play stuff we already know and then one of us is working on something, and then we bring it and then the other person adds to it and then we kind of go from there.
When we were writing the lyrics for a song together, we did a writing exercise where we picked only like six words, and then would put a minute on the clock, and just try to write like a story or a poem or lyrics using all the words.
It was fun, but it took a couple of tries until we got something, and then we just kind of went with it. And then we came in with a chord progression and that's really catchy and the lyrics are pretty funny.
Kate: "Usually for the majority of them, one of us will come with an idea, and Marge is so good about this, she'll come in with an idea and will be like, 'okay you play this' and then I'll play what she's doing and then
classic rock influence from hers, like Black Sabbath and The Grateful Dead. This diversity allows them to experiment with combining styles that they're each inspired by.
inspirational
playlist
she'll put this cool little part over what she had in mind. So then we'll talk about lyrics and we're selling right and it's hard it's, it is definitely a skill that you develop, but ya know I've like trying to do that before and I'm just 'What am I even writing?'. And I'm terrified of writing lyrics, but it's been very encouraging.
SOUND / FLAVOR
According to Kate, Lousy Bang's sound is "like Country Death Metal and it's just fun and weird."
Kate: "I feel like the with the lyrics it's very sincere. I say definitely and the music is not straight forward, but it doesn't overcompensate. It's just cathartic and fun to play"
Marge: "In making music, no chord progression is original. Everything has been done before. The way that
you do it is what's different. And the thoughts there coming out of your own head, like no one else has had that. It's impossible to be completely original except for with your own thoughts, I think the things inside your brain, that's the only truth."
"I remember we were just all sitting around outside and I was just kind of playing and talking
about the emotions that I feel when I play that song I wrote and hear it and then Kate and Ella were talking about it and we all just kind of realized that we were all trying to communicate the same feeling, but it was just so hard to put into words The song did that it in a way."
If Lousy Bang had a flavor, it would be a little tangy, a little
sweet, and chewy enough that "you gotta gnaw on it, and it gets stuck in your teeth a little bit."
THE RISE OF CROTCH POP - SKINCH ROCK
Marge: "Oh God, haha, crotch pop is something we made up one night when Kate spilled popcorn in her lap.
Crotch Pop Skinch Rock is where you don't give a fuck and you're just a little bit lousy and moist, if you will, which I would attribute to the base, like the wet lines"
Kate: "Yeah like Country Death Metal, I don't know what to call it, but it's just fun and weird.
People always ask what our genre is, but I feel like like whatever genre people put you in, you're going to get categorized as that."
RECIPE FOR
A GOOD BAND
Communication and flexibility are the two main ingredients for a good band.
It's especially important for Marge and Kate, because they both like to play the guitar or they both want to solo, but they have to switch things up sometimes to make it work.
Being able to learn from each other and grow individually is also very crucial for having a good band.
Kate: Marge’s growth in the short time I've known her is so insane. It's so inspiring for me, because I've been challenged to learn, because I would just play acoustic covers on my own all the time.
