re-introduction
I recently realized that people don’t know a lot about The Ophelias as we exist now. We started in high school in Cincinnati, but we are no longer in high school (thank god!) and we no longer all live in Cincy. We do still identify as “Midwest moth music,” though. That’s baked in, it’s never going away.
Currently, we’re split up across the country. Jo and I live in New York, Andrea is in grad school in DC, and Mic recently moved to Chicago. When we have tours or shows that Mic will travel to NY for, we typically get a couple days of rehearsal before we head out. We’ve gotten really good at snapping in tune with each other that way. Plus, then we get to be in a car together for like six weeks straight!
We have a couple lovely violinists who tour with us, Hannah (who lives in Cincy) and Kate (who lives in New York). If you’ve seen us on tour in the last few years, you probably saw Kate or Hannah shredding on the violin. I love getting to play with different people and hearing how they interpret the same part. Andrea plays “Neil Young on High” differently than Hannah plays it, which is different than how Kate plays it. I feel lucky to be attuned to those tiny differences, to get to be surprised by the songs we wrote years and years ago. We’ve had other folks play with us: Alex joined on keys for a show, Abram played second guitar for a short run and let me run around onstage with the mic.
There’s something really freeing about putting down the guitar. I studied experimental theatre in college (can you tell?), and took a lot of different types of movement classes. I don’t do much live theatre anymore, but I’ve found real joy in using some of those movement techniques in our live performances when I’ve had the chance to just sing, no guitar. It allows me to feel embodied on a different level, to be present and silly and a little less hyper-focused on “doing something wrong” (playing incorrect notes etc).
I love playing shows and I love recording, especially when we have the luxury of time. Getting to experiment in a studio is like an excavation process, and I love handing the proverbial shovels to my bandmates. I typically send pretty fully formed demos to the band, sometimes voice memos with just guitar and vocals, sometimes a GarageBand file if I’m feeling crazy. I try to let my bandmates have total freedom, though — to me, one of the best parts of being in The Ophelias is getting to hear what my bandmates hear in my songs. They become our songs, something we’ve created together.
Touring rules and I hope we get to do it more this year! We have a pretty solid division of labor on tour, and there’s a sense of freedom that we get to tap into. I do merch while Jo, Mic, and our touring violinist load the van, and we take 2-hour driving shifts each so no one goes into “video game mode” (when you’ve been driving so long your eyes start to glass over). A couple tours ago Mic got really into rock hounding, and brought a hammer etc. with us when we went to the west coast. We took time almost every day to stop by a body of water to look for cool rocks, and he ended up with a full bag in the backseat.
Anyway, that’s what we’re up to. For our day jobs, Jo does VFX work, I edit textbooks, Mic is a substitute teacher, and Andrea is in school. Mic is writing music, himself Andrea is organizing with her grad student union, Jo is dreaming up some truly unreal drag looks, and I’m sewing a lot of show outfits. I have a lot more stories about everyone, but this felt like a good foundation for all that. The basics of who we are and what we’re doing. We’re working on so much new music — I know I’ve teased it a lot but I’m so deeply excited about it, the kind of excited that makes me a little crazy. If we’re talking “eras,” I think The Ophelias are on the cusp of a new one.
Thanks for reading, and next week I won’t just talk about us :)
This week:
I continued attending Artists for Palestine meetings, which have been really helpful with finding concrete things to do. If anyone is interested in coming, let me know.
I went alone to the beautiful Babehoven and Bloomsday show at TV Eye, assuming I would run into people I knew. Which was correct! Turns out almost every person I know also wanted to sway along to “Chariot” and “Dollar Slice.”
I spent hours upon hours bedazzling and listening to Julia Fox’s podcast. I’m a vendor at a market this Sunday 1/28 in Williamsburg, 12-5 at Flophouse Comedy Club if you’re interested :) I wanted to try out more rhinestone designs - so fun, so campy. My favorite might be the turtleneck that says “father figure” in light green rhinestones, or the plaid dress that says “this doesn’t end well.” A little ominous but also glamorous, which IMO is ideal.