#studio 603

What is your life like in Los Angeles when you’re not touring?

Ellie English: Well, when I’m home I really like gardening. So the first thing I do is that I usually pull all the weeds out that have come in. Sometimes I buy new plants, and I also give drum lessons to little kids. And I walk dogs, so I do that as much as I can. And then I practice as much as I can and try to learn new stuff. And then, I hang out with people! (laughs)

Sade: Irita and I live the closest together. I live in Silverlake and she lives in Echo Park. They’re both artists communities, a lot of music scene.

Irita: Yeah. Well, I could walk to your house if I really wanted to take a long day of walking.

Sade: We like to walk a lot at home. I like to go hiking. I have a dog, he’s like my son! I go jogging with him by the Hollywood sign. To me the Hollywood sign is symbolic to being home, in Los Angeles. And I have a motorcycle, so I ride around. Also, I’ve been trying to learn how to skateboard… That’s pretty much my life!

It seems so different from here! It sounds amazing.

Sade: Well, that’s California you know! (laughs) We have a lot of sun, so a lot of outdoors.

Irita: You can do everything. You can go to the ocean, that’s an hour away, there are mountains and there’s snow, that’s like, 2 hours away.

Sade: You can go to the desert!

Irita: Yeah, anything you want – you can do it in California. It’s the best.

I love this picture of you three in this dry river that goes across L.A. …I forgot its name-

Irita: Oh, the L.A. River? Yeah, that’s the L.A. River. It actually has a lot more water now, because we’ve been getting some rain. But there’s just been some point in L.A. River where it was just sand, and there were cactuses growing out of the wash! (laughs)

Sade: A very serious drought.

Do you manage to live off your music?

Sade: No, we don’t.

Ellie: It’s a real hassle.

Irita: We do what we gotta do. Actually, we’re not home enough to hold a day job. We’re literally home two weeks at a time maybe. It’s impossible.

Sade: So we find ways to make money, whether we have the Etsy shop, or we walk dogs for our friends, or we move things with our vans. Do you guys have craigslist here?

Yeah, we have similar websites.

Sade: So I look on Craigslist for one-day jobs to make money to pay bills. I used to walk dogs, or if somebody pays me 50 dollars to move their mattress with my van. So we all have weird jobs, but it’s okay.

I hope it doesn’t get too weird though!

Sade: It gets weird for sure, but you know what? We’re free, and that’s what’s important to us. We’re free to do what we want to do. We don’t make money, but we have our freedom to make music.

Irita: That’s more important than anything.

I agree. I wanted to ask you about your Etsy shop Kill My Baby Tonight as well.

Irita: Well, we were doing it for a while. Sade and Ellie were modelling, and I think they made the best models ever! But you know, we’ve been on tour so much and it’s been hard to keep up with it. You can’t really ship stuff from the road. So it’s kind of on hold, but we’ve been working on our merch site, which I think is really cool. Sade’s been designing t-shirts, and we’ve been figuring out pins and all. So I think it replaces that mean for the time being.

By the way- what is the title of the last song you played tonight? Is it a new song?

Sade: The encore song? It’s called Feel Alright. We have never released it. It’s gonna be on the album, which may be coming out in August. That’s what we’re aiming for right now. We just signed on to a label for the first time, called Suicide Squeeze.

Irita: They’re amazing, we love them so much.

Yeah, Guantanamo Baywatch are on this label as well!

Irita: Yeah, they’re really cool people! We met them in Dallas.

I’ve met them too! They even offered me pizza.

Everyone: Aaaaw, that’s really sweet!

Irita: For the record, we love you!

Sade: The Coathangers are also on Suicide Squeeze, which is another of our favorite bands.

Ellie: We love them!

Aaaw, I miss them every time they come to play over here!

Irita: You have to see them! They’re so good live!

Sade: Yeah, they are the dream!

Sade, I really like the way you sing! What’s your mindset when you’re on stage?

Sade: When I’m singing, I’m thinking about the reasons the songs were written. I’m very passionate about giving everything I can to the people who have come to see us, and trying to be as real and genuine as possible with them. I’m a very shy person, so I don’t talk very much and I may seem like I’m very reserved when I’m actually trying my best to connect with people as much as I can.

Both Ellie and Irita were great too, but sometimes we couldn’t hear you well enough! Perhaps it was because of the microphones? (ndlr: after having talked to the staff, they told me they were indeed having technical difficulties regarding the microphones interfering with other instruments because the venue was so small.)

Sade: Well, they just started singing this year, and I think singing is a very scary thing you know.

Irita: It’s very personal.

Sade: It’s a very hard thing to do, and I think that the more they do it- eventually it’s gonna show more. I think right now it’s just the beginning stages, and it’s hard to show your true self to people and to be so vulnerable.

Yeah. I think getting on stage is one of the most terrifying things you can do.

Everyone: It is.

Also, I wanted to congratulate you on the crowdfunding you did after you got robbed in Bristol.

Irita: Thank you, it was a very bad situation.

Ellie: It was amazing how many of our friends and family stepped up and donated. It ended up being a beautiful crazy thing. We all cried.

Irita: I mean, it was such a hard situation. And for that to happen kind of made it all the way. Because then you realize how much people actually care, and how good people are. It’s crazy.

Sade: It actually made us stronger, because we didn’t realize how many people cared about us you know. When you’re in a hard situation and so many people are helping and supporting you, whether it’s giving money, letting you borrow gear or just telling your story- they showed their love and made us realize…

Irita: …Just how great the community that we exist in is. They’re so supportive, so wonderful.

Sade: Yeah, we just want to give them back what they deserve.

Ellie: Even random people were texting us and sending us messages, and we were like “You care, you know about this?!”

I feel like- to get robbed while touring is the worst thing that can happen to a band. Yet you were able to turn the situation around, and it got even better…

Sade: Yeah, even better than when we started.

Yeah. Now you’re stronger, and if I were in your shoes I would feel more confident as well, because so many fans cared.

Sade: Exactly.

I also wanted to talk about your upcoming album if you don’t mind.

Sade: It’s the first album that we’ve ever put out, it’s taken us a while. Recording has been a learning experience for all of us. We’re all very new to recording on a professional level, and we’re very excited about it. We’re aiming for August.

Will we find new songs on it?

Sade: Yeah, I believe so. I mean, there’s a few songs that have already been released, but there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve never released before.

It’s interesting that you said this album will be your first professional recording experience, because I thought your Eps sounded really good and that the whole garage sound was on purpose!

Irita: That’s really cool, I mean I really like the vibes of those recordings. We worked with our friend Joel, he’s in this band called Dios and he’s super talented. He recorded pretty much all the singles we released, and they just have a really cool vibe to them.

Sade: Also, it’s different when you’re just releasing one song as opposed to nine songs. Our full album is more like a bigger story, whereas one song is just a tiny little bit of it. And when you’re doing this whole thing- it’s something that we never thought about when we started the band. We never were thinking ahead of time as like- we never thought we were gonna be playing festivals, we never thought we would be recording an album. We were just happy to find each other, and to be able to release stuff.

That’s beautiful. And here you are now!

Irita: Yeah, that’s crazy actually! (laughs)

Sade: It’s really weird for us, but we’re very grateful.

Finally, if you had to eat one Swiss thing for the rest of your lives, what would you choose between chocolate and fondue?

Irita: We’ll take both of them, if that’s an option!

Ellie: I guess we’re all just gonna fondue!

Irita: Fon-don’t-do-that!

Ellie: The fon-do’s and don’ts of life. (laughs)