ZEBU FUR

Visual Thinking with Lauren Martin

From painting to singing to illustration to textiles to keyboards, and on!

Today we will take a closer look at a *key* member of Frankie Cosmos, Lauren Martin. That’s right, she started out designing our t-shirts, and ended up as a bandmate playing keyboards, singing harmonies, and even some 2nd guitar!

Lauren and I originally met in MIDDLE SCHOOL when Lauren formed a band with my brother! I inserted myself into their friendship as annoying little sisters tend to do, and eventually she and I started playing music together too. We had a band which performed one “show” in Eliza’s backyard for 3 of our friends, but we were both very shy performers.

Lauren ended up pursuing textile design, and was the obvious choice when it came to designing and printing the first ever Frankie Cosmos merch. She screen printed everything by hand in my parents kitchen, and we laid all the shirts out to dry on the ground (as pictured above). She filled in for some shows sporadically while in college, and when she finished school in 2016, she officially joined the touring band as our keyboard player.

[Close It Quietly Album Art Time Lapse]

Lauren continues to design merch for FC, and has found her own audience for her illustrations and design work. She sells her own prints, apparel, and more on her website, and posts lots of fun drawings on her instagram.

Q & A with Lauren Martin

How did you first find yourself playing music and performing?

I never intended to perform but always found myself performing anyway - usually because I’d be playing music with other people and they would encourage me (/drag me along) for the live element. I have really bad stage fright, performance goes against my nature. But because I keep ending up doing it, it’s clearly something that’s important to me in some way…even though it feels in conflict with who I am.

My first instrument was flute in elementary school. But my first ever musical performance was a cello recital in middle school (to an audience of parents). After that I was in my high school’s all girl rock band. I played rhythm guitar. I remember we played One Way Or Another by Blondie. I was also in the school chorus, we would perform for elderly people at retirement homes. I performed a surprising amount considering how shy I was.

During the pandemic, your illustration work really took off. With visual art being full time for you now, and touring still on hold, does playing music feel different for you?

I think having one part of myself that was really important (being a visual artist) — having that dream fulfilled in a way, makes playing music feel better. It feels like I’m not missing out on one half of myself energetically. Finding an outlet that allows me to be more wholly myself, it makes me feel more creative as a musician than I did before.  After years of having a very regimented relationship with visual art during and after art school, during the pandemic I’ve unlocked a new side of myself creatively, and established my own style as a visual artist, and a musician. Recently I’ve felt a lot more confident in sharing my musical ideas.

You’re a huge part of the aesthetic of Frankie Cosmos as a grown-up band, and took FC from my janky AppleWorks 6 creations to the legitimate poster designs, cute merch, and album art we have now. Has music always encompassed a visual element for you?

I have always been inspired by album art, and intrigued by the branding that goes along with a band. Not to say that it informs anything about the music - but I do think there’s a visual element of a band that has always been intriguing to me on the same level as sneaker logos or car logos. I like simplicity and impactfulness in graphic design. And I think music and design overlap a lot. I would never claim to have synesthesia, but I do think if you asked me to paint a song I could do that. Not being a trained musician and not having the standard language to describe what I mean when it comes to music, allowed me to create my own visual language about music.

I’m realizing now, the bands that were really influential to me as a kid, like the first albums I bought, were Gorillaz, who were cartoon characters to me, and The White Stripes, who were also cartoon characters to me.

Before you got into textile design and graphics, you were mostly painting in a renaissance style, and at one point considered studying painting restoration. How did you find your various styles over the years and how have your artistic inclinations changed?

In a weird way, I would say my artistic inclinations haven’t changed that much, it’s more just the subject matter and the medium have changed a lot. I’ve always loved depicting reality as I see it. My portraits were never “accurate” to life, they were accurate to my imagination. And now, I’ll draw a still life of something I made up. I like creating my own reality. Growing up, I was really inspired by old paintings because I would go to The Met every weekend, and I loved seeing the Hans Holbein paintings and Giotto, because I just loved that it looked like a fucked up version of reality. It’s not photorealism, it looks like what you would close your eyes and picture a person to look like. I love the way art can look like a painting of the inside of an artist’s brain.

[Banana Split Poster]

Can you compare your experiences in analog and digital art?

I love both, but I tend to gravitate toward digital mediums. As a perfectionist, I love the idea of being able to do things over and over in order to get it exactly how I want. I used to work in oil paints but I would get really frustrated with myself when it wasn’t going right, because I felt I couldn’t start over. It would probably be good for me to try it again, because I don’t necessarily want to lean into my perfectionism forever. But it was really freeing for me to start working digitally, because I can do it an infinite number of times, I can get it exactly the way I see it in my head. Also, in terms of material used…when I was making physical art, I was surrounded by so many canvases and pieces of paper…I really like sparseness and neatness in my space, so having everything I’ve ever made in a pile doesn’t work for me.

What about your sewing and physical textile work? How does that compare to your other art forms?

Music and drawing feel in a way like luxuries, whereas sewing my clothes (and cooking) feel like practical ways to use my creativity.  Those are more purely joyous outlets for me. My art is work, music is work, but sewing and knitting is truly just for myself. I don’t do it as much as I used to, but I always like to have a chunk of my wardrobe be handmade. I get to turn my brain off and just follow a pattern, do this repetitive motion.

What inspires you recently?

I’m inspired right now by exercising. My latest hobby is playing tennis. Growing up, sports were extremely important to me, I wanted to be a professional soccer player. At a certain point I felt like I had to choose between being creative or athletic. I’m recently getting excited about being physically strong again.

[Love Love Tennis Club T-Shirt]

[Stay Sunny Tie-Dye T-Shirt]

From Krill to Brunch to Tour Food to Frankie Cosmos!

Today we will take a closer look at the heart/beat of Frankie Cosmos, Luke Pyenson. I first met Luke at a Bronx NY house show (ten years ago!) where there were approximately 4 non-band-members in attendance. He was playing drums in Krill (it was their first tour!) and I was an instant fan. Both our bands played songs with Arthur Russell’s name within our lyrics, so we traded CDs and became band-friends.

We ended up playing a handful of shows together and feeling like we were part of some kind of “scene”. The FC song Sad 2 references the Krill lyric “I wish that I could kiss his paws”.  Luke ended up moving to the UK in 2014 for grad school but kept in touch. He joined British band Brunch and e-mailed me a cover they did of Sad 2 at band practice one day!

Luke finally joined Frankie Cosmos as our drummer in 2015. Not only is he a creative and talented drummer who can keep up / tune in with my oft-confusing temporality, but he also became an indispensable asset to my experience of touring. His “real job” when he first joined the band was at a travel agency, and he brought those skillsets to FC, helping plan our tours in a more organized way, like making spreadsheets ahead of time for planning stuff like where we would stay throughout a tour, and who would be on the guest lists in each city.

Alongside music, Luke has always kept up with food/travel writing, and photography. You can see his work on his website. He also co-founded Tour Food, a resource for musicians on the road looking for where to eat.

Q & A with Luke Pyenson

How did you start playing music? Did you always know you would want to be in bands? I started taking drum lessons in the 4th grade at age 8, because everybody in my elementary school had to choose an instrument for the school band. I used to bang on the sides of my parents car in sync with the radio (and always did so perfectly on beat)— I wanted to play the saxophone but my parents told me I should consider the drums, so I chose the drums. In band I played mostly a snare drum. Around 7th grade I was in my first rock band Bad Posture, with my friends Sam and Darl (who went on to play bass in Speedy Ortiz). It was instrumental because none of us could sing. Simple rock music with no lyrics. We made tee shirts on Cafe Press - an image of a man in a monkey costume, with “Bad Posture” in Chiller Font.

How does collaborating/playing in Frankie Cosmos compare to your other projects?

It’s really pretty similar to how it worked in Krill. Jonah [Furman] wrote most of the skeletons of songs on this 3-string acoustic guitar that he had. He would send us demos, bring them to practice and then we’d flesh them out in pretty much the same way we do in Frankie. But in Krill there was less diverging from our home instrument, I didn’t really give Aaron [Ratoff] or Jonah suggestions and vice versa. And I feel like there’s more of that in FC right now. Like, Jonah’s a guitarist but he never really gave Aaron any indication of what he heard in his head (as far as I remember) or what kind of guitar part he would want to hear, or much suggestion. We really just kinda immediately played the songs, we didn’t work on them as much as we do in Frankie.

Do you feel like your musical training from childhood gave you tools that you still use?

A lot of my early drum lessons were learning to read music and playing jazz charts, stuff like that…apart from my jazz training figuring into the way that I’ve played drums in any genre, I don’t actively apply that education. I could’ve availed myself more of those tools when I was younger to get more from them today, and I regret not. Like, I did this 5-week summer program at Berklee where I took music theory classes and stuff but I didn’t hang on to that. And then Nate taught me a lot of that again over zoom during the worst parts of the pandemic. I learned piano better and scale degrees. That helped me during our most recent time spent arranging FC. But I still feel constrained because I still don’t have the vocabulary… I still feel like a toddler learning to talk when I talk about melodic ideas.

Speaking of vocabulary: you speak a lot of languages, including your own vast vocabulary of made-up words which all your bandmates and nearly everyone close to you has picked up in some way. Is music a language? is language a music? What does it all mean to you?

Music is definitely a shared global language. And language is music as well. The same kind of innate musicality that I’m blessed with is the same key to my ability to speak many foreign languages. it’s just all in your ears, and openness to connecting with other people. They’re definitely related and they are the top ways I like to explore my place in the world and broaden it through communicating with these shared languages. Sometimes a word doesn’t exist in standard English, and you can play with it to achieve your desired outcome, what you are trying to express, and you can do the same thing with music. There’s infinite possibilities.

Do you play with language (the way you do with music and English) in the foreign languages you speak?

Other languages have standardized versions of playing around. Like in French there’s a type of slang called Verlan. You take a word and split the word in half and take the second half of the word and move it to the front. “Verlan” is that for L’envers (the inverse). I learned that very early on in my time learning French. With some of my American friends who speak the same foreign languages that I do, I mess around with them, definitely. Like I’ll conjugate made-up words in foreign languages. But the pool of people I can do that with is extremely limited. Maybe 3-4 people who not only could do that with me but also derive pleasure from it the way that I do. But similar to music, you don’t have to know how to play it to enjoy witnessing it!

That’s right, and also similar to music there’s an extremely limited pool of people willing to go through it with me.

From Warehouse to Lexie to Frankie Cosmos to Interesting…read on for a glimpse into Alex Bailey’s journey and his newest solo release.

Today we will take a closer look at the beloved bassist of Frankie Cosmos, Alex Bailey.

Alex’s Atlanta-based band Warehouse played with Frankie Cosmos a few times over the years (as labelmates on Bayonet!) before going on a tour opening for FC in 2016, which led to continued friendship and collaboration. First, he and Greta created side project Lexie. Alex offered up 2nd guitar parts for the recordings of Duet and Jesse (for FC’s 2018 release Vessel), and officially joined as FC bassist in late 2017 (with the promise to continue to switch around and play guitar sometimes!).

He continues to create music on his own bandcamp as Interesting. His latest release Guitar With Talking is out now.

                                            Q & A with Alex Bailey

What first compelled you to sampling movies/radio/etc.?

Around 2014, I was reading the David Byrne book How Music Works and in it he describes My Life in The Bush of Ghosts, the album he made with Brian Eno which utilizes “found vocals” over instrumentals. This idea really appealed to me, even though I still have not listened to the album. At the time I had VHS tapes and started layering talking from movies onto guitar loops, and eventually started feeling like I was fine-tuning it. But I never actually sat there and dragged the samples perfectly into rhythm with the song, I did not use music software, only loop pedal and cassette. This added to the romance and magic of using the samples, by letting them fall into place rAndOmly. I really fell in love with the concept. So, I had a project that was just that, called “Parent Trap”. Guitar loops and talking from movies. [Which has since been removed from the internet].

How has that evolved into your latest Interesting release Guitar With Talking?

I should start by saying that basically, all of my “solo” work has been made with leftover energy from playing in a band. First with Warehouse and now with Frankie Cosmos. While recording the latest Frankie Cosmos album I was trying at every possible turn to add soundscapes to the songs, like street noise or whatever. Understandably, those were kept to an absolute minimum, though some did make it in. This experience really stirred up a lot of energy and reinvigorated the part of me that identified with the “found vocals” ethos. I recorded almost all of Guitar with Talking in the week immediately following recording with FC. As a response to the pressure of recording in a digital format with endless opportunities for perfectionism I luxuriated in recording onto a 424 Portastudio (cassette 4 track). And chose not to stress over making sure every microscopic detail was just right, letting little imperfections live.

Does the talking inspire the guitar parts or do you find talking afterwards that boosts the guitar parts you already wrote?

Fishing for sound effects, like fishing for fish (I’m assuming), is a soothing process. I sit at the radio, recording static and little bits while switching between stations. Not quite as “cool” as in 2014 when I’d actually go to a thrift store in my free time and look for any videos about horses, or surfing, or a preacher warning of end times and the dangers of rock n roll. Also, for this album, I took the easy way out and tried to find similar types of videos that have been ripped and put on the internet. Once I have a good crop of samples, I’ll tend to get excited at the prospect of using them, thinking about what the song might sound like, and that eagerness kind of carries me through the process of recording an instrumental. Adding the talking last as a reward.

I feel like your personality comes through in what samples you pick. And more often than not what I’ll end up using is something I think is funny out of context. Sometimes I’ll prefer that the listener can’t understand the words and use it more as part of the guitar texture. But it’s hard to resist the urge to add a bit of humor.

You picked up classical guitar in the last few years. Has this influenced your own music?

“Classical guitar” was something I picked up during lockdown. As it was for many others it was quite a low point of creative productivity for me. I ended up watching the documentary “John Williams at Ronnie Scott’s” and wanted to try and play a few of the songs, (insert big laugh) “Classical guitar” is great because it demands daily practice and it made me play guitar in a very deliberate way that I hadn’t done before. 

What do you find interesting?

OK, I’ll take this opportunity to go absolutely off the deep end and say the harpsichord sonatas of Scarlatti and Soler and I suppose the harpsichord repertoire in general. You don’t have to go far down the “classical guitar” rabbit hole before you start hearing about the harpsichord. Harpsichord gets a bad rap— and there’s a whole history as to why— but it’s definitely something I would classify as “interesting.” To me it’s a beautiful, misunderstood instrument and a close relative to the guitar. Both are plucked string instruments with no sustain. A note is plucked, dies and is resonant. It’s beautiful. In my opinion. By the way I think the bottom of the guitar rabbit hole is actually just keyboard.