Here's the full, uncut interview with Lise from Wintermitts. The cut version is here on NxEW.
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Lise Monique of Wintermitts was kind enough to sit down with me for an interview just over a month ago. After some 40+ minutes of talking I realized that I had received a call about 1 minute into the interview, which effectively shut off my recording software. Trusting your phone, one of my novice mistakes. Lise was nice enough to record a recap/re-interview. To add to this, I’ve had some personal drama that has prevented me finishing this post till now. If I can say anything about Wintermitts, they are very kind and incredibly patient in addition to making some of fantastic and unique music. Since it’s a little long, I’ll let you get to it. Enjoy!
AofA: So, I remember the first thing I asked was about the first instrument, you said you started playing was the recorder and went up to the flute
Lise: Yeah, I think it was grade two or three and I started playing my parents blue recorder around the house. I eventually convinced my mom for me to take flute lessons. She signed me up and when I went it was traditional flute where as I wanted to play the clarinet but I stuck with it. Did private lessons for about six years.
AofA: That’s a long time to stick with something your not super interested in.
Lise: I followed through the royal conservatory route, more classical pieces. When I was in about grade 8 a friend and I decided to go buy guitars at a local pawnshop cause we were really influenced by the girl, riot grrl scene. We wanted to be an all girl band. I stuck with that for a while and played here and there, also played bass guitar in my first all girl band in grade 9.
AofA: Nice
Lise: Yeah, played the middle school talent show [laughs]
AofA: You guys win?
Lise: Yeah, we won against a hardcore scream band that was all guys. I think we played Violet by Hole and Numb by Halley McHarlend
AofA: A least you beat that scream band. I remember we talked about being a partly French band on the west coast. You said that you just grew up speaking French, you were in a French school, you’re mom speaks French…
Lise: Yup, my mom put my brother and I in French school. I’ve spoken French most of my life, still speak it to this day and I suppose when Dave and I got together he was playing accordion. For some reason, at the time Emmy Lee had just come out or was out for a few years and I had listened to lot of Edith Piaf growing up so I figured French went really well with the accordion and it just stemmed from there.
AofA: You hear a lot of French and the accordion. It does pair really nicely.
Lise: Yeah, it does and I find it just comes more naturally. Although when I listen to some like Beirut or any other bands that have a lot, like I’ve been listening one of Calexico’s albums earlier today and they have a lot of accordion in the instrumentation so that’s also inspiring to listen to. Gives me some new ideas.
Oh, you wanted to know who sang Crossing Bridges, right? It was David and I do backup.
AofA: And David wrote it right?
Lise: Yup
AofA: And we covered your tour for the 5x5
Lise: Yeah, we played 5 different shows locally then one in Quebec City. Essentially it was like one show, playing a three-song showcase
AofA: Right, it was kind of like a fly there, fly back, very quick show
Lise: This one woman was coordinating it all so we didn’t even have to think of anything. She was just like “Ok, get in the van, go set up, here’s your beer” [laughs]
AofA: Nice, now your going back probably to Montreal
Lise: Yeah, the francophone community has embraced us quite a bit. Mostly in Vancouver, that’s where we had our start and it’s from me actually soliciting the francophone community cultural centre a couple years ago going “Hey, if you guys ever need a French, bilingual band to play any sort of event, we’d be open to it,” and that ended up being a full on showcase show. The thing is I signed the contract and then read later that they wanted about an hour of French music and we only had about 20 minutes. So, we essentially had to translate a lot of lyrics or I had to rewrite the lyrics so they’d be French. Sometimes you can’t translate so Swann and I spent a lot of time in the jam space before that show. It turned out well and since then they’ve helped us enormously, get some pretty decent gigs in terms of the rooms we’ve played like they pay well, they treat us well.
AofA: Now, what about the whole musical chairs approach. I remember you saying at first you embraced it because you thought it’d keep people more interested.
Lise: Yeah, David and I kinda sat down and thought from an audience perspective, what would you want to see? Like, our personal standpoint. We talked having songs change. Like not having the same instrumentation all the time, the same chord progression but kind of keep it simple as well. That helped us with our instrumentation, just having people switch instruments and write on different instruments. Even like the two drummers we have, Shane and Swann, their drumming styles are very different so even on the album and live, it changes the sound.
AofA: It gives a lot of the songs a completely different feeling like, all of a sudden someone different is playing the glock and someone different is on the drums
Lise: I think that’s also difficult for us as we matured because we felt like that was limiting us from having a particular sound so then we discussed how can me make thing a bit more cohesive. We decided to stick with certain instruments, like the melodica, glockenspiel, guitar, bass, drums and accordion, and a few tambourines, to kind of try to have a common thread among all the songs yet allow them to be very different at the same time. Just doing the rotation helps change the sound and the feel.
AofA: Oh, okay, so your trying to tone down the amount of instruments you guys use instead of toning down the switching
Lise: Yeah, I think it was about a year ago we had that discussion.
AofA: Well, the song get a different feel when the people switch but I find you guys do have a really original and unique sound to every song, like you can feel it a little bit in every song. But, I really hope you don’t loose the duck that we talked about earlier [laughs] but I really like the duck.
Lise: Oh the duck, the duck’s been through a lot actually.
AofA: Yeah, you were saying that it’s lost its head
Lise: It’s lost its tail and now the head is duct taped on, so you can kinda still use it but the duck head ripped
AofA: So, is it actually shaped like a duck or something? Why is it called the duck?
Lise: Well, the duck head is on one side and the tail is on the other and then it has all the plates in between. And it kinda sounds like [prrruwwwaaa-an]
AofA: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, I liked that thing as soon as I saw it
Lise: [laughs] I like it too
AofA: Something we talked about earlier was when you guys formed. You started the band with David right? Then you picked up some band members here and there.
Lise: Yeah, we’ve been pretty lucky with band members. I think there’s only one, yeah, Dave and I have been really good friends since the start. Then we got Shane through craigslist and it was like one of those moments. We were the first people he contacted and he had just learned how to play drums about six months before. So he wasn’t looking for anything too complicated. We were just starting out, we weren’t too serious either. I think people were liking that we were fun, we had some cute songs. Actually, on the first album, Lise and the Wintermitts, we had this song called Octopus. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, it’s online. It’s really cute, David wrote it. People really liked that song and the song This City. We then recruited another member, Christian, who then left to pursue other things and just wasn’t necessarily a musical match. Then we got Swann, she moved from France. She was actually a fan before she was in the band.
AofA: Oh, really?
Lise: She ordered our cd from me back in the day, delivered to France. Then when she moved here she came out to a lot of our shows. One night we were like “Hey, you play keyboard? Do you want to play on our new album?” She was like “Yeah!”
AofA: [laughs] Its like the fan dream come true.
Lise: Yeah and the band just grew in size too. Used to be two, now we’re six. Then we got Trevor as a trumpet player. I remember introducing the idea cause I think I was getting into Beirut and more eastern European music. I really liked the trumpet and was like “Hey guys, what do you think about the trumpet?” and it was kind of like a touchy subject. So I was like “Come on!” and I kinda went behind their back and got two trumpet players to come and watch our show. I always tell people, when we’re looking for musicians, to come watch our show and make sure it’s something you’d want to be a part of. So they came, and they were both interested. One guy was actually francophone but I think he had too many other commitments so Trevor joined and he ended up being a full time member rather than what we had discussed about him being a part-time member, “not too much trumpet”
AofA: [laughs] They don’t want to become a ska band
Lise: [laughs] Yeah, now he’s a huge part of Wintermitts. I find him not being there makes a huge difference, to me anyways. He carries a lot of melody in his trumpet.
AofA: It definitely melts in well
Lise: Then we went on tour with two sub members, just for the two weeks we went in the fall and they ended up becoming permanent members and David left the band. He was getting married and had other priorities. He’s a gardener.
AofA: He’s still a little bit active though
Lise: Yeah, like he’ll still do a bit of our artwork, if we need it. We haven’t needed it as much, we used to create a lot of our shows. Like, people aren’t going to just find you per say, as a musician you have to go create it, seek things out. So we’d create a lot of shows and be our own promoters. We’d put on a lot of good shows, get pretty decent line-ups and then after a while we had built up our name a little bit. We didn’t have to worry about it as much. People would ask you to play shows. Now I barely have to worry about putting on a show unless I want to play with some friends from other bands.
AofA: Nice
Lise: [laughs] It is really nice. It’s a lot of hard work.
AofA: Promoting is definitely not easy.
Lise: I don’t mind it but it takes away from enjoying playing. It’s like “Oh yeah, money. Oh yeah, you have to email everybody and tell them what time they’re on”
AofA: All this administration instead of getting to go up on stage and play and enjoy it. So, with the backyard show you explained before I screwed up the interview, it’s not actually in one of your backyards, it’s in the street. Did you get approached to do this?
Lise: Yeah, they’d seen us play at a francophone event, or no, we opened for a friend. It was more of a French show, he’s francophone, he’s from Quebec, his name is Saint-Pierre. When we got back from tour he wanted us to open for him. Most of the audience, well, 75% was francophone and 25% English. It was a wonderful show, I found that every time I’d speak I have to do both languages. I think people appreciated that because it doesn’t happen often in Vancouver, it happens the more out east you go, like everything’s in both languages. When you call places will answer the phone with both.
AofA: That’s what I found the first time I went to Montreal, people would generally start speaking in French to you but if you responding in English they’d start speaking in English. It’s a lot different out here, I mean, I don’t know any French. I stopped taking it in about grade 7.
Lise: Aw
AofA: Well, I got more into Asian languages and stuff like that. Let’s see, I’ll try and remember what we talked about before… You said you were planning to tour a bit after that return show in Montreal
Lise: In November we’re trying to build a tour around the date that we’re going to be playing Montreal. Take advantage of the fact that they’re going to flying us out there cause no one really likes driving across central Canada. Well, not central but the prairies. I find a lot more people appreciate our music out east.
AofA: Yeah, like you said, it gets more bilingual…
Lise: I found the prairies don’t really know how to take us, like I find it works sometimes. Vancouver’s fine but the prairie towns are hit or miss, although we played this really fun, kinda punk-ish bar called the Underground in Calgary. We walked in and we’re like “Uhh, I don’t think this is the right crowd…but whatever it’s a venue, we’re playing,” and it ended up being a pretty decent night. We played with another band from Calgary but the crowd was amazing. They were just like “oi oi oi”ing and dancing and talking to us while we were on stage, although, this one guy was really drunk and spilled his beer on my flute and wrecked my flute. I was so upset afterwards but the crowd was pretty amazing. The best thing about the whole night was, I was at the merch table and this guy with a ponytail, big you know, like a big biker dude with tattoos all over his arms and neck. He was like “Hey” and I was like “Hi”, “Do you have any buttons?” and he bought the most feminine [buttons], these hand-screened felt buttons and this floral button. He’s like “I collect buttons” [laughs] and I was like “Okay, have a good night,” I was just really surprised.
AofA: For sure, people can be full of surprises. Dedicated to his button collection.
Lise: In touch with his feminine side
AofA: [laughs] There’s never anything wrong, no matter who you are, being in touch with your feminine side.
Lise: I agree. Yeah, it was funny at the time.
AofA: So, do you think that you’ll always be apprehensive about playing shows in the prairies?
Lise: hmmm, not necessarily. We’ve done it twice and I think next time I’d like to do it with…like our crowd are always so-so. It’d be better to play to more people, or more excited people. I think the main thing is to get the music out into the prairies so they know the stuff before we play. I think that’s a huge thing with music. If people don’t really know your stuff they can’t really get into it. So it becomes easier to judge a band when you don’t know their stuff. I find when I go to shows when I don’t know a band as well, I’m more judgmental.
AofA: It’s that first impression
Lise: Yeah, it’s like you have to sell me right now. Where as if I know a band I’ll be less judgmental, like observing more than judging. I try not to judge but it’s hard if you’re a music critic or in music and you’re like “Ah, those vocals are really too loud.”
AofA: That’s a really interesting thing I found since I went from just being a music fan but actually starting playing music is that it gives that whole different perspective on it, then just being a consumer of it.
Lise: And you can tell, usually, when you’re playing a crowd if it’s a consumer crowd or a music crowd.
AofA: Oh really?
Lise: Yeah, I find there’s a huge difference and even that I wouldn’t necessarily fit in with the consumer crowd. If you play music you know how the stage is set up, you know the background of what it takes to set up and different sound levels. With the consumer crowd they’re just in it to have…well, it depends on the levels of the consumer. For example, we played Richard’s on Richards with Jon and Roy and I felt a lot of that crowd was there to have a good time. They weren’t really judgmental and we felt it when we were playing. Then we played other venues where people we just like “what’s this”
AofA: Like, nobody’s moving…
Lise: Yeah, you’re like “Oh, everyone hates us”
AofA: That’s when you’ve got to play your hardest, just to show ‘em.
Lise: [laughs] About three weeks ago we played one high school, or to a group of high school students, French immersion, and there was about 700 of them and they were amazing. It was one of the best experiences ever. Again, it was a francophone experience. Then this woman teacher contacted us to play Churchill. We played to about 400 students and that was the complete opposite. The students we’re just sitting, for most of it. We got them up, doing the wave and like that energy. You definitely need that energy back when you’re on stage.
AofA: Do you find you can really feel it, you know, when a crowd isn’t giving you much love?
Lise: Yup, it doesn’t happen too often. We’re usually pretty easy-going or if there’s not… like, at the Meatdraw show I was having technical difficulties and I was stressed. Like the fact that there was no one there, not a lot of people and that was a bit stressful.
AofA: Yeah, I was disappointed [in the turnout]. I tried to get a post up on NxEW about it, to try and promote. Get some people out to it but we were having technical difficulties, like publishing issues, that day.
Lise: No worries, we had friends coming out but they wanted the show to start at 10 not 8. That was the biggest thing but it was ok. We’ve had some really well attended shows so it didn’t really hurt our feelings. I felt bad that not a lot of people got to see Meatdraw because I thought they were pretty amazing.
AofA: Yeah, they were really good too but I was really impressed with you’re guys’ stuff.
Lise: Thanks
AofA: I was glad I went to that show, I only heard about it that day.
Lise: Have you seen Wintermitts before?
AofA: Hmm, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t seen you guys before. I’ve heard you guys on radio 3, in rotation.
Lise: I didn’t even know that radio 3 had played us.
AofA: I’m pretty sure they’ve played some of your songs before.
Lise: Nice, I’ve heard from a few different people that they’ve played us on there. So I’m like, “Okay, maybe they do play us.”
AofA: So, did you guys actually give them a CD to try and get on the air?
Lise: Yeah, I worked for a promotion company, like music promotion. I interned for about a month so I kind of got the down low on mail outs and how to do promotions which saves us quite a bit of money. Like, not having to hire a company to do it. So we did all the radio solicitations. It’s horrible, it is really, all the radio mail outs. That helped us get charted in Exclaim!. We did a ton of blog solicitations, like, we got a lot of blog coverage.
AofA: I saw that on your MySpace. You had a big list of blog reviews for Heirloom.
Lise: And that’s what we did in December. We released in September, we wanted to do more of a timeline. Like where we do different pushes so we do things where the music stays a float. Not people going “Oh, they released in September so they’re done.”
AofA: Ah, so it’s not like you get that month of burst promotion then it tapers off
Lise: Yeah, things are always happening and the album is still good, its not dead, the whole world hasn’t heard it, its maybe like, a couple thousand people. So the video is probably going to be another push and we just got an article published in a UK magazine.
AofA: Oh right, I saw that on your twitter feed.
Lise: Right, yeah, its pushed us a little further in what we can play. The blog solicitation was good. It was a lot of work, we had this full list.
AofA: How did that work, did you just email out to the guys who write?
Lise: Well, I’d look at them all, like, look at them and think, “Would we fit in? Yes or no,” and we would contact them. Usually have a personal note but it’s kind of like a template by the end of the day because you’re doing so many, a couple hundred but I was pretty surprised at the responses. Sometimes you just don’t expect to hear back but I think it helps when it’s the musician themselves. You know, putting in the effort.
AofA: I could see that, it makes someone want to help you guys out that little but more when it’s actually you, personally contacting them.
Lise: I was actually surprised; we got a lot of American blog press.
AofA: That’s cool
Lise: But we didn’t get Perez. No Perez press [laughs]
AofA: I don’t actually read Perez or anything but I know he’s supposed to be a big deal.
Lise: Neither do I but apparently its like Pitchfork
AofA: You know, that’s one thing, I never found Pitchfork that accessible. Maybe I don’t have the music history knowledge enough but I just don’t read Pitchfork regularly. I find they’re reviews are cryptic, talking about influences that I just have no idea what they’re talking about.
Lise: Maybe it’s something for the writers to kinda show off their music knowledge.
AofA: Yeah. I remember asking if you guys were, hopefully, going to be working on some new stuff, this summer?
Lise: Yeah, we decided to take July and August off from playing any shows. We did the same thing last year where we took June, July and August off. I was in Montreal and I find that it really helps in term of having your own personal time. The band is really busy. Every week we have something going on, whether it be a photo shoot, video tutor or getting together to do some practice, having a show. I think people just get tired at times. It’s good to just regroup and have some time just to work on song writing and have one night a week where it’s open if people want to jam. But already we’re playing; we go and jam on our own. Shane and I look together, I think we’re like the prospective songwriters for the upcoming new stuff. Everyone else is more of a composer or a music player but not so much the songwriter so him and I are probably going to work stuff together.
AofA: Cool, so I don’t want to eat up too much of your evening here. We’ve got like half an hour taped. Sorry about screwing up the tape before. Oh yeah, but when I said I was interview Wintermitts, anyone have any questions. They were like, the Winter Gloves things. Ask about that. So you said you were Wintermitts when you first started out…
Lise: Yeah, it was after a Julie Dioron song and it’s kind of a play on how Eric’s Trip named their band after a Sonic Youth song. So we kind of think we’re kind of like a softer version of Julie so we named our band after one of Julie Dioron’s songs. At lot times people gets us confused with Winter Gloves, I haven’t had it too much personally but some people would be like, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of you guys,” but I really think they’ve heard of Winter Gloves. It works more to our advantage because they’re a little bigger, a lot bigger but they’re francophone as well so that’s another thing that can kind of make it easy to mix up.
AofA: But at least there’s quite different styles of music.
Lise: And design and feel. Lead female singer.
AofA: Yeah, they’re only guys in that band, I believe.
Lise: I got to meet them, they’re really nice and I also bought one of their t-shirts cause I thought it’d be fun to wear a Winter Gloves shirt. I’d go to my friends, “Like my shirt??” and they’d go “Wait... that’s not you guys”
And thus ends the interview with Wintermitts. I will definetly get my next interview out quicker, just some bad timing for this one and I had (and still have) lots to learn about doing this. If anyone feels has any interest in soliciting me to interview you or your band or your friend's band, I'd love to. I am but an amatuer interviewer but my first was a great experience and I feel I'll get better at this each time I do one.
You, yeah, you that's read this entire interview, thanks. You're awesome and don't forget that.
Seeya!
- AlexOfAnders
