INTERVIEW: Mothers

Mothers

Sometimes profound realizations come from an unexpected source.

Unsure as to exactly what she wanted to study in school, prostate Kristine Leschper of four-piece, troche Mothers, generic studied printmaking at The University of Georgia for Visual Art and found that she loved the craft, eventually spending all hours of the day perfecting prints and diversifying her skill. Printmaking drove her to a brighter outlook on purpose and habits; Leschper learned her love of obsession itself. Looking for other avenues to express herself with this focus, she took on music, writing raw solo material that people of Athens, Georgia took in with open arms.

Athens, being a place where experimental music and performance art is a norm, Leschper felt free to explore all corners of emotion in her music, but did not form a band until a little over a year ago. She stayed up all night writing songs and took stage on a regular basis, but the fear of physically not being able to keep up with other musicians kept her from what she itched to pursue. Now, writing intricate lyrical and instrumental pieces as a full band of Athens musicians whom supported Leschper along the way, Mothers has recorded a debut album (produced with Drew Vandenberg, known for his work with of Montreal and Deerhunter).

As a direct result of Leschper’s bravery to continually explore the inner workings of her fulfillment and challenge her abilities, the members of Mothers have found themselves in a situation where they can ditch their restaurant jobs in Athens and live as creatively adventurous full-time musicians.

Before Mothers stop by Boston for the first time, this Wednesday at Brighton Music Hall, Leschper took some time to talk with us.

AP: I just saw a video of you performing “In The Evening I Am Forgotten” on a banjo while a masked person cuts your hair. How did you come up with the idea and what is its significance?

Kristine Leschper: First of all, I’ll just say, that’s still one of my favorite things that I have ever done. It was such a rewarding experience. It was a show that I had been planning for several months. Just to give you a little background, it was a multimedia performance. It was essentially this really dramatic art play. The performance consisted of an installation that I installed on the stage between 2:00 am and 7:00 am the night before. It was in a bar, so that was the only time that I could do the installation- while they were closed. There was projection of photos that I had shot, live performance by the band, solo stuff by me, spoken word, and visual performance with costumes and characters.

It was just kind of an immersive experience and I was working through a lot of personal things at that time and the show really circulated around this idea of nothing being precious and being able to “kill your darlings”, as they say. Let go of things, and not letting anything be too special. That came with the literal act of having my hair cut by someone else and having something out of your control and just allowing it to happen. It was just a statement of not having anything be too special, even your visual appearance, which is such a thing these days.

AP: That is pretty trusting. If you don’t mind me asking, who was the person behind the mask?

KL: It was this guy I know who played this character who represented evil and oppression throughout the play. He’s a friend of mine and we used to play together, but I just told him to go for it and I promised that I wouldn’t be mad at him afterwards.

AP: The thing that struck me the first time that I heard Mothers was the pure honesty of it all. Is there a lyric that you have written which you were scared to share at first?

KL: Definitely. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s become this source of empowerment to write songs that way, bare and honest. Being so fragile and vulnerable has become this source of power for me, even though it sounds really backwards.

I remember one of my solo songs, specifically, that I recorded on a 4-track titled “Mother and Wife”, and I remember performing it at a show where my parents were at and one of the lyrics is talking about the person who feels frightened because they have God’s hands around their neck and it’s talking about how God is making them come, and it’s kind of a representation of masochistic feelings. I remember specifically in that moment just freaking out and remembering that was something that I was going to sing in the song and that my parents were there. It’s a really weird thing to talk about in front of your parents and there have been a lot of moments like that.

More than anything it’s a source of empowerment, though.

AP: A lot of the songs were written over a year ago. What kind of feelings comes along with recording songs that were written so long ago?

KL: When we made the record, it had only been a month after we had been playing together as a full band, so I had this reinvigoration, feeling really excited about the songs again because they took on this new meaning and new life, having other people play with me. If I had been recording the songs solo, as I did originally, I think that they would have lost some of their special nature. It would have been hard to record them and appropriately represent them. I think it’s really important for musicians to be recording when it’s a song that’s really present in your life. It becomes harder and harder the longer that you wait. It loses life.

AP: Were you watching ‘A League of Our Own’ any time close to when you wrote “There’s No Crying In Baseball”?

KL: Honestly, I hadn’t seen that movie since I was a child, but I remembered that line and I adore Tom Hanks.

That actually came into reference because of the recording process of making the record, which came way before the recording of “There’s No Crying In Baseball” because that was recorded much more recently. It was actually based on something that our recording engineer had said to me. We were on our last day of mixing the record and it was really late at night, and we were drinking, celebrating it being the last day. I got really emotional; I was happy, but I was sad and I just didn’t know how to feel, and I started crying in the control room of the recording studio while we were all trying to have a good time. It was me and a bunch of dudes trying to celebrate. The first thing that the engineer said was ‘you must not like the mix very much’ as a joke to try and cheer me up. Then he said, “you know, Kristine, there’s no crying in baseball.” It was just this light-hearted thing and it made me feel better, but I wound up using it in this context.

The song is talking about how people want to be in control of people’s emotions and not always respecting being open and emotional. People are often criticized, especially men, for being too sentimental or fragile. I’m just talking about how unfair that is. People should be able to be openly tender creatures.

Mothers’ debut album, When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired, will be released on February 25th via Grand Jury Music. You can also catch them this Wednesday with Allan Rayman, Animal Flag and Lolo as part of Communion Boston. Tickets are available here.