The most common bit of advice any creative who has found some level of success can offer is simply just keep going. If you aren’t yet where you want to be, then keep trying, keep working, and keep dreaming. As Ethel Cain once said, if it’s meant to be, then it’ll be, and so it has become for Somerville based hyper-diy outfit sidebody. Formed amid the uncertain opportunities of Covid, the group began making music simply because they could and because they suddenly had the time to try. After many trials, tribulations, and email campaigns, the quartet can now boast they have shared a bill with Avril Lavigne and Vampire Weekend. So how did it happen? We sat down with the genre-bending visual artists to discuss their trajectory, their inspirations and their plans to retreat into the woods of Maine.
Allston Pudding: How are you all feeling after performing at Boston Calling?
Cara Giaimo: It’s a bit surreal, we’ve been thinking about this set for months, maybe even a year. It feels great, but it’s like a dream that’s now come true.
Martha Schnee: We’ve been preparing for over eight months. I feel really energized and excited that 30 minutes just happened, that we’ve been crafting it for so long and I’m so proud of us and I’m so happy with how many people were there to experience it with us. It was really cool.
Lena Warnke: I feel like I’m on cloud 9, I just feel incredible. I feel really calm and happy and euphoric and everyone we love is here. It’s just really special to be together after having done that and I feel grateful.
Hava Horowitz: I just wanna do more, like when are we gonna do it again? I just wanna optimize and make it better and do it again and again. For me, I have a hard time knowing how it went when you’re on stage, so it was really helpful to watch videos that people posted and be like oh we just did that, like that was really cool. It didn’t feel like we did it while we were doing it.
AP: You must blackout part of the performance at least. You get really into it, you kind of forget while it’s happening and then it’s over.
MS: I was saying that to my parents, they were like, “did you see us?” and I said “I blacked out.” You go into this performance mindset and you’re so present and then it’s like eight months of preparation for just 30 minutes. There’s nothing else like it in life. Anything can happen in those 30 minutes.
HH: And it’s a strict 30 minutes. We planned every minute to the T, and they will cut you off if you go over, so there’s also a rhythm. We can’t add too much in the moment, we can be present, but we have to keep the beats.
CG: I saw the clock turn to 4:40 during “sponge time” and I was like we gotta get that hug in and I think we did it.
LW: I did not look at the clock a single time. I did not perceive time whatsoever. I was fully in “sponge time”. I don’t know what happened.
HH: The most challenging part for the rehearsal process was refining the setlist. What songs we’re gonna play, what songs are we not. We tried so hard to play nine songs, but I think the best choice was to only do eight so we could feel more present and spacious.
LW: It was down to the wire with the setlist. We’ve been crafting for a long time, playing it live, seeing what happens. There was another song we were so close to including, but we just cut it three days ago-
MS: Because we’re saving it for Bonnaroo.
AP: Fair enough. When did you know that you were performing at Boston Calling?
HH: A long time ago. We’ve known since April 16th of 2024.
LW: We didn’t have it signed in paperwork, but we had verbal confirmation.
HH: We opened for Maggie Rogers at the Paradise Rock Club and after the set we got an Instagram message from Peter Boyd, talent booker for Boston Calling. He messaged saying “I’m here and I’d love to chat with you guys. what are you doing Labor Day weekend 2025”.
All: Memorial Day!
HH: Oh, what the fuck. Yeah, wherever we are.
CG: He just wanted to know what we were doing on Labor Day weekend [laughs] oh, let me check my calendar… no plans!
AP: Was that the first time you were in contact with someone from Boston Calling?
LW: So we formed in 2020 during lockdown. We did not know how to play our instruments and learned how to play together. About a year into informal band practices, Hava found Peter Boyd on LinkedIn…
HH: I’m just like, this would be funny if we reached out to him.
LW: We barely knew how to play, we sounded like total garage-
CG: You guys sounded great! I wasn’t in the band yet.
LW: So we messaged Peter and he responded!
HH: He was like “oh yeah, we’re full this year but if someone drops out, I’ll let you know.” So we created a Google calendar event annually that was to annoy Peter Boyd.
LW: Not annoy, to remind!
AP: A gentle nudge.
MS: A circle back.
HH: So year after year after year we did.
MS: I think he picked the right year.
HH: Absolutely agree.
LW: I think we showed up [to perform at Boston Calling] at the right time. We’ve been building at this pace for the right moment. We have enough songs.
AP: Which is your favorite song to perform?
LW: It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I think my favorite is “he’s dead” because it’s so fun to play on the base. I just jump around and feel really locked in.
MS: And we do die differently every time we play that song, which I would say is also extremely fun, it’s really good to die on stage ya know?
CG: I like playing “sponge time” because the guitar part becomes kind of stratospheric and I just play it as fast as I can. There was an incarnation of the set list where it was second to last instead of last and I was not able to play the last song cause I had just left it all on the field.
HH: I like “he’s dead”. I think it’s the moment where we show our silliness in the set, which is really important to our ethos but I also like “fingerprints”. I think it’s really tight. I think we’ve gotten into a place with the song where we’re just listening to each other and locked in and it feels like an explosion of sunshine, and the sun came out during it today so that felt good.
AP: You had a nice moment where you got to sort of take in the sunlight.
HH: Ooh, I didn’t realize that happened. That’s great!
AP: If you could bring anything to the festival, or if you had your own sidebody fest, what would that look like? Latrell James said he would bring a basketball court or a hacky sack contest.
LW: We would bring Latrell for sure.
MS: A soccer field for sure. We play pickup soccer every Sunday in Somerville.
LW: I would have a stand-up comedy stage, like if you need a break from music, it can be overwhelming for three days.
HH: I think I would have workshops. I love when I go to festivals and they have an opportunity for learning something. You can see a band perform, but maybe they also teach you a craft. I wonder what sidebody would teach?
AP: How to make your costumes? Not that you made them yourselves, but more so how to fit into your vibe.
MS: We really do want to shout out our costume designer, her name is Emma Fritschel.
LW: She really helped us bring this entire vision together.
MS: We’ve been working with her for a really long time. She made this [choker] for me last night. I texted her saying “I have a vision, please help”. She’s just incredible.
AP: They’re definitely eye-catching and they stick with you.
CG: There’s something about playing a festival, this is only our second one, but people aren’t coming here because they know who you are. They need to find out who you are and the moment people see us together, they know who we are.
LW: Someone just said they came to see us because they saw us in line and they saw Cara’s hat.
HH: Wait, I’ve heard three people say that, they saw us on stage and they were like oh that looks curious and they leaned in. Just because of the visual image and the story. What’s really impressive about what Emma did is she was able to tailor the concept to each of our styles.
LW: She got it immediately. We had one call with her and she wrote a short story about us to help her imagine the story behind the costumes and I was like this story is on point. I didn’t know her that well but she totally gets it.
MS: I wanna say, I agree with Hava about the workshops. I think that Boston Calling is really special to have a local stage, not a lot of festivals have that and we feel really grateful to have this opportunity. Something about that that you could expand on is that anybody can do this, anybody can make music and make art and we have all these crowds of people that are into music and we could welcome them into it.
LW: A youth stage!
MS: That would be so sick!
AP: A lot of people go to a show and can’t even fathom how to get on stage, but to hear you all say that four or five years ago you were just sitting in your apartment and wanted to make music and now four or five years later you’re sharing a bill with one of your childhood idols, it’s amazing how it happens and it would be cool to share how.
LW: Time and a dream, that’s all you need [laughs].
HH: I think the lesson is just showing up overtime. Like there’s no other nut to crack. Just show up.
MS: Just taking the silly dream like, oh yeah we’ll meet up. We’ll play on these instruments. We don’t know how to play but yeah, we’ll play Boston Calling. We just showed up.
AP: Since silliness and whimsy has come up, who would you say is your inspiration when it comes to weirdness?
CG: We love The B-52’s.
AP: A lot of “Rock Lobster” going on here.
HH: Each other!
MS: We’re long friends, we’ve been friends for almost 20 years. I would say a lot of our friends who make music inspire us. We’ve been in a community of music makers since childhood. Three producers on our latest tracks are all childhood friends. Zachary Levine Caleb, Patrick Colin Walsh and Dylan Grossman. I went to elementary school with Pat. Zach is an amazing musician. Dylan is an amazing sound designer.
CG: Past & present, like when I first moved to Boston, I would go see Krill, Speedy Ortiz, Kal Marx…
MS: Fun-fact, our cowbell is gifted from Luke Pyenson, former drummer for Krill.
CG: But like when I was 22 I would go see these bands, and now it’s cool to realize that you can just do it yourself.
LW: I would say Tom Tom Club is another big influence for us, and for me personally, Talking Heads.
HH: I was just gonna say that our videographer Jonah David has been taking videos of us since we started. I was in an a cappella group with him in high school. He was the beat boxer, that’s how I met him and now he’s followed us on this journey. It’s just really cool.
MS: When I was in college, I took a performance art class that changed my life with professor Gretchen Berg. We were assigned a book about performance art and I picked it up and read a chapter about Laurie Anderson. I looked up her early performance work and it changed my life. Seeing how somebody could hit their body percussively and seeing performance as an all encompassing experience.
LW: One more, it’s gonna be really obscure. But my mom just came up to Martha and told her that she was like Nina Hagen. A deep cut from my childhood, she’s a German punk rocker from the 80s.
MS: *imitating Lena’s mother* “You have so much aura, you remind me of this artist, Nina!” She pulls out her phone and shows me these pictures of this German witch who is incredible. I can’t wait to dig into that later.
AP: So what’s next for you guys? What’s coming up for the rest of the summer?
LW: We usually take a break over the summer for various reasons. But we have a one week artist residency in Maine in September so that will be our reunion. Spending a week in the woods, making music & see what happens.
HH: One thing we talked about spending some time doing there is clowning.
MS: I wanted to say one thing about the hotline. We shared the hotline during the show, it’s 617-564-1180, this is the sidebody hotline. It’s a continuation of the set, people can leave a message with their most strange or funny Boston story or whatever they wanna share and we’re gonna turn them into a song. We’re already getting some fun messages.
CG: We do have one show in the fall, we’re playing with She Boom, they are a post-menopausal, Brazilian-inspired feminist drumming group and we are super excited. It’s in November at The Burren.
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