Oregon Music News

In a city defined by collective diversity, Kelli Schaefer is one of the quintessential Portland artists, unwavering in her mission to express herself through whatever artistic direction necessary. Armed with a powerful, emotive voice, an ability to both tear her electric guitar apart and subtly patter over it, and the support of Jeremiah Hayden on drums and Kris Doty on bass, who willfully take her songs to torrential peaks and isolated shells of silence, Schaefer defies labels and reaches into the deepest and darkest spots in our soul, playing with a life-affirming passion that is, simply put, excruciatingly beautiful.

Part of the Amigo/Amiga family, Schaefer and her band live in the same community as Drew Grow & The Pastor’s Wives. And like them, Schaefer exists in a world defined by uncertainty, soul-searching, and unending love, all of which she brings to light through introspective lyrics, restless and meticulously detailed music, and live shows that barrel over anyone in sight. Unforgivably under-reported, Kelli Schaefer is the kind of artist that, once discovered, will surely explode. For now, however, she remains one of many young artists scratching and clawing for exposure. Yet unlike the multitude of unknown bands out there, Schaefer is really, really fucking good.

Oregon Music News met with Kelli, Jeremiah and Kris on February 20th at Holman’s Bar. For over two hours we discussed Kelli’s voice, her approach to writing songs, their musical community, non-traditional recording methods, their debut LP, Ghost Of The Beast, the combination of noise and melody, whether or not Andre Miller is the best or worst player on the Trail Blazers, along with a host of other topics. The following interview comes from a lengthy conversation over beers.

When did you start to write songs?

Kelli Schaefer: I started writing when I was fifteen I think. That was when I got a guitar. I don’t really remember how I learned to play guitar; I don’t really remember much about that time.

Do you still play some of those songs?

KS: Um, no. It might be a little embarrassing to play them again.

How long have you guys been playing together as a trio?

KS: Probably solid for about a year. More seriously since the last tour, which was…

Jeremiah Hayden: October…

KS: Kris joined later on. It was me and Jeremiah for a while, and then Kris joined like six or eight months ago.

Kris Doty: I had played on your recordings, but didn’t, I guess, “join the band,” until the last tour.

JH: The first time we tried to play together, we tried to jam and we both got really frustrated because we don’t jam. We played for like twenty minutes (laughing) and then decided we should just watch a movie instead.

KS: I had never understood the natural progression that most of my friends who play music went through, in the sense of learning to play guitar, writing songs, and forming a band. I played by myself for a long time because I thought the whole band thing had passed me by, and I was terrified to play with people because I didn’t jam.

KD: (laughing) Luckily you met people who don’t jam either.

So when did you guys figure out you had something?

KS: When I was, I think 21, Drew [Grow] dragged me to the studio and recorded my first EP, which was, I think, four songs. Jeremiah, who plays drums for Drew was there and we just had him record some parts for my songs. I think the first show we played was shortly after that, and it worked much better because we actually had songs to play.

KD: I moved to town like a year and a half ago from Idaho. I immediately started playing with Drew, and since they all live together in the same house, just kind of started playing with Kelli here and there. After a while this just developed into them asking me to play a show, then to them asking me to be in the band.

JH: Yeah, as we started recording with Kris, we got to thinking that, well, we’re doing this as a two-piece, but seeing as those parts she plays became necessary live, wouldn’t it be great if that other part, which plays such an important role, were there? So we started having her come up for special release shows, but since Kris is such a kick-ass bass player, we just figured it’d be great if she always played with us.

It was definitely a bit mellower before she came on board. But as the songs progressed to a more rock sound, we realized we needed the bass.

Your music ebbs and flows through a multitude of genres and styles, and there really isn’t any one you could be pinned down in. Do you find this diversity difficult when you’re promoting your music?

JH: I remember being in Reno one time, and we stopped into this coffee shop where a friend of ours was working. And he was telling his co-worker about the show, and said, “yeah you should come down to see these guys tonight,” and the guy turned to her and said, “what do you play, acoustic, folky stuff?” And we were all really frustrated by that because we’d been hearing it a lot. There seemed to be this sense that since she’s like 25 and a girl, and plays guitar, that it’s just folk.

KS: It’s always everyone’s first assumption that I play folk. And I have nothing against folk, some of my favorite female musicians play acoustic folk. But the stereotype is so irritating.

KD: It’s so condescending to just assume that, “oh you’re a girl, so you play _____”

How would you guys describe your music?

KS: People seem to need to always put music in a genre. I think I wish that when people talk about what kind of genre it is, I would rather them just describe how it makes them feel.

JH: Yeah, we’re in this world where people are used to slapping an “organic” sticker on something, and then saying “sure I’ll buy that” without knowing if it actually is organic. I feel like, in our case at least, the music speaks for itself. I mean, I end up usually writing the press releases for us, and I try to put something in there about how, you know, this isn’t just a girl playing her guitar. That this music has some teeth.

KS: I think it’s easy to think about it all too much and go crazy because of it. In reality you should just keep playing good music, and hope the music speaks for itself in the end.

Did you ever have a point where you realized that in both your voice, your lyrics and the various styles you played in that you had something unique and, in all honesty. really special?

KS: I don’t know if there was a point, I just — this is going to make me sound like I have the biggest head in the world — I always felt like I could do anything with my voice.

KD: I promise Kelli doesn’t have a big head.

KS: (laughing) I always really just wanted to do something amazing with my life. It’s hard though when you have a gift. You know, I’ve never had to work at my voice.

I think the challenge though, is that when you get to a point where you feel like you’re not progressing anymore, you need to really work through that, because you don’t want to plateau.

When I started playing I was playing on the acoustic just because that way I could play shows at like pizza parlors and open mics. But as things progressed, and I had to start working harder to achieve my dreams, I started playing a bunch of different styles. And you can hear this on the record. So many of those songs are just all over the place, in so many different styles.

How did you come to the Amigo/Amiga label?

KS: I think that’s a question for Jeremiah, he’s the Amigo/Amiga guy…

JH: Amigo/Amiga was started based around both Kelli and Drew. It all kind of happened at the same time. We were trying to figure out a way to just get their music out there as much as possible. So it just worked out that we had two great artists, and we decided that it would be the best way to promote them, and, basically to let one flag fly for us.

When did all of this come together?

JH: August 2009? No, July 2009. So it’s still fairly new.

Can you guys tell me a bit about the process of recording Ghost Of The Beast? Some of these songs obviously were released as EPs over the last year-and-a-half. Did you guys look at this more as a compilation of what you’d done over the last year or so, or was there more of a thought put into the flow and the theme of it?

JH: (holds up two fingers then realizes the mic isn’t picking this up) Definitely flow and theme.

KS: A lot of these were released on EPs, but the way the EPs were scheduled, there were a lot of times where an EP was set to be recorded and a song hadn’t been written for it. So I’d write a song, then record a song, and then learn how to play it live.

Is that how you tend to write a lot of your songs?

KS: Yeah. I mean, they haven’t all been written that way. Sometimes I’ll take an idea from years ago, and then it will become something different by the time we record it. But, that’s the thing I’ve like about working with Amigo/Amiga is that there’s always something to do. I end up getting stressed out, knowing I have to have at least 10 songs before we go in for a recording, and that two or three may be throw-aways, but it just keeps me writing, which is good. The way we recorded last year, it kept me motivated to keep writing.

What are all of your thoughts on the album?

JH: The singles’ idea was simply just to keep people going, and to not have us lose our wallets on trying to put out an album. Plus, Drew and Kelli were really unknown, and so we were trying to spread some news about us via word-of-mouth and the music itself. That way, by the time the record came out, it was our hope people would actually care about Kelli, and about her music.

The whole process also gave people the opportunity to collect the music, to have the music, and, to want more music. I don’t know if it’s something we’ll do in the future, but it really worked for where we were at the time. We wanted people to get more out of the singles than just a high-res jpeg on their computer. You know, we’d been debating if we live in this “singles” world where people don’t care about albums any more, and so we said, we’ll try one or two songs at a time, and see where it goes. And now, knowing that people cared about the songs in the singles format, it’s great to see that people who have already bought all the singles, are now buying the album, because they want to hear them all together.

Tell me a little bit about the flow of the record. It’s interesting, I expected when I listened to it for the first time for it to start out with a more powerful song, which it didn’t. And that was something I really liked about it. What was the conscious choice about the order of the songs?

KS: The first song on the record, “The Fury,” is our newest song and one that we didn’t release on any singles. I originally thought it was going to go on the end of the record, but the more we listened to it, we realized that it was really powerful and really patient, and for whatever reason, it worked as the opener. The end of the song has this crazy noise thing going on, and that part kind of feels like you’re falling down the rabbit hole, and then it comes into “Ghost Of The Beast” and it’s this really organic sound. So I like the feeling of it as falling down the rabbit hole and then waking up in this weird, crazy land. And the middle of the record is really just the last year of my life.

KD: The last song then, like takes you back out into the world.

One thing I was thinking about, that I really like about the record, is that there are a lot of points in these songs where, had you made one choice, I may not have liked the songs, but I feel like there are a lot of almost irrational choices made on the record. A lot of these songs could be just pop/rock songs, and they could be very accessible, but then they’re not. What were your intentions when recording these songs?

KS: There’s a really cool moment in “Ghost Of The Beast,” Drew decided to scrape a shovel across the sidewalk, and then looped it. We were really trying in that song to just have these crazy noises going on in the background to add to the fact that it never lifted off.

KD: I remember that! we were doing some recording, and he got all excited and grabbed a shovel and went out to the alley to record it. He was like: “I got it!” and we just let him do whatever he was going to do.

JH: It works really well that we record in our basement, because it gives us the opportunity to mess around with random noises and things that wouldn’t normally be instruments. And it means that there’s no limit to what we’re trying to do with a recording. And any sort of experiment we make, influences further experiments and recordings, even if you don’t use that one.

KD: It’s fun to be recording and say, “What does this song need?” and then someone runs upstairs and grabs a belt, or like a frying pan.

KS: The other day I was in the kitchen and I was going to throw away this cast iron skillet because it had rust in it, and Kris said, “no no, throw some pennies in there, it will sound great!” (laughing) And then she brought it down to the basement for later use.

Do you ever feel like sometimes you have too much noise, or too many options that you have to reign yourself in so the song doesn’t become overwhelmed with noise?

KS: I think we try to go to that point, to get there, and then backtrack a bit to find the place the song needs to be in. But I really like getting to that place.

JH: You also have to go to great lengths in a recording to do something that’s really noticeable like that. I mean, like, on “Ghost Of The Beast,” we used the weirdest, most fucked-up mic-ing we’ve ever done, things were going through different amps, and we used a crappy mic on the drums, and we were boosting the levels, to try to get this crazy drum sound, and it ended up sounding really cool. But, if you’re not listening for that stuff, you’ll probably just think it’s a drum set. But for us, we were like, no way, this is mic’d under all these pillows!

KS: Yeah, and if you listened to just the drum track, it’d blow your mind, but on the recording, it’s just a really cool drum beat. But if we didn’t record it the way we did, it would be a totally different song.

JH: That part you were talking about in “Black Dog,” I think I started to play the beat in the opening half-time beat, but Kelli just kept saying to speed it up.

KS: Kris is so good at playing what should be in the song, yet we may not be able to explain it. That’s why I think the song has such a powerful bass line there, because she just knew how to make it work.

- At this point in the conversation, we all became increasingly distracted by the NBA All-Star Game on TV, and the conversation shifted for a bit to a basketball-related one. -

Who’s your favorite Blazer?

KS: Andre Miller

I was hoping you wouldn’t say him. He’s the only Blazer I actively root against.

KS: That’s it, I’m outta here! (laughing) No, but it’s funny, the only time I’ve ever been starstruck was when I got to meet Rudy Fernandez, Nicolas Batum and Andre Miller.

You really just have to love a team that loses half their line-up and yet they keep playing.

JH: They’ve certainly got a ton of heart.

It’s funny, you guys are probably the last band I would have expected to have gotten into a conversation about basketball with.

KD: (laughing) I never really understood the fact that all my friends who played music hated sports. I don’t really get why that’s such a widespread stereotype.

KS: All of us are really competitive people, so it’s pretty natural that we would be sports fans as well.

It’s really something unique to Portland, I mean the ’77 Blazers are one of the special championship teams, in how they beat that score-first Sixers team through passing and team unity.

KS: And we really are the best fans in the NBA.

Alright, I guess we should probably get back to the music…why don’t you tell me a bit about the songwriting process for you guys. Do you bring the songs to everyone, Kelli, and then everyone adds parts, or how does that all work?

KS: I rarely bring a song to them that isn’t finished. Mostly I’m pulling lyrics from one song, melodies from another, and putting them together. What I was doing for some time was writing a bunch of different songs with a similar idea in mind. Each of these songs would only have like one or two promising aspects to them, so I’d then take all my ideas and combine them into one song.

Drew has a lot to do with the production of the songs. He’s really an incredible producer. I’ve learned a lot about production from him. He’s really good at letting the song go where it needs/wants to go. I’ve learned to never hold onto an idea so tightly that I can’t just let it go.

KD: The songs are alive and they really have a mind of their own. I’ve heard that people who write novels say their characters end up writing the book themselves in some ways. We like to try to allow that with the music, especially during the recording process.

KS: You just can’t be a control freak. It will always turn out badly if you don’t let the song go where it wants to go.

Have you always been this free with your songs, or did you have to consciously work at letting the song go where it wanted to go?

KS: I think I have always been that way. When I went to record the first EP with Drew, I just trusted him so much, and I learned a lot from the way he did things. He would say the song needed something, and I just followed, and learned to do that myself. Some of the songs on the album I recorded and produced myself, and I’ve been getting more comfortable at doing that.

JH: There are a few songs on the record that initially were failures, but that we just kept experimenting with until we got them how we wanted them. You know, they wouldn’t sound right after the first couple recordings, but then we’d try them a third or fourth time, and they’d be just what we’d wanted all along. We just maybe didn’t know it. That’s part of throwing everything on the table and just going with it. We can tell if it’s not right, though.

KD: You have to not let your ego take over. If someone says they’re not feeling your idea, you just have to accept it and not get all upset.

So, are you guys always playing music together? Like, since you live in the same house, does that make it easier to just keep playing and keep tinkering with things?

JH: It’s not exactly like that. I think people might get the impression that we like don’t have a TV in the house, or that we’re just always in the basement recording. We definitely have to work with everyone’s schedule, and it ends up a lot of the time just being one or two people down there recording a drum part for a couple hours, or vocals, or whatever. What’s nice is the fact that we’re all in the same house, this makes scheduling things much easier and immediate. We don’t just leave the recorder going all day.

KS: I’ve actually done that before. I put a mic out on the front lawn with a sign saying, “be on the next Amigo/Amiga recording.” A lot of what people recorded was used towards the end of “Trinkets” on the album. There were two little brothers talking into it and I was in the house watching it all. But for the end of that song, which ends the record, we just got the idea to record a bunch of things from around our house. The cat’s in there, people talking…

JH: The thudding bass line is actually our washing machine.

“Trinkets” is a really interesting song on the record in that it has a really nice, a really sweet melody, but then it ends with such chaos and noise. What are your guys thoughts on the relationship between noise and melody in like a folk/rock song?

JH: Personally I love it. I was listening to this choir record a friend of mine brought to me last night. It’s really like a bunch of monks singing in a room. But we were talking about how they have to mic the room perfectly, because if they mic it in certain areas, like in the upper corner or something, these weird tones will happen. He was saying that the singers will actually try to sing with the weird tones in the room and sing that over the underlining melody, and how this creates a really interesting sound. But a lot of people try to get rid of that. You know, they put an engineer in a room, and they’re gonna make sure you don’t put the mic right there. They don’t want that weird overtone. But that’s the stuff I’m interested in. There’s something in the chaos within a melody, that you just can’t explain.

KS: That’s what we really get excited about when we’re recording, and we trying to lean into it as much as we can.

KD: Kelli will bring a song to us that’s really rich in melody and structure, but then as we’re recording it, you know, you try to let the song develop this life of its own, and you try to see how far you can take it, before it fish tails out of control, but even then, you see what comes out of that.

JH: And recording like that can inspire some interesting things live. Like when Kelli plays “Trinkets” live, we can’t do the ending that’s on the album, so she makes up a different ending. But who knows, maybe someday we’ll try to write an ending for it live and incorporate all that noise. That might make an interesting ending to a show, who knows?

KD: I think it all works towards our knowing that we ask a lot of our audience when they come to see us. You know, you’re not just going to see a cover band, like we’re working up on stage trying to make things happen that may not be what you want to hear, but if you’re really listening, it all fits the songs the way they should be.

KS: It can be scary for people sometimes.

JH: I think we’re really interested in figuring out where beauty meets with chaos in music.

KS: I think we’re also really curious about what’s next.

I find it interesting that you guys say you didn’t want to jam from the get-go, but a lot of what we’ve been talking about is jamming, that search for whatever is next through musical experimentation.

KD: (laughing) I know! We do kind of jam. I don’t think we could ever consciously jam on like ‘C’ though. You really can’t practice jamming. But when we’re on stage, sometimes we’ll maybe end up kind of jamming.

JH: We can jam as long as there’s a fear of failing. Cause then it’s fun. We could play for 45 minutes if we have that fear there.

KD: There’s something about trying to really get out there, and then bringing it in for a landing.

KS: It’s a rush.

JH: And the fact that you then ask yourself, “Did we land that?” I don’t know if there’s an answer to that.

KD: I think of it like stage diving. I look at every show like we’re stage diving. Not literally. But we put ourselves out there so much that the audience is either going to catch us or they aren’t. If they don’t, we just peel ourselves off the floor and go at it again. Hopefully people will catch us, but you don’t know.

KS: It’s important thought to not be afraid of beautiful sometimes. We played a show in a church a month or so ago, and that was something Jeremiah said before the show. Sometimes when I feel even the slightest bit uncertain I’ll want to go balls-to-the-wall, fucked-up punk rock. And it’s hard for me to sometimes hold back from going crazy and just enjoying the song.

KD: We played that show thinking that maybe the room is an instrument as well, and that you have to cater to that. That kind of approach can help you to mix things up a bit.

KS: One thing I’m working on is that I can fall back on punk rock really easily. It’s easy for me to play music that’s fucked-up in some kind of way. I’m really trying to accept that a song or a show can be really beautiful.

JH: It’s really easy sometimes when you’re on stage and things aren’t going well, to just throw a temper tantrum. (laughing) And, because you have an instrument in your hand, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. But in reality, sometimes you’re just throwing a temper tantrum.

KS: Yeah, that’s really hard to admit. (laughing)

JH: But again, that idea of beauty and chaos meeting….some shows will be a temper tantrum, but some shows should be, like a deep breath.

I just have one more question regarding a few of my favorite songs on the record: “Better Idea” and “Sister K.” Can you tell me a bit about what influenced these songs?

KS: So, if you want to get really personal, “Sister K” is about a friend of mine who I lived with for about a year while she was going through a horrible divorce, and she was a really, tragically awful alcoholic, and it was really heavy. But at that point in my life I was just in this really wonderful community of people who embraced everyone’s faults, and, sincerely, everyone was there for each other. So the song was just about support, the feeling of being there for you. And the people from the community actually all came over to the house and sang on the record, which was really cool.

“Better Idea” is just about this feeling in life that just irks me, which is when people feel like they don’t have a voice. Or, even more so, knowing they have one, but not having the strength to use it. Knowing that they have the better idea about something, but not fitting into society the way that everyone is supposed to, and feeling like no one is going to listen to them. And I’ve felt like that many times in my life. The second verse deals a lot with health issues, just because I’ve dealt with a lot of health problems in my life, and I’ve spent years in bed because of them. And it deals with spirituality as well, wondering if there is a God and, if so, why am I dealing with these things. But the song is basically about just raising your voice. Because I wish people had more courage to talk about what they believe.

Both of these songs are so different. “Better Idea” is almost starkly naked, and really awkward at times, and “Sister K” is so communal, how did they feel the first time you played them live?

KS: “Sister K” has always felt to me like my anthem. When I wrote that song, and we recorded it, I was coming into this feeling of, “I want to play electric guitar, and I want to turn it up, I want to scream,” and I was really coming out of my shell. The more and more we play it live, the better it works, and we’re finding we can play it more the way it should be played. It’s just a classic punk rock song.

And, “Better Idea” has actually gotten more personal. It’s slower and actually more uncomfortable. It’s hard to sing, “I’ve got the better idea” in front of people, especially with no other music behind me. But there have been times when I will take off my guitar and just sing it straight with no instruments, because I feel sometimes like I can’t get personal enough.

Are all your songs written from a personal viewpoint? Are they all about your life?

KS: Totally personal, all of them are. I would love to get to a place where I could write from a different perspective and have just music be for music’s sake, but it’s really hard for me to get the same energy that way.

When’s your guys’ next show here in Portland?

KS: March 5th at The Artistery. It’s our record release show for Ghost Of The Beast. It’s a friend of ours’ venue; it’s all ages and it’s getting shut down, which is a total bummer. It’s been open for ten years and it’s one of the only all-ages venues in Portland that consistently has great shows. It’s really tiny and has this sort of family/communal atmosphere to it. We really wanted a chance to play there before it closed down, so it works out really well for us.

Kelli Schaefer will play at The Artistery on March 5th. Aan and Campfire OK will open. Tickets are $6 in advance and $8 at the door. The show starts at 8pm, and is all ages.