Page 13 - ION Indie Magazine MarchApril 2018 Issue
P. 13
KO: Tour…to get out and play as many shows as possible. Even if all that you can manage is a three-day weekend
where you anchor it in the city that you live in and you drive to two other cities. I think that is the only way for
you to really understand what you are doing. So much of music has to do with everything outside of playing
your instrument. It has to do with how you perform and how you connect with people and how you read an
audience and how you deal with crushing blows -- like playing to two bartenders and a sound guy and the backs
of 5 people’s heads because they don’t like your music. It’s all part of growing and understanding what it is that
you think you want to do, because sometimes you realize that’s not actually what you want to do. Cause it looks
very glamorous and fun, but it’s an all-encompassing kind of thing doing any kind of art. You’re putting
something very personal out into the world and hoping that people are going to connect with it. And there’s no
one, no artist that everybody connects with. And so, I think that’s something that you learn…and you can also
learn to try and have fun even if you’re playing in a country bar and you’re a punk band and no one wants to
hear you.
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SS: Your 6 album “Whiplash Splash,” which I do love, by the way…
KO: Thank you…me too!
SS: How did you approach this different than the other ones?
KO: Well, I was pregnant with our second baby. We didn’t have any time at
all to write this one, and so we wrote it very much separately. Like Luis would
come up with instrumentals and then I would have like 15 or 20 minutes to
go in the studio while he held or paid attention to our first kid. And I would
go in there -- pregnancy hormones -- and scribble out some words and do like
a demo track. We kind of tagged each other in. We only had a couple months – I think it was 2 or 3 months that
we worked on it. We have a home studio that’s detached from our house in our back yard. And so, that was the
creative space. We would try to get in there…you know, a few times we got in there together…but it was
different. We were going through different things, too. You know, life changes when you have one kid when
you’re going to have two kids. Like, oh my gosh, we’re really a family. It’s easy to kind of drag one kid along as
your sidekick, but you know now it’s a little bit different. I think we were feeling all sorts of feelings of excitement
and concern. We were reminiscing a bit.
SS: Trepidation, maybe?
KO: Yeah, I think it’s going to be fun and sound happy like any Dollyrots’ record, but when you read and listen
in to our songs I think you can find something deeper if you want to. And so, I think a huge mix of emotions is
in that album.
SS: Because you are in rock and roll, how do you juggle being parents and also being on the road and doing
albums and these kind of things?
KO: It’s a little crazy. I mean, on the road it’s not so hard because we make sure we bring somebody to help with
the kids. That’s their one job so it’s more like there are three parents for two kids. Our whole crew has been
amazing. It changes a person, here and there, but we always bring people along that care about the kids and
can help us out when we need extra hands. It’s more of a family environment now when we’re on the road and
it’s a lot of fun. River loves it and I hope that Daisy will too. We’re going to do it while we can before school
starts, and we have to decide what we’re going to do then. You know, home life is definitely harder because
that job is fulltime. The cooking, the cleaning, the feeding of children and trying to keep them from killing
themselves or each other all day is kind of insane. So, Luis and I both play that role and then we both do the