There is a huge variety of good bands in the Valley. One of them joined The Show in the studio. It’s Sister Lip, an all-female group that’s hard to categorize.
The band is releasing its new album, "Thanks for the Mondays," Friday and Saturday at Tempe’s Sail Inn.
Full conversation
CASSIDY: Hello, we’re Sister Lip. My name is Cassidy, and I play the guitar and the lead singer.
EMILY: My name is Emily, and I play bass.
ARIEL: My name is Ariel, and I play drums.
JENNY: My name is Jenny, and I play piano. It was hard because we wanted, what we want is an album. We want to make an album, but this is more, this is our EP. It's our welcome, it's our hello.
And we wanted to give a good range of what we are, like the rock all the way to the like, really jazzy, really rock, and like everything in between. So I think it was hard to choose, like, I lost some of my favorite songs off of it because they just they just they sounded too much like the other songs, which would have been great for an album, but not so great …
CASSIDY: We all have, like different styles, like Ariel, when we met you, you were a little more punky.
JENNY: It's like saying, you can't take, what is it? You can't take the city out of the girl, but you can take the girl out of the city, like stuff like that, like country, whatever it is, we all kind of have that where, like, we had a thing before, and you can't really, you can't take us out of that. But we've kind of put ourselves into something new.
CASSIDY: We don't want our sound to be the same in every sound. So I think that's why we're like that. We always like to take our time and be like, let's really think about what we could do to make this song different from our other songs. So as far as like …
ARIEL: But still like, when people hear they'll still know it's us, but like, it's not this, it's not similar, but they'll know. They'll know it's all the same vibe. Yeah, same vibe.
(Music)
GOLDSTEIN: Do people have different expectations? The fact that this is a female band, do they expect you to sound a certain way? And how often do you dash their hopes?
JENNY: We dash their hopes very often. This is Jenny, by the way. We get a lot of people thinking we're punk bands, because the all girl thing happens, I think in Arizona, at least, more in the punk scene than it does anywhere else. I think it's shocking when people find out that we are more on the rock or blues or jazz side, whatever they decide we are, at the end of the show.
We get almost all of the time when we play in a new place, on being like, “Oh, I saw you guys. And I just didn't expect you to be very good, but you guys are actually really good. Wow. You guys are really good for girls, like for girls you can play.”
GOLDSTEIN: You really hear that?
JENNY: Yeah, more often than you'd think.
GOLDSTEIN: Now, you guys are not easy to define in terms of what your music is. So how would you define it? How many different words would you use?
CASSIDY: We normally say like blues, spirit of jazz, like, because a lot of our chord changes are very jazzy. We do take solos. …
ARIEL: In there so people show up.
(Music)
GOLDSTEIN: Let’s talk a little bit about your inspirations. When we talked about the different types of music you like, a couple of, I don't want to say a couple of favorite bands from YouTube, but that sort of theme.
CASSIDY: Jeff Buckley is my man. But I also really listen to anything. Like I could listen to Black Sabbath, and I can listen to Nina Simone, like I also sing in a jazz combo at school. So just to, like, keep that vibe with this band, and also, like, bring in the rock.
EMILY: This is Emily. I love listening to old timey music. I love ‘70s, ‘60s rock and roll.
GOLDSTEIN: For some of us, that's not old timey, Emily.
EMILY: I love Buddy Miles. I love Etta James. She really gets me. I really get her.
ARIEL: My favorite band would be Tegan And Sara, and this dude from New York, Ryan Star, Crash Kings, Banana Gun. They're local. And …
WHOLE BAND: Just saying, We know you want to say it.
ARIEL: Taylor Swift, just gonna say it, Jenny?
JENNY: This is Jenny. I really love Regina Spektor. She was like my first influence. She went to the same college I went to. I played all the pianos just in case she touched them. She's awesome. I love Elton John and Billy Joel. I listen to a lot of piano music, so I'm mostly influenced by that. I really like Ben Folds. I've been listening to a lot more jazz lately, especially with this band. It's kind of opened up my mind to a lot of that stuff.
(Music)
GOLDSTEIN: Do you feel inspired by the local music scene? I mean …
WHOLE BAND: Yeah.
GOLDSTEIN: OK, so it's out there.
JENNY: People give it a bad rap because it's kind of sectioned off, but once you get in it, you almost realize that it just looks that way from the outside. There's a lot of family and a lot of nice stuff going on.
EMILY: There are so many creative people, yeah, making music in Phoenix, and we are so lucky to be friends with a number of them. And when we had a residency at Long Wongs in Tempe, a number of bands that we grew to love, played with us there, or have started off there, created bands through that place. And it was great for us to meet these fantastic musicians
If you’re in a band or know of one you’d like to hear on air, send us a note at [email protected].
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