SAM DINGMAN: And now we bring you the next installment in our Tiny Desert Concert series. Today we’re featuring a band called New Misphoria.
New Misphoria is a two-piece ensemble featuring guitarist and lead singer Lee Parada and drummer Bella Crump.
They joined us for a conversation and performance at Stinkweeds. I began our interview by asking Lee where she gets her ideas.
LEE PARADA: I don’t really sit down to write. It’s more of like a reaction to something happening in my life that feels like it needs the space to be processed.
SAM DINGMAN: Was music always the way that felt best to you to do that?
PARADA: Yeah, I think so. I wrote my first one of my first songs when I was in fifth grade, and it was called “Broken Hearted.”
DINGMAN: In fifth grade?
PARADA: Yeah. Music has always, always been the way that I move through those feelings.
DINGMAN: Tell me more about what you mean by that.
PARADA: I get like, I don’t know. Love feels like a song to me in and of itself. And I think when I experience romance — good or bad or everything in between — I can, like, hear the music I associate with those feelings. Like, while it’s happening. And so if it comes to an end, I finally get to take all of what I heard in my head the whole time and put it into words.
DINGMAN: Oh my gosh. So is that a sense of comfort for you? Like the idea that no matter what happens, you know there’s like a song that might come out of it?
PARADA: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I think it’s OK if it doesn’t go as I wanted it to, because it’s an opportunity for me to grow into myself through my own art.
DINGMAN: Wow. Can I ask you, if I may, at least in the songs that I have heard of yours so far — in “Acronym,” you sing very directly, “I’m trying, I’m trying.” But it seems like trying and the sense of effort that love takes, that romance takes, the uncertainty about whether to really let yourself go with it or hold yourself back from it seems consistent in your lyrics. Is that something you’re thinking about consciously?
PARADA: It’s so conscious, and it’s cool that you notice that because I think I have a habit of not always being able to go with the flow if it’s like my heart on the line. And so when I talk about, in that song specifically, like “I’m trying.”
I think when I wrote that song I was 19, and I’m 25 now. So it’s been around for a long time. That was at a time that I really was trying to prove myself. And if you listen to kind of like the evolution of some of my lyrics, it changes and it and it becomes less of, “I’m trying” to like “I tried” or like, “I gave it what I could, and I’m OK that it didn’t pan out.”
DINGMAN: Yeah. Bella, let me ask you, when you’re gonna put drums to a song that Lee has written — well actually, let me back up. Is that how it works?
BELLA CRUMP: Lee definitely comes to me with songs that she’s written, and it is kind of a funny joke within our friend group that something happens in Lee’s life, and “Oh, there’s going to be a song about this.”
When Lee brings me a song, it’s usually mostly finished, but we’ll sort of work on little dynamics and intricacies of the instrumentals together.
DINGMAN: OK. Well, so that makes me want to ask something. Because something I’m always interested in when you see duos where it’s just guitar and drums and vocals, is that the drums are having to do this kind of interesting thing in my opinion — and please tell me if you disagree — where you’re obviously providing the rhythm, but in a way you’re also kind of a harmony instrument.
Does it feel that way to you as you’re doing it?
CRUMP: It definitely does feel that way. When I’m playing the drums, it’s sort of like each specific drum in a drum kit that I’m using provides a certain timbre and a certain resonance that adds to each note and each chord. It definitely feels like it all comes as one, once the drums are added.
Drums are sort of like a form of meditation for me. I almost get lost in them, in a way, when I’m doing it.
DINGMAN: A form of meditation. Can you say more about that?
CRUMP: Absolutely. Each drum having a certain vibration sort of has an effect on my brain and my body that makes it feel like I’m almost transcending and being relieved of my anxieties.
DINGMAN: So that reminds me of what you were saying, Lee, in your songwriting about how if you’re going through a difficult experience, you know that there is a song that will come out of it that will kind of help you integrate it or process it.
Can I ask you in the vein of what Bella was just saying, something again, that I noticed about your guys’ songs is that on the guitar you’re mostly playing rhythm lines. You’re not playing like big, melodic lead lines. And you guys leave a lot of space for Bella to kind of, like, move around the kit and create a kind of lead line, sort of, in the music.
Was that something that was just there from the beginning, or have you kind of found that through collaboration, and how does it interact with your lyrics?
PARADA: I think I used to write in a way that wasn’t really considering anything else, which was great. You know, it’s nice to just write totally intuitively, and I still do that in my own way. But now when I write, I’m always thinking of her because I understand that her drums will form the song into what it is.
CRUMP: I’m a very emotional drummer, I feel like. Where you wouldn’t think of drums as holding a lot of emotion, but I feel like Lee’s music has really impacted the way I play as well.
DINGMAN: All right. So we’re going to listen to one of your songs. What are you going to play for us?
PARADA: We’re going to play one of our songs called “Reflective Skin.”
(New Misphoria plays “Reflective Skin”)
DINGMAN: As I understand it, New Misphoria was not always just the two of you. There were other members previously. I could imagine a scenario where a band that has — I don’t know how many it was originally. Was it four?
PARADA and CRUMP: Four.
DINGMAN: OK. I could imagine a band that has four people going down to two and then thinking like, “All right, well, we’ve got to find two more people.” In your guys’ case, you were like, “I think we’ve actually found our right number.” What was that realization?
PARADA: Not that this is a bad thing in any way, but the previous two members were both men. And I think that so much of what I write about, especially in the vein of romantic experiences as a woman, is so unique to my experience as a woman. Having men in the band made me feel sometimes misunderstood, and not because I was being misunderstood.
But I was like, “This is like this thing that you could never really relate to.” And a lot of my music is about feeling mistreated by men in my life, and having just another woman on my team made me feel like, yeah, this feels right because it’s just you and I experiencing music as women.
CRUMP: That’s a good point. I feel like once it was just the two of us, we kind of had to learn how to fill space a little bit. We were able to kind of guide each other.
PARADA: Yeah. Also having you, I don’t think it’s about necessarily being a duo. I think it’s about being us.
DINGMAN: This duo.
PARADA: This duo. I couldn’t imagine it being something that could be accessed just by being in a two-piece. It’s that I am encouraged to experience my life through music because of Bella.
I feel things really heavily, and I know that Bella does too. And I think that as two people who really experience the weight of the world in a very real way, the dynamics come from the safety to experience everything through each other.
DINGMAN: So there’s a lyric, “I’m trying, but I had to restart. They never told me love would be so hard.” Something like that.
PARADA: “They never told me growing up would be so hard.”
DINGMAN: “They never told me growing up would be so hard.” I apologize.
PARADA: No, no. That’s fine.
DINGMAN: Based on what you said about having music as this kind of like emotional backstop or safety net. I could imagine a scenario where a songwriter like yourself might be worried about what would happen if a relationship goes well, or something happens in life that you don’t need the music to salvage the experience, if that makes sense.
PARADA: Yeah, yeah.
DINGMAN: Is that something you’re concerned about? Is that something you think about?
PARADA: All the time. All the time. It’s so real. I write about heartbreak and turmoil. That’s my thing. And when I’ve been in really beautiful relationships where I didn’t feel like I needed that outlet, I stopped writing music.
Yeah, I think about that all the time. And it’s been a very real thing of like, “Oh, I can’t write because nothing is going wrong.”
Oh my God. Yeah, yeah.
DINGMAN: Well, thank you both so much for talking to us. What are you going to take us out on?
PARADA: We’re going to play you out on our song called “Acronym.”
(New Misphoria plays “Acronym”)
