In Conversation: Miesha & The Spanks
In Conversation: Miesha & The Spanks
Ty Vanden Dool
Calgary-based duo Miesha and the Spanks made waves in 2018 with their lauded album Girls Girls Girls, earning such accolades as the YYC Music Awards’ Rock Recording of the Year, Single of the Year and Female Artist of the Year, as well as charting on Earshot and the Indigenous Music Countdown… and don’t forget about a spot on the Cups N Cakes list of the “Best Albums Of 2018”. They have also made the cover of Beatroute Magazine and played multiple festivals across the country. Now vocalist/guitarist Miesha Louie and drummer Sean Hamilton look to continue their success with this year’s anticipated Singles EP, a collection of hard-hitting garage rock songs written and recorded during the tumultuous months of 2020 with celebrated (and then Lethbridge-based) producer Leeroy Stagger. I had the opportunity to talk with Miesha about some of the things that went into the making of this EP.
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Ty Vanden Dool: Due to the pandemic, obviously going to somewhere like Brighton to record again is no longer on the table, but being based in Calgary means you probably have access to the large number of producers, engineers and studios that a big city has to offer. So what made you decide that coming down here to Lethbridge to record with Leeroy Stagger was the way to go for these songs?
Miesha Louie: Leeroy I’ve known for a long time. I was in the Peak Performance Project the year that he won, so I’d say that was 2015. He used to be in this punk rock band called the Staggers in Victoria, so he really comes from a rock and punk rock kind of place… The first week we were in the studios it was right before COVID hit, so COVID didn’t influence where we were recording. We were actually lucky that we ended up choosing something nearby, ‘cause we wouldn’t have been able to finish it if it was anywhere else, in the country even probably, right? Like, at least Lethbridge was a short drive. So we went with Leeroy because we figured that he would kind of rein us in a little bit with our sound… We thought that if we dialed it back and made it a little less heavy… it would be kind of a gateway into some more accolades with our music; we could go a little further with our careers. And so we kind of thought that was what would happen, but Leeroy is such a guy who’s all about the integrity of the music - he’s like, “No, you’re a rock band. We’re gonna get louder.” And we’re like, “Oh, OK.” And I’m glad we did it that way because it wouldn’t have been as, like, honest of an [EP] if we had gone the other way. So I’m glad that our choice ended up putting us in a spot where our music was more “us” than it ever would have been, you know? So we chose Leeroy because yeah, we thought that he would, like, clean it up a little bit, still kind of keep the heart of things, but instead keeping the heart of things meant that we got louder and a little wilder, which was really fun.
TVD: You’ve named influences of your sound like the Runaways, the Stooges and the Gits, but sometimes what I like to do as an artist is take elements that I like from specific songs. Were there ever moments like that for you when writing and recording these songs?
ML: In “Unstoppable” when we added the keys… Leeroy… was totally going for a Rocket from the Crypt keys kind of sound in there, which, like, is awesome and we love Rocket from the Crypt. So that was maybe unintentional on our end, but Leeroy brought that out for us… I definitely write like that sometimes, but this EP I didn’t really so much. Some stuff ended up coming out more in production than in the writing. It was similar when we added the keys in “I Don’t Care”; that’s kind of a Stooges keys kind of thing. And so yeah, we didn’t really have that in mind. I definitely have written like that in the past, but this time… I got a little more caught up in the words and the vocals than in the music, and Sean actually carried some of the music influences a little bit more this time. It was funny, when we were doing the “Webisodes” thing that we just released the first episode for [Episode 3 was released last week], when we came to talk about the music I was like, “Geez, what even happened with the music in there? Like, I just, we just did it.” [Laughs] It was kind of a funny way to go but like, Sean, he kind of has more of that sort of stuff. So yeah, those influences I think kind of just carry in the back of our heads; we don’t really consciously think of them too much anymore.
TVD: As people who follow the band know, you have mixed First Nations and European ancestry, and the personal struggles associated with this are addressed in “Mixed Blood Girls”. Are there also musical elements in your songs inspired by traditional Secwépemc music and culture, or the music and culture of other Indigenous Canadian peoples?
ML: That’s something that I haven’t dived into, actually… I don’t even know that many Indigenous, like, rock bands really. Like, Redbone, but I wouldn’t say that we take anything from Redbone. But traditionally, like traditional music, I didn’t really grow up with that. I didn’t grow up going to Powwows or participating in that stuff. That was part of my mixed Indigenous reality, and the struggles that I grew up with was that I didn’t really get to do that because my dad kind of held me back from a bit of that stuff. And so, like, that’s not really a part of who I am right now. It’s kind of this thing I’m actually seeking out right now: I’m learning my language, I’m trying to collect with my local Band more back in the East Kootenays to get some of that stuff now actually, so I can get my kids into that if they choose to be interested in that. But for me, I don’t really come from that place, so to use it now would feel a little phoney… It wouldn’t feel like me too much yet. But… in one of the next albums for a solo project, I’m hoping to explore some more of that as I kind of integrate that into my life a little bit more first.
TVD: What was the concept behind the music video for “I Want Fire?” Was there an intentional irony in filming it in the cold of winter?
ML: We wanted to try and get kind of a fire/ice thing going for it once we kind of picked the cabin and the lake for the locations. And we wanted to have a lot more fire, but it was so cold that the torches wouldn’t even, like, stay lit. It was ridiculous, and we couldn’t keep staying out there longer to keep lighting them. It was so crazy, but we were trying to get, like, an ice/fire thing going on. Nothing to do with Game of Thrones, but I’m probably sure that’s where it was kind of coming from, ‘cause we’re such Game of Thrones nerds. [Laughs] And the concept… kind of grew. Like, the original idea was to play on the ice; that was kind of where it all came from and then we just started spiraling from there, ‘cause I had the cabin and was like, “Well, should we use the cabin while we’re already there?” And then it turned into, like, “Should it be kind of a horror kind of idea, like a Cabin in the Woods sort of thing?” And then we had to kind of rein it in to what we could actually produce with, like, a low budget and, like, a really small team and also, with it being COVID, keeping it super small… We had a lot of funny ideas flying around with, like, monsters outside and, like, having more, like, possession stuff happening in the cabin. And then we also realized the song’s only three minutes, so like, “What are we gonna do in these three minutes?” So we just kind of went with, you know, possession where we’re, like, summoning the demons of rock ‘n’ roll to help us kill it. [Laughs] So that’s kind of where we ended up going with that.
TVD: One of the songs on the EP is titled “S.O.S.”, but it isn’t a cover of the ABBA hit of the same name. My question here is can we expect to hear Miesha and the Spanks cover ABBA someday in the future?
ML: [Laughs] Ooh, I wonder. Maybe. I’ve been thinking, like, I mean, not being able to go play shows as much anymore - it’s fun that we have this little webseries going on, but… we really only have content leading up to the EP, and then what are we gonna do? So we’ve been talking about doing, like, covers, like having a monthly webisode where we do covers and whatever else we can think of that’s fun and entertaining to kind of keep connecting. But ABBA, I could put that on the list. I don’t know which one we would do. [Laughs]
TVD: The closing track “We Were Never Meant to Be Alone for This Long Together” tackles the frustrations a lot of us are experiencing having to spend most of our time cooped up at home for the past year. In light of that, was there a therapeutic element to writing and producing this EP?
ML: For sure. Like, for that song in particular it definitely helped make it feel like a joke and more light-hearted… We were finding more and more at band practice we were just, like, ranting about our partners, who we, like, love very much but no one’s supposed to be, like, that alone with someone for that long, you know? It’s totally the smallest things driving each other crazy. So writing about it like that and making it a little bit silly while also, like, legitimately ranting, totally was therapeutic to do that. And, you know, “I Want Fire” has elements of that as well, which was nice to just, like, get it off your chest a little bit… I think those were the two main ones that were in that kind of vein of stuff and yeah, I would say it was totally therapeutic. Being able to make the [EP] at all, that was therapeutic too, ‘cause by the time we got back into the studio end of July, like, we’d been not doing anything for months, right? … So as soon as Leeroy felt, like, safe about it and we were allowed to go down there and do it, it was like, “Oh my God, we’re doing something! Like, we haven’t been doing anything for so long!” So creating it and then having this work to do, having stuff on the radio, like… not being able to tour when you’re a touring band is super hard, so having at least new music and stuff going on has been a bit of a savior.
TVD: One final question: Since the Spanks in the name “Miesha and the Spanks” consists only of Sean, how many spanks is Sean made of?
ML: [Laughs] Sean is the most recent Spanks. When I started the band, I wasn’t really sure how many backing members I was gonna have; I just wanted to get my own project rolling and I figured it would be a three-piece at least, and the very first EP does have bass and drums on it. But when it came time to play live the bassist couldn’t make it, and we played as two and it just worked, so I just kind of kept it as two for a long time. And so we like to say that the Spanks is every drummer that came before him plus him, everyone who’s guested on a record, the whole team. So Sean is I think, like, the ninth drummer Spanks. [Laughs]
Look for the Single EP to drop this Friday, April 16th. Pre-Order in the player below.