Post-Show Parking Lot Interview with Lowertown

Lowertown was the last show that I had the pleasure to see at Treefort this year, and the Shrine basement was the perfect setting for the duo’s eclectic and powerful set. Lowertown’s magnetic stage presence solidified my status as a fan, and their music speaks for itself. I got to talk with Olive and Avsha about their headline tour so far, process, solo projects and upcoming music.

Michaela: I know you just started your tour… Do you have a favorite spot that you’ve hit so far or one that you're looking forward to?

Olive: Most of them honestly. It's been really blessed so far. Portland was fucking crazy yesterday.

Avhsa: Portland was sick.

Olive: Yeah. Also, today was fun because I got to do my first crowd surf…I'm just happy I got my first crowd surf in. Yeah, that was really fun.

Avsha: That was good. I'm just glad we got here and we were able to play the set in one piece.

Olive: Yeah, we literally pulled up, like we said before the interview, 10 minutes before, and had to throw open our suitcases in the parking lot here and pull out outfits. I was literally butt-naked in the van and was like, “Please, no one come by.” So that was really funny, but we’ve done that so many times that I wasn’t freaking out about it.

 Avsha: The drive from Oregon was so beautiful. It was like one of the most beautiful drives I've ever seen. It was so nice. I've kind of been the one driving most of the time. And yeah, it was crazy. It was surreal. It's such a different topography than the East coast. It was like, I don't know…it felt like I was in a dream world. But also, I was super tired.

Olive: We also got to go to the Redwood forest 'cause we had a day off in Portland, and that was so beautiful. And Avsha wasn’t there for it, but we went to this really awesome place called the Rimsky Korsakoffe house. And we had tea and desserts, and there was this old man playing classical, flamenco guitar. It was this little cute house. It was so sick. But that was a highlight as well.

Avsha: Yeah. I feel like the Portland one was really special. We just haven't really had the money ever to come over and do headline stuff in the West Coast but we've always wanted to do it, and the three shows in a row…

Olive: It's been bangers. Yeah. 

Avsha: I mean, we've done support here before, but we haven't ever had our own shows. It was cool to see like, who likes just us here.

Michaela: Do you guys have any songs on repeat in the car? Recommendations that you've been loving lately?

Olive: Yeah, we've just been getting into our rotation right now. 

Avsha made a massive playlist on Reddit for our fans to put in suggestions. So today we put it on, and it was all the suggestions from people who like our music. That was really cool. There's a lot of Avril Lavigne on there.

Avsha: Oh no, no. Avril Lavigne was me.

Olive: Oh really?

Avhsa: That was all me.

Olive: I was like, “That was sick that they put that on.”

Avsha: No, no, no. Oh, all of them in a row? That was all me… I really wanted “I'm with you.” I really wanted to hear it. 

Olive: I always listen to hella brown noise for tinnitus. That's my vibe. It's so fucking good. Also, yesterday I was listening to the Death Note soundtrack as we were getting ready. Season two is really good. Season two Death Note soundtrack…and Panda Bear.

Avsha: I'm excited to put my classical on. Also, a lot of Ludacris. A lot. I just really love Ludacris…Word of Mouf. I'm in a Ludacris mood. Word of Mouf is all the way through good. All the way through that.

Michaela: You mentioned your Reddit…I'm on there all the time. I commented on your page once being like, “I’m coming to Treefort with my student radio,” and you replied to it. I was like, “This is so sick. I should hit them up for an interview.”

Olive: Oh fuck yeah! I love Reddit. So fun. I'm honestly a big Redditor.

Michaela: Me too…With that,  I know you guys are also always on YouTube posting stuff early, like unreleased stuff. Being accessible to your fans and open in that way, do you think that changes the music? And is that important to you?

Olive: It’s really important. … We've had times in the past where we've been with labels or teams that have been more locked down about posting and teasing stuff and, I don't know… I'm more like, the Alex G route where he just writes music and posts it .

That's sort of how I came into writing music, was finding a bunch of shit on SoundCloud that was like demos and songs people half-wrote and just threw online. And that was what inspired me to write music. So I was like, “this is my favorite kind of music” which is literally like the most horribly produced music you'll ever hear.

That shit inspired me. Because I was like, if this is my favorite kind of music, I can probably write [it]. It's just unpretentious. And I feel like also, I'm really inspired by Fugazi, and they're all about like, “We're on the same level, we're all doing the same thing, we're all just one unit.” 

Lucie: We're all people.

Olive: We’re all people… And I feel like it connects me to people when I see that shit online. It's more intimate that way.

Avsha: I mean, that's how I started making music in high school. I would write a song and then take a picture of myself in my computer science class, and that would be my album cover on PhotoBooth…And yeah, we had like a brief period of time where we had to be a little bit more secretive with it and hold on to stuff, and I just get bored having to wait so long. I just wanna keep moving and not overthink things.

Olive: I think when you get bogged down, it just destroys art.

Avsha: We're also pretty antsy, so we like to put it out right away.

Olive: When it's not on your own terms, it sucks.

Avsha: I think we were rebelling a little bit. I don’t like to be precious about stuff.  It's better that way for me.

Michaela: It was so fun to hear some stuff from your new album. I'm so excited to hear it. I know you have some different instruments on there this time. Any others that we haven't seen yet that you can tease? Stuff that you're excited about on this one that’s maybe different from your other stuff?

Olive: We do. We have harmonica, flute and saxophone. 

 Avsha: We've been trying to do the flute one on this tour. We haven't gotten around to it 'cause we didn't have a lot of time. It's with a weird looping pedal that's sort of complicated. So we'll probably work that in halfway through. 

Olive: We have done Big Thumb, the harmonica, we've done Big Thumb, which for the last two shows has been awesome.

Avsha: I sing in that one. If we had a longer set time for today, we would've played it, but yeah. That one's really fun. 

Olive: We’re going classic. That's sort of how we used to write. There's a tambourine in the background…

Olive: There's a lot more duo singing and Avsha singing in this one, which is what we missed in the last one that we dropped. So I'm excited. I think people will fuck with it.

Michaela: I love seeing the covers that you guys do. I know you've done ‘Clementine’ by Elliott Smith, and a Daniel Johnston cover…If you could have any artist cover one of your songs, who would it be and which one?

Olive: Damn. I would never even think about that one.

Avsha: I mean, fuck it. Ludacris cover of ‘The Best Person You Know.’

Olive: Um, Radiohead covering ‘Waltz in Aflat major’, 

Avsha: Bro. That would actually hit, though. 

Avsha: Yeah. Um, can they be dead? 

Michaela: Sure.

Avsha: Okay... I guess Elliott Smith cover of ‘The Gaping Mouth’

Olive: Yeah…

Avsha: It feels kind of bad, it feels disrespectful to say he would come back to life to play our song.

Olive: Yeah. Maybe not. Maybe. Maybe he would fuck with us. I dunno. I’d fuck with him probably.

Avsha: Do y'all know Laurie Anderson?

Michaela & Lucie: Yeah!

Avsha: I feel like Laurie Anderson or something. I feel like it would be awesome. I love her so much.

Lucie: With like the Vocoder? Would she do it in a crazy way?

Avsha: Yes. And she'd make it crazy.  I met her a couple times when I was younger. I was so starstruck. Yeah. She's awesome…

Michaela: And I'm a big fan of both of your solo projects too…

Olive: Thanks!

Michaela: Insomniac is so awesome.

Olive: Thank you.

Michaela: I loved it…And The October Crow songs… ‘The Mug’ has been on repeat.

Avsha: Thank you!

Olive: It's so fucking good.

 Michaela: So good… with all of these different projects, is the process different? How do you find inspiration for each of them differently? Or is there a difference?

Olive: They're definitely very different. I feel like each project has a different world that it belongs in. Like, I think Lowertown is so special because it's only something that can happen when it's both of us coming together.

And there's obvious traits of both of our music in the collective music that we write. I think, separately, all of my Olivia O. stuff …it's like half of Lowertown. And it's a lot more intimate, the songwriting process. And a lot of it is, I feel less pressure around it. Where, with Lowertown, I feel like it’s the highest pressure, the highest stakes. It's the thing in my life that I've put the most time and energy into. I have the highest bar for it. And I also have another person….we have to negotiate and collaborate.

Avsha: Yeah, yeah. Collaborate and compromise.

Olive: And it's a bit more freeing at times doing solo stuff, 'cause I don't overthink it. I just write a song and I can track it and record it all myself. I've learned a lot about producing that way. And Insomniac was a whole different world that I've been wanting to create for the past three to four years, and I finally released the first project with that. That one's more experimental and a little bit more ambient and vulnerable, with less traditional songwriting. And I feel like it doesn't belong on Olivia O. I think it's its own world. So I just want to keep it separate and not make it confusing, you know?

Avsha: Yeah. Uh, I think for, for my stuff, I honestly, I kind of just like to make myself laugh a little bit. I've been finding other people to work with that have a similar way, where they kind of work to make themselves laugh. They just have such crazy brains.

Olive: You're just a goofball.

Avsha: I'm just a little goofball. I like to goof around and have fun… but for October Crow I worked with Mina Walker and Jack Haven.

Olive: Mina Walker, your girlfriend.

Avhsa: Mina Walker, my girlfriend, and Jack Haven, the acclaimed director. That's their debut. But they're such an insane, creative person. And they both work in this way where it's like, they think of something and then they start to laugh, and then they say something else, start to laugh. Eventually everybody is just like, “We're gonna record this right now.” and then we do it. And then that's it. So I've been trying to embrace that way of writing, so I'm thinking about it less… which is better than our depressing shit.

Olive: Yeah. Our depressing shit.

Avsha: That's where I get to be my…

Olive: Your cancer moon.

Avsha: Yeah, I get to brood. I'm brooding like 95% of the time, but the other 5% I'm giggling and having a great time and I'm jumping around.

Michaela: Love it…Do you have anything else you wanna shout out? I know you have your upcoming album, but anything else?

Avsha: Yeah, album. Did we say the name of the album? 

Olive: Ugly Duckling Union. 

Avsha: Ugly Duckling Union. Lowertown. 

Olive: We're dropping like solo music too, like soon-ish. It's coming. 

Avsha: Yeah, we've been writing solo… a little album that's on my own in the summer. 

Olive: And a piano album too, dude…And he's insane at piano.

Avsha: All Ludacris covers, obviously.

Michaela: Obviously… Some Avril Lavigne?

Avsha: Yeah, an “I'm withYou” cover… It's special. It's gonna be a special piece. So, yeah. Solo projects in the summer, album at the end of the year, in the fall. Boom.

 Check out Lowertown here.