INTERVIEW BY DANNY R. PHILLIPS
St. Joseph, Missouri has never been considered a musical hotbed, and the odds are stacked against it becoming the next Seattle, Omaha or Athens. However, the birthplace of jazz great Coleman Hawkins and the Pony Express has been getting some press of late thanks to a one-guy-two-girls rock band named Alice.
For the better part of five years, the trio of guitarist, bassist and vocalist Rachel Hoffman, drummer Bobby Floyd and bassist, guitarist and vocalist Erika Pontius Foulk has been building a strong local following with its hypnotic melodies, well-crafted songs and more than passing comparisons to 1990s alt-rock female-fronted groups like the Breeders and Veruca Salt.
We sat down with the threesome in the kitchen of Floyd's downtown St. Joseph home to discuss Alice's upcoming album, their Saturday CD-release show at the Brick, their recent in studio performance on KRBZ and the music scene up in St. Joe.
Phillips: Is the name Alice a nod to Alice in Wonderland or do you just like The Brady Bunch?
Foulk: When we started the band, Bobby wasn't in the band yet and Rachel and I definitely wanted a feminine feel to it, but we had just recently watched Alice Through The Looking Glass and we were reminded of the creepiness and scariness of things you watch as a kid. The name felt creepy, dreamy and familiar, and that's how we wanted our music to sound like.
Bobby, how do you feel when people hear about Alice and assume it's an all girl band?
Floyd: Well, it's like you want to joke about it and make as much fun of it as you can. But it is a female-fronted band so that's what people are going to say and what they'll assume.
Foulk: It definitely has a feminine vibe to it but I think Bobby's OK with it. He's secure enough in his manhood to deal with everything that comes along with it.
Floyd: I also like playing in the band because the girls are pretty. [Laughs.] It brings women into the shows, which is fine.
How long have all of you been in a band together?
Hoffman: Almost five years. I think it was February 2005 that we had our first show. We had just started, but Bobby played our very first show out with us.
Foulk: Rachel and I just started jamming together and messing around with the concept of "Hey, let's try and start a band."
Hoffman: A few people came and sat in with us as drummers just so we could practice, but once Bobby played it felt right.
Foulk: When Bobby joined, it was kind of on a trial basis, really. He had other things going on, busy with another band, so he volunteered to jam with us and it was such a good fit that immediately his drumming changed the way we heard our own music.
How'd it go on the Big Fat Morning Buzz? (Click here for live MP3s.)
Floyd: It was so comfortable. Very cool.
Hoffman: I was really nervous that morning, but once we got there it was fine.
Foulk: It was like hanging out with super-crazy friends. It was kind of cramped and there was an issue of timing, getting set up, all of that but once we were on it was very cool. There were burlesque girls in the room with us.
Floyd: It was Afentra's birthday that day. There's was a lot going on. It was a great day to be in there.
Foulk: Afentra is the same on air as she is off. So warm and inviting. She gave us all hugs and kisses. She's just a great person.
Describe the Alice live experience.
Foulk: Maybe hypnotic. Hoffman and I don't move around a lot because we both sing so we're focused on playing and singing. We're kinda glued to our microphones in a sense. I would say its kind of a shoegazing type of thing.
Floyd: That's what I would say. And they just kind of leave me out. [Laughs.]
Hoffman: I've heard from people that we do a lot of off-beat harmonies and dissonance.
Foulk: But we also do have some silly, crazy, dance-your-ass-off songs from the early days of Alice. So when we play in St. Joe we get a lot of our core fans that come to the show and dance.
Speaking of St. Joe, is the music scene there underrated?
Hoffman: It depends on who you're talking to. There are a hell of a lot of great musicians here.
Floyd: There are definitely more good musicians than there is a "scene" so to speak.
Foulk: I think the musicians in St. Joe are far, far underrated. It's more like people having amazing jams in somebody's garage.
Floyd: It's like here, right now in my house as we're doing this interview there are great musicians playing upstairs all day, all night.
Hoffman: There are just lots of musicians with lots of styles coming together to play.
Floyd: People, it seems, are more excited about seeing a drag show or a cover band than they are seeing an original band playing their own stuff.
Hoffman: There are shows every weekend.
Floyd: There are amazing people doing amazing things every weekend in St. Joe. People just need to come out and see it. Be a part of it.
You're having a cd release party for your debut disc at The Brick on October 17th. Why have the show in KC instead of your home base of St. Joe?
Foulk: Actually, we're gonna have one each because we have a lot of friends, family, fans, coworkers in Kansas City. We're trying to draw in new ears to our music. In St. Joe we get a good turn out but it's the same turn out, the same faces. We'll have the big party here. I think there are a lot of Alice fans that don't know they are yet. [Laughs]
What's the name of the record?
Hoffman: We've kicked around a couple ideas but I think we've settled on Curiouser. "Curiouser and curiouser" kind of encompassed the whole Alice experience. From the first songs to where we are now.
Where did you record it?
Hoffman: We started at Cypher Sounds and finished at Chapman. We had the same engineer, George Hunt, throughout. He left studios and we went with him.
Where do you get the inspiration for your songs?
Foulk: I would say real life, dreams, the lives we wish we had. Some of our lyrics are spacey and strange, but life is like that, you know?
Floyd: The real life stuff is more fucked up than anything you could just make up. I wrote a great song in the shower the other day. Just standing in the shower, playing drums on the wall.
Foulk: In the five years since we've all meet, our lives have all changed dramatically for the better and worse, and all of that goes into our songs. There's been a bunch of material to pull from.
MP3: Alice, "Highway Hypnosis"
Alice plays Saturday, October 17, at the Brick, with Browntown and My New TV Set.
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