If you haven’t heard Leslie Woods and Dark Mountain Orchid, you’re missing out. If Radiohead listened a little more to the Cure, had a female singer and grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, you may have this interesting concoction of a band. However, that’s not an all-encompassing description, as there are similarities to Sixteen Horsepower, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and early punk rock. The blend of sounds is strikingly unique. I’ve never heard anything like it.
And recently I got to interview Leslie…
We’re at Nama, a place I had never been before, and it’s wall to wall packed. She’s a casual 15 minutes late for our interview, donning black and blue dyed hair, a leather jacket, a Suicide Girls t-shirt, and jeans. It was her idea to meet here, and she tells me right away that she eats there at least once a week, even sometimes by herself.
When we finally sit down at our table, we promptly begin talking music. She says she’s in a state of total disgust with modern rock. “It’s all so derivative,� she says. I’m not agreeing entirely, but I can’t say she’s not onto something.
“There needs to be another Nirvana,� she says, and my mouth almost drops to the floor. “The first time I heard Nirvana I was driving and I had to stop the car,� she adds. She says that day she told a friend she heard something that “actually had a guitar solo in the middle of the song.�
She’s right. Rock music has taken a strange, pretentious twist straying from its original form. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a real lack of true rock sound anymore and no one seems to be bringing it back. Despite the fact that Nirvana was incredibly derivative, at least they blended key sources. In this case, I agree with Leslie. We need another Nirvana.
As she clearly must have good taste in music (she likes Nirvana) I keep probing her, trying to figure out the answer to my original question. There’s mention of R.E.M.’s “Murmur�. There’s mention of Son Volt. These all came out during her lifetime (although her age is a mystery, like much else about her).
She says she grew up on the rock of the ‘70s, listing Eric Burdon and the Animals, Canned Heat, Dr. John and Tina Turner, an interesting blend that doesn’t seem to shine through in her music.
What may be more of an influence is her Knoxville-upbringing. Leslie grew up in the Fort Sanders area (although it didn’t come up in conversation, her
Myspace page says she refuses to tell people where she was born) and her father was a geology professor at UT. It doesn’t get more Knoxville than that.
Interestingly, Leslie tells me about the last record store on the Strip (located on Seventeenth, she believes) owned by a man she simply refers to as “Mike.�
She also tells me about her brief stint at the University of Tennessee. She constructed sort of her own Appalachian Studies major, which was short-lived due to the death of a professor who helped her get started. I can’t help but wonder if her Appalachian Studies managed to influence the more traditional, southern part of her sound.
Finally, after all of this casual conversation, my first real question I had planned to ask her comes up and I inquire about her influences, completely unaware at this point that she’s already been listing them. She looks at me funny and pauses for a moment (like they all do) before giving me the most unique answer I’ve ever heard—“I’m influenced by people more than I am bands.�
No musicians can accurately explain what bands they’re influenced by. Most of the time when they’re asked, they just look at you slightly confused, as if they’ve never really thought about it before despite the fact that it’s probably the most classic question to ever ask a rock band.
There may have been a day when the question was easier to answer. Maybe with the shifts in rock music since the early ‘70s, the question has become obsolete. But there has to be some form of answer.
She says her parents taught her to play, and music has been a familial thing for her. She says she wants to pass to her kids what was passed on to her, and the reason she wanted to learn music was to teach her children (of which she has two).
Her self-taught manner is evident in her songs. The most striking part of her music is the odd progressions (without a hint of pretentiousness or signs of being oblivious to music theory) with the intricate, fluctuating vocal lines. The band (consisting of two electric guitars, drums, an upright bass, and the occasional banjo and mandolin) comes up with their parts accordingly. “I trust them,� she says. “They’re the masters of their instruments, not me.�
She says she once asked Terry Hill (now a guitarist in her band) to teach her guitar, which he refused, saying she would be better off if she didn’t know what she was doing. Leslie plays what sounds good to her, not what she has been taught will sound good, which is a refreshing outlook on songwriting. It’s more genuine than throwing together a few chords in a progression that perfectly abides by music theory. There’s more feeling involved.
Leslie’s band is popular here in town, but she tells me that their albums (made into one double-disc set by their label, Glitterhouse Records) is big in Germany and Denmark. I ask why and she tells me it’s because people in Europe try to find the most obscure band. It’s a competition to see who can find what first. Sounds like Europe is full of indie-rock kids.
Despite their popularity, Leslie tells me they have a hard time fitting a bill with another band due to differing crowds. They’ve played with Creech Holler, and have upcoming shows with them. However, she tells me that some of their best crowd responses have been when they opened for theatre troupes or burlesque shows.
And speaking of live shows, last year Leslie had the opportunity of a lifetime when her band was asked to play Bonnaroo. “It was all very last minute,� she says. The band played at 2 p.m. the last day for a “big, somewhat enthused� crowd. She says she was the only goth at Bonnaroo, which would make sense—not many people are wearing all black and leather in Middle Tennessee when it’s 98 with a heat index of 110.
Although they haven’t been playing much recently, she talks of upcoming shows, so keep an eye out—it’s something worth seeing.
Live at Bonnaroo
(photo credits: Bill Henderson, Carrie Thompson)
