Banner Photos by Per Åhlund
Photo by Jacqui Rae
How long have you been playing music?
I started playing piano at age 6. I had one piano lesson and realized I hated lessons and started trying to figure out music myself. My dad had a grand piano where I would sit for hours and teach myself various chord progressions. I was also a band geek through out all of my schooling. I played flute and trumpet throughout middle school, mostly in the jazz and classical genres. I did a lot of sheet reading. I picked up the guitar at age 13, and am self-taught. It was sort of a self-rebellion against all of the formal music training I had previously. Although I don’t consciously fully use this knowledge for writing with guitar, The foundation I have in music theory gives me solid ground for composing music in a way that makes sense using scales, modes, tones, transpositions. It’s all useful.
What bands were you in before your move to San Francisco?
Oh where do I start with that? I grew up in New Jersey. I was in various punk and hardcore bands in my teens and early 20s. Most of them weren’t very good. When I was in high school I was in a punk band called Horse Shoes and Hand Grenades. We actually played CBGBs but were pretty bad. In college, I was in a heavy indie band called Novice Brown. That band was actually pretty good. It sounded like a mix of Sonic Youth and Unwound. When I moved to graduate school in the late 90s, I started a band called Sutek Conspiracy. That was kind of like a melodic, grindy metal tinged hardcore band. That project transitioned me into playing metal. Then I started playing in the Ohio band Memento Mori, which had me living in Columbus very briefly. I think that band was around for like a year. It was a metallic crust band, and not really tight enough to be a metal band, though some of the riffs shown through. Smitty from the band Deadsea who was a fan of Memento Mori was instrumental in showing me proper metal guitar playing techniques. To this day, I don’t think I’ve met a more well-rounded musician than him. That guy can play anything. He introduced me to the metronome. Ha ha! That time period in my life was when I saw the most improvement in my guitar playing.
Photo by Autumn Wind Photography
What brought you out to the Bay Area?
I was in graduate school at Purdue in Indiana from the latter 90s to the early 2000s but after doing a lot of touring I had gotten really into playing music. I really wanted to focus on doing music at that point and left graduate school where I was pursing speech language pathology. I decided my calling life was more artistic and less academic. I spent a year and a half couch surfing after I dropped out of school. I was playing with various musicians in different cities. It was a very lost period where I was trying to figure out where to set down my roots. I ended up in Montreal for a few months but that didn’t work out. While I was there, I received a phone call from Tim Scammell, my good friend from Rutgers University, where we both went to school in the mid 90s. We talked about putting a band together in San Francisco where he was already living for a couple years. I told him I’d be there in a month. Ha ha! He rented me a room in his apartment really cheaply; that was how it was able to work out. Tim became the bass player for Saros. We found the other members (Sam and Ben) on Craigslist. Saros was around for 6 years.
What happened to Saros?
Well it kind of just lost momentum. Towards the end of it, Tim and Sam, our drummer, started a new band called Hollow Mirrors. They got burnt out on writing metal and we decided to call a hiatus. Then I started playing in Vastum in late 2009, which wasn’t originally meant to be a serious band, but it just kind of took off.
What are your current projects?
Vastum, Hammers of Misfortune and Amber Asylum are the main bands. I’ve also been working on a few recording projects. One is an industrial/death project with Andy Butler and Mark Pistel of Hercules and Love Affair and Meat Beat Manifesto. I’ve also recently collaborated with Per Åhlund, a dark ambient/experimental artist from Stockholm, Sweden, known for his solo project Diskrepant. I’ve also got some ambient/electronic solo pieces in the works.
Photo by Autumn Wind Photography
What is the extent of your involvement with these projects?
Amber Asylum is the now band I’ve been in the longest. It is Kris Force’s brainchild but I contribute a good amount to the songwriting. I’m not playing live with them at the moment but we are working on a new album. Hammers of Misfortune I joined in 2010. I don’t write songs for this band, since it is John Cobbett’s brainchild; I pretty much just show up and play. Out of any of my bands, Vastum is the one where I have the biggest leadership role.
Do you have any tours coming up?
Hammers just played at Roadburn Festival in Holland, which was a blast. Next tour for me is in July with Vastum; we will be supporting Autopsy and Black Breath at Revelations of Death Fest in Portland. There is talk of an east coast tour with Hammers this summer too, and more touring with Vastum later in the year.
Which of your projects have lead to the most growth for you as a musician?
I’d say they all have in their own ways. They all contribute something unique to my life. The beauty of doing multiple projects is that it keeps each one fresh so I never get too burned out on any particular genre that I play.
How do you find the time?
I’ve minimized my hours at my day job so I can focus on music. But it’s challenging living in San Francisco on a part time job.
Photo by Per Åhlund
How has being a woman in a male-dominated music scene been challenging to you? I’ve been asked that question a lot and my response is that I don’t judge myself any different than my male counterparts…
Right! I don’t notice anything until people have a problem with something. It’s really other people that draw attention to the fact that I’m a woman. I’ve created a world for myself where everyone is equal. I only think about it when weird stories come up. For example at the most recent Hammers show with Death Angel at Slims, Sigrid and I were at the merch table and a guy walks up, points to the Hammers cd and asked us, “So who are these guys?” and Sigrid said, “Oh we’re Hammers Of Misfortune” and he responded with, “Oh what are they like?” He kept asking questions and referring to the band in the 3rd person and Sigrid kept correcting him. He couldn’t understand that we were actually in the band. It was very strange. Sometimes at shows like these it seems that unless we are on stage playing no one assumes we are in the band. Depending on the sub genre, it is either more or less likely to see women in metal bands. We’re fortunate to have a very insular scene in San Francisco that is more female-dominated. You don’t see that in the main stream. We’re trying to do something a little more unique.
What are your future goals as a musician?
My goal is to start a solo project and be more self-sufficient, self-engineered and self-produced. That’s a long term goal. That can involve any variety of genres. I want to learn more software. It would be nice to have a self-sufficient recording project that will always be there no matter how able bodied I am. I’ll get there. What gets in the way is that I’m such a collab-addict that all of the stuff I write on my own inevitably ends up getting used in another project. It’s a challenge to hold back and say no, I’m going to do this myself. In the meantime, I plan on doing a lot of touring while I’m still young.
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