From the ashes of Charlottesville dream-rock quartet Second Date comes Sorority Boy, a new project from drummer Maria Dehart and guitarist Brian Cameron. In this, our first podcast episode, they talk about their origins as a duo, the political made personal, and the Charlottesville scene.

Check out their music on Bandcamp, or follow them on Facebook.

TRANSCRIPT:

Ruckle: Hello and welcome to The All Scene Eye, a music interview podcast. I’m Taylor Ruckle, coming to you in audio for the first time, from clemons library at UVA, at least until someone else needs to use this study room. My guests today are Sorority Boy, a Charlottesville duo who have been making waves at plenty of local house shows. Sorority Boy, The All Scene Eye is on you.

Dehart: Hi!

R: Can I just, first things first, have you guys introduce yourselves, tell us what you play?

D: I’m Maria Dehart, I play drums and sing.

C: And I’m Brian Cameron, I play guitar and sing in the band.

R: So, thank you for being here, this is a big day for you guys, you just put out your first two songs on Bandcamp, which is very exciting.

C: Yeah, the big debut, it’s been exciting–

D: It’s a wild ride!

R: Can you tell me about those songs? There’s “Friends/Enemies,” and then “Far Away.” So what’s the story with these songs?

C: Yeah, so “Friends/Enemies” was actually, I wrote the chords and the main chorus lyrics to it actually when I was back in high school my senior year, and it was like one of the first songs I ever wrote that was just my own singer-songwriter self, or whatever. But I never did much with it until last year when Maria and I were in Second Date together. And I think, like, you saw me play it at an open mic night at Hack.Cville, and you were like, “we have to turn this into a song,” and we did that, and played it in that band for a while, but then after Second Date dissolved and we decided to keep doing this we figured since it was mostly my songwriting attribution, it made sense to keep it going over. And also the way I wrote the guitar part it was originally just one instrument, so it still made a lot of sense in the new band context.

So yeah, that’s that song, and then “Far Away” was a song that we just wrote together when we started jamming together second half of this past Fall.

R: A little bit of old, little bit of new. 

C: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

R: And I love it because you do have some of that Second Date sound, there’s the very roomy guitar and there’s the unison vocals, which are great. But then you’re also bringing this new kind of flair. It’s very cool, I love it.

Tell me about–because this is a question I always ask duos–what’s the secret to good musical collaboration? What’s, like, Sorority Boy’s secret stuff?

D: Well, I feel like we just work really well together in general, and we’re pretty on the same page about what we wanted to accomplish, and pretty good communication. We’re good friends, so that’s helpful, I don’t know if it would work if we weren’t.

C: Yeah, I think a big thing is definitely having a musical connection between the two of us, being able to really hit a groove together, again, I mean that’s definitely facilitated by the fact that we’ve been playing music together for over a year, regardless of which project it is. And then, like you said, communication is also just so key.

D: And it’s also a lot easier to just communicate with one other person versus three other people. I don’t know, I’m finding it less, yeah, it just kind of like, flows easily.

C: It makes the democracy of the music a lot easier.

D: [laughs] yeah.

R: You just distill all of that group energy into just two people.

C: Yeah, because I definitely think everyone having a say, everyone having a voice in the creation of music is really important. That’s just so much easier when you only to bounce an idea off of one person.

R: Right, right, not to mention, like, scheduling band practices and all that, getting everyone on the same page about when the gig’s gonna be, like,

D: Logistically, it’s helpful.

R: Oh, logistically, equipment-wise, there’s just so many advantages.

C: Although we didn’t even really feel the benefits of simpler band practice logistics until this semester because we were practicing at my house, and one of my housemates did not like the loud music emanating from the basement. So what we thought was going to be like, going from coordinating four people’s schedules to two people’s schedules actually went from coordinating four people’s schedules to twelve people’s schedules in my house. But now we’re practicing at O Rec–

D: Shouts out!

R: Yeah, shouts out to O Rec always.

C: Serious shouts out, that’s a really really important space on grounds I’m quickly realizing.

R: It’s gonna be interesting when we have to figure out where where we go from here to the new space. But yeah, let’s turn back the clock a little bit, how did you guys first meet and start doing musical things together?

D: I guess it probably starts like, between me and Paul in, like, middle and high school being, like, really good friends. Paul Sanders. And then, starting Second Date in Fall of our second year, and then finding out that Lona was like, really good at singing, and writing songs, and being like, “let’s have a band!” and then we’re like, “we don’t really sound that great, we need something else.” And I was like, “I know this cool kid Brian in Climate Action Society, who seems, like, really awesome, and also plays guitar with How Come Sky.”

C: Rest in peace!

D: Yeah, pour one out. And I was like, “wanna be in another band?” and he was like, “yeah!”

C: From my perspective, I love that part of the story, because I just knew you through CAS–

D: Worlds colliding.

C: No shorter than two weeks after like, How Come Sky had our first practice, Maria came up to me after a CAS meeting and was like, “hey, do you wanna jam with my band sometime?” And I was like, “uh, sure! Why not!” Meanwhile, I’m two months into college, you know, as a first year.

R: That’s a good way to start college, though, man, you come to college, you join a band, you’ve got all your bases covered.

D: Or you join two bands.

R: The more bands the merrier, honestly!

C: I mean, in retrospect I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

R: Get yourself some side-projects and your life is complete. What do you guys, like–do you have similar musical influences, or do they like, clash and contrast and play off each other? What’s the background?

D: I think it started out more different, I’ve been getting way more into like, stuff that Brian listens to.

C: And likewise.

D: Yeah, I didn’t know what shoegaze was until, like, a little over a year ago.

R: I feel like learning about shoegaze is one of those essential college things, like,

D: I guess so! [laughs]

R: You get a degree and you have to listen to a certain amount of My Bloody Valentine. 

D: Yeah, so that happens. It’s been a musical transformation for me. But I also still listen to like, Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens a lot.

C: There’s definitely a lot of overlap in our music tastes, just, in the broad palette of indie whatever-have-you. I’ve felt, definitely recently you’ve been showing me some more bands too, like you showed me True Widow, and Chastity Belt, and I’ve been getting really into them, but personally my music tastes have been changing a lot over the last year, year or two as well, getting away from more just like, typical indie rock stuff, even just like more generic shoegaze stuff like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, I’ve been getting more into newer more emo-type artists.

D: Some more femme-fronted bands, trying to prioritize them.

R: Oh yeah, absolutely. 

C: Femme- and queer-fronted. I think PWR BTTM is probably the strongest shared influence.

R: I last saw you at the Trash House show when you guys did–“Dairy Queen” was the song, I think? 

D: Yeah, yeah.

R: Tell me about, if there’s anything to tell, tell me about “dreamo”

both: [laugh]

R: Yeah, this label that you’ve given Sorority Boy.

C: I mean, we were joking amongst ourselves the other day that genre can be perhaps as difficult to define as gender sometimes. But yeah, before we released these two songs today, even now with them released, when people are like, “what genre is your stuff?” I’m like,

R: Genre is a social construct, right?

C: Yeah, exactly, like, you tell me. But a descriptor we used during Second Date was like, “dream rock?” And I think the songwriting style with Sorority Boy is a little more emo, so then it’s just kind of, what’s the word when you combine–

R: Hybrid maybe?

C: Combine two words together, no,

R: Oh! Portmanteau.

C: Portmanteau, yeah, portmanteau. Just dream and emo.

R: And so, since you brought it up, if I may ask, there’s this undeniable like, gender non-conformity edge to the name Sorority Boy. Can you talk about that?

D: Yeah, I mean, I think both of us have been sort of talking and thinking about gender a lot in the context of like, our social circles, and things we read, and experience as people with genders. [laughs] So, I don’t know. And just, definitely trying to, I mean, channeling a little of that PWR BTTM energy, like, trying to break gender norms since music, DIY in particular, is so male-dominated, and white-male-dominated, white-straight-male dominated, and inaccessible to a lot of people for that reason. I think there’s a movement to try and fight that, and like, fight for safer spaces, and acknowledge those factors. So yeah, I think we’re just trying to plug into that. Because we think that’s like, the most important thing.

C: 110%.

R: I think the other thing that I like about the name Sorority Boy is that, like, the stylization and the branding makes itself. Because you could do, like, “Sorority” and then Beta Omicron Upsilon, and it’s like you’ve got your sorority letters, and you’ve got that on your logo.

D: Also yeah, like, reclaiming greek culture, because it’s problematic, as UVA students.

C: Yeah, exactly, I think that was another deep origin place of the band name, not just you know, like “let’s do something political” it’s also, it’s distinctly political in where we find ourselves right now at a university that is deeply problematic in a lot of ways, also deeply wonderful in other ways, in that we’re enabled to be who we are and make the music that we make.

R: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, about this kind of like, personal and political crossover. Because I know both of you personally, and I know you’re very involved with a lot of social causes and things. Climate Action Society, and whatnot, on campus. And so, how does that influence what you do as musicians?

D: I think I, and I’m also a women and gender studies major, so I think about things in a politically charged way all the time, like everything I do. But I mean, we both like–I guess we’re both pretty busy, but we also have pretty similar schedules, since we do the same things. But I think having like, I don’t know. Do you have more to add on that? I don’t know where I was going.

C: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it’s pretty essential that art is never apolitical. Which is really fascinating in a lot of ways, with this moment that we all find ourselves in right now, with the beginning stages of the Trump presidency. For one, just, you know, like, all the art that we’re creating then, whether we realize it or not, has so much more of just an inherent element of resistance to it. Of resisting the rise of white nationalism in our federal government, and whatnot. That’s definitely there at the crux of it. But also, it’s really interesting when you hear some of these ignorant figures on the right or whatever who are like, “oh, if you’re an artist, if you’re an actor or whatever, just stick to your art form, you can’t be political.” It’s like, that’s never what it was about though. You’re literally pulling that argument out of nowhere.

R: As if politics just exist in a vacuum that doesn’t effect anybody’s real life. Because kind of the crux of art is lived experience, that’s essential. I’ve seen you guys, you know, of course, with the “Resist” sign, and all power to the message. But yeah, going off that, and about this UVA and Charlottesville community, what would you say are the best and worst things about making music in this kind of environment?

D: Well I feel like the music scene is like, it’s small but it’s pretty active and people are excited about it and whenever we play a show, all our friends show up, and that is really incredible, and I think we play better when we’re surrounded by people who are personally invested in what we’re doing, and it feels very real in that way, and like. I wish it were bigger of a music scene, but it wouldn’t be as cozy and tight-knit, so I don’t know. And I do love Charlottesville, and I honestly despise this school usually, except for when I get to appreciate these things that sort of give me life, like playing music and doing activism.

R: Another best and worst question. Best and worst things about starting a new project?

C: I’d say the worst thing is probably getting back to a sense of feeling like you have to prove yourself all over again, whereas like, when you are an established band you feel like you can just kind of, you know, ride the energy of being who you are and knowing that people at least vaguely know who you are. But then, when you have to start from scratch it’s definitely a social aspect to it of just like, “this is our first time as a show, these are our first songs,” you know, a lot of firsts. Our first show we played in February was like, the first time I’d really had to go through that in like, over a year. Which is definitely challenging, but in a good way. And then of course, you know, every time you write new material there’s the sense of, you know, working on it really intensely within ourselves and then bringing it forth to your friends, to the public, and yeah. It’s like, I feel like art rarely feels like it’s ever done, you just have to say, like, “I’ve done as much as I can do, and I just have to share it now.” But it’s really exciting.

R: Yeah, and then at the same time of course it is this kind of like, ever-evolving thing where every time you go out and play a show it’s a little bit different.

C: Oh, absolutely. I’m very improvisational with my guitar playing.

R: And so, here’s a question I always have for people. If you could play any instrument, what would you play? No limitations. If you could play anything, what would you play?

D: Harp. Hands down.

C: Drums.

All: [laugh]

D: Part of me does want to be able to like, shred guitar. One day I’ll be able to. I’m taking guitar lessons for the first time in my life. Wish I could play guitar like Brian.

C: I like, I hate the fact that I don’t play drums, because I feel like I’m a very percussive person, like I always vibe out to rhythms of songs, I’m very rhythmic and percussive in my guitar playing sometimes. But I just don’t have an ounce of drum playing in my body.

R: I mean, if you’ve got that rhythmic impulse, though, you’ve got to nurture that, ’cause like, take it from somebody who does not have that, it is like, so debilitating to not have that.

D: I think you have that!

R: I mean, I can play along with people who play drums, like I’ve played along with you before, and I don’t have any trouble, like, if there’s somebody who’s a good drummer who’s drumming, I’m into it, I can get on beat, but if I’m playing by myself, I can’t play to a click track, or like, drum machine, or whatever. it’s like, I don’t know why, something about if it’s another person I’m with, then I’m good, but if it’s like, a click, no dice.

D: That’s actually, that’s a good way to be though, like, it’s better to be able to play with people.

R: Yeah, it’s more organic, right?

D: Yeah, because some people, I mean, it’s hard to play with people, it can take so much getting used to.

R: The harp though. Like, the harp is so under-utilized in modern music, honestly.

D: It’s so cool.

R: Has anybody, because like, the only example I can think of, of course, is Florence and the Machine.

D: Joanna Newsom?

R: Okay, this is good because this is another thing I need from you guys, is recommendations. So tell me, say that name to me again.

D: Joanna Newsom. She’s married to Andy Samberg, fun fact. She makes really weird music, I would recommend her older music, she has a really strange voice, but it’s really beautiful, and she plays harp, and she’s really good.

R: What album is the early…?

D: Sprout and the Bean. Also, is it weird to give a shout out to someone who goes here? Ellen Crooks plays harp.

C: She does? Oh that’s–I always forget, but of course. She’s wonderful, yeah.

R: The harp is so unique in that, like, moreso than any other instrument also, just the labor of having to like, bring your harp places, you know?

D: You have to like, tune all those strings.

R: Oh, there’s so many strings. It’s like a piano, but without, you know? You have to tune it yourself, you can’t just like, yeah.

D: The 50% of me that actually enjoys being feminine really wants to play the harp, it’s very, like, graceful.

C: I love the harp, I would also love to play it. I, the first instrument I learned to play was the piano, but harp, like you said, harp is similar to piano–

R: Except you are the hammers. 

C: Exactly, and I feel like then that takes everything I love about the guitar, of being that approximate and intimate with the strings.

R: But then you have the timbre of very light, yeah.

C: But also the expansiveness of being able to pluck ten, have like twelve strings resonate at once.

R: There’s definitely something about that arm motion that’s very appealing, that makes me want to do that, you know? So, what would you say are your biggest goals for this project?

D: Wow. I feel like that’s a big question. Brian, what are your goals? [laughs]

C: Definitely, I mean, you know the basics. Want to record more, always, want to play more shows. I think a tour would be really fun.

D: Yeah, we’re talking about it.

C: I mean, I don’t know. The most important thing to me with music beyond the very special connections I form with people who I make music with are also the connections I make through music communities. Like we were talking about earlier, the music community in Charlottesville is really wonderful, it’s great to be able to use your music as a way to continue to galvanize that love. I feel similar love toward the music scene in Harrisonburg Virginia, Richmond Virginia, Fredericksburg, and from there, it would be great to be able to see and experience even if for just one night the music scene in DC or Baltimore, Pittsburgh is supposed to be wonderful. New York would be crazy.

D: Philly.

C: Oh yeah, Philly’s crazy. Philly’s awesome.

R: Oh, there’s so much good music up there. Yeah. But so, that’s awesome, and since we’re on the subject of community, who are some other locals or up-and-comers that like, we should be paying attention to, or talking to, etc.?

D: Well, Shimmer, AKA Lona Manik, she’s really important and wonderful, played a show this weekend. ING.

C: Yeah, ING is way-more on the come-up than we are, which is great, they’re so cool.

R: ING is going places, for sure. 

D: Okay, actually, yeah, goal? ING. [laughs]

R: Yeah, that’s the next, like, tier.

D: I mean I think this is a really crazy time when like, it’s hard for me to set goals for myself because I don’t know what I’m doing from one year to the next. But yeah, what are other locals?

C: Haircut. Just, you know, Daniel Berti and Julianna Viana from Magnolia House. They are wonderful, wonderful people. I’m Sorry I Woke You, from Richmond, they’re really good.

R: That’s a good band name.

C: Right? That’s what I said. It’s so poetic.

R: I feel like that’s kind of one of those in-the-moment things, where it’s like, you’re practicing with your band, and then all of a sudden your roommate’s like, “hey, can you keep it down?” and you’re like, “oh, I’m sorry I woke you… there it is. Did everybody hear that? There’s the band name. We found it.”

C: I’m Sorry I Woke You is really good. Also, have to give a plug for Smallhands and Infant Island, from Fredericksburg, they’re some of my best friends from back home.

R: Oh yeah, you guys with Second Date, you toured with Smallhands.

D: Yeah, a little weekender.

C: Austin from Smallhands actually mastered the two tracks we did and made them sound a lot better [laughs]

D: And Alex from Infant Island did the actual recording.

R: How has like, being involved with radio sort of impacted this?

D: I mean, radio community is awesome.

C: Yeah, the radio community and the UVA music community are very close to a perfect circle as a venn diagram. Those people are infinitely special.

D: The Trash House, which serves as the radio house is a super important, uh, what’s it called, pillar, in the UVA music community.

R: So when’s your next gig?

C: We’re playing at Lon Lon Ranch in Harrisonburg Virginia on Tuesday March 14th

R: Sorority Boy, thank you for joining me.

D: Thank you for having us!

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