Jack: Hello, Chloé. Hello, Flannery. Thank you very much for being on with me today.
Flannery: Hi Jack!
Chloé: Hi!
Jack: I'm very excited to learn more about you and your relationship together and individual things. So how about then from there, Chloé, why don't we start off with you? What is your background? And then how did you get into music and art? I know it's mainly a music focused thing, but this is just more how did you find the scene of people, art, music, culture, stuff that you exist in today and what was your journey to that?
Chloé: Wow, what a great big question.
Jack: So we got about 3 hours, you know? [laughter]
Chloé: Yeah, okay. I'm going to try to cliff notes it, which is what I say, as Flannery knows, when I'm trying to be really quick and concise, because I can go on forever. So I'm from outside of D.C. in Virginia and I lived there until I was 18, and then I moved to Baltimore for school. And I've been in L.A. since 2015. Actually, yesterday was my eight year anniversary. My parents aren't super musical, but they're the best anyway. So I didn't grow up listening to, like, the Beatles or anything, you know? It wasn't like that. Why are you laughing?! I just feel like there's all these amazing music families where the people are like, "Oh, yeah, we always had on showtunes."
Flannery: I just love how the Beatles is always the example.
Chloé: Do I say that a lot?
Flannery: I'm like, they spared your ass. Thank God you didn't grow up listening to the Beatles. [laughter]
Flannery: This is like, this is an anti-Beatle crew. But okay, I guess probably my first thing I got into that was kind of a little more subcultural, if you will, would be I was really into No Doubt and Blink-182. My first concert was Spice Girls when I was six or seven. But then my first thing that felt like a show was I saw the No Doubt/Blink-182 tour in 2003. That was really cool. It's actually cool in retrospect that they toured together. So No Doubt and Blink were big, and then I kind of got into some weirder stuff like Le Tigre and stuff from the internet. I was on the Internet all the time, I had a computer in my room since I was, like, seven years old, so I was online all the time. These older girls were telling me about music, and then I was definitely into kind of more, I guess you could say, indie things like Cat Power and Joanna Newsom, that sort of stuff. And then I got into hardcore and I'm laughing because I remember this one morning my mom was like, "Is it me or has the music gotten a little more heavy around here?" Like what I was listening to in the morning. She's going to come up a lot today because she's the GOAT. But then I got really obsessed with all this stuff coming out of Baltimore, Wham City era stuff.
Jack: This is still in high school?
Chloé: Yeah, this was probably when I was a junior in high school. I get really obsessed with things as Flannery can tell you.
Flannery: We all do!
Chloé: Yeah, we're all obsessives. And then I ended up going to MICA for college and then everything else exploded.
Jack: Yeah, I guess that would be a point at which the stories intersect, so why don't we rewind and start with Flannery again? Same questions: what's your background and how did you find "this thing we're in?"
Flannery: This thing we're in. I'm from Stone Ridge, New York, which is about an hour and a half north of the city.
Chloé: I'm so sorry, Flannery. [laughter]
Flannery: I guess I grew up in an opposite position, I was very exposed to music. My dad runs two opera houses upstate, so I kind of grew up in the theater.
Jack: Okay, wow, alright. We're getting to the deep part here. [laughter]
Chloé: They're so musical.
Flannery: The deep roots of it.
Chloé: In Flannery's house, in the bathroom downstairs, there's all these ticket stubs. There's Queen Latifah ticket stubs there. That's what I mean when I'm like... Not that that's everything, but that's what I mean when I'm like, "It wasn't so musical," you know?
Jack: So your parents are, in addition to running the opera houses, also just into music in general.
Flannery: Yeah, they're pretty with it in general. My mom's a playwright and my dad is an executive director, but they're theater people. But yeah, music. They know the range because my dad has been booking shows for so long, but he literally only listens to Bob Dylan. So I always say I was raised on Dylan, for better or for worse. But that kind of I feel that informed my attraction to more emotional music or... My dad showed me Bob Dylan, my mom showed me Björk and my brother showed me Nirvana. So that's kind of the spectrum.
Chloé: That's actual cliff notes, that's a really good way to say that.
Flannery: And then, yeah, I don't know. I had boyfriends that showed me great music when I was younger and kind of helped me learn my tastes, I would say. Then I also did this musical theater thing after-school program from seventh grade to sophomore year of high school. I was with all these older, cool, kind of burned out kids that showed me a lot of great music. Chloé showed me a lot of amazing music when we met, but we definitely related on the Joanna Newsom kind of girl singer-songwriter vibe, I would say. Daniel Johnston.
Chloé: Yeah.
Jack: I'm also curious about both of you making the choice to go to MICA in terms of broader art practice or interest in the arts. What were you guys doing in high school that led you to want to go to MICA?
Flannery: I was painting, which I think a lot of our peers...
Chloé: I love how much you keep using quotes because no one will ever see the video. [laughter]
Jack: Yeah, we have to annotate.
Flannery: But I knew some people that were already at MICA, so that kind of gave me an intro to the city and the scene.
Chloé: And you visited, right?
Flannery: I visited a couple times and kind of partied there. So I knew that I was going to have a better time in Baltimore versus Boston, which was the other school that I was looking at, Chloé and I both!
Jack: Really?
Chloé: I know, can you imagine if alternately... What's that Gwyneth Paltrow movie, Sliding Doors? Chloé and Flannery in Boston. [laughter]
Jack: Oh my God. You'd still be in Boston, probably.
Chloé: I know.
Flannery: Which would be fine, I love New England, Massachusetts, but yeah, we would be different gals. As I take the curler out of my hair. [laughter]
Chloé: Yeah, you're looking great, babe. Fabulous. I think we were both intrigued by the program, though, at the Museum School in Boston, right, Flan?
Flannery: Oh yeah, for sure. It felt very like the dual... What was the school? The ivy.
Chloé: Oh, Tufts. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to take real classes.
Flannery: I was on my Rory Gilmore shit with that, I was like, "Oh, it's a pseudo Ivy?"
Chloé: Oh my God. One of my friends in high school... I mean, we were all such little brats, but this is a really pretentious thing that he said. I was trying to think of if I want to go to school in New York or Baltimore and he was like, "New York will always be there, but there's something happening in Baltimore right now."
Flannery: He had a point.
Chloé: Yeah, I know, but that's such a like... Whatever happens will be great. [laughter] My mom is always like, "Sweetie, I just think if you went to school in New York, you are not going to be okay." Like, today she says that in retrospect, which is so funny. I think just because I'm a special flower and maybe it would have been a little hard, but I do remember... I'm outing some toy stories about myself, but I do remember I really wanted to go to Cooper Union. I didn't get in there, but I remember taking the tour there with my mom. They have these student tour guides and they are like, "Do you have any questions?" And I was like, "So do you guys have time to go to shows? That's really important to me." [laughter] I've told you that, right, Flanny?
Flannery: Yeah.
Chloé: I was applying in 2008. Cooper Union's a free school, so the application rate went up, like, a gazillion percent that year. It was even more competitive and I was like, "But do you think that I can, like, go to the Market Hotel?" [laughter]
Jack: They're like, "Hmmm, what's your name? Hold on, let me write this down." [laughter]
Chloé: They'll take you off the list, so funny. So this show thing I remember because I wasn't going to warehouse shows, I hadn't been to the copycat, but I went to Whartscape in 2008. That was the summer before my senior year of high school. I didn't know anyone there. I got a ride with this guy and then my mom picked me up outside of the McDonald's on North Avenue. [laughter] At two in the morning, came. Because Whatscape then was in the MICA building on that corner. We should have a sponsored MICA ad. [laughter]
Jack: Totally.
Chloé: "Promo code 400 Floor for $1 off of your tuition. You might never be able to get a job, but that's okay." [laughter]
Jack: Wow, I am cutting that right there. That's going to be the little stinger.
Chloé: "Promo code 400.".
Jack: Now this is kind of getting into the weeds here, do you guys want to set the scene of being at MICA, your experience of the first time living away from home and then how you guys end up meeting?
Chloé: Yeah, actually I really wanted to hear what Flannery says, because I feel like sometimes I can be the louder voice and Flannery has like...
Flannery: Not anymore, bitch! [laughter]
Chloé: I love you so much, Flan.
Flannery: Well, you are the storyteller in the group. You have a great memory.
Chloé: Yeah, that's what I mean.
Flannery: Our moment of meeting was the second day of class. Was it that quick?
Chloé: I guess this is why my voice ends up being louder. [laughter]
Flannery: Anyway, it was within the first week at least. Post orientation, in "Elements of Visual Thinking"?
Chloé: Okay, I guess I'm telling the story. [laughter]
Jack: Well, but that's some good macro information then, I guess. [laughter]
Flannery: Danny Farber!
Chloé: Denny, not Danny!
Flannery: Denny. [laughter]
Chloé: Yeah, well, what I thought Flannery was going to mention is that she had kind of... You knew our friend Maddie freshman year.
Flannery: Oh wait, yeah.
Chloé: I was just like, "This is what you should say." [laughter]
Flannery: Okay, so I knew this guy Oliver from upstate New York and he was friends with this person Maddie through I think the summer pre college thing. I knew about Maddie and then I remember looking on Facebook at her page and seeing pictures of Chloé and maybe one other person. Or it was just the two of them maybe?
Chloé: Maybe Kelly?
Flannery: And just being like, "These girls look cute and cool."
Chloé: "Who's this girl with completely bleached hair?" [laughter]
Flannery: Yeah, her hair is fried! "Who's this fried ass girl?" So I saw Chloé on Facebook, I had an awareness of her.
Chloé: And I had an awareness of... Nothing! [laughter]
Flannery: Anyway, she came up to me or... No, did I come to you and compliment you on your shoes? And then you said, "I like your name"?
Chloé: No. [laughter].
Flannery: Revisionist history right here!
Chloé: It was the first day of classes, but there was a holiday on the Monday. Normally Monday would have been the first day, but our Tuesday classes were the first day. And it's "Critical Inquiry and Elements of Visual Thinking."
Flannery: Okay, so I did get the name right, right?
Chloé: Yes, you did remember the one class that everyone takes correctly. [laughter]
Flannery: Wow.
Jack: Wow. I love it!
Flannery: See? This is the real Chloé.
Chloé: "This is the real me." So this is MICA trying to pretend like they're Bauhaus. So, yeah, we met that day, which later would kind of be the cornerstone of our early relationship days because my dorm was above yours and we would meet... Well, we were supposed to meet on the stairs in between our dorms, but Flannery would be late, which is actually so unlike us now, because now I feel like I'm the one who's usually late.
Flannery: I'm the more together one.
Chloé: I mean, she's the treasurer for sure, But we would go to those two classes together. I remember you were like, "I like your shoes." And I said, "Oh my God, I can't believe your name is Flannery." Which is a scene that would repeat itself. I feel like every time we rolled up to a show on tour, some dorky little DIY boy would be like, "Your name is Flannery?" [laughter]
Flannery: Oh yeah.
Chloé: I thought you were going to be like, "That didn't happen." Yeah, it really did. And I'd be like, "Um... Can we see that the P.A. perhaps?"
Flannery: Wait, tell Jack about kind of like our first performance.
Chloé: Oh my God. This is so... Oh, I think that teacher has passed away, right? He's no longer with us. I mean, he wasn't really in our life past that year, but I just have a feeling he would love this. So, background, I sprained my ankle all the time and the first time I ever sprained it was on the way to that class with you, remember? The teacher's name was Denny Farber. I sprained my ankle and I was just lying there and Flannery was like, "What will we tell Denny?!" [laughter] It was so funny. So we had to do a piece of work and the one prompt was "platform."
Flannery: Wow.
Chloé: Do you remember that?
Flannery: No!
Chloé: It's okay. I'm just going to say this one time: it's a blessing and a curse, my friends.
Jack: This is pretty amazing to witness, frankly.
Chloé: You know those memes where it's like, "Just thinking about something stupid I said ten years ago before bed."
Jack: Totally.
Chloé: Yeah, I think those are about me. But so the prompt is "platform." And we were edgy young artists in 2009 and we were like, "Okay, 'platform.' Obviously we need to make a piece about the Spice Girls, right?" So we decided to project... Projectors were big. Projector was life, you know. It's like, if you're not projecting in your pieces, what are you doing? It's like, "Oh, that's interesting. You didn't have a projector. Mmkay." [laughter] So we projected... I forgot what song, a Spice Girls video maybe? "Wannabe" perchance? [laughter]
Flannery: Perchance. I'm surprised it wasn't the "Mama, I love you."
Chloé: That would have been so sad. Yeah, that's so us.
Flannery: We'll get to that.
Jack: Oh yeah, there's a lot to talk about.
Chloé: Yeah, so we projected that song and then we dressed up in these kind of Spice Girls-ish vibe outfits. I remember I had some platform shoes on and a little mini dress, and then we just stared straight ahead for the length of the song, which now that I mention it, is something that people would say about Odwalla.
Flannery: That's so seminal right there! Just standing in front of a projected Spice Girls music video and we're just staring into space, not even lip syncing.
Chloé: I don't know if you remember this, but I happen to remember this, that we tried to do it - lip synching - but we couldn't stop laughing when we did it that way. So it was somehow easier to just dead face it and look forward. And then I do remember in the crit that they were saying that I was good at just being dead in the face. [laughter]
Flannery: Yeah, they said that I smiled, which I learned to...
Chloé: But what was that about me that I could just really dissociate and just be looking crazy?
Flannery: Yeah, I remember Denny being like, "It would have been better if Flanny hadn't flinched."
Chloé: Yeah, but whatever. Okay, this is typical undergraduate out-of-nowhere art piece that if it wasn't in that setting, it would have been genius. If we saw that today, I'd be like, "Oh, that's so sick." But everyone is throwing everything at the wall and a lot of it is bad.
Flannery: But for that to be our first work together, looking back, it makes sense.
Jack: Is there any documentation of that?
Flannery: Definitely not.
Chloé: Just in my memory.
Flannery: Which is good. But yeah, we were pretty much inseparable after that first thing.
Jack: What was the impetus then to be like, "We want to start a band."
Flannery: I would say that the collaboration we did was when we had our radio show, which was called Mother Daughter Vacation. I feel like both making a show and curating the music, but also our visual language started to come out together in terms of making posters for it and our little advertisements, and just sharing pictures on a promo level and then on a Blogspot level. But yeah, that was kind of our first collaboration. It was a micro radio [station], but we took over as the CEOs of it. [laughter]
Chloé: Okay, but this isn't... I feel like a lot of these schools have these storied radio stations and this was not like that at all. It was like, "Really?" But people a couple of years before us had started it and it was really freeform and...
Flannery: Barely worked.
Chloé: Yeah, it's so funny, also, I was thinking about this the other day the head of the... What is that called?
Flannery: A/V department.
Chloé: The head of that would try to teach us how to troubleshoot but we had no frickin' idea what an input and an output was. I had all this gear in my car from when the radio station moved years later I was like, "Oh, that's a mixer." But I didn't really know, I had no idea. I was like, "It's all buttons to me, man." So yeah, we kind of took it over. But I don't know why I have to be like, "Not giving us much credit for that..."
Flannery: Well, yeah, we were the administrators, but even now, knowing more about that type of stuff, something was fucked with that system. It would be so sad because we'd beg people to have stations. And then they'd be like, "Yeah I went to the studio and it didn't work." [laughter] And we would be like, "Thank you!"
Chloé: No, there was a lot of cool stuff. I think Flanny and I would collage stuff and do a lot of YouTube rips. So that kind of started that sort of thing, which was fun. Also just making something with you. And, you know, Baltimore is such a show poster city. Well, I don't know about now, but that era. So it was really fun to have something to make a poster for and put up around town. "Around town." Around the three blocks around the MICA campus. That's something very Flanny and I too, to make this show poster that looks like it was for something much bigger for a small little thing that existed and just take the time to do that. And I think that's what I didn't even think about the radio show when we were talking origin story.
Flannery: Yeah, I didn't either.
Chloé: Well you brought it up, babe.
Flannery: It's all coming back.
Chloé: Yeah, so I'll skip us along a little bit if you don't mind, Flannery. So, to set the stage...
Flannery: So then I got kidnaped. [laughter]
Chloé: I was like, "I didn't get kidnaped." We used to say that later, because around the time we moved here, L.A., I didn't have a car yet, so I'd be like, "Oh, we'll go to this. I'll pick you up." And we would call it kidnap when I'd just be like, "Alright, I'm going to run a couple errands here. We're going to the store." No, but I think what Franny is alluding to is that, so we graduated in 2013, and summer 2012 I did my first solo set, you could say, at Tribal House. Flannery, you weren't there, you were in upstate for the summer, I think, most likely. Just to say, because that's probably the only time you weren't.
Flannery: I miss one thing. [laughter]
Chloé: Oh God, so funny. So yeah, I had been going around for a while trying to get people to be in a band with me or make backing tracks. Spoiler alert: I had never made music before at this point. And no one would do it. Then finally, you know, all those years of Ian MacKaye in my head, I was like, "I'll just do it myself." And I was like, "Okay, Flannery, we're going to be in a band together." I had this toy drum set thing delivered to her at MICA.
Flannery: Toy like a toy, not like lame. [laughter]
Jack: We have to really be explicit with the terms.
Chloé: It's different, you know? No, but yeah, a literal Fisher-Price toy delivered to her P.O. box.
Flannery: In the shape of a foot. The pads were toes.
Chloé: And I think, dear audience, this is what Flannery is alluding to. She is alluding to being kidnaped because I was like, "You're going to be in a band with me, no choice." [laughter] And then we basically just talked about that for, like...
Flannery: And now I'm an exile in Central Coast California! [laughter]
Jack: You were like, "We're not in a band anymore."
Chloé: Not no, Jack, not no. [laughter]
Flannery: Not for now!
Jack: Wow.
Chloé: Not for now! So then we just did the other thing that I think Flanny and I are really... Well, maybe this is just a Chloé thing, where I just talked about it for months and was like, "Oh yeah, we're in a band, Odwalla88. We're in a band. We're in a band." I just said that to anyone who would listen.
Jack: And people are like, "I can't wait to hear this band." There's a whole build-up.
Chloé: And by people, there's one person, which is Duncan Moore.
Flannery: Shout out Duncan.
Jack: Yes! Shout out Duncan.
Chloé: Needle Gun was on a tour and they wanted a Baltimore show at the end. I had just been living at Floristree for a few weeks and he was like, "We want to do this show, it'll be the homecoming show and Odwalla 88 should open." We're like, "Haha, shit!" [laughter] I'm like, "Okay, Flannery, we have to write songs." It started up our horrible habit of writing entire sets...
Flannery: Pretty much every opportunity, like, "Okay!"
Chloé: "Gotta write a whole new set!"
Flannery: "Reinventing the wheel!"
Jack: It's a time honored tradition even. It's practiced by many today still.
Chloé: Right. But we wrote a bunch of songs in a week. We didn't have the sampler yet, it was just on our computers and it was really like, "Here goes nothing!" I mean, it was cool because it was at my house, you know, so we could soundcheck on that system earlier in the day and know what it would sound like. It wasn't like taking your stuff somewhere else. The bill was Needle Gun and Veiled and I think Caleb Johnston was supposed to play, but it ended up Little Howlin' Wolf did a set, I think. Yeah, because I screenprinted the flier for it. I made a poster so I can see in my mind, I think Caleb was supposed to do a set. So then for some reason people asked us to play more. And I'm not being modest, I really mean after that first set, for some reason, people asked us to play.
Flannery: Did we sit on the floor the whole time?
Chloé: I stood up for one song. But yeah, it was so weird, what I remember of that night is - and I didn't write this on the ten year anniversary thing - I remember experiencing this thing that, Jack, I'm sure you've experienced many times of you're performing a show, you're there with other performers. You're like, "Hey, what's up?" You meet each other and then it goes a couple of ways: there's a bunch of variations, but it's either they see your set and then you guys don't talk again the rest of the night, which is like, "Didn't really like what you're putting down, babe." [laughter] Or vice versa, right? You see their set and you're like, "Oh good Lord." [laughter] That happened where no one talked to us. I mean, Duncan did, but I remember the Veiled guys were definitely like, "Oookay. Baltimore is getting a little loose these days, I guess." [laughter]
Chloé: Second show we opened for Carlos [Gonzales] and Humanbeast at the Bank.
Flannery: Oh okay, right. Of course.
Chloé: Flannery's like, "Yes, I was there." [laughter]
Flannery: I was there. I was there! I remember my outfit.
Chloé: Me too.
Flannery: I was wearing a light blue two-piece, shorts. I loved that outfit.
Chloé: Yeah, that was so good.
Chloé: I'm going to confirm a rumor that's been going around about Odwalla. I'll just confirm it after all these years. We did spend more time shopping than practicing.
Jack: But you know what? That's part of the practice, if we're talking about practice.
Chloé: It is! Completely.
Flannery: That's inspiration.
Chloé: So it was a great show but that show is the reason why we carry around a DI box, which I think no small, little touring noise band did in their first six months, because I just had a lot of audio anxiety of what the sound was going to be like at the show. So every time that something would happen that went wrong, I would go 100,000,000% in the other direction to try to fix it and learn from it so that it would never happen again. I remember we had, I think, just a 1/4" line out of our sampler. Also that was the first show we played with the sampler. And then I remember the snake at the Bank was just XLR, so we tried...
Flannery: Snake at the Bank.
Chloé: Thank you. Thank you. [laughter] We were all thinking about it. You were all thinking about it. [laughter] The snake at the Bank was just like XLR and then we tried to use one of those kind of bullshit XLR to adapters, which aren't real. I don't trust them. We tried to do one of those and it didn't work. This is the only time that I've ever had this issue anywhere. We have the most simple setup, it's just a sampler and two microphones. But I remember being like, "Max!" Eilbacher. "Max! Max!" [laughter]
Chloé: And he helped us. But that show was really cool. That was a very important one for the journey, I feel like.
Flannery: Tried some new stuff out.
Chloé: Yeah, some hits, some misses.
Jack: I'm curious if you could in any way describe the progression from the first set and then new stuff you're trying out and then towards as you started playing more and how it evolved.
Chloé: Yeah, so the first set was our computer and the toy drum set. I was like, "Duncan, you know how to do this bullshit, right? Can you solder a thing in it?" And he did, which was really cool of him to just do that. But the whole time we played there was a bzzzzzz. I probably just broke the recording thing right now, but there was this crazy little buzz and I think at our first show I said, "Can I get a little more feedback in the monitor?" As a joke. I think I was just, like... Well, I was being a brat, but also just acknowledging that this thing was buzzing to high heaven. But by the second show we ditched that and it was just the sampler. So the first show with the Garage Band clips, we were kind of doing more of a traditional "there's a track and then we do our vocals over it."
Flannery: Less triggered sound.
Chloé: Yeah, less trying to do a weird calculator...
Flannery: Calculator claw.
Chloé: Yeah, calculator clock. So funny. Then yeah, the second show was all triggered with just the sampler. I think we were using... On the [SP] 404 there's this thing that says gate, which basically means as long as you hold down the button, the sample plays, and then when you lift your finger off, it stops. So it was all that, just triggered by that. And I think we had just had a little more time to like write a few songs probably because we were no longer in the rigorous art school curriculum, you know? I don't know, that was a really good environment to be playing in, too. From there we just got asked to play a bunch of shows. I was always really like, "Oh my God, we have to do it, Flannery." I don't know what it is. It's weird because I'm pretty antisocial, but I'm like, "I have to play! I just have to. I just have to!" This weird kind of glitch. Then the third show we played, there was this thing called Noise Brunch at this apartment in the Copycat. That was our third show. Then I think our fourth show was when No Age came through Baltimore. I think they had told their booker "We want to play at the Floristrees of America for this tour." So of course, they played at Floristree and people were texting the people living there at the time like, "Yo, can I get on that bill?" And I was, true to me at that time, making fun of those people. Just because, you know, I was like, "Oh God." That's a totally fine thing to do, bless everyone. And I do shit like that now, but... [laughter] And then Noel [Freibert] and Jordan [Bernier], my amazing roommates at the time, were like, "You guys should open this show, that would be fun." And then... Yeah, I don't remember. I'm sure if I thought for one more minute here I could tell you about the show.
Flannery: Good show, good show. [laughter] That was our fourth show, with No Age?
Chloé: Yeah.
Flannery: But did they kind of suggest us or no?
Chloé: No, they didn't know who we were. Believe it or not, after our first three shows in Baltimore, they didn't know who we were.
Flannery: No, but you know why I'm asking that. Because didn't B tell them about us?
Chloé: No, so this is kind of part of the, like... A little bit of our origin is because we played our first show with No Age and Dean [Spunt] was really into our set and we were talking after, it was really fun. And then Dean went back to L.A. and later hit us up to release our first album. Then I think the story goes that the sound guy Scotty told B about us. I'm just like, "Allegedly.".
Flannery: Oh really?
Chloé: Yep, that's our story, Flan. [laughter] And then B reached out and we met them and that's how that started. But yeah, it's kind of an interesting little origin story.
Flannery: And also definitely what helped, between Dean and B, kind of brought us to L.A., for sure, too.
Chloé: Yeah, completely. I think I went out to L.A. in February 2014, so right after that, and Dean was like, "Oh do you guys want to play some shows?" And I was like, "Flannery. We have to go to L.A. They're asking for us." And she's like, "Okay, we can wait. We'll get there. That sounds great." You know? But Eilbacher was like, "I'd love to record you guys." So we were going to record a few songs for fun with him and then when Dean was like, "Would you guys want to release a tape or a CD," I think we suggested CD, I was like, "Yeah, actually we have this thing our friend is recording." So then that came out I think when we did our first West Coast tour in, I want to say, August 2014. Then when we were there on that tour, we recorded our second album in L.A., which B put out. We never released anything on a Baltimore label, all of our stuff was L.A. labels, even though we lived in Baltimore for the first two years of our band. Just a fun factoid.
Flannery: What does that say? But yeah, it was kind of special that we recorded it at the Bank, our first record, where we had our second show.
[Odwalla1221 "My Window Ambiance"]
Jack: Well, you guys will have to address that at some point.
Flannery: I know, I knew that was coming.
Chloé: Honestly, it had been something that had been following us. What was always funny about that was there were these little esoteric noise boys who were the ones saying, "Do you know what that means?" And it was like, "No." I had no idea. And maybe that is naivete, but it was like, "Why do you guys all know about this?"
Jack: It's like, "Hmm, what does that say?"
Flannery: Yeah.
Chloé: I think Killian came up to us after our first show and was, like... That could have been any name, right? But yeah, bless Killian. [laughter] That always kind of followed us. Flanny, I'm curious to hear what your perspective is on this, but for me it was also that it was after the 2016 election too. I think we never really addressed it because it's not like anyone would really get our music confused with... It's not like anything was blurry about it. It was pretty clear that we weren't a skinhead band.
Flannery: I remember being like, this is so, as you just said, removed from the best friend girl band, you know? Nothing about our aesthetic matched that and the people that were bringing it up were so, like...
Chloé: They were ding dongs.
Flannery: Yeah, and it's like not a known thing and I feel like we would always be like, "Yeah, 88, hugs and kisses." Literally the name is from Flannery's email when she was, like, ten. Which is numbers that are random. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, but August, I think my birthday wasn't available. But also it is such a date reference. Anyway, I understood why we should change it in a lot of ways, but in my opinion, what was great about it was that I think we needed a little bit of a shift, like a new era. Like a vague kind of switch, where it's like, "Oh, they changed the number." People that were really paying attention to that issue, quote unquote, would have been like, "Oh, okay." But it happened so naturally and I was so surprised how well it stuck, just us changing it.
Chloé: So Flanny and I were both born in August and we weren't born in 1988, we were born in '91.
Flannery: We're young, okay? [laughter] Nineties babies.
Chloé: Here I am worried about being naive American and Flannery is like, "We're actually young, oldies." [laughter] Always just starting shit. I think before then there had never been another number that worked and Franny 8/12/91 and I'm 8/21/91. So yeah, I think we had never really thought of a number that we had liked and then I was like, "1221," and it kind of flowed. So we were like, "Let's just do that."
Flannery: And it's an angel number.
Chloé: Yeah, it's an angel number. It's a palindrome, like 1991.
Flannery: Super seamless.
Chloé: Obviously. But there were people around at that time... I say this again like we're the Rolling Stones with a management team. But there were some, I would say, PR person-esque, if you could call it, and then a booker-esque.
Flannery: Very -esque.
Chloé: Yeah, they were more roleplaying those parts and they were like, "Why are you changing it? That's so dumb." And anyone that knows me knows if you say that, I'm just going to want to do it more. Some other people who I actually respect their opinions said that too. And I was like, "No, this is what we're doing." It just seemed like if that's what we were riding everything on, then our band wasn't that much, right? And also, my famous line that please, someone put on my tombstone, if we're not going to make any money, we might as well have some integrity, right?
Jack: There you go, Ian MacKaye over here. [laughter]
Chloé: Yeah! I just put on my little rolled-up beanie, like, "Hey guys." [laughter]
[Odwalla 88 "Live in North America"]
Chloé: This is this tidbit I've been talking about. Interesting tidbit: Jack did sound at the last Odwalla show.
Jack: Wow, what? Where was that? I don't even remember that!
Chloé: At PS1. It wasn't the last Odwalla show on purpose.
Jack: Ah yeah! Oh, amazing. That's so funny.
Flannery: Trivia!
Chloé: Trivia! I know, I've been saying to Esra [Padgett] all week. I'm good at keeping secrets, but, like, if I have a birthday present for someone, I want to give it to them right away. So this was my birthday present for you.
Jack: Thank you! Hey, so then it all comes full circle.
Chloé: Yeah. But so I think a couple of things were happening. So our last show, not planned, just happened to be our last show, was at PS1 and that was at the end of 2018. But in 2017 we toured a lot and I think, I later calculated it, we were gone half the year that year. I think we're both creatures of comfort a little. Not creatures of comfort, but we like to be in our nice little house, you know? In our PJs. You know? Like, pajamas, for example. [laughter] So basically at the beginning of 2018, I kind of had a depressive episode so I took a few months off of most things I usually do. Then I got a lot better, I came back to life, which was amazing. Shout out Wellbutrin, shout out Zoloft. So then we wrote a few more songs, new songs, and we did one tour that summer with Angels, which was so fun. And then and then we did that New York trip where we played at Honey's and then at PS1 with the legendary Jack Callahan doing our sound. And then it was just kind of, like... I don't know how you felt, Flanny, but we talked about this, maybe. That was in 2018, and then at the beginning of 2019, it kind of felt like we were either going to really work on it and do this new era or maybe take a break, maybe pause, and I just don't think that my mental health... I don't think because I had a depressive episode the band broke up, but just this time had passed and things had changed. Also we started the band when we were 21 and then all of a sudden you're just a little bit older like, "Okay, what's the vibe?"
Flannery: I think we had great intentions for having Odwalla evolve into the next phase and were attempting that, but also... Yeah, life stuff, friendship stuff. I think that there was definitely a strain that, once we decided to... Which was I think a great, beautiful relief when we made that decision. It only made our friendship blossom to the next level.
Chloé: It was so sick.
Flannery: It was the best thing we could have done. And I'm sure with a lot of people that you talk to, with this theme, when you are so close, when you live together, when you've toured together, when you're doing your business and trying to have a great relationship, it's complicated. So I think that was the true... For me it was like, "Oh, what would it be like to just have Chloé as a friend and not always have to have a project." I feel like with most of my relationships that is such a strengthening component, when you can work on something together. And Chloé and I are obsessed with being productive in creative ways. But I think also having been together in this band from when we were so young, that's an interesting process to grow out of and into whatever and try things alone.
Chloé: And I was just going to say, I remember when we went on that tour with Esra, when we still lived in Baltimore and she got to know us over the course of that tour. And I was talking to her about friendships and being in the band, like her and Mark [Iosifescu], you know? I mean, Esra's always dropping these amazing, insightful, humble knowledge bombs on me. And I remember she was like, "No, but that's what makes your band special, is the potentness of it." Like I said before, I'm pretty much saying how I'm feeling most of the time and Flannery is thoughtful and maybe doesn't say her feeling right when it happens, which makes for a fabulous dynamic. And so because of that I think that she knows things before I do - spoiler alert - who would have thought? And so I feel like whenever Flanny wants to, I'm kind of like, "Flan, you call me when you're ready." I could do it tomorrow. I always say the only thing I want to do is play a show when we're, like, 65. But. But I feel like Flannery knows that I need more time too. She knows me better than I know myself. She knows what's good for me, basically, in a way that I don't always know.
Flannery: Well, I think also Chloé and I have talked about how when we were really in the thick of it we didn't always... Not that we didn't make the best decisions, but... Chloé has a great moral compass, I have a good moral compass. [laughter] It wouldn't be like, "Okay, this is the one of us that's going to tell us this dude sus, let's stop right now." We would always be like, "Hey, let's try it! Let's fuck around and find out!" So I think obviously making the decision to go on hiatus was a big deal and it took feeling out to be like, "Okay, I think this is like the move right now." But I feel so lucky to have had so many years doing that. And the potency that it brings to every other project we do now is so priceless. Performing with Chloé is one of the best feelings in the world, so I know that we will again.
Chloé: Oh my God! See, that's what I mean about the quiet and intuition, I never knew she felt that way. That's so special. I just am always filled with gratitude. And also, just this past week, talking about our first show being ten years ago, it just makes me very happy.
Jack: Oh yeah, I didn't even realize it was syncing up like this when we scheduled it.
Flannery: That's some Odwalla fate timing, for sure.
Chloé: Yeah, Flannery was like, "Couldn't have planned that better if we tried." This is so fun. I'm so excited for everything. Thank you for asking us to talk.
Flannery: Yeah, thank you, Jack. Very kind and sweet.
Jack: Of course.
Chloé: And making us feel relevant.
Jack: Likewise. Hey, you know, once you hit 30, you need all the help you can get.
Chloé: Yeah, I'm 29, but okay. Just kidding, just kidding. [laughter]
Jack: Well, I'll talk to you guys soon. And I'll see you guys soon, hopefully.
Chloé: Bye!
Flannery: Bye!
