By Nick Eneboe
I arrived at the designated meeting place around 10 p.m. It was a quaint old house on A Street, just south of the Capitol. I parked about a block away, but could already clearly hear Starla Dear practicing a cover of “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. I sat and listened to the end of their practice set, which included Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and a hard rock version of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” before we made our way to the porch for the interview.
Let’s start off with some history. When did you form?
Becca: We formed in the summer of… 2007?
Jon: 2006.
Becca: Yeah, the summer of 2006. Jon called me up at like four in the morning and he was hanging out with our friend Günter. He was just like, “Hey Becca, you wanna start a band?” and I don’t even know if I was awake. So then we started talking about who else could be in the band. That’s when we recruited Ben, because we all knew him already. I guess they knew Josh Bodfield through high school. Günter was our drummer when we started, but about a year ago he sort of lost interest and wanted to do other things, so we adopted Josh Topolski last fall.
And the name?
Becca: It’s from the Smashing Pumpkins song “Starla” from the Pisces Iscariot album.
You used to practice in a church, right? What happened to that?
Becca: Well, we just stopped, because it was kind of a pain.
Josh B: God got pissed.
Becca: Whatever, God doesn’t hate us…
Ben: No, "Ben was doing all the moving and was tired of hauling the stuff out there."
Becca: Yeah, Ben has all the equipment here, plus, then I moved in here. So it was like two out of the five of us were already here, so it was just easier.
What are your plans for the summer?
Ben: Well, Becca is going to Philadelphia for July, so we’re going to be doing other stuff.
Jon: We’re playing the reunion show on the 27th of June.
Becca: Yeah, it’s the 10 year reunion for the Lincoln High class of ’99. We’re the cover band. That’s why we’re playing all these covers.
So you’re just going from gig to gig for now?
Josh T.: We haven’t been doing a lot of gigs even for the last couple of months.
Becca: This reunion gig has been our focus lately. We didn’t have enough covers, so we’ve just been working on that.
Jon: We were playing a lot before that though.
Ben: Yeah, twice a month or so.
Becca: And we’re still doing pretty well, money wise.
Josh T.: It’s kind of been a nice break to play other peoples’ music. And then when we’ve come back to our stuff, it’s been tighter.
Josh B.: We do a surprise cover at every show and now we’ve got a huge pot grab from.
Becca: Good songs too: “Baby One More Time” and “I Want it That Way,” stuff like that.
Ben: Maybe those aren’t the good ones…
Dude, that Britney Spears cover was tight. It’s gonna kill. I guarantee it.
Josh B.: With the Slayer-like distortion.
Becca: It’s so awesome. Yeah, it’s kind of funny because I feel like, especially in the last year, the band has taken things a little more seriously and tried a little harder. Before, we were just kind of doing it for fun and I mean, we’re still doing it for fun. It’s not like we have huge plans or anything, but it seems like we took things a little more seriously this time around.
Jon: A little more focused.
Becca: Yeah, and I think people knew that when they heard us playing. Just overall I think the music got tighter. Like all the stuff we play as a band, all of our own stuff, sounds better than it ever did before. And now we can whip out all these covers at practice and it’s just fun. I think it’s a sign that the band works together really well.
Have you put together an EP or anything?
Becca: We’ve just recorded some practices here and there. That’s all we’ve got so far.
Josh T.: Aren’t you writing some new music too, that we haven’t even touched?
Becca: I’ve written a lot of new music, actually. I feel like the stuff I’ve been writing lately has been a little bit more…
Josh T.: Risqué?
Becca: Ha, no, it’s just better. I mean, a lot of the stuff we’ve been playing is old. Like, I wrote it when I was 16 or 17, so it’s almost nine years old now.
Are the new songs in the same pop-rock vein as your old ones?
Jon: I think the new stuff will still be pop, but maybe with more ambient influence.
Becca: I’m hoping there’s a lot more space for instrumental, but not the kind of instrumental we already have. With our old stuff, we like to do this buildup-blasting thing, which I think is cool. A lot of bands don’t do that anymore. But at the same time, I want to hear some really clear, good guitar solos. I really miss that in music. It’s just not in there anymore.
Jon: Guitar solos are out of fashion.
Are you talking classic rock style?
Becca: I’m thinking more like Smashing Pumpkins. I mean Josh can do that. Ben can do that.
Jon: We’ve been intending to.
Josh B.: We’ve been talking about it for the last six or seven months.
Josh T.: We’ve just been grinding it out and (we’ve) got some money saved up.
Josh B.: Yeah, that was part of the reason we were playing so many shows before.
Jon: We have to decide which songs to work on before we record.
Josh B.: Then this reunion show came up so we stopped playing shows so much and started working on that. But afterwards, I suppose the intention is – well after the show, Becca leaves for PA so…
Becca: Well, I talked to this kid, an audio tech student in Norfolk at a community college. They’ve got all this equipment and stuff and it’s a class project to record you, so they’re doing the best they can and you’re only paying like $10 and hour, so it’s a really good deal.
Josh T.: So the recording would essentially be the songs we already know that we like, plus some new ones.
Josh B.: We’ll just pick the best, maybe five or so of the old and new songs after we get them all down.
Becca: Yeah, some of the old ones are just… old. I mean I’d still like to have a recording of them, but they’re just not the best, you know? Plus, I know that Josh and Ben have written some stuff and it would be neat to collaborate.
How does the writing go normally?
Ben: Becca writes songs and we figure out the music.
Josh T.: Yeah, because she’s the voice so she writes songs that are in her, you know, comfort zone, and then musically it gets tweaked through the playing process.
Jon: The structure of the songs sometimes changes, like where the verses and the choruses and bridges go.
Josh B.: Yeah, she’ll write them, but once we get together and play through them a couple times, we’ll stop a half-dozen to a dozen times and be like, “Hold on. Let’s put this here and put that there.”
Josh T.: I’m really anxious to record actually, because it’d be nice to have a solid sounding recording to put on your MySpace. That’s how you find bands to piggy back on shows in other cities and then you can put together mini-Midwest tours and stuff like that.
Becca: I think we all want to do something like that. I mean, I don’t know that after putting all this time in that we wouldn’t want to go to someplace like that. It’s not like we have all these crazy pipe dreams but…
Josh B.: I would be nice to get out to places other than Lincoln and see what the reaction is like.
Becca: It would be cool to play in like Lawrence or Chicago or something.
Josh B.: Omaha. I mean, within three hours of here there are so many places to play – Kansas City, Lawrence, Des Moines, Sioux City… (listing continues)
Josh T.: Dayton, Milwaukee, Chicago, Peoria… (listing continues)
Becca: Wait, did I just hear Dayton, Ohio? Well, I have awesome contacts in Philly. We can just go East Coast.
Josh B.: (still listing) L.A., Seattle…
Becca: Hey, my aunt lives in Seattle! She has this huge place. We could just live there for a while.
Jon: We could probably play Seattle.
Josh B.: Why don’t we just do a whole tour of Washington?
If you’d like to get to know the band a little better, you can look for them on YouTube or visit their MySpace page.
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