Beginnings

Helena: My dad was playing drums on our first demos, so we didn't go through any drummers.

Stella: No, not without me.

Helena: We probably looked for a second guitarist for a while but that was stupid - I don't know what we were thinking.

Actually, when we were offered our first show, we needed a drummer so we could play live, and there was a girl that we were going to jam with but then she bailed. Thank God she bailed because then we got Stella through a friend of ours.

Stella: I'm going to just speak for Helena and say I feel like there was instant chemistry.

Stella Joining The Band

Stella: They had a couple of songs out on SoundCloud and those are what I listened to, to figure out if I wanted to play the show. Jason, Helena's dad, was playing on those so when we were practicing those songs I just replicated the parts that he did. So on certain songs off of Ginger, the drum parts that I played are replicating all of his parts. But all the new songs they let me write what I wanted to write.

Mikaela: Yeah, "A Letter" and "Ginger" were the songs that we had out, but then we wrote the other ones.

"Ginger"

Mikaela: I remember writing it. I was at Helena's house and we were just playing around with stuff and I thought of a cool bass line. Then she thought of guitar that would fit into it.

Helena: I remember writing those lyrics with you. We were angsty 7th graders or 8th graders.

Vocal Textures

Stella: The vocal harmonies and the bass are really what sets us apart in Hello Mary. Even before I came in Helena would record harmonies with herself, so it was clear that was something she wanted from the start, and then I came in and I was like, "I can actually do that for you, live."

So, the more and more we write and develop as a band, the vocal harmonies have become more and more present in the songs. With all these new songs that we're hopefully going to release some time this year, that will be very, very prevalent. It's just important to our sound. It is Hello Mary for sure.

Vocalizing

Helena: It's so fun - we spend a lot of time writing cool harmonies and stuff, especially on this new record.

Stella: And there's a lot of... I don't know if you'd call it "call and response," but echoing. Like I'll sing the same line but then delay it a little bit. And then it's interesting too because me and Mikaela are very rhythm - well obviously, we're rhythm instruments - but I feel like a lot of the songs are very rhythm oriented and weird rhythms, so playing those and then also singing weird delayed parts on top of that is really cool and very satisfying.

What Song Defines '90s Grunge?

Mikaela: That's such a hard question.

Stella: I have one. Mine is a classic one: "Heart-Shaped Box" by Nirvana. It's grungy but not too grungy.

Mikaela: I probably would say a Nirvana song, which is super lame. I would say "Milk It" because that's my favorite Nirvana song and it gets the job done.

"Apple"

Mikaela: I wasn't singing, Helena was definitely singing. We went to Helena's grandparents' house. On the way there, I remember Helena writing notes down in her notes folder and taking voice memos. We had brought our amps and instruments and we went right to the basement and tried to figure it out.

Helena: I remember writing the guitar riff in the car. We wrote the lyrics in the car - the lyrics are not that great.

Mikaela: Yeah, it was crowded and we were tired. We did it really quietly too. We didn't want your parents to hear us.

Helena: Yeah my parents were driving us.

"Take Something"

Helena: I wrote the guitar part and the melody over quarantine. I don't know exactly when, and Mikaela was away actually.

Mikaela: Yeah I remember when...

Stella: Mikaela went upstate for months and it was just me and Helena sadly practicing while Mikaela was away. We were all quarantined so we all had a bunch of time to write songs and Helena brought in this song, which is now "Take Something," and we practiced it for a bit.

She wrote the first kind of quieter part, and it seemed like it was going to be kind of a mellow song, and then we were like, "This needs to have some sort of explosion at the end, some big build up." Then we wrote that and then Mikaela of course came in and just made it like 100 times better.

Mikaela: When I came home I was obsessed with the song. I was like, "You guys really did it this time. You've really done it."

Talking about how supportive they are of each other no matter who played what part in putting together a great song.

Progression as Songwriters

Mikaela: I think it's a shift in taste, like we're maturing a little bit.

Helena: And getting better at our skill as well. I've gotten a lot better at guitar since "Ginger," and the harmonies and stuff are more complex.

Stella: Also, I don't want to say getting bored of the old sound, but at a certain point as songwriters, you have to go in a direction, you're not going to just stay where you are your whole life. What Mikaela said, just maturing and getting better at instruments, those two things combined and just understanding each other as musicians better.

Mikaela: And listening to more music, like different genres.

Helena: We all listen to the same things so we all know what we want in the songs.

Hopes For The Next Year

Mikaela: To play a show, as in a show with people.

Helena: Ideally touring would be the best but that's kind of unlikely.

Stella: Touring and putting out this freaking album. Putting out an album!

Mikaela: Yeah, recording and putting out new music.

Helena: Because for some reason it's really hard to make that happen... money and timing.

Stella: I think most of it is money. Just being able to pay for the studio time with the person that you want because it's expensive if you want it to sound really good, but it's worth it.

May 12, 2021

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