The following description is taken from the Sounds of LA website.
Cherry Club: Cherry Club is a powerhouse all-female rock band with a sound that fuses surf rock and fem punk. With melodies like the 70s and attitude 90s, the band takes a bold step into a newly emerging fem rock era. Proudly representing women in rock and LGBT+ musicians of LA, they each have individually honed their skills in different music schools across the city.
Garden Party: Fusing the genres of Jazz, Motown, Neo-Soul, and Funk, Garden Party is an LA-based band, comprised of 7 members each from diverse musical backgrounds. Showcasing nostalgic rhythms, moving chord changes, and powerful horn lines, Garden Party creates original compositions of love, loneliness, and so much more, all through the soulful vocals of lead singer Coco Mori. Forming in their freshman year of college, the musicians quickly became family.
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This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes.
Isabella: Can you share with us your experience performing at the Sounds of La showcase? What was the energy like and how did the audience respond to your music?
Cherry Club: Our experience was really fun. We are normally in small bar venues or backyard shows so the sound was incredible. Other students were really nice and the energy was just beautiful. Everyone was super supportive of each other and there was a wide range of different genres coming together. This was a lot different than what we’re used to but it felt really cool.
Garden Party: We had a lot of fun. I think we were really excited because this was one of our first venue performances in LA so far and it went really well. The whole thing was run super smoothly and we got some really good feedback after so I hope people enjoyed it.
Isabella: What was the process like preparing for the showcase and how did you choose your setlist?
Cherry Club: We had played a couple of gigs before that weekend and it was just kind of back to back, so we felt really prepared and ready. We picked those songs because “Nightmare” is our next song coming out and the lyrics are kind of a tease so we thought it would be fun to play at a school. “Insane”, we just filmed a Tiny Desk inspired vision for it so we wanted to play that one because we know that it’s one of our band’s favorites.
Garden Party: I think those are some of our highest energy songs. We’ve had a similar set list for a long time now and we just keep adding in originals. There’s always a newfound appreciation for new and old songs. The two we performed were “As I Wonder” composed by our pianist and “Found” composed by our guitarist.
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Interview w/ Cherry Club
Isabella: In what ways have you been able to blend surf rock and fem punk elements into your music and how do you maintain a cohesive sound while incorporating these two very different influences?
Cherry Club: We all come from different backgrounds of music so when we’re writing we bring what we’re used to to the table and then it just creates this new atmosphere of sound. It gives us a lot of space to collaborate and add new ideas from what we know as our background. We each have very cool and different decades we use in our songwriting so it’s very helpful to have all of these different influences. Female energy is also translated in two different ways. There’s that soft feminine energy and then there’s a bit more aggressive female energy so there’s a really good mix we’ve found to incorporate into both.
Isabella: Given that you do have a very distinctive style, how do you approach songwriting in a way that resonates with your audience while continuing to stay true to your sound?
Cherry Club: We have a lot of fun while we’re writing so a lot of the lyrics are either kind of funny or more serious but the way we write is really from the heart. When we’re laughing or joking or someone brings in a chord progression that’s a little more emotional, it’s really easy to tap into that as long as our own relationships continue to build. It’s hard to say what kind of direction that we’re going for with the music, it’s just kind of forming as we’re going. There’s so many different genres we want to tap into: we love rock music, punk music and the surf rock influence.
Isabella: What challenges have you faced as an all female band in a male dominated industry and how have you navigated them?
Cherry Club: I think our music is really good and our stage presence is great so it’s really just getting over the hurdle of those stereotypes of putting together a female band for the wrong reasons. A big part of the challenge is also being taken seriously by a lot of guys because they’ll automatically have this assumption that all girl bands aren’t that good. The biggest hurdle after that is just clear communication- what we want out of everything we do with the recording process and booking the photoshoots. I’m sure that’s what every musician struggles with, male or female, so we try not to make it about gender. This industry is filled with creatives and people with large imaginations and they may get an idea you don’t necessarily agree with, so you just have to be very clear in what you are saying.
Isabella: How do you see the future of representation and diversity in the rock scene evolving and what role do you hope to play in that evolution?
Cherry Club: It’s going in a really good direction. More people are becoming more supportive of one another and are able to express themselves freely. I think people are beginning to listen to the music and loving it for what it is so I do see the whole genre going in a good direction. I would love for us to be a strong leader in terms of helping with the queer side of rock and fem representation so we won’t have to get to a point where we won’t have to fight harder to be heard.
Isabella: What advice do you have for aspiring queer musicians who may be inspired by your band’s journey and message?
Cherry Club: I just feel like people should just go out and do it. If you want to make music, it doesn’t matter who you are. At the end of the day, if they don’t like you, that’s fine. I think we’re just women trying to do cool shit, you know? People are going to see through anything that isn’t authentic so keep doing things that make you happy.
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Interview w/ Garden Party
Isabella: How do you approach blending traditional jazz elements with modern music styles in your performances?
Garden Party: We have the sax, the tenor sax and trombone in all of our songs which was actually an interesting thing because when we were starting out, it was just piano, drums and bass. We were just going to keep it a rhythm section because we wanted to do more neo soul but it’s kind of veered in many different directions. We found that a lot of the covers we wanted to do had horns in them so we thought we would add a couple of friends just for certain songs. We ended up bonding so well and loving the song of all of us together. One thing we always try to do is never leave out any instruments and we usually don’t even say yes to a gig unless all of us can do it.
Isabella: How do you balance individual creativity and collaboration within the band especially when incorporating so many different styles and instruments?
Garden Party: Most of our songs up until recently have been where one person comes in with a pretty composed version already. All of us are such talented musicians and we all really trust each other with our individual skills and own instruments. Each member just brings in a song with their specific instruments, lyrics and vocal parts and we really make it Garden Party by putting in our own special taste to it. Everyone’s very creative and very involved throughout the whole process with sharing their ideas.
Isabella: What role does improvisation and spontaneity play in your band’s performances, especially since you seem to do a lot of mini solo moments in your shows?
Garden Party: All of us are from jazz backgrounds and improvisation is such an integral part of jazz and black american music. It’s interesting that even when we’re not playing jazz, although our music is very heavily jazz influenced, our background and the music we grew up listening to has definitely influenced what we have created in our ideas. It’s such a group effort- it’s always the seven of us, and we feel it’s very important to highlight that. I think oftentimes in groups with a singer, it can be perceived as the singer and their backup band or the band plus the singer, but with [Garden Party], it’s just all of us.
Isabella: How do you envision the future of your band’s music? Are you considering expanding beyond house shows to focus more on recorded music?
Garden Party: 100%. We definitely want to expand and not just be a college band in LA and really get a bigger, more diverse audience. Recording has been the next step for us. We’ve had a couple sessions where we’ve been attempting to record but it’s been a little bit of a work in progress, trying to work with sound engineers to really convey that energy we get from live performances.
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Follow @thecherryclubband on Instagram and listen to their new release “Nightmare” out SOON!
Follow @wearegardenparty on Instagram and look out for their UCLA Botanical Gardens performance on April 27th
