By Keith Walsh
As LGBTQ women in the music industry, Kaitlynn Autumn and Juliann Frances of Witch Weather are bringing their kickass punk and rock sounds to the stage and on their self-titled debut LP (2021’s New Moon was their debut EP). The ten-track set Witch Weather finds the gals asserting their right to be loud in an industry that’s sometimes been less than kind to female artists. In our extensive interview, Kaitlynn and Juliann talk about their first instruments (both hold university degrees in music), their approaches to lyric writing, their gear, and more. (My review of Witch Weather by Witch Weather is at Popular Culture Beat.)

Punk Rock Beat: Juliann mentioned that Depeche Mode was an early influence. Even though your music is guitar based, from the first notes of the “Trying” I hear the melodies that easily could have been done on synth and sounded like Depeche Mode. Even the sweetness of the vocal melodies remind me. Why is bass guitar your choice of instrument, instead of synth? And for Kaitlynn, same question except for electric guitar?

Juliann: I actually started out on guitar (my parents thought that guitar players would be more in demand, little did they know lol) and slowly worked my way onto bass. It’s hard to explain but that just *felt* like my instrument. I started learning piano in late high school to get ready for college and then played the required amount of piano for college lol. And I just didn’t really connect with the keyboard. I find that with certain effects and techniques I can achieve some of that satisfaction of playing synth through the bass.

Kaitlynn: I actually taught myself piano before I had ever even really touched a guitar so that’s kind of like a synth? But guitar was just way more fun for me to play and more versatile with what I could do. I’ve considered adding in some synth in the past but I always really like to have weird non-guitar sounding guitars anyway and I know what I’m doing a bit better with it so that’s probably kept an actual synth from being included so far.

Punk Rock Beat: It’s sometimes a philosophy of indie rock to show your feelings and find the strength in vulnerability. It’s an approach that’s still impactful, but it’s telling stories rather than singing overtly political messages. Please describe how it’s empowering to share your feelings and experiences in songs, rather than just straight forward agitprop.

Juliann: It feels good to be political in a more subversive manner. This question/line of thinking is reminding me of something Debbie Harry said in her book Face It: A Memoir where she’s talking about her lyrics. She said that she was making waves and making people uncomfortable by talking about things in her lyrics that women didn’t usually talk about in music, things that society wasn’t ready for women to be open about. And I feel like that’s kind of what we’re doing. You can get more impactful and relatable by telling a story, which in turn is more rewarding because you’re pouring your own heart into it, and it can be just as political.

Kaitlynn: I mean lyrically this project just tends to be very personal. And when I started songwriting,  the lyrics were really the only way I was truly able to express a lot of personal feelings in a way that wasn’t horribly overwhelming for me so I think a lot of it is just a continuation of that. But at the same time my existence has unfortunately been made political by a lot of awful people. So just by existing and being out and myself I’m being made political. I also do a decent bit of volunteer and activist work for different causes outside of the band so I think I get a lot of my more explicitly political thoughts and feelings out through action.

Punk Rock Beat:  I notice a choice to place clean, undistorted guitars to the front in the mix (not always, but on several of the songs on the album). How is this influenced by some of your goth and new wave heroes? Was there ever a discussion about keeping the distorted guitars in the background, and how did these discussion go (if they ever happened?) And what was the discussion to use chugging distorted guitars up front on other songs?

Juliann: I feel like once we landed on the general direction of the album we had a pretty good idea who which songs were gonna have which type of guitar be prominent. It was less like discussions and more like immediate agreeing lol.

Kaitlynn: Honestly my love of having clean shimmering guitars over top of heavy distorted rhythm guitars goes back a long way. That was definitely inspired in part by bands like The Cure and other gothy bands but I couldn’t tell you what specifically inspired it. I’ve just always found something kind of beautiful about the clarity of the clean guitar over top a bed of absolute chaos and vice versa. And we don’t normally have discussions I wouldn’t say — it’s mostly whatever fits the song better is what we go with.

Punk Rock Beat: On songs like “Blue Menace” and “All I Need” I hear the bouncy jangly guitar kind of melodic pop songs, which I feel might be influenced by the music of the 1960s. How was 1960s music part of your musical diet – was it first hand or from the legacy of later indie artists?

Juliann: For me I would say definitely getting it second hand through indie artists. I don’t tend to venture too far into the 60s

Kaitlynn: Both I would say. Definitely some fairly current indie music with that kind of sound that I’m into. But honestly a whole lot of it was first hand, I’m really into artists like Dusty Springfield and Norma Tanega. Just in general I think that wall of sound 60s pop production and the 60s garage and surf rock are all really awesome.

Punk Rock Beat:  Who’s your drummer, they’re awesome. Are they on the road with you as well?

His name is Adrian Hain and yes he’s very awesome and yes he’s on the road with us. Love you buddy.

Punk Rock Beat: How long did it take to record the album? Please share any experiences or fun stories about the recording process.

Juliann: It was honestly really fun to watch Adrian drum. We kinda just threw demos at him that had electronic drums Kaitlynn had programmed as a reference and he really made something unique out of each of them. He was doing things with his arms that looked like a fight scene in a comic book movie. But what was really funny was our creative ways of adding Cues into the project to signal him when to change sections. Cues of choice included the sound of Yoda dying from Lego Star Wars and Kaitlynn yelling “ADRIAN IT’S THE NEXT SECTION!.”

Kaitlynn: I agree it was really fun watching Adrian go crazy on these songs. I’m okay with drumming for demos and that kind of stuff but I could never even dream of being able to do what he did on this album, he went absolutely crazy. I think one really interesting thing about this album is that all the guitars and bass and even a few backing vocals were actually home-recorded. That definitely let me have a bit more fun with the guitar work and wound up making mixing way easier for me. For soundproofing I just threw a giant blanket over my amp and called it a day.

The album also took a long time to record but not necessarily a lot of hours. Just a very spread out recording process.

Punk Rock Beat:  Please tell us about the gear you prefer: your guitars, amps, pedalboards!

Juliann: I just got an Epifani bass cab from a place that didn’t want it anymore which prompted me to finally get the Markbass Little Mark Vintage 500W Bass Amp Head. I’ve really been loving that combo. My tried and true bass is the American Professional Jazz Bass V (5-strings). The pedals I’ve been using are the Big Muff from Electro-Harmonix, the Plumes from EarthQuaker, and the OC-5 Octave from BOSS.

Kaitlynn: YES I love these questions. For the recording process I used a Vintera Jazzmaster, I don’t play it live because it’s a tad finicky but for recording it sounds beautiful and jangly and surfy. I played it through an Orange AC120 into a Marshall cabinet. I went a bit light on pedals for the recording but for distortion I used the Black Mass 1312 and the Guyatone Hot Drive. For the chorus pedal I have an Eddy from EHX which I’m surprised isn’t more popular because it sounds great and doubles as a vibe pedal. On Blue Menace I used an Ibanez Bottom Booster for the distortion. On a few songs I believe I also used a 3 Series Delay pedal. Playing live I have a bit of a different pedal set up/guitar. Lots of weird little used pedals that I find are on my board at the moment.

Punk Rock Beat: What are some fun stories from the touring you’ve been doing?

Juliann: I started doing back bends on stage and people are always a little bit afraid for my safety lol. Another time we played a show in a barn and had the best stretching and cardio warm up ever behind the crowd while they looked at us weird over their shoulders every once in a while.

Kaitlynn: I think getting to open for Rio Romeo who’s since had a song reach the top 40 is a pretty cool story honestly. Opening for Sarah and the Safe Word and Bullpup on their tour was also sick. I also think it’s a fun story whenever I get to go to sleep before 3 a.m. on nights that we have shows.

Punk Rock Beat: What are some ‘not so fun’ stories from the tour ?

Juliann: Things have been pretty okay. But when you’re doing a lot of shows you’re bound to run into people who aren’t ready to take you seriously because of who you are. For us it’s cuz we’re women, and LGBTQ women at that. For reasons we don’t have to get into lol there’s people who just assume we can’t play or have good songs because I guess the girls and the gays are just too dumb and weak (that last part is very sarcastic lol).T

Kaitlynn: I’m not going to name any names because the people who were actually in this band were mostly very nice, but the people this band brought were… honestly just giving me atrocious vibes. Like older people being passive aggressive towards us, ignoring us, blocking my way into the bathroom and just like, standing there while I was trying to get through. I tried to like low key call that out on stage but I wish I had been more specific because thinking about those people is still infuriating even now. But again the band members themselves that I talked to were for the most part very nice. We’ve played at venues that have been pretty unwelcoming to us before as well so it’s not like it was all that new but still.

Punk Rock Beat; The new mix of “Don’t Need” with both of you on vocals is fire. What inspired this new version?

Juliann: I believe it was at least in part decided by playing it live. We were playing it faster and more aggressively as we went. Also as a PSA definitely don’t do what I did if you like having vocal cords lol, but we wanted unhinged so I threw out the hinges

Kaitlynn: I think the song was kind of done a disservice by the demo, because the demo was a bit slower and we hadn’t played it live yet. So while the demo sounded fine, once we started playing it live it definitely changed how we looked at it. When I went to mix the first version, I heard the vocals and heard the slower speed and went ‘ah frick ah heck we gotta redo this.’ Luckily it was really fast to rerecord and didn’t and all too much extra time.

Punk Rock Beat: Please describe the experience and joys of finally getting these songs out to the public and also playing them live, after the 10-year journey from basement to stage? How does it feel?

Juliann: Playing them live feels pretty good. The new direction is getting us livelier crowds which is something I respond to a lot better personally. Plus, it’s really hard to pick a favorite from the album because I think they’re all amazing so it’s also fun to watch people’s reactions to them.

Kaitlynn: I think the first ever demo I recorded was in 2013, and if 2013 me could see current me I would be absolutely ecstatic in a few ways. Being able to release music to an audience and playing cool shows and being out as trans has absolutely changed my life so incredibly much. Most of these songs are all new but ‘Life is Great’ specifically I wrote about 7 years ago now. Playing that one live feels incredible. I have such a huge soft spot for that one because of the time in my life that I wrote it during and the fact that I’m still here now to sing it to rooms full of people. ‘Trying’ is another pretty old one actually that was initially written about 5 years ago now and got rewritten like crazy and I think I’m finally happy with it, and that one always gets a great reaction live. It really feels like all that time I spent as a teenager hiding from the world (and myself) making demos wasn’t all for nothing. All in all I am so excited that these songs are finally out, it feels really fulfilling.

Witch Weather Link Tree
Witch Weather On Instagram
Witch Weather On YouTube
Witch Weather “Unapologetic” At Popular Culture Beat
Witch Weather “Don’t Need” At Punk Rock Beat
‘Witch Weather’ Album Review At Popular Culture Beat

finis