By: David Rachac
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| Linnea Mohn performing with Skirt at the Turf Club earlier this year. - Photo by David de Young |
Linnea Mohn: I started piano lessons at four years old, but with an abject loathing for practicing. I just kept singing and playing on my own and when Coach Said Not To needed a bass player, I decided to see what I could do with that instrument.
HWTS: Coach Said Not To is the band that most people might associate with you. How did CSNT start, and what is the status of the band?
LM: Coach Said Not To started as my sister Eva and Lee Violet, a keyboard player and friend of 15 years, getting together and sketching out songs in 2001. At first, I wanted nothing to do with it because I was so "busy" with college. I can't even remember what I was so busy with, but at the time, it was all-consuming. After a few months, I heard a couple of the songs they were coming up with and decided I wanted to play too.
HWTS: There has probably been too much over analysis about siblings being in bands together. That said, is there a difference playing in a band with your sister compared to bands with other friends or acquaintances?
LM: Big communication differences. I don't think siblings care much about politeness when it comes to each other and sometimes that makes for very clear, unabashed, borderline cruel communication. Other times, that makes for uncomfortable moments for the rest of the band. I love the musical flow Eva and I can get into when we find it, though. It's ever elusive and requires a complete lack of tension about anything else in our lives. It can be damn near impossible.
HWTS: What made you decide to form a band outside of Coach?
LM: Coach Said Not To is dear to my heart, but we exist in fits and starts in the midst of jobs, school and other creative projects. Playing in that band gave me an insatiable appetite for playing and made it necessary to get involved in other projects and work out that jones. So now I'm in SKIRT, The Alpha Centauri, playing for The Chris Koza Band, singing harmonies with Haley Bonar, basically trying to stretch and flex my musical muscle in whatever direction interests me.
HWTS: You recently spent four weeks on tour with Chris Koza. What was it like getting in the van and hitting the road for that long?
LM: It can really throw you when you attempt to return to life as it was before you left. I'm having a really hard time both sitting still and finding any sort of sane sleeping schedule. So being back I'm simultaneously anxious and exhausted. I really like being on tour, though. Getting up in one place and moving on to somewhere completely different to play every night seems to me to be an ideal schedule. We were well-received everywhere we played, which was all over the West Coast. It is frustrating when the crowd is sparse on a Tuesday night somewhere deep in the desert Southwest when we've traveled so far to be there and have so much invested in each other and the music, but we always played as though the room was packed and when it was, we could light it up. I even liked the long drives in the van, which we affectionately referred to as Martin DeVanney!
Chris is releasing the album we were touring in supportive of, The Dark, Delirious Morning, on June 7th at The First Avenue Mainroom. There is no where else to be that night!
HWTS: How did the lineup for SKIRT come together?
LM: I 'd known Scott for a while, 5 years or so, and my sister and I had been covering a Seymore Saves the World song called 'The Night' that we love! That got us more involved in each other's separate music projects. Somehow, a conversation about music and my mourning Coach Said Not To happened and I got a call from Scott asking if I'd like to try to write some songs with he and Michelle. We played for a few months and then Katie came up to us at a show, at the Hexagon bar if memory serves, and said she wanted to play with us. I wasn't sure how to make that work at the time, but it seemed to make sense and worked itself out as Katie started picking up guitar parts and adding harmonies. We're a much more complete sound now.
HWTS: How does the SKIRT disc differ from other music you have been involved in?
LM: SKIRT was referred to as a mash-up once, and that's the word I think of when I listen to the SKIRT recordings. I hear Scott in the riffs and walking bass lines, myself in the melodies, Michelle in both the subtle percussion and machine-gun-style snare hits, and Katie has brought texture with her guitar and vocal magic. Since we turned the record around so fast and mixed and mastered it while I was on the road with Chris Koza by bouncing mixes back and forth over email, everything about it feels alive and hectic! It's got a different style than Coach -- where Coach is quirky and crafted, SKIRT is direct and has more swagger.
HWTS: What song on the disc do you think is the best example of what SKIRT is all about?
LM: This Plane is Going Down, and not because of any hidden meaning about the trajectory of SKIRT in the title. It feels like a song that can't be stopped once it starts. The momentum is huge and the spectrum of dynamics is huge. I think that is a defining characteristic of SKIRT songs. We're still somewhat in the Play-Doh phase, the Fun Factory phase.
HWTS: You have a big CD release show on the 23rd at the Kitty Cat Klub. What are we going to see there?
SKIRT is really killer fun to play with live. You'll see the four of vibrating with extreme excitement. I always feel like I got hit by a truck after playing with SKIRT because it's a nonstop barrage for 45 minutes and ranges so much dynamically from quietly mellow to sweepingly rocking. It's cathartic. We're good at cracking each other up and keeping it light on stage. We've gotten better at not taking ourselves too seriously and the energy between the four of us is electric. I think that comes across.
It's a powerful bill all around, with Ah, Venice! and Martin Devaney playing with us. It's a show I'd go to if I weren't playing it.
Artist Info: SKIRT
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