hi guys i'm currently in the studio in new york right now and i'm with someone that i'm absolutely
obsessed with and she knows it so it's really awkward but i've got laura lee in the studio today
and i am so excited that she's here i literally flew in yesterday because i was like thank you
so much thank you i'm really happy to be on the show good i'm so glad thank you for being here
yeah this is my first sort of like fashion leaning chat so i'm really excited by the way you look
phenomenal thank you can you tell us what you're wearing um i am wearing a stella mccartney denim
suit i think it's like safari denim i would love to hear a little bit about your early beginnings
okay where are you from i'm from houston texas okay born and raised um and then lived there for
much longer than i thought i would growing up in houston has been really interesting i feel
like we have so many incredible artists that have come out of that city totally and most
of them have to leave um just because i think there's like a ceiling in houston of how far you
can go at least musically because there aren't there's not the infrastructure of music labels
and even venues it gets tricky because houston has no um no zoning laws
so you can have a residential area right up next to a concert venue and so most of them end up
getting shut down because of noise complaints wow even though the areas get popular because of the
venues then people move in and then they complain and it's just like vicious cycle very limiting
very limiting who first inspired you to pick up a base uh mark my bandmate um who has a million
instruments he has every instrument i mean he doesn't have every instrument but a lot um and
he was helping me learn how to play some songs on the piano and he's ear trained um as we all are
at this point but he he was telling me in terms of trying to figure out
how the song went on the piano he's like listen to where the bass is going in the song
if you can follow the bass then you'll know where the song goes and somehow that conversation led to
me being like well why don't i just learn how to play bass and it ended up being so
comfy the instrument felt comfortable to me and well obviously there's still a lot of work that
has to be done to learn how to play an instrument i think there's certain things in life that feel
right not necessarily easy but they feel like a good fit you know how did you and your bandmates
meet um i met mark through mutual friends um i worked as a prep preparator i think is the word at
art museums where you kind of break down installations and paint the walls and prepare
for the next one cool um so a friend of mine from there we went to have lunch at his house and he
lived with mark and mark was sitting there in the front room watching this movie on afghani music
and i was studying ancient near eastern art at school so it was like a very specific
place in time thing yeah yeah and we became instant friends and the week after the three of us
all got stuck in a hurricane together so i became really close friends with mark and once you have
a hurricane behind you or like bonded i will never forget hurricane sandy here and the people that i
stayed with i think i'm like on bonded to those people for life yeah exactly so we had that and
then i he invited me to dinner one night with he and dj and they had church rehearsal every tuesday
night so they would go to this place called red yards afterwards for a burger and a beer
or mexican coke depending on who you're talking to um and i got invited and that's when i met dj
and the three of us had dinner every tuesday night for three years before we ever started the band
wow that's really cute as they say with most things friends first totally is the recipe for
success yeah so i went to see them play a church every sunday after i crashed their tuesday night
i never stopped crashing their tuesday night um yeah and then later on after i'd started
playing bass mark was going on tour with span called yippa and they needed a bass player
and i tried out got the job and you know i loved it so much it was like i want to do this for the
rest of my life even at that stage which was much grimier than it is now so let's get into your
music a little bit okay your music is instantly identifiable you guys have such a specific sound
that i'm like absolutely captivated by and obsessed with i would love to hear if you can
describe it through your lens i mean i've really come to believe that we sound like the three of us
which sounds really lame or it sounds like an out to the question but the more and more i
think about it you know it's like you know dj does traditionally play like break beats and
hip-hop drums i'm playing melodic funky bass and then mark is drowning us in you know psychedelia
with his guitar i usually tell people it's psych funk psych funk yeah i like that but
that's you know it's like it doesn't completely hit on everything right but i think that it
gives enough of an idea of what we sound like that if you're interested you'll figure it out
you