an interview with makeup girl

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to interview one of the coolest local bands before their show at DC9. I’m going to be so real right now, the guys in Makeup Girl are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. This interview was honestly such a pleasure and I hope everyone likes this incredibly talented band as much as I do! (P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for their new EP Living Safe that comes out on May 11th. No one is ready for how good it is.)

Would you guys mind introducing yourselves?

Brody:

I’m Brody, I play guitar and sing. I book a lot of shows

Caleb:

I’m Caleb, I play the drums.

Johnny:

I’m Johnny, I play baritone guitar and guitar.

Avery:

I’m Avery, I play bass and I sing every now and then.

How did you meet and start playing music together?

Brody:

Caleb and I actually started ten years ago as a two piece. We played more garagey stuff, but then we ended up adding Avery a year ago, and then Johnny in October 2017.

Avery:

Then it just became a real band.

Brody:

Yeah, it came together and now we’re recharged.

Avery:

We recently had Bryce leave, our former guitar player

What inspired the name Makeup Girl?

Brody:

It was actually a nickname for someone who I kind of knew, so I was just telling a story about it and someone was like “Oh! That could be a band name”

Has your local music scene or any music scene in general influenced your music in any way?

Everyone:

Yeah, definitely

Avery:

From a present and past time

Brody:

We go to a lot of more local shows, especially when I was younger, I would go to shows and be like “My god, I gotta do that”

Avery:

Story of our lives

Brody:

Babe City Records, a lot of those bands, Baby Bry Bry is another band from 5 years ago that I really like

Are there any specific musicians who influence you?

Avery:

Shoutout to Big Tony of Trouble Funk, he would play the bass and sing as well. Also @hashonbass follow him on Instagram, definitely two big local influences as a bass player.

Brody:

I’d say BRNDA too

Are there any aspects of some of your past releases that have made way into your new EP?

Brody:

I would definitely say the single is pretty close to some of our older EPs. We have two out and we’re putting out another one. It’s more pop rock, but this one we definitely tried to bring from everything.

Caleb:

We took a lot of styles and tried to mash them all together.

Can you say anything about the creation of the EP? Were there any main inspirations behind it?

Brody:

Our first two EPs, we had some songs and we were like “Oh let’s make an EP”. So this one we were way more driven to do it, we kind of made them all more as one thing. We literally spent a week straight in my basement doing overdubs forever.

Avery:

We want to make weirder sounding things but musically, we want to make it more accessible to anyone, something that you can just sing along to and dance, there’s some depth to it

Do you have a favorite show or a favorite city that you’ve played so far?

Everyone:

It’s a little too early to tell honestly. We like DC9 a lot though.

Brody:

We opened for Peach Pit a few months ago at Comet Ping Pong, it was packed out, it was sweet.

Do you have any weird or funny show stories?

Everyone:

Ah that one that happened in Philly

Caleb: We can’t talk about that!

Avery: We’ll keep that one on the down low

Brody: Johnny once got really drunk

Johnny: I wouldn’t say really drunk. I’d say the Songbyrd one was pretty funny