There is a sonic boom happening among women of all mediums and industries. Whether through art, politics or music, females are owning their truth and expressing it unapologetically without shame, guilt or insecurity. Submerge got the chance to interview one such inspirational female contributing to this era of woman power, Liz Kat, a multi-talented vocalist, keyboardist and frontwoman of Davis band, The Midnight Dip. Kat chatted with us about bringing The Midnight Dip together, their new EP and the power of turning negatives into positives.

The genres and sounds The Midnight Dip explores would be hard to put into any box. In my first interaction with their tunes, my impression of The Midnight Dip was of a gypsy-esque variety, with an array of contrasting instruments such as accordions and banjos, among others. I imagined it as the perfect music for steampunk events or hipster circuses.

But Kat describes their music style as, “A mixture of sweet and salty with a bit of everything in between.”

While my ears continued through their kaleidoscope of sound, I heard classic funk, jazz and psychedelic thrown in. Their discography offers powerful lyrics and original music written by the frontwoman herself. And above all, The Midnight Dip hopes to inspire others, give people a voice, and contribute positively through the power of noise.

For seven years, Kat had been a part of bands with people she admired and linked up with in the local music scene. However, after her last experience, she was left deeply unsatisfied. This was due to the lack of mutual respect in the band and the irritating machismo attitudes that one can experience when being the only woman in the group.

When asked about her experience Kat replied, “I’ve been in tons of bands with musicians and friends I know in the community here. But then I was with this all-men band that had a strange resistance to having a woman contribute equally creatively. They lacked the respect for me that they’d give to each other … I decided right then and there that I wanted to work for myself with my own band.”

She admits starting her first band wasn’t easy, but so far she has created a group that has gained quite a buzz in less than a year’s time.

Through musical acquaintances, friends and Craigslist, she was able to form the group. David Jacobin on guitar and banjo was her first to join. He’s been good friends with Kat for years. Then Patrick Langham from Big Sticky Mess introduced Kat to Kim Nguyen, who is also on keys.

“Patrick told me he knew someone who was awesome on keys. He said I’d really like her, so Kim and I met up and we spoke about art for hours,” Kat detailed.

With the rest of her crew, including bassist Alex Reiff and Zehrin Sims on drums, Kat’s made the same types of connections.

What is even more impressive, though, is that within a short time of playing together, The Midnight Dip has already released an EP titled, i hear voices.

i hear voices is Kat’s brainchild (with help of the band for arrangement) and covers an intense and difficult breakup in Kat’s life. The collection of songs goes through a process of love, loss and pain, and ends with redemption. The opening track, “Crazy Woman,” begins with delicate acoustic strings that pull the listener into a memory the subject is about to reflect on. Then the drums slowly roar and join in rhythm.

“Crazy Woman” specifically focuses on a moment in the abusive relationship where Kat’s ex-boyfriend chose to call her crazy while in a fight. At that particular moment, Kat felt shame and anxiety. She always assumed crazy had to only have a negative connotation.

But then she thought, “OK, I am crazy but in the best way possible. I decided to make the word positive and made this song as a way for me to accept the word as a positive thing. I wanted to put that aggression and realization into something powerful, so I put it in this song.”

The five-song EP is full of relatable gems a breakup album should consist of, especially in its honesty of how we all can act when heartbroken. Kat admitted, however, her music specifically targets a female audience on this EP.

“After going through the wave of all these stages—love, loss, pain, acceptance—by the end I’ve finally gone through the wave and I’m finally ready to move on,” Kat explained.

While envisioning the concepts for i hear voices, Kat took much inspiration from comedian Hannah Gadsby. In her standup, Gadsby uses comedy to cope with pain. Kat explained that in this way, Gadsby is owning her pain and owning her story and that inspired her.

As for the cover art, painted by Will Durkee, it hints at the contents of the album entirely. Durkee’s piece offers a beautiful female figure in purples and blues exiting a body of water. While including swirls and waves within the piece, the women has a noticeable illustration of an eye on the small of her back. Kat describes how impressed she was with Durkee after he took her description of what she wanted and made the cover art as the result.

“I wanted a woman in water but I wanted her to be a part of the water in a way. I wanted it to all flow. He did so well that he is now my go-to artist for everything,” Kat said.

While she wishes they all practiced more, for now Kat says The Midnight Dip practices at least once a week. While the bandmates individually lead their own lives, they are all dedicated to the same goal. Above all, Kat will always adhere to this goal: “I want to run a band with as much transparency and fairness as possible,” she said. “Even if I write all the songs, I want everyone to have an equal opinion and be happy with the decisions we make.”

Though the the inner workings of social media and finances can be a difficult task, Kat is up for the challenge, frequently staying up late figuring out how to more successfully promote herself and The Midnight Dip. As for what’s next, Kat said The Midnight Dip will release a full-length album in a year or two after getting their feet wet with this first EP.

Make sure to catch The Midnight Dip at these upcoming shows: They’ll be playing the free Rock the Vote event in Davis on Oct. 20 (at Davis Commons, 500 First St., from 11 a.m.–7 p.m.) and at The Torch Club (904 15th St., Sacramento) with The Dirty Chops Brass Band on Oct. 24. This 21-and-over show is $6 and starts at 9 p.m. For more info, go to Torchclub.net. You can listen to i hear voices at Themidnightdip.bandcamp.com.

**This piece first appeared in print on pages 12 – 13 of issue #276 (Oct. 10 – 24, 2018)**

Though Sacramento’s Buildings Breeding Started as a Joke, the Band is Serious About Moving Forward

A perusal of Buildings Breeding’s Myspace page will show that the band has a sense of humor. The tagline under the band name describes the group’s genre as a fantastical mix of “healing & easylistening/religious/black metal.” Of course, even a brief listen to Buildings Breeding’s music reveals anything but. In place of these incongruous genres are dreamy male/female vocals bolstered by jangly pop melodies and swift percussive sensibilities. Perhaps “easylistening” isn’t too far off the mark, because the band’s songs are just so catchy.

Buildings Breeding’s ability to poke fun at itself may stem from the fact that the band started as a bit of a joke—albeit a romantic one. Frontman and founder Chris Larsen started the band as a way to confess his feelings for his girlfriend and now band mate, co-vocalist Melanie Glover. Larsen concocted Buildings Breeding as a fake band with its own Myspace page in order to reach out to Glover while she was abroad. This quirky back-story is a bit of a bane and a boon for Larsen.

“It’s kind of a silly story that we’re trying to get away from,” Larsen says with an uneasy laugh. “That story is haunting us our whole career.”

Whether the band was make-believe or not, its music struck a chord with Glover, and others as well. While still living in Davis, Larsen sent his songs out to Mushpot Records, which signed Buildings Breeding, even though it technically didn’t exist.

“I was pretending to be all these people. I submitted to them just as a joke, and they wanted to put out the record, so I was like, I better put together a band then,” Larsen explains.

“I don’t even know if I ever told them, because I didn’t want to ruin the chances of getting my record released.”

Now just a few years after Larsen conceived the band (he says he got the idea in 2006, but the group didn’t really come together until 2007), Buildings Breeding has bloomed from an inside joke to a bona fide five-piece with a bright future ahead of it. This month, the band will release its first nationally distributed album, In the Key of Calloused Fingers on venerable Bay Area indie Devil in the Woods. The album will be available on vinyl, limited to 300 copies (a digital version of the album was released April 28 and can be purchased via iTunes and other online music stores). The album is a compilation of older material from prior Buildings Breeding releases chosen by friends and fans and also some newer songs. Fittingly, Larsen says the title “¦Calloused Fingers also has a humorous connotation for the band.

“[The album] is kind of like a collection of what we’ve been doing for the past couple years,” he says. “We’ve been playing them so much, our hands are calloused.”

Using Myspace, Last.fm and other sites, Buildings Breeding put the “¦Calloused Fingers‘s tracklisting up to a vote. And in some cases, the band was surprised with what their fans chose.

“It brought some songs that—at least for me—weren’t first picks,” says Chris Vogel, Buildings Breeding’s bass player. “There were some songs that did really well off the self-titled [album], but some of the fans picked some of the deeper songs on that record, so it was nice to include them on “¦Calloused Fingers.”

According to Larsen, letting fans choose their favorite songs keyed the members of Buildings Breeding into which of the songs were working better than others.

“When you have people e-mailing you what songs they like, you kind of know what your live shows should sound like,” Larsen says. “There are some tracks that, in my heart, I thought people might like, but it definitely gets you on the right direction as to where to take the band. It’s obvious when you listen to this record, people like certain ways we go better than others.”
However, both Vogel and Larsen say that fan reaction alone won’t drive the music behind their next recording.

“I think what the fans were telling us by picking the songs was definitely important, but at the same time, we want to grow as a band,” Vogel says. “You can sit and make songs that everyone’s going to like all the time, but you’re just going to fail.”

Though the songs on “¦Calloused Fingers may be new to many people nationwide, Buildings Breeding are more than familiar with them. The band is looking forward to recording new material. Larsen hopes the band will re-enter the studio sometime after May.

Whether fan reaction plays any part in the road ahead for Buildings Breeding will remain to be seen. A larger affect on the direction of the band’s music will probably come from the band’s desire to write their next album together, as opposed to Larsen as primary songwriter.
“With five different people’s input, you don’t know where that’s going to take you,” Larsen says. “I think creating a record together will be the happiest thing we can do.”

Recently, Buildings Breeding was injected with new blood. Kevin Dockter stepped in on lead guitar and Justin Titsworth joined as the new drummer. Both members have had a big impact on the band. Vogel and Larsen both praise Dockter for his “tasteful” playing.

“Kevin instantly just opened up a new door for us with his guitar parts,” Larsen says. Kevin really embellished the songs.”

Meanwhile, Titsworth has taken the band to “the next level,” according to Larsen. Titsworth’s arrival allowed Glover to step out from behind the kit and be more upfront with her vocals, with out causing Buildings Breeding to lose anything rhythmically.

“Some of her songs are our best songs and fan favorites, our top sellers of whatever we sold in downloads,” Larsen says. “It really made me disgruntled to not be able to do that properly. It definitely changes everything to have everything we want going on while she’s singing.”
“I think we’re at a point with five members that we can branch out and bring some new stuff to the table that we haven’t been able to before,” Vogel adds.

With a solid roster in place, it would seem that the good humored members of Builidings Breeding have plenty reason to be resolute going forward—whichever direction their music takes them.