[Cover photo credit to Bobby Rivero]
Venice Beach, California-based Instrumental Rock duo Movie Club released their second full-length album, Great White, on December 12th, 2023, and it followed an intense series of live performances, culminating in a “Psychedelic Circus” residency in Hollywood. For that residency, Movie Club, which consists of drummer Jessamyn Violet and guitarist Vince Cuneo, drew on artists from hugely varied fields including burlesque, Drag Kings, spoken word performers, and musicians who were encouraged to create their own lyrics to Movie Club tracks.
This all-embracing approach to performance events is not very common in the music world, but the “Psychedelic Circus” built on two key touring experiences that Movie Club had taken in. After doing a residency in Brooklyn where they brought in acts from various arts, they were energized by it. After the release of Jessamyn Violet’s YA novel, Secret Rules to Being a Rockstar, they also went on an unconventional tour, playing in venues like bookstores alongside hosting and participating in readings. Bringing all those observations together enabled them to create the highly energetic “Psychedelic Circus” shows. Now there’s no looking back for them in their performance approach.
Their new album Great White marks their sixth time in the studio over their five years of band history, and it formulates an expansive sound beyond their Psych Rock foundational layers. Jessamyn Violet brings in piano, and the album features upright bass, and more horns than ever before with the help of Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie, Black Crowes) and David Ralicke (Ozomatli, Dengue Fever), respectively.
I spoke with Vince Cuneo about their transformational experience in bringing together collaborative live events and how that’s impacted their approach to their new music.
Hannah Means-Shannon: You have been doing so much performance with interesting new approaches teaming up with other artists. What do you think moved you in this direction?
Vince Cuneo: We tried it for the first time when I first went out to New York because I have some history there. I used to go see shows there and know a lot of musicians. So we collaborated with a whole bunch of artists, including, rappers, dancers, and spoken word artists. But after that we did our “Reading, Rocking Rainbow Tour” for Jessamyn’s book, where it was a book and music mashup. There would be readers there, and though we didn’t really perform with the readers, there was this opening for crossing arts. That just makes things ways more exciting, collaborating and meeting artists through performance.
When we got back from our tour, we were offered a residency in Hollywood. It was very last-minute so booking bands was looking difficult. So we thought, “Why don’t we just hit up a bunch of artists from different arts and see who might like to do it?” It was really cool because Jessamyn has a community in the writing world, so we had writers and directors. Also, for the first time, we had some singers, who we told, “Hey, just write some lyrics over our songs.” It was really cool to hear peoples’ interpretation of our music.
From the audience standpoint, it was really cool to hear people say they had never seen something that blended these arts. From the artist’s standpoint, it’s not every day that a magician gets to perform with an author. It felt good to inspire artists. It’s not every day that an author gets to read with a Psych Rock band behind them. It’s definitely inspired us. We’re talking about whether, if we go on tour again, we might grab local talent as opposed to working with other bands. It seems like there’s a need for it now and collaboration is why Movie Club exists.
HMS: I have seen some collaborative events in the literary and visual arts, but I haven’t seen as much crossover with music. I think people have kept musical events in a certain box in terms of what needs to happen in what way. And as we know, traditional ideas of touring are not always working out well lately. But I know it takes a lot of organizational energy to bring so many performers together.
VC: With Movie Club, we try to think, “There is no box.” And that has been very inspiring to us. After the formation of the band, for the first few years when we were trying to find our stride, I feel like people were saying, “You need to find a singer.” Or “You need this or that.” It’s hard to hear that, when you’re trying to do something different. But the more that we’ve been doing this, people are accepting what we are doing. As for organizational stuff, I grew up with a mom who was a music teacher and helped put on musicals, so that was all about thinking, “What performer do you want to put on here?” and “What performer do you want to put on there?”
Every week, we had different performers at this residency, so we had to think about that. The other thing is that there were zero rehearsals with these artists! So that made things exciting for us, not knowing things ahead. There were these performers who were Drag Kings, and we had no idea what they were going to do. But they had choreographed this whole thing with blow-up guitars and were dressed as rockers. It was crazy! There is some method to the madness.
HMS: Just to clarify, for some of these acts, your music acted as the backing track?
VC: Yes, the whole event was Movie Club music. For our magician, we used our track “Ghost in the Machine” since it’s a little more creepy. But some of these authors wanted our most rocking songs, which made it a little more complicated. But because our music is instrumental, it lends itself to this. Almost every week, we’d have different guitarists, too, and it was so interesting to hear what they heard in our music.
Most acts were three minutes, but sometimes we’d extend that. There was dodging and weaving due to having no rehearsals, but the last night we did it was just perfect. It does take a lot of energy to do these, as you said, so right now we’re focusing on getting our record out.
HMS: Where did the title of the show, “The Psychedelic Circus” come from?
VC: Jessamyn was doing some research and found out about The Rolling Stones’ Rock ‘n Roll Circus in the 60s. We were looking for inspiration for the flyer, and we thought, “Let’s call it The Psychedelic Circus!”
HMS: Yes, The Rolling Stones and The Who and others were involved in that television special in the late 60s that didn’t get released as planned. You can get some of the soundtrack now. It was a lot of young artists saying, “Hey, let’s do something different! Let’s see what happens!” That’s the 60s for you, I guess.
VC: That’s what I grew up with! My dad introduced me to all those 60s and 70s musicians, and it seems like they were always collaborating together and hopping on buses and trains. That is something that sometimes you don’t see as much because it is a lot of work. But as I mentioned, collaboration is what keeps Movie Club alive. That’s true on our records, because if there’s only two people in a room, you’re only going to have so much to say.
HMS: You always seem to have great people on your records.
VC: We just always like to bring other voices in. On this record, we brought Tim Lefebvre back on bass. He’s like an honorary Movie Club member. If he wasn’t touring the world so much, we’d make him play bass with us all the time. He gets our sound. We sent him tracks and within 24 to 48 hours, he sends everything back. When I hear it, I can’t believe it. He plays so simply but writes killer melodies as a bass player, which is really hard. We were also lucky to have David Ralicke on the record, who also performed with us at Gold Diggers in Hollywood. He’s also touring all the time, but when we have the right shows, we try to bring him along.
He’s a horn wizard, so on this record he’s playing baritone zax, tenor sax, flute, and on “Galapagos”, one of the last tracks, we told him to pull out a flugelhorn. A flugelhorn on Psych Rock?? But we told him to just try it. He respects what we’re doing and just gets it. Finding these people has been invaluable to us and takes our music to another place.
Tim actually plays upright bass on “Goblin” since he’s a severe Jazz head. Hearing upright bass on our music made me say, “Oh my god!” He’s also a master of bass synth because he’s a really great Producer who produces records all the time. He just sent us a bunch of synth tracks and let us pick whichever ones we wanted.
HMS: I think the mood of these songs is a little more dream-like in a good way. You definitely explore more territory rather than sticking as closely to Rock elements.
VC: This record was a lot more exploratory in that way. I’ve been playing a lot of ambient music with solo guitar since I use that to practice and find it to be like therapy. Psych Rock is a little bit droney and trippy anyway, so we thought, “Why don’t we put some of that stuff on the album?” Jessamyn plays percussion on the drums, but she also plays piano on this record because she was a classical pianist before she played the drums. I said, “Let’s start using this stuff!” Because, like I said, there is no box for Movie Club. We can make the classic banger Rock song, then we can make the trippy piano song. There are no rules.
HMS: I feel like I can really hear that on this album because each song gets its own space and mood. Do you think instrumental music allows more flexibility?
VC: We’ve been trying to get more into the movie world because we’re giant fans of cinema. So we’re kind of creating our own brand of something you’d imagine in a soundtrack. We’re trying to manifest that kind of thing because a lot of artists are getting into scoring, like Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead and, of course, Trent Reznor. We’re trying to bring all the artistic worlds together, since if a person is a fan of movies, they’d probably be into Movie Club.
HMS: You’ve been so busy with all this touring. Does that mean that you’ve written these songs more recently, or do they hail from a longer period of time?
VC: It was probably last November that we started writing this. With us, we don’t say, “Hey let’s make a full-length record.” Or even, “Hey, let’s make a single.” We just wait for when the inspiration will come. We had a little window when Jessamyn was finalizing her book, so we started writing and all these different ideas started coming. We were already nearly there, so we decided to make a full-length record.
This time, the material presented itself and we tried to make everything natural rather than trying to hit a deadline. This album really came naturally, and we started seeing new elements that really freed us up. The funny thing is that once we finished it, and recorded it, we got so caught up doing our shows that we decided not to release it during the tour. We do everything independently, and that’s a lot of work, so we needed to wait for the dust to settle. If people want us to play, we keep playing shows. Then, when we got back, we could focus on releasing the record. But as with most Movie Club records, by the time we are releasing one, we are already working on the next one! [Laughs] We already have an idea and a theme for our next record.
HMS: I imagine it’s a much more fun and fulfilling experience to focus on the release of a record when you’re not trying to do a million other things while on the road.
VC: I think the most important thing is enjoying the release. Once you finally get it out there, it’s so exciting. We’ve heard these songs, and we may think they are good, but art is to be consumed, and until you’ve put it out in the world, you don’t know how people are going to take it. That’s something I find really fun, seeing what songs people are attached to and your own idea of a song is never what someone else’s idea of a song is.
HMS: Particularly with your cinematic quality, I think people will see visual and storytelling aspects to the music, which will be different for each person. As you saw at the live shows, where people came up with new aspects of your songs. Did that make you see your own music differently?
VC: We had one singer who wrote lyrics to our song, “Thunder” and every time we play that song now, I’m singing the song. I can’t get it out of my head! [Laughs] I couldn’t even have imagined the interpretation of it.
