Lucy Michelle & The Velvet Lapelles
The charming local uke player talks about keeping an iron stomach for the love of music, and writing love songs about mittens and lightbulbs.
After a year of playing in front of progressively bigger crowds in progressively bigger venues, the stage fright is finally wearing off for Lucy Michelle, who has become one of the local music scene’s brightest new talents, along with her backing band The Velvet Lapelles. Still, on the off chance that she does vomit during a set, as happened during a live on-air performance for Radio K, rest assured that she’s developed the wherewithal to swallow it down. Rock requires an iron stomach. In little more than 12 months, Michelle and company have formed a band, released an album—this summer’s Orange Peels And Rattlesnakes—and landed a slot at First Avenue’s Best New Bands Of 2008 showcase on Wednesday, Jan. 14. Their sinuous, folky tunes might be described as Minneapolis klezmer, with unusual instrument choices such as the accordion, the throat trombone, and Michelle’s ukulele. Decider talked with Lucy Michelle about taming the stomach butterflies.
Decider: Did you envision the Lapelles being this busy in your first year together as a band?
Lucy Michelle: When we started, it was really just for fun. And then it turned into this thing where I guess people started liking it. I don’t even know how that happened. I can’t complain, though. It’s pretty awesome.
D: Have you had to readjust other parts of your life to fit in more time for gigs?
LM: I’m taking next semester off from school because it’s gotten to be a little more extreme, time-wise, to do everything that I’ve been doing. It just gets to be too much. School is important to me as well, but I’m really into music right now, and that’s what I want to be doing. So to be in school and be paying that much money for something I’m not really invested in just doesn’t make a ton of sense.
D: Although it’s because of school that you got into the ukulele, right?
LM: When I was living in the dorms I was kind of going stir-crazy because you’re stuck in this tiny little room. I couldn’t play piano because it was too big, and I couldn’t play my saxophone because it was too loud, and I was like, maybe I’ll get this tiny little instrument. So my grandpa’s really into eBay—which is weird for grandfathers, right? He’s a really savvy guy. He got me my first ukulele on eBay, and then built me a banjo ukulele a little later on. So many of our songs are built on four or five chords, and that’s easy to do on the ukulele.
D: How about lyrically? The content seems to range from the intensely personal to fairly abstract.
LM: Most of the songs are written in this weird, almost subconscious way. When I’m writing I won’t even really be thinking about anything, and then afterwards I’ll realize what I was actually thinking about. Does that make sense? For a while I was really into the idea of a concept album. “Chinese Lanterns” and a few of the others were written about a mitten and a light bulb, and it’s their love story.
D: Would you mind talking about your stage fright a little?
LM: Everyone likes talking about that. It’s gotten better over this year. But for a while I’d feel so sick right before we’d start to play. The part that makes me the most nervous isn’t actually the songs, but how to interact afterward, the in-between. It’s like, should I say something after the song? I feel like I always say really awkward things like, “All right. Party. Next song.” That’s the interaction. Then we played the Radio K thing, where we were live on the radio. Just the thought of playing live was so horrifying to me that I actually threw up. The thing that was going through my mind was, “I cannot throw up on all this equipment.” How embarrassing, on live radio. I just swallowed it. It was bad. It’s gotten a little bit better since then.
D: It seems you’ve begun to expand a bit beyond Minnesota’s borders, too.
LM: We did a little Midwest tour last summer for about 10 days. It was amazing. We went to all these tiny little towns. The nice thing about small towns is that they’re so appreciative of your music. It’s totally unlike here, where some people are too cool to see this or too cool to see that. Last summer we played in northern Iowa right after the floods, and it was a fundraiser for places that had been flooded. After we’d finished, the guy who owned the bar came up to me and he was crying. He was like, “We’ve never had anybody play music like this before. It means so much to us that you were here to do this.” It brings new meaning to why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s like, this is why we do this. You’re touching other people. That’s the whole point.
Lucy Michelle: When we started, it was really just for fun. And then it turned into this thing where I guess people started liking it. I don’t even know how that happened. I can’t complain, though. It’s pretty awesome.
D: Have you had to readjust other parts of your life to fit in more time for gigs?
LM: I’m taking next semester off from school because it’s gotten to be a little more extreme, time-wise, to do everything that I’ve been doing. It just gets to be too much. School is important to me as well, but I’m really into music right now, and that’s what I want to be doing. So to be in school and be paying that much money for something I’m not really invested in just doesn’t make a ton of sense.
D: Although it’s because of school that you got into the ukulele, right?
LM: When I was living in the dorms I was kind of going stir-crazy because you’re stuck in this tiny little room. I couldn’t play piano because it was too big, and I couldn’t play my saxophone because it was too loud, and I was like, maybe I’ll get this tiny little instrument. So my grandpa’s really into eBay—which is weird for grandfathers, right? He’s a really savvy guy. He got me my first ukulele on eBay, and then built me a banjo ukulele a little later on. So many of our songs are built on four or five chords, and that’s easy to do on the ukulele.
D: How about lyrically? The content seems to range from the intensely personal to fairly abstract.
LM: Most of the songs are written in this weird, almost subconscious way. When I’m writing I won’t even really be thinking about anything, and then afterwards I’ll realize what I was actually thinking about. Does that make sense? For a while I was really into the idea of a concept album. “Chinese Lanterns” and a few of the others were written about a mitten and a light bulb, and it’s their love story.
D: Would you mind talking about your stage fright a little?
LM: Everyone likes talking about that. It’s gotten better over this year. But for a while I’d feel so sick right before we’d start to play. The part that makes me the most nervous isn’t actually the songs, but how to interact afterward, the in-between. It’s like, should I say something after the song? I feel like I always say really awkward things like, “All right. Party. Next song.” That’s the interaction. Then we played the Radio K thing, where we were live on the radio. Just the thought of playing live was so horrifying to me that I actually threw up. The thing that was going through my mind was, “I cannot throw up on all this equipment.” How embarrassing, on live radio. I just swallowed it. It was bad. It’s gotten a little bit better since then.
D: It seems you’ve begun to expand a bit beyond Minnesota’s borders, too.
LM: We did a little Midwest tour last summer for about 10 days. It was amazing. We went to all these tiny little towns. The nice thing about small towns is that they’re so appreciative of your music. It’s totally unlike here, where some people are too cool to see this or too cool to see that. Last summer we played in northern Iowa right after the floods, and it was a fundraiser for places that had been flooded. After we’d finished, the guy who owned the bar came up to me and he was crying. He was like, “We’ve never had anybody play music like this before. It means so much to us that you were here to do this.” It brings new meaning to why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s like, this is why we do this. You’re touching other people. That’s the whole point.
Lucy Michelle & The Velvet Lapelles live at Orchestra Hall, Aug. 31, 2008:
