A Little Corner #5

An Interview With Livvy Bennett

Livvy Bennett is best known as the main songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist for the experimental-rock band Mamalarky. I recently was able to interview them for A Little Corner. They’ve always been a great person to talk to and see after shows when I've seen them perform in Chicago, and I was really thankful when they agreed to be interviewed.

Vincent Byas: Well, your main instrument is the guitar, correct?

Livvy Bennett: Yes.

VB: And then also you're kind of the main songwriter for Mamalarky. How do you push yourself to pick up your guitar and write songs? Is it just a natural habit or now that it's part of your career, is it more complicated?

LB: I love that question. I’ve been a songwriter since I was seven. I got my uncle's guitar and was very immediately, like, "Oh, that's a chord, okay, I'm gonna write a song with that chord." I used to practice and try to learn new skills. But the last few years, I basically just write little songs and that's basically what motivates me. It's kind of just part of the flow of life at this point. But I don't know. I feel like I used to write an idea on my guitar and figure out the world around it. But now that we’re producing records on our own more, I feel like I just get ideas all together more. I think of the chords and the melody and lyrics. 

But in terms of like, motivation, I don't know, shit. Sometimes I'm really busy, and I don't pick up my instrument as much as I would like to. I feel like most instrumentalists can probably relate that. If you have a spell like that, you'll sit down with it and you'll be like, “Oh, there's my friend, sorry, I haven't checked in in a second.” 

VB: I mean, you always kind of come back to it, no matter how long it's been.

LB: I feel like I used to be very, like, hard on myself, especially when I was a kid, like, “You need to practice every day for at least an hour, or you won't get better!” And I think that's really useful too. I think that people get really good doing that. But in the realm of writing music that’s very meaningful to you, it feels good to just move with it and play when it feels relevant.

VB: When you bring those songs to other people now with having two albums under your belt, is that process of sharing songs any easier or is there still that apprehension sometimes to say, “Hey, guys, I wrote a song, check it out. Watch me play it?”

LB: I remember when I first started writing music, before Noor was in the band, I would be so afraid to show Dylan and Michael my songs. It can feel very embarrassing to be like, “I wrote this about whatever I'm going through.” But it is a lot easier, and that has come from being supported by the three of them every single time. I also think everyone has gotten really comfortable contributing their ideas, so our songwriting has become more and more of a group thing, which is really really good for me. It's also just cool. I feel very lucky to have my bandmates because it's like any relationship, you learn each other so well. I can think, “Ooh, if I played this thing, Dylan is going to do this really cool thing, or if I sing this, Noor can sing this really cool part over it.” So I think just getting deeper into that part of writing has been really cool.

But to be completely honest, writing songs with Michael is very just…I feel like it's a brain-melding process. We really fill in the blanks for each other, and I can't remember if I've alluded to this at all, but he and I are songwriting and producing for other artists now. So that’s been another layer of feeling even more solid and having each other as creative partners makes it very…I don't know, it's easier than being alone. It doesn't feel like I'm standing alone at the talent show. It feels like I have my teammates.

VB: Well, with Michael, is that because of the shared musical background or is it just your personalities? 

LB: I think it's both. I hope literally, anyone who makes music gets to work with Michael Hunter, because he is truly a genius. I think our greatest strengths are telling each other when something is good that we might not recognize. If one of us is humming a small idea, you know, just something in passing, someone else will say, “Oh, let's try that. I have an idea that we can run with.” I think that a lot of our best songs have been because someone identified something that maybe the other person didn't hear at the time, or didn't hear that it could be something bigger. 

Also our writing brains work very differently. I think. We're both very, like, chordal people, but I think that he has very good ideas for rhythm and arrangements and I have an idea of what the heart of the song is.

VB: Is there a song in particular you think of ?

LB: The best example to me is “Frog 2” because that was like, at the end of a day and he was just playing something. He was just playing the beginning thing, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and he wanted to be done with the day at that point. And I was like, “No, let's keep doing this idea, I have something for this.” He just wrote the song on the spot, kind of begrudgingly, because he was like, “I don't even know what this is.” Then I just wrote the lyrics and the melody and all the harmonies over that improvised idea. 

I mean, that song is one of my favorite songs we've ever made. I feel like people either really get it or they're like, “well, that's a lot of chords, that song changes up a lot,” but that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been just pursuing different ideas and I feel like it's so hard to find. 

I've been really lucky, because everyone that I've worked with has come from my hometown, my high school. And I found Noor out here when she used to live out here. And it all just made a lot of sense. But I feel for other writers who are like, they don't necessarily need, you know, a band or like co-writers, but it definitely makes it really easy to just make a shitload of music if you have people around you that are just, you know, doing shit. 

VB: How do you balance your own creative impulses with who you’re working with now that you’re producing for other people?

LB: I’m admittedly new to this so I'm still learning. From what I've observed so far, it's been extremely case by case. Most often we go into a studio and it's just like, “what are we gonna make today,” and we all kind of figure it out together. And most often, it starts with you know, chords or a riff, some instrumental idea that we have. Because obviously if someone is bringing us in, they want us to put our ideas down.

Sometimes we're brought in as songwriters to like work alongside a producer who will direct the flow of the session in a studio. Sometimes we're brought in to produce a song from scratch. So we’re building it entirely ourselves.

There's so many ways to do it. But I think something that I’d like to grow on is vocalizing my inclinations more strongly, because in Mamalarky I feel like we really speak our mind. But it's in the sense of when you meet people for the first time and you're kind of sussing out like how everyone works.

I think that that's a muscle I really wanna strengthen, and that's something I've been working on a lot lately. It's really helpful to work with Michael obviously, because we are almost a hundred percent of the time like, “Yes, let's do that. That makes sense. Let's go with that idea.” So when we’re both in on the same session, we can kind of co-conspire.

VB: Another question I had was about the European tour. I mean, that's momentous. Is there anything from that experience that you really took away? 

LB: It's such a supportive environment, and definitely less of a cell phone culture. People are so of the moment, and really listening to what you have to say. I was really struck by the fact that we even had people there that were really about us like that. We have a really good European booking agent, who took a chance on us because we hadn't played there before. We played the major cities, but also a lot of small towns in France, and those were the weirdest ones, because you would go and then it would be these kids who'd be like, “I live in a village three hours away, and we drove all the way here just to see you.” It's just trippy to think about the whole world that's out there. Like, every city is different, every night is different, but in general everyone was very sweet and attentive. 

But it's nice to tour with [the band] because we treat every tour like “Alright, here's the show days, where are our off days and where are we going to go?” And we make the fucking most of our off days, we all love nature, we all love to just spend a day at the beach. We'll get local fish and just make something really good. 

But the funniest thing that happened, in my opinion from this whole experience, was when we were playing Pointu Festival. It's on an island off of the coast of France. We sound checked, we were like, “Oh, this is awesome." Then we went to the coast to look out and it's like the Mediterranean Sea, which I had never been in at that point. And we saw an island off in the distance that had a castle on it. And we were like, “What if we swam over there to go see it?”

But I was like, “That's pretty far. How are we going to swim across the ocean? Like, where do our phones go?”

And they were like, “Livvy, we'll like, carry our phones out of the water. Like, it's fine. Like, let's just try to get there.”  And I was like, all right. I mean, when in Pointu, go swim across a large channel of water. So we did that. 

It was really hard. I hurt my foot, and I was a baby about it. And then the castle was really awesome. It was worth the trip on the way there. On the way back, Dylan, our drummer, grabbed a sea urchin. It was pretty shallow at some points, and he was doing a freestyle stroke and then he just grabbed a sea urchin. He stopped in the water, we saw him holding his hand and he was like, “Something got me, something got me.” When we got back to the shore, we were trying to get back into the festival and there wasn't security when we left, but then there was security in there like, “Who are you guys? What are y'all doing?” And we were like, “We were playing soon, can y'all let us in?” There was also that language barrier.

Dylan was like, “I got hit by a sea urchin,” And they were just like, “pour some vodka on that and it should come out.” It did, but he had to play a show after that and it was pretty painful for him. 

But there's so many situations like that, where one of us thinks we should do something, and it only has ended in very minor peril. So maybe it is worth it. 

VB: You definitely get a story out of it at least. The other question I had was about the zine. What was behind you guys wanting to put together a zine? Was it just another way to express yourselves creatively? 

LB: Well, to be honest, it was not a good business decision at all. It wasn't very expensive. I'll say that. We made it because we were like, “Oh, it's hard to get merch over to Europe, this is something that's easy.” But we'd forgotten that a lot of people don't read English. In the UK, they sold more but like I think a lot of people, they've straight up told us, “I can't read it,” and we were like, “Why did we not think about that?”  

But it is cool. I mean, I had a lot of fun making it. It was really easy to make. We'll probably make another at some point just because it was really awesome. I love physical media. Someone who came to South By [Southwest] just sent me like a zine from that show I'm looking at right now. It's just nice to have. I would love that from a band that I like, just something to further the lore, something physical.

VB: It's always great to go to a show and see people selling different kinds of merch. Somebody I played with made match boxes for merch and decorated them, they're really cute. And, you know, it's just a tiny thing, but it's nice because you can hold it in your hand.

LB: Yeah, and I don't know, I always just think about if I'm blessed to grow old, you know, I'm hoping there's a fucking era where I'm not on my phone.  I hope that I can have little things that I can be like, “Oh shit, there's a memory that's right here.”

VB: Are there any musicians that you're really into now or acts that you're excited for or listening to right now? 

LB: The biggest listen for me is Arima Ederra. Do you know her music?

VB: No.

LB: Oh, my God. My head is exploding.

VB: Ouch.

LB: [Laughs] Not at you not knowing her, but she just got signed to RCA. I'm pretty sure she is gonna be a really big deal. One of my really good friends who's also a musician named Yvonne, their project is called Vonne, showed me her music. It's like, it's the best album. Period. 

I'm gonna send it to you, but it's just very…I don't have a lot of albums where I never skip anything, and I never skip this one. It's a no skip album. Her voice and her writing is just very genuine and the people that she has producing the album with are a perfect match I'd say. Her record An Orange Colored Day is really good. It's very, it's very contemplative. 

VB: I’ll definitely give it a listen! 

LB: She's so good. She has this producer Teo Halm who's really, really good. And on that record, Maurice II, formerly known as John Bap on a lot of the instrumentals. Yeah. It's stupid. It's so good. 

VB: I do love John Bap.

LB: You're gonna love it then because he's featured on a decent amount of the songs. But yeah. Check it out.

VB: Well, I definitely will. This has been a really wonderful conversation. Thank you so much!

LB: Thank you!