RECORDS LiVE

Tamara: Okay, I’m here with Velvet Penny, aka Marlena. Hi. Welcome to my house.

Marlena: It’s so cozy in here. I love it.

Tamara: It is really cozy. I think it’s very comfortable. I like to just listen to music in here.

Song Plays: Bright Eyes – Lua

Tamara: Okay, so break our hearts with this song. When was the first time you listened to it?

Marlena: The first time I listened to this song, I was literally a child. Way too young to listen to Bright Eyes. But when I was a kid, my aunt was a teenager and she loved to share music with me. She would burn me CDs. She gave me a Gorillaz CD. She took me to my first concert, which was actually at the Glasshouse to see the Aquabats… this past weekend. No, just kidding. No, yeah, it was a long time ago when I was probably like eight. And yeah, we just, we loved Bright Eyes. It was actually a segue to one of my first friends that I ever played music with, probably in seventh grade. We were talking about music and I was like, “I like Bright Eyes.” and she was like, “I do too.” And we were like, “Whoa,” because we’re only in seventh grade. And then we started playing music together.

Tamara: That’s cute. Did this kind of lyricism influence your songwriting at all?

Marlena: I don’t know if I would say that my lyricism is the same as Conor Oberst. His lyricism is very visual. I feel like mine is very vague, but I think where it comes from is similar because most of the time when people think of Bright Eyes, they think of sad music. That’s what music has been for me. It’s an outlet for my sadness and confusing feelings and trying to work that out.

Tamara: Have you ever written a song when you’re happy? Or is that like a foreign emotion for creativity?

Marlena: When I’m happy? I think I’m getting there. I’m actually trying to intentionally do that because songs are such capsules and as a performer, you come back to them again and again. What’s cool about writing a sad song is that you come back to it again and again and eventually you alchemize that feeling, that sadness that was in it. But with a happy song, it’s like you can come back to it again and again and feel that celebration. That would be really nice to tap into as a capsule.

Tamara: That would be so beautiful. I think this song is so… I think sad music is so like therapeutic to me. I’ll just sit in my room. We’re sitting in my living room right now. We’re just feeling this sad, sad song.

Marlena: It’s a good way to remember that you’re not alone. It’s something that can hold you when you’re having these emotions that you don’t want to talk about, you don’t know how to talk about. You just need to feel.

Tamara: Do you think there are any songs of yours that really resonated with others in that sense of sadness and just needing to feel?

Marlena: I think so, yes. I’ve felt that when playing solo sets. But I think even more so when I released All the Flowers and we had the music video release. We had the video playing and people were crying in the crowd. I don’t know how to explain what that feels like. But now talking about that and listening to this, art has made me cry before. Just an incredible ripple effect.

Tamara: Was it the first time you got that reaction to your art, that was so raw like that?

Marlena: Yeah.

Tamara: That’s crazy. I feel like your live performances, like your solo ones are so raw. The first time I saw you perform solo was at The Basement in the Kandy Cocktail. I remember seeing that and it just shook something in me. I know you throw a lot of emotion into that. Obviously if you’re growing up listening to music like this, it makes so much sense.

Marlena: Yeah. Bright Eyes is always going to have a place in my heart for sure.

Tamara: Okay, we’re going to get to the next song which is a little funkier.

Marlena: Just a little bit.

Song Plays: Frank Zappa – Willie the Pimp

Tamara: Like maybe hard confession, I knew nothing about this artist at all. Sorry everybody. But tell me about him. Tell me about how you discovered this for the first time.

Marlena: So, Frank Zappa for me is a landmark of being in my teenage years. Definitely like a rebel without a cause sort of phase and really marks the time of jamming. Getting with your buds. Sharing some flower, eating some chili-cheese fries and then just jamming. my two best friends growing up showed me this album. It’s always going to mark this time when I was starting to discover a lot of music from the 70s and from the 60s and starting to fall in love with that stuff. It’s also going to always encapsulate this time in my life where it was like, “I don’t know how to play my fucking instrument, but we’re going to play. We’re going to play and anyone’s welcome to come and we’re just going to jam and it’s going to be a good time.”

Tamara: Nice. And I know Velvet Penny is kind of like a newer thing for you. Do you want to talk about some of your initial musical projects with those friends you jammed with?

Marlena: Yeah, sure. So, this this group of friends who showed me this band, we went through a couple different names. Around the same time I was also doing Velvet Penny. Velvet Penny actually started when I was in a teenager. But during that time I was doing more noise sets and I grew up here in Pomona and I would go to PB and J. If anybody remembers PB and J, it’s where Zoinks is now. It stood for Photos, Brushes and Jams. It was a hole in the wall venue where you could go and experience live music. I saw this artist there called Stay Cool Forever and this other duo they’re called Fly Bot and other bands. Yeah, just like so much music here in Pomona. What I was trying to get at is that during that time I was being exposed to a lot of local experimental sounds and it encouraged me to do noise sets myself. So, I just had a loop pedal and a Line 6 amp and I would go into the basement shows over at the D.A. right next door and do like an improv set. The end of that era was when I played at this place, I think it was in Corona and I did a performance art piece where I dressed up as Carrie. My friend wore a pig mask and poured blood all over me. Then I came out and there was like this line from the movie repeating over and over. “They’re all going to laugh at you. They’re all going to laugh at you.” That was like my RIP set to that era of Velvet Penny.

Tamara: That’s amazing. I feel like you have so much intentionality with the art that you create even back then. With your music video, how did the storyline come about with that and how did you piece together a team to be able to create that?

Marlena: With the All the Flowers music video, I sat on that song for a really long time and I tried to make that song again and again until I finally found the right team. The idea for the music video was very sporadic. It’s kind of just like one of those napkin ideas. You write it down as soon as it comes to you. I’m a very stubborn person. Once I get an idea, I’m like, “All right, we’re going to do it.” The team came together just by asking, “Do you know someone? Do you know someone? Can you recommend me someone?” And then that’s how the right people came together.

Tamara: And did you do all of the claymation stop motion stuff yourself? Did you build that?

Marlena: Yeah. Me and my friend Kai, we were doing the stop motion for that video in the wintertime in her garage. So, the clay was breaking apart. It was like two in the morning. We were so hungry. We ordered Postmates Taco Bell. It never came. Oh my God. We were like, “We need to get the shot.” And we did. It was a lot of fun.

Tamara: It’s so good. It’s such a beautiful music video. If you guys haven’t seen it, please check it out. It’s on YouTube. I know you did some like premieres of it too. Right?

Marlena: Yes.

Tamara: Yeah, I love that. I love that everything you do is so intentional. It’s like “my art needs to be consumed the correct way.” It’s just nice because I feel like sometimes stuff just gets thrown together. Like people don’t really want to factor in what it takes to make art and the best ways to consume it. It’s not just streaming. It’s like it needs to be organic, like this in-person experience we’re doing now.

Marlena: I mean that’s really what it’s about for me. The community experience. So much of that came from wanting to heal together and share the ways in which I’ve found joy in my life and that’s by coming together in art spaces.

Tamara: I remember, I think it was your second Femmes to the Front event that I was at or the Kandy Cocktail one. That was the second one. I thought it was just so special because we were all sitting on the ground like it was a living room setting type thing. We’re all sitting on the ground just watching Annie with her banjo I think. I thought that was so special. I think you bring a lot of warmth and like tenderness to the community.

Marlena: I’m so glad you feel that way because that’s exactly what I want.

Tamara: You’re like “That’s what I’m trying to put off. So, thank you.”

Tamara: This is also an artist I’m unfamiliar with. Are they from San Francisco?

Song Plays: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Aya

Marlena: I’m actually not sure.  I was also introduced to this band when I was a teenager and I was playing bass in a post punk band. We were called See the Jaguar. We would just play around here in Pomona. But I think this song marks, for me, another time period of community stuff. My friend Cherish wanted to start a collective called Locals Only and I guess she thought that I was an organized person or something. So, she was like “Hey let’s put some shows together.” I think that it was during that time that I really found my love for community and putting together community events. When I was bathing in this rock/shoegaze and it’s like that feeling when you go to your first backyard show and you’re like “That’s my friend’s band and they’re so good.”

Tamara: I love that feeling. I really miss backyard shows. I’ve been seeing some pop-up recently and I’m like, “Oh, I need to go.” Even though we’re going to be like 10 years older than everybody there.

Marlena: We’ll be the old people like, “Hey, should you be drinking that?“

Tamara: People will be like, “Who invited their moms?” But do you have any bands in the local scene in Pomona who helped you form that community or were a part of you forming this community of musicians?

Marlena: Yeah, definitely. And so much of it has happened here at DBA because it’s just like open door, come in, there’s always something happening. You see that your friends are doing a thing here. It’s easy to get to. Yeah, I think that these walls hold a lot of that magic for me and I’m happy to be here doing it.

Tamara: I think it’s such a quintessential venue for any IE band. It’s like you haven’t made it until you’ve like played at DBA, I think.

Marlena: Well, I also think It’s like, “Oh, you’re starting? Get on up here.“

Tamara: Yeah, it’s accessible. It’s not gate keep-y, which I really like. And you did your first Femmes to the Front event here?

Marlena: Yeah, that one was great. It was like super dark.

Tamara: Yeah, that was so cool. Okay, tell me a little more about this song. Was there any influence in it with the first band you were in where you played bass or no?

Marlena: Yeah, those guys introduced me to this band. I think it was kind of just like an attitude and a rawness that this band has that we all resonated with. I think I’ve actually been referencing this song a lot for a song that we’re trying to work on for this upcoming album. I’m really excited for it because it’s different than what I’ve been able to put out with the last album. It’s still very embedded in me. Like this is one of my all-time favorite songs. Like in this chorus, he’s just yelling and then the beginning has a bass part where he’s making that bass tone by detuning his bass and then tuning it back up, which is not easy to do. And yeah, I think that it also brings me back to the shoegaze and rock that is very much in my blood.

Tamara: Yeah, you’re like “It’s in my history. It’s in like my background.” With the full band, are you doing more collaborative stuff in your recordings or is it mostly you songwriting?

Marlena: This upcoming album is going to be like a hybrid. So, a lot of the songs, I bring to them the spine of the song and then we build it out. With the song that I was referencing with this one in particular though, we’ve been trying to work on  more structurally.

Tamara: So yeah. Nice, I love it. How many people do you have in your band right now?

Marlena: It fluctuates, you know, it’s whoever’s available. But we have played in a seven-piece arrangement and a trio, a quartet, and solo stuff.

Tamara: Can you say what you prefer or do you think it just depends?

Marlena: There’s really no preference. It’s like all of them are a different experience and I’m happy, more than happy to partake in all of them. It really depends on the event, what’s going to be appropriate for the event.

Tamara: With your solo set, how did the rubber chicken come in? If you guys don’t know, Velvet Penny will do a solo set and she has a rubber chicken that she’ll step on and it’ll have a mic to it and it’ll add to the set. It’s really cool.

Marlena: I forgot that’s actually my manager. We just got in a fight so I had to put him in his place. No, I’m just kidding.

Tamara: Not the chicken.

Marlena:  It’s just for a silly song.

Tamara: It’s silly but it sounds so good. It’s so folky. It’s like folky with a chicken. I’m like “What’s going on here?” It’s fun. It’s camp.

Marlena: Exactly.

Tamara: Yeah, I get it.

Tamara: Okay, Erykah Badu.

Song plays: Erykah Badu – Didn’t Cha Know

Marlena: Yeah, so Erykah Badu was a big influence for another band that I was in called Shinobi Ghost. In that band, I was just the singer and the musicians that I was playing with were very top tier, very much knew their shit and they really encouraged me to want to get better at music. During this time, we were sharing more hip hop influences, R&B influences and so this is what we were stewing in during my early 20s.

Tamara: That’s so beautiful. Have you listened to a lot of Erykah Badu? Is she one of your favorite artists?

Marlena: Yes, she’s definitely an icon. She was very much a pinnacle for that group as well because it was an artist that we all shared a commonality between us.

Tamara: Yeah. How important is it for you to uplift other women in the scene and upcoming female musicians who maybe don’t know where to get started and start performing? It seems like it’s wired in you.

Marlena: Yeah. It’s 100% in my priority list. It’s up there whenever I’m organizing something. I’m recognizing that I have the power for something. It’s a fucking boys club.

Tamara: It is a boys club. Yeah.

Marlena: And it’s just like, all right, well, we’re out here killing it. So, I’d rather be around my friends that I can look hot with and I can have a good time with and not have to worry about this person trying to walk me to my car. What are their intentions? You know? Like, this person is taking pictures of me from behind the stage. Who are they? Just weird stuff like that.

Tamara: Yeah, you really don’t have to have your guard up.

Marlena: Exactly. Yeah. I could keep going. But that’s why it’s so important to me because there’s safety and there’s empowerment and there’s a commonality.

Tamara: There’s intersectionality and the safety and the empowerment. I agree 100% with that. I would say in our scene and in the IE it’s much easier to form genuine connections with other musicians. Do you think it was hard moving into like the LA scene, forming those genuine connections or knowing that these connections are like actually real and they’re not just like people trying to like rub elbows with each other?

Marlena: It’s just different. It’s different over there. But I think that as long as you stick with your values, then the riffraff is going to find its own way out.

Tamara: I agree with that. I think it’s just very hard.

Song Plays: Lizette and Quevin – Now It’s Your Turn To Sing

Tamara: I know these people are friends of yours in a way or you know them at least?

Marlena: I’ve met Quevin before. This song was important to me because I put down music for a long time after I wasn’t playing with Shinobi Ghost anymore. And I was kind of mourning that and grieving that band. I didn’t think that I was ever going to find something like that again. And I was and I was going through some mental health stuff. I was pretty depressed. It was when the shutdown happened. I wasn’t working anymore. But my friend, Mauricio, who used to book us a lot, he heard about Big Crown records having this singing contest. He was like, “Hey, why don’t you try this?” And I tried it out and I won the contest. It was really great because the lyrics that I wrote over this song were about that misconnection with music. It really helped me to rekindle my connection to music. And it is what has essentially catapulted me into pursuing what Velvet Penny is now. So, through that process I got to meet Quevin and the guys from Brainstory and like, we jammed and it was fun.

Tamara: Yeah, that’s so cool. And then we’re going to forget numbers. We’re going to forget streams and listens and everything like that. To you, what does success mean in your music outside of all those numbers?

Marlena: That 100% comes back to value. What I really want to do when I share my music is to encourage people to find their own outlet, to find their own way of alchemizing this chaos that is life. And whether that’s through creativity, some kind of movement practice, just making sure that you’re spending time with your friends and share that and help that to resonate more in the world because that’s what being in music has really helped me do. Grow and heal.

Tamara: That’s so beautiful. Do you think music has helped you find a place in this world? Like it’s really given you a purpose?

Marlena: Yeah, it’s really silly because I think that like for a long time when I would share my music and go to shows and so much of it was like, “Okay, where do I belong?” What I’ve really found is when you’re able to tap into that self-discovery and being able to hold your own changes in your hands and make something out of that, again, alchemize it-then that’s when you can feel yourself. So, art, music, community.

Tamara: Art is so powerful. Art and community are so so powerful. So, with Velvet Penny, you’re recording new music and you’re coming out with a new music video. What else can we look forward to? Tell us.

Marlena: We’ll also be playing over at the Cathedral in January. Yeah, I’m really excited about that. We’re going to be playing for Sol Societe’s release. They’re doing this release show and we’ll also be playing with Siam Jem. 

Tamara: Okay, we got both bands playing with Siam Jem. That’s so cool.

Marlena: Yeah, they’re killing it for sure.

Tamara: Nice. Hell yeah. Thank you so much for joining me today. This was such a beautiful discussion.

Marlena: Yeah, thank you for inviting me in your home.