Raw Geronimo play prog-structured music with the ferocity of punk rock. They combine tribal rhythms, guitars which alternate between aggressive and ethereal, and Laena Geronimo's no-limits voice to create a sound that hits hard and lingers long.
After playing in a number of bands – including bass in The Like, and violin in Dante vs. Zombies and Skyline Electric, among many others – Geronimo assembled the band to focus on her own vocals and songwriting. They just released their debut album, Dream Fever, on Neurotic Yell Records. I was lucky enough to ask her a few questions about the band and album.
Ground Control's G. Murray Thomas vs. Laena Geronimo of Raw Geronimo
GMT: How did Raw Geronimo come together?
LG: I've been playing music for a really long time. I've always written songs, but I was very shy about them, and also about my voice. It took me a while to find my voice. I always knew that at some point something would click, where I felt like I was ready to unleash it.
I was playing with a band called The Like, and that band sort of disintegrated for various reasons. My ticking time bomb on forming a band on my own had run out. I was already compiling lists of people I knew that I would love to play with. I had fully fleshed out demos. I figured out what arrangements would work, and instrumentation, and started contacting people. Some members of the band I didn't actually know, but I did some investigative work, and recruited people.
It's exciting because everything has finally settled into a final grouping of who's in the band. I decided I was going to form it, and found awesome people who were willing to do it. We're all really excited about it being a more collaborative effort for the next record.
GMT: How much collaboration went into this album?
LG: This album was very much my baby. On the demos, I played almost every instrument. Our first single was two songs I had recorded before I had formed the band. The demos were pretty fleshed out. Of course, everyone took the parts and made it their own. I tried to create a skeleton, and the overall feel of what the end product would be. Everything else in between was filled in by each person's expression.
For the next record, I'm leaving the door open for how we all can contribute, and finding out what everyone's strengths are. I'm trying to pare it back more and more, where I'm fleshing out the songs less and less, so we can become a band where everyone's bringing in ideas, and can express themselves creatively.
GMT: How did you decide to focus mostly on vocals on this one? You are a multi-instrumentalist, why focus solely on the vocals?
LG: Because I wanted the live show to be true to the recording. I wanted us to be a real band, not just my solo project, where I have a revolving door of people to play. Singing and playing at the same time – I can do that – but there's something about singing and not playing anything that allows me to transcend the reality of this world in a lot of ways, and try to connect with the energy … to be a lightning rod… to channel the energy. I don't really feel like it's me up there. I feel more like a vehicle. When playing an instrument, I'm dividing my consciousness in that way, it becomes a lot more rooted in rhythm and things like that, whereas when I'm just singing, I can let go.
GMT: Did you write songs for the other bands you've been in? It sounds like you didn't really write songs for the previous bands?
LG: That is correct. For The Like, I was recruited into that band after the record I supported with them was finished. Toward the tail end, we were working on new songs, and we were playing some songs I had written. But for the primary songwriter in that band, it didn't make sense to continue in that direction.
Sometimes it's like too many cooks in the kitchen. Every band is different. For a lot of the bands I played in, the songwriting wasn't an open door policy. It was more like, "you're the bass player," and "you're the violinist." Within that I was able to interpret their songwriting, and make my parts my own, but I was never part of the actual songwriting process.
With Dante vs. Zombies, there were times when Dante, Jeff and I were jamming, we wrote a couple of songs which ended up being DvZ songs. Like "Branded by Nuns, " I helped write that song. Jamming is always something that's really fun for me, but it had never really been viewed as a songwriting session. So it's difficult to draw the line, "Yeah, I helped write that song." It was more like it all came together naturally.
GMT: How many instruments do you play?
LG: Violin, guitar, bass, percussion, some keyboards. Basically, anything with strings on it, I can play to some extent. I'm a classically trained violinist. I started when I was kid, I took private lessons, played in symphonies and quartets and like that. When I started playing bass when I was eighteen, going from violin to an instrument that had frets on it, there were certain muscles in my fingers I needed to train, but the essentials of the instrument were pretty easy for me to transfer.
My parents are both musicians, so there are pictures of me when I was four playing guitar. My dad's a drummer [the late Alan Myers of Devo -ed], so there are pictures of me at his drum kit.
GMT: You were raised in a music household, so music was always part of your life…
LG: A huge part of my life. My mom had a band that she started when I was two years old, that practiced in my living room. My childhood was filled with tripping over cables, and ruining amps by sticking crayons in the back, and stuff like that.
GMT: What do you consider your musical influences?
LG: That's the hardest question for me to answer. I feel that every sensory input influences a person artistically. My parents are huge influences on me. My dad — drumming for all the various projects he's played in, most notably Devo. My mom's a Romanian singer/songwriter, who wrote beautiful, whimsical pop music. And then things that they listen to. Me and my mom would dance around to Abba and Kate Bush and Romanian folk music. My parents are very into eastern religion, and we listen to a lot of Indian chanting. They listen to a lot of world music in general. My dad loves experimental classical music and jazz, and interesting time signatures, and weird instrumentations. Then at the same time, he would slip a Bob Dylan CD under my door when I was a teenager, or Bob Marley, or Jimi Hendrix, I guess, it's really hard for me to say. I love so many different kinds of music. I think every genre of music has some gems to offer. I listen to everything from old country to some punk music some kids are making in their garage down the street right now.
Yeah, it's the hardest question.
I've written songs being inspired by the way the toaster is ticking, and then I hear some melody in my head. Or some commercial you think is so crazy on TV, and to think people are actually influenced by that. Everything is inspiring, whether it's musical or not. As an artist, that's how I choose to express my creativity, but it's not limited to musical information.
GMT: Do you want to talk about your lyrics a bit. Some of them are pretty philosophical, but others are like character studies… What inspires your lyrics?
LG: Some intense emotion. It's interesting with this record, because when I wrote all the songs on it (except "Bitched"), it was before I formed the band, and I wasn't writing them for any specific purpose, I was just writing them. Maybe there was a specific purpose for each individual song, but I didn't imagine a band would ever be playing them.
"Chinatown" is obviously an oddball, because it is a joke song. I was working near a health food store, and on my lunch I would go down there to eat. They had this amazing smoothie called "The Chinatown Yoda" and it was really expensive, but I loved it. This guy who worked there would give them to me once in a while, and I said "One day I'm going to write a song about this smoothie." And then I did, and I walked in and gave it to him, and he was like, "You're crazy."
Each song has a different story like that, because it wasn't me sitting in a room thinking, "Okay, I have to sing this with the band, what do I want to say?" It would just come out. I wrote "Magnetic Love" for my boyfriend as a present. We had been together for six months, and I had the day off, so I was "I'm going to record a song for him." I just sat down and wrote it and recorded it, and handed it to him that night. That recording is actually the B-side of the first single.
Some of the other songs, especially the ones that have more image based lyrics, like "Van Gogh Baby" or "Bird's Eye Bonzai," those one are very much painting with words. It's expressing an emotion without it being a literal story. To me, I know what it means. It's more about creating a general feeling and an image.
A lot of the lyrics I suppose are very philosophical, but that's just the way that I think. I don't think of them as being very philosophical, just "There are these problems in the world, and obviously we need to talk about it." We all get frustrated by certain things, the way this world works, and we struggle to understand how we fit in it, and what our roles are in it. The lyrics I have that seem to ask questions about things like that are just trying to connect with other people and see if they feel that way too. Or just express some frustration that doesn't seem to be expressed enough.
I really didn't write the lyrics for this record with the public opinion in mind.
GMT: Do you anticipate the next record being different, where you will have it more in your mind that you are writing for this band?
LG: We'll see. Basically the creative process for me is about going into a trance, and not really thinking about the end product. When I'm writing, I do it stream of consciousness at first. I'll just play guitar for an hour and record it, and then I'll go through that and pick things out. It's very much a frenzy. With lyrics, it's a little less like that, but it's very much I sit down with a piece of paper and I just pour things out. Then I pick through it. Then I worry about rhyming or figuring out ways to say something that fit better into a phrase. I try to be as open of a channel as possible. I hope that with the next record I'm able to dissociate myself from the idea that people are going to be trying to figure out what I'm talking about, and just come from that pure place of expression.
GMT: Are you guys going out on tour?
LG: That's the plan. There's been a lot on this record finally coming out. We are definitely planning on doing at least a West Coast tour this fall. But we're leaving the door open to hopefully getting a booking agent, and being able to tour the country. Obviously, overseas would be incredible. We don't have money, so unless we are able to get decent guarantees, or a support tour, we're pretty limited as to how far we can go. Everyone in the band has a day job, we all kind of scramble to make ends meet. We would love to go on tour, and share what we're doing with as many people as possible, but there are financial restrictions.
In a way it feels like the band, in the public eye, has just been born, but we've been sweating it out for two years. We'll just have to see what happens in the next month.
There's no shortage of local shows.
GMT: How do you feel about the Echo Park music scene?
LG: I love the Echo Park music scene right now. In musical history there are always concentrations of creative momentum. They change over time. In the late 70s New York City was a big deal, in the 90s there was Portland/Seattle area, later on here was Detroit. I genuinely feel that in Echo Park right now, there is that magical energy. There are so many people who are working really hard to make their creative dreams come true. People are so supportive of each other, and everyone seems to be proud of each other. I think it's really great. All of my friends are musicians. It's not really competitive, which is great…. I walk down to the coffee shop, and I run into seven great musicians that I know. It's a fairly condensed little creative hot spot right now. I love being in the middle of it. It's very inspiring.
Artist:
www.rawgeronimo.com/
www.myspace.com/rawgeronimo
www.facebook.com/RawGeronimo
www.twitter.com/RawGeronimo
Album:
Dream Fever is out now. Buy it here , direct from Neurotic Yell Records.
