Three Stars: Garland of Hours

Visit her online, listen to soundclips, and buy the records at: http://www.garlandofhours.com

See her next: June 17th, a solo in-store performance at Cusp in Georgetown, 4 p.m.

Questions for Amy Domingues:

How did you feel about the show last week?

I had a great time! I felt like it was probably the most fun show, the most fun lineup of people that I’ve played with. I pretty much play with whoever of my friends are around or not busy or in town, so sometimes there’ll be different drummers, or…I guess the one exception is that I’ve been playing with Mary Timony for about a year now. I guess it started when I asked her to record, to play some guitar on the new record, and when I was playing some shows, I said, "Well, why don’t you come play live?" She’s a regular member of the band now, and that’s good, because she’s a good friend of mine.

Do you like being able to play with whoever’s around, or would you prefer to have a more solid band lineup?

I can understand the beauty of having "the band", and certainly schedule-wise, knowing what to expect, that’s always nice. But one of the reasons I love playing music is that when you play with different people, it’s a different communication process, and different people bring different elements to the group. So when I play with the band, yeah, the songs are just my parts and then there’s vocals, but I never dictate to anyone what they should play, because I really believe in individuality when you’re working together as a group. So it’s never set in stone. I think that what we play live is sometimes different from what’s on the record. Plus it’s really hard, because a lot of the people, especially drummers, that I’ve worked with, have been involved in other groups and are touring, and I don’t want to turn down shows if someone’s not here; and everyone understands that. I like that it’s just me.

Coming from a classical background, where did the point come for you when you realized that you could take what you were doing, and you could translate it into a different area, like a rock band, and that you didn’t necessarily have to take up a new instrument to get there?

I guess it was when I was in college. I wish I had had a teacher, when I was younger, that had encouraged me to improvise and play something besides classical cello. I’m a cello teacher myself now, so I always try to bring that element to it. I teach mostly classical, but I try and get the kids to improvise and do fiddling tunes and stuff like that. But anyway, I came from a strictly classical background, and then I went to college at James Madison and I was lucky to be there at a really great time. There were a lot of great bands coming out of Harrisonburg, like there were a couple of Teenbeat bands, this band called Blast Off Country Style...but anyway I started playing in an Irish folk band. And I think it was, at first, an excuse for me and my friends to go get drunk and play Pogues covers. And they were like, “Hey, why don’t you play cello?” We did mostly covers, and some traditional Irish songs, and that’s when I started playing amplified. And then I started playing bass in some punk rock bands, and that was totally different…the people were like, “Oh, you can play cello, you should play bass, and play in our punk rock band.” So that was probably my late teens/early 20s that I figured out there was more I could do with the cello rather than what I was studying in school - I was getting a cello performance degree. I loved it, and I still do, those types of playing, and I think each type of playing just strengthens the others.

What type of setup do you use to amplify the cello live? I know it can be notoriously hard to amplify, and feedback is always a problem.

Oh, my God, it’s been trial and error. After I left Harrisonburg, I moved back to DC/Arlington, and I started playing with my friend Bob Massey, who now has this band called the Gena Rowlands Band, and he lives in L.A. now, but we had this band called Telegraph Melts, and it was basically him on electric guitar and me on amplified cello, totally instrumental. And the idea was to have the cello equally as loud as the electric guitar. And the stuff he was playing went from really sad atmospheric stuff to metal riffs, it was pretty extreme. I had an SVT810 cabinet at one point with a GK head, just trying to get sheer volume. But the most important thing I found, was the pickup. You’ve got ot invest in a really good pickup. And the pickup that I’ve settled on in the past couple of years is made by Swiss company called Schertler, and it’s the most amazing pickup ever. It’s really necessary to have a great pickup and a pre-amp, or an EQ, before you go into the amp.

You’ve done a lot of playing on other people’s records, playing a supporting role in a lot of things…what was the impetus for starting up a band of your own?

It was, honestly, my friends that made me do it. I had sort of played around, making demos, and I guess it was a combination of my friends, and in the fall of '99 I bought a 1957 Wurlitzer, one of those super old ones, it needed some work, and it’s in a wooden cabinet, and I got a really good deal on it and got it fixed up, and I just started playing stuff on it. It was weird, songs just started coming out. But it wasn’t so much vocal songs, but more instrumental stuff. So at first when I started writing, it wasn’t so much for cello. Initially it was hard for me to write songs on cello, singing and playing at the same time. My friend Jenny Toomey, who I played with in Tsunami, she was always, “Why don’t you do your own record?” And Mary was always really supportive. So I guess that’s what it was.

The way the songs end up, whether they’re primarily a keyboard or a cello song, is that usually the way they start, or do you sometimes start with one and think this song would be better with the other instrument?

Yeah, it’s weird, I’ve never tried writing a song on keyboard and then putting it on cello. I think about them really differently. When I write songs for cello, they tend to have more of a folky feel. And I’m really influenced by British folk rock from the 70s, like Pentagle, Steeleye Span, the Albion Band. Britain has this rich history of folk tradition, and a lot of the American Appalachian songs came from Britain. And that was a point when people started playing that as rock music, in the early '70s. I listen to a lot of that, so that’s a big influence. Also, I’ve picked up banjo; I didn’t play it at this show, but the show before this in December, I did. But when I play piano, the music comes from a different place.

Are you more comfortable on one or the other?

Not really. But it’s funny, because when I do go back and listen to the records, the songs are in a slightly different style, the piano songs and the cello songs. Actually, piano was my first instrument, and I studied that pretty seriously until I went to college, and then I had to choose one or the other. There’s part of me that feels very instinctual on the piano. My parents…God bless them, I wanted to quit so bad. And they made me practice an hour a day on both piano and cello. And being a teacher myself, with the kids, I can always tell; and the parents are always like, “I don’t want to be the mean person, I don’t want to tell them they have to practice.” And I say, “No, tell them. Because I wanted to quit, and I hated practicing and look what I’m doing.” If my parents hadn’t made me do it, I don’t what I’d be doing.

There’s a definite Renaissance/Early Music influence in your songwriting; is music from that period a direct influence, or is it that filtered through the British folk rock, which also had that as an influence?

I think it’s a little of both, but I also…

...or do you just have an affinity for certain scales?

I do, I do, and I also fell in love with medieval music when I went to college and took music history and spent a whole semester learning about music pre-1700. And one of the things that I’ve yet to do, one of the instruments I’ve yet to learn, and I keep telling myself I’m going to do it, is to learn viola da gamba, which is a renaissance instrument, like a cello, but with frets and seven strings. I think that’d be pretty cool, when I’m super-old to go to all these early music festivals. So I’m really interested in early music. I think one of the really big influences on me, with writing, and kind of the modal quality, has been 16th century choral music, like Thomas Tallis, and Palestrina, and William Byrd; well, he did mostly instrumental music. But yeah, all that stuff. I would say that if this music was popular today, this would be emo music. John Dowland lute songs? The lyrics are so over the top, about love and suicide. And then with a countertenor, a really high male voice? So beautiful.

How do you feel about the new record in comparison to the first one?

Well, the first record feels very tentative to me. It was my first foray into singing. I would sing on a couple of songs on that record, and a lot of it is really instrumental. A lot of people have called it really soundtrack-y, atmospheric music. And yeah, that’s pretty what I wrote a lot of those songs about. But I definitely feel that I’ve learned a lot and become more confident, especially in writing songs on the cello. On the first record, there’s this one song that’s an instrumental, a trio that I wrote. And it’s multitracked, three cello parts together, but there’s no songs that I play cello and sing on. I feel like the second record, I definitely learned a lot since that time, and it’s definitely a lot more of a personal record, in terms of the songs and documenting the times.

Why did you decide to create your own label to release this record?

I definitely wanted to send it out to labels, and I did send it out to a few, but I realized in this day and age, because of the internet and because of digital media, if you’re not going to sign to Touch & Go, or Matador, for an independent musician, it’s really...well, number one, you can get more potential for making your money back, if you really work at it, and number two, it’s empowering. Also, I wanted it to come out right away. I talked to a couple of local labels, and it was like, “We could do it, but it would be a year from now.” I don’t regret it all, and it’s been amazing. I’ve been going through CD Baby, and they’re great. A friend of my friend Jenny runs that company and they’re just really great…they take a tiny, tiny percentage, and they distribute your music to iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, all those things. So it’s great for digital distribution. And I’ve also been working with Dischord, they’re going to distribute the record, and they’ve got great distribution to indie record stores. They’re wonderful.

Are you interested in using Noble Task for putting out other people’s records, or just for yourself?

It’s all about me! [laughs] I really don’t know right now. You know, when you put out a record yourself, you kind of have to have a name, and that’s just the name that I chose. I was toying with the idea that if I wanted to put a record out of just solo cello music, and I could do that, and I could put it out on my own label, and it’d be easy. It’s kind of exciting to think about. There’s so much good music going on in D.C. that’s not documented at all. A lot of people have been kind of down on the scene in D.C. the past couple of years, but I think there’s some great stuff out there that would be really cool to make accessible. But at the same time, I’m pretty broke. [laughs] And it’s hard enough work. That’s the one thing with releasing a record: I knew that you have to put up some money to do it, but if you don’t follow up on it, and send it out, or get a PR person, it’s ridiculous. I sort of didn’t realize how much work it was, and I’ve been trying to find someone who would handle mailings to magazines and webzines and stuff like that, since I work full time, too. But it’s fun at the same time. Like I said, it’s empowering. And I’m willing to do that for myself. I hate to sound selfish, but I don’t know if I’d be willing to do that for someone else.

Your next show is in Georgetown?

I’m just doing that show by myself, I’m pretty excited about it. It’s at this fashion boutique. My friend Benjy [Ferree], I play in his band, he’s also playing after me.

It seems like you don’t play out that often. Is that by design, or...?

No, I’d like to! It’s just so hard to get everyone together. I am going to do a tour in August, I’m working on booking it right now. I think it’s just going to be east coast. I’ve been talking to Short Stack, and I’ll play some shows with them in New York and probably Philly. It’s just making sure that Mary and come and Jonah [Takagi] can come, and get a drummer. My idea is always to book the show and see who can come. I’d actually like to do a couple more things myself solo, because there are some things that I can do solo that I don’t do with the band, like the Lungfish song. More stuff with samples and loops. And I’ve been working a lot on some new material with that, before I give the songs to the band. Maybe I’ll do a couple of those, because Mary, she just left for tour, and she won’t be back until the end of June.

Outside of teaching and Garland of Hours, do you have anything else going on?

I’m playing with Benjy. Another band that I play in that only gets together every couple of years is this band called the Threnody Ensemble, and it’s more neoclassical instrumental music. Our second record is done, and we’re just shopping it around right now. I’d like to do more soundtrack stuff. My friend Dave, from Threnody Ensemble, we collaborated on the soundtrack to the Weather Underground, and it turned into this thing, I had no idea it was going to be so huge. I definitely have tried to pursue some film stuff, and my brother lives in L.A. and works in film, and he’s always like, “Why don’t you market yourself? It’s great you have that on your résumé.” But that's kind of not my style. Sam [Green], the director of that film, he used some music that I wrote for a short film after that, which was about the murder at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert. But, I’d like to do more film work.

Photo of Garland of Hours by Jamie Liu. Photo of Amy Domingues playing cello by Matthew Taylor.