Ashley: Why did you decide to learn to play the Theremin.
Keri: We were making a Nathan record and we had four days until it was going to get mastered so the mixes were done and there was this one song that for the solo part we just thought that sci-fi instrument that was in all of the science fiction movies would be great but what the hell was it? We did some research and for some reason I found one at Mother’s Music in the corner gathering dust for half price. It just got left there because no one knew what it was, I think. It was a stroke of luck because they were hard to find so I bought it and I practiced and practiced it and now I’m completely obsessed with it.
Ashley: How do you learn an instrument like that? Is there a book?
Keri: It comes with a little book with a few suggestions on finger movements because I think the main thing about the Theremin is when you are figuring out a melody the tiniest knuckle movement is like a semi tone so you just need to get used to the tiny little increments takes a lot of work and shaking your hand to get vibrato. There isn’t really a way to play it, it’s very intuitive; it’s basically a leap of faith and trusting you’re muscle memory. In fact you have to turn your brain off, I find, it’s like meditation. You’d like it!
Ashley: What is a practice to jam session like?
Keri: For Leaf Rapids it’s basically me writing the songs and then Devin and I coming together and figuring out the bass parts. I guess it’s primarily my song writing; with Nathan Shelley wrote a lot of the songs and now Mike who is apart of the band is a great writer and musician. IT’s more collaborative for Nathan but for [Leaf Rapids] it’s just mostly myself.
Ashley: So then what is your songwriting process?
Keri: It’s kind of embarrassing; this is lately. Sometimes I’ll get into a writing flurry and I’ll just put music to that. But more often than not it’s just melody and some gibberish which I record into my album and I’ll go through them and see if some imagery comes up and I’ll start piecing it together. But Mainly I’ll get struck with a melody but if anyone gets ahold of my iPhone, it just has the most embarrassing stuff.
Ashley: So who inspires your music? Or when you first started how did you find your voice and style?
Keri: Well I actually went to art school thinking I would be a visual artist and I took graphic design. It was so intense that I think on the side as a release of some tension I would just start songwriting. Ani Difranco at the time was just getting big and she was just an explosion that went off. When I heard of her, it was my first introduction to a really raw singer-songwriter and a guitar. She plays very percussively and she’s very poetic. You have to check her out. That idea of just be a songwriter with a guitar and have a message, that sparked me to just play a little bit. Then unfortunately my studies suffered because I was hooked by songwriting by full force.
Ashley: How do you go on tour when you have kids?
Keri: IT’s funny because Devin plays bass in the band with me so that’s handy. We bring them with us. In April we spent two weeks in western Canada and took our kids with us and toured with Slow Leaves. We practiced together and I learned a lot of backups for him, then he played guitar and sung backups for us too so it was a really feasible way. Part of the reason we paly music is because we both we love to travel so this is a way to subsidize our travel.