Interview with The Sentimentalist

[Tara <tvlycia@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

                   interview with The Sentimentalist:

Your latest disc "Tripping Back" is a beautifully stripped-down
collection of introspective songs which in a way hearkens back to some
of your earlier material.  Can you tell us a bit about the ideas behind
the making of this CD?

        tv:  The release started out as Mike just fiddling around with
        the acoustic guitar. He had not touched any music equipment in
        nearly a year out of frustrations with the music "industry",
        amongst other things, and just started picking up the guitar
        more or less for something to do. He started recording the album
        after we moved back to Arizona and needed a release from the
        personal stress of having to try and find work. I wasn't even
        aware he was recording until the album was more than half
        finished. It basically chronicles a span of about two years
        where a lot of really crappy things had happened. The album for
        me is the most personally open I've ever been via music. It was
        very hard for me to write my lyrics and melodies. For the first
        time ever in my musical "career" I struggled tremendously and
        threw in the towel at one point and told Mike to go on without
        me.

        We wanted the release to be pretty sparse and stripped back. I
        mean, there's still a lot of ambience going on, but in
        comparison to our other releases Tripping... is pretty bare.
        Mike took the photos for the artwork a week before we moved from
        Ohio and we thought they represented the overrall vibe of the
        release really well. We weren't even sure we would release the
        album, but figured there might be like three people out there
        that would want to hear it, so we decided to briefly come out of
        "retirement" and put the album out. It's a very important
        release to us personally, but I'm not sure anyone else really
        cares about it (or us) one way or the other.

If it's not too personal a question, what were some of the "broken days"
you might have been recollecting while writing the songs for this
release?

        tv: Mike and I have had a lot of upheaval the last five years or
        so.  Mike found out he was diabetic, nearly died twice, was
        diagnosed with graves disease, lost his mother, lost music (for
        the most part), lost friends, lost family, lost our jobs, moved
        2000 miles, the list goes on.  It's just been a culmination of a
        lot of very intense things over the past several years that tend
        to lead to one being quite depressed and borderline panicky a
        good portion of the time. I've had a lot of people who are sort
        of close to us complain about silly little things in their
        lives, or try to compare what they go through on a daily basis
        to what we've been through, and it just sort of makes me laugh,
        or makes me bitter towards them. I watched Mike going through
        the death process for nearly a year. I slept with one hand on
        his stomach to make sure he was still breathing in the middle of
        the night.  I saw the panic in his eyes that he tried very hard
        to cover. While all of this was going on we worked fulltime
        jobs, in factories, warehouses, third shift, second shift,
        whatever it took, trying to push forward with music.  There came
        a point where something had to give, and that something HAD to
        be music.  It felt like a lot people turned on us when we needed
        help the most.  I think that's why Tripping.... means so much to
        Mike and myself, because we had seriously let go of Lycia and
        music forever.

Having been writing music as Lycia for 14 years, have you found it gets
easier as it goes along--do you feel there is more to explore as you go
through different phases of life as a songwriter?

        tv: We both have so many ideas about what we want to do next
        that there's to o many ideas  and never enough time to
        accomplish any of it.  It's very difficult with the limitations
        his health brings. I mean, it's hard for him to work fulltime
        then come home and dedicate another several hours to music, but
        he's full of ideas and inspiration. I don't think it ever gets
        "easier" per se, but I guess you develop a certain routine of
        writing that makes the process flow more efficiently.

Though the two of you did take a break from doing music for a short
time, do you feel more content when you are involved in writing songs or
do you find a need to distance yourself from it every once in a while?

        tv: We never feel we need a break from the actual "music", it's
        the junk associated with music that gets very tedious and
        frustrating. There are a lot of "behind the scenes" politics
        involved in music making that make it tremendously frustrating
        for us (as it is with MOST musicians), so much so that at one
        point it caused us to walk away completely. There are days when
        you just sit and think, "God! It's so unfair!"  You want to beat
        the crap out of someone or scream and yell about everything. We
        have forced ourselves to accept the reality that we will NEVER
        be where we wanted to be "professionally" and have really made
        music JUST about music now.  Naturally when you're out there
        touring, recording, fighting to get somewhere, you want success
        for what you're doing. We just realize now the ONLY success we
        can ever have is for us to be happy with what we create. There
        are too many cards stacked against us to ever hope for anything
        more. The goal used to be that somehow people would truly
        connect with what we do on a large enough scale  to afford for
        us to do music fulltime. We realize now that will never happen,
        so we accept our fate and create music solely for the enjoyment
        of creating. Of course that doesn't mean we don't have days
        where we get frustrated. It's a very fresh wound. It's
        exceptionally difficult to pour your heart into something that's
        continuously viewed as "unimportant".  Those are the things we
        need breaks from, never the music.

The songs on your 1996 disc "Cold" were recently used for an indie film
"Lana's Rain".  Is this a film that particularly interested you and
Mike--how did this collaboration come about?

        tv: It really came about quite by accident. Michael Ojeda (the
        director/writer of the film) contacted us initially just wanting
        to use "baltica". We get contacted on a fairly regular basis by
        people wanting to use songs in their films, which usually turn
        out to be super cheesy student films, or movies about subjects
        we'd rather not be involved with, so we were really skeptical
        about allowing the use of our song.  Michael sent the story line
        and we thought, "well, this sounds interesting"...so we asked to
        see a clip from the film. We saw how professional it was, and
        how interesting it seemed, and decided it was a great project to
        be involved with. Mike was considered for scoring the film, but
        he decided he just didn't have the time to dedicate to it on
        such a short time frame. Michael Ojeda later decided he wanted
        to use the other tracks in the film as well, which we were
        pretty thrilled with. We've seen the entire film, sans the
        music, and we're really happy to be involved with it. Hopefully
        it will lead to more collaborations in the future.

Are you currently working on new material for another release?

        tv: Nope, not really. Mike has about five songs he's started
        working on, but he's in no hurry to finish them. We still have
        Empty Space sitting here for release, so I doubt any new
        material will see the light of day for a few years. Who knows
        though, we change our minds on a somewhat frequent basis!