INTERVIEW: CrowJane
CrowJane
The Photo Ladies Interview
For many artists, writing and recording music can be considered a form of therapy and for LA musician, makeup and makeup effects artist Heather Galipo, her new solo album was just that. Galipo, who goes by the moniker CrowJane, is releasing her new album Mater Dolorosa today. Described by some as experimental and avant-garde, those descriptions could be used to describe the album. A genuine and unconventional artist with no desire to be the next big thing, Mater Dolorosa is an honest album that was years in the making for Galipo. As she was slowly writing the songs for the album, she also joined three other bands- Egrets on Ergot, The Deadbeats and Prissy Whip. Earlier this year, she signed with Kitten Robot Records, owned by musical icon Josie Cotton, and the album was recorded at the Kitten Robot Studios. Galipo worked closely on the album with producer and LA punk icon Paul Roessler (The Screamers/Nina Hagen/45 Grave/The Deadbeats), who runs the studio. Having worked with Roessler on other projects/bands over the years, he convinced her to put pen to paper and write about the loss, abuse and addiction she had experienced. The result is Mater Dolorosa, 10 tracks that are a raw and vulnerable expression of these experiences. “A lot of thought and experimenting went into this album,” she replies about this collaboration. “A variety of experimental percussive sounds, some coming from instruments that we made out of various materials like bed railing, tin cans, foil, etc. This album is uncomfortably personal which makes me feel exposed to the public. It is riddled with pain and self-reflection from personal experiences and the state of the world. At the same time, it shines a light on some of the beauty of being so exposed and overcoming obstacles. It's a love story and it's an expression of gratitude to so many that have left a stamp on my life and helped me grow.” The first single from the album, "Terminal Secrets", was released on August 18th. “Lyrically, this song was inspired by the idea that a person can have a smile on their face but be screaming on the inside,” she told Postpunk.com, who premiered the single and video. “What is portrayed on the outside doesn't always reflect what is actually going on inside a person and within their mind. People can spend so much of their life chasing for money, power, security, validation, fame, 'success', and wake up to the realization of the 'monster they have become' on their journey to obtain or achieve it.” The second single, "The Pharmacy", was released on September 8th. Aside from music, Galipo has a visual art background in surrealism and horror and has built a career as a professional horror effects makeup artist. A lifelong love for painting and drawing morphed in high school into a decision to pursue makeup effects. After spending over a decade in the indie film industry, she recently made it into the makeup union and has since worked on high profile shows such as Star Trek: Picard and Ryan Murphy's show Hollywood, to name a few. With plans to make more music videos and start writing her next album, CrowJane is definitely an artist to keep on your radar. You can connect with CrowJane and purchase her album via the following links.
You'll be releasing your debut solo album Mater Dolorosa in September, an album that has been years in the making for you. You have discussed how the album was uncomfortably personal and riddled with pain and self-reflection from both personal experiences and the state of the world. What can you tell me about the experience of making the album and coming out of that place of pain into what you have described now as a sense of gratitude for your growth and the lessons that you learned as a result?
Well, I play in 3 bands and am the only girl in all of them and most of the time I am playing guitar. In one of the bands I am the lead vocalist, for a band called Prissy Whip. With the band I've been in the longest, I play guitar primarily and it's such a different thing to just play guitar, as opposed to singing and being the frontperson and writing these words and expressing yourself through lyrics. Something like poetry and writing, it's something I've always done. When I was in high school, I remember I'd always write poetry and stuff in the back of my notebook when I should have been in class paying attention (laughs). I was writing poetry in the back of my notebook or drawing pretty things in the margins. I have this very already kind of intense emotional connection to writing and using writing songs and art and all of that as a form of expression and emotional release. At the time, I think I was just, and I think this is something a lot of people go through, a bottled-up person with a lot of emotions and a lot of trauma. And that's not special to me in any particular case. I think every human being has their own version of traumatic events that have happened to them. But with this particular situation, I didn't really know where to put things in the sense of "How do I navigate through everything that I'm going through?". It felt like a very heavy weight. I was never, like, in therapy. I got put into therapy once in high school. It was this terrible situation where it was a really strict Christian who tried to convert me and got my dad involved and it was weird. I would smoke weed before I would go and would go there really high and really happy and I remember at one point she was like "You seem happier" and I was like "You're right, I am" (laughs)! I would try any way to get out of stuff like that and would ignore anything that was like self-reflection, even though that is exactly what I needed. So really I was in my own self-bondage and would let everything that felt like a traumatic event that I'd gone through all control me and affect me in my day-to-day life. This album was a particular breaking point. I was going through my addiction and it was at its peak, I think. I fell 12 feet though a skylight and was in a back brace and scared the shit out of everyone I love. Paul (Roessler), my music producer, was one of those people. He even wrote a song about a girl falling through a skylight (laughs)! He's one of the people that would be like asking the universe to help me and to help get me sober. I'm a very love-centric person and when I was writing this album, it was a lot of relationships that didn't work out and one of them was even abusive. Two days before I sang the song...I do a cover on the album of "It's A Man's World" and wanted to do it in a very feminist kind of way. A lot of people cover that song but sing it in a very pretty way. It's a good song but the only band that I know, and it's a band that I am actually inspired by who covers that song, is a band called The Residents, and they just fuck it up and make it weird. I wanted to fuck it up and make it weird but also wanted to bring a feminist energy to it, like "Yeah. It's a fucking man's world but we're doing our best to change that!". 2 days before I sang that vocal track I was sexually assaulted and throughout all of this stuff Paul said "You're going to write about it". This is one way that I know how to navigate through this and that makes it better. This is a very good therapy, and of course every art form is, but sometimes I feel like when you are in the heat of all that stuff, you don't want to do anything. I'm sure a lot of people are going through that in quarantine, with this country on fire and the world being weird, and you want the drive to do all of the things, but sometimes you just don't. Paul was the push that was like "write songs about it", and so I did. At first, they were primarily about the relationships that I was in, and I was just expressing what it was like to go through this process of trying to have something like a romantic relationship, and you're not taught in school how to do such a thing. I feel like people don't commonly go about it in the way of like "Hmmm. This is an interesting experience to have in life. Let me research it and read books about it first". You're just kind of thrown in there and fumbling around and guessing and have a lot of probably not so great or healthy ones. Or at least in my case that's how it was. Even though it started off being centered in a lot of that and just writing about a lot of that stuff, I'm happy that I did it because it did help get me through it. It makes it really personal in a way that isn't like me just playing a guitar part in a song. It forces me to be vulnerable.
The album is titled Mater Dolorosa, which translates to Mother of Sorrows, one of the 3 artistic representations of a sorrowful Virgin Mary. Also, the album will be released on September 15th, which is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. What can you tell me of any personal significance of the album title and release date?
Mater Dolorosa...Lady of Sorrows...I thought that it was fitting, just with the vibe of the album and what it's about (laughs). But I've been sober for over 5 years now and have gone through all kinds of different experiences and it's not all woes and turmoil. My life is way more amazing now than it's ever been. But Mater Dolorosa was kind of a universal God shot in that September 15th is a celebratory day of Mater Dolorosa. I met up with the label and we were talking about release dates and Gina, who works with Josie (Cotton), said "Hey. I looked it up and September 15th is a celebratory day of Mater Dolorosa and we were like WOAH!". It just so happened to be the day we were talking about releasing the album, so we were like "This is perfect. Let's release it on this date". Along with the representation of the meaning of what Mater Dolorosa is, Paul was in a band called The Screamers that I love a lot, and I have all of these little symbolisms, sort of a love letter play on words and hidden between the lines sort of stuff. It's kind of like a love letter to Paul and The Screamers and I like the meaning and imagery of Mater Dolorosa a lot. So that's where that came from.
What led you to want to experiment with different kinds of atypical instrumentation on the album, such as metal bed frames and crumpled up foil and just whatever was around?
I feel like I am a very experimental person in general when it comes to art forms, particularly music. I'm inspired by so many different bands that really bend the rules on music. So many of my friends and people that I make music with are the same way. It's fun for me to explore, because I feel like people can get pigeonholed very easily and stuck in this very guitar/bass/drums model. Everything's been done, you know? Everything's been done. At the same time, I'm a self-taught musician, so I'm in the studio and Paul is telling me to write these songs. I was just going to do like a guitar-acoustic type of thing but was like "Too folky. I don't want that". How many people do I know who made a solo album and it was a folk album? Even if sometimes that vibe will come naturally, there was also a part of me that wanted drums on a track. There were some tom drums in the studio and I decided to bang on those for a little bit. I think the trigger for the inspiration came when we were making a song, and I was in the vocal booth, and the mic was still on. I walked out and there's this sliding glass door that opens and closes in order to go into the other room where you listen back, where the recording board is. When I opened and closed it, it went "swoosh" and the microphone caught the sound. When we listened back, both Paul and I liked that sound. I think there was just a realization and something that clicked there where we realized we could make all of these cool sounds that we could add into the music. Paul is really good at stuff like that. We could make them and use what's around the studio and the apartment as instruments that sound really cool. Then we were off on this whole new thing and everything in the house could be used for really cool sounds. It's interesting, because even places like Disney used to do that, like with soundtracks to cartoons or whatever they were doing. A lot of the times there were these homemade instruments they would use to make a specific sound of like "What does this cartoon character falling off a mountain sound like?". I'm into stuff like that and I researched it and so we just started banging on stuff and a lot of it sounded really cool and added a really interesting, experimental flare.
What has it been like to be signed to Kitten Robot Records? Having been friends with and worked with Paul (who heads Kitten Robot Studios) for several years now, what do you feel you have learned from him over the years?
I call him and his wife Rachel my little angels. Woah, I feel emotional. I didn't expect that. He's like a mentor, you know? And he's really supportive and inspiring and it's not just with me. I see it with him and Josie too. If he were here, he'd be saying some smart-ass comment about this I'm sure (laughs)! Like "I love it when girls cry" (laughs). There's a humor and humility to it. It's been really cool. I've done music for a long time now and have been signed to a label before and basically it didn't do much. It gave us a tangible record on vinyl that we couldn't afford anyway. This is the first time I have been signed to a label that has...you know, it's a newer label so they are driven to expand and become bigger. The push to expand and become bigger with them is existent and that's the first time that I have had that from a label. I'm getting interviews left and right and photo shoots and really good PR. I was just going to put this album up online and call it a day, but Paul put a lot of time into this album too and was like "I want you to try to shop it around and let's see what happens". In a lot of these situations, I like to take myself out of them. It's not all about me. I wanted to shop it around for him and for the project. And then Kitten Robot was into it and they wanted to put it out and I'm just really grateful and appreciative of all the support. It's really cool that all of these magical things keep happening, like it was just supposed to be a digital release and then one of my friends who is also starting a label said they would partner up with Kitten Robot Records and make vinyl. They really wanted the album to be on vinyl and I was like "Woah! Now this is going to be on vinyl? Cool!". And now I have interviews with all of these magazines talking about it, which is cool. This is way more than I ever expected from it. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. It's never my drive to be like the next big thing or whatever. You know, my music is, like, weird. I'm a weirdo and my music's weird (laughs)! I don't expect everyone to love it. It doesn't have this, like, very basic structure of catchy choruses that happen time and time again, even though I think it's really melodic and beautiful. I think the work that Paul and I did is really cool. I also know that the vast majority of people are listening to the top 60 radio hits, like Taylor Swift or whatever. But I think that everything that is happening is really awesome and it's been a really cool experience.
You have talked about growing up in the punk scene and about how punk rock saved your life. What can you tell me about the early days of the LA punk and underground music scene that you were a part of when you were younger and how it's evolved over the years?
Yeah, sure. I'm happy that you used the words "that punk rock saved your life" because yeah, I say that and it's true, as much as it kind of destroys your life at the same time (laughs). You know, I say the same thing about music...a blessing and a curse. And I'm not really a religious person when I say these terms. They're just the easiest terms to use. When I was in high school, things weren't the best at home. There was a period in my life where my mother died from cancer at a really young age and I was just mad. I was mad and had all of this energy and there was this group of kids that hung out at the wall. It was called the wall. It was this brick wall and they were all of the goth and punk kids and I was just a nerd who liked to read books. There was something that just drew me in to these kids. I think my siblings at the same time were...like my brother was wearing Doc Martens and was always listening to music with these big headphones and had the Dead Kennedys CDs and The Doors and things like that. All of these things in my life were moving me towards this music and these people and everyone that I knew, like these kids who hung out at the wall or in the janitor's closet, were all going through something too. I feel like that's the part where the punk kids became my family and where them saving my life comes in, because people need people to a certain extent. We were all going through this shit and like, the music just lets you, it's just that you could connect to it so much and in a political way too. And then you go to these shows and that was our escape. We would go to these shows and get into the mosh pit and chip our teeth and get bloody and bruised and whatever. It felt good and we'd feel so alive!. At the same time, the darker side of that stuff is where the addiction comes in. There was a lot of drinking and a lot of these musicians and writers that I would idolize, like Hunter S Thompson and a lot of musicians in the punk scene, were all kind of these, like, broken people with troubles with addiction but amazing at what they do. And I'd think "Oh, I'm not addicted to anything". I had this way of romanticizing that narrative and it wasn't until later in life, like now, where I realized that that's actually the sad part of their story. With Hunter S Thompson, for example, I wish he was alive now with all of these different things in politics happening. I want to know what he would write about. It would be amazing. But anyways, I just devoted myself to punk music and it became my life and I became a nerd about that since I was a nerd anyway. And I just researched the shit out of it. I wanted to go underground and underground and underground and find all of the deeper cuts, since it's kind of the music that a lot of bands didn't really make a profit off of. Like, I love The Screamers so much and it's a legendary band, but Paul was telling me this story about he got, like, a check in the mail for The Screamers and it was a dollar. It's just, like, bootlegs everywhere and people don't make money off of it and that's fine. When I started to be in bands and play music, I just got more and more friends who were punk nerds. When I got out of high school, my friends that were more musically inclined and into music actually wanted to make music. The partying came to a halt. It got ugly there. It became more about making music and making art. And the underground scene in LA, like with my band Egrets on Ergot, was really cool. It felt like everything I had read about in books, like this is happening. I always would say how I wished I was in the music scene in the 70s. If I had a time machine, I would go back to the blues days. I wish I was in any sort of musical world besides the one I'm actually in (laughs). It felt very thriving and cool and underground and everyone was dressed up and expressing themselves in cool styles and going to the shops and to Glitter Death and we'd play upstairs in sort of the attic area. The whole store was shaking and was probably unsafe but whatever. We were all hanging out there until 2 or 3 am and we were in Hollywood and it felt really cool. I think it started to get a lot of traction and post-punk, even though it was underground, started to get a lot of traction and became a pretty popular thing here in LA and more and more people started to come out to shows and my band Egrets on Ergot got more and more traction. If you would have told little punk me in high school that one day I would be playing with The Deadbeats and I would be sitting within the studio or I would meet Paul Roessler from The Screamers or I would be playing in a band with Rick Agnew from Christian Death, I wouldn't have believed you. Or that I was going to be on tour with The Weirdos in your band. I would have said no way. I remember when I was going to shows and watching bands up on the stage being like "Man, that would be so cool to do something like that" but feeling like I probably never would. But I have, many, many times, and it's actually one of the places I love to be the most. There's nothing else that I've done that is like it. I get really awesome feelings and sensations of expression and loss of time when I'm doing makeup and makeup effects for example, or painting. But there's just nothing like performing on a stage and connecting to people and their energy. There's just nothing like it.
In recent months you have rediscovered your love for art forms that you haven't really touched for a while, most specifically photography. A lot of the photography you have done has been for the album artwork and the artwork for the album's singles and you have collaborated with Rachel Roessler, who is also a photographer. What can you tell me about getting back into photography, as well as the inspiration behind the aesthetic of your photos, which have a spooky, witchy and at times spiritual vibe to them?
I used to do film photography with my sister, and just photography in general. I would always be the model for my sister in her photos. She got really into it, as well. My relationship with Rachel kind of feels that way. I took a class at Cal Arts and would be in the darkroom developing my film and stuff like that and I don't know. I stopped doing it for a long time. I think when Covid happened, a lot of my artist friends...my world had become music and film and both of them will keep you really busy. Painting on canvas and photography is something that I hadn't touched for a while. I got the chance to during this Covid time. Rachel is really into photography too and we both have these kinds of dark aesthetics. There's just a mood to this album that I really wanted to represent and I kept getting all of these ideas of things I thought would look really cool, and I was also able to use my make-up and effects skills. For one of the photoshoots, I wanted to recreate Mater Dolorosa, so I made a prosthetic at home with swords going through my heart and made it kind of gory. I got an idea to go to...it was when it was raining for days and days in LA and I think it was the most rain we'd ever had. Everything was so green. I just love misty, cloudy, foggy environments and the mood it creates. It's my favorite mood, even though it's kind of sad, but it's just comfortable. I think, like, healthy people who are going to the gym all the time or something probably like the sun the most and are up at 6 am (laughs)! Rachel was diving back into her photography too and we wanted something to do. I didn't have the release yet. Kitten Robot Records wasn't even in the picture. We were just like "Wanna go take photos? I need something to do. Let's go take some photos. Let's go to the mountains and walk around". So we did and I do have a spiritual, sort of witchy side to me and I just like nature so much. Through becoming sober and through even this time in Covid, this sort of grounding connection to nature has been something that has been really important to me. It reminds me to get out of the concrete jungle and to stare at a tree or go into nature and look at how beautiful the world is and to remember that outside of people and politics and things that could be considered ugly, there's also all of these beautiful parts of the world to explore. More and more ideas kept coming to Rachel and I and we were like "Ok, let's do this. Let's be a murky, creepy witch person in the water". We are both kind of inspired by this horror type of imagery and it's been really fun. I really like what we've done.
You recently released the single "Terminal Secrets", which was inspired by the fact that what's portrayed on the outside doesn't always reflect what's going on inside of a person and their mind. What can you tell me about the song and what you feel it reflects about today's society?
It's funny, because to me it's saying what's underneath the mask of your personality and what's really going on inside. And then it just so happens to be, at this point and time in the world, that we have to wear masks literally (laughs)! It can be so hard to see people's personalities through these masks. There's just no expression. I just feel like there's so much pressure in society to present yourself well, and I don't know. Maybe this is some old sort of 50s mentality or something? And being emotional or crying is seen as sign of weakness. I think for a lot of people, it's hard for them to communicate about this stuff that's probably going on inside of them. It's hard to be vulnerable, and as humans everyone has kind of like their ego and it's just what naturally happens. How do you break that and how do you shed that? I see it a lot of the time in the film industry and in music where there's just a lot of facade. I think especially in LA. It feels like things just lack depth because people aren't being genuine. That or their really, really genuine and maybe saying too much, which is maybe where I fall into the line (laughs). I'm like at the opposite end of the spectrum. But I wanted to write about that and I've seen it time and time again, where people just get a little taste of success and they want more and more and more of it and just "How do I make it in LA and in this industry? Who do I need to know and how can I be their friend so that I can get closer to my success?". Part of what I talk about in the song is this monster and waking up to the monster you've become. And maybe it's the loneliest you've ever been because you don't have any kind of relationship that has true depth. It's all surface level "friends", but it doesn't start out that way maybe. In the song it kind of starts off with sounding like you're in a happy place and are doing it for fun and for the right reasons and then when you get a taste for success it can easily turn bad. It's like a mindfuck, you know?
You also released a video for "Terminal Secrets" that uses stop motion animation. What can you tell me about the process of making the video and your love for stop motion animation?
My friend Jenny (Nirgends) directed the video and she goes to Cal Arts and is an animator. She's one of my favorite artsy people to collaborate with, outside of Rachel, because she's really driven and has a lot of really cool ideas and a unique style. Me and her have decorated a whole building for one of my band's release show and were inspired by Yayoi Kusama. She's an artist who does a lot of installation art and she'd decorate a whole room usually in a series of dots and it looks really surreal looking. We wanted to make this real looking world for the show and we called it The ACID test and it was kind of a legendary show. I had worked with her before on that and she's done music videos for my other bands before, so I thought about her as soon as I got the opportunity to make music videos. I hit her up and asked her if she wanted to make one with me and that I didn't have much money but would build the art and we'd have some money for materials. She was like "Yeah. I've always wanted to make a pixel animation". Her and I both have the same connections and inspirations from, like, The Brothers Quay and different stop motion animations. We were talking about that and Peter Gabriel's music video for "Sledgehammer" came up and we discussed doing it in a portrait type of mode and we talked about the theme of the song and how I wanted the music video to be about faces transforming. When I say "the monster you've become" in the song, I wanted to develop my own face into the monster and shedding my skin time and time again. She was like "Ok cool. Can you build a mask of your own face?" and I was like "Yeah. I have a lot of time in quarantine right now" (laughs)! I had never filmed anything in stop motion before and it was a really cool experience but it's a lot of work. We did 12 frames a second. Sometimes people do 24. Even with 12 frames a second, just half of that, we'd be shooting all day and walk out of there with 10 seconds of footage and the song is over 3 minutes. Along with pre-production, we were working on that music video for weeks. She made the art for it and the collage and the wall and I made all of the plaster faces and masks. It was an interesting process to make a mask of my own face. It's kind of funny to see yourself in clay, without hair and stuff. I felt like I was, like, my dad. I looked old and I looked a lot like my dad and was like "Ugh!" (laugh)! But it was a fun process. My friend Ashley (Hooker), who is a body painter, came out and I think that turned out to be a really cool part of the music video of just trying to blend me into the background and painting flowers on me.
You have talked about having a really great team of women working on the video and doing the pixel animation. What kind of support do you see amongst women in the music industry, as well as in makeup and film?
There are so many things I could talk about with this subject. I really wanted to push to have more women making this art and be as connected to this project as I could, because it's important to me. All of a sudden, I realized that I'm working around and with a bunch of dudes all the time. It's almost like people are surprised when they meet a female recording engineer or a female worker in an effects shop. In the effects industry, especially in the labs, it's primarily male based. I think it's been getting better over the past few years and it's better now, but there's a lot of dudes in it. It can feel very, like, "Well she's not strong enough to lift this bag of plaster, so she's not going to do this", but I do know a lot of women and they've done amazing things in the music and the film world. I think there are women who really find their place and really stand up for themselves in both of those worlds. I know a lot of women in bands and they don't like to be called a girl band. If it was with dudes, it would just be called a band, but since there's girls in it it's called a girl band. It's important to me, as a female, to remember to work with other females and to keep it thriving in these industries. I don't have bad feelings against the men or anything like that. Paul is a guy and he's amazing, but I just feel like doing my part as a woman in this world and even as a person in general, how can I help the growth in these areas of the world, whether it be women having more successes and equal opportunities, as well as people of color. I think those are all important things for people and myself to keep in mind when we are employing people or creating something. We all have different perspectives and come from different areas and that can be very inspiring and maybe they can think of things that you didn't think of. Sometimes it's just about who's best for the job or who wants to do it, in terms of where it could be genderless. I think it's an important thing to keep in mind for me.
Going into high school, your passion for painting and drawing kind of morphed into makeup and make up effects. Could you talk a bit about you came to want to make a career out of doing make up and special effects? Is there an achievement or moment you are most proud of?
I was always a thinker and drawing. My sister was an artist too and I knew a handful of people that went to college for art. College always seemed to me, in general, expensive and something that would put me into a lot of debt and being, like, a painter seemed like an unrealistic dream. David Bowie has a good quote about being an artist and musician, like that you have to be kind of crazy to do it. Like why don't you just do something you know will put bread on the table (laughs)? And you know, it's true! You have to really love it and stick with it, otherwise just do something that you know is going to pay you. But I was just trying to think of different ways...like, what am I going to do when I get out of high school and what can I do artistically that I think can bring me money? And I was watching CSI or some show like that with my dad. He just so happened to be home that day and the tv was on, per usual (laughs), and I saw the dead bodies and stuff. And I always loved Predator and different types of sci-fi and horror movies and would do makeup for my sister when she went to the prom or something. It just clicked, like, "Oh, I could probably make these dead people for a living" (laughs)! It's just painting and it's cool and I felt like people in the film industry make a lot of money. So I looked up makeup schools and went to Cinema makeup school. There was a short course and I took the master course and I did airbrushing and beauty and effects stuff and I really fell in love with makeup effects. I was lucky because my makeup effects teacher at the time, his name's Greg McDougall...I was one of the only people in my class that was really, really into it. I would always show up early and stay late and a lot of the other girls who were more beauty oriented didn't want to get dirty, and with effects you often get plaster all over you. I loved being messy. I'm a messy artist, so I was really into it and so he took me under his wing and got me onto productions right out of school. I did a Bigfoot movie with him up in Northern California and I just got a just start and was really passionate and made flyers for myself and put them around at all of the film schools and started to get jobs and was an intern at different effects labs. I did that for, like, a decade or more. I think it's been about two years now that I got into the makeup union, which when you ask me about important moments in my life and makeup career and my favorite thing, getting into the makeup union was HUGE. I mean, huge. I was doing a film in the Arctic, like 3 hours away from the North Pole, on this little island in an area called Pyramiden, which is technically owned by Russia. It's close to Norway and is this little island where the North Pole is and I was there for a month with no tv, no internet...nothing. It's just you and the polar bears, a bunch of Russians, your film crew and snow. That's it. It's such a beautiful place. Before I left, I had turned in all of my hours and everything to the makeup union and then left for that job and was in the snow for a month, disconnected from the world. When I got back home, I got my letter saying that I had made it into the union and I was just like "Holy Shit!". That's where you get the big boy jobs. Like, with all of the films that you love and tv shows, you now get the opportunity to be on those shows and be a makeup artist on set. I love American Horror Story and I loved Game Of Thrones and you just get the chance to be on stuff you love and when you tell people about it, they're like "Oh yeah, I know that show". Before, I was talking about indie things that no one has heard of and you're treated maybe not that great on set and the projects are low budget. When I got into the makeup union, it was huge and you have to meet people now. It was kind of like starting over. I'd been in the indie world for over a decade and now you're in the union with all of these other people who don't you and you have to get to meet them and kind of prove yourself as an artist. There's Make Up Artist Magazine and there was a guy that asked if anyone wanted to do interviews who had a unique story or something. I said "I shot a movie for a month in the Arctic. Is that interesting?" and he was like "Yeah!". I went and talked about it and some of my friends were getting on Star Trek: Picard and usually a lot of the new Star Trek series are shot and filmed in Canada but they did this series, Picard, in LA. A guy named James MacKinnon is the department head for it and the department head for American Horror Story is this woman named Eryn Krueger Mekash. These are the rock stars of the makeup industry. So I do this interview and we're talking about Star Trek when the interview is over and I'm saying how I hope I can get on it. That would be really cool. But how do I do that? I don't know him. And he was like you should send him (James MacKinnon) a Facebook message. In my head, I'm like "No Way!". It seemed so unprofessional to hit him up on Facebook. But there's a part of me that likes to pay attention to little messages that I think are from the universe, so as much as I thought it was embarrassing and the wrong thing to do, which is what my head was telling me, I felt like maybe it was suggested for a reason and maybe I should just do it. What's the worst that could happen? So, I worked on my website for days and days and got everything all together and then sent James MacKinnon, this rock star makeup artist, a message of Facebook and said "Hey. I have some friends who are on Star Trek and I would love to be on it. Here's my stuff". I watched interviews with him and he talked about how he used to work at Taco Bell and stuff and I was just really inspired by his story. Some days go by and he sends me a message back and asked me to text him and I did and more days go by and he was like "Can you work on this day?". I was like "Woah! This is actually happening!" And there's this guy who I love too and have known him for a really long time, his name is Jerry Ayers. I used to work at an effects lab with him and have known him since I was young. I've been doing this since I got out of high school, so I was around 17, and I think I met him when I was like 18 or 19 and I'm almost 30 now. I knew he was on Star Trek and I hadn't seen him in so long and it was my first day going to Star Trek and I think it was one of my most exciting moments in the makeup industry. I was so nervous because it's such a big show, and mind you, all I'm doing is background stuff. I'm seeing all of these people that I love who I haven't seen in a long time and it's the biggest set I've ever been on and it was so cool. I'm so appreciative to James MacKinnon for giving me that opportunity. I got to learn from that and got to reconnect with Carrie and we have this friendship now. I met Eryn Mekash, who does American Horror Story, on Star Trek and she got me on, Ryan Murphy has this show out called Hollywood, which is a period piece, and I got to work on that. Just being around those people is really cool and they are so funny and down to earth and are into all of the same shit I'm into, you know? They're all musicians too, kind of, and are all into the same shit and it's really cool.
Aside from your album release, what's next for you?
I have at least 2 more music videos coming out. I keep getting hit up by friends in the film industry, like directors and people with cameras, who are like "Hey! Wanna shoot a music video for your solo album?" and I'm like "Yeah! The more the merrier. Let's do it!". A lot of them are out of work and just want to create. So I have 2 music videos coming out. One is for my next single "The Pharmacy", and that one really reflects my love of horror. I'm a demon and did my own make up and am a demon in it and it's really witchy. And then there will be a video for "A Man's World", and that one is a really surreal black and white, noir meets grunge kind of vibe, and I'm really happy with the way that one came out. A union VP, his name is Mark Evans, did the camera work for that one and my friend Nesto directed that one and my friend Michelle Hernandez directed "The Pharmacy". These are all film people. I really love the way that they came out and think it's really fun. In terms of what's next, I don't know. I think some film is kind of coming back, but having hundreds of background artists on set, which is primarily what I was doing, probably won't come back for a while. Even if Star Trek and American Horror Stroy are supposed to shoot again, it will probably be with a minimal crew. I'm kind of just doing non-union stuff again and helping other friends make their music videos and just trying to stay creative. I think I'm going to make more music videos. I'm sure of it. I also want to start writing the next album. There's a lot of promo for this album going on, and that's cool, but I'm also just getting more and more inspiration to write the next one and am excited to do that. I'm excited to write songs again and to focus on that for a while. And as much as I like promo, the social media stuff is like "oh my god". I'd rather you shoot me (laughs). I just want to create art. I don't want to worry about finding more followers, but that's just the world that we're in.