Armed with a four-pound Panasonic, I squeezed around a table at Mr. Spot’s Chai House in Ballard, to rub shoulders with the easy going members of Seeing Blind-- Jessika, Melissa, Markus, and Luke (from shortest to tallest). They waxed on everything from Mr. Mittens (ask Luke), to what this burgeoning band thinks of its fans, its sound, and the local scene. With a female front man, a cello, and a two accomplished sound engineers in the lineup, a listener could find themselves lost in the vibrance and diversity of each song. Here’s what they had to say for anyone still in the dark about this band from the Sound, poised to make a splash.
I have to do it…Seeing Blind…what’s up with the name?
Jessika: Well, we had a whole board of names, but Seeing Blind caught my attention because it sounded cool, and it was short and easier to say, but then it made me think of music. When you play music it’s kind of like seeing blind, cuz you can’t see your music, you’re just playing it, you know.
Melissa: Exactly. Like seeing blind is like listening to music. But there’s another reason that I just wanna bring up because I’m like that, but--another reason is because I think the world in general is kind of seeing blind; we’re not really seeing what’s going on. We’re all just living in this kind of haze. The kids on there (their logo) are the 50’s style kind of kids and that’s why that image was chosen, because I think that things that we’re seeing as important or whatever, are not. I think a general awakening needs to happen.
Does that bleed into some of the songs you write?
Melissa: Absolutely. Not every song, but there’s a lot of songs. There’s this song called “Beautiful Country” that talks about the country and just how there’s so much potential here and that we don’t see it and we’re doing all sorts of things to damage the good and the things that we already have.
Among your influences you list-- Buckley, Hendrix, Ani DiFranco, Tool, Yo-yo Ma, and Rusted Root. How do you feel this broad spectrum affects your sound?
Melissa: We’re all influenced by Jeff Buckley a little bit, so that’s one we all kind of share. I think we’d all agree that Jimi Hendrix is pretty darn cool, but, the Tool influence, that’s me, I dunno about everybody else. I love tool--Tool, System of the Down--I love that kind of music, it’s hard, but it’s melodic…it means something (chuckles). Good lyrics, I mean, I’m the vocalist so that’s what I listen for.
Does the song writing always start with you?
Melissa: Usually it starts with my guitar, then I bring it to these guys and they do their magic and we work it out and they say I like that or let’s do something here, or let’s have a break down (Jessika chuckles) or a bass solo (looks at Markus and laughs).
Markus, I’m curious as to how you got started with the band?
Markus: Yeah, I’m the baby of the band. I used to be the engineer up at London Bridge and one day this Motley Crue comes walking in and I stuck around a bit and realized they didn’t have a bass player. I really liked the sound right away--it has a bluesy feel, very soulful. Listening to a lot of music as an engineer, I could tell right away that the vocals were hot, there’s a talented cellist which is unique, and the drums blew me away too. I knew I had to join the band right away. They made me get naked though(all laughs).
Jessika: We had the initiation.
Melissa: If you call “getting naked” taking of your underwear.
Jessika, do you play anything besides the cello in the band?
Jessika: Well, one time (laughs) on “Fall Back” the producer wanted a piano in there, and so we came up with this piano part, but I’m not very good at the piano; I can play sheet music, but I can’t write a part, so she (Melissa) came up with the whole part, but I played the right hand and she played the left hand at the same time, and that’s how we recorded it.
Melissa: Cuz neither one of us knew had to coordinate both hands (laughs)
Jessika: Good enough to sound like a real piano player. But in the band, I just play the cello. I thought about maybe playing the bassoon, cuz I know how to play the bassoon. I thought that’d be cool to bust out the bassoon on a couple songs, but they’re hard to find to even rent, so…
Markus: You know Luke plays a mean skin flute. (all laughs)
Do you ever get pissed when people spell “cello” with an “h?”
Jessika: I think that’s so funny, or they don’t know what a “cellist” is, like, ‘you’re a cello player.’ I use an electric cello, it’s kind of like art work--it’s see through and it’s crazy--so some people don’t even know what it is, and I’m surprised every time. I’m like, ‘whoa.’
Melissa: On top of that too, sometimes when people have listened to our music, just some comments in general, people don’t know the sound--because of the way she plays it. She doesn’t play it low like a cello, she’s going lead, you know, so they either thinks it’s a violin or a fiddle guitar (laughs). But it’s fun for us to be like “guitar fiddle?”
What kind of a show do you guys bring to the stage?
Melissa: Sometimes we joke around on stage, or if we’re playing a harder song we’ll bump into each other on stage or whatever--I usually leave her (Jessika) alone, she’s all in her cello bubble. There’s always high energy though, even when we’re playing mellow songs. We give it our all in the live shows.
Luke: I think we’re definitely a live band.
Michael Overa said of you guys “A band, any band should never be this hard to explain. Or maybe more should be.” How do you respond to that, and the endless attempt these days to fit a unique sound like yours into a specific genre?
Markus: It’s always tough, you know. The first question anyone always asks you is, ‘oh who do you sound like?’ and nobody likes to throw themselves into a specific type of genre and peg yourself as ‘this’ and we are definitely not that band. We come hard, we come soft, we come loud, we come crazy, we come…you know, whatever. We have so many influences, that it is what it is. The only way that you ever really know is just to come experience it and decide for yourself what you think it sounds like. But in a nutshell it is just like Britney Spears (laughs).
Melissa: If you had to peg it (laughs). But that’s really more of Luke’s influence really.
Luke: I just like her legs.
Jessika: Someone once asked, ‘what do they sound like?’ Then somebody said, ‘a mix between Dave Mathews Band and Evanescence,’ and someone else was like, ‘ how does that even happen?’
If you had to do a Conan O’Brien “if they married” skit of your sound, who would it be? I mean what the hell kind of band are you?
Markus: (laughs) It would definitely be at least a three-way.
Jessika: I’d have to say, if Tila Tequila and Dave Mathews Band had a musical baby it’d be us.
Melissa: Only if Carter Buford went first and last. (laughs)
Markus: I’d have to say if Korn and Britney Spears had a baby (laughs).
Jessika: Yo-yo Ma and Soundgarden (laughs).
Melissa: That would never happen. Yo-yo Ma’s standards are way too high to hook up with Soundgarden
Jessika: This is what makes it kind of hard for us. Like every time we get a show at a new place they put us with girl fronted bands of any kind of genre. It’s always random. It could be heavy metal, it could be folk girls singing in a choir. Then once we play a show at the venue they’re like, ‘whoa, maybe we should put em with something else.’ (laughs) And then we got put with punk and like hard rock--
Melissa: Which is cool.
Jessika: Yeah, and that worked. We played at this place that was like PUNK, like moshpits, called the Stashpot, and they loved us. But then there’s fifty year old women that love us and little kids who are like 11 who love us, too. It’s just so random.
As a local band, what are your plans for shows in the city and the surrounding area?
Melissa: I’d like to plan a college fall tour, encompassing Washington definitely, bring it home to where the heart is you know, Oregon and California, maybe even Idaho too.
Luke: Our focus was really to build a fan base for a little bit too, just to get some notoriety. We wanted to make sure that if we tour we have fans to back it up or to bring with us.
Melissa: We’ve got fans all over the state now which is great. The only thing I can really say is that there is really awesome music in Seattle, and there are great bands that are on indie labels here, but there are also awesome bands that are not and I would suggest to readers to maybe take out a magazine or the Stranger and do the globe thing, the “where am I gonna put my finger” and just go out, just check out some bands because there are some really awesome ones and I know because I’ve played with em. The scene is really good. It’s found itself. I’m so excited now because there’s so much great stuff happening.
Luke: I agree, there are a lot of bands, like us with such diverse influences, and that’s the beauty of the Seattle scene; there’s so much influence that it all combines into single bands that are just really creative and interesting, and I love the music scene out here.
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