Tag: stevie nicks

Zilched Rekindles Love for Stevie Nicks with “Stand Back” Cover on New EP

Photo Credit: Julia Koza

There was a time when Chloë Drallos – aka Zilched – was embarrassed that she ever loved Stevie Nicks. Growing up with a love for the classics and then rejecting them in the name of riot grrrl, Drallos has since found her happy medium in a cover of Nicks’ classic “Stand Back.” The cover is one of two songs from a special two-song EP, out yesterday, November 9th, just as Zilched wraps up a short tour with dates in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Brooklyn.

Drallos’ video references the original, as she dances in the dark under a spotlight. Except, in the Zilched version, Nicks’ dancing troupe is replaced by a shrine of the queen herself; Drallos makes her offering. It’s a celebration of youth, an acknowledgment of the music that shaped her, and a killer performance of her go-to karaoke song; she and her sister spent many nights early on in the pandemic with Ian Ruhala of HALA, the three of them doing drunken karaoke at his house. As a nod to those times, she got Ruhala to play guitar and bass on the cover.

Both “Stand Back” and the video for the EP’s previous-released single, “A Valentine,” encapsulate Drallos’ trademark DIY aesthetic. To be fair, it’s more than just an aesthetic, considering Drallos acts as her own merch designer, photographer, director, booking agent and producer. It’s not uncommon for budding artists to wear multiple hats at the beginning of their career, but it feels exceptional that Drallos mastered all of the above before reaching legal drinking age. 

Drallos knew early on that she had to be a musician. Not because she liked being on stage or because her parents did it, but because it was the only thing that seemed to make life worth living. “It was mostly me being like, ‘this is the only thing that I think would make me maybe like my life, or whatever.’ So I was just like, ‘This is the key to being happy and not having to go to college. So I was just doing it.” 

“Doing it” meant driving the 45-minutes from her hometown of Hartland, Michigan, to any show she could book in Detroit. The first show she played at Detroit’s El Club was the same week as her high school graduation. While other teens were thinking about college or prom or whatever teenagers think about, Drallos was planning her move to the city, and making sure she had a few friends when she got there. “I hear people say, ‘That must’ve taken a lot of guts,’ or ‘that must’ve been really hard,’ but I wasn’t thinking of it that way. I was like, ‘this is what I gotta do and I gotta do it now,’” she recalls. 

It helped that Drallos didn’t really feel engaged with any part of her hometown. There, she kept to herself; even her music was a really private part of her life. While she was booking shows in Detroit, she rarely ever played out in her hometown. In fact, it took her a while to feel comfortable on stage. “I didn’t really hang out with a lot of people in my town so I was really removed from everything,” says Drallos. “And I also had, like, crippling stage fright.” 

She explains that part of that nervousness stemmed from feeling like she wasn’t a good enough singer. Growing up listening to artists like Stevie Nicks, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and the like, her idea of what a voice “should” sound like didn’t line up with what was coming out of her. Her early music education consisted of absorbing as much knowledge about the “greats” as she possibly could. “I would come home and watch VHI Classic all day and I would write down all the bands or songs that played, and then I would download them on Napster, listen to them for a few days, delete them so I had more room, then do it again.” 

This resulted in her early songwriting career to have a heavy folk-rock leaning. “For me, Bob Dylan was, like, my guy,” Drallos laughs. “I was obsessed with him and wanted to be him so I just wrote songs that tried to sound like him. But then I got into riot grrrl and grunge and I was like, I need a cheaper guitar to be cool.” She turned in her hard-earned Gretsch for a Danelectro and started to let herself sing. “My first practices did not include a microphone – I was sooooo shy,” she says.

Since then, Drallos’ deep knowledge in folk and rock has seeped into her smart and melodic songwriting style, delivered with the angst and honesty of grunge. In “Stand Back” Drallos pays homage to one of her heroes while inserting her own sonic personality. “She’s an artist I loved so much when I was in middle school. I thought she was like the perfect woman,” says Drallos. “In high school, I was trying to forget that I was ever like that and was too cool for that and then after I moved out, I went back to a bunch of those types of artists and was like, ‘I’m not too cool for these, they’re still the greatest.’”

Zilched may be cool as hell, but no one is too cool for Stevie Nicks.

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NEWS ROUNDUP: Rock Hall’s Newest Inductees, New Music from Amanda Palmer + MORE

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019 Inductees Announced

The inductees to 2019’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced this week and include Stevie Nicks, The Zombies, Radiohead, Def Leppard, Janet Jackson, The Cure, and Roxy Music (with Brian Eno). Stevie Nicks is the first woman to be inducted twice – first with Fleetwood Mac in 1998, and now in 2019 for her career as a solo artist. She tweeted “I have been in a band since 1968. To be recognized for my solo work makes me take a deep breath and smile. It’s a glorious feeling.”

Radiohead acknowledged their invitation in a more positive regard after last year’s dismissive comments from guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien. For bands like The Zombies, whose career bloomed later than most 1960s British Invasion bands, this is a “life-defining moment.” The 34th annual Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on March 29th 2019.

The New New

Amanda Palmer released “Drowning in The Sound,” the first single from her solo album There Will Be No Intermission. It comes out on March 8, 2019, which is also International Woman’s Day. Avril Lavigne released “Tell Me It’s Over” and announced her upcoming record Head Above Water. You Me At Six released a Rick & Morty inspired lyric video for “Straight to My Head.”

End Notes

  • New Jersey Radio Station WFMU’s Free Music Archive will not be removed after being acquired by KitSplit. WFMU Director Cheyanne Hoffman stated that they “will reopen artist/curator uploads and our Music Submission form and resume our scheduled audio weirdness, curated playlist posts, and new releases here on our blog.”

ONLY NOISE: Say What?

Somewhere in a parallel universe lives a Karma Comedian, a Cheerio Girl, and a one-winged dove. Dirty deeds are done by Thunder Chiefs, and Tony Danza holds us closer…so close. This is the Land of Misheard Lyrics, and it is a silly, silly place. Yet it is a place we are all familiar with, having suffered varying degrees of humiliation during our visits there.

For this installment of Only Noise, I reached out to my friends and fellow music journalists to ask: what lyrics have you tragically misheard in the past? And oh, how the gems rolled in. Some misinterpretations were almost universal in their familiarity. Take one colleague’s aural rendering of a Manfred Mann mega hit: “The best one has to be ‘wrapped up like a douche,’” she said. “I thought those were the lyrics to ‘Blinded By The Light’ for half my life.” I’m still convinced that’s what he’s saying, personally. In fact, if you played that song through text dictation, I bet five dollars the “douche” version would end up on your phone.

Some misinterpretations directly correlated to the age of the listener. For instance, a friend of mine admitted: “I used to think, as a child, that Prince’s ‘I Would Die 4 U’ was ‘Apple Dapple Do.’” Another pal misheard ABBA during “Take a Chance on Me.” “I used to think, when I was a kid, that the lyric ‘Honey I’m still free’ was ‘Olly oxen free.’” And perhaps my favorite instance of pop-music-through-the-ears-of-a-child: Madonna’s chart topping smash hit about a balanced breakfast: “Cheerio Girl.” Madonna wasn’t wrong (she rarely is) when she sang, “We are living in a Cheerio world/and I am a Cheerio girl.”

Similar such nonsense insisted that Steve Miller was not in fact singing “Oh, Oh big ol’ jet airliner” in “Jet Airliner,” but rather, “Bingo Jed had a lina,” whatever the hell that means. Who is this “Bingo Jed” anyhow? Some kind of gambling tycoon at the local retirement home? And what in God’s name is a lina? Only parallel universe Steve Miller can tell us.

The Land of Misheard Lyrics can be goofy, for sure, but it is also a realm of longing, proven by groups such as TLC, who once pleaded, “Don’t go, Jason Waterfalls!” And we must never forget the picturesque isolation painted by Stevie Nicks when she sang, “Just like the one-winged dove/Sings a song/Sounds like she’s singing/Ooo, ooo, ooo.” Those “Ooos” were merely the painful cries of a newly one-winged bird. Now she’ll have to apply for bird disability, and I don’t even know if that’s a thing.

If sad and silly are high rollers in the Land of Misheard Lyrics, then absurdity is king. Remember when Mick Jagger swore he’d never be “Your pizza burnin’,” or when ‘90s dance sensation Eiffel 65 confessed: “I’m blue and I beat up a guy”? Me too. Or what about the time all those “Dirty Deeds” were done by “The Thunder Chief”? Or how ‘bout that darn Karma Comedian, who was perpetually coming and going, for six choruses and a bridge? Ugh. Comedians.

But that’s just the PG side of things. Some folks heard lyrics that Freud would have a grand old time picking apart. Take Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ love ballad, “Sweetheart Come,” which a fellow music writer heard as, “Sweet Hot Cum.” To be fair, I don’t blame her for thinking that. I mean, have you ever listened to the lyrics of “Stagger Lee”? Pervy-ness abounds in the Land of Misheard Lyrics, where Ziggy Stardust can be found “Making love to an eagle,” and Sir Mix-a-Lot likes “Big butts in the candlelight.” Not fluorescent. Not incandescent. Specifically, only in candlelight. To Sir Mix-a-Lot’s nonexistent point, candles are the sexiest light source.

My personal best example of misinterpreted lyrics occurred at age 10, upon the release of “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” by Destiny’s Child. “Ladies leave your man at home,” Beyoncé and the other three sang, “the club is full of ballers and their COCK is full grown.” Say huh? How did this get past the FCC? I wondered. Did my mom, from whose car and therefore radio we were listening to such filth hear what I heard? Furthermore, if the club was full of ballers, and “their” cock was full grown, did that mean that these ballers possessed one, collective cock? The peoples’ cock? I needed answers. All I knew was one thing: you can’t say “cock” on the radio! Or could you? Was this profanity Beyoncé’s fault? Or the DJ’s for not bleeping out the “cock” word? Or was it as the great Jimmy Buffett once sang: “Some people claim that there’s a walnut to blame”? We may never know.

ONLY NOISE: Not With The Band

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Sam Riley as Ian Curtis and Alexandra Maria Lara as Annik Honore in Anton Corbijn’s 2007 film Control

Imagine it. Spring Fling, 2005. Kevin, the object of your eternal tweenage desire, is playing the school dance – in his band. That’s right. Kevin is in a band. Or, more accurately, Kevin has a band. You see, he writes the songs, and the lyrics. He sings them, and plays the electric guitar. It’s a Stratocaster. He got it last year for his birthday.

Kevin looks great tonight. He’s just gotten a haircut, and he’s wearing that shirt that you love. Kevin looks great in shirts. He’s even swapped out his glasses for contacts, making him look more Kyle MacLachlan than a bespectacled Morrissey. To be honest, you can’t even decide which Kevin you prefer – the one with four eyes, or two. Both Kevins are equally foxy.

This occasion – the Spring Fling of 2005, (which certainly happened and is in no way a thinly veiled decoy for more recent events) should be a wonderful time. You should be dancing, and singing along to Kevin’s trite love songs. Unfortunately, Kevin dumped you last week, and all those songs he’s singing involving words like “baby” and “love me” and “crying” ain’t about you, sweetheart.

Now imagine, that it is not in fact the Spring Fling of 2005. It is the Summer Bummer of 2017. You are not a tweenager. You are a grown-ass woman, and the above scenario involving Kevin and his poorly structured songs is just a taste of what it is like to date and get dumped by a musician. It reduces you to tween angst and humiliation. It makes you feel as though you are standing alone on the Spring Fling dance floor, while everyone else couples up to do that slow eighth grade penguin dance.

As Murphy’s Law would have it, if you have been burned by a musician, chances are you will definitely get his new single emailed to you by a publicist. You will for sure show up to a gig he is playing by accident, because he got added to the bill last minute, sans announcement. But wait – why would you get an email from a publicist? Because in addition to being a grown-ass woman, you are also a journalist. A music journalist.

As a music journalist, you have a staunch, zero tolerance policy when it comes to dating musicians. Even when approached by the most casual of guitar hobbyists, the answer is always no. N.O. Always, except those four five times you permitted an exemption due to… well, proximity. And charm. But mostly proximity. Because here’s the thing about working in a creative field that writes about another creative field, a.k.a., music journalism. You literally meet two kinds of people. 1) Other writers. 2) Musicians.

It’s almost impossible for you to meet men who aren’t musicians – they just flock to you. You hang out in the same places: concert venues, record stores, and bars (while I can’t find statistics on what percentage of musicians are bartenders, I am positive that it’s a very high number. Regardless, Luke O’Neil of Stuff Magazine assures us that “100 percent of bartenders and musicians are drunks,” so there). The point is, a music journalist swearing off musicians of the preferred sex is like a photographer saying he will never date a model, a director never sleeping with an actor, or an author never getting drinks with her publisher. It’s rather difficult.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried dating other writers, but I think we are (somehow) far more insufferable than musicians. The competition, the anxiety about typos in your text messages, and the fact that neither of you can get anything done while in the same room together. Historically, writer-on-writer romance hasn’t gone so well, anyhow (see: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath).

Musicians, on the other hand, deal in a different medium – your favorite medium! Plus, they’re too self-absorbed to be competitive, and they’ll always put you on a little pedestal, because you get paid to write your opinions about the thing they live for: music. They may even hope that one day you’ll write some nice opinions about their music (which you would never do, because that would be unprofessional). In turn, you might get a song written in your honor. Oh, I know it sounds corny, but everyone wants a song written about them, just like everyone wants to be a backup dancer in a music video (just once!). It’s as human as the need for love itself.

Sure, a music journalist dating a musician has its obvious downfalls (see: Ian Curtis and Annik Honoré). Of course, the quality of the songwriting can complicate things, but despite what you think, dating a shitty artist is always better than dating a goddamn genius. Look at what Suze Rotolo, Joan Baez, Sara Lowndes, and probably anyone who ever slept with Bob Dylan got – a handful of songs to plague them for all of eternity. Really, really good songs that you can’t even make fun of. Not even a little bit. Rick Astley, on the other hand, has been with same woman since 1988, and he’s never gonna give her up – but if he did, she probably wouldn’t miss that song.

Yeah, yeah, it may seem awesome to date a super hot singer/songwriter, who writes gorgeous melodies about you. It may sound fun to go to their shows, trying not to sing along to every word, because that would be very lame. But here’s the thing: the breakup with the savant is way worse. First of all, you already looked up to them for their abilities. You know they’re hot shit, and you can’t knock their new material, because it’s still kickass. Naturally the chances of their success is greater, which is a catastrophe. This means that you will have to hear about them from people you barely know and see them in magazines. This means that potentially, the barista at your coffee shop could one day be singing along to a song written about you while you wait for your goddamn Americano. Or, in Suze Rotolo’s case: you and your former beau Bob Dylan could be seared forever onto a classic album cover. This is no good.

Conversely, dating a mediocre songwriter ensures a tiny morsel of humiliation to savor after they break your heart. Even if they are otherwise flawless – intelligent, kind, funny, attractive, fabulous hair – their crappy music is your secret weapon. Because no dis hurts a music man’s heart more than “your band sucks, Kevin.”

To be fair, some wonderful art has sprung from the agony of bedding and wedding songwriters, but usually from the hands of other songwriters. If loving a musician wasn’t a complete pain in the ass, Stevie Nicks would never have written “Silver Springs” (for Lindsay Buckingham), Joanna Newsom wouldn’t have penned “Does Not Suffice” (about Bill Callahan), and Mandy Moore might still be married to Ryan Adams (who might have never recorded his last three albums). Considering all of the great songs that have been sown from breaking up, I can’t exactly hate on the heartbreak itself.

But maybe that’s the trick: maybe musicians can date musicians, because the fallout produces great art. Imagine how Bill Callahan must have felt when hearing his former girlfriend Joanna Newsom sing the words, “The tap of hangers swaying in the closet/Unburdened hooks and empty drawers/And everywhere I tried to love you/Is yours again and only yours.”

Ouch. That’s the kind of pain you just can’t conjure with an op-ed…but it doesn’t mean we won’t try.

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