Vial on the Hex Girls and WLW Representation - Tunes Tuesday Interview Transcript

Maud: Hi folks, I'm Maud Mostly. My pronouns are they/them and welcome back to Tunes Tuesday, a weekly series where I sit down with queer/2SLGBTQ+ plus musicians and bands to talk to them about their music, their experiences, and so much more! This week I am honored to be joined by Minneapolis indie rock punk band Vial. Thank you so much for joining me this week, would each of you like to go ahead and introduce yourselves?

Taylor: Hello thank you so much we're so happy to be here. My name is Taylor, I use she/they pronouns. I play the keytar in Vial and I also sing a little bit and I have a cat named Mimi.

M: Shout out to Mimi!

KT: Hello I am KT, I use they/them pronouns and I play guitar and I also sing

Kate: I'm Kate I also use they/them pronouns I play bass and I yell a bit

Katie: And my name's Katie I use she/her pronouns, I play the drums and I have a cat named Umi

M: Amazing I love that the cats are part of this interview now that feels so special. And thank you so much to all of you for joining me I'm so happy to have you here and I’m really excited to do a bit of a throwback first because back in 2020, which wasn't that long ago but what is time, you released a Hex Girls cover now for those of you who don't know the Hex Girls are a band from the cartoon Scooby-Doo and they served as a queer awakening for so many people. So what inspired you to bring this ode to the Hex Girls to life?

Katie: I think we got compared to the hex girls a lot and so we decided to take that and run with it and um you know cover a song make a cute little video with it. I don't know it was very fun.

Kate: It was nice I think we all were big scooby-doo fans as kids I know that Katie and I think yeah all of us were except for Taylor - I knew there was one of us- but you know great movies and stuff and we had gotten those comparisons and we were working on loudmouth but not really anywhere near like recording it or like getting down into it, so we kind of wanted to do something. It was as well a bit into quarantine and so like we wanted to put our passion somewhere and it came out into that beautiful cover.

M: I love that and so you know can you relate to the people who had the hex girls as their queer awakening or did you have different experiences.

KT: For sure they were definitely my queer awakening, 100

M: Amazing, and with shows kind of starting to make a safe return do you think this is something that you're going to bring to the stage with you at all?

Katie: You know we haven't talked about it but I wouldn't mind doing it for Halloween I don't know

KT: I think it'd be fun! I think the reason we haven't is both cuz of COVID and it's in like drop c or something um and neither of us the string instruments players have like more than one instrument to play live

Kate: and we also don't have tuners like we have phone tuners but it would be stressful to down tune to that in a live situation but it would be fun we'll work on it

M: Yeah very fair no this sounds like there's some barriers there but honestly I can imagine being an audience member when that song starts playing and that would be a fantastic time if possible but as you just mentioned you have been working on your sophomore album LOUDMOUTH for the last year and it is out this Friday which is amazing. What excites you most about the impending release?

T: We literally haven't released anything for like two years so it just feels like a pressure cooker that has been cooking for a hot second haha count the puns, but yeah it just feels like these songs have been like bouncing around in our brains and then recorded and have been waiting to be released for so long so it just kind of feels like a pressure cooker to me

KT: Feels like it's time they're ready to be released to the world we're ready to give them up and let them do their own thing

M: Oh sorry did somebody else have something they'd like to share there

M: All right amazing well it sounds like there's so much to be excited about and I mean you have already released three singles from the album which have all I think given the rest of us so many things to be excited about and one of those pre-release singles from loudmouth is the punky sapphic anthem violet and honoring queer culture the music video features angsty shy queer love at a roller rink so there's just so many amazing elements to this can you share more about the making of the music video and the ideas behind it?

KT: Yeah so originally we knew from the start that we wanted the music video to be a WLW representative music video because that's what the song is about and we had come up with an idea of these two people going on multiple imaginary dates, not just at the roller rink but a bunch of other places and we brought that idea to Jasia Ka who directed the music video and she said “how about we stick with the roller rink theme because I think we can make that really cool” we're like you know what that's sick let's run with that and so she was really the mastermind behind the whole thing and she uh directed everything and did an amazing job and we're so grateful for all the work she put in

M: Amazing and what's the reception to the music video been like have you been hearing anything back? I know this isn't still representation people see all the time so has there been a reaction to it

KT: All of the reception that I've seen has been extremely positive, luckily we're in like a community that is filled with like queer folks and so I don't know it wasn't seen by any of the like nasty stinky people that would shit on it you know

Kate: Yeah I've only seen positive things which is really great and I'm very excited about that

M: Yeah that is really great to hear and I mean for you as a band how important was that representation to you to be putting out there?

T: I think all four of us have a deep connection with like the LGBTQ+ community whether we're in it or allies um I think just having that in music somewhere given that we do believe in a lot of activism of all different sorts um having that in a song where it was very blatantly um about a woman I think at least to me was very important because you hear a lot of love songs but it's kind of ambiguous um I guess the genders of the different parties involved so I think it was just uh an important thing at least for myself to try to write lyrics about at least once in Vial's uh life so yeah

M: Yeah definitely! Well thank you so much for being on here with me this week if you would like to check out any of the songs, music videos, or you know pre-save the album before it comes out you can do so at any of the links below. Thank you so much to all of you for being here to talk to me and you know go deeper into these songs and I look really forward to listening to the full album. Vial will be playing us out!

*Violet by Vial begins playing*