Christopher Clauss of Phoebe Nix spoke with KGNU’s Iris Berkeley. Christopher shared insights about the creative process behind the group’s new EP, titled Late Summer’s Moon. Christopher also discussed their show at the Velvet Elk Lounge featuring Charlie Berry (Interview date: 8/29/2024)
Iris Berkeley: I have the great pleasure of having Christopher Clauss here in the studio. He’s got a big old smile on his face. It’s a good Thursday here at KGNU. Say, hello, my friend.
Phoebe Nix: Hello everybody. Good to be here.
Iris Berkeley: It’s been a while since I’ve seen you guys, and it’s a pleasure that you were able to come and hang out with us here today. We’ve got a background right now, your song “Funky Driver”, which I’ve known for a little while. Before that, tell us what we heard. Is that the first time anybody’s heard that on the radio before?
Phoebe Nix: Yeah, we just gave you the first listen. It’s a new track called “She’s So Wild”. It’s part of a three song EP that’s coming out on the 31st, and that was my sneaky way of letting people hear it.
Iris Berkeley: It’s been really awesome, because you were here for Kabaret, I want to say about a year ago, right?
Phoebe Nix: I think it’s been just about a year.
Iris Berkeley: That was super fun. Y’all had the best energy. It’s really interesting to hear that new track and hear how y’all have developed. Tell me what’s been in the works in that last year.
Phoebe Nix: Well, a lot has changed in my life in the past year. I moved into a space. I finally got my little mountain cabin to myself. Everything about this room was designed to have drums and live music. It just sounds so good. I’ve been so comfortable here and it’s made it a lot easier for me to get into this and create and not have to think about outside stuff or be distracted. It’s been a pretty productive time.
Iris Berkeley: We’ve got one more track after we chat, but tell me about what’s coming out on the 31st. You’ve also got some music coming out. Some live music in town. So tell us about the horizon.
Phoebe Nix: Yeah, the 31st is a big day for us. I have a three song EP I mentioned that’s coming out. It’s called Late Summer’s Moon. It tells three stories. They’re all real stories. If you listen, it’s all real stuff about real people. They represent the past month or two of my life and how it’s felt being here, and some of the angels who’ve come into my life and some of the things that have happened. It tells that story. It culminates this Saturday, the 31st. We are doing a show with the Velvet Elk. We have the grandson of Chuck Berry, Charlie Berry, coming out. He’s on tour right now.
Iris Berkeley: We were just talking in the studio about the coincidence, because we have a conversation that Jim had with Robert Cray coming up. All the stars are aligning.
Braintree Jim: Yeah, and in speaking with Robert Cray, there’s a great story, which I will give you a little tease of before the actual interview comes up. Back in 1987, when Keith Richards was putting together Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, the documentary on Chuck Berry, Robert Cray was involved as part of that effort. Here we are, talking about Chuck Berry and Chuck Berry’s grandson.
Iris Berkeley: We were talking about whether we might be able to convince Robert Cray to come to your place for an afterparty blues jam.
Phoebe Nix: Yeah, Robert Cray, if you’re listening, we’re gonna have Charlie Berry there. It’s funny because I sent Charlie a clip from that, where they’re arguing and Chuck is being the man, the boss. I was like, dude, your grandpa’s the man. He’s the only person who could tell Keith Richards off in the world. And I won’t spoil it. I will just say that one bit. What a guy to be able to do that. It’s Keith Richards, a rock god. No one tells Chuck Berry what to do.
Braintree Jim: No. There’s also a great story about Keith Richards and Robert Cray, part of that larger story of Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. So that’s gonna be coming up as well.
Iris Berkeley: It is all interconnected. You’ve been in the studio a lot where we’re talking about how you’ve been exploring new directions, refining your sound. Talk a little bit about that creative process as things have been developing in your head and in your studio.
Phoebe Nix: Yeah, I’ve been writing songs for 15 years and recording them for most of that time. Obviously it’s a learning curve. I’m stubborn and DIY in a lot of ways. I insist on not paying someone else to do this if I can get the tools. So I basically spent every dollar I’ve ever earned in my life on getting the best gear I could to make music that sounds like the music from the early 70s.
To me that’s the golden era, the 70s and the 90s. Because in the 90s they had perfected solid state as well as all that analog. Man, those records. Rumors, Fleetwood Mac. These are the things I chase. I get two mics and watch the videos and how they engineered these things. I get nervous going into a radio station with these songs. Shoot, I mixed this myself and this is going to represent me. So it’s scary, but it also inspires me to try to learn and continue to improve the quality of the music I’m putting out.
Iris Berkeley: Jim and I were in the car last night ’cause you sent over the tracks. He was like, oh, we gotta go ’cause we’re going to Red Rocks. I was like no. Can you Bluetooth this in? We gotta hear it! And bless you. You were like no swearing, I promise. No swearing the radio.
Phoebe Nix: When I wrote these I was like, I’m not going to curse anymore. It’s not necessary in the music. I say it enough in my day to day life.
Iris Berkeley: Yeah, I hear that. I think my favorite memory is hosting a Kabaret with the local musician who shall remain anonymous who wrote on their hand in giant magic marker ‘no swearing’. That defines my life.
But we’re listening in the car. We’re on our way to go see Khruangbin at Red Rocks, just blasting your tracks. Now that you mentioned it, it was like, yeah, that big warm seventies sound. It’s just never going away.
Braintree Jim: It’s funny you say that too, because I’ve had this discussion with some fellow DJs at WOMR in Cape Cod, and we’re of the opinion that some of the earliest 80s sounds are thin because they were the first digital boards. And that whole era, you can’t improve that sound. So things are better now, as you said before, between the seventies and the solid state of the nineties. I was curious that he left out the eighties and I’m thinking, there’s a good reason why he left out the eighties.
Phoebe Nix: There’s some great eighties. You mentioned Joy Division before. You could listen to the first couple U2 albums like The Unforgettable Fire and it like, I think that could have sounded better. Who are they working with? Eno and Danny Lanois.
Iris Berkeley: You’re talking to the world’s biggest U2 fan here.
Phoebe Nix: Joshua Tree, you listen to that record. I wanted to not like Bono for so long and be like, I’m a hipster. That’s again, the holy grail of audio.
Braintree Jim: And the recording rooms were different and the techniques. You’re absolutely right about that.
Phoebe Nix: But then you talk about Khruangbin, too, and they’re one of my favorite bands. I don’t think there’s many people doing anything that cool with a guitar. They’re bringing it as a band. They record their albums in a barn with a dirt floor. And when DJ hits the snare, you can hear that crack of a barn. You can hear the dust, the shuffling of feet. You can hear them breathing sometimes.
Braintree Jim: They have a unique sound. I just learned before the show that it’s now broadly known, that subgenre, as “Khruangbin vibes”. Because it’s so unique. That just came right out last night at the show.
Iris Berkeley: That’s just so awesome to hear, this band that has been simmering underground for a while. Last night, I’m like, I’m at Red Rocks with me and however many thousands of my best friends I’ve never met in my life. I’m like, alright, the world is gonna be okay if there are this many people vibing out to this music. You said you were very responsible and you had tickets, but you had band practice.
Phoebe Nix: I teach music lessons during the day and one of my drum students, she’s a really kind woman, texted me and said, hey, I got two tickets. And I was like, oh. So I gave ’em to a friend that also loves the band, and I did see them last year at Red Rocks and it was like guitar church. So I passed on the opportunity and said, we’ve got this Saturday show and these songs that we’re practicing are a pain in the keister to make radio friendly.
Iris Berkeley: That was a very FCC friendly way of putting it.
Phoebe Nix: They’re a hassle to learn for a band. So I’m putting in the time to make sure we don’t beef it.
Braintree Jim: Are there any other bands besides Khruangbin that you consider to be a big influence on your music?
Phoebe Nix: There’s a lot. I love so much, and I’m from the East Coast. I’m from New Jersey, and that’s a big source of pride for me. Billy Joel, I don’t love all of Bruce’s stuff, but Born to Run, as a record, every song on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, those songs are just insane. I love the 70s, I love 90s, Chris Cornell, all things, Audioslave, Soundgarden especially. Jane’s Addiction, I love rock and roll, I love folk, John Prine. Cat Stevens, Nick Drake. It’s so many things that inspire me.
Iris Berkeley: Yeah. Hearing you rattle off this list, I was just like, all right. Now I can start to hear this in what folks are gonna come see you on Saturday. Tell us what folks can expect of the Velvet Elk on Saturday.
Phoebe Nix: I have a setlist of our most adventurous and challenging material. I tried to put together what I think are my favorite songs, and in what I’ve seen in the past two years, people’s favorite songs. There’s at least three or four brand new tunes in there, and some of the ones from the last album that I never play, because I think they’re too hard.
We’re gonna be a four piece. I’ve got Ryan Benthall, he’s the reason Charlie’s coming around, a fantastic keyboard player. I’ve got Michael Santoli, we actually work together, he’s playing bass. Michael Dooley is playing drums, two Michaels, great dude. Dooley is a monster.
I’ve been very lucky, the musicians who have played with me and are willing to play with me, I think are some of the best I’ve ever met in my life. So that’s what you can expect, folks, we’re gonna give you everything we’ve got.
Iris Berkeley: Oh, that’s gonna be great.
Phoebe Nix: I’ll also mention that my neighbors and my dear friend Zach, he’s got a band called Canyon Collective, and they’re the middle group in there, and they’re some of our friends that all live in Four Mile Canyon. It’s the Canyon Collective, yeah.
Iris Berkeley: Alright, that’s awesome. So when’s this all kick off?
Phoebe Nix: 8pm is when Charlie kicks, 7pm will be doors.
Iris Berkeley: Ok, 7pm doors, 8pm Velvet Elk Lounge, big ol extravaganza, celebrating the release of your EP. Where can folks find you in the meantime?
Phoebe Nix: The instagram is @phoebenix66. Actually this is wild, if you google Phoebe Nix it says ‘musician’. And it shows a picture of us and then there’s all our music and stuff. I don’t know who did that. My friend does work for Google. I’m very suspicious because he’s a programmer. Lucas, if you’re listening, I’m talking about you.
I also want to mention one more thing. We have our first official t-shirts coming out this Saturday too. And I’m doing a giveaway. So if you go on our Instagram, phoebenix66, you’ll see a post with the graphic. Comment a skull, and you’ve entered yourself into a drawing for the first official Phoebe Nix shirt.
Iris Berkeley: That’s gonna be a collectors item one of these days.
Phoebe Nix: I’ll have to give you guys one and put it in the shadow box.
Iris Berkeley: I’m not gonna say no to that. We are so glad you made it. We got one more brand new track for you before, before we let you go. Anything else you want folks in the KGNUniverse to know?
Phoebe Nix: I want to mention something and I like to use my communication for happy love. I guess in essence this is happy love. This is a strange request to the world, but I want to mention that amidst all the things in my life, my parents have been incredibly supportive. Mom, dad, I love you guys. You’ve been so supportive to me. They never pushed me not to do this. They’ve done everything they could to give me every tool. My dad, especially. We didn’t get to know each other much as a kid, but any chance he had he got me a piece of gear, was at every one of my shows.
Probably 10 days before my 30th birthday in May, I found him on the ground. He had fallen and laid there for a couple of days and sustained a diffuse axonal injury, but basically his brain got seriously damaged. It’s taken most of my mental to deal with all these things. Thank God he’s recovering. He’s speaking again. We just went fishing the other day with the hospital. He’s walking. He’s made big improvements. But you know, this experience, amidst everything I’m trying to do – there were a lot of times where I said man, I can’t do both. I can’t do this.
I often thought, I know that my dad would want me to be here right now and would want me to not give up on this. I want to share with all y’all listening how important the people in our lives that we love are. I can say proudly that if, God forbid, he had not made it through, because it was a tough month. We weren’t sure. We had a great relationship. We had memories together that I will cherish forever and I feel grateful. So not to be sappy, but, call your mom, call your dad, call your sister. Even if you’ve argued lately or had a falling out, nothing is worth not telling your family you love them. And the people we love are so important in our lives and God bless all of you. I hope you’re all going to have a fantastic day.
Iris Berkeley: We already are. I’m going to thank your dad for encouraging you because we get all this great music. You got one more coming up. Tell us about this next track that we’re going to go out with.
Phoebe Nix: It’s on a more positive note. This song is called “Daisy Says”. These three songs are all stories. They’re all about girls I met this summer that I adore very much. And I’m very grateful that I met y’all. Thank you for your kindness. My heart needed it.
Daisy, I met at a show. I was playing the drums and she was the only person up in front of the stage and she did not stop dancing the entire night. And the more I drummed, the more I felt, even with my eyes closed, I could feel her dancing. And I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. I went right up, and this is described in the song if you listen to it, it’s all there. But I went up and shot my shot and said, hey, you seem cool. I want to know you. And she said some things to me and I went home that night and I don’t know, I was just playing my guitar and D major seven. And I thought, Daisy says, and then it just became a series of things Daisy said.
Iris Berkeley: See, now that’s like a whole new concept as opposed to listening in the car last night. So thank you for the context. Super appreciate that.
If you’ve just tuned in, we’ve been chatting with Christopher Clauss of Phoebe Nix. They’re going to be at the Velvet Elk on Saturday with all the cool people, including Charlie. It’s going to be a good one. You can learn more information about that. They’re on the socials @phoebenix66. It’s been a pleasure.
It’s really good to see you again. Hope to have you in Kabaret with everybody else, with the full band. But until then, I’m looking forward to Saturday night.
Phoebe Nix: Thank you so much.
