Interview: Hey Anna Talk Sibling Music, Geography, Pop, Love Songs, and Run Koko

Defend Pop... ...Just Pop

NY/NJ quintet Hey Anna create irresistible indie pop that sounds like far off places, the sun, and the sea. The intertwining vocals of the three Rauch-Sasseen sisters (Erin, Anna, Katie) combine with the rhythms of Matt Langner and the layered, chiming guitar of Jamie DiTringo to produce a dreamy landscape that you can see flickering on a movie screen in your mind's eye. A Jumpy, yellowed, grainy film of families smiling silently near the water's edge.

Just check out recently released single "Island:"



The song comes from the band's upcoming Run Koko, for which Hey Anna are running a PledgeMusic campaign in preparation for a summer release. I sent some questions over to Hey Anna, and they told us about what it's like to play music with your sisters, how their travels have influenced their sound; and Anna made it clear that she will defend (good) pop music until the very end.

You’re a band that includes three sisters -- Erin, Anna, and Katie Rauch-Sasseen. Did the three of you always know that you wanted to be in a band together or did you come to that decision over a period of time?

(Erin) This is a great question. I think we always knew playing music together would be an integral part of our lives -- kind of like eating or breathing. However, the idea of being in a band was something that formed gradually. I had been performing solo in New York for a couple of years. One of the first songs Anna and I wrote together ("Apple Cider") was something I performed alone for about a year. It was around that time that Anna had returned from a year in Hawaii where she taught herself how to play guitar and wrote a bunch of songs. After she came back to New Jersey, she and Katie started writing together; and I think the rest just progressed sort of naturally. Around that time, my friend had taken me to see First Aid Kit at Mercury Lounge; and I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, yes. This. This is what I want. I want to be up there with my sisters.” We played our first show as a trio at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg in September of 2010.

(CoolDad note: I saw First Aid Kit, of whom I had very little prior knowledge, last year in Prague and almost started to cry. True story.)

When we started playing with our original drummer and lead guitar player in 2011 (and shed our acoustic vibes), it was a totally new world for us. Unlike the boys, we hadn’t been in bands as teenagers, so everything was a learning experience. There were ups and downs, of course; but it was like we had finally tasted the elixir of life. In a way, maybe we’re a little addicted to making music together.

Three sisters, two of them twins. You must have your own ways of communicating –- inside sibling stuff. Have Matt (Langner) and Jamie (DiTringo) been able to crack that? What’s that overall dynamic like?

(Jamie) It’s been cracked like the DaVinci Code.

(Erin) We let them think that.

We get along handsomely. Everyone works really well together. We are all pretty outspoken and direct.  Our words come from a place of love.

(Jamie) I am an open book really.

We all say what’s on our minds and are usually on the same page. Ideas and thoughts flow like wine.  It’s a party.

I’ve read in interviews that Erin, Anna, and Katie lived all over before their family settled on the Jersey Shore. Erin also had a job, as I understand it, which took her to some pretty exotic locales. Do you think that diverse geographic background has influenced the sounds you produce as a band?

Hey Anna's Erin Rauch-Sasseen

(Erin) Most definitely. We moved around a lot when we were younger, and our parents made sure we were exposed to as much music as possible. When we lived in San Francisco, we were very young; but we got to witness first hand the city’s vibrant music and festival scene. We caught the live music bug. From there, our formative years were spent in Kansas City; and our mother would take us to see live music as often as she could. We went to outdoor blues festivals, Spirit Festivals, and were treated to the quintessential Kansas City music: jazz. We would get dressed up in our Sunday best, and our mother would bring us to the swingingest jazz nightclubs where we got to listen to and meet some of the greatest jazz musicians in the area. She also made sure we were exposed to “world music” as it is sometimes called, and we always had strange percussion instruments from various countries lying around our house. We were really very lucky.

Over the years, every summer, we would visit our father who worked across Europe for most of our childhood. He always saved up his vacation time for us, and we would get in the car and travel everywhere. For each country that we visited, he would make sure we had a CD or tape of the country’s traditional music to listen to in the car as we explored. It was inevitable that we would develop a taste for the musical and sonic variety that geographic location and culture can create. Even in “American” Virginia, our family around Christmas time would always get together and play music. Two of our cousins play a mean Irish jig on a fiddle, harp, and bodrham; and we would sing harmony along with the rest of cousins, our step mom, and really the whole family.

I’ve traveled more recently to exotic locations such as Russia, Eastern Europe, and Cuba and we’ve realized that we really, really like to include hints of other countries in some of our music. [Former Hey Anna guitarist] Andrew Smolin loves reggae music and has travelled all over South America, and you can hear that influence in the guitar lines that he develops. “By the Bay” has a Cuban feel, but we also add some samples from a traditional Middle Eastern instrument. "PIA"’s main keyboard line was supposed to resemble the shakuhachi  -- a Japanese bamboo flute. Some people seem to interpret the keyboard line for that as extraterrestrial, not Japanese. To each his own.

Speaking of international travel, at the end of last year you guys got to go over to Japan to play. What was that experience like?

(Erin) Being in Japan for a week and playing three shows was an experience we cannot even put into words. It was too surreal for that kinda thing, but we’ll try.

Jamie had joined the band literally a month before we flew to Tokyo, so everything had to come together fast. And then all of a sudden, we were in Japan. When we finally settled in, (we stayed in a place called the Dream House. Need we say more?) we discovered that Japan has some of the most friendly, hospitable and kind people in the world. They were awesome. And we actually had real live FANS. There may have even been some tears -- off and onstage. It was mind-blowing to see people from the other side of the planet singing along to the words. The last day at the festival we felt like the luckiest band in the world.

Now, it is a known truth that you can’t possibly talk about Japan without talking about sushi. Believe me, we’ve tried. So, it was the day before we were leaving; and we STILL had not had any sushi. Jamie was literally about to lose his mind at the prospect of leaving without having sampled the famous Japanese fare, so Fugi Bear -- the best label rep in world -- took us on a quick detour to some hole in the ground sushi place. It was amazing. You sit down, fill up your teacup from spigots of hot green tea, and then plates and plates of sushi drift past your face carried on an actual conveyer belt. The rest is up to you. Let’s just say we couldn’t see Jamie after five minutes. He had so many plates stacked before him.

I think I can hear an evolution in your music from the self-titled EP through Pompette and to more recent songs like “By the Bay” and “Anaphaze.” You’ve maintained your indie pop sound, but I feel like things have gotten both cleaner and more layered or complex. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re approaching your new stuff differently?

Hey Anna at Asbury Lanes in September, 2014.

(Erin) Hmm, good question.  For our first EP, we had only been together as a band a very short time before we started recording, but it took over half a year to complete. We would record a track here and there, never quite finishing a song. With all the extra time, we were always tempted to add more bits and pieces. Also, back then, we weren’t as strict with, you know, unimportant things to music… like timing; perhaps adding to some of the clutter in EP #1. For Pompette and Run Koko, we recorded the songs mostly with Jesse Cannon and Mike Oettinger in a studio probably at the rate of 1.5 songs a day. Jesse and Mike are as efficient as a bicycle (Look it up. You’re going to be amazed), which helps to streamline the final product. Also, on the songwriting end of it, the earlier songs were “premade” by one of the girls and brought to the band whereas a lot of the newer songs are born in the practice studio with the entire band. When everyone creates them together, something different happens.

(Jamie) As a guy who has played in bands for almost 20 years, I personally have evolved as a player and writer since joining Hey Anna. I think my style of guitar playing really adds a heavier bottom, but I also play a lot of weird delay/shimmering things now too. I am obsessed with Nels Cline of Wilco; and his blend of twang, shredding and atmospheric effects layered in songs is a huge inspiration for me. The new songs we wrote together feel very alive to me. I love to layer guitar parts in the studio and triple track distorted guitars. Deep down I want to play heavy metal.

(Anna) Heavy Metal Heart: next album.

I sometimes think that “pop,” because the final product is so accessible, universal, and fun, can be underrated artistically. But when I hear a great pop song where everything comes together, I sometimes think to myself, “Wow. This really is a masterpiece.” Hey Anna are making some great pop music right now. I can hear an attention to detail in even your earliest songs. Does creating a great pop song come easily for you or is it a constant process of adjusting and tweaking to get things just right?

(Anna) Thank you for the compliment. It really means a lot to us. What seems to happen is you have this moment of inspiration where it’s almost like you’ve picked exactly the right words or melody out of the universe, whether it’s alone or in the rehearsal room with the band. You’ve hopefully recorded it, because if you try to simply remember it, it will never ever ever come back in the right way. If just one note is off, you miss the mark. Once you’ve got it, you then spend SO MUCH TIME fine tuning every little piece. 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, like they say. It’s funny. Michelangelo said that when he sculpted his statues, he “saw the angel in the marble and carved until [he] set him free.”  Not that I’m comparing our music to Michelangelo’s genius sculptures, but I think it’s the same thing with any kind of masterful song, whether it’s pop, or rock, or classical: The perfect version of it is somewhere out there in the mathematical music universe and you have to see it (inspiration), then keep cracking at the stone till its free.

It is very frustrating that people undervalue and discount pop songs. If they were so easy to make, and so artistically uninteresting and frivolous that any Neanderthal could throw one together, I wonder why there are not more millionaires running around the planet? One hit wonders would simply not exist. People complain because pop is formulaic, but so is every other kind of music. That’s what music is -- something arranged in some sort of recognizable pattern. It’s how you use the formula that makes the great song. Then, imagine taking that great song you made and have it appeal to the old, the young, and in between? It’s incredible. Listen to the old Motown hits. From the first two measures, you can hear JUST the right combination of all the elements of a piece of music; it’s almost like magic. Then, listen to some other lesser-known motown songs that follow the “formula,” and you can hear it too --something you can’t quite put your finger on is missing. There’s the marble and then there is the angel inside.

What people don’t get is that -- just like there is bad rock music, or bad hip hop -- there is bad pop music, and instead of differentiating the bad from the good, they blanket it together; and so collectively pop gets a bad rap. I’ve known bands who actually got offended when I called them a pop band because of the stigma attached to the word. The record companies pump out derivative songs, and it might not actually be garbage that they’re putting out there, but without the original inspiration, it sounds like it.  So I think that there needs to be a definite distinction between pop music and just plain old counterfeit.

DON'T even get me started on love songs. Just because love songs are about love, it doesn’t make them any less important than ones about your job, or your disillusionment, or your acceptance of your own mortality. Even more irritating: how love songs written by males are viewed as opposed to ones written by females. If a guy writes a love song, it’s honest, real, inspiring, authentic; if a female writes a love song, it’s just, “oh, listen to this nice silly little ditty by this sweet little girl.” I was in the car and I heard a DJ say that once about Haim’s "Honey and I." I almost broke my radio.

You’ve got your first LP, Run Koko, on the way in the coming months. You’ve got a PledgeMusic campaign running to fund the physical production of the record. What can we expect from the album and what attracted you guys to the crowdfunding option?

(Erin) As an independent band, money is always the bane of your existence. You don’t have a lot of it, and that is just the reality that you’re faced with. Crowdfunding is attractive because it becomes an almost symbiotic relationship with your fans. The people who enjoy Hey Anna effectively become part of the production of the album and share in the ride to completing your goal.

Run Koko is representative of our love for our current situations and our wanderlust and how we deal with that dichotomy. There is hope and expectation, pitfalls and disappointment, love and acceptance. Over the past two years, we’ve released a few tracks online, such as “Move Your Body” and “Tangerine Lightning.” We re-recorded those songs, which we’re excited about. We’re also including a few tracks that are currently only available on an album we released in Japan. However, the thing we’re really jazzed about is all the totally new stuff we wrote for this album, in addition to “classic” Hey Anna songs that we’ve been performing for a while, but never recorded. We think it is the perfect wedding of songs for the folks that have been with us since the beginning and those that will be experiencing our music for the first time.

When are you planning to release Run Koko? Will you be touring for it?

(Erin) We plan on releasing the album on July 7 with dates being planned as we speak. Stay tuned!

Finally, when are we going to get Hey Anna back down to the Jersey Shore for some shows?

(Erin) Our next show on the beach will be June 13 at the Asbury Park Yacht Club with a band of brothers, We’re Ghosts Now. We played APYC once before and had an absolute blast. We come from the sea, so having our music drift towards the waves is a pretty ideal situation for us.