On having endurance during burn out

I love your music but also your band photos, music videos, the whole general aesthetic of Momma, the merch. How do you curate and maintain your image?

Etta Friedman: Allegra and I are definitely the full package type. We’re full package people. We see music as visual as well, not just what it is. We’ll collab on a lot of ideas, but I do like the graphic design work for it. And then Aron [Kobayashi-Ritch], our bass player and producer’s sister, Daria [Kobayashi-Ritch], took all the photos that are physically on our record.

Allegra created a really awesome mood board for not just the record but also for a few music videos and stuff like that. We’re really hands-on in that sense. I feel like I need to have control of what’s happening. Because there have been times where it’ll be like, oh, I don’t have enough time to make this tour poster or something, and then we outsource and I’m always like, “Let me just do it, honestly.” I just can’t. It needs to all be in one little cohesive storyline. We are both just really hands-on in that sense because we just care about every aspect of it.

Your album bio says that Welcome to the Blue Sky is less concerned with sounding “cool and heavy and rock and roll,” and much more focused on “good, clean songwriting that hopefully inspires people to sing along and mean every word.” It also mentions aiming for the most direct vessel for sharing an emotional experience. What inspired this shift toward newer sincerity, and how does this new direction impact your songwriting?

Allegra Weingarten: I think what inspired the shift towards sincerity was just where we were emotionally in our lives at that point when we were writing the record. People keep asking us what inspired this change or this shift, but it was not a conscious decision at all, ever. We were just in such a fragile emotional state and we had so many big emotions happening at that time so whenever we sat down to write, it just ended up being autobiographical and tender. We just spent a lot of time on the lyrics. And once the songs were done, we didn’t want to distract from the meaning of them because we knew that this record was going to end up being the personal record in our discography. We wanted that to shine through. But that was all after we wrote the songs, when we decided that, production-wise, it wasn’t going to be too loud or heavy.

Does having more tender, autobiographical lyrics than before affect your experience as performers?

Allegra: We don’t really know.

Etta: Well, we played a lot of these songs for the first time at our release show. One or two songs made me feel emotional for different reasons. I noticed that when we played the last song on the record, “My Old Street,” which is what we ended with…Even listening to that song makes me really emotional, because it’s so personal and so much about our family and, yes, ourselves, but also just a lot of reminiscing on things that have shaped us. That’s an overall theme for the whole record. But this song concerning family—as opposed to the specific event that the rest of the record is entirely about is—just cuts deep.

Certain lines choked me up at the show, which was interesting. But I think it’s because we’re singing about our moms having similar problems while we were growing up and things like that. But then on a separate note, playing “Fever,” which is what we opened up that set with, was really fun. To play in front of people who were there for us, to see how excited everyone got, how they’re gauging it. When we had played “Fever” in the past, it was to crowds that weren’t really ours. So, seeing our own crowd’s receptivity was great. We wanted to know if it was going to be a good single. I think the vulnerability in content is going to show itself in different ways, but in terms of being super tender and sincere, I don’t think that’s necessarily hit while performing just yet.

“Fever” is a great single. It’s so catchy. In general, compared to your earlier albums, Welcome to My Blue Sky feels catchier. Was this intentional?

Allegra: No. I think we just got better at songwriting. I’m trying to deflect a lot of the assumptions that we sat down and were like, “We’re going to make a pop record, we’re going to make radio hits.” In a way, the record sounds like that, but that wasn’t because we were trying to do it. I think we’ve just gotten to a point where we’re a little more confident in our songwriting abilities and we just have gotten a little better, if I do say so myself. So, no, I don’t think it was a conscious thing to be like, “let’s sit down and write a bunch of catchy hooks and melodies.” I think it was just like–

Etta: “This is what we’re doing.”

Allegra: Yeah, we just did it. That’s what we were into at the time. We were probably listening to a lot of catchy hooks and melodies when we were writing the record, and that’s just what we wanted to do as opposed to writing a weird, I don’t know, someone said we should write a krautrock record, which we don’t want to do.

Did you say crowd rock?

Allegra: Krautrock. Don’t quote me, because I think it’s like German techno music.

Like sauerkraut.

Allegra: Yeah. It’s not techno, but it’s like synths and post-punk. I don’t know. Anyway.

You’ve played with a lot of big bands like Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie, and Alex G and also at some major festivals like Coachella. Is it everything you hoped for? Is it more, is there any disillusionment? What’s the sense of having those experiences?

Allegra: It lived up to my expectations in terms of how fun it all was. The Weezer tour was the most fun I’ve ever had, period. And same with Coachella. But for the actual playing, I guess for Coachella, I mean, that’s a hard crowd. We’re not playing to thousands of adoring fans. We played in a random-ass tent at 5:00 PM. And with Weezer, we’re basically the walk-in music because we were one of three and people were finding their seats when we were playing. So, until you’re playing your own songs for a stadium of people who want to hear your songs, I think there is just a sense of like, okay, “I’m doing this really big thing, but I’m humbling myself because these people are not here for me. It’s just, I got really lucky that I’m in this position right now.” But singing on stage with Rivers [Cuomo] was–

Etta: Incredible.

Allegra: That was a very surreal experience.

Etta: Yeah, so cool.

What song did you sing with them?

Etta: “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams.” It’s a B-side on Pinkerton. The original girl who sings in that is in the Rentals and That Dog. Allegra and I have also loved that song for a really long time, so it was really awesome. We did not think that was going to happen. And when it did, we definitely didn’t think it was going to happen every night. And then it did.

I just got chills. I know that you have both worked in the service industry while working on music. How do you balance your work and creativity?

Allegra: It’s really, really hard and we’re both exhausted all the time. There is no other way to say it. Etta and I have burnt the candle at both ends for so long, and especially these past couple months, it’s been really hard. Etta works during the day. I work nights. Etta’s off days are the days that I work, vice versa. So we have to be really committed to using every single minute of our free time and devoting it to this. And be flexible. We try to move our stuff around for each other when we can to make time to work on music.

The whole thing is just like, you have to just be really passionate about music, and we both are deeply passionate and have really good work ethic. To be honest… You know what, let me stand on a–

Soapbox? Go off.

Allegra: A lot of really great bands don’t have good work ethic, and you have to have both. You can’t just have talent. You can’t just write great songs. You have to have a really good work ethic, and you have to know how to run this operation and to keep it moving. And Etta and I have been doing that since we were 16 years-old, even when we went to different colleges. We have always worked towards this. Okay, bye.

Did it ever feel like it was taking too long? How did you deal with patience or impatience during that trajectory of working hard?

Etta: The timing of how everything worked out for us was really lucky. And it’s going to start by sounding like it wasn’t that lucky, but Two of Me, for example, the first or second record came out June of 2020. It was right when Covid started. And we were like, “Okay, cool. Well, we can’t even do promotion.” I didn’t think Covid was going to make us leave college and have to go home and all of that. So I was like, “I’m ready to take a year off of school to tour. I’m ready to do the whole thing.” And then we were like, “Oh shit, well, it came out. We can’t even promote it.” And we just got really lucky by, in the interim of the pandemic, finding our management, getting our whole team together. We were able to sit and focus on that and writing more so than touring or trying to get our name out there.

Getting our team together was awesome. We are blessed to have found the right people for us. And I think that there was also a lot of patience that we had to learn there. Even signing a record deal or something, there’s people that are dangling things in front of your face consistently. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get it. And I think especially when your dream is right there, you’re like, “Oh, I want all the cool things. I want it all. I want it all.” It’s not always going to work out like that, which is fine.

I realized our steady incline is a really good thing. I noticed a pattern in bands that were immediately exploding. There’d be a rise or a fall, a very quick shot up and a quick fall down. And I think we have pretty steadily been on this uptick, which feels great, because there haven’t been any major fall-outs that have made us think we aren’t going to be able to do this.

The patience of it all has been interesting in terms of comparing our growth to others. I’m like, “Okay, it will all work out.” Seeing the band Alvvays, who’s been our label, Polyvinyl, not release a record for five years and then get nominated for a Grammy. It happens. You just gotta make good work and strike at the right time for yourself.

How do you avoid burnout, or replenish yourselves when you’re feeling burnt at both ends?

Allegra: I don’t have the answer because I feel like we do just burn ourselves out. I guess when we come back from tour, we… No, we don’t even get to chill, because we’ve always had to go right back to work.

Etta: It’s crazy.

Allegra: We’re young, I guess. We have the endurance already built in. We have a muscle for it now, I guess. But yeah, I don’t know how to avoid burnout because I feel burnt out as fuck.

Etta: I know. It’s crazy. I feel like if anything, I turn into hermit mode and just turn everything off for a sec and then try to recoup. But that always makes it worse for myself. Always. It’s just like my brain can’t handle it and then I’m like, “Okay, we’re not dealing with it.” But then I look back at what I need to be doing and I’m like, “Well, that was actually not even relaxing.” So, damn.

You’re very open about the album’s autobiographical themes of infidelity, heavy drinking, and leaving others behind, which I think is really brave. A lot of people might not wish to identify with these actions or worry what others would think. Did this worry you at all, and/or has it led to greater self-acceptance?

Allegra: Yeah, it definitely was worrisome for us because people don’t like cheaters, obviously. I don’t like cheaters. I don’t really see people talking about that very openly. And it’s scary to talk about infidelity because you don’t know how people are going to receive it. And, to be honest, I still don’t really know how people are receiving that. I haven’t really seen any comments or read any press of anybody directly commenting with an opinion. So I think maybe we’re in the clear? Like, people just know not to have an opinion about it? But yeah, it was really scary and it took a conversation between Etta and I to be like, “Okay, are we going to talk about this? What’s the extent to which we’re going to talk about this?” And we just decided if we didn’t say everything, then the album meant nothing. Because that’s what it’s all about. And it’s so hard to talk about it in interviews and beat around the bush when, at the end of the day, it is about infidelity. And I think that people should just own up to their mistakes more. I think if you’re going to do something bad, it makes you a little better if you can at least acknowledge that it was bad.

Etta: That’s fair.

Allegra: Right? I don’t know.

Etta: Accountability.

Allegra: Yeah, accountability.