Building Buzz
Nate LipkaIssue date: 5/14/09 Section: Calendar
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“I’ve been noticing that, usually, at a lot of shows, not every show – maybe it is every show – but even if they aren’t acting weird, there’s always one dude that’s weird,” Ponytail front-woman Molly Siegel says. “Weirdos that get wasted and will do crazy stuff.”
At a show at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City last fall, one fellow, “either on Ecstasy or some pumped-up, weird American Ecstasy, or something fucked up,” according to Siegel, climbed onto the stage and assumed her role as singer.
“I don’t think it was the loudest show we’ve ever played, but he was like screaming so loud is was almost overpowering,” Siegel says. “And then he like reached out and touched me, I was disgusted, it like totally freaked me out.”
At a recent show at Baltimore’s Golden West Café, one inebriated audience member’s seductive dance quickly turned into a full-fledged double breast grab.
Both freaky men were eventually removed from the venues, and rightfully so, but it’s difficult not to see the ironic implications of such ordeal: people flock by the hundreds to see Ponytail’s own on-stage freak-outs.
“I think that, yeah, it’s a bit of a shocker,” Siegel says. “Everything we do is a little bit weird, or something, and might shock somebody who’s never heard me sing like that, or never heard us or something. But I would say that my vocals are probably a turning-point for somebody to either like our music or not.”
Siegel spurns lyricism and a recognizable register for whoops, whistles, hollers and clicks, a strange arsenal that she unknowingly honed while growing up.
“When I was in elementary school, I used to make this weird sound,” Siegel says. “I won’t do it because it’s, like, hard on my voice. I used to call it the ‘eagle call.’ It sounds like a seal or something.”
The closest thing to classical training was singing Edith Piaf songs alongside her grandmother’s piano accompaniment, Siegel says, which makes Ponytail’s back-story all the more interesting and unlikely.
While enrolled in the Maryland Institute’s College of Art, Siegel, Dustin Wong, Jeremy Hyman and Ken Seeno all registered for an experimental class led by Professor Jeremy Sigler, associate New York editor of esteemed art journal Parkett. Seeno placed the four together “intuitively, randomly, at his own discretion,” Siegel says, and commanded them to practice and finish the semester by playing at Baltimore’s Parapalooza festival.
“I think we stood together in a weird way, maybe, because we’re a little oddball,” Siegel says.
Without much planning, Ponytail jumped right in.
“We didn’t talk about what we wanted the band to sound like, or anything, we just started playing, and I was like signing and on the xylophone and stuff like that.”
The very first day, Siegel says, the band wrote “..., , , ;;;:::!”, a spazzy, screeching track that made it onto Ponytail’s first record, 2007’s Kamehameha.
Halfway through the semester, the foursome had an inkling the band might stick around beyond the school year.
After a rousing warehouse showing at Parapalooza, it was decided, and Ponytail’s been building buzz ever since. Quite a feat for a singer who never learned how to sing.
“It was really weird, like, I’ve never trained to sing, or sang at all,” Siegel says. “It just kind of came out, really, with Ponytail.”
Ponytail w/Yukon Ho!, Chandails, Step Cousins, Phix, Sunday, May 17, 7 p.m., $10
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