Blood Moon Wedding | Interview | New Album, ‘Blood Moon Wedding: An American Nightmare’
Blood Moon Wedding is an international duet project, created by legendary English punk rocker Steve Lake of Zounds and American singer Mia Dean. Together they present their gothic-noir, road trip, folktale in the form of ‘Blood Moon Wedding: An American Nightmare,’ released April 7th via Mobilization Recordings.
Steve Lake is a member of the influential English alt-rock group Zounds. He has recorded for many great labels including Rough Trade, PIAS, Cooking Vinyl, and Crass Records. Lake still tours regularly, both as a solo artist, and with his group. Lake’s work is expansive and experimental. Beyond Zounds, he has produced and performed a number of spoken word and multimedia events throughout Europe, including the Edinburgh Festival and a highly successful residency at London’s prestigious Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Mia Dean is a writer and singer for the Oakland band Antler Family. She studied classical opera and performance in San Francisco with the great Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano, Blanche Thebom, and abroad. She sang opera on the stages of Italy and Austria before returning to California to focus on composition and production. She is co-founder of the iconic punk and metal venue the Oakland Metro Operahouse, where the duo met in 2017. “We were lost in the uncertainty of the pandemic, trying to find our way back to ourselves as performers,” notes Dean. “Somehow the road led directly to each other.”
‘Blood Moon Wedding: An American Nightmare’ was produced by Dean and Lake in Oakland, California and Bath, UK. Additional recording assistance was provided by Skot Brown (Altar de Fey, Esses, Phantom Limbs) and Salvador Raya (Ails, Asunder, Laudanum). The record was mixed in Los Angeles, California by Alex DeGroot (Zola Jesus, Sondra Sun Odeon), mastered by Justin Weis at Trakworx in San Francisco, California and is adorned by the ethereal cover art of Shannon Taylor.
“A crypto-mystical, sci-fi adventure across parallel dimensions”
It’s really great to have you. You have a very exciting album coming out in April, but let’s first discuss how you got to know each other?
Steve Lake: Zounds headlined the Manic Relapse Festival at the Oakland Metro Operahouse in 2017. It was fantastic. Mia and Tom were running the venue, so we met them there and stayed in touch. We have mutual friends, and over the years since we met, we have spent quite a bit of time together in the States and in England. We all just really get along.
How much work went into writing ‘Blood Moon Wedding: An American Nightmare’?
Hundreds of hours of writing, talking, swapping ideas, playing things to each other. It was all done 6,000 miles apart by modern communications technology. Like how you would make an album if you lived in a dystopian future. Which we do.
Would you say there’s a certain concept behind it?
It’s a story. A reasonably conventional narrative about troubled lovers on the run and on the road, but with a few twists and ambiguities. It can be taken a number of ways. It’s either a crypto-mystical, sci-fi adventure across parallel dimensions; or a story about two seriously disturbed individuals with mental health issues who are a danger to themselves and everyone else. But you don’t have to buy into any of that because hopefully all the songs work in their own right.
Can you share some further words where the album was recorded?
We worked separately in our own studios and sent stuff to each other via the World Central Computer. Obviously, when I say studio, I mean a glorified garden shed full of broken speakers, injured guitars, and hundreds of bits of paper with abandoned songs scrawled in illegible handwriting. I think Mia mostly worked in her bedroom and made a vocal booth in her closet. But all the drums were recorded in a studio in Oakland.
The album was produced by you two. What was that experience like for you? Are you happy with the result?
It was very exciting and satisfying to have a vision, and the ability to bring it to life. In a way we followed our curiosity and it revealed itself to us. It was also fun to do this work with such a creative friend, ideas would grow and get more outlandish, and I’m overjoyed with the result. I can be a very lazy and distracted person so it’s rare for me to actually finish anything, when I do it is often a bit half-arsed and DIY. Mia made sure there were very high production values and made it sound like a proper record. She did a brilliant job and kept me focused. She is the driving force behind it. She’s the one with real talent. I’m just an enthusiastic amateur.
You have some incredible musicians playing on the record including, Oakland composer Tom Dean (Antler Family, Code Of The West, Oakland Opera) on keys and bass, Jason Willer (Jello Biafra And The Guantanamo School Of Medicine, Charger, Acid King, UK Subs) on drums, and multi-instrumentalist David Coulter (The Pogues, Tom Waits, Test Department) on musical saw, violin, and Leslie piano. What was the energy like in the studio?
Everyone was very generous and enthusiastic and it was mostly during lockdown, so we all had a lot of time on our hands. We were so fortunate to have these brilliant people playing on the record. But apart from the drums we all worked in our own spaces. Even so, it sounds very fresh and live. If I was in a room with all those great people I would probably explode and feel soppy and inadequate.
I love the cover artwork. Who did it?
Oh I’m glad you like it. It is very beautiful and fits the album so well. It was done by a friend of Mia’s in Oakland named Shannon Taylor, who is an incredible artist, and there is other great artwork in the gatefold that we are looking forward to revealing when the album is released next month.
What’s next for you? Are you planning to tour when the album will be released?
We are planning a UK tour to support the record this summer. Mia will be here for a couple of months. We will certainly be playing shows in Europe. There is a lot of interest for us to play in the USA but the US government doesn’t really like me and has chosen to cancel me!! I don’t know why they are so scared of me. Most of my surviving relatives live there. And some of them are quite law-abiding.
I hope you don’t mind if we also talk about some history. Steve, you were a member of Zounds, which released a stunning album in 1982. What are some of the strongest memories from working on the songs for ‘The Curse of Zounds!’?
I don’t mind at all. It was such a thrill working on the songs for ‘The Curse of Zounds!’. We really wanted to make a brilliant record that was full of cool music. It basically consisted of songs from our live set. I would usually write the basic songs and Laurence Wood would start them up and make them sound good. We were living in squats and just writing about the things that everyone was talking about at the time. At the time, we were very disappointed with the album, we thought it didn’t truly capture the sound we wanted. Over time I’ve grown to like it a lot more, and it has certainly taken on a life of its own. It is an absolutely honest statement of where we were at during that period.
Did you approach music making any differently back then?
Yes, I was even more clueless then than I am now. I still can barely tune a guitar. Actually my approach is probably similar because I have to work within very limited restrictions. It’s harder for me than most people because I’m tone deaf, can’t keep time and have a poor memory. It’s a wonder I make it out of bed most mornings.
What was it like to grow up in Reading? Would you like to tell us what kind of records, fanzines, books would we find in your teenage room?
Reading was a weird town. Part country-market town and part suburban overspill for London after the destruction of the Second World War. A load of cockneys moved down, so half the kids were jack-the-lad’s and the other half were displaced farm boys. I came from a family of factory workers. My dad had been in the military police, then the real police. It was weird for me because I was an abused child. My mother suffered from manic depression and was bi-polar. Therefore my grandparents brought me up. I always felt a bit out of place and alienated. But a lot of kids do, I wasn’t special in that sense.
I was a seventies youth, so as a young kid I grew up with sixties music. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Hendrix. But my uncle lived with us and he had loads of Country and Western records. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Carter Family, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn. I loved all that. I was also very attracted to the San Francisco psychedelic bands and quickly got involved with the English free-festival circuit. They were like illegal raves but with bands instead of records. At the same time we really got into The Velvet Underground. As for books, I loved Steinbeck and the Beat writers. I read all the psychedelic English classics, the Alice books, Wind In The Willows. Kurt Vonnegut was a big influence as well. I like things that take you into strange places, like our own world but slightly out of kilter.
“The Government has been the single biggest influence on me describing myself as an anarchist”
How do you define anarchism and who influenced you the most, you think?
The Government has been the single biggest influence on me describing myself as an anarchist. As Alan Moore says, 99.9% of all the troubles of the world are caused by leaders. So let’s get rid of them. But I’m not big on theory. It’s a philosophical thing for me. Who has the right to tell you what to do? Especially as the ones that make the laws are greedy, destructive, warmongering, corrupt liars.
The band was very political and that got you in quite some trouble.
We got attacked by fascists occasionally. Sometimes we got attacked by drunken beer monsters who were just looking for a fight. England was a very violent place in the 1970s and early 80’s. It’s nothing like as bad now.
How would you elaborate on the free festivals you were part of. It’s hard to imagine today to have like-minded people working together to create something like that.
They were amazing. But not without their issues. Some of the big ones could be a bit frightening with Hells Angels tearing about on motorbikes in the dark. But on the whole they were joyous and productive. Anarchy in action. People working things out between themselves to celebrate, play and make friends. Lovely jubbly.
You were close friends with The Mob.
We toured and lived together. I’m good friends with Mark Mob now. I see him a lot. Back in the early days The Mob were a right load of troublemakers. But they were always one of my favourite bands. Mark introduced me to Mia, as well. He met her before I did.
Some time ago I interviewed Penny Rimbaud who wisely said, “I influence myself the most when it comes to anarchism.” How did you meet Crass?
Yes, very wise. And it would be out of character for Penny Rimbaud to give anyone else credit for anything. I mean that jokingly and with affection by the way. It’s quite a famous story about how we met. People kept telling us about them, how we would probably get on because we had a lot of similar ideas. Then our bus broke down outside their house. Synchronicity some may say. Anyway, we had a good laugh with them and took it from there.
‘Can’t Cheat Karma’ was released on Crass Records. It must have been special to be part of a community, part of the DIY movement that was on the rise in the 70s.
Oh for sure. We were on a mission to save the world from the corporate, death machine nightmare that we could see coming down the pipeline. And many of us were utopian dreamers who still believed that with our talents and imagination we could build a new beautiful world. It was exciting and fun and a wonderful adventure. That is still my vision actually.
So how did that take you to Rough Trade Records to release your debut album?
We went to see Geoff Travis who started Rough Trade and asked him how to make a follow up to ‘Can’t Cheat Karma,’ and he said he wanted us on Rough Trade. I was very surprised. I felt like the cat who got the cream… twice. Mind you, I haven’t had much cream since.
I love the cover artwork by Clifford Harper… would you like to tell the idea behind it?
I like the cover more than the record. Cliff drew it originally for a magazine called Anarchy. It was during a firefighters’ strike. I loved it and asked if we could use it. He redrew it for us and Rough Trade paid him thirty quid for it. I was involved in publishing a book of his work called The Education Of Desire. A good book if you can get hold of it.
How come you decided to stop?
I had kids, needed money, the punk scene was getting dark and drab and uniform. I just moved out of the scene one day and disappeared for ages. When I came back, I discovered that people were listening to ‘The Curse of Zounds!’ all over the world. It was quite a shock.
You were then involved with The World Service?
It was going to be my next group with Laurence Wood but he got really into video directing and editing so I was left on my own. It never went anywhere but we did make one pretty good record for Rough Trade.
How did you enjoy working on ‘The Redemption of Zounds’?
I loved it and thought there were some great songs on it. But no one wants to hear new songs from an old band. Which I didn’t realise till it dawned on me we were one of those bands.
Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.
As God said to Moses, “Keep taking the tablets.”
Headline photo: JB Coll
Blood Moon Wedding Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp / YouTube
Zounds Official Website / Facebook
Mobilization Recordings Official Website / Facebook / Bandcamp / YouTube
