Photo by Trey Marez
Being sisters is one thing, but being sisters in a band is entirely different. In Skating Polly’s case, it’s the thing that makes their songs the best they can be. I buckled up with step-sisters Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse in their minivan before their gig at The Funhouse to hear about how personal of a process songwriting is and what it’s like to grow up in a band.
Haley Parsons: I saw you two last October with Naked Giants. What was the rest of that tour like? How do you feel you have changed or progressed since then?
Kelli Mayo: That was a fun show, it was actually a one-off show with them but we actually played with them at Tree Fort Fest and they reached out to us but they were really great that night and I’ve been following them since then and we went to see them with Carseat Headrest. Anyway, us though, and changing… Peyton how do you think we’ve changed since October 2016?
Peyton Bighorse: Since October 2016, well we’ve written a lot of songs and I feel like the songs have just progressed a lot since we added Kurtis to the band. He definitely wasn’t playing with us in October 2016.
Kelli: Yeah, no he wasn’t.
Peyton: I mean we have an extra member and it just adds a lot to the sound, we sound heavier and louder, which I guess is the same thing.
Kelli: I think it’s like louder and more poppy because in pop you’re used to a lot of layers, so it’s really cool. Also, just, we’ve had more experiences on big stages since then. We toured with X a bunch this year, like three different times, and we toured with Kate Nash in Europe. We’ve just been practicing a lot and writing a lot. This last year, once we finish this tour, we will have played over 100 shows and that’s insane! Like I always wanted to do that but it is kind of insane once you actually get there because I still don’t know my home town, Tacoma at all and I’ve lived there for two years!
HP: What was it like moving from Oklahoma to Tacoma and what influenced that move?
Peyton: We’d been wanting to get out of Oklahoma for a while and we finally had enough money and that’s what we did, we just moved because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to.
Kelli: Yeah, we came across the money and just kind of went for it, which was kinda crazy.
Peyton: It was really fast, I think we found out just a couple months before we moved
Kelli: I felt like I figured out WEEKS before I moved. I felt like “alright they’re going to find a house, alright they found a house, OK got a moving truck, pack your s**t!”
Peyton: It was insane, it was intense, it was great because now we don’t live in Oklahoma anymore.
Kelli: We’ve never lived in a city before, I lived in Oklahoma City a little bit with my mom, but still, Tacoma is a big difference and we live really close to 6th Ave so we have areas we can walk to and stuff – that’s different. Because the last house we lived in, the closest thing was a gas station literally a mile away and you had to walk on the side of a highway through weeds like that tall (gestures to about the height of the window on the minivan door) and I was like “I’m gonna get ticks or I’m gonna get attacked by someone’s rapid pitbull.”
Peyton: Our neighbors let their giant dogs run loose–
Kelli: –I said rapid, but I meant RABID.
Peyton: So, you couldn’t really go outside without getting harassed by the dogs, sometimes you got your ear bitten off! That happened to my little brother.
Kelli: In short, a lot of our favorite bands came from up here but not just (mock authoritative tone) “you guys are obsessed with 90s grunge” like The Happening, Sleater-Kinney, Kimya Dawson, Perfume Genius, a lot of people. I think there’s something about like, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, they’re beautiful cities, but they rain all the time! So, for me it’s been like this perfect balance of like, “oh I just wanna stay in and write music” and “ok I just want to go out and explore, I want to go on a hike through a rainforest on the side of an ocean!”
Kelli Mayo by Trey Marez
HP: How do you think starting your musical careers so young (9 and 14) has affected you? How has traveling and getting to see so much affected you?
Kelli: That is one thing I’m really thankful for with my job because I’m not in school anymore, and I missed a lot of school when I was in school and I was going to really cool art school and stuff, wow I said school like eight times. But I had this boyfriend, you know like a 7th grade boyfriend, whatever that means, but he was like, “how are you ever going to learn if you’re always just touring and traveling?” and I was like “b*tch! I am learning so much!” But seriously, like, this is definitely a learning job. Part of it is like, when we go to all these different places, I want to find out what people’s favorite music is, what people’s favorite bands are, I want to watch all the bands there and eat up the scene. I wanna get books from everywhere and look at the buildings, you know? Like that’s definitely had a big impact on me and I can remember that when I think, “maybe I’m stupid, haha” at least there’s that. I mean it’s hard to compare, like sometimes we get broad questions like, “what is it like being so young in a band?” and I’m like “well, I don’t know because I’ve never NOT been so young and in a band!” but I do think it’s different and I do get especially nervous, and so does Peyton, and Kurtis is the best about it because he’s just so fricken charming and funny and can talk to anyone about anything, but I think I get especially nervous around people close to my age. Because I’m used to dealing with adults all the time and it’s not like I’m more mature than them, at all, I feel like I don’t know how to relate to them and I might be annoying.
HP: I don’t think you’re annoying!
Kelli: Thank you. It has only been a couple minutes though!
HP: Peyton, anything to add?
Peyton: She covered it pretty well, but we’ve had two different experiences because when I was younger, I wasn’t in a band at the same time she was so I was in school for…
Kelli: Well, you graduated.
Peyton: Yeah, I graduated. I’m trying to compare our situations…
Kelli: I think we started going on little tours around your 11th grade year, maybe.
Peyton: Yeah, I didn’t tour as much when I was in school, like, I got through most of school without having to go off and do a bunch of Skating Polly stuff. But, I mean, we both had a lot of responsibility thrown on us, that only we were responsible for, so I think that has shaped who we are a little bit. We’ve like basically taken on a full-time job.
Kelli: Yeah, yeah, we literally treat it like a full-time job. Like I wake up and I just try to cover all the bases, like “ok we need to do that interview and we need to get more merch.” So, we just take up all day doing it.
HP: What does your daily life look like at home and on the road?
Kelli: I am such a weirdo at home. When I’m home I get really restless because I’m so used to being on the road. Also, when we’re at home is when we have the least money because we’re not out getting paid for every show so it’s like, “we need to do more, we need to do more!” but it’s also like “we’re home, we need to relax.” Whenever we’re on tour, I mean Peyton reads like crazy, Peyton’s read like a billion books.
Peyton: Literally a billion, almost two billion.
Kelli: But you’ve read like 25 this year?
Peyton: No, I don’t know, I think I’ve read at least 20.
Kelli: And some of those are like 1,000 page books! It’s crazy.
HP: Which was your favorite? Or most recent one that you read?
Peyton: Favorite one? I don’t even remember all of them that I’ve read. Last one? Well the one I’m reading right now is called When the Killing’s Done. I don’t remember the last one I read. One that was really good was one that DJ from X gave me called, Offshore, that was really cool. I like books that kinda like stray from, like, guys who think everyone hates them because I feel like I read about that a lot.
Kelli: (laughing) Let me stray from that central theme. I don’t know, I get to see a lot of my closest friends on tour, especially when we go to Oklahoma. I don’t know, I really like touring, but it’s also great being home. We have this comic shop we go to regularly, called Stargazer, in Tacoma and the people who run it aren’t just like into superheroes – although they could one-up anyone about that – they’re into like politics and metaphors, and symbolism, but not in a, like, in-your-face-pretentious-way, they’re like the most welcoming comic store ever and it’s like “frick there’s a lot of cool sh*t in graphic novels, it’s not just like good guy wins/bad guy wins” so I kinda got hooked on that, got to explore my nerdy side. What else do we do when we’re home? WRITE! Write a lot, practice, write, design shirts.
Peyton: Yeah, whenever we’re not practicing or writing or doing band stuff, we’re doing normal stuff like cleaning and cooking –
Kelli: – buying groceries –
Peyton: – picking up our little brother –
Kelli: – and getting excited about the Swiffer we just bought!
HP: Since you added Kurtis to the band, does he write with you guys?
Kelli: Kurtis is honestly a big part of the lyrics on this new record. I always kind of trust Kurtis’s taste more than my own, I think I do that with too many people, honestly. But I always look to Kurtis on things because he knows more music than me and so he can kind of like, see what it reminds him of, what it’s totally not like, and he’s really good at like drawing from other things and helping me finish an idea in my head. Also, this is the first album where I feel like we literally sat down, and we did it a little on The Big Fit, but every song is like, “ok, this is what this is actually about and here’s the story I want to tell at surface level, and I want to tell it when this kind of imagery, or with this kind of theme, can you help me do that?” And that’s kind of like, you know, that can be kind of tricky if it’s anyone besides your best friends who you super trust, you know? This album is about things that have weighed really heavily on our minds the last two years since we moved here, just things we’ve been stressed about the most, upset about the most, just thinking about the most. Literally every one of them is dedicated to a section of our brain. My brain, Peyton’s brain, and Kurtis’s brain. I mean we put things in each other’s songs that I think meant personal things to each of us, but it all worked out.
Peyton Bighorse by Trey Marez
HP: You worked with Louise Post and Nina Gordon on the New Trick EP, right? What was it like working with them?
Peyton: That was awesome! We had been listening to Veruca Salt since we were little, and we still do, but I just remember singing at the top of our lungs their cover of “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols, it was one of our favorites and so I thought I would be really nervous going into it, but we got dinner the night before and we all got along really well and it was great. But I was like, “well, I’m still going to be nervous writing songs with them because I can’t write songs in front of other people!” But somehow, we just found a way and it worked really well. We weren’t nervous and we were all throwing out ideas and they taught us so much, like little tricks with guitar and just new things to do with vocals.
Kelli: Drums. I mean Peyton and I are playing drums on that, like Kurt wasn’t in the band yet, and I feel like your drums are just at your best on that. I mean, I feel like they just get better and better, but you have some really cool drums on that.
Peyton: Yeah, and every part was collaborative between the four of us, and Brad, who produced it, and also our new record. Brad’s a drummer and so even though Louise and Nina can’t play the drums, they would make sounds and we would work on it.
Kelli: We would try to decode it and then we’d be like, “Brad, do you know what the hell they’re talking about?” and he’d be like, “so like this, Louise?” and she’d be like, “yeah, see it’s not that hard!” and I’d just be like, “god-damn it! How did you get that?”
Peyton: To be fair, they’ve been working together a lot longer
Kelli: Yeah, yeah, like I could kind of understand. And it was funny because I could like see Louise’s drum sounds because I do the same thing with you, but you get it with me. So, she’s probably used to working with Jim, who gets it with her, and we’re just like, “we’re not used to your drum language, yo.” But they were great. They have all these things that to us, seem so wicked and revolutionary, but to them it’s just another verse. Where I’m like, “but you completely changed the melody on the verse and you made it half as long as there’s this weird measure in the middle!” Stuff like that, and I remember when we were working with them, they were like, “well we can’t do this song structure, this is totally “Alternica”’ which is a song off their record, and they were like, “well, maybe no one will notice.” And I heard that album and I really didn’t notice, but I do that too now! Like ever since we worked with them and even a little before that, I’d be like, “well we have this song with the same song structure as this other track, so we can’t do that. But it sounds better this way than any other way, so maybe no one will notice!”
Peyton: And they have terms for things that we also different terms for. So, they would say something and we’d be like, “what?” So, we had to get used to their language while still speaking our own.
Kelli: They’re the speediest at coming up with harmonies and adding layers. I felt like every time we played a track back, they would have a new layer, they would have a new harmony, they would have a new guitar part. Since there were four of us who were singers and guitarists, there were tons of layers. So, Brad had a big part in deciding what layers to keep.
HP: That’s super cool. Thank you, guys, so much for your time!
The really cool thing about being in a sibling band seems to be getting to share the experience of going to new places with the people you’re closest to in the world. Despite not all being blood-related, Kelli, Kurtis, and Peyton absolutely share a bond that allows for a steady flow of creativity that has fueled several incredible albums. These sisters have taken on a full-time job together and have to hold one another accountable, but seem to possess a very patient understanding of one another’s personalities. Their relationship is one that already has intimacy just because they’ve lived together and had such similar experiences, but it’s deepened by the music they make, which is evident in their description of their distinct musical dialect. Their new album will be out in 2018 and I think that as a result of all the time they’ve spent together traveling, writing, practicing, and playing, it’s going to be their best one yet.
Love Skating Polly as much as I do? Like them on Facebook!
HALEY PARSONS | My first column, brought to you by Skating Polly’s car! | KXSU Music Reporter