[00:00:00] Speaker A: You was born on a Saturday in 73 in the park. Right? Music on the fifth guitar with the short whip radio.
It's motherfucking Andy calling. Look at my fucking cup, here we come. Andy calling, wearing his orange hat.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: All right, so welcome to unsigned five one eight. I am here with Melanie and Rich of Cersei. How's it going?
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: It's great. Things are going awesome.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: And I guess I'll give away the secret right away is that you're not actually in the room here with me. You are. Where?
[00:00:49] Speaker C: We are in Charleston, South Carolina, today.
[00:00:52] Speaker D: We are? Yeah.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: No, go ahead.
[00:00:57] Speaker D: It is the city where Rich proposed to me and he reenacted it today. Andy.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: No way.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: That is fantastic.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: And so you've been gone for a while, right? You've been on tour for a minute, right?
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Well, we were home in 2023. We only slept in our own bed, 103 nights.
[00:01:24] Speaker D: Crazy.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: The rest of the year, we were on the road, but we were home for the first two and a half weeks of January just to kind of regroup.
[00:01:34] Speaker D: And we got to play a show at Cafe Lena, as you remember, golf.
And we won't be home again until March.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Is there anything that you're going to do in March?
You like that?
[00:01:55] Speaker D: We have a show on Saturday, March 9, at the Linda and the amazing Katie Gallagher will be opening the show. We've been trying to do a show together for a while, so we're really excited to have her with us.
Probably going to do a duet with her at some point in the night. We'll have some brand new songs that we've not yet released that we will play live at the show, and they're going to record the whole thing.
So we're hoping for a lot of folks to come out. Awesome.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: And tickets for that.
[00:02:30] Speaker D: Yeah, tickets for that are on. If you go to our website, cersei.com. S-I-R-S-Y. Click on the tour date. There's a link for tickets. There's a link in our link tree. If you go on our instagram, the links in the bio, and also, of course, on the Linda's website as well. We x t is presenting the show as well. So shout out to them.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah, shout out to them. Love them.
[00:02:54] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: So I want to get into, I guess, just like a normal episode, we will go into kind of the history of the band and how it led up to today. But I want to go back to how we personally crossed paths 21 years ago at this point.
[00:03:14] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Because I was the MC of the Ruby CD release party at what was then northern lights, right?
[00:03:27] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:03:29] Speaker C: And the date is very memorable because it was five one eight.
[00:03:33] Speaker D: It was. And we did it on purpose.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: 2005.
[00:03:36] Speaker D: 2005 was the CD release party where. All right, so then a better mc in the history.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I remember whipping the t shirts out into the crowd and everything. And it was cool because it was my first backstage experience where I was like, oh, I could just go hang out backstage. All right, cool.
[00:03:59] Speaker D: We really like to party backstage, too. There's often some, like a veggie tray.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Maybe some ranch dip if you're feeling crazy.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: It was just like a light bulb flickering, swinging on a rope, a couple of creepy guys in the corner.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: But, yeah, I dug it.
And somewhere in the room where I am at, I still have the signed CD from.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: Yeah, that's really beautiful. That makes my heart happy.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: I've got a couple of things where my safekeeping things.
This stays here.
So we go back to 2005. We go back and then here we are. And it's funny because a lot of people think I just appeared out of nowhere, but I'm like, no, I've got, like, a couple of decades of doing stuff like this. I swear, I just took a very long break.
[00:05:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: So you're on tour now. You're coming back in March, and then you've got the show with Katie.
[00:05:17] Speaker D: March 9 is the show. Yeah.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: And is there anything else big coming up?
[00:05:24] Speaker D: Well, after we're home for just like maybe two weeks.
Not even two weeks. So we'll do the show with the Linda and then a couple of shows out, western New York, Syracuse area, in Rochester area, and then we hit the road again for like three months.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: It's 95 days, I think.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:45] Speaker D: We go out to the west coast again and come back, and in between tour dates, we've been feverishly working on writing some new songs.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Where do you find the time for that?
[00:05:58] Speaker D: Yeah, it's difficult. It really is.
We just toured with Adams group at the end of the year and we thought we worked hard, man, until we toured with those guys. And he was like, we're playing five shows together at the end of the week. We're going to debut a live song together that we've written this week.
And we did. And we did. So we are inspired by his work ethic. Like, he just got up early. We got up early every day. We got together in hotel room, worked on writing, and then we would hit the road and go to sound check. So we're just trying to do that ourselves as much as possible and write some new stuff.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: That is amazing. So I want to go back to. Because obviously, Cersei, when I mcd the Ruby release party in 2005, was certainly a different band than it is now. So I want to, I guess, kind of go into the story of that and if you want to play a song first, we could play a song and then come back and kind of do the Cersei origin story.
[00:07:06] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: So you had sent me four songs to choose from.
And I believe I get the choice, don't I?
[00:07:15] Speaker D: You do. You get to choose the two that you want to play.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: I already chose them. I was familiar with all of this. So I'm like, oh, I know these. I knew these. And then I was like, the choice? I don't know. But I made it this afternoon after a couple of listens. So, first one I would like to hear is astronauts.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: I remember, obviously, not only the video coming out, but the making of the video and the anticipation of the release of the video. It was a very exciting time. So it's apropos that we play astronauts.
[00:07:50] Speaker D: It's my favorite video we've ever done and one of my favorite songs.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: Yeah, me, too.
[00:07:54] Speaker D: So I'm glad you chose it.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Awesome. So we'll listen to astronauts Cersei and then we'll be right back.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Through the atmosphere. She found her way out of here leaving all those someone that's behind on the side so rap with dreams we didn't get a dream while gravity was holding us down but I could never let go out the weight of the world she said I should see the crowd see them all I you lacquer after she burned out too fast nothing that's too good to lash so we gotta hold what we can and when the sky too dark you see the stars and crazy dreams I wish for one of those summer night when she could always let go out the weight of the world I say I swear if we could dance to the moon and see that more night after night and sometimes try and get harder than rocket science count of three and we'll be free there out of this world I know I heartaches would feel so small if we could blast to see my life every night I'm so glad we do close. Um.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: All right, so that was astronauts, Cersei. And, you know, obviously where you are now, you've made a huge name for yourself, not only in the five one eight, but I mean, across the country. So I guess let's go tell the story however you want of how that came to be. You're doing everything diY.
[00:12:06] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, rich and I played our first show as Cersei in the year 2000, which is insane to us because it's 24 years that we have been playing together, and we played our first shows as an acoustic duo. So no drums, no amps, just acoustic guitar. Rich played acoustic guitar. I sang and I played some percussion. And that's how we played our first bunch of shows. And we decided we wanted to play them more with a full arrangement. And so we worked with a whole bunch of different people, kind of a revolving door of guitarists, because Rich was really a bass player at heart.
So we worked with a whole bunch of different guitar players and drummers for a couple of years. And it's just really hard to find two people as crazy as we are and who want to have no life and just play all the time and tour and do this.
So we went back to the two piece idea after a couple of years, but decided to play all the instruments of the four piece ourselves.
And that's kind of the concept. And we would have never done it had we not had so many personnel changeovers. But it ended up being the best thing ever because it's super fun to play this way and it's.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: We. After playing like as the two person electric band for a couple of years, we actually got signed to a small indie label based on the west coast, which was a very different experience from all the DIY stuff we had been doing for a bunch of years. And we were in that deal for a couple of years. And we made some very good connections with producers and some other folks that kind of helped us along the path. The end of the day, it wasn't necessarily the best fit for us. We kind of enjoy the DIY.
We have a song called revolution, and one of the lines is make your own revolution. And we kind of always enjoyed that aspect of our steering the ship.
Apparently, we're both control freaks.
We liberated ourselves from that, which was also a learning experience.
And then we just keep trucking on. We've just been touring nonstop, except during the pandemic, obviously, for so long, I don't know any other way of life.
[00:14:47] Speaker D: And I mean, we have this really amazing community of people that supports us. And like you said, we've played in every state except for know was we were there and we rented a guitar from a music store and played a song and recorded it and put a video up on YouTube. So we're counting it in the continental United States. We play in all the states and we have this wonderful community of people that supports us. Everywhere we go, and we're certainly not famous, but we kind of love the way that it is because we basically have pockets of family all over the country, and we really get to interact with our fans and form real connections.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: Like, people always ask, what do you want out of your career? What's the goal? And I think for us, it was never to play stadiums and be famous. I mean, obviously, it would be nice to not have to be as concerned with the business aspect of it.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: But we always just wanted to create music so we could create connections with people and move people.
[00:16:04] Speaker D: And we see it firsthand with our fans. It's very cool, and it's really kind of a beautiful thing.
[00:16:10] Speaker C: We had a group of friends who were in a band in the Seattle or north of Seattle area, and they just recently covered our song, hell, no. And they sent us a video of them at rehearsal playing it. It's just, like, such a cool. I don't know, it's just a cool know. Group of people across the country were motivated enough and liked the song enough that they covered it. That's so flattering.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: As a songwriter for people that live all over the country, it's an event when you come through town, you know what I mean? Not that you're taken for granted in your local area, because you're certainly.
But to go someplace where people have been looking forward to it for months and they're excited for you to be there. That's got to be such a trip to be, like, thousands of miles from home, and people are like, yeah, they're here.
[00:17:08] Speaker D: It's a really lucky life, and we feel really glad that we get to travel together as a couple, because even though we're away from home for months and months, home is kind of with us because we're together. So it's really cool. We're lucky.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And just like, out of curiosity, how far in advance do you plan tours? Because that whole idea to me, to juggle it yourself and to plan everything and plan the stops and the logistics that go behind everything, just blows my mind. So how do you manage that?
[00:17:49] Speaker D: Well, I have at least ten panic attacks when I'm planning.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Okay, well, perfect, then, because I've had two since we started talking about it.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. Melanie at one point said to me, we tried to book as far as in advance as possible, but a lot of clubs don't do that. Some clubs do, but I know a couple of times, when we left for these three month runs, Melanie said to me, this tour is so long, the end of, it's not even booked yet. I don't even know where we're going to.
[00:18:21] Speaker D: It's usually, I try, usually, to stay six months ahead. I try usually, to stay around six months ahead. And sometimes I can't go further than that because there are some of the music centric venues where there are ticket sales involved and things like that. They don't want to book further ahead than that. And those are a lot of our anchor dates in certain markets. And so we have to kind of plan around that.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Is that something that you just work into your schedule knowing that there's going to be some high anxiety days of unknowns?
[00:18:59] Speaker D: Yes.
And then sometimes if we don't book a show, one thing the pandemic taught us is that we can do a live stream, and we have this wonderful live stream community that will join us. And they love not only connecting with us, but with each other.
And so it's never like a drag when we have to do a live stream. It's always kind of a little bonus.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Right. I really loved the pandemic. Live streams, by the way.
[00:19:30] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Those were all fantastic.
[00:19:34] Speaker D: We definitely nerd it out for sure.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah. That's why I love them.
[00:19:38] Speaker D: Yeah. So there's that.
We do a lot of house concerts for people, so sometimes we'll be on the road and we'll be coming through a town on a Tuesday or something, and a big fan will say, I want to host you at the house. And we'll do, like, an acoustic thing in their living room, and we'll sell tickets. And it's really usually a really special experience because there's, like, 30 people in their living room, and we all get to spend time together. And it's really unique.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: That's cool to be diy enough where you can just be like, yeah, that sounds rad. I'll come to you. Because if you were under the ties of a record label, they'd be like, I don't think so. Insurance says that's really cool.
[00:20:27] Speaker D: Our record label said no to a lot of things that we thought was not a great, um.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: I guess at this, know, I don't want to keep you too long, but I wanted to play another Cersei song, and this time I want to do brave and kind, which is one of my favorite Cersei songs. But I was listening to it, and I'm like, I don't know if I've heard the acoustic version.
Know, I feel ashamed that I hadn't heard it before, but I've already listened to it a couple times today, and that's, I think, going to be my choice for the second. Where was this recorded? Did you just do it yourself?
[00:21:09] Speaker D: We recorded it in our basement studio, but we had this amazing guy named Paul Q. Coldry mix it. He's produced and mixed our last bunch of recordings, and we actually met him through the label, so he was one of the plus sides of that.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: It's an amazing version.
[00:21:30] Speaker D: Thank you.
When we performed the song live, we stopped doing the full instrumentation because this song is all about the lyrics and it's all about the connection with the crowd and the story of the song.
For us. We feel like it's so intimate that we want it to be just stripped down and intimate when we do it live. So we wanted to release a recording of it that way, too.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Well, it's perfect.
[00:21:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: So let's listen to brave and kind acoustic from Cersei, and then we'll be right back to wrap it up with Melanie and rich.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: And two for joy and three for better days and all that I counted on seems so far away so here I stand on foreign ground trying not to sway with nothing left to lose but everything stare, man to try to make me hold and I will fight I will try to be brave and kind two for grace three for chanting it and all that I counted on I took for granted but with this scar I am found I am branded with everything to lose this is not things would dare meant to try to make me whole and I will fight I will try to be brave and kind but I am not afraid I am blood and I am bones but I am not afraid.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: So that was brave and kind acoustic Cersei. So, Melanie, Rich, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your not only busy schedule, but you're several states away, so really cool that you took your time to do this. And before we go, I want to give you the chance to say what I call your gratitudes. So go ahead.
[00:26:30] Speaker D: Well, I want to say thank you for taking the time to do the interview, first of all, and, oh, my God, there's so many things to be grateful for.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: I'd like to thank myself for being there when I needed myself the most.
[00:26:43] Speaker D: I would know you played that song brave and kind, and a lot of people know the story behind that. But rich and I wrote that the first time I was diagnosed with cancer.
So I'm always very thankful just for every day that I get to be alive and play music and connect with people.
I'm very grateful for that. And I'm very grateful for all the people that tell me their stories at the shows and come to the shows and let our music into their lives.
We have so many wonderful friends that help us sell merchandise and roadie our gear, and our friend Chet, who builds our website for us, and we pay him in beer. And my mom, who is like, every local show in the front row and always cheering us on. And my dad would be if he could be. And I don't know. How about you?
[00:27:43] Speaker C: Grateful for anything else? Anything else?
[00:27:45] Speaker D: Oh, well, you, of course. Of course.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: You, your husband.
I am thankful for all those same things as Mel, obviously. And I am thankful so much for Mel because I can't imagine this would be my life musically if it weren't for Mel.
[00:28:04] Speaker D: I wouldn't have the guts if it wasn't for you.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Well, love you too. It was super nice to talk to you again. Have a safe time. On the road, that is Cersei. I am Andy Scullen. This is unsigned five one eight, and I'll see you on the road.
Unsigned five one eight is produced and hosted by me, Andy Scullen. New episodes are available every week wherever you stream podcasts. If you would like to help support the show, please like and subscribe wherever you are listening. Or you could buy me a
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