Several days ago I had the pleasure of conversing with Thomas Redmond of DC’s own True Womanhood. We talked beer and music and art, among other things. It was interesting and informative and I’m excited to see Thomas and his two bandmates open for NYC’s Bear Hands this Wednesday at U Street Music Hall @ 9 P.M.

While only three musicians, True Womanhood combine to create a lot of noise. Driving bass, pounding drums, droning guitar licks, and a profusion of loops, samples, and string arrangements combine for a churning, mangled melancholy mess of experimental, ambient rock. And by that, I mean it’s awesomely awesome. You can buy their Basement Membranes EP here. Since my financial resources are pathetically low at the moment, I have not had the means to replace my broken tape recorder, and therefore am unable to record phone conversations. Due to these circumstances, and the fact that Thomas and I used a lot of really big words and made several obscure musical references, I have done my best to summarize and paraphrase and edit our question an answer session into something most fitting for Blisspop and its audience. Check it out …

Brooks: Is the band name some sort of post-feminist social or political commentary? What does it mean?

Thomas: Not exactly. True Womanhood comes from The Cult of True Womanhood which was the prevailing chauvinistic view of women during the nineteenth century, especially in New England, and it served to keep women confined to their domestic duties in the house and kitchen. We as a band clearly stand for basically the opposite of all of the Cult’s original tenets. But I’d say it’s not really a political statement. The name was chosen because it’s interesting and colorful; as a band we typically come from the arty side of things as opposed to the political, so the name was mostly chosen for artistic reasons.

Brooks: I know much of your recent EP was recorded at Death By Audio in New York, and that you all are very inclined to experiment with electronics and set ups and pedals, is any one of you a McGiver-like electrical wizard?

Thomas: I don’t know about that. We recorded our most recent album, which will come out soon, with our friend J. Robbins at his Baltimore Studio. But our last EP was mostly recorded at Death By Audio. As a band we love to experiment with new instruments and new electronic set ups. We regularly tear down our set-up and build it anew, in order to find new sound and encourage creativity and sonic exploration as we write new songs. We’ve recently employed a vocal processing device that runs through my midi guitar and allows me to sing and play vocal harmonies on my guitar at the same time. It was originally intended for cheesy country singers, but we’ve re-imagined it for our own purposes, and we get really psyched about stuff like that. The typical use of shoegaze pedal effects and the like can get rather monotonous, so we try to mix it up.

Brooks: Give me some DC bands to look out for, that I might not have heard of yet?

Thomas: I recently saw Luke from Laughing Man and Gideon Forman play as their new duo called Zigaurat at a jazz night at Bossa. They played a looped sax and crazy guitar riffs to form sort of free jazz art rock.  I also really dig Shock Diamond and Connect the Dots: they’re both really new, young bands that are starting to take off.

Brooks: Do y’all ever play covers at your live shows?

Thomas: We have yet to play a cover. We’ve been so busy recording and rehearsing new material we never have time to practice cover material for a live gig. But we definitely talk about it, and want to cover a song soon. Covering music is always good practice when we are looking to find new sound and direction for the band. We’re looking to learn “All I Need is the Air that I Breath” by the Hollies.

Brooks: I just moved here, so give me some good bars to go to.

Thomas: The Raven in Mt. Pleasant is really cool. We Fought the Big One is a DJ party thrown every first Friday at Marx Cafe, also in Mt Pleasant, and it is always really fun. Little Miss Whiskey’s on H Street is a very cool bar with a good selection of beers.

Brooks: Sounds good, I’ll see you there. Who did the artwork for your MySpace page and who did the photo for your last album?

Thomas: For the album cover we did a shoot in a Cold-War era bomb shelter with photographer Alyssa Lesser who does work for BYT from time to time. The artwork on our MySpace page is by one of my/our best friends from High School. His name is Maciej Makalowski, he’s from Poland, and he’s living in SF now. The painting is a self-portrait, it’s actually about six feet tall, and it’s an outlier piece in a series called “People Who Desire.” The rest of the paintings in the series are all portraits of sex offenders.

Thanks Thomas! And all of you readers, come see Thomas and his band True Womanhood at U Street Music Hall on Wednesday.

True Womanhood – Magic Child