Up and coming band, The Violet Hours, recently played their first show together at Leftfield Bar and I got the chance to sit down with them to chat about their creative process, how the band got together, and who their musical inspirations are.
Lead singer, Ryan Wilkins illustrates how he “had all these ideas [for songs] but had no one to play them with and [he’s] not the biggest social butterfly so it was kind of hard” to find people. Guitarist, Jordan Chemtob, responded to a Facebook post Wilkins had made and jokes that keyboardist and vocalist, Nina DeMeo defeated the previous keyboardist in “a sort of gladiatorial contest” to get the spot. The band found their drummer, Kat Borderud through a Craigslist ad and their bassist, David Karp by putting flyers up around NYU’s campus.
When asked about where their band name, The Violet Hours, came from, Wilkins responded “Well, I’d like to just put on the record that our name is not an endorsement of the university…” It actually comes from a line in The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot which Wilkins had been reading in a class and proposed to the rest of the band as a temporary title that they all liked and it ended up sticking.
Each band member has vastly different tastes in music but there is a clear consensus around The Velvet Underground as a group that inspires their writing and performance styles. At their show, keyboardist Nina DeMeo took center stage to sing Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground and Nico. This cover fit in perfectly with their set of originals that are all of the “80’s synth-pop, New York, grunge” vibe as the band collectively described their sound to me.
The Violet Hours creative process is very fluid but for now begins with Wilkins writing a basic melody and lyrics to structure each song and then collaborating on the other instrumentation with the band. Very humbly, Wilkins claims the title of the “worst musician” in the band and extends high praise to Chemtob who writes all of his own guitar parts and “does everything wonderfully.”
The Violet Hours content and lyrics are based in social justice awareness and activism more than romance or relationships. As Wilkins puts it, “at the risk of sounding horribly pretentious, it feels like most music out there is about unrequited love and chasing somebody but that gets boring after a while and there are other things out there to write about, not that we would never write those songs or that it’s not a rich topic to discuss, but there are bigger things going on in the world.” DeMeo points out that they even have a reference to Donald Trump in one of their songs and that their inspirations right now come more from the cultural moment we are in than any of their interpersonal relationships. Wilkins also calls attention to their lyrical focus on the “shifting periods of life” and how they are about realizing that at some point you have to grow up and make decisions about who you are and who you want to be.
The Violet Hours will be announcing their next show date soon, you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram to stay updated! I wish them the best of luck and look forward to being in the audience at their next show.
