Interview: She’s Got a Habit
MYATS: What is your favourite place for coffee in Montreal?
Emma: I really like Pikolo because it’s new and really pretty. The coffee is “third wave” and I’m a Bouge. [Laughs] Actually, it’s “fourth wave”, she told me its “fourth wave”.
Martin: She said, “actually, you’re late”. [Laughs] I think mine is Falco. I really like Cafe Falco over on De Gaspe and St-Viateur. It’s underneath these lofts. Emma knows ‘cause I used to live over there and when we used to meet up I’d be like “we have to go to Falco”. They do this different type of brewing; they don’t do espresso and they don’t do drip. They heat up this, I forget what it’s called, but they heat up this bottle. It looks like a scientific experiment. They flip this ball upside down and there is like a bunsen burner underneath and then the coffee spurts out over the top. It’s cool and really good. It’s really nice inside the cafe and they have good food.
Emma: And there’s a cute little kid that wanders around.
MYATS: My second question is, and I guess I always ask this because I’m looking for things to read. What are you guys reading these days?
Martin: I’m actually not reading anything right now.
Emma: We don’t read. [Laughs]
Martin: I wanna read this Kurzweil book. Kurzweil makes synthesizers but he also has this one book called The Singularity is Near. It talks about how we are all moving, the technology and the cultural migrations happening, that we are all going to become one race. It’s really abstract and that’s what I gathered from the little blurb but it looks cool.
Emma: I’m in the same boat as you, which is don’t know what to read and reeling after a Literature degree where I was reading not for fun all the time. So, I need some good books. Anybody who is reading this interview, please send me some recommendations.
MYATS: What brought you to place the ad in craigslist where you met Emma?
Martin: That’s a good question. Well essentially, it was being in Montreal and not having any friends because I’d just moved to Montreal with my wife. I’d just come to Montreal and didn’t really know anybody so I just started putting a bunch of random ads up trying to get work and trying to meet musicians. Actually, the funny thing is now all of my friends that I have in Montreal I met them all through craigslist from when I first got here. I met Emma there, I met my friend Jack, who is another drummer I met, Danny, etc. All these really close friends of mine, I met them all through trying to get work or looking for people to collaborate on projects and then we just hit it off.
MYATS: You’re lucky you didn’t meet any serial killers.
Martin: I met a couple, I’ve met some weird people on craigslist. You just have to know how to be like: “Ok this is done, thanks”.
MYATS: Emma, when you saw the ad, were you thinking: “This is cool… but”?
Emma: Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. He basically listed my three favourite singers at the time and that caught my attention.
MYATS: What were they?
Emma: Georgia Anne Moldrow, Erykah Badu and Bilal. At the time, I was in this funk hip-hop group in Vermont that was a ton of soul and a lot of belting. I wanted to be doing a quieter more intimate project but with the same kind of influences. So, I was excited to see his list. Then he tried to organize a meeting and I thought “ umm I dunno, kinda creepy”. Then he showed up to a performance of mine. I think he just knew that I probably wasn’t going to just meet up with him so he showed up to a performance of mine and he had this hip hat on.
Martin: Really? I don’t remember wearing a hat.
Emma: Yeah, you had the detective’s hat on.
Martin: I know which hat you are talking about. That’s a good hat.
Emma: He introduced himself and he was just cool and charming. I mean just look at him. It was all that and more.
Martin: All that and then some. Tall, dark, and handsome. [Laughs] Except the tall part and not so dark. Short, chubby, yeah. [Laughs]
Emma: [Laughs] And then we just made a time to meet up and it was cool. I’ve had the same experience as Martin with craigslist. I just find that in this area, everybody that lives in this area is just sorta around my age, pretty dependable, pretty homogeneous, you don’t find a lot of people that are totally out of your realm.
MYATS: Why and how did you guys come up with “She’s Got a Habit”?
Martin: Well we were struggling with the name because names are always the hardest thing to come up with. Just to find something that multiple parties can agree on and that you feel is representative of the work or whatever. So we were just throwing around a bunch of ideas and I had had a conversation with a friend of mine and we were talking about somebody and he had just said “Oh yeah, she’s got a habit”. It was one of those things that just kinda hits you. Oh! That can be a cool name. So I brought it up to Emma and Andy and everyone agreed on it.
Emma: Martin suggested it and was like it totally doesn’t have to do with you. But it became this huge source of insecurity and self-doubt. Because that’s how I think about myself most of the time. I’m part of the new-agey generation that is constantly self-analyzing and self-reflecting and examining all these shitty life patterns that everybody has that are both personal and cultural. I liked the word habit because it felt not too sinister and kinda funny but also a little bit sinister.
Martin: There was a provocative edge to the name we felt, well at least I did. I like that you don’t know what it is and I like that there is a feminine nature to the name. It was those parts that made it interesting in terms of the words next to each other.
MYATS: What’s the songwriting process for you guys as a band?
Emma: It has changed a lot. So the writing process for the EP was very different than what it is now. For the EP, there was a couple tunes where I brought in songs. I brought in chords and maybe made some shitty Garage Band thing and showed Andy and Martin and then we worked on it together. Other stuff, Martin just brought tracks where the beat was made, the chords were there, all the textures were there and I just sang on it.
Martin: And then we would arrange them. That’s how we did those ones but now the band’s kinda grown.
MYATS: Originally you guys were three, and now?
Emma: Now we are five. The original drummer, Andy, is on tour with Twin Shadow. So he’s not playing with us right now. We have some other guys who are really amazing. A cellist named J.P. Saint-Cyr, a drummer named Evan Tighe, a synth player and back up vocalist named Beavan Flanagan. We just jam out our tunes. Sometimes I’ll bring in a tune where the structure is mostly there but something is missing and we’ll just jam and happen upon a new section and that happens that way. Or Martin will come up with chords and a beat and bring that in and we’ll jam that out.
MYATS: What inspires you Martin when you are making different arrangements?
Martin: Depends. I’ve always been pretty much an addict to having new music. By new music I don’t mean like just came out yesterday, just something I haven’t heard about. If I don’t have something new to listen to, there’s a lack of inspiration so I constantly look through a lot of old vinyl. I’m a big vinyl junkie, I’m always digging through records trying to look at how other people were writing songs and old arrangements. I really love old vinyl. I always feel weird saying the word old because I don’t think that’s the right terminology but it just refers to the time it was made. Anyways, I listen to a lot of stuff like that and also a lot of avant-garde music. I like to try and bring certain elements of that into our more accessible stuff. That’s more of a mission statement for me to help make stuff that people aren’t comfortable with or aware of and try and bring that into pop music so people that it starts being digestible for people so that maybe at one point Sun-Ra is going to be on the radio. So yeah, stuff like that inspires me and films also. We talk about movies and TV shows a lot too. We were watching Mad Men at the same time and bringing that up a lot.
Emma: I think we all, and all the guys in the band too, think in terms of “Oh I’m digging this country western vibe mixed with India whatever”. I think we just enjoy different mixes happening and all have pretty active imaginations for what scenes those things can conjure.
Martin: Yeah, the guys in the band are amazing. Before it was just the three of us writing, and Andy was in Boston so it was a lot of back and forth. Now it’s a lot more instantaneous. People are here and we’ve been able to develop these tunes, the new set of songs we’ve been working on, in a live context first which is the reverse of how we did the EP. For the Ep, we worked in the studio and then tried to figure out how to play them live. So now it’s the reverse and that’s been a lot of fun in terms of the songwriting process.
MYATS: What are your musical influences?
Emma: A lot and it changes. I have a long list. I’m gonna start at Lisa Minelli. I did a lot of musical theatre when I was younger and I really like Cabaret. Nina Simone. Little Dragon was really big when we started working together. Hannah Hukkelberg also. I’ve done a lot of Jazz and Soul singing so all the old soul stuff: Aretha, tons of Stevie Wonder, Ella.
Martin: Like Emma, and most people of our generation, I listen to a lot of different types of music. In terms of influences that are still living, I’m a huge fan of Madlib and I really love his arrangements and approach to doing stuff artistically and musically. I’m also a big fan of Radiohead because I think they are trying to constantly push themselves and I dig that. It took me a while to get into them, and I wasn’t really into them when it was really popular. I only got into them the last four years or so. Flaming Lips are a big influence. Charles Mingus is a big influence for me. I love the arrangements, story, soul all that stuff that’s in his work it’s great. I think the fact that Emma and I both have Jazz influences that are really heavy, Hip Hop and Soul influences that are really heavy, and then some Indie references that were similar. We were both listening to The Books album a lot.
Emma: We were both listening to stuff that was more produced and “shimmery” or “shiny”. We were thinking, wouldn’t it be really sweet to do something like that? Martin was new to Montreal and I’m from Boston and have been here for five years. Montreal was continually blowing me away with this DIY culture and all this rough around the edges but super beautiful super creative stuff. So, I think we were thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to do that more produced stuff. Martin has the ability to do it and I was doing all this Soul and Jazz stuff and so we were like what if we took all those raw textures and used them.
MYATS: What can we expect from and when can we expect a full-length album?
Martin: Expect nothing [Laughs]. We actually just went into McGill to demo a couple of tunes and just see what they felt like because some of the arrangements that we’ve been doing live may not translate in the best sense to the recorded. So we are going in to record some more songs in December and see what’s up. The plan for us is to record these, encapsulate them and then see what we can do with them. We are interested in doing a self-release and that could be interesting but we would like to take it to the next step. We had some labels that were interested in the past and they are still kinda peeking around to see what’s up. So we kind of want to finish these songs and find a friend.
MYATS: What’s your favourite Montreal venue?
Emma: I like Upstairs. It sounds amazing. It’s the one place that I’ve played that has this dependable incredible sound. They are also streaming all their shows now live and you leave with amazing sound quality DVD of your performance.
Martin: Le Belmont was really cool. That venue has a really nice vibe. I’m not sure why it hasn’t been utilized as much in the past but I feel people are using it more now. Our music isn’t like “Hey, everybody get up and dance” but it’s also not “Hey everybody sit down”. Le Belmont has these nice high table tops so it’s nice people can kinda stand and have a drink and there’s room up front.
MYATS: When was the moment that you knew music was what you wanted to do?
Emma: I mean this is really a question about love isn’t it. [Laughs] There was never a moment but just a long slow process where more and more music was what was filling up my time and consistently making me feel fulfilled. Definitely coming to Montreal was a shift, there are just so many resources for doing music here. It was just easy to make it your life.
Martin: Mine is a lot like Emma’s. There was definitely a point where I made a clear decision. My parents were always playing music all the time at my house. They are not musicians, but they are big enthusiasts. My dad plays the guitar, banjo, and mandolin, and my mom plays the accordion. It always had that sort of bringing people together sort of thing. I’d done theatre and all that sorta stuff in high school and at some point music started pulling me more and more in one direction. And then for university, I started applying and got into the Berklee College of Music and that was pretty much it.
Interview conducted by Pamela Fillion.
MYATS would like to thank Emma and Martin for the interview and we recommend that you check out She’s Got A Habit’s Blindfold Test. Also, keep an eye out for a new video they will be launching soon!
