“Like bathing in the tears of joy from an indie-rock unicorn…” That’s how the members of Love Darling (Shay Magro, Mike Wolpe, and Christian Trujillo) describe their band. Add to that a lesbian frontwoman who watches The Real L Word live in person and a sound that draws influences from everything from Tegan & Sara to PJ Harvey to Smashing Pumpkins to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and you, like us, will want to learn more…
CherryGRRL (CG): First off, I recently became a fan of Love Darling after seeing you perform at a Thrashed event out here in LA (via our Morgan) and now I’m a definitely a fan. So since I’m a fan, I really want to see this debut full-length album get made! Tell us about where you are in terms of production on that.
Shay Magro (SM): Great question. That’s exactly why we started a Kickstarter campaign. We’ve already written and recorded rough versions of most of the songs that will make it onto the album, but in order to finish recording all the songs, and then releasing the album, we’re looking to our fans to raise the dough to make that happen. We’ve always liked the concept of “fan-funding” since its a win-win situation. So, here we are! And we love the idea of involving our fans in the music making process.
CG: Your Kickstarter has some pretty cool incentives for pledges. What are some of these “treasures” you all are offering?
SM: I like that you used the word “treasures” Yes, for this Kickstarter campaign we really tried to offer one-of-a kind, exclusive goodies as incentives for our fans to pledge and help us reach our goal. Everything from signed vinyl copies of the new album, a signed acoustic guitar that we’ve performed with, even a turntable to go with that shiny new record, all the way to spending the day with the band and a special live Love Darling performance. Magic tricks and bowling with the band may also be involved…jus sayin’.
CG: You’ve tapped into some of your Real L Word connections for this. You appear on the show, sing the theme song, and live with a cast member [Shay and her fiancee Aylssa live with Whitney] but there really has never been a plug of your band. Has it still proven to be helpful in terms of bringing visibility to Love Darling?
SM: We are really grateful for all the new fans we’ve gained from the exposure that the show has given us. Although, there was no direct “plugging” of the band, it definitely opened up our audience and visibility…we are happy with the way people organically discovered us honestly. We didn’t want it to be something where we became trivialized as a band because we were on the show, ya know? We like the fact that our fans are genuine fans of our music and not just fans because we were on or associated with the show.
CG: Do you perform “Hazy” a lot live and if so do people sing along on that one? What’s the reaction when you perform it?
SM: Actually, because of our licensing agreement, we can only perform Hazy at Showtime related events. So, we don’t tend to play it that often. However, we did get to play it at this year’s Los Angeles Pride Festival, a slightly different version than the one that’s used as the theme song, and the crowd seemed to dig it.
CG: How do you feel about the show? It gets a lot of criticism and yet it’s so crazy popular. Do you feel it portrays your friends fairly?
SM: It’s been interesting. There’s been a lot of positive and negative feedback about the show, for both Season 1 and 2. The thing is, unfortunately, since there’s only so many episodes to squeeze everyone’s story into, often times, viewers only see very abridged versions of things. What was aired is, for the most part, truly unscripted and real footage of people on the show, however, there was so much that never made an episode that I think would have given a more true picture of everyone’s life and added depth to people on the show. One of the positives that came out of this experience is that I’ve gained some really amazing new friends. But it makes it tough to hear or read negative comments about people on the show that are also my friends because I know there is so much more to everyone than what is portrayed, and the viewers are only getting a fraction of who they really are. (continued on next page)
