One of the joys of SXSW is discovering artists you were not previously aware of. Sorry Mom are such a gem. Having first seen them at Idles Hands on Rainey Street, I went back for more at The Far Out Lounge on the last day of music at SXSW for 2023. After their set Juno (guitar/lead vocals), Taryn (drums) and Kari (bass) sat down with me. With Dream Wife playing onstage in the background I found out a little more about Sorry Mom.
As way of introduction could you share a little on how you got together as a band?
Taryn: Juno and I met in college and we started a punk cover band. And one day Juno said I write original songs do you guys want to hear any and maybe we can play them. They were just the best songs I’d ever heard in my life. And I said we can do something with these, we can take this somewhere.
Juno: No-one believed her and we didn’t for 2 years!
Taryn: The pandemic happened and finally in 2021 I said things are cooling down a little bit please lets go to a recording studio because we can record again.
Juno: The songs for the first EP I wrote when I was 18 (Juno Goes to the Big House) and then we recorded them when I was 21.
Taryn: In 2021 we recorded them, we put them out and immediately people had really great responses to them. We thought it’d be just our parents and friends who would be listening to it. We were putting it out as a friends and family thing.
Juno : I didn’t even tell my parents. I didn’t tell my Mom.
Taryn: Well because of (the track) ‘I Fucked Your Mom‘ maybe we shouldn’t tell our parents! Maybe we should keep it away from our Moms. And that’s the one that blew up.
Juno: That was the only one I hadn’t written previously. We wrote that in the studio. I had this lyrics notebook with the other songs written in it and kind of as a joke the night before I said I want to write a song called ‘I Fucked Your Mom‘. Taryn said what are the lyrics going to be and I said “I Fucked Your Mom” x 25!
Taryn: Juno came up with the monologue on the spot. The first take is what’s in the song. People had a really good response and people started reaching out to us to play live. Now we’re here and we’ve been playing live for almost a year and a half.
Juno: After the EP came out Kari joined up with us. She’s played since our first show with us. We think that’s the real start of Sorry Mom, when Kari joined.
Taryn: Kari is a Berkley trained bass player phenomenal and I’m from Massachusetts so that’s how we met.
And have you released just the one EP Juno Goes to the Big House to date?
Taryn: We’ve put out a single, and then we recently put out our first promotional single. We have an album coming out on 12 May called Babyface. The first single from that is out now ‘Hiccup‘ and we have two more coming out. There is supposed to be a hiccup noise in it but none of us could induce hiccups so we got a cough in there. You’re listening for the hiccup and it never comes and you listen again to see if you missed it!
Kari: Maybe eventually we’ll put out ‘Hiccup – the remix‘ where we’ll actually have a hiccup!
And is the album Babyface self-released?
Taryn: We’re all self-released and independent right now.
And is that a struggle?
Kari: It’s time consuming for sure.
Taryn: We also mix and master everything ourselves, we do all the editing. Kari does the mixing and mastering. No-one else touches anything. We design our own merch for the most part. We like keeping everything in house, creative control.
What is your current touring schedule at the moment? What’s on the horizon?
Juno: We have our first headline tour coming up on the North East, we’re going to seven or eight cities. We’re going on tour with a band Froggy. They’re very very cool. They are a younger queer punk band. Since the very beginning they reached out to us. We did a zoom concert with them during Covid. They were still in High School at the time, so they just got out of class! We had about 50 people in the zoom room. We love them and so we’re taking them on tour with us. We’re excited they are so talented.
Taryn: So that’s coming up in May for the album so its called the “The Babyface tour“. Then doing couple of one off shows around the country and hopefully expanding from there.
And what is your song creation process?
Juno: I write all the lyrics, melody and chords. What usually happens is I sit in my room with my acoustic guitar. I live in a small apartment I can’t be loud so all of our songs start as acoustic songs. Then I send a voice memo out to Kari and Taryn, and then the first time we play the song together is in the studio. They each write their own parts. The first time I heard Taryn drum parts for the entire new album was in the studio. And it was awesome because I was like wow these sound like real songs now. And the same with Kari’s bass parts.
And most of the time it works when you come?
Taryn: All of the time so far. We trust each other so much. I’m not going to write a better bass part than Kari because I’m not a bass player. I’m not going to write a better song than Juno because I’m not a song-writer or vocalist.
Juno: Because Kari wasn’t with us when we were recording the first EP, hearing the bass parts on the new songs my mind was blown. These songs sound crazy different, they have a bass player on them now!
So where are you based at the moment?
Juno: We’re all based in New York now. For our first year of touring I was still doing my senior year of college. To be honest I came very close to failing because we started playing so many shows at the very beginning. Shows every weekend. That first year we played close to 50 shows. I was showing up at a class coming off the tail of a show. I didn’t know if I was going to graduate until graduation day when they called my name. I think they got rid of me because I was on a scholarship and it was costing money to keep me there so they just wanted me out!
And finally do you have any main themes in your songs?
Juno: We have songs like ‘Molly‘ and ‘Hiccup‘ where, not that I would say there’s no meaning to them but the biggest meaning is having fun, and they sound silly, and the lyrics are silly and its tongue in cheek and it reminds me of music that I listened to when growing up like Green Day. And the other half of our songs are about the misery of growing older. So we’ve got half silly and half miserable. Our next album is called Babyface and I think the main theme is being in a room full of adults and feeling like a toddler, not really feeling like you’re one of them even though you are. The album art is a picture that we took of my niece, we put her in all my clothes. She looked like a little adult and we got some pictures of her in daycare.
Taryn: There’s also a lot of queer elements to our songs. I think that is something we are proud of.
Juno: Something I have stood by with all my writing is that I do not write songs that centre men. I don’t write songs about men. I’m sure I could but I don’t write songs about men that have fucked me over. I want young queer people to be able to listen to a band and not have that moment where they are “Wow this band is really speaking to me” and then I start singing about my boyfriend.
I have only seen you here at SXSW and you have that ferocious sound, but you also had a quieter song in the set just now and you have a beautiful voice.
Juno: Thank you! I had a wicked stutter when I was a kid and I didn’t have any friends so my Mom sent me out to theatre, because that was going to help and make me cool!
Taryn: Juno has a lovely voice, she can go from beautiful angelic to screaming into a mike – its a phenomenal range.
Juno: I’m learning how to scream a little more these days. I’m very excited about the next album because its edgier than before. On the first EP we recorded it without ever having played the songs live. There’s no screaming. It was mostly just softer vocals. And then the very first song we played I found myself screaming every single song. I feel that a lot of people who listened to our EP but haven’t seen us life don’t really know how we usually play them! So I am very excited to put out an album that is more true to how we sound live.
And I have to say Taryn you are the smiliest drummer I think I’ve seen here at SXSW!
Juno: The lack of a strong lead guitarist has never held us back because Taryn is our lead guitarist. We purposely stand out of the way on stage so that Taryn is in the middle. When you’re at a show you want to look at people that are playing crazy, and that’s not me, that’s Kari, that’s Taryn. I think its a unique thing that people like about us.
Taryn: I can’t wait for you to hear this album. The riffs are amazing, the bass is insane. Kari does one take and asks “What do you think?” and we’re like “That’s the best bass line ever”.
Juno: We did a vinyl session with this very cool company in New York where they do direct to vinyl and people put in pre-orders. I think we got 50 pre-orders. Sold out in two hours. So we just sat in the studio and played and people could order what song they wanted and then we’d play the song live in the studio and it would be cut direct to vinyl. Every single time Kari would play a new bassline, and every time it was better!
Kari: It can be boring playing the same songs over and over if you’re playing the exact same thing. This way keeps it interesting. And everyone’s is personalised. No two performances are the same.
Sorry Mom’s debut album Babyface is out on 12 May.
For more information on Sorry Mom please check out their facebook and bandcamp.
