Ladada, and other Stuff Like That: An Interview with Ellen Kempner of Palehound

Ellen Kempner, of the band Palehound, is a 19 year old songwriter. Their 90's-inspired (part Breeders, part Liz Phair, part something totally new) debut EP, Bent Nail, is available on bandcamp. We talked a bit about songwriting after their set at the CMJ showcase for Exploding In Sound Records at Silent Barn. Palehound has a show this Saturday in Pleasantville, NY. If you're in the tri-state area, you should really make the scene.
How do you feel?

I feel slightly, just like, I’m just really on edge slash kind of embarrassed just because like all of my favorite musicians are in that room and just, I have these super high expectations that I made for the show and I don’t know whether or not I met them, it’s just like a really uneasy feeling where it’s like “Oh, shit, everyone I respect is in that room.” And it’s...I don’t know what’s goin’ on.

How do you approach songwriting?

Normally I don’t voluntarily approach it, it’s just kind of like, I’ll be in the middle of a pretty inconvenient situation like in a class or like riding my bike or something, and I’ll just kind of think up a melody with some kind of lyric attached to it, and the next chance I’ll get I’ll sit with a guitar and think up chords and more lyrics and more melodies, and just kind of branch off that. But my phone is full of like a million voice recordings of me just like “ladada”, stuff like that.

How and when did you start writing music?

I started writing music when I was ten. I don’t remember how. My dad wrote songs when I was growing up and I was like, “Oh man, my dad’s so cool! I wanna be as cool as my dad!” So then I started writing songs that were really bad about like school and like, boys. I have a whole binder full of them. Pretty bad.

Do your influences just show up in your writing or are you intentionally inspired by bands?

It depends. It depends on what I’m listening to. It depends on how serious I am about a band that I love. There are some bands that I definitely admit to like, ripping off. Not directly, but I’ll listen to a certain part of a song and be like “Fuck, like, I need to make that happen.” or something. But mainly it’s just from listening to the same bands over and over and over, and making that kind of my taste, and writing inspired by them, but not like completely ripping off.

Do you have any advice for young artists?

Yeah, I think following music can be really disheartening sometimes just because it’s such a competitive field and you end up playing these bum shows sometimes and your friends will come but no one else will. But it’s really worth sticking with because the longer you go with it, the more you practice and the more you perform, the better it gets, the better the experience of performing live and writing music is.

Photo by Rachel Barrish.