Like the majority of you, all of us in the Philadelphia area are staying at home, learning to adapt to our “new normal.” MAGNET is checking in with local musicians to see how and what they’re doing during this unprecedented time. Photos by Chris Sikich.
Klaproth: There’s a lot of positive that came out of this time for me but also a lot of negative. The negatives are unfortunate: no band practice and jamming with my buds, plus the loss of gig income that would help us comfortably fund things like merch, music videos and the physical printing of our album.
We currently have our first full-length album finished, but celebrating that right now feels like a bust. Instead, we’ve been releasing singles from the album paired with music videos we have been creating with some really talented folks.
That leads me to the positive. We’ve had a bunch of time to spend on music videos!!! Our drummer directed “Come To Us.” I dreamed up “Flowers, Flowers,” a collaboration that our friend Andrew from the band House Plant is currently finishing up. And we’ve got some more collaborations in the works!
It’s been fun to have the time and freedom to get creative with our art. Miss Cantaloupe has always been a multidisciplinary art troupe, so getting to delve into the performance aspect has been nice. I’ll be getting together with a small writing team soon to start writing our play for Beardfest 2021, which will be one of our bigger shows of next year.
Beyond that, the future of gigs and gigging is uncertain. We’ve been hesitant to take gigs in such an unsteady time. I personally would love to book a “Flowers, Flowers” tour on the West Coast to promote our new album and camp with the band in the Redwoods of California.
I just need to manifest the perfect band van and a dope list of sick shows at awesome venues that will actually pay. Ha ha. It’s a lot more work than it seems from the outside looking in, but it’s so worth it to live out the daydream.
And people need music to get by right now. It helps us all get to our happy place.