Interview by Miriam Cadoni
LA’s based alternative hard rock band Stitched Up Heart are back with their follow-up to their 2016’s debut album “Never Alone”, “Darkness” which was released via Another Century/Red Music. The band decided to used an innovative promotional method by offering most of their singles before the actual album release. Let’s discover more about together with the affable singer Mixi.
How are you Mixi? How are you feeling?
I’m doing pretty good. I’m trying to stay busy in all this craziness. Obviously, our tour got postponed due to the virus. So, we’re doing a lot of writing and we’re still practicing. In the meantime, I’m fostering some kittens and they are keeping me in good spirits.
So, you previously mentioned the tour and I think you were referring to the tour with Sebastian Bach. Now, I was wondering to know how personally you were feeling about it and how are you fighting the consequences at home and not having some social contact?
You know, I have my moments. Ups and down. Like one minute I feel grateful that I’ve even had such a comfortable place where to stay, that I have people in my life such as my family to talk to, that they’re healthy and I’m healthy. But, there are moments where I want to be out on the road. I wish I could do stuff. I think when you are in isolation that’s when your brain get a little bit crazy and this is the most dangerous time for anyone who deals with depression and anxiety. Right now, there are definitely a lot of people that are struggling. Personally speaking, I’m trying to stay positive as possible and I think I’m doing a pretty good job. I’m meditating a lot and I’m just trying to do my part by staying inside and not being a problem.
This was your personal take on these precarious times. Considering that Stitched Up Heart has at this moment released their second album, how will this affect the band?
Right now, there’s nothing we can do. The whole world is shut down and we’re just doing Facebook live sessions to try to stay connected. We’ve already played some acoustic performances and we keep on writing a lot. We are still getting used to the fact that we’re coming and staying at home and writing while before we used to have writing sessions and straight go out on the road. We’re attempting to stay busy and yeah, it does affect the band. Naturally, we make money when we are on tour, so far we’re managing with the situation because we can afford to pay our bills. Since we are missing the stage, we’re hoping that the shows will start soon again.
Since it’s our first time together, for who is not still familiar with Stitched Up Heart, would you like to introduce how the band got together?
Actually, I put the band together in 2010. I’ve been in the music industry for a while now and during that period, I was on a major label for a minute, then I dropped, and I almost gave up and rode back to Florida, where I’m originally from. And if I was leaving Los Angeles for Christmas to see my parents, I had to confess to my family that this industry is so rough and I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Well, they were really supportive of me and told me that I have to go back and finish what I’ve started. At last, I went back to LA then I decided to put Stitched Up Heart together, to put up my heart and that’s pretty much where it started.
It was recently announced your second full-length called “Darkness” will be released in the spring of 2020 via Another Century/Red Music. So far, what can you share about its general production?
We really tried to draw some directions possible for creating something new. My big big thing is trying to be innovative, try to create something that doesn’t sound like something else. You know, our last album was “Never Alone” and we couldn’t easily repeat something that can be an extension of that but we have decided to expand and try new things. We have written 70 songs for this record and somehow, the last 11 or 12 stuck. Then, there are 60 songs chilling somewhere, who knows if they’ll see the light of day. It was just trying new things, trying to evolve and do something different. I don’t ever want that any album to sound like that last one. So, it will always be something new and fresh if it’s coming from us.
You just mentioned these 60 songs, so do you think that maybe in the future might be a good start for a new probable release or do you plan them to not use them?
Honestly, I don’t know and I don’t think so because I think by the time we write the next record, we’ll have new ideas. I usually write about what happens in life. While our new album “Darkness” for me lyrically I went through a lot of stuff again, instead “Never Again” was about hope because we just got signed and everything was going great. We did manage to see the light at the end of the tunnel and then “Darkness”, it was more about going into that rollercoaster of life again and stuff happens. However, there is still hopefulness because I don’t want to keep people down. In the end, I want some sort of positive message. We’re also trying to be real, I don’t think that sometimes we are honest to people because everybody is scared to be vulnerable and tell people what’s really going on with them. I think opening up and sharing the real stuff that nobody talks about sometimes is just authentic. I want to be as real as possible and nothing don’t look as sunshine and rainbows. However, those negative things that happened, you learn from it and unfortunately, you go through what you go through. Pretty much, it sums what this album is about.
Now you mentioned some life lessons that you have experienced, which are the differences that you can notice between “Darkness” and “Never Alone”? And about life life lessons, which are the one that you have learned in this long period of time between 2016 and 2020?
Oh man, we learned a lot. For example, on what to do and not what to do. “Never Alone” was written after our first record deal as a band. Finally, we did find after 5 years of doing it ourselves and booking our tours. So, it was like a light at the end of the tunnel. It was almost 5 years ago when I quit drinking and for this, “Never Alone” represents some sort of rebirth. Practically, I was just a baby with a pair of new eyes. I was like: “Oh yay, life is great and awesome”. Then, you tour, you go through things that really really questions your own ability to do what you love. You question yourself whether you are good or not, whether you are talented or not. And, a lot of “Darkness” is about questioning myself about “Am I worthy of it?”, “Am I good enough for this?”. I think the biggest difference between “Never Alone” and “Darkness” is just what I write about life, what it was at the time so, that’s why probably none of those other songs will end up on the next record. They represent the past and whatever I go through in this record who knows what I’ll have to say for the next one.
So, you mentioned these songs and quite a bunch of them were already released. In particular, I’m referring to “Lost”, “Darkness” (video) , “Problems” (video) and “Crooked Halo” (video) Would you like to share more details about these singles? And how collaborating on “Lost” together with Godsmack‘s Sully Erna?
Oh man, Sully is just a force of nature. We became friends a couple of years ago and he’s a genuine person that tries to help out artists and people that he believes in. We became friends overtime and we wanted to help us out. So, I asked him if he wanted to sing on a song, not exactly thinking that he would say yes. He just replied that it has to be the right song. We had already finished the whole record and I asked him: “What about this song?” and we went with the flow and what happened. After we finished writing the song, I flew out to Nashville to write his part on that song because he didn’t want to just send his vocals through email. It’s not sentimental and also Godsmack was building their studio there, he simply told them to go there and we would have figured it out from there. You know, the very very very last night that I was there, we finally got there and I just told him: “I don’t even care what you say, Sully. Just sing. Just burp in the microphone. I don’t care what you do”. Finally, we finished recording his part and on the way back, he was like: “Who’s gonna sing my parts?” and I replied: “Probably, whoever comes on tour with us can sing it or we can have some guest vocalist (preferably you)”. It’s in this exact moment that the tour with Godsmack came in. So, a couple of months run buy, and here we are on tour with them. It has been really awesome and on that song, we didn’t do any huge push behind it. We had a plan to record a full video-clip but considering the fact that Sully would have to fly straight out from the East Coast to LA, we just opted to record a little live performance during our tour with their photographer/videographer. Right now, it’s getting close to a million views and it’s growing on its own. People’s getting really curious about it. I just wanted to capture a moment of our biggest tour we’ve done so far.
As I have previously mentioned before, in addition to “Lost”, we also have “Darkness”, “Problems” and “Crooked Hello”. What would you like to add about them?
So, of course, “Darkness” is the title of our album and I think it goes hand in hand with what I was experiencing throughout the lyrics. Actually, it was inspired by some of our closest band followers, or better our friends. They were going through a rough period where they thought that life wasn’t worth living. They didn’t want to be around and I was trying to pull them out of that place. It was really, really, really difficult. In effect, I was trying to be with them, I was trying to write something for them. We go through dark times over and over and I lose count of how many times I pulled them out. The fact is that if you make it once, you’ll make it alive twice because you have been there before and I know that you’ll make it alive. But please, don’t be afraid of the darkness because you can do it. Instead, “Problems” is about literally being married with your problems. I think it’s self-explanatory [she starts singing the song]. While for “Warrior”, we have even shot a music video. It was fun to shoot and it’s one of my favourite songs because it’s super-fun to play live. It’s about people fighting, whether it is military related or not. The cause can be quite diverse but in our song we question if they’re fighting for the right reason. It’s like being just a warrior and right for the things you worry and care about. The issue is that we keep on releasing singles and they are all different [laughs]. Lastly, we have our latest single “Crooked Halo’‘. It’s just related to when you are messed up. We’re not some angels, you know, and it’s about just admitting it, and accepting it.
Personally speaking, the single “Darkness” does reflect me a lot but I’ve learned that even in dark times, you are supposed to gain and learn new lessons.
Totally. The two girls that I was fighting to try to pull them out at the end they made it. One of those two girls, now she’s got married, she bought a house and she’s got two cute puppies. I don’t know how many times I was there for her and how many times, I thought that maybe she won’t make it. There were times where we thought she was dead and she would disappear from the face of the earth. Somehow, she has managed to find her way to the hospital every time she was in that low place. Even if you think that the world would be better without you in it, you are completely wrong. If compared to before, her life right now is really different. At the time, she was really stressed out and she was living in a Cinderella situation. Her mother died quite early and she didn’t feel wanted or loved. Most often, she thought that the world would be better without her. After going through this with her, over and over again and with the other friend that she was self-harming herself to the point that it would almost bleed out of death, I felt like they were pullings me in while I was trying to pull them out and all this together, it was really hard. Subsequently, I realized that they cannot be afraid of that anymore because they made out before that situation. It’s easy to say, but you have to make through it and try to hold on as tight as you can.
I would personally thank you for openly talking, come forward about mental health issues and be a sort of advocate for treating these topics in your songs.
Yeah, sure. I hope it helps whoever is reading these words and I appreciated your words because music and lyrics can heal you. You can use it for anything you want, if not which is the purpose of creating music? Somehow, my goal is to help people through it. So, some people are passionate about politics and love and they want to sing about them. Instead, I feel there’s some internal introspective battles that we don’t talk about and it’s time to start to bring out all this stuff and speak about it.
As mentioned before, your second album “Darkness” was released on March 13th and the vast majority of the album was already dropped out through several singles. Don’t you think that releasing too many singles might offer too many spoilers to the fans/listeners?
Yeah, sure there’s that. On the other hand, the way that people listen to music nowadays is on the vast majority of music streaming services. So, this is supposedly to happen anyway. While the people that still believe in buying albums, are still the same one. Some people want the physical copy, that’s all. I think we did fine with the sale even though everything was shut down. I don’t know if we would like it if we had in the ordinary way but for us, it wasn’t horrible. Everybody’s pretty happy despite the fact that the world was shutting down the day of our release.
Well, the logical reasoning that it follows is: “Yeah, you have released a substantial amount of singles, people listen to it via digital streaming but in order to stimulate the fan, what the physical format offers more than liquid and streaming music?
We had vinyl records, posters and t-shirts and by buying one of these items you also get the chance to digitally download our album. Even if you buy a CD, you can still play it on your iPad or iPhone. Of course, my favourite were the vinyls and we almost completely sold out them. For us, it was the first time we ever got to do them and it’s something exclusive which won’t be created again. So, it was pretty much cool.
You recently mentioned your involvement in kitten rescuing, would you like to say more about it?
Yeah, as soon as I found out that the tour was postponed, I ordered a pizza and I called the kitten rescue to offer my availability to help to milk some bottle baby kittens. They need to be fed every couple of hours and unfortunately, their mama is not around anymore. So, I became a mom and at the same time, they saved my soul. Probably, I knew already that I would be stuck inside because we got bumped out of the tour. Moreover, it’s not me helping them but on the contrary, it’s more they helping me. At the moment, I’m helping the organisation Kitten Rescue and they can be reached out at the following website: www.kittenrescue.org. There you can find all the information and they love donations.
I have to do this question, in a way, tho’ I am already aware of its reply: what 2020 has in store for Stitched Up Heart in terms of everything [laughs]?
I know, well, we have still some 6 or 7 festivals that they might be still playing and subsequently, we have moved our tour with Sebastian Bach to the fall. As for now, the festivals are still happening as soon as everything starts to open up, we’re hoping, finger crossed, that the festivals and the tour will happen. We’re just ready, we cannot wait to go back on the road.
Do you also have any plans to come in Europe?
Oh, God I would love to and actually, we were talking about coming to Europe during the fall but when Sebastian Bach‘s tour got moved, they practically coincided with the planned date in Europe. Financially, it made much more sense to stay here in the US and play those dates that are already booked. Unfortunately, trying to figure out visas in this whole situation can be quite risky since there’s the high probability of postponement.
So, Mixi, this was actually my last question. Please be free to say hi to both your American and overseas fans and then, our readers. I really thank you for your time and kindness, now it’s your space.
I thank you for taking the time. On a side note, just don’t let the darkness get you. When it seems like nothing else is worth leaving for, just give it one more day and hang in there. I promise you that you’ll find a positive thing to look forward to. The positive thing to wake up for. It’s really hard but just begin to practice every day and search for something good everyday.
Links:
facebook.com/StitchedUpHeartRoc
twitter.com/stitchedupheart
instagram.com/stitchedupheart/
stitchedupheart.org/