GET TO KNOW PUDDLEJUMPER

I sat down with Soleil Engin and Hannah Wilson-Black (over Zoom, of course) to talk inspiration, process, and aspirations for their quarantine-born dreampop band Puddlejumper.

What inspired you to start Puddlejumper?

Soleil: I’ve been playing guitar since I was seven, and I started writing music when I was seventeen. For a long time, I was just focused on technical learning and becoming the best technical guitarist I could be. When I started writing my own music, I came to a very obvious obstacle, which was the fact that I was a guitarist and songwriter and lyricist who couldn't sing.

I got to college in Chicago and met Hannah in a social science class, and I thought she was super cool because her music was already recorded and on Bandcamp. The second I heard her voice, I just knew she was the person I wanted to sing my music, so I said “would you like to collaborate on this project and perform at some on-campus events?” and she said sure. We performed on campus a little bit and then were sent home [because of COVID-19], and that’s when I decided I wanted to start recording and releasing my music, and I of course wanted Hannah to be the vocalist to work with on that, and that’s kind of how things started.

Hannah: We played at two events together. I don’t think we really thought of ourselves as a band (at least I didn’t), and then when we came home, Soleil asked me to be on a couple of tracks for her album, and I actually did not realize that i was now in a band. I was like oh, I’m featured, that’s nice; it would be cool if I could do the whole album or almost all of the album; that would be a cool project. Lo and behold, I was in a band without knowing it, so that was a very fun surprise.

S: That was funny, actually, because you contacted me and were like “hey, so not to be greedy or anything, but would it be okay if you put my name in the credits for the song?” At first, I thought you were just making sure that I would put your name in the credits for legal purposes. I didn’t even realize that you didn’t think you were part of the band until like a week later.

How would you best describe your music to someone who has never listened to it?

S: I think our music, sonically, is very dreamy. I honestly didn’t have a genre in mind when I started releasing, but the first zine that released an interview about us referenced us as a dreampop band, and I was like “I guess we’re a dreampop band.”

I think the lyrics offer an interesting juxtaposition to that, because a lot of our lyrics are more serious, more emotional, more loaded, and so, while the music might be something you could just listen to while doing homework or listen to in the background, the lyrics are what engage the listener and kind of draw them in, and are more in your face (in a pleasant way, I hope).

H: I wasn’t aware that dreampop was a genre until like a month ago, so that shows the different music scenes that we’re coming from. [In our music,] there’s a mellow sound but darker themes. I feel like Soleil’s lyrics kind of make listening to the songs like you're taking a shower and washing off something or somebody that was holding you back from something. It’s definitely very emotional, self-reflective music.

“I feel like Soleil’s lyrics kind of make listening to the songs like you’re taking a shower and washing off something or somebody that was holding you back from something”

Who/what are some of your creative/musical influences?

S: This is always such a funny question for me, because the bands that inspired me to start writing music were hardcore punk bands. When I first started writing music and lyrics, I was writing music that I imagined playing with a five or six-piece band with screaming vocals –– really heavy, hardcore music –– and then I couldn’t find bandmates, which was kind of the first problem, and then I just realized that wasn’t the music that my mind wanted to create.

In terms of the music that I listen to and the music that I write, my biggest musical influences are bands like Movements, Knocked Loose, La Dispute, and Touché Amoré. They’re bands that, lyrically, are just very different from a lot of what I’ll call standard pop music in terms of the issues that they address or the ways that the lyrics themselves are phrased. A lot of the songs don’t even have a structure that’s really standard (like verse, chorus, verse, chorus). So, because those were the songs that initially inspired me to start writing music, I think that had a very heavy influence on the music I write now, even if they're totally separate genres and aesthetics and all those things. I'd say in terms of the musical aesthetic itself –– in terms of being dreamlike and soft and all that –– my biggest influences are definitely Lala Lala, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, and Current Joys. 

H: My answer is going to be quite different, largely because I'm not a guitarist and also because I am not in any way involved in the LA punk scene. I've been to a handful of concerts, and for a lot of them, because I don't live in the city, I would go into DC. I've been to a bunch of stadium concerts in DC; I don't really have a go-to music venue in my area besides open mics and stuff that I’ve performed at. I would say, as a vocalist, the stuff that influences me tends to be kind of a sad girl pop situation, like Lana del Rey, Halsey, Lorde, sometimes Taylor Swift; and 90s Adult Contemporary, like Sarah McLaughlin, Tori Amos –– things that your parents listened to. I listened to a lot of country growing up; my parents just handed me down all their CDs.

I feel like –– not so much in Soleil’s music, because it doesn't lend itself to this –– but in my solo music, I think you can kind of hear a twang going on sometimes, which is super weird, because I was not even born in Virginia. There's some just amazing country and bluegrass vocalists out there, Reba McEntire, the Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks), and Alison Krauss are some of them. I actually took a vocal performance workshop in Nashville, so that's kind of where I'm coming from; very different, but somehow it works.

What was your inspiration behind “Blue Glass”?

S: That's a funny story. So, I had a boyfriend that I dumped last August. I was over him, it was perfect, I had a great summer, no regrets, no nothing. And then I got to college, and within the first two weeks, my roommate was probably asked out like five times –– something absurd –– and it just seemed like everyone around me was coupling up. Even just the fact that they had found really close friends somehow just during orientation and I hadn’t, I felt really alone, isolated, and kind of just like I made the wrong decision. Like, oh my god, if I hadn't left this person, I would still have this person; I would have someone. It just made me very reflective on that relationship. So, “Blue Glass” was really inspired by a feeling of what could have been if things had gone differently; kind of still understanding that things ended at a good place, but wondering what would have happened if they hadn't gone down that path or if we had stayed together through college. So, it's really just about the reflections that I feel like follow any breakup, in a sense, just the what-could-have-been’s.

H: Yeah, it definitely rings to me like sort of the hazy feeling that comes with bittersweet memories, where it's a little bit like looking through rose colored glasses but in reverse, which makes sense. I feel like that's a very human thing to do. I think the experience you're describing is a big college student experience. [At school,] I also was like, “how did these people get friends? I went to sleep at 10:30 last night and somehow between the hours of 10:30 and 3am, everyone had some deep conversations in the lounge and now there are five friend groups in my building and I'm not part of any of them.”

What message do you hope to convey to people through your music?

S: I think the biggest thing I want people to get out of our music is really just to feel something, which is really vague and really general and unclear, but I think evoking emotion and memory and experience is truly one of the most powerful things music can do for us in the sense that a lot of the music that I've gravitated to throughout my lifetime has been music that I could listen to and then sit back and relive a childhood memory, or dream about my future, or cry about a middle school experience I had. I think that's one of the most beautiful things music can do for us, so, more than anything, I want my music to be something that people can listen to and just remember something –– feel something. Maybe that something will change the next day they listen to it, or the next month they listen to it, or really just throughout their lifetimes. I think, at its core, I really just hope that my music can bring something out of people and enhance their experience of life in some way.

H: I think, in my experience of doing my own songwriting, I feel like it's really about self reflection and creating narratives out of the mess that is life. It's not like there's a beginning, middle and end and there are a couple of subplots and it's all pretty clear. Everything is going on all at once, and how you experience or think about something that happened a year ago is very different than how you experienced it when it was happening or [how you] anticipated it before it was happening. So, I think Puddlejumper’s music really gets you, quote unquote, in your feelings. It's about sharing something, too, because so many of the experiences that we have as people are shared, and people will have things in common with each other; that's what makes everyone able to connect.

“it’s kind of a free for all, but it’s a beautiful chaos.”

How has your location influenced your music, creative vision, and/or performances?

S: I think Puddlejumper has a really interesting creative process behind the scenes that not a lot of people get to see. I will record or write and record on a guitar, and then I'll send that recording out to my friend Alex Caceros, who plays bass for us, my friend Jack Downey, who's recorded drums for us, my friend Tate Robinson who's recorded synths for us, and of course Hannah will do keys and vocals on songs. They'll send me back their parts, and then I splice everything together and produce it; that's how a song gets made for us. I don't actually know what it's like to be with these people recording in the studio or even just recording in the same room. I do think that has heavily influenced our sound in the sense that you have all of that artistic creation coming together in one finished product that I think is really beautiful; it's kind of a free for all, but it's a beautiful chaos.

What are your goals for Puddlejumper? Where do you see it going in the future?

S: My biggest dream is to play a show at the Smell. When I moved to California, I was just kind of a misfit in the area where I lived, and then, around my sophomore year of high school, I discovered this DIY punk venue called the Smell, and it very quickly became a home, in a sense. I went there multiple times every week, and it's consistently always been my dream to play a show there. I’d love to go on tour at some point and to start playing live. I think the performance aspect of puddle jumper is definitely kind of important and something that I want to pursue more because it's something that we really haven't gotten to pursue at all since we’re a project that started in quarantine.

H: When it’s safe again, I would really like to get to know a little bit more about the Chicago music scene and also play some shows on campus.

What are some of your interests/hobbies outside of music?

S: I'm doing an internship for Women in Global Health as a policy intern, so I spend a lot of my time researching health policy for various nations, researching gender equity policy for various nations, attending UN and World Health Organization meetings, taking notes, and helping draft policy. And of course, throughout the school year, that's kind of replaced with my homework and classwork and whatnot. On a more recreational note, I skateboard and longboard, I do watercolors, and I'm also a music and advocacy writer for soul talk magazine and a music writer for slumber mag.

H: I’m very tapped into the traditional literary scene; I read a lot, I do a lot of fiction writing (mostly short stories, but for a while I was seeking publication for a novel but that's kind of just been put on hold because my interest has been drawn to other things). I also do my own songwriting and make my own music that can be found on Bandcamp under my name. At school, my area of interest, besides writing, is environmentalism. I was doing an internship for a bit this summer where I was basically researching Maryland and Virginia’s plans to restore the Chesapeake Bay. If anybody's curious about oyster restoration, I'm your girl.

“I realized that I could do more with my art than just kind of put it into the world for people to enjoy; I could actually use it to create a change bigger than myself”

Has your work in school influenced puddlejumper at all? If so, how?

S: I realized that I could do more with my art than just kind of put it into the world for people to enjoy; I could actually use it to create a change bigger than myself, and that change is obviously not very big right now because we've only been able to donate about $200 from Bandcamp sales, but every penny makes a difference, and I think just the fact that we're able to donate that money and have an impact is is very influenced by my work in public policy and social justice.

H: I'm also a creative writing major, and I think my coursework just helps me in the sense that, if somebody sends me lyrics, I can tinker with them a little bit to make sure the rhythm makes sense, or to make something clear. [Soleil and I] both took a poetry class this past past school year, and I think that was helpful for training my brain.

S: One of our songs on the EP, new lies, which is actually the title track, was actually inspired by a sonnet that I wrote in that poetry class. I wrote it for an assignment and I didn't even like it that much –– it didn't even really make sense –– but then I was reading it back and I was like, “these would be really cool song lyrics”. And so I kind of ripped it apart and pieced it back together as the lyrics and inspiration for one of our songs.

Puddlejumper’s EP “New Lies” will be out on all platforms on October 16th. Check them out on instagram at @puddlejumprrr

Responses have been edited for clarity.