If you’re looking for a band with some of the best energy in the rock scene at the moment, Skating Polly is for you! The band is a real family affair, founded by step-sisters Kelli Mayo (basitar, vocals, guitar) and Peyton Bighorse (guitar, vocals, drums), before officially adding brother Kurtis Mayo (drums, guitar) earlier this year. Their self-described ‘Ugly Pop’ music captured the room when we went to check them out at their headline gig at The Moon in Cardiff. Safe to say, everyone left the room with a smile on their face; the fun they have on stage is infectious!

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We caught up with the band before the show for a chat.

 

 

You've already been in the music business for a long time, having formed in 2009, can you remember the first time you realised your gift for song writing?

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Kelli: I dunno! I mean, me and Kurtis, our parents were always very, like, ‘any art you wanna do, that can be your job!’ I was trying out for plays that I was too young to try out for I was too young to try out for when I was like 8 and getting cast and stuff like that… And with music I just loved singing a lot, and I always made other people play guitar for me because I hated how it felt on my fingers. Me and Kurtis and my dad and my mom used to play music together, and I’d be the singer of our family garage band. I don't know when the first time was, but when I was 3 I wrote my very first song! It goes “Harry Potter, Harry Potter, PARENTS ARE DEAD, PARENTS ARE DEAD” *laughs*

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That’s so cute! You should release that, people would love it.

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Kelli: Maybe I should write some instrumentation for it! *laughs*

 

Can you remember your first experience with the world of rock music, or why you wanted to get into this kind of genre?

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Peyton: The first show I went to was this band ‘Millions of Dead Cops’, me and Kurtis went with his dad, I don't know if that's necessarily when I realised that I wanted to play music, but it’s whenever I first realised that there was more to music than what I had known before, which was just the radio and stuff my friends listened to.

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Kurtis: Yeah, that was a crazy show! We both didn't really know what to expect at all. It’s this hard-core band that’s been around for ages, and I broke my leg a couple months earlier so I had my boot on. So I get up to the front of the stage, and I'm ready for the first band (there's like five hard-core bands and they're all about to play) and I’m ready for this local band and everybody just goes crazy and starts throwing me around! And I’m like oh my god this is so cool! I started wearing pins in my jacket the next day at school, all my sex pistols and clash stuff, I’m like ‘I’m so cool, I’m part of the scene now’!

 

Do you think there’s something that drew you to this kind of genre, what you have self-described as ‘ugly pop’? Particularly the girls, is there maybe a feminist aspect to it?

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Kelli: A little bit. Mostly I just never knew the perfect way to describe our genre, I felt like rock was too broad of a description, I felt like punk was kind of pigeonholing us a bit, you know? Because we have some really soft songs too, lots of punk bands do, but because of the dynamics and stuff - and I kind of feel like some of the dynamics and shifts we go through are like Nirvana or something? Just the sounds, I’m not saying we’re as good as Nirvana! But whenever I say that people say that we’re a grunge band, and we’re not really grunge either! Most grunge bands don't sound like Nirvana…

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Hey speaking of Nirvana, a lot of people on your YouTube videos compare you to Kurt Cobain reincarnated! How do you feel about that?

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Kelli: Uhh, flattered! And also very uncomfortable! Because I know people who were friends with him! I mean, I f*cking idolised him like a god or something in a lot of ways, every single room in our house has a photo of Kurt Cobain, just like some people have photos of Jesus in every room. This giant portrait, several posters that aren’t even hung up…

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Kurtis: Because we just have too many! *laughs*

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Kelli: So yeah it’s incredibly flattering! But also it’s weird for me because like, Lori Barbero from ‘Babes in Toyland’, she was a really good friend of his, or some other people who’ve known him, it’s just weird having this kind of, connection? It’s like, oh sh*t, he’s a person! Oh sh*t I shouldn’t be such a freak always obsessing over him!

 

You guys supported Kate Nash last night in Belfast; the venue was upgraded due to demand which is pretty cool! How was the show?

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Kelli: It was really cool! Belfast was great, but we had to leave immediately after our set, so we could catch a ferry to Liverpool, and drive all the way down here! [Cardiff]

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Wow what a journey! How did you guys meet Kate?

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Kelli: Pretty much we had two shows set up with her, the first of three bands. I was blown away by Kate’s set! I hadn't heard much of her music but her name sounded familiar - I actually thought she was Kate Bush when I heard we were playing with her!

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Peyton: *laughs* me too!

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Kelli: So after the first show, I’d really gotten along with Kate, I was blown away by her, and I loved playing for her crowds. I was like, ‘Oh my god I f*cking love you, I’m so bummed this is over’, and she was like ‘I f*cking love you! I’m adding you to the rest of my shows!’ And so we ended up playing like 16 more shows with her that year. She’s an amazing person.

 

How does this tour compare to your previous tours?

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Kelli: This one is gonna be different because Kurtis is with us this time, obviously. We just went on our longest tour ever, and we brought Kurt. Also this one’s different because it’s our longest we’ve ever spent in Europe. The other two tours we did over here I think were 5 dates each? This is like 21 dates! We’re going outside of the UK, and a lot of crowds are sold out because of Kate.

Peyton: Also, we’re playing a few new songs in this set. Which is really exciting, but also a little terrifying! You never know how they’re gonna go night to night, they could end up a disaster!

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Kelli: Oh my god, they haven’t yet!

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Peyton: They haven’t…. yet! *laughs*

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Kelli: It is very nerve-wracking. We usually get like one set ready, and a couple of extra songs to switch out in case? But for this tour we learned like 21 songs! So it’s really scary because every sound check is also a mini-practice because we’re switching the set slightly – so far it’s been going well though!

 

You mentioned that Kurtis has joined officially now, how does that affect how you play? Does it affect older songs live?

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Kurtis: Older songs have more parts now, you know? Peyton’s really taken off with her lead guitar parts, I think it’s just bigger! It’s just louder now.

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Was it the natural decision to add you officially do you think?

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All: Yes!

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Kurtis: I’ve been playing music in Oklahoma City, with my buddies, we’d jam around and have a strobe light on and be like, man, we’re rock stars! I got kind of caught up on drums, to where I could perform. When I moved up to Washington after I finished high school, the girls were practicing and I had my kit set up in a different room and I would practice when they weren’t practicing, and then when they did the ‘New Trick’ record they were kind of thrust into a position where they had all these songs that are so great but they didn’t have all the instruments? So it was a natural thing. As far as I’m concerned they’re the best songwriters I’ve ever met!

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Kelli: Aw shucks! Kurtis would always help me and would always be my ‘taste-tester’ and I remember playing ‘Hey Sweet’ for him before anyone else, I would always run lyrics by him – there are several lines on ‘The Big Fit’ that I talked to Kurtis about, or even he just wrote! There’s a lyric on ‘Perfume For Now’, “seven odd clouds, seven odd men”, Kurt wrote that. Lots of little things like that, I trusted his taste because he knows so much about bands and he’s so good with keeping up and comparing things – he’s much more music savvy in terms of keeping track of sh*t and knowing about music than I am! I’m just like ‘I like singing this song!’ *laughs*

 

You mentioned ‘The Big Fit’ – it’s been over a year since you released that, and more recently you released your latest EP ‘New Trick’. How was it working with Veruca Salt’s Nina and Louise?

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Kelli: They were really great, the first day we were with them, we got dinner first, and instantly it was really cool! I was scared they’d be like ‘oh we have to work with some band…’ I didn’t know how much they actually wanted to do it; but then when we got to talking they were just super f*cking nice! They were like ‘how did you do this? I like this song!’ and then we started talking about our common influences, and then we started showing each other records… they showed me so much music as we were working together, me and Peyton really got into this band ‘Red Red Meat’. They showed me that album ‘Spiderland’ by ‘Slint’, I was showing them ‘Breeders’ songs; they f*cking loved The Breeders! So it was really great, it was a good experience

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Peyton: I was really nervous at first because I don’t work well in front of people that I don’t know; I work well in front of Kelli and Kurtis, and just barely! So I was really nervous but somehow immediately I was comfortable in front of Nina and Louise, and Brad who produced it. It was just really easy working with them, and in front of them, I wasn’t afraid to say my ideas.

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Kelli: Yeah it was a really comfortable space, we were cracking jokes all the time. And they would come up with things that I didn’t think my voice could reach, I didn’t think I had the physical capabilities to do so, and sure enough I could! I just found different depths of my voice on that EP, and also just watching them constantly, because we were kind of writing in the studio, what we would do pretty much is come up with like, a billion f*cking layers, different backup vocals and guitar parts, and then in the mix Brad took most of it out but kept the good stuff; it’s just insane watching how fast they can come up with layers, and then listening to the record like, those layers really help; the layers move the song. Except for ‘Louder in Outer Space’; the other songs don’t have that many parts, ‘Black Sky’ doesn’t, but there’s just so many layers that keep the song moving.

 

What’s the coolest story behind a song on the EP do you think? I noticed that particularly ‘Hail Mary’ has a really cool video, lots of imagery.  

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Kelli: Yeah that’s pretty interesting, it’s kind of sad but…. The song is supposed to be about a princess or whatever – in my head I’m always picturing my songs being like fairy tales, or very ‘Game-of-Thrones’-y, I don’t know why! But it’s about someone who has her prince, has her money, has all these things, but they’re physically making her sick, hurting her, and it’s like a thing where everyone is like ‘you can leave this stuff, and you can still be you!’ And you know you don’t need that stuff to be you, and the narrator is begging her to drop all the shit and not be worried to be her. In real life it’s about a friend I have who has really bad patterns of sacrificing herself for a guy, or actually toxic things, she thinks that that’s part of her persona and that that’s who she has to be so, yeah it’s kinda sad.

 

Where do you think your music will go from here? Are you discovering new influences as you’re on the road?

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Kurtis: Thin Lizzy’s been a big influence lately!

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Kelli: Yeah we’ve been listening to thin Lizzy so f*cking much.

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Kurtis: It’s something I never imagined myself getting into. I think one of the newer songs that we’re working on I’m dead on trying to play a thin Lizzy drum part.

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Kelli: Which one?

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Kurtis: Queen for a Day. Like ‘jailbreak’ starts with that like ‘bam!’ and so does Queen for a Day! That’s where I got that from.

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Peyton: Kurtis and Kelli go really metal whenever I’m not around.

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All: *laugh*

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Kelli: I mean the most metal stuff I actually enjoy is like ‘Queens of the Stone Age’, ‘Melvins’, ‘Babes in Toyland’, ‘Katastrophy Wife’. I don’t enjoy other metal really…. Actually there’s this song called ‘In League with Satan’, yeah I do enjoy that song! But it’s so f*cking fun to get in our garage and play total fraud metal!

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Peyton: I’ll be off running an errand or something and I’ll come back home to this crazy metal song and its like, guys! What are you doing! *laughs*

 

One last question: because you guys started off pretty young, what advice would you give to a young artist who wants to get into the music business?

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Kelli: It’s hard when you’re young because you’re always trying to be older, that’s hard if you wanna be taken seriously, that feels like the natural thing to do – but don’t try to be older because that will just highlight your age. Don’t try to be anyone else just be yourself. Our first album – I wasn’t trying to be ‘cutesy’ when I wrote a song called ‘Rainbows’, I thought that was cool and that sh*t worked at the time; and now it is f*cking adorable right! But it would have been lame as hell if I was like ‘heroiiiin’! Just be you, and be whatever inspires you – today I was doing an email interview and Kurt was like ‘you should be more specific about what inspires you’, and I was like, I don’t wanna tell people that I’ve stolen lines from ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Doctor Who’! They’ll think that I’m lame! *laughs* But, well, that’s me though. I enjoy those things and I can have serious songs and I can be serious even enjoying the childlike things that I enjoy still.

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Peyton: I would just say don’t be too self-conscious when you’re writing. I wasn’t self-conscious at all when I was younger, because I didn’t realise that I had any reason to be self-conscious about it, which helped a lot I think. I was able to write more and express myself more when I wasn’t thinking about it.

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Kurtis: I think sometimes the most simple thing can be the most expressive. A lot of the things I like would be the most bare-bones, stripped down stuff, and I think that’s usually the best place to start. 1, 2, 3 chords for a song, one drum beat.

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Kelli: I think that when kids think that music is like a class that you can ace or something instead of thinking of it as art, and if you just enjoy yourself then… work on your music-ship and work on your craftsmanship but put the song first.