Usually, when one sits down with a solo artist to see how they got to their current career trajectory, there’s a fairly predictable collection of experiences. Learned guitar from their dad. Was in a bunch of shitty bands in high school, or college, that didn’t go anywhere. Finally got a big break, etc. Then there’s the other option–that they blew up very young, and are now finally finding themselves as adults after the chaos of sudden fame. The Hayley Willams arc, if you will.
Enter Cincinnati indie-pop artist Maura Weaver, who was already learning the ropes of life on the road when most of us were still cramming for AP Biology. The former frontwoman of pop-punk act Mixtapes describes her experiences as a literal, actual teenager thrust into the turbulent sphere of professional musicianship as both ‘a great way to learn how to tour‘ and ‘genuinely traumatic’. Yeah, that tracks. ‘Tale as old as time,’ we both sang, half-joking and half-knowingly horrified.
Weaver and I met over Zoom to chat about her winding and ‘often unbelievable’ road to becoming a solo artist in her own right, and spent roughly an hour talking (‘I’m a yapper, I’m a reply guy’) at breakneck speed. We were wearing essentially matching outfits and kept interrupting each other out of sheer excitement. Anyway–her path after Mixtapes disbanded was rocky, and she stopped creating altogether for a while. Getting back into the saddle took some time, but a call from the legendary Mike Park of Asian Man Records helped reroute her to doing music again.
‘After all of that, I moved to Chicago and was working some restaurant jobs. But then Mike Park hit me up, he said ‘do you want to do some songs together for Ogikubo Station,‘ …then I got more and more involved. I came back to Cincinnati. I had been touring with The Homeless Gospel Choir, too, and playing in all these bands, I think I did over 100 shows in 2019. I kept getting sick. My body was just like–you have to stop.’
Despite our own self-imposed obstacles to getting an honest-to-god interview done, we managed to cut to the core of what really prompted Weaver to seriously consider a solo career: COVID.
‘So then COVID happened, and I just thought: if not now, what’s the point? Like, when else am I going to be able to do this? I was finally single for the first time in basically my whole adult life, I lived alone, and I was unemployed, so I had all of this time and–and I couldn’t really go anywhere. I would just get really stoned and go for walks by myself, and that’s how I wound up writing a ton of songs. I still do that, actually.’
I thanked Weaver profusely for such a nice segue into my next question about her writing and studio process for her most recent album, Strange Devotion, a shockingly earnest and lovely collection of songs that range from fuzzy toned-down punk all the way to acoustic folk. I could ramble about this album for a long, long time, but the fact of the matter is that this is a truly excellent record. I’d never heard Weaver’s work before and was stunned. I’ve always had a soft spot for folk albums, but found the lack of variety on them to be a deterrent. Strange Devotion avoids this issue completely. “The Face” is a stellar indie-rock tune that channels The Go-Go’s; riff-centric and bouncy. And then there are the confessional ballads. When I say that “Museum Glass” steamrolled me emotionally, please believe me. This is what Phoebe Bridgers wishes she was writing.
I specifically mentioned her Spotify playlist of inspirational tracks and how delighted I was to see the (for lack of a better word) rather esoteric mishmash of artists on there. I immediately recognized Sheryl Crow and The Grateful Dead as huge influences on songs like “Prince” and “Breakfast”, but was pleasantly surprised to see Rush and They Might Be Giants on there as well. I asked if she intentionally collected all these songs because she wanted to emulate specific sounds, or if she just threw them on the playlist as they came to her organically. After we squealed about the upcoming Rush tour a bit, she revealed the answer was, predictably, both. She was pleased that I clocked the Dead sound in particular. Then we finally got to the meat of the thing.
‘I think my first album still had a lot of other people in it. Strange Devotion is the first time I felt like I was able to say like…no, I want to do things this way. I’d just bring stuff to John Hoffman, who recorded the album for me, and say ‘we’re gonna do it like this.’ Even when I was in a bunch of other bands, I would write songs now and then, but I mostly let other people take the wheel…I finally felt like the songs were actually good and I knew how I wanted to do them this time.’
Weaver is itching to do more; her sense of creative momentum was palpable even through the rancid confines of a video meeting. She’s about to embark on a Midwest/East Coast tour with Future Teens and ADJY, and has dreams of doing a proper West Coast route as well. And there’s plenty of material for future releases already written, it seems:
‘I think I might do an EP, too, because we recorded like 16 songs for the album but only 10 of them wound up in the final release. I write way too many songs. Like, I’ll come home and half-write two or three of them literally every day. Actually, wait, let me check how many voice memos I have…’
The answer is 4,380.
Strange Devotion credits:
Maura Weaver – vocals and guitar
John Hoffman – bass, drums, and percussion
