Another day and another timeout for Pulling Up The Tweeds, focusing on getting to know some of the incredible acts that are playing at this year’s Tweed River Music Festival in Vermont. Today we catch up with Lisa Pimentel from No Small Children. I could try and put a tag on the trio, but they do a much better job at talking shop on what they do in their spare time (not that they have much with all the stuff they do outside of the music realm), melodies, hooks and melting faces at night and molding minds by day. Check it out.

RLR:  For the fine folks who may not be as familiar with your work, how would you sum up your sound in a short phrase ?

LP: Our sound in a short phrase… a hodgepodge of all of our experiences. We love melodic songs (especially with heavy guitars), and we love music that has badass, unapologetic essence to it… that thing you can’t put your finger on that happens in all different genres of music…punk, jazz, hardcore, rock, hip-hop, symphonic, funk/soul, pop etc…. The three of us have very different musical backgrounds, but we agree on this and hope that you can hear it when you listen to our music.

RLR:  The tagline on your website is “rockin chicks by night, school teachers by day”, something many musician folks deal with (myself included)…the ‘day job’, the thing that allows us to live our dream of performance when it may not be paying the bills. How do you all find the time and balance to keep on doing what you love? Do you draw inspiration from the old “9-5″…though I know being a teacher is much more intensive than that!

LP: When you are doing what you love and you are being creative, it doesn’t feel like work. We love teaching and we love our band, and it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Teaching kids is just an extension of the band and our band is an extension of the classroom. It’s all the same thing. We just try to fit stuff we love to do into our lives. We love teaching, we love writing songs, we love the studio, we love playing music, we love traveling, we love spending time with each other, we love meeting new people… we get more energy from it all…not less.

RLR:  Festivals are often celebrated for their collaborations, community and bringing folks together for a weekend where they may not see each other otherwise. Is there anyone in particular that you would like to see appear on stage together at Tweed? How about collaborating with you? What are you most excited for about Tweed this year?

LP: We go way back with Bow Thayer and it was definitely a Tweed highlight when he got into an NSC dress and jumped up on stage with us haha! Joanie wants to have a bass-off with Jeremy Curtis. We would love to play with Scott Aruda… what an amazing trumpet player, and NSC are bandies through and through! Joanie sang a Carol King song with The Tim Gearan Band two Tweeds ago, and it was magical.  I met Andrea Gillis in the bathroom at our first Tweed year and we have gotten to know her since…what a cool chick… always thought she was such a badass. So many people are so great at Tweed and so good to us too. We planned our whole tour around the festival and are so grateful and honored to be asked back. Oh, and we are really looking forward to chilling on the Tweed Bus with Bob!

RLR:  What is 1 record that shaped you when you first started playing and 1 ‘lesser known’ record or artist that you are now/are listening to now that you think folks really need to hear about?

 
LP: We all have different musical influences but for me for sure “Meet The Beatles” changed my life. I was John in the mirror as I lip synced the entire record again and again and again (my brothers and sisters were the others) I am a huge Shins fan…Broken Bells too (same singer). Besides playing the bass and singing in NSC, Joanie is a soul singer. She sang with a Boston band called Superhoney for many years before Nicola and I talked her into moving to LA. Aretha Franklin is her musical idol. She is really into Royal Blood right now and is hoping to learn a few bass tricks from them. Nicola is a Dead Head at heart. I can picture her dancing as I write this. haha.

RLR:  So, why is creating music important to you? Why do you hit the stage night after night, pull out the old song notebook every day, or whatever else you do to let loose your creativity?

LP:. I am a habitual writer. I set aside time to write lyrics every day and I have lots of time sitting in traffic to obsess over rehearsal and songwriting-idea recordings. Another perk to living in LA…traffic!!  When I started writing and singing, I found a voice that I never knew I had. A funny thing happens when you write music… your writing somehow shows you how you feel about stuff. It’s not like you say, “I’m going to write a song about _______”. What happens is you write the song and then you realize afterward that what you wrote about is ___________. Then you give it a name… and it becomes your voice………and you feel really good about it….and then other people hear it and sometimes they feel the same way….and then you feel even better…and grateful too…and then you chase that feeling your whole life…that’s what happened to me anyway

RLR:  Aside from music, do you have any other pastimes? What would you want people to know about you aside from your musical endeavors?

 
LP: All three of us have dogs and like to do dog stuff, like go to the dogpark and hike with our dogs. Joanie is Renascence woman who can fix your TV, rebuild your engine, and sew you new outfit that fits perfectly. If she doesn’t know how to do something, she will quickly figure it out and do it better than anyone. Nicola is a go-getter and traveler who kicks our ass on a daily basis. She just (in May) got her 2nd masters degree in Educational Leadership from Columbia University and is planning a trip to Chili-Argentina-Patagonia right now, ALWAYS busy and a master planner. Our rehearsals start and end on time, haha.

RLR:  Anything else you want to plug or we should know?

LP: We are so happy and grateful to be part of this wonderful festival…all the organizers, all the bands, all the artists, all the chefs, all the music lovers.

LP: We want people to know that we are releasing our LP on August 1st… the day we play at Tweed. It is called “Hold Tight I’m Flying”. We recorded and produced it ourselves with some help and advice from producer, Bob Marlette. We are very excited about it. We also have a video that will be completed in the fall for a song called “Big Steps”, and then off to the next thing, keep it coming….

http://rbmasson.com/nosmallchildren/