Meredith Lampe: I think there’s a 20% chance that Isaac [Stalling] pulls up in the van as we’re sitting here. He borrowed the van because he’s on tour with Greg Freeman.
We were all curious as to if the universe would allow such a coincidence to occur – to see the Hot Wheel emblemed Work Wife van pull into town on this dreary New York afternoon.
A few weeks ago, Brooklyn-based band, Work Wife released their latest EP, Waste Management off of Born Losers Records. Started by Lampe as a creative bedroom project back in 2021, Work Wife has found its fullest, most collaborative form yet. With the edition of Kenny Monroe (bass) and Cody Edgerly (drums) for 2022’s Quitting Season, Isaac Stalling (guitar/banjo) is the most recent addition to the Work Wife business.
I met up with Lampe and Monroe recently at a café in Brooklyn, New York, to catch up and discuss the new EP, writing love songs and indie-rock basketball.
SR: So you guys just released your second EP, Waste Management, a few weeks ago. This is also your first release as a fully formed group. Can you tell me about the recording process a bit?
ML: This time Cody and Kenny were much more involved, because I always forget to show them the songs before we record them. The way that the Toledo guys operate is they don’t want to hear anything beforehand – they work more like, ‘let’s just get in the room and then we’ll do whatever we feel like’. This time they had actually rented a studio space in the Navy Yard in central Brooklyn and Kenny, Cody and I went there together for a full weekend before we recorded and we worked the songs out and learned them.
KM: Yeah, a little bit. Not too much though.
ML: No, not too much. But yeah, this time there’s a couple more collaboratively written songs. I feel like Kenny wrote a lot more of the guitar licks. This thing will happen where Kenny will come up with a bass part that’s super sick and then Dan and Jordan, our producers, will be like, ‘oh we’re gonna actually play that on the guitar,’ and I feel like your bass part gets stolen. It’s the melodic stuff, he can hear it – that’s your superpower, Kenny. But I wrote most of the lyrics and structure for all the songs, and then they wrote the parts.
KM: Arranging the songs is a very fun process after Meredith writes them.
ML: I think that writing is more fun than arranging. Arranging feels like work to me.
KM: Then it all works out in the end. I think Dan, Jordan and Cody like arranging equally. They seem like they’re really in their bag when they’re arranging.
ML: The way they record is we’ll be working on a song and everyone will kind of have something that they’re messing around with, and then when Dan hears something that he likes and he’ll yell, ‘TRACK IT’. So, Jordan will be playing the guitar and I’ll be turning all his guitar pedals and Cody will be shaking something weird and then Dan will yell, ‘TRACK IT’, and then we run to put the mic over there and then we track it. It’s kind of stressful.
KM: It’s loose, you know, kind of chaotic. But there’s definitely a method to the madness. We have great chemistry, though. Especially when young Isaac joined us – we became a full unit.
SR: Yeah that’s one thing that I wanted to ask about, because your performances, and the song structures themselves on Waste Management feel looser, like you are all just having fun with it. Are you feeling more connected as a collaborative and creative project?
ML: Actually, Cody and I were just talking about this recently, because we’re at the stage where some opportunities we’re saying yes to and some we are saying no to, versus the beginning where we would do anything. But with the previous bands I played in it felt like we were very goal oriented, always pushing to get the record deal and having to grind until we get there. And in my math brain, I always thought the probability of us doing this is so low. So if we are not having a good time, then that is the worst bet we’ve ever made. So when I started this band, I thought, number one, we just have to have a good time and not do things that make us feel bad, and then everything else can come after.
SR: Has that made having to make creative choices easier?
KM: Well, for “Downtime”, Meredith had a demo that was really cool. It was in a weird time signature and it was really disjointed and had a very strange melody and we really wanted to make it a full song. So what happened was we took that demo, which was like one verse and like half a chorus, and then we recorded an entire instrumental that had a bunch of new parts. And then we gave it back…
ML: Well, then I thought you wanted me to rewrite the entire song! So I rewrote the entire song with completely different melodies and lyrics. Then they were like, “no, that’s too much, go back to the beginning!” And I had this whole other song with the “Downtime” instrumental that actually says waste management, and there’s this whole thing around taking your trash out and emptying your brain and I was like ‘oh, it’s so cohesive!’ Then they were like, ‘no no the other one was better.’ Someday I’ll take that melody and slap it on a different piece of toast I guess.
KM: That was a funny multi-step process.
ML: It felt more like what it’s like to write with a band, as opposed to me just being like, ‘this is what the song is.’
KM: Yeah, it felt like an experiment. It sounds like an experiment too.
ML: That song is so polarizing. People either love it or they never address it. They just don’t bring it up.
SR: And you were okay when they approached you, when you thought they wanted you to rewrite the whole song?
ML: Yeah, well, the song wasn’t done in the first place, but, yeah, it’s way more fun that way. It’s way better to have the input. Writing by yourself is boring. It’s lame.
SR: Waste Management deals a lot with, not necessarily loneliness, but solitude with yourself, which is an interesting juxtaposition when compared to the harsh magnitude of the city that you use as a backdrop. What were some ways you worked through this theme and were there any feelings that came out in the process?
ML: When I was writing these songs, I think it was shortly after I had moved back to New York. I think I was just, at that point, having to rebuild my whole social circle. I wasn’t playing in Coltura anymore, and I kind of got tired of the scene I was in. But I think what I was trying to figure out was when growing up I was surrounded by people a lot and have never established an independent routine that felt good. I think it’s because when I was younger my parents put me in a lot of stuff – playing sports, piano lessons, and doing homework – I was just a highly productive child. So I never really learned how to have a fulfilling home life. It’s like the curse of the American productivity complex, but we’re all just trying to figure out how to relax a little bit – and I’m still dealing with that. So, “Downtime” and “Control” are about that, and “Strangers” a little bit, too. The thing that I’ve found that’s been really grounding is just creating lots of routine. You get so much decision fatigue, especially here in New York, about what to do with your time.
SR: One thematic step that I really resonated with on Waste Management is the focus on other relationships beyond just the romantic kind. Can you tell me a bit about that choice?
ML: Yeah, I mean, they’re more important than romantic relationships. I go back and forth about this a lot with all the songwriters here, about love songs and like, should we keep writing love songs or not? Fenne Lily, who’s one of my closest friends, will always say, ‘there’s a reason that the best songs are love songs. You have to continue writing love songs because that’s when you have the strongest feelings.’ But I get really tired of it after a while, you know? I think that writing about other relationships has a lot of nuance, and oftentimes, the relationships are much longer. I’ve been trying to write a song about my best friend Natalie for years. And I can’t figure out how to even begin to describe all the different facets of it. But I think it will be a much more interesting song, perhaps, than a love song about someone who I just met and feel interested in or something. Or like with “Something’s Up”, which is about my best friend’s mom, it’s like that is someone who’s known you for your entire childhood, so I think it makes for a more interesting song. Maybe not quite one that has so much depth of feeling, like extreme sadness or extreme happiness, but there’s more to say.
SR: Yeah of course, can you tell me more about “Something’s Up” and that relationship with your best friend’s mom? It’s such a unique lens to write a song from.
ML: Well, one year I had gone to Dallas for Christmas with my ex, which is where he’s from. One night, we went over to his best friend’s house. I think for him, growing up, he would go to his friend’s house as an oasis. The woman who I ended up hanging out with was his best friend’s mom. They just had this crazy year and were sitting around in the sun room smoking cigarettes as a celebratory thing. I think I wrote that song right when I got back to New York, because it was just a really impressionable conversation I had that night. And when a parental figure gives you a cigarette, something happens in that moment where you’re like SHIT – this is kinda cool. I sort of took that, and then the verses are more about my actual childhood friends and their parents.
SR: Was your friend’s house an oasis for you when you were growing up as well? Was that an environment you resonated with?
ML: I feel like this family that I’m writing about is really fun to be around but has some really intense shit going on. There are always fights because there’s a lot of kids and there are always random people staying over at the house. In my house it was just me, my sister and my parents and everything was very calm. There was never a lot of action, so whenever I went over there it was like, this is life! This is crazy!
SR: Can you tell me a bit about the matching EP artworks and the idea behind those photos?
KM: I can’t remember when I shot the winter one, but it was just in my archive and we needed artwork for Quitting Season. It was taken at my parent’s place up in rural Wisconsin.
ML: You take the best photos, Kenny. Most of the things that Kenny does, he’s very good at and no one ever knows.
KM: Jack of all trades, master of none. But yeah, I have a pretty good archive of cool photos. So I sent like 20 or so photos for single art and cover art and everyone liked the truck. The truck was the winner. And then I thought, ‘I’m going to go take that same truck photo in the summer for the next EP.’
ML: Yeah, you nailed it
KM: It was the same day the truck went to the dump. The truck is gone now.
ML: It went to the dump?
KM: It went to the scrap. It wasn’t really working, and our neighbor came over to maybe buy some of the parts off of it, so he and my dad were there talking about stuff and looking in the hood and that’s what I took the picture. Took a bunch of photos of them doing that and then that dude scrapped it.
KM: Do you know about Indie Basketball? It’s a podcast from Chicago where your favorite indie rock musicians talk about the NBA. If you ever meet these guys, tell them Work Wife really wants to be on it.
SR: I haven’t, but I definitely will, that sounds incredible! You started your own basketball music fest/fundraiser, didn’t you?
ML: Bandsketball!
KM: I’m working on getting the venue right now! I’m trying to get the parkour gym to do it, because they have this huge parking lot with hoops. But they have their concerns.
ML: Isaac maybe had the worst day of his life at last year’s Bandsketball. Well, first off, we were all hungover for some reason, but it was also really hot and we were not dressed appropriately for it. We got smacked by this band called Monograms who brought their own matching jerseys and had their own plays that they were running.
KM: Yeah, Isaac was playing in boots and overalls.
ML: He actually thought he was going to die, like he thought he was going to have a heart attack. And then we had to play our set after and I knew he was fucked up, but it was hard to tell because he was still shredding. But he was dead in the eyes.
SR: How many bands participated in it?
KM: We had 16, but there were a lot of people who were interested. This band called Henry Flower won. His record came out the same week and he said it was the greatest week of his life.
ML: It was a big deal. He said he and his band had not been having band practice because they were practicing basketball.
SR: Off the record, which band had the worst team?
KM: Probably Work Wife, you can leave that on the record, we were terrible – just awful. But we were only our band. For a while we were going to play with Helenor, but Dave [DiAngelis] fielded his own team, which was probably good for him.
ML: We talked a pretty big game, but we were shockingly bad for how often we play basketball on tour. But I still love the game.
SR: How was this past headlining tour you just finished?
ML: It continues to amaze me that anyone wants to come to these shows. Before we started doing these headlining tours, I was thinking that I really don’t want to do this. You hear so many horror stories of these bands playing headlining tours that are just like empty show after empty show. But the tours have been great! A bunch of people show up to every show. I don’t know who they are but they know who we are and it makes it feel like we can do this. Touring is highly inefficient, though. Hauling around all these humans and equipment to play for like 30 minutes, sometimes to an empty room, you think, is this really the best way to do this? But I think we’re the type of band where the live show is a big part of what we do, so we’ll keep doing it. But we are going to take a touring break and then start playing shows in the summer again.
SR: Does Work Wife have anything coming up that you are excited about?
ML: We’re working on a full-length now which I think will be a little bit different than the old stuff. Now we have Isaac, so the stuff that we’re writing I think has a bigger influence coming from his country rock and blues stuff. He’s just been sending me a ton of music and I feel like my taste is slowly changing for the better.
KM: We recorded demos. There’s like one electro-pop kind of thing which we’re doing as well.
ML: Yeah, the thing I can’t figure out is where to put it. It’s kind of like folk-rock, but there’s some electronic stuff as well. It’s a continual journey of deciding how much to incorporate that, because I always love pushing two things that don’t belong together and trying to make it work. But I don’t know, we will keep trying. Once the summer hits then it’ll be back to the bangers.
Written by Shea Roney | Photo by Justin Buschardt
the ugly hug 