SCAD Radio’s Content Director Ian Dziura had an interview with Daisy Caplan and Kate Wakefield, the two making up the rock duo Lung.
After taking time off work to do shows, the two of you decided one day to just quit your jobs and go head first into the group. That’s a courageous move. Would you say that leap of faith has paid off?
Daisy- I mean I wouldn’t say it’s paid off but it’s awesome.
Kate- We haven’t died yet so that’s good.
You’re a two-person band. Do you think there are any advantages to having only two members?
K- Oh, totally. But I’m biased, because I’m in a two-person band, but for me, I think it makes writing a lot easier when it’s just two creative minds to go at things with. And also logistics-wise, touring around in a band with two people is a lot easier than, maybe six. And there’s also a third “silent” member of the band, her name’s Rachelle, she does all of our art and she travels with us too.
D- Yeah, I don’t know how [bands with many people] do that. You ever think about that?
Yeah, Arcade Fire has 6 or 7 people, I don’t get how they juggle that around.
D- Arcade Fire [and] Reel Big Fish, there’s a lot of them. My heart goes out to the Arcade Fires and Reel Big Fish.
One of you plays the cello? Many bands of your genre don’t use a cello, so what is that like?
K- Well, I can’t really play guitar, and I can’t really play bass. I’m mediocre at piano, so I’ve always just written with cello, because it’s what I can play. For me, it’s always been what I’ve written on. It’s pretty normal for me. What do you think, Daisy?
D- I think it’s… it’s cool. It’s not that different than a guitar. I kinda occupies the same sonic territory and it’s very loud, so it’s not that far off.
That’s just really interesting, I’ve never come across a band that uses a cello as a primary instrument.
D- There’s a couple of them out there, we actually played with a strangely large amount of cello bands last tour, which is pretty cool. It’s like guitar, you can do all sorts of different stuff with it, which is pretty rad to see. We played in New York at [an event] that was all cello bands.
K- Yeah, it was called “Coachello”! (Laughs)
You recently release your second album, All the King’s Horses. Going into recording that second album, what do you wish you knew when you started working on your debut LP?
D- I don’t think we wish we knew anything different.
K- They’re just different albums…different feels. First album we recorded was pretty off the cuff. We were just trying to have something to tour with.
D- It’s pretty rough and out of tune and weird. But we also record in like, a day. It has good energy.
K- And the second [album] is a little more on purpose.
D- It’s two different kinds of records. You have to approach each project artistically with its own energy, and they were approached with very separate energies, which is cool. One was done in a day, one was done in…
K- A couple of months.
Let’s talk about the cover for All the King’s Horses. It’s this weird symbol that doesn’t look like anything familiar. Could you explain that?
K- It’s actually a sigil, if you look at it, it sort of spells out “Lung” in one symbol. It was designed by Rachelle Caplan, who travels a bunch with us and does all of the art, does all of our T-shirts, and helped with the photoshoot for the first album. We just thought [the sigil] was simple and represented the album well.
