Hi, everyone! I recently sat down to speak with Sima Cunningham, one-half of the Chicago based rock duo Ohmme. She and bandmate Macie Stewart have been making music together since 2014, and have released an EP and two full-length records in that time-span. They have also been rather active in the touring scene, getting to go out on the road with some of Chicago's premier acts: Wilco, Twin Peaks, Post Animal, and many more along the way. Their newest album, Fantasize Your Ghost was released this past June on Joyful Noise Recordings, which I did not review, but enjoyed quite a bit. In this interview, we talked a little bit more about that, as well as various tour memories, influences, etc. Enjoy!
bazzreviews: Which albums or artists inspired you to start a music career in the first place?
Sima Cunningham: To start a career in the first place, that goes way back for Macie and I. We both started playing music at a young age and had wanted to start a band of some sort. I know for me, I always wanted to play in a rock band. I loved all those bands that every artist probably talks about, the Beatles, Neil Young, the Who, stuff like that. I think the first band I really fell in love with was No Doubt, and then other grunge acts of the 90s like Nirvana and Green Day. On top of all that, my dad is also a musician. I got to hear a rich variety of genres in our house growing up, like blues, reggae, and jazz. There’s barely any genre that I haven’t touched in some way, you know? In terms of us getting inspired for Ohmme right now, Macie and I are really into the improvisational scene that’s here in Chicago. We also really love artists that use rock songwriting, but take it in a more experimental direction. I’d say the biggest examples are Brian Eno, Kate Bush, and Wilco.
br: How did you guys end up meeting each other?
S.C.: We went to the same high school, but didn’t know each other. She was a little younger than me and played in a lot of bands with my younger brother. I saw her in some school production back in the day, and I thought she had an incredible voice. We didn’t really get close until I moved back to Chicago around 2012-2013. We both saw that we shared musical visions and wanted to find a way to do that. We had worked together on a few albums and knew how to harmonize each others’ voices, so it definitely stemmed from that, too. At that time, both of us were in various bands but stepped away because we had been having so much fun with Ohmme. Musician friends of ours kept encouraging it, and we ended up pushing that to the forefront.
br: What is the significance behind the band’s name?
S.C.: Frankly, it doesn't have a ton of significance. When we first started, we were looking for a project name that could tease the phenomenon of there being so many band names that reference either women, or women's bodies, but don't have any women in the bands. We were first going to call ourselves “The Men”. We kind of thought it would be funny, but unfortunately, that band already exists. We then went with Homme, which is “man” in French. That also didn’t work, because there was a K-Pop band that had that same name. It just got complicated on Wikipedia and the internet, so we decided to flip to the letters and have it be “Ohmme.” We kind of like it a little bit more because it has a lot of different meanings. It’s funny, people have come to us with different meanings, but it was just meant to be something simple. We get to make lots of puns with it. Like, hey, we have to go do some “Ohmme-work” now.
br: How have you guys been staying active musically during the pandemic?
S.C.: Certainly at the beginning beyond the initial shock of quarantine, I think people felt artists and we felt kind of pressed to bring people music and bring people joy. Some people couldn't leave their houses, it was still cold out, so we resorted to doing a lot of live streams. You come to learn that live streams take a lot of work to properly put them together. Luckily, my partner is an engineer and really handy with a lot of the technology, so I guess we’ve been fortunate enough to have the help to produce high-quality live streams. After doing that for a while, I think the both of us decided to lean into the opportunity to give ourselves a lot of space. Not only with the pandemic, but the social justice movement that has been happening throughout the summer makes it become not the best time to be a 24/7 hype machine for your own band. Macie and I love to camp, and we were like, “hey, why don't we give ourselves a lot of space this summer to go unplug for a little bit and be outside?” I think that time away from music was very refreshing for us. Now that we're getting back into the fall, we've actually been together over the last couple weeks to do a bunch of little projects for the time being.
br: I’ve heard the live show is a big part of your image, would you say that you prefer playing live rather than working on new material?
S.C.: It's hard to weigh one against the other. Yes, I would say I miss playing live terribly, it’s an ache that I feel often. I think most people would agree that it would be great for that “live experience” to go back to normal. I really can't wait until we can have an uninhibited live performance, with people in a room and bodies piled up next to each other. That energy is absolutely impossible to recreate a live stream. I will also say that a lot of the times in the past, the recording had been stressful. Because we played live so often early on, we were always under some kind of an intense time crunch and had to wedge in recording whenever we could. Not really being able to take our time with recording was something that I never liked doing. So, now that we have lots of time, it kind of creates a different relationship with recording. Don’t get me wrong, I've never really been someone who likes to spend endless hours in a studio. I just really like to make stuff and it's exciting when you start with nothing. I touched on this in the last question, but the stuff Macie and I have been working on went from start to finish in two days.
br: Your shows have ranged the gamut- playing Tiny Desk, opening for Twin Peaks, which have been some of your favorites to have done?
S.C.: We had such an incredible fall last year. It felt really special being in Europe with Wilco, following their bus, and getting to play those shows with our drummer Matt. I look back on those shows a lot. It just feels like a dream at this point, you know? I particularly remember the night we played a show at this really famous venue in Glasgow. It was in this cool old roller rink, so getting to perform in there was just so exciting. Our tours are really small, we often don't really even tour with any support staff. We are really a self-sufficient band. On that European tour, I miss just sitting with the two of them after playing a show and getting to bask in the joy of what it was. Shortly after that, we went out for two months with Twin Peaks and Post Animal, which was absolutely the tour of a lifetime. I’m super grateful that we had the opportunity to go out with them. Getting to hang out with those friends in such a fun, concentrated way and singing with Twin Peaks every night was something I’ll never forget. There’s one night in particular that I remember from down in Austin. That night was the last show on the tour, and it felt kind of heavy in some ways. Before we went on, we just found out that our friend, Rylan, had gotten shot in the arm. I think that inspired us in some ways, and we went on to do, arguably, our best performance of the tour. I've been thinking about that incident a lot. It's important not to be distracted from the weight of a moment. Really intense things are happening right now, so we need to pay attention and be persistent through it all. I also think that while people's minds are staying vigilant and staying clear, people's souls and people's hearts need to be refreshed in some way. That's ultimately what is pumping the energy into our bodies. I think that music can really do that for a lot of people.
br: Can you describe the writing process on your newest record, Fantasize Your Ghost? How did it differ from previous releases?
S.C.: I feel like that, at least for myself, came from a place of self-doubt. I was really overwhelmed by feelings of anger and wanting to express very specific decrees about what I was seeing and feeling. That felt really arresting to my ability to write a good song, so I had to back away from that and let the music lead. I've been leaning more towards abstract poetry when I've been writing recently. Sometimes, I can write and it feels like it comes out as lyrics. As I mentioned with this record, some of the songs I was writing tended to have the music come first and then I backed it back into it with that poetic approach. Macie came with a lot of songs that felt like they had a really great center already, and we did a lot more collaborative writing. We were open-minded towards each other and trusted the decisions we laid out. That differed from past releases because we write the songs separately and bring them together to finish them up. I think because we worked in tandem, Fantasize Your Ghost ended up with a really cool set of songs.
br: What’s more important to you guys, lyricism, or production value and instrumentation?
S.C.: I think lyrics are really important and really matter. They don't need to be complicated, they don't need to be a Bob Dylan-esque clever cascade of lyrics, it should be saying something that people will walk away from and reflect on. That being said, we may have a song on the record that was an improvised track that has no lyrics. The instrumentation is then our voice and should lead the way.
br: I’ve heard that improvisation is an important part of how you guys make music, can you explain more about why that is?
S.C.: What I like about improvisation is that it's like an ongoing dialogue. It's like a really good conversation that never has a natural ending because you're just riffing off of each other. I love to hear Macy improvise, it's kind of become a really big part of her musical practice over the past couple of years. It inspires me, as her collaborator, to hear her improvise. I keep tieing improvisation to this metaphor of conversation. When you see someone who knows how to have a really good conversation, can talk about anything and it sounds fascinating to just watch it, that’s what improvisation is like. I've been hanging out with people who have a native language, and watching them in an environment where they're speaking their native language is super interesting. Although I can't really follow what's going on or what’s being said, what I can follow is them talking and listening. Great musicians have all of these skills, but in a musical form. If they use those skills towards playing towards exploration rather than playing within these formulaic constraints, that’s where the most unique musical moments come from.
br: Knowing everything you know about music now, what is one thing you’d tell your past selves?
S.C.: I think I would tell my past self to record songs as soon as they're done. Don't ever sit on songs for years, as they can be such a wonderful snapshot of your subconscious or ideas that you're going through. You're going to evolve past them quickly to the point of not wanting to release them after a year of waiting. You’re likely not going to feel the same way you once did, so something you spent so long on crafting could ultimately be wasted.
br: I know that Fantasize Your Ghost dropped in June, but are there any other projects in the work that you can talk about?
S.C.: As I mentioned earlier, we do have some songs that we’ve been working on, most importantly, some seven-inch releases coming out on Sub Pop as part of their singles club. We got to collaborate with some really cool artists that we admire on the artwork for that, so that was exciting, too. We're also trying to figure out a possible video for them, but other than that, we’re not sure.
br: What music goals do you have for the future? S.C.: Along with some of that other music we’re putting out, I'm working on a bunch of solo music that's a departure from some of Ohmme’s stuff. It’s going down the path of singer-songwriter/Americana. Most importantly, I just want to keep playing shows and connecting with audiences.
I'd like to thank Sima for sitting down and doing this interview. I think Ohmme is an incredibly talented group, and I am wishing them the best going forward. If you have yet to check out Fantasize Your Ghost, I cannot recommend that enough. In the meantime, hope you are all doing well and staying safe! Keep your eyes open for more bazzreviews content coming soon!
To hear Ohmme's music, log on to https://open.spotify.com/artist/1lGRK7KK1IuflIyNSE9R3M
