INTERVIEW: MARY JANE DUNPHE

GREAT NEW RECORD OUT NOW ON POP WIG

CCFX only put out a single four-song EP, but what an EP it was. The 2017 release was special; it sounded like a band who realized they could create an entire universe out of Peter Hook bass and Saint Etienne’s breakbeat-driven cover of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” I’m still rocking with it to this day.

CCFX was a collaboration between members of two Olympia bands—CC Dust and Trans FX—and featured the former’s vocalist, Mary Jane Dunphe. By that point, Dunphe was already known for fronting Vexx, who played a boogie-forward brand of hardcore punk. YouTube has a trove of Vexx gigs to watch, many of which feature Dunphe throwing herself in the crowd, on the ground, and all around, ripping it up with both aggression and theatrical intention, like some mutant combination of Nina Hagen and John Brannon. Take notes, kids: That is how you front a rock and roll band.

Flashing forward to the present and skipping over her work in the country project Country Liners and the punk unit Pinoccio, Dunphe has a great new record called Stage of Love out on Pop Wig, a label run by members of the bands Angel Du$t and Turnstile. It’s been cooking since 2019, and it puts Dunphe’s vocals, which range from an anthemic baritone to an unhinged yelp, front-and-center. The result is an expansive electronic pop LP that feels like the culmination of Dunphe’s life in underground music. It clears a path for the next chapter.

I want to get into the new record, of course, which I've been enjoying, by the way. But I kind of want to go backwards if that's okay, because I couldn't find that many interviews with you where you talk about your life and music. 

That's fine, yeah. 

I saw in some interview I read, maybe it was a CCFX interview, but you said that early on you were making noise music. 

Yeah. Like, before I was in any band. 

Was that in Olympia? 

Oh, yeah. That was in Olympia. And when you're in a town that's really small, you're not going to play, I mean, you could play a noise show, for sure, that does happen. But a lot of the shows get all jumbled up and mixed together. And everyone, even if you make fun of each other, sometimes everyone's kind of influenced by each other. Yeah, I was in kind of a noise, performance art project. And I played with hardcore bands. They were like, what is this? But I ended up becoming friends with them. And I like that kind of music. So yeah, it all just flows together. 

Were you listening to that kind of music in high school or before? 

Yeah, I grew up in Spokane and I got into the hardcore scene as a teenager, the straight edge, mid-2000s, melodic hardcore world, but also got really into radical leftist politics and like, end up running away from home. And that's a whole other story. But yeah, eventually I was in Olympia doing weird noise music. 

What was that project called? Are there any traces of it on the internet or is that something you want to just like, dead?

I don't know if I want people to find it. I want close friends to find it. Yeah, for sure. And me and the band member have written a text for a small book about it for no reason, just for fun, really for ourselves. There's one live video that a friend that I hadn't talked to in like a decade emailed me, like, Oh, Mary Jane, I just was thinking of you because I saw you on this Reddit cringe forum. And the cringers had discovered a live video of my 19-year-old troubled self like humping a table or something. They had a lot to say about it. And then I deleted the link so I would never find the comments again and like, deleted the email, but it was funny, for sure. 

I mean, as somebody who has also been on Reddit cringe forums, I think you have to really be going for it in a certain way to get there, and that is positive. 

You're not winking. You're not winking at anybody, you're fully in whatever you're doing. For sure. 

And you were in school for performance stuff. 

That was before school. Okay, when I was doing that, I was a high school dropout. Like, post-runaway. I didn't know anything about art history. Which people could argue I should—I mean, now I do—but I really just had a lot of stuff built up I needed to get out in the weirdest most direct way possible. 

I think oftentimes artists will retroactively learn about art history, then realize that they were kind of intuitively doing some of that stuff. 

Yeah. Flexing, like, constricting all my muscles for 10 minutes straight into these bodybuilder poses in this little dress, harsh noise. Sounds ridiculous, but it did teach me humility. And I learned how to be embarrassed and get embarrassed and own it in a way that probably helped me be a better performer down the line, you know, it's like, you realize there's nothing beyond the embarrassment other than getting embarrassed. You can turn it around and make people watching embarrassed—you get to be the comfortable one and suddenly it's cool. 

Yeah. And that led you to play in Vexx, which was, judging from videos I've watched, you were still kind of exploring a performance style a little bit outside of what a normal hardcore frontperson might do. 

Yeah, actually, I was in a very silly short-lived kind of goth rock band that I started in a garage with my friend Chris who was in CCFX called Torture By Roses before Vexx, and we played at this record store called Phantom City Records in Olympia. And I think that the very shitty, very small PA wasn't working or some piece of gear wasn't working, but I was just kind of hamming it up. And it's like 15 people at the show, you know, but I was like, you don't understand. And you don't understand. I was just screaming it, because our shit wasn't working. And then the people who I started Vexx with, they're like, Oh, she should front a punk band. And then they asked me. 

And then you toured a lot with that band. 

Yeah. 

Did that sort of hone anything for you as a performer? Like all that kind of repetition? 

Yeah, I think so. Definitely physically. Vocally, I think that I didn't know how to use my voice and I'm still kind of dealing with these repercussions probably partly from singing in Vexx, with my vocal chords. And I had a lot of stuff I had to get out, a lot of negativity I had to get out. And in Vexx, we played so much, even when we were in town, I feel like you just play every two weeks. And people in Olympia were like, Yeah, we'll go to the show again. It's like, right. 

But I had so much negativity to get out. And when you focus so much on it, you end up putting it back in even worse—it’s like if you were to go to the sauna and not drink any water. And playing so much kind of sent me. It was, yeah, a trial by fire or something. I Iearned how to be aggressive and get out the stuff. And then I had to learn how to be tender because it was just too much of a negative trip sometimes for me. And the band's just doing their thing. They're just like, noodling away over there. And then I'm having some crazy—like headbutting too many people or whatever and rolling around the floor and kind of losing it. So bless them for being a part of whatever I was going through. But yeah, I learned a lot being in that band. 

Was CC Dust or CCFX almost a reaction? Did you feel the need to write pop songs almost after that? 

Yeah, for sure. I mean, they overlap, those two bands. But yeah, definitely. I mean, pop is pop. Like, there's some Vexx songs that are poppy. I don't really think pop's a genre. I think it's a mode. Any genre can be pop music. But yeah, I wanted to learn how to write songs for myself. And I wanted to make things that were sweet, that were beautiful, that made me feel tender. I keep using that word. And I love that kind of music so much. 

Yeah, I mean, that CCFX EP, you know, I'm probably not the first person to tell you this, but I've listened to that thing so many times. It blew my mind that there was this project with this one perfect EP that kind of just stood on its own. Was there more music written for that band? 

No, that band's funny. It was CC Dust and Trans FX. Trans FX was Chris who I was in Torture By Roses with years before [and our friend Mirče Popovic.] CC Dust had two songs that we were having a hard time finishing, and they had two songs that they were having a hard time finishing. And so we were like, let's just help each other finish our songs. Then also I ended up breaking my ankle the day after the last CC Dust show. This band Diät from Berlin, they played the last CC Dust show and they stayed at my house and we jumped on my trampoline and I got double bounced. I broke my ankle on both sides and they had to take me to the ER. 

There’s a really cute picture from it. But yeah, I was going to move to New York and then I ended up having to stay in Olympia. And that's how that CCFX record was really fully formed. And also County Liners and also the Gen Pop 7”, all while I broke my ankle. So I probably should break more bones, honestly. But after it was done, I moved to New York and then we talked about doing a second album with DFA and it was actually all planned out. But by the time I got to Olympia, my two bandmates decided that they wanted to make a different kind of music and they didn't want it to be very vocal-centered. They didn't want CCFX. They wanted to make drum and bass music, bless them, but that's not what I wanted to do. So it didn't keep happening. It was very sad actually. It took a year of me kind of grieving it before I could start writing music by myself, like learning how to do that. 

Yeah, so you were playing in Pinocchio around this time? 

Yes. 

So this process of writing this solo record, it's been pretty elongated. 

Yeah, since 2019. 

Which is interesting to me—you've really taken your time with this. Where do these songs start from? 

What do you mean? 

Like, are you starting in your bedroom with a keyboard? Are you going to studios with this? Did you bring in any collaborators? 

All the above. The first song took like eight months to write. 

Wow. 

Partly because you're like figuring out how you write. It's like swimming—it’s 70% confidence and 30% buoyancy, you know? And it's hard to build the confidence up. 

After you got that one, was it like, Okay, it's time to go, and did the songs come a bit faster? 

A little bit, but I was also partially writing in a studio. 

Yeah. 

And it was hard to get inside of there. You make excuses for yourself as to why you can't get something done. You're like, Oh, I need to be in this specific kind of room. Oh, I need to have this kind of gear. Like, Oh, like this person needs to be standing right there, you know? And I feel like in the process of writing all these songs, I slowly have to call bullshit on myself for needing those things to write, you know?

Do you feel like that whole process—are you excited to make more music now in a sort of less regimented style? 

Yeah, yeah, I also, I don't want to rely on crisis so much, because “Opening of a Field,” “Just Like Air” and maybe “Starless Night,” were all recorded in Brooklyn. And those took forever. And then I was going to Los Angeles to record two songs. And I wanted to write in the studio. I saved up my own money because I have this really obsolete ambition and love for writing in the recording studio. It's so expensive. It's crazy to do that. On the way to LA, I had a crazy tooth infection that almost killed me and my face blew up three times the size. And I had all these emergency surgeries and a Gofundme. And I ended up writing three songs in a couple weeks and recording them, and a cover. And that's insane. I was recording vocals with my face swollen. Like a melon. So yeah, I don't know. It's funny the way that works. 

Wow, that's your Kanye “Through The Wire” moment. 

Yeah, my “Through The Wire” moment. Yeah.

So going forward, you’ve been playing a lot of shows, right? 

Yeah.

Seemingly, you're playing like a lot of, even though this music is, you know, there's guitars in this music for sure, but you're seemingly playing with a lot of aggressive rock bands. 

Yeah, it's funny. What do you think about that? Do you have an idea why I am? 

I mean, you have a history in those rooms understanding how to—there's something theatrical about how you play, but there's still an energy there that to me makes sense to punk people or hardcore people. 

Yeah. 

You think that's still the case or was that maybe the case a while ago?

No, I mean, well, one, I don't think that if you are into hardcore that's—I mean, some people, yes—but I don't think that means that's the only kind of music you listen to, you know? 

Probably now more than ever, hardcore kids can have eclectic taste. 

Yeah, totally. But it still is like, I don't know what the audience is gonna think at all. And I'm playing these shows, and it's not like I only wanna play with these kinds of bands, but it's just the way it's happening and it's kind of fun. And Pop Wig put out the record. 

Yeah. 

And that's people from Angel Du$t and Turnstile. And when my face was all swollen and crazy and I was recording in the studio, that's around when I met Justice. And we became really fast friends and he was hanging in the studio. He would just hang out and he was sick and he was a very inspiring person to be around. So also there's just all these people who come from hardcore that are making different kinds of music and it's really cool. And my music is for sure electronic, but someday I will have a backing band and then people will find out how many parts are actually guitars that I just made sound really weird. I just don't wanna play any live because I wanna dance. So for now it's all on backing tracks. 

Yeah, no, the backing tracks thing, it's a lot more financially viable. 

It really is, especially as an opening act. I wouldn't wanna have a backing band and not compensate them for their work. That would feel kind of bad. It'll all come together. It just takes time for things to congeal. And if you force it, it doesn't congeal right. So I'm not forcing anything. 

Do you ever get the urge to go back to a different kind of performance at these shows, to shake these kids up a little bit? 

What do you mean? 

I mean, I don't know. Like, do you ever jump in the crowd or… 

I do jump in the crowd. 

Yeah, yeah. Okay, there you go. There's your answer. 

The first show [of this last tour with Spirit of the Beehive], I jumped off. It doesn't even matter, because I'm not saying this to brag, but I jump, nowadays when I jump into the crowd, I'm in platform shoes and I still have to land. You know? 

For sure. That's more difficult. 

Yeah, no, I think that my biggest challenge isn't moving. It's slowing down my movements so I can be more present in the song. The only reason why I move is to reattach my head back to my body. I have problems with just disassociating and performing is one of the best things I've found in my personal life for reattaching my head. You know? I recently started getting into strength training and I've been going to this place, Brooklyn Training Hall, but that's a similar kind of thing—doing something physical that takes a lot of mental focus and helps me reintegrate myself. But you can also be too physical and then just forget your head all together and hurt yourself. So it's always a balance.

Stage of Love is out now on Pop Wig. Mary Jane Dunphe on Instagram and Bandcamp. (Photo: Alex Mctigue)