I was thrilled to get this new musical introduction to Dish-Pit Violet, an artist whose work I have appreciated in the past and might like even more now. The new album sounds joyful and upbeat and includes some heavy hitting topics but in such a way that makes me feel hopeful, which isn’t easy these days. I can’t wait until everyone can listen to it!
Let time we spoke, you were part of Present Company, a band I remember for political statements and clever videos. So, some things stay the same. I love your politics (I was going to say undercurrent but it’s not under anything!) and your new video. But tell us about your new work, Dish-Pit Violet and how you got here.
Videos can be like magic tricks and I love to wow a crowd! I think I developed a taste for music video making with Present Company but the split finally separated the identity of them and I. The political statements come with me, the presenting queerness comes with me, and the pursuit of happy music comes with me. I was always leaning more toward something indie pop/post-punk and they were always leaning midwest emo/post-hardcore. The separation was my choice and it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. Things were really messed up between us and feelings had gotten so pushed down that there wasn’t a way forward anymore. Sometimes two creative forces try to swallow each other instead of using each other’s strengths. Sometimes continuing a creative project becomes a vessel for avoiding problems. Since I agreed to sign an NDA while leaving Present Company, I can’t go into too many details of what happened specifically. Lets just say none of us were happy about how the break up happened and we struggled to agree on terms moving forward.
I plopped out of Present Company in the fall of 2023. The music community/friend group that had basically raised me through my early 20’s was gone. I realized that all my friends were someone else’s friends and family. I literally had the least amount of historical ties to these people out of anyone and was always working to secure a space in this friend/family group. Since I broke up with the band I no longer had this big family. I had to ask myself why this happened. Why did I not feel ownership to take any space from these people? I had a lot of blame to throw but I know I was responsible for some of the mess. It was hard to see a way through. I had been drifting from these friends for about a year, so by the time the band broke up, I felt like I could develop healthier relationships elsewhere. Relationships not centered around alcohol.
When you are raised in a high-control religious group, even if you separate yourself later on, you have a higher propensity to re-enact those behaviors. The band sorta turned into the religious cult it was running away from because we couldn’t reconcile with the religious trauma that was most of our upbringings. In our songs we were excited to bring up the confusion, sadness, and rage that being raised religious brought to us. We didn’t explore past that point, so the confusion, sadness, and rage became our anthem. And because we felt betrayed and victimized by our upbringing, we felt entitled to do whatever we wanted to reclaim that upbringing. Because we felt betrayed by the teachings of our parents and pastors, we started testing every rule. I’m not saying everyone doesn’t experience some form of this in their 20’s, I just think some of the principles of basic human relationships are misconstrued more severely in the Evangelical and adjacent denominations of Christianity. So, when you start a band and grow a bigger friend group without deconstructing your extremist religious upbringing enough, you end up valuing things like loyalty, people pleasing, and boundaryless love above doing the right thing. You start recreating the same power structures. You care more about the group identity than the group members. You care more about the band’s success than the band member that’s been hurt.
I started my healing journey immediately after the break up. My wonderfully wise wife Madi, at that time girlfriend, encouraged me to start therapy so I did a deep dive on DBT (Dialectic Behavioral Therapy) to see why these situations kept happening in my life. I got myself a therapist and started deconstructing EVERYTHING. It didn’t take me long to write the first song on the album “Ready For You”. The first words: “Congratulations Cronos, look what you’ve done”, I felt very alone and insecure at this point. I hit the restart button on all my friends (devoured them all like Cronos) and my partner Madi was giving me hella life advice. I felt undeserving of things since reconciling with how my actions/in-actions caused so many problems in my life and others’ lives. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ok again.
Madi’s brother Simon and our other house-mate John had also just left the U.S. to become English teachers in Japan, leaving us living totally alone for the first time in our relationship. With the looming Minnesota heating bill approaching and a proposed plan to visit Simon in Japan we needed some extra cash, so we got jobs at J Selby’s in Saint Paul (one of the only vegan restaurants in the Twin Cities). Madi got her front of house job she’d had before and I got a job in the back of house as a dishwasher. I reconstructed my whole life out of that dish pit. I found new friends, I found the same problems, I found a new therapist, things were going great!
Hi, I’m Violet is a strong start for your new self-titled album. First, I love it like I love the Magnet Fields!! Second, I feel like everyone should write a Hi, I’m (state your name) song. How did it feel writing it? How does it feel when you sing it?
One day while on our way to the Oscar nominated shorts screening at the Riverview movie theater we were brainstorming band names for my new project. A nickname that Madi had given me in the past was Violet. She just said, “Dish Pit Violet” and that stuck in my head really nice. On the spot I said, “That’s the band name right there”. We got closer to the movie theater and I imagined introducing myself on stage as Dish Pit Violet. Then I visualized the stage again and said, “Hi, I’m Violet”…Something in me clicked. Madi and I had been discussing my gender identity quite a bit and I was feeling like I fit best under the Trans-Femme umbrella. I didn’t think I would necessarily need a new name until I heard me say “Hi, I’m Violet” in my head. It felt like that name had been waiting for me my whole life. Thinking about myself as Violet made me feel so much more myself than my dead-name ever did. I never felt very “Christ-like”, I’ve always felt more like a flower.
During the month of June I came out to my family, officially, as transgender. They told me they would not accept this decision, would not use my preferred pronouns, and would not let me wear any type of dress or skirt around them. I attempted to work things out but in the end my Mom, Dad, Sisters, and entire Dad’s side of the family would not accept me. It was what I feared might happen but I couldn’t let it stop me from living my life. Out of the ashes of these conversations rose the songs “Hi, I’m Violet” and “You Picked Jesus Over Me”. I was so frustrated and baffled by my family’s ignorance and bigotry that I needed to start writing some journal entries about it. My therapist and Madi guided me toward writing music about it. I decided to fill up a whole journal with the most honest and direct lyrics I had ever written. I wanted to push this new project to be understandable and relatable to people like me. I didn’t want to be cryptic with my lyrics anymore like with the last project. I wanted to speak my mind. After losing my family I never wanted to hide my identity again. Hide it under a bush? Oh no, I’m gonna let it shine! It felt empowering to write this song. It felt like my family might even understand me if they heard it. That was partially my goal. When I sing it, I feel justified in the way I handled everything. It’s very therapeutic to recount what happened and your reasoning for leaving once you’ve left.
I love the way Stephin Merrit says things. I love his bluntness and cheekiness and the Magnetic Field’s cute musical stylings. I was inspired by his boldness to cut through to the root emotion, he’s not afraid to be grandiose and a bit earnest either!
Please talk about the song and video for Nobody’s Better. The song is so upbeat. The horns are amazing. The images are like social scrolling on speed – but the upbeat nature of the music changes my mindset about them. I feel like I can overcome the doom with your soundtrack. Also – did I glimpse a picture of Oscar Wilde?
Yes you did glimpse a picture of Oscar Wilde! I was searching for as many visual references as possible for the ‘Nobody’s Better’ music video. I wanted to pay homage to some amazing queer predecessors including Marsha P. Johnson, videos of the Stonewall Uprising, and some of the first trans people given interviews on television in the 60’s. I also put in the Capitol Crawl from 1990 because disability rights are going out the window in this country along with LGBTQ rights. I also displayed Pride events from around the world that occurred this past year, even in Hungary where it’s been outlawed. We should always see our victories in times like these.
Obviously there’s another horrific thing capitulated by the U.S. that’s come more into focus the past couple of years, the Palestinian genocide. Over the course of 2+ years I’ve been properly informed about the Apartheid state of Israel and its current genocide of the Palesinian people. Our tax-payer dollars have directly funded the deaths of over 70,000 Palestinian people (20,000 of them children) and displaced hundreds of thousands through indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas. I wanted to illuminate our complicity in supplying Israel with weapons and technologies that kill children. We should all be demanding it stops. If we can do it in South Africa there might be a chance we can help Palestine rid itself of Apartheid as well.
Seeing how Imperialism works its way around countries like Palestine, I started doing research on all occupied territories of the world. Here is the list of countries that are currently experiencing genocide, recovering from genocide, and/or living under an occupying government:
The First Nations of America including our own neighboring Anishinaabe (Chippewa, Ojibwe) and Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Lakota, Nakota) tribes, Sudan, Maori people of New Zealand and Indigenous People everywehere, Democratic Republic of Congo, Hawaii, Haiti, Lebanon, Armenia, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Rohingya of Myanmar, Iraq, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Moldova, Georgia, Cyprus, Western Sahara, and probably more.
I started to see the bigger picture. I started to see that in each of these conflicts there is one people-group trying to dominate the other through violence and perpetuated Imperialism. Typically motived by greed, bound in racism, and justified through religion, I found it my duty to speak out against Imperialism. My life purpose might be to try and repair some of the damage my colonizer ancestors committed against the people in this country and countries all over the globe. The U.S. is an imperialist monster that has overthrown at least 16 governments, backing around 100 military coups since WW2. We want to control the world. We were the only ones who could have procured a ceasefire for Gaza in the past 2 years and we chose to let the child murdering continue. How could the U.N. allow for one country to have so much power? How could the U.S. allow its government to be bought and paid for by AIPAC? Our complicity is only getting worse.
HOWEVER, I truly believe the younger generation will attempt to fix what has happened. I think the new generation is so much smarter and less racist/violent than the people in power right now. Once we get younger and less male led, we will start to see the turn. We are in one of the darkest hours of human history but I have hope. I have a lot of hope. So much hope that my newly wed wife and I are going to try and have kids. The world seemed factually less dark when I was younger but that is simply not true. The Dick Cheney/Bush years led us to commit our own genocides in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, the list goes on and on. We will eventually drop the South-West Asian violence and exploitation. America will run out of PR runway. I’m concerned for when the world turns on us for our atrocities. We definitely deserve the hate!
Kind of a separate topic but one that fits right in with Imperialism is the policing of the binary concept of genders and LGBTQIA+ rights. First Nation people don’t fit in the U.S.’s imperial plans, they never have, and that’s why we committed a genocide against them for the land and resources of North America. Capitalism craves everything and everyone. The LGBTQIA+ community doesn’t fit within Imperialist policy either. We exist regardless of the clutches of Capitalism. We form our own communities, aid, entertainment, relationships, and families. They don’t know how to make money off of a non-binary and/or trans person. They need us to stay in the straight white box. We can resist through unplugging from the terrible system and making our own. We can get involved in local government. We can learn to spar in legal battles. We can illuminate their hate and discrimination with our language. We just have to keep talking, keep singing, and keep being ourselves.
Top, Top, Drop Dead, Knock Out sounds like a sitcom theme song from the 1970s – in a great way. In less than 4 minutes I have a flavor of a relationship and at least one of the people in it; that’s awesome. What was the inspiration?
Tip-Top-Drop-Dead-Knock-Out is a song I wrote about my wife Madi 🙂 It’s the third single I’m releasing on December 19th! So sweet it could be a Holiday song!! It’s definitely inspired by the Magnetic fields. I always thought happy music wasn’t achievable because the last project I was in didn’t really think it was achievable either. I thought happy music was cheesy. Now I think being dark and twisty is cheesy. I had the most fun making the guitar and bass on this song. The phaser making every hit seem like a warbley-torbley bouncey house full of plushies or a nice ride down a lazy river through a candy forest. I wanted to write 69 Love Songs just like Stephin Merrit but I only made a handful on this record. I wrote the song about the day to day, night to night, year to year of me and Madi’s relationship. It feels like a never ending sleep over! Everything is easy and full of sugar with Madi. We’re typically focused on keeping ourselves happy and making the world a better place. Being on the other end of some therapy really makes life feel meaningful. This song was somewhat of a therapy note that turned into a rosey poem that fit right into a lovely guitar lick that I was drafting up.
Tell us about the album release. Any big plans or hopes?
I am going to set up a show and a band to play an album release and more shows in the future, I’m just enjoying the holidays right now and prioritizing some other things like teaching music to kids at Music on Grand. This album is me starting a new chapter in my musical career. I was soaring for as many eyeballs as I could get in the past but I flew a little too close to the sun. This time around I want to focus on making the music perfect for me and helping people find solace in their trauma like I have been able to find. I think there’s a countless number of people in the U.S. that have been religiously traumatized. I think I can speak to them through my experience and that community is part of my healing journey as well. It took a long time to be ok with myself and I want to give other people that skill through music. Even if it comes off too earnest or on the nose I want to reach the people who need to hear it. I don’t really want to tour, I’m looking to build a music career in the Twin Cities and have some kind of consistent community. Maybe some day that will take me on the road but my focus is on taking back my own life and helping other people take back their lives. I hope my messages warm the icy confused hearts of religious families everywhere including mine. If you want a good book to help your religious family accept you for being gay or trans or queer, check out “Sanctuary, Queering a Church in the Heartland”.
Mostly Minnesota 