Elijah Wood and Melkbelly’s Kids Have Good Taste in Music

Elijah Wood is an actor; Miranda and Bart Winters and James Wetzel are the Chicago-based indie rock band Melkbelly. Elijah and the band met back in 2017, when Melkbelly opened for the Breeders at the El Rey in LA. In the intervening years, all four of them have become parents; Miranda and James recently released solo records (Lawn Girl and Norphonic, respectively); and this past spring, Melkbelly put out two singles, “KMS EXPRESS” and “PRECIOUS CARGO,” on Exploding In Sound. Earlier this summer, they got on the phone to catch up about it all. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music 

Elijah Wood: Miranda, your solo record’s awesome. Or, would you consider Mandy a solo project?

Miranda Winters: Yeah, I think so. Thanks for listening to it!

Elijah: It’s so great! And James, this electronic Aphex-inspired record is great as well. Holy shit, man.

James Wetzel: Thanks. Yeah, we all started having kids and making solo records. Because we can do that, you know, 10 feet away from the crib.

Miranda: [Laughs.] It’s a little easier. 

Elijah: Yeah, that’ll do it. I mean, since we last saw each other — was it seven years ago, at the Breeders shows? Our lives have changed quite a bit since then. 

Miranda: Holy smokes, yeah.

James: Yeah, you didn’t have kids yet then either, right?

Elijah: No, no. And now we have two… So with these two singles — which are amazing, by the way — are these the first songs of what will eventually be an album, or is this sort of a standalone?

Miranda: Yeah, it’s standalone for sure. But I think it was a way for us to be like, “We’re still making music.”

Bart Winters: Yeah, “We’re still a band.”

Miranda: Yeah. Because the last record we released was at the exactly — maybe not “wrong” moment, but…

Bart: Yeah, April 2020. It just got lost. 

James: The biggest lull in record sales in history.

Elijah: Is that true?

Bart: That’s what I’ve heard. Or people just tell us that to make us feel better.

James: So, yeah, it kind of got brushed under the rug. But we kept writing new material, and I think when we decided to record at Electrical [Audio], we had decided to do a full record. Then we were like, “Well, if we want to put something out in the next six months to a year, we’re going to have to just do a one-off seven-inch type thing.” Also, that was our first time working in Electrical and working with Taylor [Hales], which was really great. We did it in a slightly different way where we weren’t always at the studio at the same time — we kind of took turns. Miranda would come in and do some vocal stuff and then disappear off with the kids, and then I would show up and we’d do some overdub stuff, and that worked out. So now we know that we can manage it with our new parent lives a little bit more. 

Elijah: That’s awesome. Getting that balance — that’s really great.

Miranda: Yeah, we’re trying to.

Bart: Still working on it.

Elijah: I wonder if you found this as well: We had kids around the same time, so the pandemic was a real frame for the early life of our children. In a lot of ways, it wasn’t a realistic period of time. We were all off of our respective work; I certainly was not doing any traveling, as much as I used to. So it was this kind of amazing golden period of almost having extended parental leave and not having to deal with establishing that balance. We didn’t have to think about anything beyond being parents and being with our kid. The real establishing of that balance is actually coming into play more now than it did over the last four years. Did you find that it was the same for y’all?

Bart: Yeah, for sure. I mean, Winnie was how old — six months, seven months?

Miranda: Yeah, eight months. There was definitely that aspect to it. I think personally — we released this record in April and we were planning on going on this tour. We had some Canadian dates, we were going to bring Winnie with us and we had her passport. That had always been something that I dreamed about doing, going on tour with my child. So that got canceled and taken away, and it kind of for me was super intense to be like, Your passion — performing live music — that’s going to end at the same time as you become a mom. It was a lot.

James: And the Euro shows also got canned. We had our second Euro tour lined up and it was supposed to happen later, like fall of 2020, and that hasn’t happened yet. 

Miranda: Yeah. But I do feel incredibly lucky that she existed, because I probably would have lost it.

Elijah: You’ll get there eventually.

James: Yeah, it’s coming. But we might actually try to do a Japan tour first.

Bart: We just played a show a couple weeks ago with a band from Tokyo called Loolowningen. They were on tour, so we set up that show for them. Then after the show, we were talking and they were like, “You should come to Japan!” I booked shows, so we kind of have a tour-slash-family-vacation thing. We’ll try to bring the kids. 

Elijah: Have you ever been to Japan before?

Bart: No, no. Have you? 

Elijah: Yeah. I’ve only been to Tokyo. It’s really amazing. It’s an explosion of culture and sights and sounds, and that city is so wild. But as chaotic as it is on the surface, culturally they have such incredible attention to detail and there’s such peace as well. It’s awesome. The food is incredible. Making a little vacation out of that will be great. 

Bart: Yeah. It was cool too, because one of the members of the band, Steve Albini was one of his heroes. And he had never played in Chicago, so the fact that they were there right after he passed away and played at the Empty Bottle — a venue that he loved — was cool.

Miranda: We covered a Shellac song — we played with them, and he was like, “I love that song, I know every word!”

James: Are you a Shellac fan?

Elijah: I’ve loved everything I’ve heard, but that’s a band I’ve never done a deep dive with. 

James: People would reference Shellac as a possible influence that we’d had, but I think we all assimilated their music just through so many different angles in the Chicago scene. And then, Bart, you would talk about Shellac frequently over the last few years— 

Miranda: You love Shellac. 

James: And then the day Steve Albini died, Bart texted the band and was like, “We’re covering this. Learn it.” [Laughs.] 

Bart: It was a couple days before the show and we were playing at the Empty Bottle, and we’re so influenced, directly and indirectly, by him, so I felt like we should do something. Even though Steve Albini probably would hate it. If he was watching it, he’d probably have said, “This sucks.” [Laughs.] But it felt like you should do something. Even if it wasn’t spot on cover, it was worth doing. 

Elijah: Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah, it’s kind of incredible, the reach that he had.

Bart: Yeah, for sure. Usually with celebrity type figures, I block that out — there’s so much going on in the world, people passing away, it’s hard to mourn everything. But for whatever reason, Steve Albini definitely hit me harder. I realized all the influences…

Miranda: I think he’s closer to you than a celebrity, too. 

Elijah: Yeah. He had a huge influence on music in Chicago, and your peers and people that you’ve played with. That [death] was definitely profound. It is wild — to your point, we’re sort of at this age where certain icons that we’ve kind of grown up with, we’re seeing them pass. It’s a part of life, but some of them hit a little bit deeper, and his really was profound.

James: Yeah. It seems like from a lot of the tributes I’ve read, from people who worked with him or just met him briefly, he seemed to have a very easygoing personality, but also at the same was time very aware and tuned in to people’s needs in the studio. I think a lot of the recording techniques that came through in these two singles — I feel like Taylor’s probably the best continuation of Steve Albini’s methodology in the studio. To watch Taylor while we were working on these songs, just very quick using a lot of outboard gear… I think he described that studio as being like Albini’s castle that he had just dumped everything into — everything from the construction of it, the deconstruction, to the reconstruction of it, isolating rooms to have no sonic bleed, and the wiring of everything — just meticulous attention to detail. So to be able to just have recorded there and be around his presence, I think for a lot of people, meant a lot. For us, we didn’t even work with him, and it meant a lot to be there. 

Miranda: Yeah, the first time I entered Electrical Audio, I cried a little bit. 

Bart: Really? 

Miranda: I did! Because I had wanted to be there for so long, since I was a pre-teen listening to the Breeders and just being like, Oh, I gotta get there. And then being at the front door, I was like, [hyperventilating] “It’s real!”

Elijah: Oh, my god, yeah.

James: It’s such a specific sound, especially in studio B, [which] we were in. It’s a very high ceilinged room. That’s where they did the legendary the Breeders’ Pod snare drum — that reverberant kind of drop. They did so many records, but I feel like that’s one of the best records that showcases that room sound. So when we set the drums up, I think I just played for, like, 30 minutes. I forgot where I was, and then Taylor came on the mic and was like, “Alright, I think we got your drums checked.” [Laughs.] 

Miranda: Yeah, he was the best person for that.

James: He was very patient.

Miranda: He was like, “You can cry. I understand.” [Laughs.] 

Elijah: So, you’ve been writing a bunch of songs for Melkbelly, for a third record, and then you chose these two songs [to release as single]. What was it about those two songs that identified that they were the ones that you wanted to record?

Miranda: I feel like they just felt really good, and they came together really quickly.

James: They worked really well together, and the “KMS EXPRESS” track is so in your face. 

Elijah: I don’t know if there’s another song I can think of that you’ve recorded quite like that one. It’s really amazing. 

James: We wrote that one when there were no shows happening at all, and I think in our heads we were just daydreaming of playing it in a basement in Chicago. Then when we got our first gig back, we kind of built the whole set around debuting this song, and a mosh pit emerged right away. [Laughs.] We were like, “OK, this song slaps.” So that song, we knew we had to record it. And then the other one, “PRECIOUS CARGO,” was just such a great melody that I think balanced out some of the aggressiveness of “KMS.” 

Elijah: They work as a really good A and B side. It’s a lovely pair.

James: Thank you. So hopefully the new songs we write can hang with those ones and keep up. But I think we’re entering a phase where we want to have more contrast like that. We want to dial it back a bit, but we also want to amp it up at the same time. At least I do.

Miranda: I’m trying to learn how to scream correctly.

Elijah: Yeah? 

Miranda: So that I can do it for a long time.

Elijah: I was gonna say, your scream is pretty great.

Miranda: Thank you, thank you so much! [Laughs.] 

Bart: She hammered her vocal cords recording “KMS.”

Miranda: That song ended and then I could not create a sound for, like, two weeks. It was nuts. 

Elijah: Do you do any vocal exercising, or teas and various herbal supplements? 

Miranda: I didn’t, I do now. I met with a vocal coach, and then I do speech therapy. So now I’ve got tips and tricks. I’m trying.

Elijah: Wow, that is such a cool road to go down. Do you do the exercises every day?

Miranda: I’m supposed to, but it’s not always realistic. Because before you start speaking, you should do the exercises, but how can I do that if I have somebody next to my bed at 5:30 AM saying, [whispers] “I have to tell you something.”

James: [Laughs.] Maybe Winnie wants to do the exercises with you.

Miranda: Yeah, she’d probably be into it. 

James: She can learn a feral scream at a very young age. Or maybe she’s already got it.

Miranda: Yeah, she does. But she wants to do less music and more art.

Elijah: Since your kids are surrounded by music, how has that influenced them? What is their musical taste? What are you playing for them? 

Miranda: Our children love EDM. 

Elijah: Woah.

Bart: And ‘90s, like, Vengaboys.

Miranda: “Sandstorm.” That kind of stuff. 

Bart: Both of them love that. I think that’s the music that we can tolerate — it’s kind of fun and and they like it. So a mix of that and, like, Bluey. Have you heard of Danny Go?

Elijah: Danny Go? 

Miranda: If you haven’t heard it yet, maybe don’t even introduce it. Don’t worry about it. My Little Pony’s New Generation soundtrack slaps.

Bart: That’s actually good.

Miranda: Or, I don’t know if it is good. I think we’ve just listened to it a lot.

Elijah: I find the music from Bluey to be pretty great. The Dance Mode album is a little intense, but the music’s really good. The score is awesome. There’s actually quite a lot of good music made for children, both contemporary and old. But it’s funny, the stuff that we play that connects. What EDM are you playing that they’re in love with?

Bart: We’ve put on James’s record! I think anything with a beat — our youngest loves to dance. He’ll just start dancing.

Elijah: It’s funny, dance music isn’t quite working. It’s pretty much strictly rock & roll over here.

Miranda: That’s nice. I’m jealous. [Laughs.] 

James: Anything in particular?

Elijah: Our son, anything with a guitar and drums was something that he was super into and would connect with. I’ve tried varying dance songs here and there, and they haven’t really connected. The songs right now — our favorite song’s “Enter Sandman.”

James: [Laughs.] That’s funny, my daughter went through a very brief Metallica phase in the car. We were just listening to the radio and she perked up and made some noise — this was before she was talking — in response to Metallica. So we were like, “Hm, maybe she’s into Metallica…” So we listened to Metallica for, like, two or three weeks. We were trying to fight off the kids music for as long as we could, playing everything. A lot of Aphex Twin. My daughter recognizes the difference between Aphex Twin and my music, which is good. She knows daddy’s music. She’s just starting to talk a lot — she says “Aphex Twin” now, which is kind of hilarious.

Elijah: Amazing, you must be so proud!

Miranda: [Laughs.] 

James: [Laughs.] The proudest father.

Miranda: There’s also this one band from Providence called Death Vessel, they’re on Sub Pop. They have this song called “Mercury Dime”  — it’s a great song, and for whatever reason, that’s the first song that Winnie latched on to. I think our household is responsible for, like, 90% of the plays on Spotify for that song. 

Bart: Well… Liam [Winters] couldn’t be here, obviously. He’s working right now, but he said that he’s very excited to see Toxic Avenger whenever that comes out, as we all are.

Elijah: Oh, awesome. Yeah, I’m excited for people to see it. I’m not sure what the release strategy is, but it played at a couple of festivals last year, and it’s pretty great and weird and fucking hilarious. You know, it’s a remake of a Troma movie, so it very much pays homage to those films and that style. It’s bloody and gory and ridiculous. I’m hoping it’ll see the light of day sometime this year.

Miranda: Nice.

Elijah: Well, guys, this has been really fun. 

Bart: It’s been great. 

James: Thank you so much for being down. 

Elijah: Oh, man, it’s been nice to see you guys! If we’re ever in the Chicago area, we’ll definitely let you guys know. Would love to visit you.

Miranda: Yeah, come to the yard.

(Photo Credit: Autumn de Wilde)