AN INTRODUCTION TO: RUBY
We spoke with Katy Hellman, previously of Julia Caesar, on a snowy evening in Vermont, but a mild one in Philadelphia, about the break out of her new project Ruby. She was sporting her classic red turtleneck, black overalls, oversized glasses and explosive enthusiasm for creating. Some things don’t change, like Katy’s unapologetic ownership of her art and turtlenecks, and it’s in those consistencies that we find comfort in times of growth, exploration and transcendence.
hope: Who is Ruby? You and Steven Lebele were a big part of Burlington VT’s Julia Caesar, but this is not a continuation. What do you want people to know about Ruby?
Ooh this all makes me so excited! The name is such a good story! I was asking some of my students for suggestions, and this is from a second grader, and she came up with three names: Ruby, Thorns Until the Dawn of Time and Sisters of Mercy. I was like “Girl! You are a poet!”. So, that is the cutest. And what Ruby means to me is this raw, vulnerable, passionate heart at the center of everything.
The band is made up of Steven Lebele, who writes synth, drums and some guitar parts and who plays the drums lives. Maddie Rabin, who plays guitar and sings supporting vocals. Leah Goldman, who plays synth and also sings supporting vocals and myself! As a band, we want to be touring as often as possible and to be sharing music with as many people as possible. I don’t think we have a particular target audience in mind, because I’ve been so surprised by audiences before, of who’s connecting with the music. I’ve been connecting with people all over the Northeast and a bit south of Philly, as well. It’s a lot of people we had started building community with through Julia Caesar, too. I’m trying not to get too attached to specific outcomes of what’s gonna happen with the project, because that’s where things can get painful. I have the vision of feeling super fulfilled and nourished by the whole creative process, from writing, to building and arranging songs, to recording, to being with audiences. Just to feel engaged really. A funny thing for our vision, or like goal, is to make cis-boys cry!
hope: Like in a “Hey! Just feel your feelings, okay?”.
Yeah! It’s kind of a joke, but we want to create an experience where people can feel the breadth of emotion. To just kind of open up windows in people’s souls, in people’s hearts, in people’s bodies to really deeply feel. We’re given these “good” or “bad” feelings as a framework for how we relate to emotions, and this project is trying to challenge that. But yeah, get people to really feel the vibrancy of all the emotions and create an opportunity and a safe container to do be doing that through music.
hope: How has the transition of moving from Burlington to Philadelphia in pursuit of this new project felt? What has it taught you?
The transition feels really deliberate. It feels like for the first time in my life I’m really concretely and intentionally putting myself out there. I feel like with Julia Caesar we built a lot of really awesome momentum and things happened really organically. But I’ve just aggressively been making friends! Haha! And trying to build community with femme, queer musicians here and it’s been really awesome so far. It’s been leading me to really cool things and not just in Philly! I’m really believing that the success of this project is going to be relational and people caring and resonating with the music. This isn’t an exploitative, capitalist venture. It’s gonna happen because of really solid and honest relationships.
Over the last few years of playing with Julia Caesar, I came into knowing that this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This project is stepping into my own power as an artist. At 27, it feels like the moment of “Alright, here I go!”. I think what’s different with this project is that I have a lot more explicit, creative control. That was something I was grappling with for a while, if I wanted to be trying to create something with a co-creative process. For a while, I was questioning myself that stepping out and doing this on my own meant I wasn’t a good collaborator or that I couldn’t work with people and it’s not that. I’ve always had really clear visions of what I want and how I’m going to do it. I was told by the world that that was a bad thing. And that sort of pushed me in the opposite direction of my truth and this time I’m really ready to just bust out.
hope: Are you finding any differences in what feels accessible to you sonically or thematically in your new music?
I mean, some of the language I’ve used to describe Julia Caesar, I’ll probably use to describe this project because there are a lot of similarities. There’s a heavy emphasis on vocals and lyrics and arranged harmonies that are at the heart of these songs, that are built around and uplift the stories that are the main point. I actually had this dream where I was telling someone who my band sounded like and I had these three bands, and it’s people who I’m inspired by, Mountain Man, Big Thief and Natalie Merchant. It ranges from songs that are stripped down, just vocals and guitar, to full-on heavy rock. And there are a wide variety of arrangements and sounds, and with Steve’s drumming there are definitely these really intricate, layered rhythms. So like, heavy abstraction and explosive optimism.
hope: What is the creative process for this project like? How do y’all write? Is it all together or does everyone bring something to the table and you find ways to make the puzzle pieces fit?
This sounds cheesy, but I know that my gift in this world is my music. Stepping into this project is me saying “I’m allowed to do this. I’m giving myself permission to share my gift”. And the way it all comes about, and this is so true of most of my life, is tension. There’s a tension or a dissonance or an angst, and I don’t know what to do and I feel it so intensely in my body and that’s usually where the songwriting process starts. I don’t often sit down to write songs where I’m like “Wow, I‘ve been feeling really light and beautiful”. No, it usually starts in a place of “Arghh! There’s something building and I need to get it out!”. My creative process is my healing process. Art is a way to heal, so when these songs are building and there’s this tension, writing the music is the only way I’ve found that I can truly resolve that tension and find release because the Universe doesn’t speak in linear ways, so music is one way of understanding that, translating it. Sometimes, I hear the melody first and then the words come and then I write the music. I’ll write a bass line and now I’m incorporating my own guitar writing and playing more than I have before! I don’t know where the music and lyrics come from. The songwriting is like stream-of-consciousness.
I want to give Steve his sparkle! I write and arrange the songs and then I bring them to Steve. Steve and I write and arrange the rest of the songs for the band. For some, he might write the synth and drums and I write guitar and bass. For others, he might write guitar, synth and drums and I arrange and write vocals. We’re both contributing and writing them out in this way. On the album, Steve plays all the synth, drums, and a lot of guitar and I play guitar, bass and vocals. Then we bring it to the other bandmates. For some of the songs, they help write the vocal harmonies or I’ll have them done. That’s how it is for now, but we’ll see how that develops over time.
hope: The lead single, “Rapture”, is set to be released December 10. What does “Rapture” mean for you?
It’s the first single and the first track on the album, Marrow. The song is way more simple, in terms of its arrangement, compared to other songs on the album. It’s basically three verses and it’s what it feels like to be taking these deliberate steps in my journey. I picture this little character of me walking off into the world, ready to do it! As the song goes on, it gets into the warped ways of how we understand what we’re “supposed” to be doing and what success looks like, and it resolves in this deliberate choice to love. It’s honoring and noticing the ways love and hate spiral out. Building momentum around love is what the song feels like. I write a lot of my songs in the third-person, even when they’re about me, and “Rapture” is in the first-person and that feels really right and head-on.
hope: How does “Rapture” fit into Marrow as a collective creative work?
Marrow is a collection of songs from the last two years of songwriting. What makes me really excited about it, as a whole, is that there’s a dynamic and intense variety of this exploratory process at different times. Thinking about these paradoxes of seeing the mystery, seeing the truth, from all the various perspectives and angles, each song feels like it’s getting at “it” in a different way. “Rapture” is about courage in taking those first steps, it’s about what we do with anger and how it translates into love and how it’s fuel for love, ultimately.
THIS ARTICLE WAS GRACIOUSLY CONTRIBUTED BY:
G Cenedella is a writer, performer and curry-enthusiast in Burlington, VT. You can follow her work and shenanigans on Instagram @thesweetbbyg.