To call them rule-breakers would be largely underselling them. Oklahoma sibling trio Skating Polly formed when founding members (and step-sisters) Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse were only 9 and 14; Kelli’s brother Kurtis joined in 2017. Since then they’ve racked up fans like X’s Exene Cervenka and Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson. They’ve made up their own genre, Ugly-Pop, and revived DIY culture with handmade merch and a grassroots fanbase. They’ve managed to mature, as artists and individuals, while dipping in and out of the spotlight. With a rock-steady ethos, Skating Polly has never backed away from a challenge and refuse to be put in a box.
It’s been five years since their last release and Kelli Mayo of Skating Polly is here to talk about their new album, Chaos County Line, the freedom of defining your own genre, working with Brad Wood (Exile in Guyville) and what it means to be a life-long musician.
Scene Point Blank: What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about Skating Polly?
Kelli: I guess just how versatile we can be. I think it's easier for people to think that we're a loud girl band or something. But one thing that I'm really proud of is our band is really versatile -- there’s lots of sides to us. It's funny. I'll have relatives who you know just go, “It’s not my thing” and I’ll go, “It's okay, Grandma. Have you heard this song?” [Laughs.] And then it’s, “Oh, that’s lovely. Why don’t you sing like that more?” [Laughs.]
Scene Point Blank: Broadly speaking your music is considered to be punk, or at least have a deep punk influence and appreciation. Is there ever a fear that you’re trapped in a box now as far as genre goes? Do you feel pressure to sound a certain way to appease fans?
Kelli: Not really. I think part of labelling ourselves Ugly-Pop was like, you know, when you make up your own genre, it can be whatever you say it is. Ugly-Pop is an oxymoron to me; it covers like all sides of the spectrum a little bit. The idea is every harsh song has a little bit of pretty in it and every pretty song has a little bit of weirdness or harshness or darkness in it. I don't feel too trapped in a box. Sometimes when we’re planning a live show, building a setlist, I feel like we have to do a certain number of the faster, louder ones. Those are also just fun to play. But you know, I think it's weird with Skating Polly fans. A lot of the songs that I am most proud of, that's what people end up latching onto the most as well. There's not been a lot of times where I've written a song and then been like, “Oh man, this one really got overlooked.” I mean, there are songs that are less popular than others. The ones that resonate with me the strongest usually strike a chord with other people as well no matter what genre it is.
Scene Point Blank: You kind of have a song for everyone then?
Kelli: Yeah, it feels like that. With this album, I sent it to a lot of my close friends and other musicians and everyone had different favourites and that's really exciting. So, it’s like they're all really good songs and it's more like what your vibe is.
Scene Point Blank: You’ve talked about Ugly-Pop as this idea of heavy melody mixed with imperfections and blemishes. As you refine your sound and continue to gain experience, is it more difficult to tap into the “ugly” part of Ugly-Pop?
Kelli: No, I feel like that's always very accessible to me. [Laughs.] First of all, as we've become better musicians, we’re pushing ourselves. A lot of the time me, Kurtis and Peyton will write parts that we can't quite play yet. So, there's still room there for errors, you're learning these parts that you're trying to play in the studio. When you aren’t editing yourself with robot perfection, there's always these really cool imperfections. There's always these cool moments, if you just, like, look under the rock and see who’s hanging out. I feel like that’s just part of playing music and putting yourself out there: you will just naturally kind of capture these things, these chatty moments. So no, it's not been hard to tap into that. “Ugly” has evolved in what it means to me. Ugly is a guitar flub we decided to keep in the track or sometimes the content of the song is about a really ugly feeling. Sometimes it's getting vulnerable with my voice in a way that's not the most proper singing but is still just a cool, real moment. To me, it's always been about not editing out humanity. That’s how you keep ugly and Ugly-Pop.
Scene Point Blank: It’s been five years since your last album. Does Chaos County Line feel like a chance to reintroduce yourselves? Or does it feel like you never left?
Kelli: I feel like our first tour after the pandemic was like the chance to reintroduce ourselves. It was the longest Kurtis, Peyton and I had been apart. I was living in LA a bit, I was living in Oregon a bit, so we weren't all together. I do really feel like the record, though, is a continuation of what we've always been doing from the start. But it's evolved and I feel like it's our best work yet. Of course I want to reach new fan --- but I think that people who’ve known about us will also like it. I think this will resonate with them. It's not like we were trying to recapture something we did before, but I really do feel like it was the natural progression of where everything started and kind of like everything's been leading up to this. [Laughs.] Which is like, “Where does the next one go?” which I don’t know. [Laughs.] Yeah, I'm really proud of it. I really do hope it reaches new people. That's another thing that actually happened during the pandemic. A lot of young, cool people found our music randomly. Our audiences have been a lot younger and made up of people who like to make their own clothes. It's like a Skating Polly Ugly-Pop fashion show every night. Like, it's really rad.
Scene Point Blank: I've been a fan for a while, and I’ve noticed younger people have recently started getting into your music too.
Kelli: Yeah, it hasn't always been like that. There have been some younger fans and I don’t think young people dislike us, but it's just like we weren't capturing the attention of a lot of young people. We were touring with X and these people that I think -- I don't know -- it's just our audience was a lot of older rockers and that was cool ‘cause it was people who really appreciated music and kind of music snobs, you know, who like Skating Polly. Now we’re catching on with younger people. I feel like the cool kids.
Scene Point Blank: A lot of your past merch has been DIY or handmade and Skating Polly generally carries a do-it-yourself ethos. Does it feel like you, as a band, are reviving a more DIY mindset in comparison to other bands today?
Kelli: I've definitely always been very pro DIY. Just this last tour we ran out of printed T-shirts so we went to Walmart, bought some white t-shirts, bought fabric markers, you know, and went for it. We are on a label -- a small label that’s been really great to us -- but it's funny ‘cause there's just still so much that we take care of. There is so much that we're constantly doing ourselves. It's cool because it would be very un-Ugly-Pop if we had that all streamlined and taken care of. It’s the only way to make sure we’re doing things the most Skating Polly way. I hope it inspires people to just do things themselves. It totally is the same mindset as Ugly-Pop, you know: to just go for it, make it, put it out there, it shouldn't be perfect.
Scene Point Blank: You started making music when you were pretty young. As you’ve aged did it ever feel like there was a point when you had to decide to try and take music on as a career and forgo a more traditional job?
Kelli: I've always known that I wanted this to be my thing. I mean, I'm living back with my parents now. There are times when I’m like, “Oh,” ‘cause I want to move back to LA. [Laughs.] There are times when I want to make more money, but I don't really consider something else as another career. It's just, “What else can I squeeze it so that I can make money while doing this?” There's definitely sacrifices I make so that Skating Polly can be my focus -- same for Peyton and Kurtis. Truly I don't see life without it. This is me and if it never gets to the level where I can just live off of my music then I'll just keep doing it at this level forever. I don't think that'll be the case. I think that things will keep growing and it's not something that I’m going to stop. Peyton and Kurtis feel the same way. We all just want to keep going with it forever. The things that it fulfils in our life couldn't be filled by anything else.
Scene Point Blank: It’s been a while since fans have heard new recorded music from you and your voices have obviously matured a lot. Peyton’s vocals on “Hickey King” are seriously amazing. Have you been doing vocal training or just lots of practice?
Kelli: The beginning of 2020, I went to this fancy voice doctor person ‘cause I was having struggles with my voice and it turned out that I had to get two surgeries. That was all amidst the pandemic, it was a whole thing, but it went beautifully. So then after that, the healing, they described it as playing a different guitar as how my voice would be. How it would just feel different. I'd have to learn how to play it differently in order to get the sound I wanted. It's really wild ‘cause that was spot-on. As my voice was healing, I was working with a speech therapist and then vocal coaches. I learned all these cool tricks from the vocal coaches about how to preserve my voice, get the most out of my voice and how to get around mental blocks -- when you think you can't hit a note and then, sure enough, you can. It was really cool, and I learned a lot of warm-up exercises. I’m a big fan of warm-ups and vocal exercises now. [Laughs.] I taught Peyton a lot of them. Doing all the vocal coach stuff made me have more of an ear for pure tones. I still love weird vocals. It's not like I'm wanting to sound like some, you know, I don't know... It's funny. I've mentioned vocal coaches, and people think I'm trying to sing like Taylor Swift or Mariah Carey, like really perfectly. That's not what the objective is. The objective is to be able to know my instrument better so I can even do more with my instrument.
I would be really picky with me and Peyton’s vocals. Peyton – honestly, even if I wasn't in the band with her -- has just one of my favourite voices. She’s just so unique. I’ve never heard anyone who sounds like her, and she can do so much with it, and it's really different from mine. I think our voices work really well together. They're very different but then they're also similar in certain ways because we’ve grown up together. We’re really proud of how we sound on the record. There are certain moments when it’s like, “Holy crap, we sound like real singers,” [Laughs.] One of my proudest things about this new record is definitely the vocals. I think [they are] stronger than ever, yes, but also just still very powerful and earnest.
The idea is every harsh song has a little bit of pretty in it and every pretty song has a little bit of weirdness or harshness or darkness in it.
Scene Point Blank: Chaos County Line is a double album. Did you go into this project knowing you wanted to create a longer album, or did it organically grow into this?
Kelli: Yeah, we definitely knew. I have been promising that we do a new album since gosh, like 2020 or something. I kept saying, “We're going to be ready by the New Year,” and I just kept saying that. Then it would be like, “Oh, maybe not because of my voice,”’ or “Oh, maybe not because of this,” you know? Things just kept happening. We had so many song ideas. Even when I didn’t have my voice, I was writing stuff, whistling melodies, like trying to make songs ‘cause that’s how I process a lot of things.
It was all there, it was just a matter of finishing things. So, me and Peyton and Kurtis, for the first time ever, spent money and rented an Airbnb for a month to put a deadline on it. Like this is how much time we have to write the album. We went through almost like 40 different song ideas, very vague. It really could be a 15-second voice memo on a phone or it could be like, I don't know, like 10 parts, you know? It could be a really convoluted song that needs some help with editing or it could be a song that’s basically just done or just needs drums and bass. We went through it all and picked our favorites. We tried to get a well-rounded sound, different vibes. Then we started editing and started fleshing stuff out. We definitely knew it needed to be a double record. It was like, “Okay, we've had so much time. We've had this much time, we can do this. We should do this.” And I also think it’s just guilt that it’s taking so long.
Late 2021 I was already feeling like it had been so long. Originally, we were going in November 2021 to record the album. It was going to come out a lot sooner but then Brad Wood, our producer, got really bad family news and had to go take care of a family medical emergency. We couldn't get back to the record for quite some time. By the time he was ready to get back to the record we were going on tour in Europe. It was just delay after delay. But it was all good ‘cause that tour in Europe really got baked into the songs. It made us tighter and made us feel like a real band again. It felt like we are a band, like “Oh, this is a real thing. [Laughs.]
Scene Point Blank: What was it like working with your producer, Brad Wood?
Kelli: It's amazing. I really, really trust him and I think that he's brilliant. I think he's got a great ear. I think he really gets us. I think he really gets our whole idea and the whole idea behind Ugly-Pop. That's aligned with his beliefs. He's really good at, like, when I described what I want out of my voice and what I don't want out of my voice, he’s really good at hearing it and understanding. We have a really good dialogue. I would just sit next to him while Peyton was tracking vocals or while Kurtis was tracking. We call Brad “Producifer.” That’s his nickname. One of the girls from The Bangles gave him Producifer. I’m like, “I’m Producifer Junior! I need my Producifer Junior chair to sit next to him!” [Laughs. Exile in Guyville is one of my favorite albums of all time. I reference it all the time, even if we aren't working with Brad. I'm so close to Brad at this point, we all are, so when I reference one of his songs in reference to my song, it’s like, “You know that moment on ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’? You know that guitar sound? Maybe we could use that?” [Laughs. He’s never like, “Oh my God,” he's flattered, he’s very sweet. He's got a really good ear for percussion. I wrote a lot more layers on this record than previous records and he's really good in the mix, kinda finding room for things but making some of them subliminal. It’s not super loud in-your-face. It’s layered in there. It’s really cool because some of those layers are things that will not be recreated live. It's cooler to have them just as texture because it would be weird when we go live and it’s like, “Where’s the organ? Where’s the harp?” [Laughs.
Scene Point Blank: Yeah, it's very cool. You can be like a fan of your producer.
Kelli: Yeah, and [Laughs. -- not to just keep talking about a great Brad is -- but it was a really emotional record to make. Everyone says that. [Laughs. Most records are emotional to make, but it was weird, for the first time ever, I would cry in the vocal booth. I broke down crying and Peyton had a meltdown too. We needed to get it right. It was vital. He was a really good coach. He'd be like, “You’re close, you don't need a meltdown, we're going to get this, or we can get this tomorrow.” He's a very good coach and so it was cool for sure.
Scene Point Blank: A song like “I’m Sorry For Always Apologizing” is so honest and self-deprecating. Is it hard writing about such personal issues when you know a lot of people are going to hear it?
Kelli: I used to be a lot more scared to be direct. Those lyrics [for “I’m Sorry For Always Apologizing”] are like very, very direct and to the surface and I've talked about specifically who that song is about. I think it's okay to be honest and if people like don't like the way I felt or the song I made based on the way I felt, then that's okay. I'm just trying to make peace with that, but also just try to be real. I also used to be scared to talk too directly about what my songs mean, ‘cause I don't want to paint myself a certain way. What if people think this or that. Art is, music is, so subjective to whoever's taking it in. People can still project whatever they want onto it. I think from a writing standpoint it's really cool to know what the musicians were writing about. I love those little bits of trivia. Right now I'm feeling really open and I’m kind of just riding that wave and if I’m asked about that in a few years so be it. But right now I'm very okay with it.
Scene Point Blank: Fans talk about certain songs sounding like a “Peyton song” or a “Kelli song.” Do you think there’s a big difference in your songwriting or the topics you chose to write about?
Kelli: Peyton songs and Kelli songs, that's funny. Me and Peyton even catch ourselves doing it but, often, there are a lot of songs that have gray area. I was getting driven crazy because people were calling “Hickey King” a Peyton song and I was like, “Shut the fuck up.” [Laughs]…I’m the motherfucker going “ch-ch-ch” [on the riff]. [Laughs.]
We're going to do an album track-by-track breakdown for a publication. Me and Peyton were like, “How do we do this? Do we want to take the songs that we did lead vocals on?” We basically just came to: if there's something you have to say about one of the songs to say it, no matter who's doing lead. The fact of the matter is we'll both end up with lines in each other’s songs and stuff. “Tiger at The Drug Store,” which is a piano song where we trade off vocals, Peyton had the original conception of that song. When we went and did lyrics, we ended up using all my journal entries. That’s a weirdly unique song because the journal entries in the lyrics, when I was writing, I was trying to make it like Peyton’s original concept but then they were still my words. It was about the same things but also different things. That song is about coping mechanisms. Me and Peyton have had really different coping mechanisms in our lives. We get each other though. The same song can mean wildly different things and have super different memories attached to it. Thinking of another example, “Hickey King” for Peyton is about this very specific shitty Tinder date she went on. For me it's about possessiveness of guys. It’s completely different people but it's telling the same story. That's really fun, going through our feelings and seeing where they line up and seeing where the characters can play together in the song.
Scene Point Blank: What song do you have on repeat right now?
Kelli: I've been listening to “I Want Wind to Blow” by The Microphones a lot. Also, “I Might Be Wrong” by Radiohead. Wait, wait, wait…[Laughs.] more than that is “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” by Radiohead because I’m trying to play that on guitar.
Scene Point Blank: That must be hard to learn, I imagine? It’s a Radiohead song, so…[Laughs.]
Kelli: It is. [Laughs.] I'm not great at it. To me it just feels like a fun drill and I don't know if I'll ever perfect it but it's a good warm up like, “Let me try to stumble through this for a second.” [Laughs.]
Scene Point Blank: You’re about to go back on tour. What’s your favourite -- and least favourite -- part of touring?
Kelli: Least favourite part is whenever I start feeling bad, if I get hurt, or when circumstances are making it hard on my voice. There's nothing that stresses me out more. I’ve already had a surgery for my voice. I have to start computing like, do I have to just stop talking to everybody all day, which is really hard. It sounds like I'm being a baby but that's a hard thing to do.
The vocal coaches will say, “Your voice is like a bank account.” That's weird ‘cause it doesn't seem like a part of you that you should have to watch out for like that. Talking should be a part of yourself that you can just talk as much as you want. [Laughs.] You should have an unlimited resource of that. But it does happen. I can't talk loud after shows, I gotta watch out for staying up late and yada yada. That’s my least favourite part; dealing with any sort of vocal discomfort because it really scares me. I am hyper aware of it now, so I'm taking better care of it and I'm not going to damage it again. There’s so much anxiety that comes with it and then there's so much fun that I sacrifice checking out from everybody else.
The best part of touring? For several shows I'll just be on stage and I'll be so happy. It really is like, “Oh man, this is the best job in the world.” I love seeing people sing along to my songs. I love, love, love, love, love it. If every person in the audience is mean or so checked out or even if there was like, five people in the audience, but one person was just super happy and singing along: that's all I need. I really do love that.
I love the kind of routine, I mean, it's not a routine but it's as close to a routine as I can ever get too. It's drive to a place, sound check, have a few dead hours, play the show. I'm not very good with routine but that routine I really enjoy. Whenever you actually make yourself walk around and explore a little bit on tour, and it is hard because sometimes it just seems like it’d be better to sleep, but finding these little moments to explore and just have fun, it's really worth it. You are literally traveling either all over the country or all over different places. You’re getting to see the world; you might as well try to see it a little. Again, sometimes that's hard, but it can be really nice if you can take that. I actually really like car rides. I'm still not sick of it which is kind of crazy. I think it's good bonding time: playing silly car games and stuff.
But all of it: connecting with fans, getting dressed up for the shows, it’s all a great feeling. Even with shows where things are going wrong like or having terrible sound issues or someone was rude or whatever. I try to harness that mantra, ‘cause it's so true. I have the best job in the world.
Scene Point Blank: What are you most excited to do as a band this year?
Kelli: Geez, that’s a hard one. We might be getting to go to a really special studio that we've always wanted to work at. We might be doing this, but I don't think I can really say anything else about that. But we might be going for a promotional live session, we might be going to a really cool studio. I’m really stoked about that.
There’s this director that I super want to work with but, again, that's another thing where I don't know if I can announce it yet. They’ve made a lot of my favorite music videos and we've been in communication. We've been in communication about making one in early July, so coming up really soon.
I'm really ready for the record to come out. [Laughs.] We've been starting the [live] set with “Queen for a Day” for years now, since 2018, so like five years. Now we're going to start the set with a song from the new album. We're also going to start playing piano live and the sets are going to feel a little bit different. They're going to have even more depth to them and I'm excited about that. There isn’t one specific thing. I truly am really excited about the tour, just for people to get this record. Me and Peyton and Kurtis are just so proud of it. You can do all the speculation you want but when it’s out it’s real in a different way.
