By Jack Daniel Betz

Female Demand has worked hard over the past year to record their first LP and in December, I sat down with Jonathan and Bradley at Agora to talk about the process; glamor, grief, and all. Female Demand will be playing a very special set at Fitzgerald’s on the 10^th which will include their first ever live collaboration with local hip-hop powerhouse, B L A C K I E.

Was two weeks a long time to work on the album or did it feel like not a lot of time once you got started?

It was good but we weren’t going to take the time to do a bunch of retakes if we didn’t have to. The way me and Bradley operate, it’s like we hammer it out really easily because we both don’t want to deal with it right now- rather we just want to do and it move on.

Tell me about getting the bassist from Shellac to work on it

Our producer got him because he’s like the go to guy. He’s like one of those people who when you walk into a coffee shop or a bar in LA they all know him. And they all know him. [. . .] Manny [Nieto] knows Steve Albini. His band recorded with them way back in the day and they toured together.

While we’re on the subject, how did you connect with Manny in the first place?

What show was it? He was like are you guys trying to a demo and we were like yeah. He was like, save your pennies and come out to LA. So we saved our money, grabbed our shit. I took my kick pedal and my guitar and we flew out there. It was pretty fun but we were also apprehensive because we didn’t know what to expect from him. We never really met the guy. All we came up with was the agreement on the amount of money and the amount of time. Our 12 inch we put a while ago, that was the product of us working with him for a weekend. We learned from that situation. I recorded the whole process on camera. I was so excited. I saved my money. I was in high school and it was senior year and I had a choice to go to my prom like a loser like everybody else and probably get laid and drunk. But instead of buying that suit and buying that ticket I spent my time on that one night where I might never hear from that girl ever again: prom or LA? I chose LA. [. . .]

It was really chill. It was very professional and he’s really nice. But he’s a producer. There’s that side of him, and when it comes out, he’s relentless. And we’ve seen that side of him and it’s not to be a dick, it’s not to be an asshole, but it’s to make good records. During the EP was a taste. During that he was like ok, when you guys go back home and release this, you need to get ready to come back and I’ll record you. And that’s how we got our artist [Sonny Kay]. [. . .] To have him be part of our project is an honor. Manny was tuning our drums and asked us if we had an artist for our EP. And we were like no we don’t have an artist. I have a guy you all may know, who might be down to do it. His name is Sonny Kay. I told him that sounds familiar. And he was like, he’s the guy who does all Omar Rodriguez’s solo shit. It was like one of those record scratch moments. I was like, oh shit. Yeah. We’ll let him do the cover. He gave me his email and we created a dialogue and he’s very supportive of what we do considering that barely even knew us. He heard the music [. . .] and he said he’d love to do it.

Now I heard that it was going really smoothly but then you got hung up in one place.

Honestly, a lot of shit happened. Emotion, anger, frustration. Blood sweat and tears. And sushi. Manny loves sushi. [. . .] As soon as that Monday came we went to the studio and met up with Manny and were just chatting while was setting up the mics and it was smooth. [. . .] When he did post-production with us before we left LA, we had nine songs for the record and we had a tenth song we were almost done with -it was almost ready. But he didn’t want to hear it. He was like, it’s a surprise. “Outside the Universe”. He called us out for not practicing on those changes. For “Outside the Universe” we worked it out and we played it and he goes ok, that song was kind of intense.

He flew out, we showed him what we had and him, being a producer was like, “change this, do this differently”. He was tearing up all of our songs. All those songs are completely different. Well, I wouldn’t say completely different. There are at least four that are pretty similar to what we had it. “STDs don’t sleep”, he fucked the shit out of that one. Like for that one I had to write lyrics on the spot because he wanted words. Like literally, he fucked up this whole record but in a good way. He was being a producer. He wasn’t like making up parts and telling us to play them, what he was doing was just dissecting the songs, taking shit out and rearranging it. But the songs he changed, they really changed. The first song we did was a song he didn’t hear yet and he said that song was fine. But after a while he was like these weren’t the songs that we went through and he was getting pissed. He called us out. The turning point of the whole record was that song, “Eat who I eat” which is the song Shelby did the video for. That song was different from the way we had it. For some reason I just did not feel right about the changes. We played it through for him and we didn’t even listen back to it. He just like, “what the fuck! You didn’t keep the changes!”

Did he go all Phil Spector on you?

He was mad. He was so pissed. He talked to us like he was our dad. He was disappointed with us. He said, you wasted money flying my ass out here, just spent the whole day on this song, on your changes, look, you better pay attention. That was the turning point in the record because he was like I could be a paid yes-man or you can make this fucking record. [. . .] After he gave us a long lecture, it was like two or three in the afternoon, he said let’s take the rest of the afternoon, grab something to eat, think about it and we’ll see what you decide.