Glen’s Rockmaggedon- Interview with Lisa Kekaula (The Bellrays)

I read that your first ever performance was at a talent show at your school, and I’d like to ask you which song you sang and if you won the show?

That was the second one in school. The first one I did I was about 6, and it was one of those summer camp things, and I did Oscar Brown Jr’s “Signifyin’ Monkey“. It was like a jazz-rap flash-tune, before rap was rap. I remember feeling very accomplished afterwards, because I was scared to death, my knees were shaking, but at the end everybody clapped, so I felt like – that was winning.

It was a start to an impressive career for sure. What was the first song you remember hearing that made you fall in love with rock’n’roll?

The first rock’n’roll song? I wanna say it was „Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds “, but the song that I remember being so startled by that it made me recognize what music was “I Gotcha“ by Joe Tex. I remember being in the back seat of my mom’s car and hearing that song and just be like “Oh my God. What was that?“

Did you think immediately: “That’s what I wanna do with my life?“

No (laughs), when I heard that it was something that I didn’t really understand but wanted to find out more about. It had a startling effect. I kinda grew up with somebody singing around me all the time. My mom always sang just to herself, and she’s a twin, so she and her sister used to sing to each other. They never sang professionally, but there was always singing going around.

What time did you decide that you wanted to play music for a living?

I wanna say probably a year after a talent show. I was like 7.

You were really young!

Yeah, but we know kids think of crazy shit. I wanna be a fireman! I wanna be an actress! I wanna be this! But I do remember that I really wanted to be a singer- I liked singing.

How many bands, and what sort of bands did you play in before the Bellrays came along?

I did a school jazz-band, and Bob and I did the Rose Thorns together, but other than that I had always just music kinda on my own, I have just been a follower of music.

Did you do solo performances with an acoustic guitar or something like that?

No, I never got good enough at playing an instrument and singing at the same time. And I also couldn’t sing at church, I was raised catholic, so it wasn’t like Aretha Franklin where there was a choir or something like that. I didn’t know what was going to happen and how, I was just kinda singing on my own.

How did the Rose Thorns and The Bellrays come about?

Bob and I met working as cooks at an eatery out here called the Bull and Mouth long ago when we were both students. He played guitar in his band, and I had just started this jazz-band, and he came and saw me playing in this jazz band and said „Hey, you wanna come down and try out for my group?“ So I went down and played some songs with his group, it wasn’t the Rose Thorns at the time, it was a different group. That went horribly (laughs) . We stayed friends, and eventually we would hang out and started going out with each other, and figured that we should try doing music together- and that’s how the Rose Thorns happened.

I gotta say; I don’t know any music of the Rose Thorns- was it similar to The Bellrays?

It was the precursor of what The Bellrays was gonna become, it influenced what that band was gonna be. We were really into music being very organic , not going out and saying „We’re gonna do this rock band, and it’s gonna be like this!“. We weren’t really thinking about that.

You said you and Bob were cooks together. What did you cook?

Burgers. Every Tuesday and Thursday it was ‘Burger Madness’ and people would come in to campus and it was $1.99 for a Burger and Fries, and $2.99 for a Cheeseburger and Fries.

Were they good or was it horrible?

Oh, they were delicious.

Were you and Bob an item before the band, or did that happen during the band?

It was before, while we were working as cooks. We were friends and then said, “Let’s make this exclusive…” (laughs)

I worked in bars and restaurants most of my life and know what a hard job a cook is. And the staff is its own clique because everybody else is off while you are working, and when you got a day off everybody else is working usually, so it happens a lot that cooks, bartenders and waiters end up together.

That’s so true! And the thing that I noticed that always happens is this ‘end of the night’, when they close down and everybody sits at the bar and has a drink together. That type of camaraderie doesn’t exist in other types of businesses.

The Bellrays are known for explosive live performances, I’ve seen you guys and it’s true. How did you get yourself hyped up for shows and do you have a special warm up technique?

I always feel like it’s our opportunity to really live. Whatever you’re committed to- at that moment that you get to do that, that’s your moment to shine. And that’s what we do when we do our shows, it’s like an expression of “If I died right now I’d die doing what I love right this minute,” I’m not there to do a half-way good show, I’m there to do a great show, and fail trying if I don´t… As far as warm-ups go, I never learned that way, I’ve never really done warm-ups. I take care of my voice by trying to get as much sleep and drinking water and not smoking. I try to be as good to it as I can.

So you’re not going „La la la la la“ for ten minutes before a show?

No. We did a short tour with the Pixies, and Charles (Frank Black) was a MONSTER at warming up. I would say he warmed up for an hour straight.

What’s your favorite food and what’s your favorite drink?

Favorite food varies from day to day. I wanna say right now it’s scallops, I’m dreaming of these scallops. Another dish that I love is Gumbo. My mother’s family is from Louisiana, and there is this sea-food gumbo that all the women in our family cook. It’s kinda like this big goulash of seafood, chicken, bay leaves and like a red sauce with rice, and it’s just amazing, delicious.

I was talking to Ross from The Dictators earlier, and he told me about the big steaks he bought for the 4^th of July, and now I’m getting really hungry.

I bet Ross the Boss is a good cook. We’ve done a couple of shows with the Dictators, I love those guys, great guys. And with Handsome Dick (Manitoba) I did a bunch of stuff for MC5, so that’s how I know these guys.

Who was still around from the original members when you joined the MC5?

Michael, Dennis and Wayne were all there, and in one of the shows Lemmy was there. This was like early 2003, when they were first getting back together, and that was also when Handsome Dick started playing with them.

When I listen to the Bellrays, for some reason I always think that you’re from Detroit.

Haha, so many people do.

Do you think that has something to do with the soul in your voice and the MC5 kind of rock’n’roll you guys play?

I really don’t know why it is that way, people come up with a lot of ideas of why we sound like we sound and they’re usually full of shit (laughs). I’m born and raised in California, Tony is from the Midwest, but then he moved to Southern California too. We´re doing something that needed us to be reaching outward the way that we did to look for the kind of music that we wanted to play, you know music with that edge ! I guess it’s something . People wanna connect us to something, but we are a band where there aren’t many connectors. It’s one of the reasons why so many people don’t know who we are, because they cannot say „Oh they’re like this, they’re like that,“ We never really seem to fit the bill.

Does that bother you?

It bothers me that is has to be something, that is has to be connected to something. I feel like it’s a very racially and sexually charged thing, too. It’s alright for white men to act like black women and be in rock bands and get rich, but for a black woman to go and do the same thing is almost detrimental to the band. How many black females fronting a rock band can you name? Not many, because there is that lack of association, and if a woman does come in and wants to do something, the first thing that a record label wants to do is to take her out of that role and have her be a popular solo artist. It’s total shit.

But you’re also not an unknown band, everybody that has any idea about rock’n’roll know who The Bellrays are.

Well, that’s true, but there’s a lot of of people that don’t know shit about it. Hahaha.

Let’s talk about touring- what was the worst catering you guys ever had?

Worst catering? Does nothing count? I won’t mention where it was, but I will mention the country it was in, it was in Lyon in France, which made it so shocking. They gave us pre-warmed food that took forever to make, but was just rancid and awful and we just thought- what is going on in this city?

Was it in a sort of cellar?

Yeah, it was in a cellar …

I think I know the club, we played there too a couple of years ago and looking forward the catering, and we got the cheapest pizza in town. But I think we have to stop about food now… so what do you guys listen to in the van when on tour?

I try not to listen to anything. Sonically we live in awful times. We’re always being exposed to sound, music being pushed into us and some of it just fries your brain. Most of it is just a barrage of sound, and when I get in the van, I usually try to have not any sound at all.

How is the songwriting process with you guys?

Usually, Bob comes up with the music first. Sometimes he has it all ready, most times actually. And then I’ll add lyrics and sing it.

Do you sing in the shower?

Very, very rarely. It varies, often it’s just something that just got stuck in your head, or a floating song idea, harmonies and melodies. It’s a cool sound in there, but I just wanna relax in the shower.

Do you listen to your own music?

I don’t. Bob does. I can’t, I can’t really do it. If it’s in a demo state and especially if my voice isn’t on it, I can listen to it over and over again. But I have a real problem listening to things with my voice on it.

I think that’s a guitar player thing maybe because we’re all fucking egomaniacs

Yeah, yeah. It’s hard for me though.

Yeah. I can understand that too. Um, okay. So you guys have a daughter. Am I correct? How old is she now?

She’s a grown woman. She’s like 30 plus.

Was it a difficult time when she was young, to like find time to spend with her and also keep going on tour and stuff?

Well, we really kind of narrowed things down. So when she was really young, it wasn’t even the fact that we just didn’t do it. We didn’t have the opportunity to really tour, and we didn’t have people that were interested in us, it was just the two of us. So we would do like coffee, house gigs and things just together. And then once we got the full band together and started touring, she was about, I want to say sixth grade, seventh grade. So by that time she’s a lot older and you can just kind of say, okay, we can go forward, have people stay with her. And it’s not a shock to the system, like if you’re five or six and mommy and daddy are gone at the same time.

So I’m not saying it was easy, but it still was a lot easier for us to do as well as the fact that we prepped her for it. We were talking about it for years saying „Well, one of these days we’re going to start touring.“ So it wasn’t like something that was just dropped. I think the best way to do anything is to be clear and have a transparency, like just kind of let her know „life is not going to be like your friends’.“ And even your friends’ lives that seem like everybody else’s lives, they’re not like that. Everybody’s life is different, and everybody’s got these different turns and stuff.

I want to say one more thing about that. One part about saying those kinds of things to your child, especially if you’re an artist, it’s really important. Because I feel like I know so many artists that gave up being artists because they said, „Oh, well, I’ve got to go be a parent and I’ve got to do these things.“ And I think it’s really important if we want dreamers to exist to let them know that that’s ok if we want children that are gonna go beyond and do whatever they dream about, it’s really important.

That’s a great statement its going in (laughs). So I want to ask, how are you guys dealing with this whole fuck-up that is 2020?

Um, I want to say we’re dealing with it rather well, for the rug basically being pulled out from underneath us, mostly because no one could use that excuse like, Oh my God, the rug got pulled from underneath just us, that shit got pulled from underneath everyone, no matter what kind of work they did, no matter what was going on in the world, at the same time that allowed other people to be incredibly empathetic, which is something I have not witnessed in a very long time- group empathy. It’s like something that’s been happening all over the place. I think humanity needed it to try to save itself. I think this COVID thing might help save humanity.

Yeah, the earth needed it too, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah. I mean, that’s incredible. The stuff that I’ve heard about just not no travel and all these other things in this, like we live in Southern California, which is usually full of smog, like just bullshit all over the place. And we have had the clearest year, all the foliage around here… the plants that are growing. It’s insane, how much everything is thriving.

The dolphins in Venice, you know, it’s amazing.

I know all that happened in a month, in one month. Everybody has been talking about how “Oh, humans are killing her (the planet)” and I do agree with that statement, don’t get me wrong, there’s things that we need to not do. But everybody was saying, „Oh, it’s too far gone. There’s nothing we can do“. But now everybody sees there’s everything that we can do! Just slow the fuck down.

So how was it for the band, I guess you guys had to cancel a lot stuff?

Oh yeah. We had an awesome US tour plan. We were just getting ready to get on flights to Spain right before everything got shut down, which was safer for us.
We’re supposed to be in Europe right now, right this minute.

Okay. So one more question for you, Lisa. If you could write a song with anyone alive or dead, who would it be and why?

Hmm, with anyone alive or dead… oh, Prince or David Bowie, either one of them would be totally cool.

Is there a particular reason for that or just because you’re a fan?

Well, I think both of them are really great song crafters. I think they both have an eye into it I’d do just for being in the room and watching them do it, being able to do it and then sing against one of those songs or sing with somebody like that, with that kind of a prowess and savvy and just where they’re in, they’ve been in their skin. And I wouldn’t want to go back and do it with young Prince or young David Bowie. I would want it to be the oldest that they could possibly be. I’d want it to be the guy that have been through all that stuff. Little Richard, that would also be another one!

Do you think you’ll be back in Europe in 2021?

I know I’ll be back in Europe soon. We’re supposed to be in Spain in late September, early October.

Lets keep our fingers crossed that nothing happens to stop that !
You know we actually have met before when you played in the Sonic Ballroom in Cologne- I was tending bar.

I love that place. That’s like one of my favorites. Also some of the best tasting potatoes I ever had on tour.

Really? That’s cool, my wife did the catering there and I know exactly what you’re talking about !

They were great, Rosemary oven baked potatoes !!

I’ll tell her that it will make her day !

You be sure to do that !!

Ok, thanks Lisa it was great talking to you, thank you for your time.

You too man, take care !

Interview by Glen Clarke – July 2020

Buy and listen to The Bellrays’ music here:
https://thebellraysrock.com/