Russell RockwellI don’t think I’ve ever interviewed anyone else with such a lust for life as Gabbie Watts. When I sat down with the songwriter, engineer, and visionary a few days ago over a cup of coffee, the spirit in the room was optimistic and anticipatory as Watts detailed her love for DIY music and Atlanta.
Her latest project Smile Girls Vol. 2 is in many ways a good metaphor for Watts’ creative spirit. Even though it’s only the second compilation tape in a series focusing on queer, female, and non-binary artists in Atlanta, the tape reflects her willingness to try anything while remaining focused on collaboration. Smile Girls isn’t simply a holistic characterization of underrepresented songwriters in Atlanta. Thanks to Watts it pushes the boundaries of what a compilation series can do, both in terms of connecting artists, and in the realm of music studio education. Through Smile Girls, Watts demystifies the process of turning an idea of a song into a finished product, which is critical for every musician to understand.
Before our conversation got completely sidetracked by our mutual love of shoes (especially cherry red Docs), and Watts’ disappointment in Liz Phair’s stage presence, we dug into how she was able to put out two compilations in one year, and how she sees the idea of Smile Girls evolving in the future.
The following interview is edited for length and clarity.
How is Smile Girls Vol. 2 different from the first tape?
Over the past few months, the idea behind it has changed as things do. The main difference is for this tape I didn’t end up recording everything. So TAYLOR ALXNDR, and Sister Sai, part of Suntundra, and Structures Beavers Make, they all did their own thing. Claire Darling who does Structures Beavers Make, had a song she had already put out, but I loved it because it was so silly but also emotional, so millennial-sounding, so I asked her if I could put that song on it. I didn’t engineer everything because it’s a lot of effort and I’ve been trying to prioritize creation. Engineering is another artistic pursuit that there’s no money attached to, and I have all these other interests too. There’s songwriting and producing, and I’ve also started doing stand up comedy, so I gratefully give these things my creative energy and engineering took a back seat. But I still think this is an important thing to do—to have an event and compilation that centers around artists I really like, and all the artists I like are all queer, female, or non-binary in general.
Did working on the first tape affect your songwriting or perspective on music at all?
The first one made me really grateful, because sometimes I feel really disconnected from Atlanta’s music scene. Doing the first tape in some regards was very self-serving in that it was like, let me get my music friends to let me practice recording them. [It was] also me trying to figure out what Atlanta’s music community is, and then realizing I do have a lot of friends who are musicians who are happy to do projects together. So even if it didn’t influence my songwriting, it did sort of make me feel a lot better about my place in songwriting and the music community that’s here. There’s so many people doing cool things, and I still wish I went to more shows. I’ll go and support people I know, but for other random shows, I’m just tired. And with stand up comedy you have to go out to open mics all the time. So I think for Smile Girls, I just want to keep doing things around it so it can be a community building thing that I can use to contribute to Atlanta’s music scene in some way, because I think it’s important and I forget how many wonderful people are in it.
So are you more optimistic about the Atlanta music scene as a whole after working on these tapes?
I guess I think I just have a deeper appreciation for individuals trying to make things. I think it’s also interesting having in the past year put out various EPs, and my band, Gabbie Rotts, just put out our own album and me experiencing how much work goes into producing something makes your appreciation for other people grow. In general, just me becoming more familiar with different aspects of the creative process—that it’s so hard to make art that’s good, and it’s so hard to have a band. Most people on the comp are solo artists and that’s a feat in itself because you don’t have other people to motivate you, but at the same time having a band is so hard in terms of coordinating schedules and people contributing to a vision; there’s a lot of ego death that has to happen. After doing the tape and performing more, I really respect everyone that I interact with.
Did people submit to the tape then?
No, I just reached out to them, which is a cool thing too, because creative people are just so willing to do things. It’s a crazy ask to be like, “Hey, can you submit an original song that you can record or I can record it?” I never felt like I was harassing people, but there are people on this tape that I wanted to be on the first tape, and I was just sending them a lot of Facebook messages with lots of exclamation points. I was sometimes like, “Am I being overbearing?” But no, people have other things to do, but they still really want to do it, which I think is cool.
Do you feel like the tone or essence of this tape is different than the first one?
Yeah, for sure. I think because some people did their own recording, like TAYLOR ALXNDR and Sister Sai, who are both great producers. With Suntundra, she and her collaborators had some synth stuff they’d done in advance, and then we did the vocals and her friend who plays harp was in town, and I was just like, “How the fuck do you do this?” So I just put the microphones in random places until it sounded fine. The first tape was more acoustic, and this tape has more production. The first one was more folk, singer-songwriter stuff, and this one has more diverse genres of music on it.
How did you connect with the label putting out the tape?
It’s called Banana Tapes. Gabbie Rotts were on tour this summer for a couple weeks and we played this show at Media Rerun which is in Murfreesboro outside of Nashville in a strip mall, and I really like that. You drive up and it’s like, there’s the grocery store, there’s the Chilis, and here’s the record store we’re playing in. So we played on a bill with several other bands from Nashville, and a couple of the guys played in a band called Flesheater. It’s really quite shocking when you see them because they stick microphones down their throats and there’s a lot of gagging. But they were telling us about how they run a tape label for queer artists and they had been looking to do more artists outside of Nashville. We had been thinking of putting my band’s tape out with them, but I already had everything printed for it. I told them I had this project coming out that was heavily Atlanta based and they were into it, so they duplicated and printed everything, and I just really like their DIY community orientation. I think that’s similar to Smile Girls, whatever it ends up being in the future, supporting artists and pretty much everyone who’s not a cis male, but still being inclusive and just wanting to have good vibes.
Where do you see Smile Girls going from here?
I’ve been thinking about events more, and how you can have an event where money doesn’t matter, or where audience numbers don’t matter. I know for a lot of people it’s just hard to stay up too late and be engaged that late. Me as the old person of 26, I can’t stand for 4 hours, I just can’t do it. I would love to figure out how to curate events that make the audience feel like they’re involved with what’s going on. I do like the idea of tapes still, even if it turns into more of a once a year thing, because two in one year was definitely a challenge. I still think it’s fun to put your music next to other people’s music that wouldn’t usually happen, like Sister Sai with Lois Righteous. It’s cool to have some cross genre things going on. I’m okay with things moving slowly, but I’d like to have some longevity. I did have this dream one day of doing everything. Like, we do events and tapes and we’re going to have a podcast thing, and now we have to have comedy and also youth development, and we teach everyone how to record, and that seems a little bit crazy right now, but those are all of my ideas. I still don’t know how to make money, but we’ll figure it out.
Smile Girls Vol. 2 is out today.
Smile Girls will celebrate the release of their second comp today at 529 featuring performances by Bitter, TAYLOR ALXNDR, Lois Righteous, Laurie Ray, and Sister Sai. Doors open at 8 p.m. Donations accepted at the door. 21+ to enter.
More Info
Bandcamp: smilegirls.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @smilegirlsatl