Five Questions with Steve Molter

Kalmia Traver is the front-woman, co-band leader, and saxophonist for the art-pop-dance band Rubblebucket. She has an equally dynamic solo project called Kalbells which performs with an all female band. She is an avid nature lover having spent her childhood in the woods of Vermont. And most importantly, she's a cancer survivor.   

I met up with Kal backstage at the House of Blues in Boston at which Rubblebucket was headlining the annual world music festival CRASHfest. (They absolutely crushed it, by the way.) We found a spot in the wings and watched a killer performance by Flor De Toloache, then found a cozy corner backstage and chatted about finding peace inside relationships, the powerful spirit of an all female band, Kal and her mom's revolutionary love experiment, the lessons of trees, breaking up a romantic relationship with your bandmate and remaining a band, experiencing infinity in love, and also randomly discovered that Kal went to high school with my cousin. Small world! Oh, and she answered Five Questions. Meet Kal.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Rubblebucket - Sound of Erasing
Kalbells - Bodyriders
Symbol - Resurrection Flag
Worrytrain - Heaven's Ice Spread Downward

Jeremy Ogusky is an artisan potter whose work can be found in restaurants all over the Boston area. He's also worked extensively in public health in Africa, South America, and the US, is the founder of the Boston Fermentation Festival, met his wife in while working with the Peace Corps in a little country called Lesotho, has a one-year-old son, and somehow managed to make time for me to ask him Five Questions.

He invited me to his pottery studio and workspace and we chatted about the struggle of balance in daily life, finding efficiencies within restrictions, the joys and difficulties of collaboration, and of course he answered Five Questions along the way. Meet Jeremy.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Labradford - G
Hammock - I Could Hear the Water at the Edge of All Things
The Drift - Uncanny Valley
Beware of Safety - Lowercase West
Goldmund - Image-Autumn-Womb

Maria Molteni is a prolific multimedia and performing artist, educator, organizer, and artist-in-residence with the City of Boston whose work has been featured across the globe from Croatia to Colorado, from the Philippines to Pennsylvania, from Brooklyn to Boston. 

Maria and I met up at her fabulously creative workspace/home in Boston, and had a wonderfully inspiring conversation full of laughs and insight about inventing spaces for teaching art, her paralyzing fear of taxidermy, radical vulnerability in love, The Shakers, and the imbalance of power between men and women and its direct effect on her life and career.

The most memorable and touching part of my meeting with Maria happened when the mics were unfortunately turned off. After recording, before taking photographs, Maria and I continued our chat. I shared my feelings of guilt that come up regarding the difficulties women go through in the world, and that I think about the things that I have done in the past that may have been inappropriate. Thankfully, nothing came up along the lines of what's being reported in the media, but the fact that I may have looked too hard at a woman, or asked one too many times for sex, or done anything that negatively affected a stranger, a date, a girlfriend, or a partner without knowing, weighs on my conscience. Maria was kind enough to listen, and offer me thoughtful words of insight, comfort, and truth. I'm sure I've made mistakes. But taking responsibility for them, owning them, and correcting my course is something I have been focusing and will continue to as I progress in life. 

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
BadBadNotGood - Can't Leave the Night
::thinkstandard:: - If You Are the One to Take Me Home
Lymbyc System - Trichromatic
Unrecognizable Now - Sleep it Off
Jambinai - 감긴 눈 위로 비추는 달빛

Karen Jerzyk is a photographer whose trademark is photographing elaborate scenes in abandoned buildings. Her work is often wildly colorful and dynamic and creates a sense of surrealism and chaos with meticulous detail. 

Karen kindly invited me to her studio where she was designing a set for her latest work. The place was full of antique pieces, dismembered mannequins, old paintings, and photography gear. We chatted about not fitting in, struggling to find artistic voice, favorite filmmakers, and her father's battle with stroke and its affect on her work. Oh yeah, and she answered Five Questions. Meet Karen.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Cinematic Orchestra - The Awakening of a Woman (Burnout)
Le Sigh - Loops for Sleeping II
Trespassers William - What of Me
Tristeza - Balabaristas

Carl Shane is the frontman, primary songwriter, and guitarist for the Boston-based band Kal Marks who's new record, Universal Care, came out on February 23rd. Kal Marks has been called "the loudest band in Boston" by NPR and are on a nationwide tour as you read this.

I caught two Kal Marks performances in the span of a couple of weeks and felt compelled to get Carl on Five Questions. He kindly obliged and we linked up at his apartment on a bitterly cold night in January. We talked about panic-attack-inducing anxiety, collaborative songwriting, regrets in the wake of lost love, being on tour with a drug addict, and how conversations with friends are so precious. And yup, he answered Five Questions. Meet Carl.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Library Tapes - Slow-Wave Sleep
Clevis - Five Days
Blue States - Trainer Shuffle
The Azure Vault - Where Shadows Lie

Terry Marshall is deeply involved in social justice. He is the founder and strategy architect at Intelligent Mischief, a creative action design lab using culture, narrative and design to hack social change. Terry also founded Streets is Watching and the Hip Hop Media Lab. He is an affiliate trainer and consultant for the Center for Story-based Strategy (CSS), a Beautiful Trouble trainer, co-founder of The BlackOut Collective and sits on the board for Center for Artistic Activism. He's also an extremely personable, kind, and warm-hearted person.

After a few missed attempts at meeting up in New York, Terry and I finally linked up at a Ula Café in Jamaica Plain and chatted about getting lost in Cuba with no money and little Spanish, how he got involved in social justice work, fighting back against systematic racism, going to a Sunni Muslim school as a child, observing human behavior, his comic book geekness, and how boring death is. And he totally answered Five Questions. Meet Terry.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
And So I Watch You From Afar - The Stay Golden Pt. 1
Ssaliva - Thought Has Wings
Tulsa Drone - The Catch
Worrytrain - Broken Hymn (Piano + Drums)
Rhandir - Prince Tyrinian's Naming Day
Signal Hill - Corners

Kimbra is an award-winning, world-touring musician from New Zealand who's new record Primal Heart is out April 20. She's won a bunch of awards (Grammy, ARIA, APRA, New Zealand Music Awards, etc) and worked with well-known peers (Brian Wilson, Queens of the Stone Age, The Roots, Childish Gambino, Skrillex, Gotye, The Dillinger Escape Plan, among others). She's also a super kind, thoughtful, and amiable person, which, in my opinion, is the most important part of this whole paragraph.

Kimbra and I hopped on the phone for our conversation and she invited me to photograph her at her tour kickoff at The Paradise Rock Club in Boston. We talked about moving around the world, anxieties around growing up in the limelight, finding a mantra, and how love is all around us. And yep, she answered Five Questions. Meet Kimbra.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Kimbra - Everybody Knows
Kimbra - Settle Down
Beware of Safety - Raingarden
::thinkstandard:: - Amy

Betsy Schneider is a photographer and filmmaker who explores and documents transformations of individuals and families over time and place. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is featured in collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, and the Museet for Fotokunst in Denmark. In her most recent work, she photographed and filmed thirteen-year-olds across North America on a Guggenheim Fellowship. This work entitled "To Be Thirteen" will be a major exhibition originating at the Phoenix Art Museum in May of 2018 and it will be accompanied by a book and a feature length film "Triskaidekaphobia".

I met Betsy when she was a guest speaker in a photography course I took at MassArt taught by Rania Matar. I was immediately drawn to Betsy's openness and her ability to discuss the multiple layers of her approach to her work and ideas, and found her photography expressive, touching, and memorable.

Betsy invited me to her home studio near Boston where we talked about parenting through divorce, the meditative state of driving cross-country, failure's impact on her approach to life, and what it means to age. And, yep, she answered Five Questions. Meet Betsy.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Altus - Sodium Glow
::thinkstandard:: - If You Are the One to Take Me Home
Joy Wants Eternity - Death is a Door That Opens
The Littlest Viking - Jock Jams Vol. 4

Jasha Klebe is a film and TV composer, former professional gymnast, and a childhood opera singer. Some of his career highlights include The 84th Annual Academy Awards, Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, Diana: In Her Own Words, and BBC's Planet Earth II which he co-composed with Jacob Shea, and has worked closely with one of my personal favorite composers of all time, Hans Zimmer.

Jasha invited me to his home studio in West Hollywood and we chatted about collaboration, what it feels like to leave home with a mission, parallels between sport and art, how being in love with music makes him a little bit crazy, and the motivation of creation. He was also kind enough to give me a bottle of wine which was absolutely delectable. And of course I asked him Five Questions. Meet Jasha.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
All India Radio - Mexicola
pg.lost - Yes I Am
Robert Miles and Trilok Gurtu - Omen
The Album Leaf - Brennivin

John Walsh is a storyteller, an illustrator, and a father. He was selected as one of ten Artists in Residence by the City of Boston for 2016/2017. In this program, artists are supported as agents of reflection, collaboration, and activism, whether through process-oriented practice, direct community engagement, and/or as leaders of system-wide change projects at Boston Centers for Youth and Family and other City agencies.

I linked up with John at his place and we hit it off right away. John is the definition of the term "salt of the earth" as you'll hear in our conversation. We talked about telling stories of interest, the joy and change that comes with being a parent, the drive to continue pursuing art, and how failure and success show up in art and life. Oh, I almost forgot, he also answered Five Questions. Meet John.

Featured Music:
Theme Song: Beware of Safety - Mulberry and Heather
Polmo Polpo - Sky Histoire
Abby Simone - Reminisce
Le Sigh - As Night Wears On
Helios - First Dream Called Ocean
36 - Room One