On Friday, November 14th, Venus Radio got the opportunity to sit down with THE Karly Hartzman of the band Wednesday, before she took the stage in Montreal. The band’s sixth studio album, Bleeds, was released this fall, receiving an abundance of praise for its compelling and emotional lyricism and gripping instrumentation. Wednesday is the future, I LOVE YOU KARLY.

Avery Straumann: This is Avery and Alyssa from Venus Radio, and today we’re sitting down with Karly Hartzman, the frontwoman of Wednesday! Thank you so much for meeting with us. How have the first 24 hours in Montreal been?

Karly Hartzman: Amazing. I just said off mic that I got a huge tattoo because my favourite tattooer, @dirtyl00ks, was like, I could walk there. So I got a huge tattoo on my leg, and I love it. So shout out to tattooing.

Alyssa Chalmers: Well, obviously, this is your second leg of the Bleeds tour. Have you had a favourite stop along this leg yet?
Well, we’ve just done New York and Philly. Philly was the first show. The first show of the tour, I’m always remembering the lyrics as I’m saying them, because I’m not as into the flow, so New York was just like inherently better because I wasn’t having to like, think so hard about remembering how to play the songs. Plus, New York is just always fun. I mean, I usually love the smaller towns more; we just haven’t played any yet, really.

AC: Do you have a favourite show that you’ve ever played touring?
There is… oh my gosh, I mean, there’s a lot of different ones for different reasons. My favourite show of all time was in Water Valley, Mississippi. The bassist of Drive-By Truckers… We had like an extra day, and he booked us a show in his hometown, and it was literally like this very small town an hour outside of Oxford, Mississippi. We just did it in a park, and like, the whole town came. Like babies, octogenarians, and yeah, like it wasn’t the craziest crowd, but there was just something about it that felt perfect. There’s this festival we played in New Zealand called Camp A Low Hum that is like a notorious, insane festival in the middle of the woods, and they had like this insane lighting director. Like they had Billie Eilish’s LD invest his own money to bring an insane setup to the woods, and we played at sunset. And they set us up in the round so we were playing in a circle, and it was so special.

AS: So, in September, you guys released your sixth studio album, Bleeds. It’s obviously had an amazing reception. Like, I think a lot of people would agree with me; it’s my album of the year. How does seeing the feedback you guys have been getting feel for you and the band?
The online stuff I don’t know because I’m less on that tip, but I’ve heard it’s really good. The shows have been awesome. Like, people were singing every word to the newer songs that have been out for a month, and that’s just insane. At the end of the day, it’s validating to my lyricism that people care enough to learn all the words and sing them at me at the show. It’s such a humbling, beautiful experience.

AS: We have a few questions about the individual tracks. The opener, “Reality TV Argument Bleeds,” is like one of my favourite opening tracks of any record. How the instrumental builds and releases, and also just the motif of “Reality TV Argument Bleeds,” I feel like it’s really unique and interesting. So what was the inspiration behind that, and how do you think it sets the tone for the rest of the album?
The first track on the album is a reference… I feel like it’s establishing the setting. I feel like I’m still catching up on my high school memories, weirdly enough, even though I’m six albums in. The setting for that state of mind is my bedroom at my parents’ house, where my mom stays up until like four or five in the morning watching reality TV like really loudly. It was almost comforting to me, even though there was the sound of arguing downstairs or whatever. That memory really puts me in that headspace of the things I’m discussing on a lot of the rest of the album. There’s some stuff about modern happenings in my life too, but like “Reality TV”, “Townies”, and a few others are referencing earlier memories.

AC: On Bleeds, there’s a re-record of “Phish Pepsi.” You did an interview for The Needle Drop where you talked about the reason why you picked that as the song to do a re-record on. I love the song so so much, like I love the original, I love the re-record. I was wondering if, when you were re-recording it, you reflected on your evolution as a songwriter, or how the band has evolved since you first recorded it?
I would definitely say more so, like how the band has evolved. I love that song; it’s one of the earlier versions of a song that I feel like I was doing what I wanted to lyrically, so I wanted to redo it, just letting my bandmates go nuts on it. And I literally just told them like, okay, the opening from Dolly Parton’s song “Get Happy,” do that, whatever that is happening there, we’ll do at the beginning of the song, and then it drops into like a drum loop, and then we just did everything on top of that. They killed it. So definitely the growth as a band shows, I think. Some people prefer the like, lo-fi version, which I understand because I love lo-fi stuff too, but I really love the one that we re-recorded.

AC: Obviously, bands change, but you’ve been releasing under the name Wednesday since 2017. What’s your favourite part about being a musician and making music?
Definitely the writing. I feel like, to wake up and feel like driven to write, and knowing that it’s my purpose, and having learned that so early in my life… I feel like some people don’t feel like they’re doing their dream job until way late in life, or maybe not at all. I get to wake up every day and feel like if I want to write, then I’m doing my life’s work, and it’s my favourite thing to do. So that’s definitely the best part.

AS: Another track from Bleeds, “Wasp,” I know you’ve been asked about this one a lot, because obviously it’s a bit of an outlier compared to the rest of the album. I was wondering if you had influences from the hardcore scene that kinda influenced your sound for that one? 
Yeah, I mean, I think hardcore is such a kinda gatekept genre, at least you would think. I feel like if you don’t get into it really early, it can seem really intimidating. But then you go to local hardcore shows, you just show up, and it’s actually like, you just jump in, and it’s fine. I think it took me a second to get there, but I think the people, like seeing Mannequin Pussy, our friends, really made me feel like… I’ve always loved the recorded music, but I can go to the shows and feel comfortable; I just need to go do it. Gouge Away, I’ve said a bunch, her scream is like my reference scream, Christina from that band. I’m trying to think of other hardcore projects… I mean, I just love noisy, kind of feedback-driven music, like Unwound, or Swirlies, are like my favourite bands. And they’re not hardcore bands, but they have elements that I feel like when I’m channelling that… like we’re gonna hopefully make a whole album of that type of music. Everything’s more interesting when you bring influences from outside of the genre in. I don’t even know what to categorize Unwound as, but more of that kind of tip, but with a fully screaming, hardcore sensibility.

AS: Speaking of influences, do you have any female artists who influenced you in your local scene growing up?
I didn’t see a woman on stage for a really long time, because I live in Greensboro, which is on the smaller side, and all the bands that were around were like all dude pop punk bands. All the bands in my hometown were like emo dude bands that would play at the skatepark. It was so cool, but I think the first woman I saw on stage was in this band, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. The keyboardist was the first woman I had seen on stage at a show that I went to without my parents or something. And that was really life-changing. But the band that was like, oh I can do this, I can make music influential, was Palberta, if you know them. They don’t play anymore, but I think Lily Konigsberg makes solo music; she was in that band. They were wearing like, spaghetti strap tank tops and athletic shorts, and they would all play all three instruments; they would just switch. It sounded amazing, but it also sounded like they started playing music like two days before the set, but I was like, okay, I can do that. That was the one where I was like I’ll do it. I bought a guitar the day after I saw that show.

AC: On your lyricism, I think one of the most recognizable parts of your music is your lyrics. I think they’re so special, and you’re obviously very inspired by Asheville and your life as a whole. What’s the process like for incorporating these stories into your songs?
I mostly just like, have a list of memories I want to write a song about one day, and some days I… like, I know the feeling, my writing feeling. If I wake up first thing in the morning and I have that feeling, I make time to go sit somewhere. And then I like, close my eyes and put myself in the memory I want to kinda channel, and I write 20 or more lines, everything I can possibly remember about it. And then I’ll sit with that for a while. And just accumulate more unrelated stuff over sometimes even like a month, and then I’ll be like, okay, I have enough raw material to take the best stuff and put it into a song. But yeah, mostly just like sensory, trying to literally transport myself back to the memory, and the most memorable ones are always the saddest, or the hardest, so that’s usually what I’m writing about.

AC: How do you feel like you know when a song is done?
Hard to say… yeah, there’s a feeling that I’ve learned, when I play a song that I’m like, okay, that’s it, but I don’t think I could put it into words. And then of course it’s not done until the rest of the band puts their mark on it, but that’s usually not ’til we record it.

AS: More on that note, like with lyricism, I feel like one of the best parts of your writing, at least in my opinion, is how you take these mundane things that everyone kind of experiences, but you think to write them down. From [“Pick Up That Knife”], like when you say “Grocery store on Christmas, parked too close to someone to get out”, everyone has seen that or experienced something like that, and when you hear it in your songs, it’s like, why didn’t I think to write about that. What is it about those moments that makes you say this needs to be in a song?  
The most painful memories are the easiest to write about. There was something that must have been painful about that specific time that I had gone to the grocery store, and I was maybe dealing with family stuff, that part I don’t remember. But I do remember parking too close to someone, not being able to open my car door and go get something from the grocery store I needed, and just like that was the moment where I felt like I would snap, or it broke, or you know, that was the culminating moment. Once you get the muscle to recognize that moment in your own life, anyone can do what I’m doing.

AS: That’s really interesting to hear. We were talking before, and it’s so cool to hear the things that you pick out that just kinda pass through people’s minds. It’s my favourite part about your lyrics. 

Okay, that just about wraps it up, but we have a silly question. If you could describe Wednesday with a colour, number, and animal, what would they be?
Okay colour… there’s a song that we recorded a long time ago, and there’s a line that’s like “sky looks like a bruise”. Like bruised sky, it’s like purple, yellow, pink, green… yeah, whatever that is. And then, number, that’s such an abstract thing, but I wanna pick a good one. 72, that’s what I thought of. And an animal? Rat. It’s kind of the obvious answer, but yeah, that’s the animal.

Interview by Alyssa Chalmers and Avery Straumann