Recently at Lovers Spit we had the opportunity to talk to local musician Jo Babb on her most recent project, Spinster.
Spinster is an indie-rock band based in Oklahoma City, and we are absolutely swooning over them. We sat down and asked Jo a few questions about inspiration, change, and upcoming endeavors.
Spinster is somewhat of a more recent project for you, what inspired the name Spinster?
My grandma would always joke that she wish she had been a spinster, and that she could have easily not gotten married to my grandpa, had he not been so charming, and you know she would have been this badass single older lady. So I always thought that was really funny and I have kind of fallen in her footsteps saying how I’ll never get married and have kids, I’m just gonna be a spinster, you know. I always thought that if I was going to have a band that wasn’t Annie Oakley I’d call it spinster, so when I got the chance, that’s just what I chose.
How is Spinster different from other music endeavors you’ve had in the past?
Um, I think it’s different, one, just because it requires a full band, I can’t play most of the songs solo. It differs from Annie Oakley in the way that it has bass, drums, and is not folk. I mean folk has inspired my lyrics, but the sound is a lot more pop-y and surfy, more indie rock.
Who have been some of your biggest inspirations? Music and otherwise.
Adrianne Lenker, Big Thief, is my absolute biggest influence. I would die for her, I love her, I wanna marry her, and everything she does musically is beautiful. So, definitely her, uh the Paper Kites are another one, I’ve listened to them forever. They’re just so good, and so multi-dimensional, so I kinda wanna do that in my music, all sorts of things, from folk to new wave and indie-rock. I just wanna try it all.
If you had any advice for aspiring musicians, what would it be?
I would say write as many songs as possible because you can’t just wait around for that one song to come out, you have to write your bad songs to get one good one. It’s just a practice or a skill, it’s just like painting, you can’t just paint the greatest painting of all time because you waited 5 years for it to come out of you. You have to learn how to paint. So just write songs constantly.
And finally I know you have an album release coming up, when and what can we expect?
It’s coming out at the end of June, you can expect softer songs that are quiet but the rest are more fun, upbeat, indie-rock songs. It’s come from a year and a half of being apart, and from a break up, so that’s what you can expect, a lot of self doubt.
Don’t miss Spinster’s album release on 6/19, and be sure to keep up with them on instagram @spinstermusic.