Interviews: Burning it all down with Eevie Echoes of Eevie Echoes and the Locations

Earlier this month, Brooklyn-based punk band Eevie Echoes and The Locations released their excellent debut album, The Cons of Being a Wallflower. The album follows the band as they explore the hardships and triumphs that go along with coming out and detail the journey to self-love and self-acceptance with honest, heartfelt lyrics that open discussions around parental acceptance, religious trauma, anxiety, trust, and community. Throughout the album, they make use of dynamic arrangements that take cues from ska-punk, garage rock, emo, spoken word, and chiptune to create a killer sound that is uniquely their own. Along with centering around a journey of self-discovery, The Cons of Being a Wallflower is also a perfect example of a band coming into their own.

The Cons of Being a Wallflower is out now via Ska Punk International. Eevie Echoes and the Locations will be playing their album release show on January 27 (this Saturday!) in Brooklyn, will be playing around Brooklyn next month, and will be hitting some festivals in the spring.
Punknews editor Em Moore caught up with lead guitarist and vocalist Eevie Echoes over Zoom to talk about the album, working with Reade Wolcott, protecting your energy in a capitalist society, the importance of using your voice, and so much more. Read the interview below!This interview between Em Moore and Eevie Echoes took place in January 2024 over Zoom. This transcription documents their conversation and has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You’ve mentioned that you’ve wanted to work with Ska Punk International for quite a while now and The Cons of Being A Wallflower is your first album with the label. What has it been like to finally work with them?

It was really cool! Working with Chris and working with Michi, I have felt really supported the whole way through. And I just really like having people to do the boring stuff that I don’t wanna do, it’s really nice. I’m currently working full-time and in school for a master’s program and doing internships for my master’s program and I’m in a pretty well-known band in Brooklyn, so my schedule is very packed. I don’t have the energy to send emails to a bunch of people and be like, “Hey! Can you check this out?” So it’s really awesome to have someone who can do that for me and I can just wake up in the morning, grab a cup of coffee, check my email, and then Michi’s like, “Hey, by the way, this really sick magazine wants to interview you” and I’m like, “Hell yeah! I’m down. Send the questions over!” [laughs] It’s nice to have that support and have people have connections outside of what my typical sphere of influence is. It feels like a team effort. It feels like everyone is really excited to be a part of this and to make it as big and successful as possible. It’s just really nice to have that faith in something that I was a big part of creating. It’s exciting. [laughs] It’s really awesome to have that team support.

This is also your first album with a full band. How did the current lineup come together? What’s the biggest difference between playing solo and playing in a band?

This is the first album that I’ve done, period, with any project at all. I’ve never done a full-length album before. I started as a solo project during quarantine and I was freshly out and still trying to figure stuff out. I picked up the guitar during quarantine, there’s a fun fact. I didn’t know how to play guitar before, I picked up a guitar in 2020 and I sat down and I said, “I’m going to learn this fucking instrument by the end of quarantine because I have nothing to do”. So that’s what I did. I played at least three or four hours every single day for probably two years straight. As I was doing that, I was coming up with all these ideas and stuff. One of the very first songs I ever wrote for the project - before it was even Eevie Echoes because Eevie Echoes really became a thing after I came out, before that, I was going by Echo Music - was “Liar”. Somewhere deep in the internet, there’s a really old, shitty version of “Liar”. “Liar” was the second song I ever wrote for the project. It was really cool to go back and revamp it and just see how people had really taken to that song, especially live. That’s the song we kick off our sets with. We recently did a show at the Broadway and we played that first “doo-doo-doo-doo” and all you hear is “WOOOO!!” I was like, “Holy shit!” It was wild!
That’s how the project kicked off: I’m writing music to cope with a lot of these really intense feelings I’m having, transitioning and coming from a very strict religious background and a Caribbean family. So there was a lot of internal guilt and these big conflicting feelings that I did not know how to handle so I kind of dealt with that through music. When lockdown started to lift a little bit, I got an opportunity to open for a friend’s band, Lost Dog. We opened for them at a rooftop in Williamsburg at this restaurant called Bia which is a couple blocks out from the Williamsburg bridge so from the bridge you could see us performing on the rooftop. It was a really cool moment because people saw us performing and heard the show. They were cheering from the Williamsburg bridge because they could see us on the rooftop. It was a really, really shitty setup. The PA was all fucked up, it was just crackling and you couldn’t hear anything that was going on. But it was fun! That first show was me, Nick Grasso - the greatest drummer in the world, and my friend John, we used to be in a two-piece indie band together. The earliest shows were just the three of us. It was me on guitar and vocals, John on bass and backup vocals, and then Nick on drums. Honestly for a while, even though we were playing live as a band, I still considered it very much a solo project because I was still the songwriter and they were just my live band for a very long time.
As time went on, I had a particularly rough day and like I said, music is how I cope with stuff so I went to Guitar Center because I just needed to relax. I kinda clocked this trans girl playing the coolest, jazziest Strat licks I’ve ever heard in my life. Clean tone, just gorgeous guitar playing. I was like, “Hey, I know I don’t look too feminine right now but I’m also trans. I like your guitar playing, let’s be friends!” In comes Emma, now one of the closest friends in my entire world. I love that girl to death. We met at a Guitar Center, instantly hit it off and we hung out for three or four hours, screwing around on the instruments. We became tight. I was like, “I really like your guitar playing. Do you want to join my punk band? Where we play nothing clean, ever, and we’re just loud and obnoxious?” And she was like, “Yeah, that sounds fun!” [laughs] So we did a couple of shows together.
For the longest time the lineup was me, John, Nick, and Emma. John was doing some solo work for a little bit and we had this other girl Carmen fill in for a little while. Carmen is actually on the album because at the time we recorded it Carmen was in the band. Carmen was filling in with us for a bit and then she became part of the band. She was part of the recording process of the album. As of right now, she is no longer in the band. There’s no drama, it was just very much like she was in a couple of different projects and was like, “Hey, listen, I can’t devote the time to this”. I was like, “It’s cool. No hard feelings”. So Carmen is no longer playing with us. Right now it’s me, Nick, and Emma. That’s the core trio. We’re still feeling out bassists right now. That’s how it all came to be. It was just a lot of meeting cool people and being like, “Huh, I like your vibe! Let’s play music together!” [laughs] It was really cool.
I have to give you a really quick anecdote about Nick! I invited a friend of mine from high school to play drums with us for a show and he’s in like fifteen different bands so at the very last minute he was like, “Oh shit, I didn’t realize I’d double booked that day! Let me get you in contact with my boy Nick.” I was like, “I don’t know this dude but yeah, ok”. Then Nick played with us and then he kept playing with us and now we’re all cool. It’s pretty sick because Nick has been a day-one member of the band. Kind of a cool thing that Nick started as a fill-in and became our actual drummer. [laughs]

How would you describe your songwriting process?

It’s kinda chaotic. I might have a phrase or a word that sticks in my brain and I’ll just kind of run with that. I’ll get a concept, like with “Murder Me” specifically. When I was writing “Murder Me”, I was on my way to work and I was taking the train. I was feeling really anxious and starting to disassociate a little bit and things just didn’t feel real in that moment so I wrote down the lyric, “I feel like an alien today”. The whole song builds from that concept of feeling like an alien, it goes, “I feel like an alien today / My face is stretching thin / And when I smile it breaks my skin / I still have scars from last time”. That’s a reference to a Doctor Who character, Cassandra. She’s the last human on earth and her whole thing is like, “I need to be moisturized! I need to be moisturized!” because she’s literally just a sheet of skin. The whole thing was that she’s so vain she’s barely even human anymore and she’s just a sheet of skin. It was very much this feeling of, “I feel very separated from people. I feel like an alien right now” and really playing into that alien idea. There’s a lot of references to space and aliens in that song just because my head was really revolving around Doctor Who. [laughs] I was also trying to pull that into this experience of also just feeling like you’re living for other people and wanting them to kill the old you so you can make new memories and be a different person. Being able to shed that skin, basically. All of that kinda stemmed from one little idea that ping-ponged into a bunch of ideas. Sometimes the songs just play in my head fully formed. Then I just have to translate them into actual music. One of the most surreal parts of the album is listening to it and hearing the song that was in my head three years ago. That’s one of the coolest fucking feelings. [laughs]

Do you have a song in particular that’s like, “Woah!”?

“Users”, especially that breakdown. I had imagined doing a breakdown in a song for so long. I tried to do it with this really old song, “Space Debris”. That was the very first song that I had put out with the project, like officially put out not just on Soundcloud or somewhere. I had this idea for this really gnarly guitar part, like [guitar noises], but it fell flat. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was a baby. But hearing “Users” and hearing how that breakdown specifically came out I was like, “THAT is the magic I was trying to capture all the way back when I was writing ‘Space Debris’!” It’s really cool to know that I have the tools to do that and I have band members who can really bring that vision to life and that’s exciting.

It’s a sick breakdown!

God, when Emma ripped that solo over top I was just sitting there jaw on the floor. It was wild! That one is definitely a very surreal moment like, “Wow! That’s cooler than I imagined!”

To go back to “Murder Me” for a minute, the lobster people that you mention, are they also from Doctor Who or is that something that you came up with?

Yes and no. It was a very fuzzy memory of Doctor Who. I’ve watched all twelve seasons of new Who including the Jodie Whittaker stuff. I’m a little behind and I haven’t watched the new Tennant stuff, so no spoilers! I remember that there were a lot of different aliens and I remember there was one that was maybe some kind of lobster character but I really don’t remember. I tried looking up “lobster people Doctor Who” long after the song was written and I was like, “Maybe I was completely misremembering that”. It was what I thought was a Doctor Who character. It was meant to be a reference and I think I just lost the plot. [laughs]

You’ll be catching up on episodes and there’ll be some lobster person scuttle in and you’ll be like, “I knew it!”

I have to rewatch it from the 9th Doctor and be like, “Where the fuck is that lobster person??” [laughs]

Self-discovery and embracing self-love are also major themes on the album. What’s helped you come into yourself?

When I first came out, one of the things that I think warmed my heart was performing at the open mic before the band, before I even knew what I was doing. I just had an acoustic guitar and was trying to get some songs out and see what people thought about them at the open mic. There was so much love in the room. I started performing at this very underground open mic in the basement of a bar. That bar has since been demolished - landlords, they suck. They bought out the bar and destroyed the whole building, but that’s where it all started. From very early on, I didn’t know what I was doing, I was still trying to figure out the name “Eevie” like, “I’m Eevie, I think. I guess”. It was just so fresh for me. Just playing songs and having that love just hit me right after that and having these people look at me and be like, “You’ve got something special and I want you to keep going. I want you to continue”. That is huge. Having people in your corner who get you, who can kinda take the place of that loving and warm family. Not to shit talk my family at all but it’s been really rough since coming out. I was really looking for a community of people where I didn’t have to fake it for anybody. A big part of learning to love myself and a big part of learning to accept who I am was being around people who saw me for me and never treated me like I was different. They let me be in spaces where I could just feel fucking normal and that was huge for me.

Really having that safe space.

Safe space is a good way to put it. A safe space and just a loving space to just exist around people and to know they care about you. That’s huge. Just being around loving people was a big part of that.

Did you have a song on the album that was the most cathartic to write?

“Letters U Wrote” for sure. “Letters U Wrote” was about when I was outed to my mom, she had a very hard time coming to terms with everything and she still isn’t there. But there was a period of time when she was writing a lot of letters to me trying to tell me, “This isn’t what God’s plan is for you” in this very strict, very staunch religious authoritarian letter writing. It would be framed as, “I’m trying to help you find a better path”. I was getting these letters every couple of weeks. It was extremely traumatic. I’ve kept all of them. I’ve kept every single one. The very first line in “Letters U Wrote” says, “I’m just a bat / Helplessly trapped in your thornbush”. I got a tattoo of a bat in a rosebush, it’s one of my earliest tattoos because my mom and I have always been very close - single child, only parent so we’ve always been tight. To see how much pain and how much distance this has caused between the two of us and the rift we’ve had in our relationship since then hurts and “Letters U Wrote” was my way of coping with that feeling. That extended metaphor is like, “I'm just a bat / Helplessly trapped in your thornbush / You prick me and shred up my wings / You cut me / Expect me to take it / Now I can't fly away” and feeling absolutely hopeless in this space that you thought would always be safe and where you thought you’d always be able to protect the person. Those first lyrics came to me when I was lying in bed just sobbing my eyes out.
“Letters U Wrote” took a while to finish writing. The song that took the longest to write was “Odd Man Out”, that took the better part of a year because I was only getting parts of the song and the rest of it was not meshing itself together. It took a year, year and a half before I fully finished “Odd Man Out” and was happy with it. “Letters” took a few months of revisiting the idea before I felt fully happy with it.
“Letters U Wrote” was extremely hard. It was cathartic to write, it was cathartic in the studio. That loud part in the end, I just yelled that at the microphone. I wasn’t even really singing, I was just yelling at the microphone in the studio. I broke down in tears right after I finished that and the band came up and gave me a big fucking group hug and they helped me calm down. It was a very sweet and beautiful moment. That was a very cathartic song because there’s not much metaphor to it. After that extended part in the beginning it goes straight into real-life things that were happening to me on a regular basis that was making me feel trapped and alone. Writing that song was a lot. Performing that song is a lot sometimes. That was a big one.

That’s so good you have a band of people you trust.

I keep a very close circle. I try to keep people around who I feel are safe because music, at least for me, is very vulnerable and I want people around who I feel I can trust with that vulnerability.

On “24 (The Growing Pains of Capitalism)” you talk about the pressure of feeling like you need to have your entire life and career figured out by age 24. What helps you when you feel that pressure?

I think it’s about striking a balance for me. Right now, I’m working as a social worker and I’m not going to lie to you, my paycheck goes almost exclusively to music. Every paycheck. [laughs] I’m trying to be fiscally responsible but I’m almost always buying studio time, buying a new guitar, buying practice space time because it’s not cheap, and spending money on merch and stuff like that. What kind of helps is knowing that I have something stable, at least for right now. I have a stable position and, within reason, I’m using a lot of that money to fund something that is so deeply passionate for me. I love being able to get lost in that. Music has become like a second job for me because last year I was playing shows practically every single weekend. I was gigging non-stop, I was always on stage. I was always doing something music-related. I was recording or whatever. It’s about striking that balance for me. It’s about not letting the capitalist society deter me from pursuing the things that I love and the things that make me happy. You have to work to make money in this society. I wish I could make a career out of music at this stage in the game but I just have to hope that if I pour my energy into it, it’ll get there. When I do get there, I’ll be able to look back and say, “Hell yeah, I fucking did it! Now I get to make music for the rest of my life and that’s the coolest thing ever!” [laughs] I’m manifesting it.

What helps you protect your energy in a society that’s out to drain you?

Being around my people. Being in as many queer spaces as I possibly can be whether that be my shows, other people’s shows, or drag shows. I love to be around community. I love to be around people who I feel loved by. I protect my energy by sharing my energy with loving people. I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily an extrovert but I guess I kinda am just in the sense that being around people I love and spending quality time with people helps me recharge. I can have the worst week in the world then I can spend an entire day with a friend or with my partner, whatever the case may be, and I just feel on top of the world by the time we’re done. That helps me. Just being in community with people that I love and quality is huge for me.

Quality time is severely underrated.

Quality time is the best medicine. [laughs] Just be around people that you care about and you’ll feel so much better. If you’re hanging out with your best friend and your best friend is smiling and having the time of their life, you’re going to have the time of your life too. We’re social creatures. We feed off each other’s energies. Just put as much good energy into your space and you’re going to feel so much better because that energy is going to react to your energy and your energy is going to react with that energy. I just try to keep as much good energy around me as much as I can. That helps a lot.

On “Odd Man Out” one of the things you talk about is getting out of your comfort zone. What helps you to do that?

I was a very sheltered kid. I didn’t really go out much. “Odd Man Out” is a little bit of a period piece because I was very nervous to be around people and I do still have social anxiety. I’m not going to lie on record and say I don’t have social anxiety. [laughs] I had to actively force myself to be around people and to interact with people. I had to be the person to make the first move and go up to someone and be like, “Hi my name is Eevie. What's your name? I like your hair. It’s a cool colour”. I’m pushing myself into making that first move. I think that’s the biggest thing I do. When I first started grad school I made it my business, I was like, “Go and introduce yourself to that person right now! They have a cool hoodie on, tell them you think their hoodie is cool”. Over time it becomes a lot less scary and I’m a lot more self-confident. I’m more happy with myself now. I’m less worried about saying hi to someone and them being like, “Ew, freak!” and if they do I’ll just be like, “Yeah, and what dude?” [laughs] I’ve been pushing myself to interact with people and pushing myself to experience new things. Just trying to be more proactive in enjoying things and in learning and growing. For me, it’s very self-motivated. It’s very much about, “You’re sitting here and you’re upset and you’re nervous. The best way to fix that is to just jump right in the deep end. I don’t want to sit here and be nervous and afraid anymore, I’m going to go talk to somebody”. Part of it is also because I don’t drink anymore and I was using that a lot as a crutch for social anxiety. That’s been huge too in pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve been taking away those things that I was using as a crutch and trying to give people myself, not in a scary way but in a way that’s going to be ultimately better for me.

Reade Wolcott mixed The Cons of Being A Wallflower and you’ve mentioned how much We Are The Union’s album Ordinary Life has meant to you. What was it like working with her?

I believe it was after the Bad Time Records tour Reade made a post on Instagram like, “Hey, I’m back from tour and I’ve got time for studio time!” I was dropping into her DMs like, “Please, let’s do this! Let’s fucking do this. I love your work. I love your band. Let’s do the damn thing!” and she was like, “Cool, yeah!” We talked and she named her price. I have a spreadsheet, I think I posted it on Twitter, of all of the mixing references, the exact parts of the album, and the little moments of what I was looking for and stuff. The thing is, a lot of different parts of the album are pulled from songs that I was hyper-fixating on a couple of summers ago. There’s this one song, “Sweet Cis Teen” by Dazey and the Scouts that just ramps up, it’s so spacey and weird and one of the vocalists is doing a spoken word piece with all of these crazy noises bouncing around. I was like, “That’s what I want for ‘Users’! Bury those vocals so deep in the mix you can barely hear them” and that’s exactly what she did. Most of the songs had a couple of revisions to them but when I heard “Users” I was like, “No notes. That’s exactly how I wanted it. Put that exactly on the album”. “Users” had no mix revisions.
Just as a testament to how good Reade is and how professional she is at her job, all the songs on the album save for maybe one or two songs, didn’t need more than two revisions, and those revisions were the most minor things like, “Can you take the vocals up just a little bit more here? Can you pan this just a little bit more here?” At no point was I like, “I need 100 things fixed”. It was just like, “Hey, here’s a couple small edits that are more in line with what I’m thinking” and she nailed it on the next revision she sent me. Reade was an absolute joy to work with and it was amazing. It was really cool to work with someone who was just bringing everything to life with what seemed like minimal effort, at least on my end. A couple of days later I’d get an email and the song was perfect. Working with Reade was absolutely incredible. If you have the availability to do so, just putting it out there, work with Reade! Let her mix your stuff. She is insanely talented and I’m beyond stoked that I got to work with her on this thing.
The two songs that she didn’t mix were “Liar” and “Letters”. Those were mixed by Zach Resignano, who was the guy we did all the recording with. That was just a little asterisk that I wanted to make sure people knew about. Those were the two singles so when we worked with Zach he did the mix for those two. So we just kept them the same for the album, just remastered them so the whole album was cohesive as far as the masters. All of the rest of the songs are Reade. Incredible experience, once in a lifetime. I really hope that she had as much fun mixing the tracks as I did writing them and listening to them for the first time. I’ve never met Reade in person but if I did I’d say, “Hi! I’m Eevie. I think you’re awesome! Thanks for making my record real good!” [laughs]

You’ll be playing your album release show on January 27, Valentine’s Day Fight Night in February, Femme Fest in March, and Stoopfest in May. What are you looking forward to the most about these shows?

I’m excited about all these shows! For the album release, I’ve gotten bands that are people that I personally love, who I love to gig with and I love their acts. I put together the dream show for myself, really. I’m a little bit selfish. One of the founding members of QIRL is a person I used to do the open mics with when I first started making music. When I saw Frankie start QIRL and then QIRL became what QIRL is now, I was like, “DUDE I fucking love you guys!” They do dope communist noise punk queer shit and I was like, “This kills!”. Pop Music Fever Dream, someone that I met as a solo project kind of got them introduced into the queer scene in New York and they just blew up. Ok, Cuddle, I think Nicole approached me after a show and was like, “Hey, I love your music!” Then I started seeing her band around and I was like, “Hey, I love your music! Your band kills!” It’s cool. People I’ve met in the scene who I think are insanely talented, people I admire a lot as musicians. That’s like a dream bill for me personally. I also just found out that we can do vendors so I’m trying to get a tattoo artist friend of mine and I’m trying to get some really dope people doing creative stuff within the scene. I’m like, “Please come do some creative stuff at this really cool show!” Shoutout Eli Jones who did this tattoo for me! [Eevie shows off a really rad candle tattoo on her arm] I’m so stoked for the release show! We’re doing the whole album from start to finish.
Then for Fight Night we’re playing with Winter Wolf who I fucking love! It’s really cool to see Black punks in the scene and it’s really cool to see Black punks with the most insane fucking music. I fucking love Winter Wolf, they are awesome! So I’m very excited for that show. There’s an underground queer wrestling kind of thing that goes on and the venue where we’re doing the release show is where they usually do their big fight night kind of stuff. It’s really, really cool! Stoked for that.
Femme Fest, [mimes head exploding]. I was born and raised in New York. I am a Brooklyn girl through and through. The first time I ever played outside of New York was when we went on a weeklong tour a couple months back. It was a Northeast tour. I booked it with my friend Ian. That was my first time playing outside of New York so anytime I get to play in a different state, that is exciting! Playing in a different state and playing a femme-oriented festival. Have you seen Higher Ground in Vermont? That place looks cool, that place looking fucking huge! Burly Girlies reached out to me shortly after the album was released and was like, “Hey, we’re booking a couple shows. Would you like to be on any of them?” and I was like, “Hell yes I want to be on them!” So we got booked for Femme Fest and the venue is just gorgeous, just beautiful. I’m so excited. I’ve never played a show in Vermont before, that’s going to be a first.
Stoopfest I’m also extremely excited about. I’m going to tell you a story about Stoopfest. I have an anecdote for everything. I have ADHD, don’t come for me. [laughs] I applied last year and I didn’t get in but I did get a message that was like, “Hey, sorry we couldn’t include you this year. The whole committee was so stoked on your stuff! Would you like to play next year?” and I was like, “Hell yes, I want to play next year!” So that’s how that happened. I got a message a couple months ago like, “Hey, do you still want to play Stoopfest?” and I was like, “Hell yes! It’s been in my calendar since last year”. I’m so stoked for Stoopfest. Weakened Friends? Cool! So cool! They’re one of the big bands on the bill! I get to see Mint Green again which I’m so stoked about. We played together a few years back. We opened for Vial at Elsewhere when I was still a baby, an itty bitty girl just getting my feet wet with this band. We got tacked onto that bill and that was pretty insane. I’m so stoked. Ronnica, I’m going to be hanging out with her again. So stoked for that! There’s a couple people on there that I’m really excited to meet in real life or put faces to names. I know those shows are going to go so hard, I’m so excited! [laughs]
I’m booking less this year because I’m busy with school but I am trying to book things that I am pumped for. I’m not booking a bunch of local shows just for the sake of booking shows, just to have a reason to do something. This year I decided that I wanted to book with more intention so I’m being a lot more careful in what I’m taking and who’s going to be on the bill. I want to play shows that I’m genuinely excited for and I’m really stoked for all these shows coming up. It’s going to be great. I’m pumped for that! Lots of really cool stuff.

Will you be playing any Nirvana covers on any of these dates?

Yeah! [laughs] We did “In Bloom” at the Broadway show and that was so much fun to do. Emma is an incredible vocalist too. I know I talked a lot about her guitar work but she’s also a fantastic vocalist. We split the vocals on “In Bloom” and that was really cool. For the release show, we’re going to do only original stuff or that’s the plan at least. If my voice holds out, we might do the cover but for future shows, we’re definitely planning on bringing the Nirvana cover back. That’s going to be fun because it’s Nirvana. I’ve already decided that I’m secretly Kurt Cobain, that’s what people don’t know. That’s the conspiracy. Kurt never died, he just reincarnated as a Black trans woman. [laughs] He died in 1994, I was born in 2000. That seems about right for reincarnation. I know exactly what I’m talking about. I studied that in college, the physics of reincarnation.

How would you describe the punk scene in Brooklyn?

I will say that at its core, the Brooklyn punk scene is about a deep love for art and a deep love for each other. At the end of the day, we all have a story to tell and we’re all just trying to tell that. I’ve been in a lot of conversations with friends recently talking about how it feels like something is brewing in our scene that is big and exciting. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I feel like give it twenty or thirty years and they’re going to be looking at the trans punk scene here in Brooklyn in this moment the same way we look at the riot grrrl movement of the Bikini Kill and Bratmobile era and that moment. I truly do feel that way. I feel like we’re building the foundation for something really important right now. I’m just excited to be a part of it and I hope that we can keep each other safe and loved and continue to keep creating amazing art together.

There’s so many scenes doing important things. I agree, there’s going to be a big explosion.

I hope so. And I hope when that explosion happens we all go together because it’s not about one person. It’s never been about one person, it’s never been about one band. In every interview I do, I shout out four or five of my favourite bands from the scene because we‘re the names you see recurring in the scene, like the heavy hitters as I call them. It’s us, Pop Music Fever Dream, Crush Fund, Ok, Cuddle, QIRL, and I’m willing to even say PEF - they’re very new but they’ve got that fucking star power to them. They kill! There’s a lot of talent. I’m almost definitely missing a few people but those are the first names that come to mind right now.

It’s hard to encompass the scene in a few minutes.

Yeah! But those are a few bands where you see something really big is going to brew there for sure. The Crush Fund girls are the sweetest people in the whole universe and their music kicks ass and their live shows kick ass, truly. They kill, they're awesome.

That’s the best combination, great people doing great stuff.

Yeah! Great people, great stuff, great music, you can’t go wrong.

What does the future hold for Eevie Echoes and the Locations?

Hopefully more music, more stories, and God, I hope a sponsorship. [laughs] Listen, music is expensive, no one tells you this. Not a single person has ever said that music is expensive. [laughs]

Not before now.

I pioneered this. I actually started music. The whole concept of music is because of me.
[laughter]

I want to grab every opportunity that I can. That’s important to me. I want to keep building a platform so that other queer people can feel seen and can feel loved the way that I did when I first got into music, ultimately that’s the goal. I’m not here to be famous, I’m not here to be popular or whatever the fuck, I’m here to make something that means something to someone. At the end of the day, if only four people listen to my music but those four people thought it was the most meaningful thing in the world to them, that is the most exciting thing in the world to me. I love creating something and having someone else be like, “That hit. That resonated for me”. That’s huge. That is the biggest compliment that I could ever receive. Hopefully more opportunities. Let’s get more queer music in more queer ears. Let’s change the world! We’re going to change the world. More love. Just love each other please, God. There’s too much hate in the world, let’s just love. Let’s just love each other. That’s what I’m here for. The only people you should be punching in the face are the government and the cops. Beat the shit out of the cops, don’t beat the shit out of each other. [laughs]

Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?

Yeah, I want a call to action. There’s a lot of injustice going on in the world right now and I think it’s important that people speak up. I want people to know that their voices matter. It’s hard to believe that because we have all these systems in place that don’t make us feel like our voices matter but your voice matters. It’s never too late to speak up against injustice. Not to quote the New York City Public Transportation, but if you see something, say something. Look out for people. Look out for yourself and look out for the people close to you. It’s important to speak out. Free Palestine. Speak up, use your voice. I think that’s the most important thing that you can do as a person.