Your final album Host Body will be out on August 31. You released your previous album Who’s Next on that date in 2018. Does this date hold any significance for you or is it a coincidence?

It’s a coincidence! [laughs] It just lined up like that. We were like, “Why not?” I think we just started paying attention to when we started doing the work and we picked that date. John’s a Leo but August 31 isn’t Leo anymore so that doesn’t count. [laughs]

When you were working on the album did you know that it would be Night Witch’s final release?

We had most of these songs written before COVID and we were actually gearing up to do the release before the pandemic. 2020 was going to be our year, let me tell you. We were going to tour Europe, we had a tour manager and a schedule lined up for us. Everything was planned out. We were going to play WrestleMania. [laughs] Two of these songs had been written for five years now and we’ve been playing them as our ‘new songs’ for a really long time. I think since 2019. [laughs] COVID really fucked us up! It really delayed everything. We’ve been sitting on these songs for years. We all moved at the same time to different places and got new jobs. Me and John got married! We’ve just been going through a ton of personal transitions. Nothing that we couldn’t handle on our own but it just delayed the release of this album.

Then coming to the realization that being in a band when you live so far away is so hard. Nikki lives in Minneapolis, John and I live in Philly, and Tyler lives in Providence, Rhoad Island. It’s really hard to write songs. I know it’s easier now because we live in the future but it’s hard to be in a band in the way that we all personally like being in bands together. We like making music and practicing together and working on a little riff to create a song. I know you can do that over the internet but I think realistically none of us wanted to be in a band like that so we’re ready to call it quits.

If it doesn’t feel right, there’s no use in trying to force it. You might come back together at some point too.

The inevitable Night Witch reunion is already booming. [laughs] We did have a really stupid plan but it fell through. Fest is our last show and we had a plan to have a reunion show later that night. [laughs] Honestly, I think it would have been too much and I think it was just a joke that I took too far and actually started planning. We're not doing a reunion show the day of but when My Chemical Romance asks us to tour with them, definitely. That’s going to happen, right?

You already have an in with Frank Iero after being featured with him on “Trust The Process” off the new HIRS Collective album.

[laughs] Everyone who knows me knows that MCR is my favourite band. HIRS is also one of my favourite bands. So Jenna knew that I was a superfan and she called me. She was going to record my reaction but something didn’t work. [laughs] When Jenna called me I was in the middle of brushing my teeth and she asked if I wanted to be on the song and I choked. I full-on choked and started crying, weeping, and having an attack. I was like, “Are you sure??” I lost my mind. It was like I was pregnant. I went around and called all my friends and family like, “Guess what??” and they were like, “What??” I think that’s just part of who I am. I’m a fan of something and I cannot hide being a fan of something. Something in my brain makes me very excited for very specific things or bands and I’ve never been a casual fan of anything in my life. I couldn’t hide it with this. [laughs] I kinda leaned into it and embraced it. I’m a huge fucking fan of these two bands and it’s crazy that I’m on a song with them. There’s no bone in my body that could act cool about it and be like, “Yeah, I’m on a song with Frank Iero”. [hair toss] Like no, couldn’t do it. [laughs] I will shout it from the rooftops. It’s so cool! I’ve never been cool about shit like that. That’s probably the last time I’ll be asked to do anything like that but whatever. [laughs]

Gotta make the most of it.

Maybe someone will appreciate me being an insane fan of something else. Who knows? [laughs] It’s gotten me this far so we’ll see. If BTS calls me up, that’s the next step, right? They want me to do guest vocals on the new BTS track, for sure. Honestly, they would see so much success if they got somebody to do hardcore vocals on one of their tracks. It would be crazy. It would change the industry forever. It doesn’t have to be me.

How do you feel like you’ve evolved as a person and as a band in the past ten years?

Over that long of a time span, anyone is going to change.A lot of the anger that I felt when writing these songs has changed. Part of the reason I wanted to scream about stuff was because I felt like I really needed to scream about some stuff. I think the anger behind the songs is still there but not in a way that’s deeply, horribly personal. It’s a period of time in which I was extremely angry about certain situations and certain people. I’ve been able to kind of step away from that and forgive either the people who are the subjects of the songs or the situations that arose that made me want to write about it. Obviously, not forgiveness of the topics or of worshipping cool guys just because they’re cool guys even though they’ve done bad things. I obviously haven’t forgiven the concepts but I think I’ve been able to heal from the deeply personal aspects of those.

The vibe in the band hasn’t changed, it’s still exactly the same. All of us are extremely goofy and unserious individuals most of the time and we’re all very vulnerable with each other in a way that makes our friendship feel deeper. Nikki and I talk on the phone every other week even though they live in Minneapolis now. We all talk on the phone and we all talk in the group chat. We’re still very silly as friends. I think that aspect hasn’t changed at all. Nathan, who is the original drummer for the band, also lives in Philly so I see him every other day. We’re still bopping around doing silly shit. I think the friendship has changed for the better. We’ve grown with each other and got through extremely hard times with each other and became closer. The general vibe is still fucking goofs trying to come across as hardcore. [laughs]

In terms of our actual music, I would say our style did change when John came on to do guitar. Shaw left the band in 2018 to go to grad school, not for any bad reason. He was insane! He never wrote hardcore music before this band and he wrote some of our weirdest sounding songs. All of us, except for Nikki, had a background in pop punk and folk punk, and none of us had ever been in a hardcore band. Some of the riffs that Shaw wrote are weird as hell! The one that comes to my mind is “Constant Vigilance”. I think he’s written weirder songs than that too. “Lucky” is a weirder-sounding song. Those were written by Shaw and I think they gave us our semi-unique sound. When John came on, he gave us a little more legitimacy when it came to hardcore music. He was influenced by Aus-Rotten and Crass. He actually listened to good hardcore music and was in hardcore bands before this. He kept our original weird shit while also bringing some more traditional hardcore sound to us. I think that’s the only thing that changed. Tyler’s drumming is crazy! Nathan’s drumming is also insane but the way Tyler plays and the things he comes up with on the spot is amazing. We’ll play a single riff and he’ll be like, “Oh I think I got that!” then he’ll go fucking crazy and write the coolest shit I’ve ever heard. He brought a lot of loudness to the band. I get in my head a lot about the importance of certain things and Night Witch is really important to me. It’s a band that has helped me through a lot of shit and I’ve formed really beautiful friendships through it.

How would you describe your songwriting process?

It’s fun! It’s been a long time since we actually wrote a song together because of COVID. We had practice at my house every other week and sometimes John, Nikki, or Tyler would come in with little riffs that they’d just come up with and we would figure out what parts we liked and how we could write different parts to it. I would say a quarter of the time Nikki, Tyler, or John would come in with a fully-fledged song all written out and ready to go. My contributions are usually saying, “Can that song be shorter?” [laughs] It’s a minute-long song and I’m like, “I think it drags a little. It’s sooo long. We should cut it in half!” I really did have to curb that instinct. I don’t think I did at all for this one. I don’t want to overstay my welcome. You’re in, you’re out, you’re done with the show. [laughs]

Like I said, a lot of my lyrics came from places of anger or extreme feelings that I had to work through and word-vomit onto a page of my diary or something. I would listen to the songs that they came up with during practice while scrolling through my phone to see if any of those lyrics made sense together and fit. Other times, I would be really struggling with coming up with lyrics that weren’t too on the nose. Like, “I am mad! This is bad!” [laughs] I would be vulnerable and talk to Tyler, John, and Nikki and be like, “Hey, I cannot come up with something to say for this. Here’s the general idea of the song and I need help writing lyrics for this part”. They helped a lot, especially with this album. I think John and Nikki both wrote lyrics for a couple of the songs.

On “Clout” you talk about feeling the need to relive trauma to be successful. What has helped you to break out of that pattern of thinking?

Therapy! Going to therapy. I started during COVID and really needed to work through a lot of shit on my own. It’s about a lot of different things but I think part of the reason why I wrote that song was because a lot of the earlier songs I wrote were about my specific sexual assault.

During a certain period we stopped playing “Lucky” live because I would just spill my guts on stage. I’d get to that point where I was giving a really emotional performance that a lot of people identified with but at the same time, I was shell-shocked after every show. There was one show where I just stopped because I was feeling so, so bad about everything. It was the last song that we played and I just put the mic down and walked outside and just walked around the block. Some people at that show followed me out to tell me their story of sexual assault and why that song was so meaningful. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of having a panic attack because I triggered myself by talking about this song. That’s the confusing part. I’m so, so grateful and happy that people feel comfortable talking to me and the rest of the band about their experiences because we’re not afraid to talk about those experiences ourselves. Talking about it helps brings light to it and helps bring change. It’s ultimately a positive but for a little while in the middle, it felt really bad for me specifically. I felt guilty when we did stop playing that song. I also stopped doing long-ass speeches on stage for a minute - I’m back to it now! - but I’d just be like, “This song is about how men suck!” instead of being like, “Here’s my story”. That brought feelings of guilt because I’m not opening up the conversation, I’m tiptoeing around it. But I needed to do that for a little bit so I could work on my shit.

The rest of the parts in that song are about how that’s what we “became known for” and it just got in my head that, “This is my identity. My assault is now this band’s identity and it feels really weird”. Like I said at the very end of the paragraph up above, I know that’s not what most people think, that’s just what was in my head and what I started to construe. It was a lot.

You have to take care of yourself first and foremost.

The band didn’t implode because I stopped doing long speeches on stage. [laughs]

You also talk about struggling with mental health on the album, especially on the title track. What helps you look after your mental health?

Like I said, therapy. [laughs] For me personally, I have a long history of mental health issues in my family. A lot of my close family members have struggled with severe depression and things like that. I watched it growing up and that really influenced me. In high school, some of my friends were also struggling with pretty bad mental health shit. I’ve been a huge mental health advocate since I was a teenager. When I was a child I wanted to be a guidance counselor because I really liked how my guidance counselor helped my friends. I’m not a guidance counselor now but I did get my masters in social work. When I was younger in Tallahassee I tried to start a mental health non-profit that specifically catered to folks in the music scene. That is not a thing anymore. There’s a place in Athens, Georgia called Nuci’s Space. I found out about that as a 20-year-old and was blown away that this is a community mental health resource center that helps connect folks with local therapists. They work on a sliding scale and they also offer their own peer-to-peer counseling. They’re also a venue/practice space for musicians and they use music therapy in a lot of work that they do. So for me, a 20-year-old, I was like, “I wanna do that! I can do that!” No experience at all with any of that.

In Tallahassee, I talked a big game for a really long time about getting care for your mental health but I never went to therapy until much later after that because I had the mindset of, “Other people have it worse than me. I don’t need to go to therapy. I don’t need to take the space of somebody else going to therapy”. Which is an insane take. It doesn’t make any sense. COVID was bad for everyone and it’s still bad but that time was real bad for people. I got to the lowest point I’d ever been at so I started going to therapy and it helped me out in a lot of different ways and it’s still helping. I’m going through a lot of stuff right now and it’s still a really wonderful tool. Before I went, just talking with my friends about different things really helped.

Nikki wrote half of the lyrics for “Host Body” and I found out that they’re struggling with the same fucking thing! We didn’t talk to each other as blatantly as we probably could have but through writing these lyrics I was like, “Oh! Nikki really struggles with a lot of the same things I do”. That helped our friendship open up a bit more too. I recommended my therapist to Nikki and they started going to that therapist too. [laughs] She rules and she has helped us both. It was my first time going to therapy and it helped me work through a lot of the shit that I wrote about on this album. The fact that we were both writing lyrics that were this similar was like, “Ooh, we’ve got the same weird brain! Lucky that we’re friends and in this silly band”.

On “Ingrained” you explore how capitalism is killing everyone. What can be done to build a better society? How can we unlearn capitalistic behavours?

That’s a big question!! [laughs] I think it’s really hard to do that. That’s what that song is about. I’m going to be 33 this year and I have struggled with this shit my entire fucking life. Capitalism is a big player in how I bad feel about myself and that sucks. I wrote the song about how the body positivity and self-love movement has morphed into a thing that makes you just buy shit like, “Buy this thing for self-care! Buy this for your mental health!” It feels like even the idea behind body positivity or self-love has now been warped into just buying more shit and it sucks. That’s not news to anyone. The line “Clutching to the things that you find familiar” is about doing things that you know are not overall good for you but you do just to have something to grasp onto that’s familiar and makes you wanna feel good even temporarily. It’s not a huge statement but it’s something that all of us struggle with, unfortunately.

You address the lack of accountability within the punk scene on “No More Cowards”. What steps can be taken to make sure people are held accountable within the punk scene?

I think my stance on this has gotten a little bit more nuanced. I think it is very based on the situation. Every situation is going to be different because there are different people involved, different cities, different communities, different everything. That’s obviously the big nuance. Actually taking accountability looks different in every situation but I think there are really good examples of people being held accountable and that feeling ok.

I wrote that song about a specific situation that I ran into when I was still living in Tallahassee. I was working for Planned Parenthood at the time and I was putting on a Planned Parenthood event at the local bar, the one bar there that’s cool, and some dude just started talking to me about how abortion is wrong. I was like, “I can’t believe it’s 2019 and I’m having this conversation in a punk bar with some punk who I’ve never seen before”. It was surreal to see this happen. I just felt like I was having an out-of-body experience but I guess it was no surprise. So fast forward a few months, that guy is in a band that’s being booked at that same bar and I was like, “Oh no!”. I was like, “The booker must not know so I’m going to send a little message”. I said, “Hey, I had a really bad conversation with this guy about abortion at a Planned Parenthood event. I don’t know if it’s in everyone’s best interest to give this guy a platform. I’m happy to help you find another band to fill this bill but maybe let’s not book a band that has somebody who is anti-abortion in it”. The bar is LOW, the bar is on the ground. The person booking was like, “I don’t know…that’s against their religious beliefs and I think that’s discrimination if I don’t let them play”. This was a cis white guy too. It was just some fucking guy. At that point in my life, I had dealt with scenarios like these over and over and over again. People are afraid to take a stance who are involved in an alternative punk community that is based off of taking stances. Punk was built on rejecting the mainstream ideas of patriarchy and racism and capitalism and trying to build a community to reject those things and that community found different ways to be sustainable within our own weird music scene. Of course, we know that’s not what actually happened, unfortunately. Punks from the 80s were fucking horrible about different things. It just sucked that it was 2019 and it just felt bad. I thought we’d come so much further. I thought that taking an anti-abortion guy off your gig is a no-brainer but it was still, “I don’t know. I don’t think I can do it”. I’m just sick of people not actually standing by these ideals that they claim to be part of. The DIY punk scene claims to be against these certain behaviours and things. That’s why I wrote the song. I’m not very poetic, I wrote what I just said. I don’t know if there’s a specific protocol that we should follow because that’s not applicable to everything. I want people to actually turn their words into actions and actually kick the anti-abortion guy off the bill. It’s not that hard! Like I said, the bar is on the ground, the bar is underground, the bar is in the dirt. [laughs]

Holding people accountable is nuanced, every situation is different but I do think something that folks should take away from any situation is not to get caught up in the clout or fame or whatever that this person has and the idea that you had of this person. I think working together is important and not making it public unless it has to be for people’s safety. Doing things like callout posts can be empowering and can be good but doing other things before you get to the callout post is also important. Trying to do accountability in a way that the person that has been hurt actually wants to see. A lot of the time you’ll see people call folks out and not involve anybody who was actually hurt in the situation and just be like, “This guy fucking sucks!” The victim is then left feeling like, “I didn’t necessarily want that out there but I guess it’s out there now”. Like I said, every situation is nuanced, and sometimes people do want things like that. Centering the people who were harmed, asking them what they want to do, and working with them to figure out how they can heal from certain situations and move from there is key. Center the person who was hurt and ask what they want! Maybe that person does want a huge callout post! Talking about it is very important. Handling every situation with nuance and centering the victim in every situation is what I think folks should take home at the end of the day.

You’re going on your farewell tour this fall and your final shows are taking place at Fest. What does bringing the band to a close at Fest mean to you?

Oh my god, it feels so good! It feels very good but not in a way that feels malicious. [laughs] I think the thing that I’m saddest about is not playing music with Nikki and Tyler anymore and not having an excuse to hang out with them as much. Nikki’s been really good with calling me and Tyler is only a 6-hour drive away so we might still pop in and visit him. That’s the thing that I’m mourning the most with this band. I’m in another band with John and I’m also married to him so that’s why I didn’t name him. [laughs] Most of these songs were written from a place of anger or deep hurt that I was experiencing and it really helped. Being able to literally scream about these things helped me so much in so many different ways that I could not begin to name all of them. Like I said before, I’ve healed from a lot of places I was at when I wrote these songs so I’m happy to be giving full closure to the feelings that I had when I was writing these songs.

Something I loved about this band was people’s reactions after we played. Like people coming up to me and saying they related with a lot of things I said on stage like, “Thank you for saying these things. I don’t see that said a lot anymore and I needed to hear that for x, y, z reasons”. Just connecting with people afterward and seeing that immediate validation of the things you were saying are right, like, “We shouldn’t be supporting these people who are abusers” and things like that. Even after all these years sometimes I’m like, “Maybe I’m being too much of a bitch. Maybe I should shut the fuck up”. That little fun voice in my head still rears her head every couple of hours, honestly. It can feel a little silly sometimes to do a long speech about a thirty-second song. [laughs] I do still get in my head about doing that but I still feel compelled to talk about these songs because of the reactions that we get from people. I did need to stop doing that for a little while because I had to heal myself but I do it now that I’m in a better place and can handle talking to folks more about it as well and commiserating in the sadness of the things we’ve been through and the importance of actually talking about it. That’s something I’m going to miss but at the same time, I don’t think any new band that I join is going to not do that. Not necessarily doing long speeches over the mic but that‘s a sentiment that I’m going to have in any band no matter what. Even if I’m drumming or whatever. I’m always going to be there to talk to people about shit like that because it’s important to do that. Talking to people about the shit that we’ve all been through is something I’m going to carry with me with other bands that I’m in, no matter what the topic is.

We all left Tallahassee and Night Witch a Tallahassee band, baby! We need to close the chapter on Tallahassee. [laughs] It’s a good spot but we need to move on from Tallahassee in the best way possible. One of our last shows is going to be in Tallahassee. We’re playing there right before Fest at that same bar I mentioned earlier, called the Bark. One of our songs on this record is called “Bark Trash” and it’s about the bar. It’s our favourite place in the whole world. Someone said, “All you fucking political assholes are all fucking Bark trash!” So that’s how we got the song title. [laughs] We’re happy to say goodbye to that part of our lives. Also, we were in our twenties! I was so young when I started this band! It was ten years ago. It’s insane! It’s time to close that chapter.

Close it with love.

Close it with love! I’m going to miss you, thanks for everything, goodbye. I’ll still visit Tallahassee. We have family in Florida, so we’re going to see them, those swamp people. [laughs] It’s closure on this band but not necessarily on that city because I love that city. I have Tallahassee tattoos on me. I’ve got a swamp tattoo. I do love Tallahassee and it’s given me so much and so many things that I love about myself. I’ve moved and I’m ready to move on. I spent 13 years in that town, I don’t think I owe them that much more. We’re good. [laughs]

How would you describe the punk scene in Tallahassee?

It’s great! I’ve been gone for two years now and COVID put everything on pause so I don’t know how it’s changed since but it’s really, really wonderful. I think we’ve come a long way since I was 23 and writing these songs. There was a certain point where there was a band touring through called RVIVR and they had a requirement that caused so many people to be so pissed off. [laughs] They were really big at the time so people had to listen to them. They were like, “When we’re touring, our requirement is that every bill that we play must have at least one non-man band. There must be one person in the band who is supporting us who is not a man”. I had to start a band because there was no one in Tallahassee at the time of that tour! We were using message boards then - I feel like boomer [laughs] - and people were saying, “There are no girls that even want to start bands! I don’t know who to talk to!” and I’m like, “WHAT!?” It’s so funny because the people that said those words have grown so much and are not like that anymore. We all have to start somewhere. Tallahassee started in a weird spot where we had to start a band because there were no bands with girls in them. [laughs] I was yelled at for calling out somebody who sexually assaulted someone else in our scene. We’ve come such a long way. Truly, we’ve come such a long way. I’m so proud of the people who are still there holding it down.

We have a fucking venue now! For a minute we didn’t have a venue. Small towns are really wonderful places for bands to stop. I hope that most bands can stop through small towns like Tallahassee because kids come out! There’s nothing going on so they’ll go to the gig. It’s a really, really wonderful spot. It’s also so goofy. I have not been able to replicate or find another city that has replicated the goofiness and silliness that is the Tallahassee punk scene. We had three cover shows a year at one point. One of the cover shows was covering other Tallahassee bands and we called it Friends Fest and we just swapped bands. It was so sweet! Very silly things go on. We had a bicycle race that happened every year that people got really, really into. People came in from other parts of the state for it.

Tallahassee is also a college town so there are always new folks coming in and there are a lot of good ol’ Southern people who are happy to talk to you if you’re new. I went there for college and I was some new wide-eyed 18-year-old at one point and I could have easily been shunned by the people there like, “Who’s this young weirdo who doesn’t have that much experience?” The people who were living there at the time were like, “Hey, let me show you how to do this!” That sentiment of, “Let me show you!” is still within all of the folks who run shows there. They book bands who are still in high school so the kids have something to go to. I just think it’s really cool! It’s a good scene full of really good people who are doing really cool shit.

Will you be playing any MCR covers on your farewell tour?

No! [laughs] For the MCR cover set we did at Fest, Tyler only learned those parts three weeks before because the guitarist we had lined up for that had to drop out. He doesn’t like My Chem! He learned all of those parts, all those crazy solos in three weeks because I was like, “Tyler, please it’s my favourite band!!” and he was like, “Ok, I’ll do it”. [laughs] I love doing covers. If I could do a cover in every band I’m in for every set I play, I would but not everyone’s like that. We almost did a cover of “Xanadu” which is by Olivia Newton-John. Nikki was obsessed with it during our first tour and would play it every hour or two and we all got really into it. We almost did a cover of that but instead, we’re getting matching tattoos. Mine’s going to have “Xanadu” lyrics in it. We’re not going to do MCR covers, Tyler doesn’t like that band that much, and Nikki doesn’t like that band that much. John does like the band but hates doing covers. It’s really just me. [laughs]

What do you want the legacy of Night Witch to be?

That’s a loaded question, I don’t know! This is our perception of our band - I don’t know if it’s true but this is how we think of our band because we’ve had conversations about this - but I don’t think that we are perceived as a ‘cool guy’ hardcore band. None of us act hard on stage. I’m up there giggling and wearing a BTS shirt. All of us are extremely friendly and ready to talk to anyone who wants to talk to us, I think it’s a Southern thing but who knows? We’ve never been perceived as the fucking hardcore untouchable-type band. I want our legacy to be that we’re a goofy group of kids who were able to stay friends for over a decade, made a lot of music together, and we weren't afraid to talk about things that were important to us. I think our ultimate legacy would be like, “They were a band that was down to clown but also down to thrown down and yell at people”. [laughs] And not being inaccessible to talk to and always ready to be like, “What’s up? Oh my god, that’s crazy that you like my band! What’s your band? Can I like your band?”

Anything that you’d like to add?

We have this crazy show coming up! I’ve been working with somebody who puts on indie wrestling shows in Philly. Me, Nikki, and John are really into wrestling. Nikki has been into wrestling their whole lives and they tried to get me and John into it for 10 years. For some reason, it just clicked and now I’m into wrestling. We’re all stoked about it! For our music video for “Drop Dead” we were working with our favourite wrestler Effy. We were about to play WrestleMania when COVID hit!!

We’re going to put on a wrestling show in Philly (you can buy tickets to that show right here!). We’re playing with HIRS too. We’re really excited about it! We have 20 different local wrestlers booked who are all on the indie circuit. I’m really excited to play with HIRS for one last time too because they’re a band that’s had a huge influence on me and are super nice people. They put on a crazy show. Working with Labor of Love has been really, really fun and we’re going to try to do more local indie wrestling shows around Philly too that incorporate different hardcore bands and stuff like that. Please come out!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Labor of Love (@laboroflovephl)