Band Booking: On Band Names, Duos, and Songwriting with Deep Time

If you’re fond of taut post-punk saturated with unexpectedly resonant melodies, Deep Time’s self-titled album is likely to warm your heart. We chatted with singer/guitarist Jennifer Moore via email about her writing, the challenges of being a two-piece, and what effect the band’s name change (from Yellow Fever) had had on their music.

Seeing you live, the songs from Deep Time unfold differently than they do on the album. Do you try to reinvent these songs in different ways every night, or is there more of a live translation of them that works better, in certain cases?
We try to represent them the best we can with two people which leads to a lot of multi-tasking and unfortunately, not a lot of nightly reinterpretation. We’ve done a couple shows recently with our friend, Daniel Francis Doyle(who also plays solo under that name) playing extra parts that are on the album that we usually can’t play live. It’s been pretty fun.

When did the name change become apparent?
Uhhhhh, well the need became apparent after receiving a couple cease and desist letters from a clothing company’s lawyer, but the actual name took a long time to figure out. The new name took a lot of lists, terrible puns, and fake show lineups (i.e. Thin Lizzy, Grass Widow, Dr. Dre, and Deep Time, Friday @ Beerland or Led Zeppelin, D.A.F, CAN, Deep Time and Tiny Tim @ Cake Shop)

Do you feel like the change from Yellow Fever to Deep Time has prompted a shift in the songs that you’ve written since then?
All the songs on our new album were written as Yellow Fever and we had to change the name after we’d completed it. So I guess there’s no telling yet, but the name change wasn’t meant to be an aesthetic shift. It’s more like a legal necessity that turned out to be something we like.

You wrote an editorial for Impose responding to Vice’s Grass Widow “review” — have you been doing any other writing this year?
I’m writing something for my roommate’s zine, called Pull Trigger.

What are you reading right now?
Day by A. L. Kennedy.

Photo: Angel Ceballos

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