Getting to Know…Tarah Who? | Interview

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Prepare to blown away by Interview #4, featuring all three members of the self-described “loud, energetic, entertaining punk/rock band,” Tarah Who?.

It’s pretty awesome when a band seems to truly embrace and totally understand their identity.  That’s the case with Los Angeles rock band, Tarah Who? All three members of Tarah Who were gracious enough to “spill the tea” about all aspects of the band, including musical influences, chemistry as a trio, and of course, some juicy, wild and crazy stories.  Interview #4 is the first to feature an entire band, and the lengthiest yet, and but it’s well worth the read.  Prepare to rock with this female-fronted juggernaut.

Tarah Who? Personnel

Tarah G. Carpenter (TGC): Vocals, Guitar

Joey Southern (JS): Bass, Backing Vocals

Coralie Hervé (CH): Drums, Backing Vocals

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Brent Faulkner (The Musical Hype): Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes you/your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off? 

Coralie Hervé (CH): Tarah Who? is a loud, energetic, entertaining punk/rock band. We try to give our best at every one of our shows. The goal is to make people have an awesome night and a lot of fun!!!

Joey Southern (JS): To add to what Coralie said, as of right now I believe we have the element of surprise. On the road meeting new bands and friends at gigs, we tend to come off as “nice.” That’s not a bad thing, it’s just that I am a good ol’ cornfed boy and the ladies are polite and soft spoken. We play hard and we play loud music. Compared to me, Coralie is a bit “reserved” as I can talk for days about random nothings and she is a woman of few words. However, after each performance people rush Coralie raving “oh my, you hit with such power and just…just… wow!” And Tarah’s vocals roaring like a lioness feeding off the room’s energy tearing through your ears drums is the same girl who whispered in a graceful manner, “May I please have a Jameson n coke” at the bar 20 min before our set.

Tarah G. Carpenter (TGC): Lol!! Joey you crack me up! Yes, to what Coralie and Joey said. If you listen to us online, you are either going to like it or not. You will not get the full Tarah Who? experience until you come out to one of our shows, and THEN you ‘ll come back to the recorded songs and say “NOW I GET IT!!” and listen more. We are a VERY intense band. We are loud because it is part of the music, not to just be loud in your ears. We are ‘rock,’ people, after our shows tend to call us ‘punk rock’ because of the energy and the show that we give, more than the music. We improvise a lot, we go with the flow and what energy the audience gives us. We love to meet new people, the more the audience is into the show, participating, the crazier we get. 🙂 We want to have fun on stage and we want you to have fun with us.

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BF: Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your band form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on? 

CH: I joined Tarah Who? a year ago. I’ve never been in a professional band before, it’s a lot of work but it’s so worth it!! We did two tours, one in the West Coast and one on the East Coast, recorded one EP and played a lot of gigs, it just amazing!!

JS: I am the newest member of the band coming up on six months now. We met back in April 2018 via Facebook messenger…

“Hi Joe, I am contacting you because I am looking for a bass player for my band Tarah Who? If you like what you hear hit me back. Have a good day!” Tarah…

Random, it seemed strange and went unanswered for six whole days. The idea rolled around in my head enough and I decided I needed to listen to the songs. Two weeks later we left on a west coast tour and we have been constantly working ever since! Each experience seems better than the last. Since I am new I believe our goals have stayed the same since I joined. Take the next step in our career which is being self-sufficient and financially stable to quit our grind jobs and have the liberty of doing what we love. In turn creating a community within the industry and one day help other bands just like us through the struggle.

TGC: I started Tarah Who? in 2006. I have worked alone, and with producers and musicians in France and in the US. I finally met Coralie a year ago only, but it seems like we have known each other for years. We connected right away, she is super serious, and professional, especially at such a young age (she is 23)! She is a great drummer and she doesn’t come with the ego BS package, which is really nice.

Joey, as he mentioned above, joined us in April. Our previous bass player was going through some personal stuff and we had a full-on west coast tour planned. I had two weeks to find a bass player. I emailed Joey and he came prepared to the audition, knowing three songs, and being the coolest guy in the world! I really liked his positive attitude, and how he had worked on the songs. I loved his bass sound and I knew Coralie would like him. The next time we saw him, he knew the whole set list, and told us that he was going to come on tour with us!

Joey is motivated, dedicated, and I am very lucky to be surrounded by two supportive, professional and mature musicians, who became part of the family. Going on tour made us closer than ever, we truly have each other’s back and we know what kind of space each one of us needs. We all want in the end to break through and we are ready to make it happen.

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BF: Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now? 

Joey Southern (JS): At first, the experience was overwhelming and to be honest a dream come true to be able to go on tour through the country coast to coast. That high of touring still has not faded. Overtime we have hit bumps and learned valuable lessons that have molded my excitement into focus. Learning what is truly important in this game and learning how to play it. Not to say I have lost my excitement and spark but I have adapted into a more driven and confident musician with a purpose. My goals now are specific to our growth as a band and presents in the music community.

Tarah G. Carpenter (TGC): I have really high set goals for Tarah Who? I share the realistic ones with Coralie and Joey, but I don’t want to overwhelm them too much and as things are going, sometimes I have slightly different visions for the band. The perspective in itself has not changed much, Coralie and Joey are better individuals than ever expected, my goals have changed because I can go even further than I thought. We have been able to explore different sounds, and aspects to our music, Coralie and Joey are really good musicians and can adapt quickly. We have not been playing for a long time together but we have spent so much time in the studio together and on the road that we can understand each other with just one look! Our last show, I re-structured 3 songs on the go, just by looking at them. The sound engineer had to cut our set, and I really wanted to play all of our songs! So, I made sure that Joey and Coralie got my signals and we switched around a little.

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BF: Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential? 

Coralie Hervé (CH): I’m a big fan of Nightwish, a symphonic metal band, I really love that style. More generally, I’m a rocker and a metal head, haha. The three of us have totally different musical influences but it really works in Tarah Who?!! We all bring our own background to the music.

JS: My biggest influence musically growing up was the Ross Brothers. Two Brothers I went to school with that were über talented and introduced me to so much music and many bass players that later influenced me. Bassists like Jaco Pastorius and Ray Brown would have just been another name to me. I went on to play in several bands with Nick the eldest brother and learned what it was to be a performer. As for musicians you may be familiar with, I would say bassists like Justin Chancellor [Tool] or Mike Watt. Justin’s use of color is far out and his bass tone is raunchy. Mike is always playing lead bass to my ears and his energy is electric, leaving you with a sense of confident attitude.

TGC: I don’t write music to sound like someone, or to be like someone. I write because I need to. Over the years, I have also learned to be more confident about what I like and what I want to sound like rather than trying to FIT in a musical genre. I remember being surrounded or helped by producers and other musicians who did not “understand” or had the same vision for my music. They would tell me, that it was better for my music sort of.  It sounded good or ok. but it wasn’t who I was. I was not 100% performing it because I didn’t believe in it.

I grew up listening to Alanis Morrissette, and I think the big confusion when you say things like that, is that the people who I worked with automatically thought that this meant “I want to sound like Alanis.” I never wanted to. Enjoying her music does not mean that I want to be or sound like her. Then I discovered The Distillers, Pantera, Motörhead, RATM etc… at the time Avril Lavigne was huge, so I was this timid girl, who loves Alanis Morrissette but likes rock. “Let’s make you a new Avril Lavigne!” Oh… how much I hated that! I hated that people wanted to make me into something rather than listening to what I had to say or offer musically. It has always been ok with me to do something new! Most bands that made it, (truly made it) innovated! They did it because they believed in something bigger, rather than trying to sound like someone in order to be safe and be commercial. Now about being influenced, we had heard it all. I am sure that there is a part of my writing that will remind you of Alanis because of the raw, autobiographical, lyrics. Musically, I listen to everything grunge, rock from the 90s, and I am sure that you can hear a lot of bands in us from that. I know the feeling I want to have when we play and that’s what I am more focused on.

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BF: Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative. 

 

Coralie Hervé (CH): There is so much to say!!! One of the funniest and craziest was: when we were driving from Eugene to San Francisco, eight hours, for Joey to catch his flight to LA, we stopped at a “gas station” kind of in the middle of nowhere. We entered his “shop” and he saw that I was looking for something. He told me, “are you looking for the pisser?” and I was like “yes,” he gave me a flashlight and said “you gonna need this,” it was so weird!!! But we laughed a lot about it afterward haha.

Joey Southern (JS): Hahaha I have two for you. First wacky incident happened in Oakland. A regular patron stopping in for his usual pint after work ended up crawling all over the stage on his knees and basically attempting to duct tape Tarah and I together at the legs. It is common for us to encourage the audience to come up on stage with us so this seemed half way normal. But at one point, I saw him behind her making motions to pull the tape out, up and over her head to tape her mouth shut. I was on one foot anticipating to physically kick this guy off the three-foot stage. Luckily the bassist from Enemy of my Enemy came to the rescue and escorted him off stage again…and again. The bouncer made his way to the front and gave me the look like, “Do you want him out?” I smiled and said no way man haha we basically told him to come up here so oops.

Another fun one in Pittsburgh, again inviting people onstage comes with no boundaries and opens up a can of worms or a can of ‘ass’ in this case. A member from another band comes on stage and drops his pants mooning the crowd…maybe to be insulting? Or just a crude sense of humor haha. Either way we took him by surprise when we said, “Get back up here and get that ‘ass’ out again so we can take a picture.” You can find it @tarahwho on Instagram.

Tarah G. Carpenter (TGC): Yeah. we were not sure what this guy with the duct tape wanted to do, I was looking at him in the corner of my eyes, getting ready to smash my guitar on him if he tried. No kidding. I was holding the guitar really firmly on the neck in case I had to swing it. My family, from Oakland who was also in the audience also told me that they were getting ready to come up on stage and take him out! LOL! That poor guy who woke up probably just super hangover has no idea that he almost got hit by a guitar, pushed from a three-foot stage, jumped by my family, and bounced out! lol!!

Let’s see… I had a lot of fun on our last show at The Redwood. Nothing too crazy happened there, but something that I really HATE, is being cut. We work really hard on our music and we always make sure that when given a set time, we time it and respect it. We come all the way to the venue, for no pay, because it was a special female event that we wanted to support and be part of. Not even a free drink, NO-THING! Everyone went on time, and the band before us even stopped earlier because the bass player had some hand issue. We go on with our set and everyone is clearly enjoying, watching, participating etc… and the sound guy gives us a sign three songs before the end of our set. THREE!!!! and goes “5 more minutes”. Oh, how much I hate that! I tell him “We only have three songs left, let us finish come on.” We were the last band, no one was after us. He goes “5 minutes” At this point, you don’t argue because the time that you argue is the time of your set. I thought. Fuck it, let’s play all three songs really fast.

We started playing “Worst to Come”, from our album Little Out There available on Spotify/ iTunes etc..) and I gave a sign to Coralie, forget about the intro let’s just go into it right away, faster. As we’re staying, I’m tapping the tempo with my foot, and we give each other a sign, it must have been 15-20 BPM faster, which is not musical at this point, it is just fast enough for me to still be able to sing. As we’re playing the song, I give them a sign to jump right into our next song “Cough Drop” (Federal Circle of Shame [EP]) and as we’re doing this, we’re cracking up of course, because they know at this point that I am not giving it. We are playing the three songs and we are finishing the set that came up here to play. As we are playing “Cough Drop” I realize, that no one will notice that we’re skipping one full verse and chorus, and if they do, they will also understand what I am doing. So, I turn to Coralie and Joey and give them a sign for third verse, which is the most important part of the song, musically. So here we are, third verse, and now we are having fun, and totally killing it!

After the bridge, I find a moment where I can just make some noise with my guitar, because I need to change guitars for the last song, the most important song of the set, because it is our upcoming single “Numb Killer” that we are releasing soon for our new EP, 64 Women. I change guitars while Coralie and Joey are finishing “Cough Drop,” Coralie understands that as soon as they finish, we will do “Numb Killer.” Here we are, she hears my guitar, and switches to “Numb Killer,” we play the song faster, but now people got it, I played the three songs I wanted to play and everyone is laughing and clapping, and gets really into it. We finish our set, and everyone was totally cheering for us, because we finished, and we got a lot of free drinks from the crowd! Which is always nice because this means that they really liked us! It was a fun show!

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BF: Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

 

Coralie Hervé (CH): I really like the new EP called 64 Women, we’re gonna release it soon so stay tuned haha!! It’s the first one that I recorded with the band, so I helped Tarah with the drum part and I think it makes it special in a way. I like to play “Copycat” off this EP but really, all the songs are really fun to play!!

Joey Southern (JS): Yes!!! This is the first recording Coralie and I are a part of. It is extra special for that reason entirely. In the first two months of being in the band, I had already went on the west coast leg of the U.S. tour and recorded five tracks in a single session. It all happened so fast I am blessed it is all well documented for me to have forever.

Tarah G. Carpenter (TGC): All the songs that I have recorded are special to me. They all have a history, they are very personal. When you write a song that is so personal, it reminds you of what you felt at the time, but also the story of how it was recorded. the circumstances and how you thought of everything, and came up with different part or chose this one over another one. “Numb Killer” is being mixed right now, I cannot wait to hear it. But I have to say that each recording was very, very special to me. The people I was working with at the time made those moments memorable. I love playing all the songs live too. I love playing “Ache” (Half Middle child Syndrome [EP]). I love playing “Cough Drop” and “Numb Killer.” It’s their story, and how crazy we go on stage. The instrumental parts we added for the live shows. All of this, makes those songs fun to perform and share live.

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BF: Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits? 

 

CH: I love Coca Cola !! hahaha

JS: We do have a few surprises in the bag for playing live shows. I certainly can’t spill all the beans; however, I do believe it’s important to know we are micro dosing vocal effects. Hardly using them, but they giving a little extra push when needed. Recently, we’ve been exploring the TC Helicon Ditto Mic looper pedal. With all the use of backing tracks now with live performances it seems still too stiff for us. We wanted an organic approach and found use in looping our vocals live to add layers of intensity. Our most recent single, “Numb Killer,” is a prime example of our tinkering. Listen for our little surprise at the next gig!!! Sunday, October 28th at The Redwood bar in Downtown Los Angeles.

TGC: I love to cook. I really enjoy preparing food and making good healthy meals :). I have a very, very sweet spot for animals, especially if they are furry, and I love martial arts.

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BF: Closing this thing out, what is you/your band currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.

 

CH: We are working on the release of the new EP, 64 Women, and preparing a tour for next year to promote it, so we really hope to see some of you on the road to rock with us !!!

JS: Yes!!! The new EP 64 Women. I can’t wait to get this out and into your ears!!! I am especially excited because this will officially be my first recording with Tarah Who? The most fun I had recording was screaming the backing group vocals. We all warmed up real quick to each other and produced explosive mob intensity. It was a powerful experience. We even got a bit trilingual with the intro to “Linger” which will be a treat for you!

TGC: Like Coralie and Joey said, we are preparing for the big release of our EP 64 Women co-produced by Jason Orme. We are also currently working on a music video for “Numb Killer” with our friend Maria Quintana. We are preparing for our tour next year, we are going to head southwest, and to Europe. We’re always working on something, join us on Instagram – this is where we are the most responsive. We do a lot of live videos, where you can ask us questions or request songs.  otherwise, we hope to see you on the road!

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Tarah Who? Socials:

Instagram  •  Facebook   •   Twitter   •   YouTube   •   SoundCloud   •  Website

Photo Credits: Tarah Who?

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