Shilpa Ray, Happy Hooker

© Gabrielle Sierra / RumBum.com

Shilpa Ray performs with her Happy Hookers.

Off stage, Shilpa Ray is a petite city chick, easily blending into a crowd in her dark colored cardigan and jeans. On stage she is an animal, rocking out on her harmonium while growling and screaming and purring to her audience in a sweaty flailing mess. It is this mix of styles and organized chaos that she and her "Happy Hookers" lend to their debut album, A Fish Hook An Open Eye, released in August by Kepler Records. By blending jazz, blues, and shocking rock, Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers are able to create a unique sound that shouldn't be missed, and once heard will certainly not be forgotten.

I caught up with Shilpa Ray, bassist Nick Hundley and drummer Josh Fleischmann backstage at Bowery Ballroom, where they were set to open for the Fiery Furnaces. While waiting for their other band members to show up the three musicians casually chatted with me, Shilpa occasionally sipping Jim Bean from a brown bag.

So you guys have been called "volatile" and it has been said that listening to you perform is like "a punch in the face," in a good way. How do you feel about this kind of classification? Is this something you are going for?

Nick Hundley: I've never heard that before!

Shilpa Ray:  That's really pretty hilarious. We're actually total softies. I don't know, I guess I use music as an excuse to throw a temper tantrum.

In regards to your influences you have been described as a "vulgar Ella Fitzgerald."

NH: What does that even mean?

You tell me. When you were putting the band together what were you thinking?

SR: I wasn't thinking. I don't know, I like a lot of music so it's really tough for me to say. I like Rodriguez a lot. Classic soul is really doing it for me, and a lot of English Punk bands. In terms of comparisons and things like that it's so weird. I think that my favorite comparison ever was Candyslice, and that's the Gilda Radner character from Saturday Night Live, and I actually never thought about it until someone pointed it out and I was like "I am kind of over the top, I am like Candyslice." I think comedy is a really big influence on us. We all have a sense of humor.

You mean, lyrics-wise?

SR: Even how we like cooperating on stage, its sort of all very tongue in cheek.

NH: We've been told that it is a very familiar sound but a very unfamiliar sound. Its like a whole lot of familiarities combined...its like a Creole spice. I don't even know what that means.

So this is your debut album. Is it everything you hoped it would be?

SR: I think that it fit the time period that we had to work under; I just formed the band within like three months and then we went into the studio and did it. I think recording took eight days. I just wanted to finish something, because I never finished anything before. Once you finish something the possibilities are endless.

Do you think that there is a lot that you guys are ready to put into your next album?

SR: Yes, totally. We are actually working on our second album now, its pretty exciting, I like it.

NH: It's coming along pretty well. And its long. It is twice as long.

SR: (Laughing) Yea we are going to just jump right in to the double concept record.

As you are aware, the New York area band/ music scene has been steadily changing over the past ten, twenty, thirty years. Do you think that playing music and creating art in New York still holds the same creative energy that it used to?

SR: When you are working on stuff you really cant hang out. So it's more like inspiration, you can go out and listen to music...I had some friends visiting from Ohio and when I took them out around here I realized that you could get great music every place we were going to. Regardless of how many people bitch about how much the music scene sucks, I think the scene is really good. There are so many great musicians and great bands. And you can use it for that. But in terms of when we are working on stuff together, it becomes more isolating because you have to stay in your work, stay in your own head.

NH: You don't ever realize that a scene is a scene until you are out of it. You look at it from an outside point of view. Its just a neighborhood where people hang out just like anybody else, but then later on you are like "Woah, there was something going on there."

SR: When we go to other people's shows, when we don't have to play or practice, when we are hanging out, you can feel it. The thing is that in New York there is not just one scene there are a bunch of different little scenes that intertwine. Pockets of stuff. I think it's really exciting. I think it's awesome.

NH: People love to say that you missed it, was so five years ago or ten years ago.

SR: Nostalgia is just to make someone feel special. There is always something going on, as long as it exists.

NH: Its such a passionate scene right now, people will go out and see your band any day, it doesn't have be a Friday it can be a Tuesday, the support is just really fantastic. The city will always breathe and pulsate art and music. Culture.

SR: And if its not art it will be music or it will be theater. Right now is a really great time for music.

Do you feel a difference when you are performing outside of NYC?

SR: There is less pressure. Its more relaxing, people don't peck at you as much, less bloggers.

NH: It's very hard to impress people in New York. People in other places are more open to...there are so many bands and music. Everyone I know is in a band, and everyone they know is in a band. So all they do is play in bands and see bands, so its different than the guy in Cleveland who works at a sports bar and once and a while he catches a great band.

SR: You get more diverse bands when you go to other cities. People don't split you up into cliques like they do here. Things are curated to a theme here.

Like Brooklyn "hipster" music.

SR: Yes! Being a hipster just means you are young. There are hipsters in all genres of music.

NH: All of my comedian friends have jokes about hipsters from Williamsburg, but they are too! They just all live in Greenpoint.

SR: Everyone has lives outside of their art, I have various friends, and everyone is who they are. I am tired of the whole "The Man" shpiel. Everyone should do what makes him or her happy.

Josh Fleischmann: Who is the man?

SR: "The" man.

Josh: Oh. "The man"

So you guys are playing with the Fiery Furnaces. How is that going?

SR: We are just playing two shows with them but we are all huge fans. It's really awesome. They are amazing, their stage presence, lyrics, it's amazing. When I first heard their songs I was walking down the street drinking a soda and I swear to god I just spit it out everywhere, their lyrics are so funny and cool I love them.

I know you wanted to travel. Have you gotten to do that?

SR: In the states, yes. But to me traveling is being someplace you aren't used to. And I'm a total city chick, my parents are from big cities, and seeing the rest of the country is awesome. How they live their lives and what they eat, America is built as lots of countries in one.

So I have to ask, why "Happy Hookers"?

SR: (Laughs) I was at a dinner party and I was really depressed and I was talking about flying to Vegas and I was dreaming about what it would be like if I was a hooker in Vegas. And I thought it would be pretty easy. But I would want to be a happy hooker. Actually, I wanted to call it "the pity party" but I didn't want my past band members (Beat the Devil) to think I was down about not being in the band anymore.

NH: It was weird to get used to the name but now when you walk around Brooklyn someone will yell "Hooker" at you and its pretty cool.

SR: See, that's awesome.

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