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Female trio Cake Like touches music stardom
'We just picked up instruments and got lucky'
December 3, 1997
Web posted at: 8:30 p.m. EST (0130 GMT)By Paul Freeman
Forget those music lessons. Your ticket to rock stardom may involve simply picking up an instrument and bashing away. Well, it worked for Cake Like, anyhow.
Of course, it helps that this exciting female trio possesses tremendous imagination and natural talents. Those qualities are amply evident on the group's current album, "Bruiser Queen."
Cake Like was born in early 1993 when Kerri Kenney and Nina Hellman were attending New York University's Experimental Theatre Wing. Jody Seifert became Hellman's roommate, and the three decided that music might make an interesting hobby.
"We said, 'We have boyfriends and friends in bands,'" Kenney recalls, "'Wouldn't that be a fun thing to try?' Then it was, 'OK, who wants to play what instrument?' None of us had ever played any before. We borrowed instruments and started fooling around."
Hellman chose guitar; Seifert drums; Kenney's boyfriend at the time played bass, so that was a natural choice for her. "I don't play it traditionally," Kenney says. "I play it like a guitar. Most of the time, I'm playing a melody either with or against the guitar player. I hardly ever have a rhythm bass thing going on."
No musical expectations
The women had no expectations for their music. "We were trying to achieve absolutely nothing other than the three of us having fun for an hour a couple of times a week," Kenney says. "We never dreamed of playing a live show or even completing a song, let alone making a couple of CDs and going on tour."
Fate intervened. "We were practicing and somebody from another band poked his head in and said, 'Hey, you guys sound really good. Do you want to play a show with us?' We laughed and said OK. We had five songs, sort of songs. It just went from there."
Briefly, the band's breezy attitude was replaced with trepidation. "It was completely terrifying when we started performing," Kenney admits. "We had never anticipated actually leaving the practice space and having people hear it."
But, she continues, "After a while, if you're still playing, it's not a joke anymore. So you have to hope you can still do well past the "oh isn't that cute and amazing they never played instruments before" stage. You've got to have something to keep people coming back. We hoped that the novelty of us being fresh, young, new musicians would carry us over as we got better at playing and writing songs."
The lack of formal training can have its advantages. "People say they like the fact that we can sound so sparse," she says. "I think once you have the technical ability to noodle things and fill them up, you don't usually go backward and become more sparse. Also, we couldn't sound like any other band if we tried, because we just don't know how."
With Kenney as primary vocalist and clever lyricist, Cake Like developed a unique sound that's adventurous but not pretentious; punkish but musically pleasing; simple yet sophisticated.
A musician friend exposed experimental jazz saxophonist John Zorn to Cake Like's music, which is how Zorn came to release the group's album "Delicious" on his Avant label. The album, available as a Japanese import, earned raves from rock critics. Ric Ocasek loved the cover art and purchased the CD. Then he went wild over the music. He produced Cake Like's recent single "Mr. Fireman" and introduced them to Neil Young. Shortly thereafter, Cake Like was offered a deal with Young's Vapor Records.
Bandmembers still pursuing other interests
The band chose Vapor to release "Bruiser Queen" because it was the one label that enthusiastically supported the notion of the women pursuing second careers: Seifert is a fashion designer. Hellman is an off-Broadway actress. And Kenney is a host of one of Comedy Central's most successful shows, the "Viva Variety" series (an offshoot of her previous sketch comedy venture, "The State," which was an MTV hit).
The MTV connection initially brought Cake Like a high level of recognition, but the troupe felt it was time to move on after a few seasons.
Kenney also made her feature film debut, playing a "sexual surrogate therapist-in-training" in "Love God," which was shown at the Sundance Festival and may soon be widely distributed. "It's technically very ground-breaking, the first feature shot on digital video," she explains. "It's sort of a live-action Japanese animation, punk rock, gore thriller. It's an incredible amount of fun."
Kenney's theatrical background gives her a boost in rock performances. "It helps you know how to talk to an audience, to fill in spaces and bring people into the whole thing. We spend a lot of time just being silly and goofing around."
Though acting is Kenney's primary passion, the band's music keeps gaining ardent admirers, internationally, and she has to juggle her two artistic worlds.
"It's unbelievable. We never, for a second, do not appreciate what's happened to us," Kenney says. "We have a lot of friends who have been playing music all their lives and never get out of New York City, playing bars. We just picked up instruments and got lucky.
"Our motto is, if it all ends today, then it was a great ride."
(c) 1997, Paul Freeman. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate
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