Courtesy Photograph
Mattie Schell is a fixture within the St. Louis music scene.
You odor like contemporary laundry,” Mattie Schell tells me. We’re ready for drinks amid the varicolored tiles and eclectic bric-a-brac of Venice Cafe, a brief stroll from the home the gifted singer-songwriter shares together with her fiancé, musician and audio engineer Nathan Gilberg. Schell describes her house’s proximity to Venice Cafe as “harmful” because of the tempting comfort of such quick access to her favourite watering gap.
It is a comfort she apparently enjoys usually. The bartender is aware of her drink with out Schell having to order it, and no fewer than a dozen individuals cease to speak to her throughout our sidewalk-table interview. (“We’re doing an interview proper now,” she tells one pal. “However once we’re carried out I am gonna come over and hug ya!”) She’s a well-liked and convivial fixture of the place, virtually all the time smiling, the form of gal who likes to have one foot on the dance ground and one elbow on the bar. Plus, she performs at Venice twice a month as one in all St. Louis’ hottest new solo artists.
The important thing phrase is “new solo,” as Schell is most acquainted to St. Louis and past as one-half of acoustic-based folkicana duo River Kittens alongside singer/guitarist Allie Vogler. Over the past decade, River Kittens recorded two EPs, launched a flurry of singles and kicked up mud across the nation mixing olde-tyme musical idioms with wry trendy songwriting and seamless vocal harmonies.
Vogler had already shaped River Kittens as a duo with singer Martha Mehring when Schell first met her in 2014 on the Crow’s Nest in Maplewood. After an impromptu set collectively that night time, Schell formally joined River Kittens, turning the group right into a trio.
The lineup took off, because the Kittens performed 5 nights every week round city, launched a well-received self-titled EP and opened for Pokey LaFarge’s 2015 New Yr’s Eve present on the Pageant. After Mehring left the band in 2018, Schell and Vogler cast forward as a duo, ultimately connecting with guitarist and producer Devon Allman, who signed the ladies to his Create Information label and put out the Kittens’ 2021 EP Soaking Moist.
“That document actually took us coast to coast,” Schell says of the band’s cross-country excursions opening for the Allman Betts Band and taking part in venues such because the Ryman in Nashville with the Allman Household Revival. It is a way of life that match her properly. “I like the highway,” she says. “For me, it takes quite a bit longer to wish to come house than it does to wish to return on the highway.”
River Kittens chalked up an extended listing of highlights. They recorded at Solar Studios in Memphis, closed the Open Freeway Music Pageant by jamming with Outdated Crow Medication Present on a canopy of the Beastie Boys’ “Combat For Your Proper,” performed the Mighty Pines’ inaugural Pines Fest final yr and collaborated with G. Love on a model of Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic Metropolis,” launched as a River Kittens single. “G. Love gave us a lift,” Schell says, although she notes that the youthful Vogler had beforehand by no means heard of G. Love. “I used to be like, ‘I had him on fucking Napster, dude!’ She was like, ‘What’s Napster?'”
Regardless of the various successes, the Kittens felt like 2023 was time for a change. Schell treads flippantly when speaking about Vogler, cautious to keep away from saying something detrimental about her former bandmate or the explanations for his or her cut up, and she or he says she considers the door open to future collaborations with Vogler or River Kittens reunions.
“The expertise of the River Kittens is likely one of the most unbelievable issues in my life,” Schell says, emphasizing the distinctive vocal connection she and Vogler shared. “Allie and I have been actually good at telegraphing what we’ll do, actually good at singing concord. We simply had that chemistry with one another.”
Nonetheless, she notes that the 2 have been fairly completely different in different methods and that after eight years collectively, Schell was able to go solo. “I am unable to converse for Allie, however on the finish of the day, each artist deserves to have the ability to create with out compromise, and I believe we have been each prepared to only do our personal factor.”
So out of the blue, she turned Mattie Schell, solo artist, the woman who grew up because the musical-theater-loving child from Jerseyville, Illinois, and member of the sprawling Schell clan of bluegrass pickers. Again in these days, Schell reduce her tooth in highschool reward bands till heading off to school in Nashville and broadening her horizons. “I found marijuana,” she says, laughing. Immediately, she is sporting overalls and a flat-brimmed ball cap adorned with Grateful Lifeless dancing bears, apparel that sums up each her farm-girl roots and her eventual foray into extra expansive, jammier music.
An enormous affect on her was her uncle, Wayne Schell, who turned her on to a few of her favourite artists (Dylan, the Band, Gillian Welch), gave Schell her first mandolin and performed covers together with her on weekend nights in Grafton, Illinois bars again within the early ’10s. “I actually began discovering my sound and my voice with my Uncle Wayne each Friday night time,” she says.
She ultimately landed in St. Louis, ready tables in Maplewood, relationship Gilberg, assembly Vogler and carving out the River Kittens years. After the cut up with Vogler, Schell discovered herself taking over beforehand scheduled River Kittens plans by herself, together with a tour with singer-songwriter Jackson Stokes and an Off Broadway live performance in February paying tribute to the Grateful Lifeless’s American Magnificence and the Band’s Stage Fright, two of Schell’s favourite albums.
That present ended up being billed as Mattie Schell & Buddies and featured a powerful all-star crew made up of Al Vacation, Nick Gusman and members of the Mighty Pines, Funky Butt Brass Band, One Means Visitors, Yard Eagle and extra. “I knew that if it is not going to be River Kittens, I wanted an superior lineup,” she says. The night time was an enormous success, and Schell guarantees comparable exhibits to return. She can be a favourite on Sean Canan’s Voodoo nights, most lately a two-night stint channeling Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie for Voodoo Fleetwood Mac.
However Schell is most excited for her upcoming solo album, which she lately recorded in Nashville with producer JD Simo. “I’ve by no means carried out a solo document in my life,” she says with seen pleasure. “They’re all songs that I’ve written or co-written with my fiancé. We reduce the entire thing reside within the studio — no headphones, no separate rooms.”
Within the spirit of her solo debut, the album’s working title was Child’s First Document. “I believed it was humorous,” she says. “I get so bored with individuals taking themselves so severely. Then I recorded one final track, the one one with simply me and the guitar, referred to as ‘And So It Goes,’ so we named the album after that track.
And So It Goes has no launch date but, as Schell is fielding some promising label choices, however the first single, “Let You Let Me” is out now. “The album is unquestionably the very best factor I’ve ever carried out,” Schell says. “I am actually pleased with it.”
With an advance hearken to the album, it is simple to see why. And So It Goes highlights Schell’s chameleonic potential to channel a variety of Americana types into an assured tour by way of nation crooners, funk-soul groovers, jazzy ballads and folks confessionals, all delivered with Schell’s highly effective, pliant vocals.
Within the meantime, she’s gearing up for an action-packed summer season. She can be singing at Venice Cafe on the primary and third Tuesdays of every month; she is scheduled to play three separate units on the Open Freeway Music Pageant on June 16; she’s going to maintain a solo showcase at Joe’s Cafe on June 22; and she or he is on the lineup for the Summer season Sunset Pageant in Effingham, Illinois, in August.
“I’ve began discovering my very own sound as a lot as I ever had in my life,” she says. “And I am chomping on the bit to get it on the market.”
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