I clearly remember the first time I ever heard of the band Rosin Coven.

I had just moved back to San Francsico for the second time, in '03, and was working in an office as an "account executive". One of the people working there - unfortunately I don't recall his name, learned that my musical tastes varied from the norm, and one day brough in a CD. "Hey, you've gotta check these guys out! They're called Rosin Coven - they play pagan lounge music! You'll love them!"

Well, I listened to the CD he had made, and must admit - I didn't. Sure, it was cool, but it didn't really grab me, not at all, and I told him so. "Well, it's kind of an acquired taste, I guess. You definitely need to be in a certain mood, or hear it enough." Sure. I'll wait 'till I'm in that mood (I thought) having no idea what mood that could be...

Well, turns out that kid was right. It actually didn't take much listening to them to begin to like it (though I'm still not sure what the "mood" is) but most of the appreciation came from seeing them live one random night a couple years later, at The Cat Club.

They are definitely a visual band, a band that warrants a certain ambience- so buy their CD, dress in a fancy costume, make yourself a martini, dim the lights and darken your mind like an old film noir movie. Don't try to listen to them in an office and expect to understand what Rosin Coven is about.

~ kSea flux

P.S. - My transcriber wasn't able to pick up on exactly who was saying what as she typed the words (over 7000 in the original transcription, all done and sent to me the night before this went out to you) so sometimes you'll just have to guess. Here it is, as edited a bit by yours truly...

kSea: Okay, here we go... um... where did the terminology ‘Pagan Lounge’ come from? Wait a minute, first introduce yourselves, and what part of Rosin Coven you are, if you don’t mind.
MR: Carrie Katz, also known as ‘Midnight Rose.’ And, ah, sing in the, uh … how to describe it… the singer. [everyone laughs] One of the singers, because all of us sing, actually.
~~: Alright, let’s start over here. Are we gonna use our names. What names? Midnight Rose.
MR: Midnight Rose.
kSea: Okay.
MR: That’s all. [laughs] I’m just kidding.
kSea: Midnight Rose, and she sings.
MR: And plays guitar! And sometimes some harp.
kSea: Really? Harp? I haven’t seen that.
MR: Every once in a blue moon.
kSea: I’ll be waiting for that blue moon. Okay. And, as we go around the room…
TB: I’m Toby Baine. I play trombone in the band.
AB: I’m Abraham Birmingham. Ah, bass player. Aspiring ensemble vocalist and occasional ringleader.
JG: So do I just say my stage name?
~~: I don’t have another name.
JG: I’m Laila Sklar, also known as ‘Jasmine Garden,’ and I sing and play the violin.
JSJ: I think of myself as ‘the other cellist,’ or the ‘rhythm cellist.’ [everyone laughs] Unfortunately our other cellist, our primary cellist, is at another gig this evening but my name is Brian but they call me ‘Beetle.’ (Otherwise known as James St. James – ed.)
~~: Little Beetle Rhythm.
SP: I am SP, also known as Tim O’Keefe. I am a vibraphonist and percussionist and, ah, sing-ist, kind of. Since I’m on isms and ists. That’s what I do for Rosin Coven. And I creep Laila out as well. I creep her out, it’s one of my jobs.
kSea: How do you do that?
SP: I kind of make these big eyes.
kSea: While you’re performing?
SP: It’s usually when I’m wearing a moustache.
JG: It’s the moustache, really.
SP: It’s the moustache, yeah.
AB: And he has a pension for that sort of somewhere between Clockwork Orange and the Addams’ family… you sort of hover in that area.
kSea: Ahhh - So is it you in the pictures that I’ve seen from Edwardian Ball with the mustache and deep eye makeup? Okay, yeah, you look a little different now.
AB: He pioneered, I think it was fifth annual Edwardian Ball when he accidentally pioneered the double moustache.
SP: Oh, right, right. There’s a picture of, yeah, there’s some pictures of that.
kSea: Okay, I’d like to hear about this. ‘The Double Moustache?’
~~: The double-handlebar.
SP: It’s a handlebar, but it was split it in two so it had kind of a double action going on.
JG: Up and down.
AB: I’ve seen it imitated since.
SP: Have you?
~~: Yeah.
SP: [laughs]
kSea: I think it should be this whole thing that kind of crawls over your face like an octopus. Go all out.
SP: Mmm, yeah the curlies would be really fun if you could work that. I’ve never been able to. Maybe this year.
~~: You’ll be sporting the ‘Edwardian Calamari’ look!
SP: Yeah, there was something kind of insect-like when I had that double moustache. It kind of made me feel like I had a big bug on my face some of the time.

kSea: How long have you been together? How long has Rosin Coven existed?
MR: It’s been about 11 years.
~~: I got a call in the summer of ’97 by [unclear] and the band had already played a few different things and they were looking for someone to fill in for the primary cellist. I’m pretty sure that was somewhere in ’97.
~~: Yeah. That’s where it started. ’97 is really when the ensemble got together, pretty much for these 11 years we’ve been the same core group with slowly some additions and really after that, really not much change at all. Ms. Jasmine Garden is still the new violinist. [everyone laughs]

kSea: And how long have you been in?
JG: About 7 years.
~~: She’s the new kid, with Anastasia as one of the founding players, original violinist. It was Anastasia with Midnight Rose and Gingerbread Candy, our cellist who’s not here, that cooked up the name of ‘Rosin Coven’ at the very beginning.

{James St. James - the rhythm cellist.}

kSea: Your website has the dictionary description of both ‘rosin’ and ‘coven’ but was the name ‘Rosin Coven’ just something pulled out the air, or just something that sounded great together so you decided to use it, or something that worked?
MR: Well, Anastasia came up with the idea of ‘rosin.’ She said, ‘What about “rosin”?’ because at the time it was all cello and violin and guitar, & she said, ‘I want to have something with “rosin”’ - and then a couple days later, ‘coven!’ just popped in. When we first said that, we had reactions like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of weird.’ You know, ‘I don’t know, “Rosin Coven.”’ But it just kind of stuck, so. Yeah.
AB: It’s been the subject of mispronunciation ever since.
[everyone]: And misspellings.
~~: Marquees around the world.
~~: I’ve got a friend who’s a cellist who pronounces it “rosen” all the time. It’s like, ‘Dude come on. Get it. It’s ROSIN.’
AB: So the name then sort of parlayed into the original genre because of our very first performance. We were doing a summer backyard soiree and at the end of it the host came up and said, ‘I made you your business card. Here,’ and he handed it to us. It was a little business card that he had drawn, a little cut-away, a little side of a cello, and it said, ‘Rosin Coven: Pagan Lounge Music.’ He said, ‘Here you go.’ We were like, ‘Oh.’ That was the first show, our very first show.
~~: So the term “Pagan Lounge” was literally handed to us.
kSea: It’s an incredibly fitting description, in just the ambiguity of it.
AB: It seems like it’s divided. It’s given a nice sort of dividing response. You get the, ‘Huh?’ or the ‘Oh, yeah,’ even though nobody knows what it means. There are those that I think have heard it over the years that are like, ‘Oh, cool, great, yeah.’ Then there’s the ones, ‘I have no idea what that is,’ and when people say that, you’re like, ‘Oh.’
JSJ: It actually helps me when we’re performing in that it’s sort of our personal name for the space and the mood that we’re invoking, so it’s not just that we’re showing up on stage, we’ve got a set list, and we’re playing a tune. We have to bring, we have to invoke the pagan lounge. Now is the time, we’re going to invoke it. It’s going to happen.
[everyone]: Mhmm.
JSJ: So it helps me clear my mind. There are certain moments I think of as sort of quintessential ‘pagan lounge’ moments, so I think, ‘I must now invoke that, and we must come together and make the pagan lounge happen.’ It’s almost a little more spiritual and touchy-feely than that. Yeah, me saying that.
[everyone laughs]
JSJ: Don’t fuckin’ laugh at me. It’s a texture, it’s a mood, it’s a feeling.
AB: This is coming from the Pagan Lounge Technical Director.
[everyone laughs]
JSJ: It’s an invoking of this time and the place and spirit. It’s hard to describe other than ‘it’s that thing we do.’ If you come to the shows, you see what it is.

~~: That’s something that has been commented on from the very beginning of the years. People say how they feel after our shows. People say, ‘I came into it from whatever I’ve been doing, or I was tired, or I was stressed out or I was this or that or I just wasn’t paying attention, and people get sucked in, and churned through the pagan lounge alchemy cocktail and come out on the other side saying, you know, just having an experience, like he’s saying. That’s why the live show has always been really what we’re about. I mean, clearly we haven’t put out enough records to be – That’s really not what it’s been about. It’s been the live experience.
kSea: You are quoted, I forget where, as saying, ‘It’s like bringing a martini to a solstice celebration,’ which I thought was just brilliant and perfect, and fits it very, very well.
~~: Actually, it’s the vodka jello eggs.
~~: Right, for a couple of years we did the pagan easter events, where it’s all ‘pagan easter.’ What can you say? It’s this whole spring celebration but then there’s a vodka jello egg. The kids loved it.
kSea: Over the years, has – well, the newest member is 7 years young – has the style of the music changed?
~~: The music has changed.
kSea: How has it changed? Where did you start off, and where are you now?
~~: Carrie, in the beginning, why don’t you talk about where the music was in the beginning, cause you had the idea.
MR: Well, it was a lot simpler in the beginning. It’s gotten more complex because we’ve learned to orchestrate with all the instruments. We’ve learned really well where each of us fit in the music. The songs’ structures have also changed a lot, too. The early ones were very simple.
~~: They were very song-oriented, I think, early on, where as now they’re more composition-like, piece-oriented.
~~: Sprawling trilogies. [everyone laughs]
~~: Carrie developed a fetish for odd time signatures and pagan thud rock.
~~: What’s a fetish for [unclear] [laughs]
MR: Well, some call it that.
~~: Now, now.
MR: They love to tweak, push my buttons.
~~: In the beginning we had a more traditional, at least in popular music, we had a lot more guitar-based music and the structure, like you were saying, was more simple structure.

MR: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus kind of structure.
~~: Now we have what she was saying, we understand. It’s an unusual arrangement of voices. There’s no other group that has, to my knowledge, this selection. If you have one horn, it’s usually not a bass trombone. That’s been really amazing.
TB: There’s probably a reason for that, but nobody’s told you guys.
MR: We love you anyway.
~~: Usually you don’t get a string quartet with vibes. The way it comes together is unusual and I think it’s taken us time to understand. Now when we create these songs, we can ask of each other things in the music in ways that we couldn’t have before we understood this combination of voices.
[everyone]: Mhmm.
~~: Now I can think of a song and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that is a really good vibes part, and then the violin can come in with this other section that’s happening ‘cause now we know the possibilities.
~~: One of the things I think is really special to me about being in this band is the fact that the compositions really are not only collaborative, but people bring in their own compositions. This is a Gingy song, this is an Abe song, this is a Patrick song, this is a Carrie song. Songs always come from somewhere and they have all different feels. One great thing is when you put together a set list, we can go in a very circus-y direction, we can go in a very lounge-y direction, we can go in a very dance-y upbeat direction. We’ve always really had all those ideas in the band but really there’s this coming together of not only voices of music but mental voices of the actual music coming to us.

Jasmine Garden & Midnight Rose

LG: I agree with what you’re saying, too. It’s the diversity of our music. In that way, it’s been similar throughout the years. It’s not like we’ve gone through this period where it’s more jazzy, or now we’re more dark moody. There’s a little touch of everything that’s kind of stayed consistent in that way.
kSea: But it’s still very distinctly Rosin Coven.
LG: Yeah, and I guess that’s the pagan lounge music. It embraces all of those, that whole range.
kSea: Before I came here I googled ‘pagan lounge’ just to see if anything else would come up. Nah. It’s all Rosin Coven.
[everyone laughs]
kSea: Was the Edwardian Ball created as a vehicle to have the perfect atmosphere for Rosin Coven? It seems like it would have been.
MR: Not really.

~~: It’s a runaway ‘Edwardian coach’ at this point.
~~: It was just kind of a fun idea at first, to do an Edward Gorey story. It wasn’t initially just going to be us doing the Grasleycrumb Tinnies as little bit, and then it developed into – Tony wanted to work with us, right? ‘Yeah, let’s do this whole thing.’
~~: Hatched over, like it says, a dusty black martini in the desert where a lot of good ideas come and go, but that one actually we remembered when we got back.
[everyone laughs]
kSea: I remember I saw you years and years ago before I’d left San Francisco the first time, I think, at the Cat Club. A little tiny band, a compressed little space – and it’s just grown exponentially.
~~: Well, one of the things you were asking about, ‘the perfect environment for Rosin Coven,’ is, I think, going back to what we’re saying. That is one perfect environment for us but what is so great about this band is that we can find a very comfortable, enjoyable and fun home on a float or on the streets in Paris or in the desert. Different places. This is kind of going down direction which is this crazy, elegant ballroom which we love and obviously other people do, too, but we don’t feel like we need to do that. There’s the rest of the year when we can try other things out.

kSea: Talk to me about ‘Rosin Coven.’ I don’t really know what to ask. The questions were scribbled on a piece of paper at the last second as I was trying to remain conscious. What do you want to say about Rosin Coven, and where do you want to take it?
~~: There’s one thing. I’ll say it’s that a group that has been together for this long that is this close, is ridiculous. This is, to use over-played term, this really is the family. This group has seen it all and done it all and in that span of time there’s been more or less of different kinds of arts, touring, recording, this or that. We went through a little bit of a quieter phase as the various members in the band were cranking out these little circus terrors that we hear in the background here. Suddenly there’s kids around and things were really quieting down. Each person had their own take on it but I think it presented the question, to me, as the person who runs a lot of the shows, Is this going to be it? Where are we going? Are we going to be able to keep doing this? Is this tapering off? All projects have life cycles, so where are we in it? Then suddenly this year, we’re going back out on the road and opening up in new directions where we haven’t gone. We’re being flown out to St. Paul. We’re going to play in Minnesota.
kSea: For the AIDS benefit, I heard about that. You also have a brand new Edwardian Ball happening in Los Angles, right?

~~: We’re going to do the Edwardian Ball there. We’re going to Cirque Bezerk on one of their new LA shows they’re doing. We still might be heading out to Rothbury in Michigan. Suddenly, out of this quiet spell, we have a new album in the early stages. We’ve got more than enough music for that. So suddenly, wow.
JSJ: One thing we decided just as we all sat around and said about that doing a show a month at 12 Galaxies or something like that. If we’re only going to do 3 or 4 shows, if that’s all we’ve got a chance to really have the energy for, let’s do something big. Let’s have a night or two nights at the Great American where we can really dress up, and let’s work with a bunch of really great people and stop doing the small stuff as much and start doing really big collaborations. We’ve really been getting even more into the circus collaborations and the dance collaborations. It’s always been a part of what we did but I think it’s really blossomed a lot over the last 4 or 5 years as part of this shift.
kSea: Okay, and to finish this interview, tell me a secret, any secret. As an example, Nicholas Caesar who is an artist in the first issue, whom you will see in four days – his secret was that he a garter snake when he was a kid. I can’t remember exactly, but when it died he wasn’t absolutely certain that he died so he buried it and every day he dug it up for a few days.
LG: We can tell secrets about each other.
~~: Those will remain secrets.
LG: Oh, I got one. Yeah, I got one that involves all of us. We played at a fetish club one time.
~~: I knew you were going there.
LG: In New York. The girls all got their toes sucked on and their feet massaged.
~~: There were a lot of foot people there.
MR: Foot fetish people, yeah. Serious foot fetish people.
~~: Very, very serious.
~~: They were lined up for all y’alls’ feetses.
LG: Yeah, they were. That was a very interesting experience.
~~: I think I sucked on your toes a little bit myself.
LG: I think you did.
~~: He just got in line.
~~: Yeah, I thought, ‘Shit, I gotta see what this is all about, man. You guys are pretty fired up.’
kSea: While you were playing?
LG: After, after the set. Actually it was great because we had been walking around New York City all day. And these guys just got down and they massaged our feet.
MR: They were like, ‘The stinkier the better,’ too.
~~: That’s right.
LG: For an hour and a half or something.
kSea: Thems some hardcore fetishes.
MR: It was hardcore.
LG: Yeah, it was.
~~: And now I’m just remembering that there was that thing with the candle wax, too.
kSea: A thing with candle wax?
~~: Wait, no, that was made in the woods.
[everyone laughs]
~~: No, that was Gamora.
LG: Candlewax.
~~: Does that count as a secret? I mean, it happened in a public place.
kSea: It’s something that’s not necessarily public knowledge. It doesn’t really need to be a secret.
LG: Or it wasn’t, up until this point.
~~: But that wasn’t the strangest place we’ve played.
~~: But I do recall it being difficult to get ol’ Yasmin here to leave.
[everyone laughs]
~~: That was a good call. Good secret.
kSea: Is there anything else that anyone would like to say about Rosin Coven and what it’s doing.
~~: We’re just getting started.
kSea: You’re just getting started. You go to 11.
~~: That’s right.
~~: The next decade’s going to be even better.
~~: This band goes to 11.
MR: Ask Joe. Yeah, it feels like amazingly we have as much energy, if not more, than we ever have. It’s different but the goal is to keep up with the new evolving of the family. I think in terms of where are we going, just hopefully constantly evolving. We always want to be surprising each other and doing something that we never would have thought we’d be doing.
kSea: Like playing fetish clubs and motocross tracks in the Czech Republic.
MR: Exactly. Who knows what’s around the next corner? It’s just so cool that--
kSea: The Vatican!
MR: Hey.
LG: You never know.
kSea: That would be kind of cool.
~~: We are lining up a show at a church in the city.
MR: The pagan lounge at the Vatican. [lounge]
kSea: Yeah. I think that should definitely be your new goal
MR: We’ll make it ‘the pope lounge.’
~~: Yeah, we’ll have to.
~~: The pope lounge - the papal lounge!
~~: Set up out front and start playing. I wonder if they’d invite us in.
~~: Well, We’ll think about that. Fabulous.