Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: All four of us grew up immersed in music, and begged our parents for lessons in elementary school. Char’s mom is a violin teacher and runs a summer music camp, where Greg and Charlotte first started making music together. Danny’s parents were deadheads and started bringing him to concerts when he was really young. Ellie grew up in South Carolina, learning fiddle tunes on porches and omnivorously devouring all the recorded music that came her way. A childhood rooted in classical music and wonderful teachers link the four of us and our sensibilities. Since then, we’ve spent arguably too much time in music school. Between us, we share 3 bachelors and a masters in music performance, two masters in music education, and an impending doctorate in classical performance.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “The Mops”?
A: Our favorite way to connect with people is through live shows. While juggling work schedules, we hope to play with as many bands in as many places as we can! The warmth extended to us by audiences and fellow musicians out of town has been a huge reason to keep working and sharing our music.
If you’re just about to discover The Mops, we hope listening to our music inspires you to make things with your friends. This project is fueled by our love of each other and the endlessly fascinating, challenging, and gratifying project of collaborating.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: Fugazi. Long live DIY. We find inspiration for making music from the amazing songs that our friends write: Kyle Morgan, Drew McCann, Lily Talmers, Ian Davis, and more.
We all are involved in other writing projects too (Big Yawn, Ellie MacPhee, Sinking Ships, Old Father Eternity, Charlotte Hill & Drew McCann) – all of the desire to create feeds on itself and fuels us to keep going.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the song, “Maurice.”?
A: In August 2024, a flightless Canada goose hung out with us for three weeks. Char was running her family’s chamber music camp in Ontario, and the other Mops joined at the end for their annual songwriting residency. The goose – dubbed Maurice, after the composer Ravel – transformed from a whimsical mascot into a dear friend over the three weeks. He would swim with us, sit around the campfire with us, follow us from cabin to cabin. He would chase after our cars when we left campus to do errands. It was incredibly trippy and unlike anything any of us had experienced. Char wrote the words to this song after unsuccessfully coaxing Maurice to swim with a flock of geese that had landed at the waterfront. Standing in the water she couldn’t stop crying, seeing how he had chosen us as his family and didn’t seem to recognize himself as a goose.
We brought Maurice to a wild bird sanctuary before leaving Ontario, but he died that same night in a state of agitation. The sanctuary thought he may have had an underlying heart condition. In grief, Char got a tattoo of him, and we arranged the band version of the song.
The whole thing was a reminder that whimsy and beauty and grief can come in the most unexpected forms.
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: Friends.
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “Maurice”?
A: This one came pretty easy! We recorded it live in Charlotte’s childhood living room with the amazing Matt Labozza. Recording the core instrumentation of this LP live together helped us to play with good timing and feel, as opposed to recording each instrument separately, which we had done on our previous albums. We went to record in good shape, didn’t do too many takes for each song, edited very sparsely, and focused on overall sound and musicality.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: Music is the best. Our goal is to keep making music in a way that feels cathartic and joyful, and to keep connecting with new people through music.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: The Beatles, duh.
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: Make things in a way that feels honest and true to you! Trying to be someone else never works. Tech companies want us all to do it the same way, and they’re just doing that to make a buck. We don’t begrudge anyone who savvily uses tools like TikTok or Instagram, but 99% of the time it’s so much more gratifying to connect with people face to face.
We took our music off of Spotify after playing a book release show for Liz Pelly’s “Mood Machine” (extremely recommended reading). We may reach fewer strangers through playlists, or something like that, but the move actually encouraged us to connect with more people directly, to lean into the joys of physical media, and to have interesting conversations with friends and strangers about what it means to make and share music right now.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Don’t be afraid to talk to artists you admire! We’re all out here with the same itch to make and share and connect.
