Arrow De Wilde

Yes, it’s really nice to have those, I had another artist last year, Caleb Hahne, he did these hands holding a glass of water. I’d never met him before, he lives in Denver. I had this whole idea for a show. He did a few paintings with this yellow, orange color that looked like a Los Angeles sunset during the fires this past fall. I said to him, “Listen we’re having these fires, the sky is all red and orange. The timing is perfect. You come from Colorado. We get our water from Colorado.” He had made this little painting of a hand holding water, and I told him to make it huge. It’s not that everything bigger is better. It’s just because it gives a whole different meaning to the painting. It was a struggle, but then he did it. And it looked

pretty great, he still had a job when he came here to LA. When he got back, he quit. Now he’s just working like crazy.

What do you think the future is for your residency and the Cabin?

Future... I just want to keep going as it is, I get so excited when I discover someone new, and especially love the idea of finding someone that nobody wanted to show before. I mean, it’s just like an artist told me once when he came here. He was in such a strange time when I called him. Nothing was really selling and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep going. Not that many people can keep painting like Van Gogh did when nothing is selling. You need validation, by people actually spending money and buying your work, or people enjoying your work. He didn’t get it from anyone really, so when he came here it was a new life. I have this one artist from Belgium that was here. And when he went back to Belgium he got a tattoo of the Cabin on his leg.

No way that’s awesome.

There’s Vojtech Kovarik, he’s a Czech Republic artist. When he came here, it was almost like Borat in LA [laughing]. The guy lives in a little town, 400 kilometers from Prague. I paid for his airfare, and when he came here, he was supposed to come at around noon. And at six I was sitting in a restaurant and waiting for him across the street from the studio. I didn’t have his telephone number. Then I look on Instagram Live and I see him walking on The Hollywood Walk of Fame. Because he just couldn’t wait to go, he took the bus, which probably took him three hours to get to Hollywood from the airport. This guy is one of the hottest European artists right now. I told him “You’re gonna be the richest person in your little village.” He probably is...

WILDE -DE- -DE- ARROW

We’ve known Arrow since high school. Seeing her again for this interview reminded us that she’s always been incredibly beautiful and immensely talented. From the moment we sat outside on her patio, it felt as if we could be sitting on the benches of our high school laughing before the first bell. The way she told us about her music and the evolution of her performance was similar to an old friend talking about their new band. While Arrow’s performances in Starcrawler look like a fair depiction of insanity, she has always been one of the sweetest and most down-to-earth people we know. I guess the world has always been filled with mystery and—of course—rock n’ roll.

The first question we usually pose is: what do you create?

The thing I create in my mind, with Starcrawler, is something I’ve always wanted to create: our own world. Music, yes, but I really want to have a Starcrawler world. The Grateful Dead have deadheads and Jimmy Buffett...

Parrot heads.

I don’t want it to just be some band that was cool for a minute. I want it to be our own scene.

How did it start?

It started because I really wanted to start a band, and at first just to do it for fun. You know, I didn’t really think it was gonna be my career. I was in a band before with people from high school and it just wasn’t moving; nothing was happening and of course, drama... It made me realize how much I really did want to do it though I hadn’t realized it until that point and I was like, “Fuck, I don’t even care that this isn’t working out with these people because I just want it to happen.”

Absolutely, what was that shift into making Starcrawler?

I found people that seemed all down and all serious. And we weren’t all best friends so we had some sort of reliability on each other. It was almost like starting a business. When I met Henry, I figured he played guitar because he was in the music academy and he looked cool enough. I gave him my number and we jammed. Austin I had already found—who is no longer in the band anymore—but once Henry came into the equation, the three of us really became solid, we could actually now write songs. It all kind of fell into place in a weird way.

So you and Henry are kind of the core of the band?

Yeah, pretty much. When I met Austin, we were still just kind of getting to know each other and figuring out what our sound was because we had different music tastes. So, it was like two different teams jamming. It wasn’t a band yet. Once Henry joined we were able to find the sound and start playing like a band.

Did that first jam with Henry click in a way?

Yeah definitely. He is super straightforward. When we’d play, if he heard something he didn’t like, he’d be like, “Don’t play that.” You know what I mean? My dad taught me drums when I was a kid and he was like that too. I didn’t take it personally. Henry’s a music kid. That’s just how it is. It’s like, if you’re wrong, you’re wrong. It’s not a personal thing. That was the issue in the band before, if you said, “Oh that’s out of tune or that’s wrong,” it became personal. Thinking about building a world that’s bigger than a high school bedroom band, was that something that the band built? Or were you more of the architect?

I definitely sought everyone out and made it happen, but once we started practicing, it really made things move. We didn’t want to be a high school band. Sometimes I regret that only because we started out just playing bars and we never played house parties or The Smell like other bands in our high school. Looking back, bars and bar venues were weirdly easier.

What was your first show like?

The first show was actually not at a venue at all: it was at this space being renovated, a storage room. It was really fucking small. Probably the size of my living room. My friends came but since it was so small, it was packed. It was fun, but then after that, we played these weird bars. We slowly realized we couldn’t accept every single offer, it makes it harder, you dig yourself into a hole. There was this one bar called Der Wolf Scar, this German themed bar in Pasadena. They served beer and German sausages. It was so bad, such bad vibes, and no one was there to watch us, just people eating sausages.

That’s hilarious.

Yeah, it was really gnarly. I mean crazy bad. I feel bad saying that but bad metal bands that were called Deep Fried Dynamite or George of the Jungle played there. It was tweakers with their shirts off, really ugly. Ugly guitars, I don’t even know how to describe it, it was such a gnarly vibe.

You’re definitely a performer—the show is a huge part of it and it’s not something you do quietly. How did you cultivate your onstage presence?

There was a while before we were actually playing shows where I kind of had time to think about what I wanted the whole vibe to be, but I didn’t really know until I had already gotten on stage. At the time, my dad was playing in a 70s rock cover band at that bar, Davey Wayne’s. It was him and a bunch of other dudes from bands. Like the dude from Fleet Foxes played guitar, and they just did it for fun and extra dough on weeknights. My dad would sneak me in through the back on school nights and I would sing “Cherry Bomb,” that Runaway song. But since it was just a full packed crowd of drunk fraternity kids that weren’t gonna remember, I got to practice. I got to do live practices like real shows and it didn’t matter because no one that I knew would ever know and would never remember. They were all basic people. I hadn’t really played live at all that much before then and that really helped. So I had time to think about what kind of performer I wanted to be. I would watch videos of the Runaways, Ozzy, and horror movies.

Where did the idea of the blood and the straitjackets come from?

From the first show, I knew I wanted to do a straitjacket but couldn’t find one because it’s actually really hard to find one that doesn’t look cheap and steampunky. So I just wore a hospital gown and panties so my butt was out. I spit blood, was barefoot, and had the wristband too. No one knew what I was gonna do. I didn’t tell anybody, even my parents and my friends. They were like, “What the hell is

going on?” It was really fun. After that, I knew I wanted to do the straightjacket thing. I found the website where Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper got theirs. It’s this really janky 90’s website. They custom make them and they’re not that expensive. So I ordered it from that website. That’s the one I use. And then it got to be a routine, so I haven’t spit blood as much lately. I think because people were expecting it too much it kind of just took the fun out of it.

What was the most fun you’ve had with it?

I really get the fun out of doing fake blood when people who don’t know who we are. In the dressing rooms, when I come back, sometimes I’m still playing into it. I’m all sweaty and bloody, limping in there like there is something genuinely wrong with me. Sometimes I’ll collapse on the floor, and I just want to fuck with people. At SXSW, I collapsed right in front of this security guard, she got the medic and everything. And then I just jumped up and screamed! And they were all like, “Fuck you!”

That’s hilarious. My mom shot Kendall Jenner for Vogue China, and my boyfriend, Gilbert, did the video for it. They needed music. My mom said since it was for Vogue, they have all these rules of what it can and can’t be. It needed to be soft almost like Mazzy Star; it’s not like Starcrawler, we just wrote it out, it only needed to be 30 seconds. People love the song too. I think we’re gonna put it out as either a B-side or an interlude on the next album.

It’s cool to see how you’re evolving as a band as well as your whole image. Just looking at your two albums out, your sound has changed from Starcrawler to Devour You.

When we started we were super into glam rock and punk. I just wanted to make straightforward music. At the time I was against keyboards and synths, sticking to being a guitar band through and through. No effects. I just wanted to sound raw. And I liked that first album a lot, but then we got better at songwriting and more into different genres of music and of rock and what not. So we just evolved. Henry was just turning 15 when I first met him and I was turning 16. It was like the very start of us; we were bound to change.

I wanted to do The Sandlot thing.

We were listening to this song that you wrote for a Vogue China Ad. It’s like nothing you’ve ever made before. I think you guys are calling back to something from before, those 70’s rock groups and also trying to do something new.

Yeah, for our first record we recorded it analog. We did it how Kiss did it: it’s all live track and you can’t go in and fix shit. People called us a nostalgia band and I was like, “No, this is real, I want kids to like this.” I like those old timers who know what’s up, but at the same time, I want it to be modern, so kids can connect to it as well.

Speaking of old timers, what’s Ozzy like?

I met him one night at The Forum and I was so starstruck. I brought my record for him to sign and I had to have Gilbert spell my name out for him. I couldn’t even talk, I was so petrified. I’d always thought, “What do I say to him if I meet him?” I couldn’t say anything. I was literally in a dream. He was wearing gentleman’s slippers, fancy old rich man’s slippers. They were black with gold and honey bees on them or something and he had this black satin robe. He had a gold shiny harmonica that just said “Ozzy” on it. He was super classy and still super metal. It’s what you would think an old rock star should look like, not like Steven Tyler, one of your friend’s aunts from Venice.

What about the creative process in your music videos?

Gilbert does most of them. It depends on the video, but usually starts with a loose idea, images in my head of what I want. I write a music video for every song that we have, even if we don’t make it. In my head I always know at least a certain gist of what I want it to feel like. And I only trust very few people with the visuals.

We’ve talked to a lot of artists and a big through line is this feeling of, “I’ve had all this time and I should be creative, but it’s hard when the world isn’t doing anything.” It doesn’t really matter how much time you have—inspiration comes from life. How do you feel about the next album?

I just haven’t been inspired. I usually get inspired from being on the road and playing shows and seeing people. Being active and then when I do have the time to sit down it’s nice; it feels almost like a luxury and I feel all creative and shit. But it’s weird, you’d think I would be more creative doing nothing but it’s not true.

Do you think as a rock and roll band you are playing into something that’s old and dead or that is actually coming back? I always thought maybe it would come back, but I never really thought that rock would come back into the mainstream. Now all these pop stars like Miley Cyrus are doing a rock thing. It’s kind of crazy because people thought that shit was so lame. When we started doing it, anyone in the mainstream thought it was cheese balls and now, basic girls are wearing Kiss shirts and have mullets. Even Billie Eilish has a fucking glam rock haircut right now. At first, I felt like this is fucking bullshit, but honestly it’s cheesy, but if anything, it’ll just make shit better for us. Even though the music doesn’t necessarily sound like rock—Miley doing all those really bad covers of basic ass rock songs she probably just

found out about—it’s kind of cool. Only because it shows those young kids that don’t know who the fucking Beatles are some new music. Honestly cool that she is doing that even though it’s cringe, but at least she’s kind of doing a service. I miss Hannah Montana. That shit was rock n’ roll. It might not be called rock because that’s a turnoff for people, which is why I’m kind of trying not to say it. A lot of times, bands that do want to do rock and roll go wrong when they talk about it too much and they sing about rock and roll in their songs. That’s what immediately people don’t like, you know? You kind of have to approach it in a way where you fool people into thinking that it’s hip and new—which it is. You kind of have to disguise it. They don’t even say alt-rock anymore, they’ll just say alt. We played with Cage the Elephant and I had just heard the name and I assumed it was a pop music group or something. Honestly, they are a rock band: they’re all really good musicians, there’s flames in their shows, it’s a rock show, and he looks like Mick Jagger. But they don’t call it rock.

So everyone can swallow it nicely.

That’s a nice way of still having a band, still having it be palatable to more than just one scene of people, but still having your own world. It’s still your scene and it’s not like you’re stuck in one genre. It’s easy to fall down into that hole of just being a rock or punk band, playing fan-sponsored stuff. I like doing a mix of indie shit and that cheesy rock and roll shit.

It’s so cool to see how you are creating your own sound within this massive genre that existed and went away for a moment in time. You have a very distinct presence in it and it 100% comes off that way. It’ll be interesting to see what the fuck happens in three years: what your music will become, what popular music will become. Once people are going to shows again, they’ll want to see a Stracrawler show. I think people are gonna want to feel something different than just like a little mellow man.

I think so too. Yeah, it’s gonna be wild. I can’t wait to start touring. There are some plans to do a show in September but I’m not getting my hopes up because you never know—but I can’t wait.

Well, I’ll tell you we will definitely be at the next Starcrawler show.