It’s a sweet Japanese cocktail and karaoke music that fuel the inspiration behind Cassis Orange, whose music combines swirling electro and optimistic twee. A one-woman project for now, Autumn Ehinger channels her energy into songs that bound with infectious hooks and cross-culture influence. Cassis Orange plays The Pinhook in Durham on Thursday, April 8 with Butterflies and Wood Ear. The show starts at 9 p.m.and costs $5. In anticipation of her return to the Triangle this summer, Diversions Staff Writer Elizabeth Byrum asked Ehinger five questions regarding the birth of Cassis Orange.
Diversions: What is the story behind the name Cassis Orange and why did you choose it?
Autumn Ehinger: It’s actually the name of a cocktail drink in Japan and it is really good and I like it a lot. I used to live in Japan, so I drank a lot of because it is really popular in karaoke booths. I think the music, is a lot of times just me by myself, so I kind of feel like it’s appropriate to think of a karaoke kind of sweet, girly alcoholic drink.
Dive: Besides Japan, are there any other influences that have helped to shape your sound?
AE: Yeah, definitely. I try to play with other people, but it has been really hard living in a bunch of really weird random places, so it has by default turned into a one-person kind of band, and then sometimes some other people. So, I am really influenced by other people who have been in the same situations--Dear Nora, or Katie Davidson of Dear Nora. She has had a band by that name, but a lot of times it is just her and I know that she has moved around a lot. Those sort of bands that are one-people, I think about. In some bios they are listed as living in this other place, and the next time you hear from them they are on the other side of the country, and you are like “Oh that person doesn’t know what they are doing either!” and I relate to that. It’s nice to think about those kinds of bands.
Dive: You mentioned you also have moved all over the place -- Japan, Arizona, North Carolina -- doing all sorts of different things. What sparked the jump to music, how did it come about?
AE: Well, I have always kind of been doing music. I had played in a band called The Ex-Lovers, when I was in college at Chapel Hill. We played some shows and then we broke up when everyone moved away. It was a three person band. And one person moved to D.C., and another person moved to Switzerland and then I was just there. I didn’t do anything for a couple of years, at least publicly. But I was always kind of working on stuff and especially living in Arizona in this trailer, it was like this FEMA trailer, it was totally sketchy. It was very hilarious, a very cartoon-like series of life. But there was nothing to do but mess around with guitar, toy keyboards in this trailer in the middle of the desert. I have kind of been working on stuff and I knew I wanted to have a band again and play music again, but it was just going to be hard until I moved back to a place that was kind of conducive to that, where there is a music scene. Now I am finally able to start doing that again, now that I know I will be moving back to Chapel Hill or Durham this summer. I love so many bands up in Chapel Hill, and a lot of my friends are in Chapel Hill and Durham and have their bands that I love a lot. I have been trying to come up a lot over the weekends, but I haven’t’ been able to see a lot of the things I want to see and I am going to be happy to play shows with their bands.
Dive: So it will be nice to come home, so to speak, this summer.
AE: Yeah, exactly.
Dive: How did the songwriting process come about, and what does it usually entail?
AE: Right now, the songwriting process usually starts with some kind of idea, it could be that I just sit down and I hear a sort of melody or maybe there is a certain line, a lyric or something that I build off. And on top of that idea, I just kind of mess with it for a long time. Sometimes, the songs get written really quickly and I will just tape record it while I play around with it for the first time and then it is done. I have to record it because a lot of times I will completely forget two hours later and have no idea what I had done. And then there are other times where I think about it a lot. On most of the recordings, it is just me, so the recordings are kind of like a songwriting process itself I guess. I know that I am going to have to arrange things; I am trying to figure out sounds that are going to make sense and distortion that makes sense and a bunch of Casio beats that makes sense and layer all those things together in a way that makes a song. It somehow comes together to create something pseudo cohesive.
Dive: For this EP, you did a lot of it by yourself. What instruments did
you use?
AE: On the EP, I recorded the very last song is one I did completely by myself, and on that song “Still No Home” I am playing piano and glockenspiel, toy keyboard, and some beats from a toy keyboard and also playing real drums over them. On the other few songs, I had re-rerecorded my little crappy bedroom demo versions of the first three with my friend Zach in Nashville. But I went to go hang out with him and he recorded those three songs and we had this really awesome drummer named Derek Pearson, who plays in a band called Umbrella Tree, and he plays drums on the first three songs on the EP. But outside of that situation, that luxurious situation of actually having a drummer, I just kind of try to fake playing drums because I am a really terrible drummer. So I just try to figure out how I want things to sound and try really hard to make it sound. It never sounds how I would like for it to sound, but I try to get it kind of close. But I am a big fan of DIY and lo-fi sort of things, so when things end up sounding kind of bad, I kind of like it.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
