One-Eyed Doll – The band you have to see to believe.
I am lucky for a lot of reasons. One of them is my life is filled with music – both local and touring. But this thing happens, where the more you see the harder it is to run across something that makes your jaw hit the floor and stay there. One-Eyed Doll does that.
Musically, they balance a sugary-sweet pixie quality with something far heavier peeking out from underneath. As people, the duo seem to win over everyone everywhere they go.
One-Eyed Doll is currently on tour with Wednesday 13 – which is a match made in alternative-rock-free-for-fall land. Neither band fits neatly in a box, but both are theatrical and are about just a damn good time.
“It’s been great,” share Kimberly Freeman of the current tour, “We really love these guys, they are super super rad. It has been really easy peasy – we all get along really well and our fans get along. There is a similar vibe, I think, with all of our followings. Kind of the artsy-er, darker, not taking yourself too seriously – kind of thing that we both do. Even though our performances are way different from each other, I feel like we have the same heart. I really have a lot of respect for those guys – they are so good.”
Freeman admits that the first night of the tour was really her first exposure to Wednesday 13, but it left a lasting impression. “Our first show in Spokane was my first expedience. I didn’t see any Youtube videos or anything, I just went in totally clean and I was front in center. I was blown away – I was totally blown away by all of them and the performance. And Wednesday is just a phenomenal frontman, he is a true performance artist.”
Jason Rufuss Sewell, A.K.A., “Junior”, reveals that there is a treasure trove on songs waiting to see the light of day. “We have like 40 songs recorded, and we are going to go back make even more – like ten more. And decide from those which ones are going to be on our next album. With those, we write whatever we want and when we get like 10 or 11 songs that sound like they fit together – then we make it an album.”
The next release could be as soon as this Christmas, entitled ‘Secret Lullaby.’
“t is very experimental,” explains Sewell of the album. “It is going to be a lot of the weirdest stuff that we have done. It is finished, mastered, the artwork is done.”
When pressed what exactly defines ‘weird’, especially taking into consideration that One-Eyed Doll isn’t a typical rock band, Sewell shares, “It’s not heavy drums and guitars, it’s not acoustic, it’s not electronic – it’s just the stuff that really don’t fit anywhere else. They don’t really fit under the umbrella of what we typically do, but I think people are going to like it though.”
Here’s the thing with a phone interview with a band on tour – you just have to roll with whatever happens next. For me, that meant crashing the VIP party for the band before the show in Boonesboro, Maryland.
Now, if you know anything about the band – it is that they slow down and make everyone feel special. In a world of flash and occasional attitude they figure out how to make every fan feel like they belong.
As I crashed the VIP party – everyone answered a simple question: What was their first exposure to One-Eyed Doll.
Over and over the stories shared the same threads. Someone went to a show, and simply felt something special.
Ellen had a particularly lovely story from an Otep show, “I got the opportunity to talk to Kimberly before the show. I had no idea who she was, I just knew she was the most interesting looking person. So I went over and talked to her, and she said, “Thank you for coming but I’m sorry I need to be on stage in a few minutes.” Then she got on stage and they blew us away.”
Learn more about the band on their official website: http://www.oneeyeddoll.com
Remaining tour dates are:
10/14 Destin, FL
10/15 San Antonio, TX
10/16 Austin, TX
10/17 Houston, TX
10/19 Dallas, TX
10/20 Gallup, NM
10/21 Mesa, AZ
10/22 Las Vegas, NV
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