chokecherry is a 3 piece band out of California featuring members Scarlett Levinson (she/her) on bass and vocals, Izzy Clark (she/her) on guitar and vocals, and Abri Crocitto (he/him) on drums. The group has recently released the single and video for “Afterglow” the first single off their upcoming EP. I was able to visit briefly with Izzy and Scarlett to learn more about the band, their influences and get a little preview of the upcoming EP.
Start off with a basic question. How did the band get started?
Izzy Clark/chockecherry: The band was started in 2022. Scarlett and I matched on Hinge, which is like, okay, I get it, like the romance rumors, you know, they come from nowhere, but we actually, we didn’t date. We just met up at a bar and we were like, oh my God, like we should start a band. You’re a front woman. I’m a front woman. It would be a really cool energy to like experiment with that, and we started jamming in late 2022, wrote our first songs, and we were just having fun, like we didn’t really think. I guess Scarlett, I guess you were, we’re gonna get big, but I was like,
Scarlett Levinson/chokecherry: no, I was not, I was more so just like, wow, this is so cool. I think that we really, as much as it was like the dream, you know, to get big, we really did it ’cause we wanted to play different kinds of music and we loved jamming out together, I feel. Izzy correct me if I’m wrong.
Izzy: Yeah, it was, I feel like we could feel this, we could feel this palpable energy. When we played our first shows, there was already a crowd of people who knew our music at our first venue show and we sold out of merch at that show as well, people started to really care about the project. That was in early 2023 when we started to play shows, but Scarlett and I were in other bands before and didn’t really get that kind of hype or attention like that quickly off the bat. So it was very surreal and this was before we even released our first single.
Scarlett:Yes
Izzy: It was kind of like some buzz throughout the scene in San Francisco.
So why do you think this iteration took off as opposed to when you were in other bands?
Izzy: I don’t know. Honestly, it’s so, it’s so, I feel like it’s so random when bands take off but I feel like people could really resonate with the vulnerable songwriting and the kind of interplay between heavy guitars and very ethereal layered vocals I think that was really cool and kind of set us apart maybe.
Scarlett: I also think that, especially in the modern world, one of the most radical acts, one of the most radical things you can do as two femme front people is get along and work together and create something together. Because I feel the industry, and I don’t know, society in general really does try to drive femme people and women apart and put people against each other, and so to collaborate and to create something and to get along I think there’s so much power and energy in that too. I’ve just been thinking about that a lot lately on a personal level. But yeah, I think that the vulnerability in the songwriting is something that always really drew me to our project and something I was always so proud of and so amazed by. Izzy is just like an incredible guitarist and a very naturally gifted songwriter and I learned to play bass for this project so I was very much so hitting the ground running. but it was really cool, and I think that is part of why the music felt so good in the beginning is ’cause we were like, “Oh yeah, we have our other project that we front, “let’s fuck around and find out,” for lack of a better term, and make something that’s really honest and really vulnerable, and it just ended up being really cool.
How’d you come up with the name chokecherry?
Izzy: I was on a field trip for this class I was taking in college. It was one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taken. It was called Nature Immersion and the professor was a total badass survivalist, and she was like, yeah, I’m going to go on a little adventure. because I know how to do this shit and she would like teach us how to build fire out of raw like material or make fire and kind of survive in the wilderness it was the most insane college class I’ve ever taken and we would go camping and shit but At one point, we were on this guided tour, we were kind of in the back hills of the East Bay in Hayward, California, and there’s this really cool guy who was leading the tour and he was showing us all these native plants and medicinal plants like soap. like a natural soap plant and just all these plants with great properties. Anyway, I’m getting super off track, but at the end of the tour, he showed us all these seeds in boxes and we were kind of just looking at them and passing them around and there were Chokecherry seeds and I was like, “Oh my God, that’s so fascinating. I’ve never heard of a Chokecherry before, but it’s this tree that’s native to North America and it bears a fruit, the Chokecherry fruit, that you can make wine out of, jam out of, tea out of, you just eat it. It’s like, I don’t know, but I’ve never tried it. I was like, wow, what a cool name. It kind of evoked a lot of feminine rage and also the connection to nature was really cool, and if you look at a lot of our single covers and these upcoming music videos that we have, we have a lot of nature themes tied into it, and I think Yeah, we just thought it was cool and kind of like evocative of a lot of different feelings.
Who are your influences musically?
Scarlett: We love a ton of the same stuff. I’m going to throw out– We have a lot of like 90s classic kind of big shoegaze influences, so you know, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Slow Dive, that kind of thing. I think that we also really do like the more kind of grungy, heavier side of things. I really like Big Star, we really like T-Rex, and Pavement is a huge one that we bonded over. In terms of the more modern, like, SoCal scene, Izzy, do you want to touch on that?
Izzy:. Pavement is a huge one and I feel like all of the bands we look up to, a lot of the more contemporary bands like Mama are also super influenced by Pavement and it’s just like really cool to see the ripple effect of that era. Like every other grunge musician, like yes Nirvana of course. – and Hole, oh my god, yes. -Scarlett: Hole is a huge one. Sonic Youth.
Izzy: Sonic Youth, for sure.
Scarlett: Pixies.
Izzy: far as SoCal..
Scarlett: Ooh, can I just throw out one more from kind of that era of Broadcast and Blonde Redhead.
Izzy: Oh Yeah. As far as like SoCal bands that I was super influenced by growing up like Ty Segall. Ty Segall’s live shows as a 15 year old got me so into that whole scene because it was just the most incredible incredible energy I’d ever seen and took part in or been witness to. The constant stage diving and now I kind of I feel like Ty Segall shows I feel like everybody got like older not in the band or I guess everybody did you know we all have aged but uh the shows are I guess a little bit milder now but like back in 2015, 2016, they went fucking crazy, and just being a part of that scene, bands like, you know, old Fidlar, like what they were doing in 2013 to like 2016, Waves, kind of like all that fuck you surf music. I feel like, um, it’s very escapist to, um, and I feel like as a kid, like an angst teenager, just listening to that shit. I just was so, so stoked. Um, but yeah, as far as like guitar. influences like for sure Ty Segall, John Dwyer of the Osees, there’s more, oh my god yeah like Geek Valley was a big one when I was first starting to learn guitar and I was in a band in SoCal called Girls with my friend Emma. We were just playing, we just played like shitty punk music. We uploaded our voice demos to SoundCloud and had a great time, but like did not know what we were doing. But it was fun. I’m sure I’ll think of other things, but yeah.
Scarlet: That whole Ty Segalll, Fidlar thing is so fucking real. I feel like the stage diving the crowd surfing and just being in that really intense energy really converted me. Nick is the guitarist of my other band Foes He has a Fidlar tattoo. He took off his pants and showed it to them when we played with them at Freak Out. You know, I feel like there was just, there was a real moment that was happening then around that like 2012 to 2015 sort of era where, and it hasn’t passed at all, but it was just, I feel like if you were around and you were like growing up during that time and into that kind of garage scene. Those things, were God, you know, it really it really took over your life and I think that chokecherry we have a lot of kind of heavier Influences in that way. I also always found myself really really influenced by like femme vocalist like Mitski, especially I think Mitski’s tiny desk (video) is one of the reasons that I wanted to do music. I saw that and I just thought it was so raw and so vulnerable and her songwriting, I mean, clearly resonates with, you know, hundreds of millions of people and with good reason. It’s so, so powerful. When I was, you know, like way too young to be listening to Lana Del Rey, I was listening to Lana Del Rey as were most. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it really did influence a lot of us in terms of that, you know. But also, I feel like Angel Olsen, Jessica Pratt, and the reason that they all come to mind for me is that it’s just really vulnerable songwriting. and really honest songwriting. It’s just, wow. It really, yeah, it totally resonates. It really does something. I’ve always, I think one of my biggest influences also has always been The Velvet Underground, and I couldn’t quite, like, I don’t. I don’t know why but it always like totally totally took me over and changed me So I’ll throw that all The Velvet Underground out there, too. Also Kate Bush and yeah Bleach, Bleach for sure and Siouxsie and The Banshees in the Siouxsie and the Banshees is huge. There’s a lot of really great modern bands too. We could totally go off on people who have been inspiring us who are playing right now, but those are definitely some big ones.
Your current single is “Afterglow.” What’s the story behind this song?
Scarlett: The story behind “Afterglow”, so as a band, we write in lots of different ways. Sometimes we all just get in a room and jam and see what comes out. Sometimes one of us will bring in something and we’ll develop on it. For “Afterglow”, I don’t know. I was going through like a bad patch where I was seeing somebody on and off and it was one of the many times that we decided to call it quits amicably, but nonetheless, like three days later, I was feeling very sorry for myself. I remember I went on Groupon and I saw there was a Thai Massage Groupon. I went there and I got a cheap massage and I was crying the whole time and I was, damn it, and then I was walking on Haight street, and there was these like kids who hang out there, skate, and, you know, I was clearly struggling, you know, like tears running down my face and this one kid was, you look great have a great day, and it was, people were trying to make me feel better.. But I really, I couldn’t seem to make myself feel much better, and I came home and I was just kind of running with ideas, and I really felt at that moment that everything was my fault and that, every breakup I had ever had and every, you know, everything was just, I was to blame for everything, it was kinda like a self-pity party and I was in the living room and I had this voice memo of the first few verses which is just me like sobbing at half tempo trying to get words out and I brought it at one point because we were just kind of demoing some stuff or testing out stuff and Izzy like pulled it out of me because I did not want to share it I was oh god this is so anxious, but it ended up kind of she bounced off it and came up with a chorus and then we kind of started. We started bouncing off each other and then our friend Chris was in the room and we came up with a really cool breakdown and so you know it was a real collaborative process, but yeah it was definitely born out of a real pity party moment for me, and just feeling I was definitely at fault for what was happening to me. So that’s that, and yeah.
It’s the first single from the upcoming EP. What can you tell us about the upcoming EP?
Izzy: So the EP, it’s coming out October 25th and we’re super excited because I feel like it showcase, a lot of our heavier. influences. There’s a song on there that been one of my favorite songs that we play live for a very long time and I feel like a lot of our songs that we have out now, “Afterglow” has a hint of the heaviness that we like to play around with but this EP, I think we’ll get heavier and heavier as time goes on, but yeah, I think it has a wide variety of sounds and it kind of has a little something for everybody and we had a lot of fun making it because it wasn’t so confined to a single genre. It kind of plays at the boundaries of a lot of I guess rock genres like shoegaze and almost pop punk sometimes and then some of it’s a little bit doomy and a little bit of hardcore.I forgot to mention that Turnstile is also like one of my favorite bands and definitely influenced one of the songs on this album or on this EP. My bad. We’re just really excited to show people what we’ve been working on. I feel like it’s been a long time coming. The process of recording this EP was a lot quicker than our usual process with recording songs. Our first two singles, we spent a lot of time on, we kind of sat on them for a second, adding in tons of new guitar layers and new harmonies and this was kind of like, okay, you’re going to lay it down and you’re just going to commit to what you have, and that was a really, you know, interesting experience because I’m so used to just sitting on music. Um, but yeah, it was a ton of fun. Also the single we have coming out August 9th is called “No Other Place”. That was the first single that we really wrote with a producer. As far as like getting into the studio and writing the song then and there, and by the end of the day, we had a rough track of the song like basically the structure was done in a day and all the harmonies or all the melodies were in place although the words were just like gibberish of course but we had a lot of fun experimenting with our writing process here.
Scarlett: I also want to add that one of the things I’m most excited about for this EP is that I do feel, if you’ve seen us live you know, but we skew heavier in a lot of our music and the stuff that we have out right now is on the lighter side of what we do and it’s definitely an element of chokecherry. It’s definitely… a really big and important part of our sound is that kind of shoegazy, bubble-grungy, lighter side of our music, and I think that the breakdown in “Afterglow” is a really nice preview of what’s to come on the upcoming EP, but I think that the upcoming EP is really representative of a lot of our live sound, so I’m excited for people to hear that too and know even more that when they come to a chokecherry show that they’re gonna, maybe mosh a little bit.
Is there any tour planned for the release of the EP?
Scarlett: Yes, sir. Absolutely. So, really perfect timing. Our friends in Destroy Boys invited us on a full U.S. plus Canada tour. We’re doing Vancouver and Montreal as well, but we’re doing a full US tour from October 25th to November 24th, and we’re gonna add some dates before October 25th as well to hit some of our favorite West Coast cities But yeah, we’re going to be touring with Destroyer Boys right around the release.
Very cool. Thank you so much for taking time to do this. I appreciate it.
Izzy: Of course.
Scarlett: Sure thing, Tim. Yeah, lovely to speak to you.
Hope you all have a great rest of your day and looking forward to hearing the new single coming out next month.
Scarlett Yay!
Izzy: I’m so excited. Thank you so much.
Interview by I’m Music Magazine Writer Tim Board
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