Brightest Young Things

Words and Photos by Rachel Eisley

One sunny Sunday in our nation’s capitol, I was invited to brunch at the lovely apartment of Ms. Sadie Dingfelder (ex- Junior League Band), the fiddle player of the up and coming alt-country band, Hot Coffee, Mississippi. After Sadie cooked me up an amazing omelet, I interviewed both Sadie and Lester Feder, the band's singer and banjo player. I stuck around for their band rehearsal where I met bassist Jason Dangle, and guitarist Alex Vactor, both Pittsburgh transplants to DC, bringing a rich variety of talent and sound to HC,M. Check out what Sadie and Lester had to say, and make sure not to miss their upcoming DC shows: this Sunday, March 8th at 9 pm at the Wonderland Ballroom, and their headlining show on Friday, March 20th at 11:30 pm at the Red and the Black.

We’ll hear from Sadie first, and then Lester.

BYT: Hi Sadie! Where did you come up with band name, Hot Coffee, Mississippi?

Sadie: Lester and the lead guitar player, Alex Vactor, came up with the name when they got together the first time in 2007. The name is actually a real town’s name in Mississippi, other than that it’s fairly random as far as I know. Initially I was concerned because I think it has a few too many syllables, but as Lester says, it’s kind of nice because it harkens to a kind of southern gothic, or southern country music tradition.

BYT: Describe your sound:
Sadie: Lester is definitely more qualified to answer this question, but I would say that we sound a little bit like the Avett Brothers, it’s definitely an alt-country genre.

BYT: How did you meet Lester?
Sadie: A bunch of us in the band came together because of a mutual friend named Ben Licciardi who is friends with Lester and a lot of us, he was in a band called Pagoda, then it was called the Roofwalkers. When Lester moved back to DC after finishing his MA in Journalism from Columbia, he wanted to start up his former band with Alex. Meanwhile, Ben knew that I had recently left Junior League Band, so he suggested I play with Lester, which was a fantastic suggestion, because it was just easy to tell from the beginning that he would be fun to collaborate with. O
ur other band members are great too, Alex and our bassist Jason Dangle, are both from Pittsburgh. Alex has a great blues sound, and has a lot of soul for a white boy, and Jason actually comes from a punk background, so he gives the band a little punk edge. We don’t have a full time drummer yet, so if you know anyone good, send them our way!

BYT: Why did you leave Junior League?
Sadie: Junior League just got too successful, and I couldn’t keep up with their touring schedule. They're touring almost nonstop right now, full time, and I have a lot of different stuff I’m working on right now here in DC, so just couldn’t commit to that kind of schedule. But it was so great playing with them, and I really miss it. One thing that’s cool about not being on tour all the time, in addition to the fact that my fish gets fed more regularly, and that my plants aren’t all dying, is that I actually get to focus on music in a more thoughtful way. The other day I went to my first violin lesson in maybe 10 years. I’m trying to get better at improvisation, and sound a little bit less like a classical violinist, and more like a fiddle player, so its fun to have time to work on that, and have time to feed my fish.

BYT: What upcoming shows do you have?
Sadie: I’m really excited about a show we’re playing at Wonderland Ballroom, which is this Sunday March 8th, at 9 pm. One of the reasons that I’m excited about this show, in addition to the fact that it’s our first show, is because my grandma who is 87 years old is going to be there. She’s flying in from Tampa. Her hearing aids don’t work that well, so sometimes when things are noisy she can’t really hear us. She saw an old band of mine perform one time in Philadelphia, and she couldn’t hear a thing, and she said “Well, you guys looked great!” But anyway, it will be so fun to have her there. And maybe I’ll put her in charge of the email list because people won’t say no, or give fake emails to my grandma, right? We also have a bigger show coming up, which will have a full drum kit, on the 20th, at the Red and the Black, everyone should come out to that, I think it will be a lot of fun!

BYT: What’s the latest book you’ve read?
Sadie: I’m currently reading this book that I don’t like very much so I’m trying to just get through it, since I haven’t read a whole novel in a while. The book is called “A Fraction of the Whole”, by Steve Toltz, and it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s really depressing, for example, the main character was given advice to go kill himself so he went off looking for a cliff to jump off of…Anyways, I’m wondering if I should just give up or if I’m going to start liking it, so if any BYT readers have read this book, let me know what you think, if I should give it a chance and finish it. Another book I read recently which I really loved was called “A Secret Sign of my Own” and it’s a really beautiful book with spare language about an elementary school math teacher. That sounds boring, but it’s not at all boring, its very magical realist, where things happen that couldn’t happen in real life. But its told in such a matter of fact way that it doesn’t even seem that odd that they’re happening. I love that.

BYT: Well thank you for letting me interview you, and thanks for the omelet! It was awesome!
Sadie: Thanks for interviewing us!

BYT: Hi Lester! First question: what is your background in music?

Lester: My first instrument was a ukulele given to me at age 4 by my great uncle, Jack Postman, a Jew who learned violin during his childhood in Vienna before fleeing the Nazis and who played in amateur orchestras all his life. I never really mastered the ukulele—I first wanted to be a violinist, and took violin lessons for four years at the Levine School. But I didn't like classical music and the strict practicing rules, and in middle school I discovered traditional music. I got lucky, and became friends with local Piedmont Blues master guitarist John Cephas, whom I used to visit for monthly lessons in Fredericksburg. When I started playing banjo, I met a group of old-time musicians with roots in West Virginia, and began spending part of every summer in the state. In college, I apprenticed with Seattle blueswoman Del Rey the Guitar Queen, sleeping in her closet and drinking Slivovitz every night. (She’ll actually be in town later this month doing a workshop at the at the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation.) I never loved the idea of the music business and I wanted to bridge my love of music with my passion for politics, so I earned a PhD in musicology trying to figure out how a music I loved—country—got tangled up with the conservative movement. But I fell out of love with academia, started working in politics, and decided it was time to start performing. I also went electric for the first time two years ago, and now scare my band mates by trying to put distortion on my banjo (they've managed to thwart my efforts so far).

BYT: Describe Hot Coffee, Mississippi’s sound.
Lester: HC,M is 30 percent blues, 30 percent old-time country, 30 percent indie rock, and 10 percent stream of consciousness. Oh, and when abbreviated, HC,M is 25 percent punctuation.

BYT: What are some bands you've been listening to lately?
Lester: I just discovered Everything Abstracted and Distorted out of Denver and I'm newly hooked on Backyard Tire Fire from Illinois. I've also just discovered Robin Hitchcock's collaboration with Welch and Rollins, Spooked.

BYT: Speaking of music, what are some of the musical influences on your development of HC,M?
Lester: I didn't set out to emulate anyone, but I've heard my style compared to Will Oldham and Neutral Milk Hotel. The people whose music is most in my head include Lyle Lovett, Memphis Minnie, The Blasters, Sufjan Stevens, Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam, Brother Claude Ely, Lyle Lovett, the Decemberists, an unusually heavy amount of gospel for someone raised Jewish, and all my years of playing fiddle tunes and blues songs.

BYT: What are some of your favorite books, magazines, TV shows?
Lester: Favorite books: At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill and Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. Magazine: The Oxford American, The Nation (full disclosure, I've written for both of them) TV Show: The West Wing and The Wire (since they're no longer on the air, I watch less TV.)

BYT: Well thanks for letting me crash your rehearsal and giving BYT a great idea of what Hot Coffee, Mississippi is all about!

want (and need) more?
go here: http://www.myspace.com/hotcoffeemississippi