The Blow

The Blow is Jona Bechtolt and Khaela Maricich.

They're from Portland, Oregon!




Chief Magazine: Happy Saturday... what's a typical Saturday for you these days?

Jona: I don't really have a typical schedule for Saturdays. No taco nights or anything. Tonight I'm playing a show.

Chief: Oh, solo? With Khaela?

Jona: A benefit for a 3-year-old-girl that lost a kidney to cancer. Alone. Khaela and I split up touring duty. Since Paper Television came out I've been hard at work making the follow up.

I would bet few can say they did much to help out another in need. Mighty altruistic of ya!

Jona: But the follow up is a YACHT record.

What does Y.A.C.H.T. mean?

Jona: There used to be a weird building on MLK here in Portland called Y.A.C.H.T. that I named my band after. It stood for Young Americans Challenging High Technology and I don't know what the deal was with it. I never got to see it operational, only as a decrepit and crappy shack with a happy birthday sign falling out of the window. Since then I've lost the acronym and associated periods, but kept it caps. It's just YACHT and it means "no fancies."

---

How did you each find each other in the first place?

Jona: Well, we're both from this NorthWest grunge zone. She grew up in Seattle. I grew up in Astoria, Oregon.

So no day job to front the rent kind of thing? That's on the coast isn't it... Astoria, I mean?

Jona: Nope. I won't be able to work a regular job ever again. Yeah, Astoria is on the coast.
Where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. The Goonies, Free Willy, Kindergarten Cop, Short Circuit... all filmed there!

Wow! The Goonies. I can imagine it through my studio apartment that looks out to another concrete wall.

Jona: So I was putting on shows above my parents' gas station in Astoria. After a little while all these bands from bigger towns started calling me.

I see. Where are you playing tonight?

Jona: I'm playing at a club here in Portland called Berbatis Pan. So yeah, someone from K Records called me and asked about putting a show together for a band called Old Time Relijun.

Interesting. I hear that place is Greek-owned and is a nice place.

Jona: Yeah. It's not bad. Khaela's here!

What’s going on in Stump Town these days? Now with Pine Street Theater, X-Ray Café, Satiricon – all gone. Where do you gig or chill when you go out?  Besides Berbatis -- pronounced BerbatEES!

Khaela: I don't focus on places as much as people around here.

JONA: Barbatis... of course... But yeah, there are some good places still. Holocene is nice. It's newer.

Khaela: Oh shit, Paloma is here to talk to me about making the whisker dolls.

Jona: Awesome.

Okay.

Jona: Tell her I say hi!

KHAELA: Yeah. Whiskers says hi, too.

Khaela, you said you are cooking for friends tonight, what are you making?

Khaela: Ouch! Cats will cause all kinds of spills. Whiskers is my radical cat.

---

What kind of cat?

Khaela: She is very old and has one eye.

Come on. One eye?

Khaela: Seriously. A raccoon scratched her other eye out when she was two.

Damn. You were not joking. Cute though. All racoons should just be banished. So what comes first, lyrics or the notes?

Jona: Both!

Do tell.

Jona: There is a little of both. KK, go ahead.

Khaela: Aww. There are cases in which Jona and I sit down and decide to make a song, and he starts making beats, and I start writing lyrics, or we start writing them together.

Jona: Very collaborative.

Khaela: In other cases, I write the lyrics and the melody, and go around singing them to myself in my bathroom, and then go to Jona and sing the song for him, and he gets an idea for producing it, and just starts up on the computer right then and there.

That sounds nice. Bathrooms are great places to muse. Do you have a favorite book? A place that you like to be in? By book, I mean a book to write the songs?

Khaela: I don't personally have a special book. Our work can be pretty collaborative, but there are definitely realms where it seems like we each do a lot of good stuff privately, don't you think, Jona?

Jona: Totally.

Khaela: Sometimes. I for sure drive Jona crazy by leaning over his shoulder and making a lot of suggestions when he is trying to go somewhere with producing a certain sound.

Sorry ‘bout that, Jona.

It seems as though the process is working for each of you, though.

Jona: It's cool, man. I'm over it. Yeah, I think we did some good songs.

Khaela, your last few entries on your blog goes in-depth about you being sometimes bored with monotony of life but the way you write is far from mundane. There is clearly something; something existential there that is not boring.

Khaela: I'm glad that the blog entries have managed to come off as not mundane, that is a relief to know. You never know if your musings carry any kind of meaning for people who don't live inside your head with you.

Maybe I didn't realize that I was writing about the monotony of life, but I guess that I can see that there is a way that I am fixated on the mystical boringness of things

Do you have a favorite 24 hour joint, a pharmacy for mouthwash and q-tips? A street vendor that always cooks up quality eats?

Jona: The only thing that really seems to be open late at night here is the excellent donut shop, but they aren't 24 hours. They are only late at night.  And when they feel like it, they open the little window and sell donuts onto the street. But you get to travel to them and do shows.

Khaela: There isn't much 24 hour stuff here. I'm very jealous of big cities for this function.

What do you order when you crave a doughnut?

Jona: That French kind.

Khaela: Jona gets vegan ones. My girlfriend and I just bought a dozen of these amazing vegan donuts from Seattle.

Jona: YES.

Travel to the donut shops and do shows there? Really. What do they fry them in?

Jona: Vegetable oil.

Khaela: Chocolate mint, cinnamon sugar, classic glazed. Oh man, remember when we had plans to do a show at the VooDoo Donuts, Jona? On top of the refrigerator?

Jona: YES. Totally. That was a good idea.

Who are you listening to right now? Each of you, of course...

Khaela: Yes.

The band yes? YES????

Jona: I love YES the band.

Khaela: Me too. I've been revisiting a lot of my favorite 90s alternative bands. I am not actually listening to them, not since high school. I said yes because I thought you had asked something else.

So... what you are listening to?

Jona: Veruca Salt, mostly. Also, there is a B-52s album I keep repeating. Mesopotamia/Party Mix -- It's really good. Dance floor versions of their first record. Dubbed out and longer. Super good.

The B-52s... Where are the hell are they now?

Jona: They're from Athens, Georgia, right. Well, their guitarist died. The drummer took over.

Khaela: The Family Fodder. The Young People.

JONA: Then the guitarist's little sister (one of the two girls) quit for a minute. I think they're done for now. Oh, also... I have a new Architecture in Helsinki song that is fucking amazing.

Khaela: Both of our new records are coming out in the spring and we're touring the US and Australia together.

Noted. Anyone under the radar you're really impressed by?

---

Khaela: Swan Island would have been my answer to that

Jona: I love this band from San Francisco called Tussle.

Khaela: I like them too. We're trading remixes.

Downloads

TheBlow-Track01.mp3
The Blow- Hock-It-(YACHT-Remix).mp3

Websites

www.theblow.us
www.myspace.com/theblowus

Photos

Daniel Peterson
Sarah Cass
Michael Lavine

---