Cinema Hearts
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You've done music and theater most of your life, but when did you first start getting involved in the local D.C. music scene? Was it before or after you started working on your own music?
It was probably the same time, maybe a little bit after. I started writing songs when I was 18-19. Actually, maybe even later. I might have started at 20 and then I got into the D.C. music scene probably when I was 20-21, which seems late but I just didn't know it existed.
So you didn't grow up going to a lot of local concerts or anything?
Oh no, not really. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. I grew up in Virginia. There wasn't a lot of exposure and art support for local musicians so I had no idea that people could just write a song or make a band. It didn't occur to me that music can be grassroots. I always thought pop music came from the radio, came from some other realm. Hollywood, who knows.
When did you first gain exposure to pageant life? I understand your mom did pageantry. Was it something that always had a presence in the household?
Yeah, sort of. My mom did America's Junior Miss when she was a teenager so she wasn't as serious or as competitive as I later became. We occasionally would watch Miss America on TV when it was on so I have a vivid memory of sitting on my floor and watching a ventriloquist during the Miss America Pageant. The idea always stuck with me. I did the Miss Northern Virginia Pageant at 18. Didn't like it, it was not for me, but that experience stuck with me. When I started Cinema Hearts, I knew that I wanted the concept to be, "What if Miss America, the most feminine icon I could think of, played the electric guitar which has a very masculine history?" I just loved that dichotomy. And then later on, I was so drawn to the Miss America myth that I decided to go for it and dive into it. That's how I got involved. I did pageants from 2017 to 2019, maybe 2016 to 2019.
What does the process of being involved with a pageant actually look like?
With the Miss America system there's local, state, and the national pageants. When I was going for the local level, I was completely on my own. I would watch YouTube videos or read books, look online, or trial-and-error learned what kind of things won. But then once you won the local level, the directors of that particular local pageant become like your coaches for the state pageant. So then later on I did have some guidance through meeting different people who are in this scene. I like to relate it to the music scene because in the music scene there are people who will help you out and also people who show you the ropes of DIY music. It's the same way in the pageant realm. There were people who showed me how things were done, like the unspoken rules that people in the scene know.
What was one of the most important lessons you learned during that time that you've kept with you?
I think the biggest thing... I really wanted to be Miss Virginia or Miss America because I wanted to be able to inspire girls. I wanted to be able to reach them and show them alternate perspectives on what womanhood or being a girl could be. For me, I didn't know girls played guitar so my talent for the competition was playing electric guitar. What's interesting now is today I volunteered for Girls Rock D.C. Camp and I helped coach one of the bands. The singer was feeling really shy and I helped coach them all. I just realized, wow, I can have this same sort of impact and be a mentor and a role model and a friend to a lot of these young girls without having that Miss America title, but the training and the experiences I had while doing pageants absolutely gave me the skills to be able to have that moment today.
Do you have any examples of a result you've seen where an introduction to music helped someone thrive?
I can think of so many instances. There was one where I was a group guitar teacher. I had a group of third graders and I remember there was one little girl who, first day of class, wasn't really engaged. [She] was very shy and didn't wanna speak up too much, but by the end of the semester she was the one who was telling the group how a certain song they were performing together should be played. She was the one passing out music. The idea that through this, I guess, gentleness that I like to give through music, she felt like she could speak up.
I also work as a music teacher now on a one-on-one level. I had an incident last week where one of my students, she's a piano player, she felt so frustrated playing her song because she wasn't doing it perfect. I was just thinking, geez, this seven year old girl thinks she has to be perfect at such a young age. We had to sit down and talk about what does that mean. That as girls, we're striving for perfectionism, especially on the first try, especially when you don't have the tools yet to be able to make a mistake. It was really nice to be able to share with her, even as an adult, I had to struggle with perfectionism and that when we are making music, especially in a lesson setting and not a performance setting, that's the time where we could safely make mistakes and that we can be loud and be messy. And then if the time comes where we want to be more polished, we could choose to do that.
I bet she's going to carry that lesson for life.
Yeah, it was such a deep... I think that was the biggest thing for me. I felt like when I was a little girl, I didn't have that kind of guidance. It's so important for me now to be able to give that.
How would you describe the sound of Cinema Hearts?
I'm very inspired by sixties girl groups and garage rock and surf music, but I like to be able to subvert it and make it more modern. I listen to a lot of contemporary indie rock too so I find Cinema Hearts to be dramatic. I love it to have the wall of sound and a lot of the lyrics feels vulnerable to me. It feels sincere.
You've expressed that it was difficult to find band members when you first started. How did you eventually find success with that, and what were your early jam sessions like?
My first bassist was my brother. My mom had to convince him to be in the band. Our first drummer was someone who I met in a Facebook group for local musicians. He was the only one that didn't tease me for the type of music I wanted to play. Those early jam sessions, it was a lot of fun. It was a time where I was really learning how to be a band leader and what kind of sound I wanted and what kind of show I wanted to put together. Now, I have two friends from college who play in my band and it's amazing how much I feel like I've grown since the beginning because the vision has become tighter. The vision's always stayed the same, but now I feel like I have the musical language and more ideas to make it even sharper. And it's so cool that my bandmates over the years have been so supportive of the Cinema Hearts idea.
I love that. Obviously juggling music while wearing so many other hats between volunteering, school, work, all of the things, is a huge endeavor. What is it about performing and songwriting that has kept you engaged with this artistry?
I think for me, it's like I wanna write songs that can provide comfort to me in tough situations. I like writing songs that are saying something that hasn't been said before by other musicians. That's really important to me. The type of music I make, sometimes it's scary for me because it does feel like I'm putting my diary into the world. I like to compare songwriting to running. I don't like running and I always tell myself, “I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go.” But then once I do it, I'm like, “Wow, that felt great!” And it's the same with songwriting. "I don't wanna do it. I really don't wanna dive deep into myself. I would rather just pretend everything's fine." Then once I do it, I'm always like, "Wow. That's how I felt, huh?"
You've mentioned the D.C. music scene was very inclusive and welcoming. How did it go bringing your music to life and how has the scene helped keep you going?
I grew up in Northern Virginia. For the first few years of Cinema Hearts, my local scene was the suburbs. That's why it was so hard for me to find bandmates and find support because sometimes the culture of D.C. doesn't quite reach out to the suburbs. I got a job at Comet Ping Pong working sound and that was my first time I was really exposed to D.C. music almost every single night. My first D.C. show was at Comet and my release show is gonna be at Comet. The thing about D.C. musicians is they've always been open to avant-garde sounds and performance art. I feel like the D.C. scene is so supportive of women in music and people of color in music. It honestly feels like family sometimes. I feel like I'm so emotional over this but I've booked shows in other cities and I've tried getting involved in other cities and I just know that, for me, Washington D.C. is the type of culture that supports artists and musicians.
Speaking of support, you've been part of a lot of charity streams. You've recorded music for fundraising compilations and participated in live shows. Are these opportunities that you tend to seek out or do they find you?
They tend to seek me out. I think the one group that I consistently volunteer with is Girls Rock! camps. I've done Girls Rock! D.C. and then I also did Girls Rock! Roanoke in Virginia. It's just a matter of scheduling and timing and being able to invest my energy but anytime that I can make the world a better place, especially through something I create, I always try to be involved with that.
You did two releases prior to this that were recorded at your school. What was that DIY experience like and how did that help give you the tools to prepare for an eventual studio recording?
I recorded those with my brother. There is no way I would've had the confidence to be with any other producer at that time of my life because Eric was really the only one who would listen to me. We complimented each other with our personalities. With our first demo album, I did not plan anything. I had the lyrics, I had the melody and the chords, but I didn't plan any of the harmonies. I did not plan any of the drum parts or the bass parts or anything like that. It was very much on the fly, kind of intuitive.
Looking back in those recordings, I'm so grateful for them but I'll hear some of the harmonies and I'm like, “Those are not in tune.” I did not practice them. The second demo album we did, we learned more. I learned I should plan what I sing ahead of time. I became a little bit better guitarist so there was more layering of guitar parts. With the most recent one, Your Ideal, I practiced so hard for it because I just knew when you're in a studio where you're paying for the time, I wanted to make sure I used all the time wisely. Bartees said I was the most organized musician he's worked with and I was honored. I was really flattered. I was like, "Cool cause I've been obsessing over this." I think the biggest takeaway I've had is that, for me personally, I love to have all the parts I can control. So for me: guitar, synthesizer and vocals. I like having those notes down but I also learned to leave some room open for experimentation, especially working with Bartees. One of the songs on the record, "Sister," I was gonna cut it because I had no idea what to do for instrumentation and I'm so happy that I gave Bartees complete freedom to make whatever sounds he wanted because it ended up being a really beautiful closing track.
Bartees came in to help produce the record and I heard that he was the one to reach out to you. How did you two first start collaborating and how did he help guide you from the live set to a polished recording?
We really just had like one phone conversation. He messaged me on Instagram and asked if I had any songs. I was like, “I do have some songs,” but I was kind of nervous cause I'd been, I was looking for a producer for a long time and I was very, very scared of presenting these songs based on beauty pageants, especially to male producers who were the only ones in my area. What was really great was, when I first talked with Bartees, I just knew that he was someone who would listen to ideas I had and respect them and not cookie cutter do things how he liked, but he would really bring this sound that I've been wanting to fruition. I sent him some example songs like artists that I really love and I remember he said, “When you sent me Dum Dumb Girls, I knew exactly what you wanted.” And I was like, that's so cool because I feel kind of dorky now that Dum Dum Girls are a little bit of an older band to reference. He taught me how to use synthesizers so now I'm obsessed with that. The thing with Bartees is I'm just so grateful he reached out to me because I felt such an imposter syndrome. I felt such a lack of confidence as a musician, even up until we were recording. Just having him believe in these songs and push me to sound more like how I wanted to sound instead of what I thought I should do. It was remarkable.
Amazing. And then speaking of like support too. A lot during the pandemic, there was a lot of like live streamings and Tiktoks and stuff. Did that kind of help you sort of like with experimentation too?
Yeah, it did, cause I had a fear of judgment. I had a fear of, “What if people don't like me? What if I make a mistake? What if people don't get it? What if people are mean to me?” Those were all so many fears so I would just not put myself out there. But then I challenged myself to make a TikTok every single day for maybe two months. Obviously not all those Tiktoks were very good because you just have to push out the videos. I had some videos where people didn't get it or they would be mean to me for whatever reason, but I became more resilient. It was also great because I've gotten so many positive things from putting myself on the internet. I've had people who leave comments and ask me questions about guitar or songwriting.
Like to me, that's so cool because, even though I've played guitar for 10 years, it's an instrument where there's a hierarchy and there's a lot of gatekeeping. So the fact that other people thought I could be the expert and help them with a question like that was so flattering to me. Just the idea that people wanted to hear these stories I had about shows or about pageants or songwriting or being in the studio because I am a born performer. I love sharing things and it's nice to have an audience in my pocket through Instagram and TikTok.
On the flip side of that, were there any artists that you turned into during this time that you learned things from?
Obviously learning from Bartees was amazing to me, especially because [when] I recorded with him I think Live Forever had been out for a month. We hadn't really seen the big impact it had yet. And then over the past couple years, just seeing the trajectory, it made me realize I wasn't too old and I wasn't in the wrong place. If I just had the songs and had the right team and kept consistent, that same kind of stuff could happen for my music so that was really cool. In terms of things I've been listening to, I got way more into hardcore and listening to things like Turnstile really inspired me. I was involved with doing social media for a D.C. punk documentary called Punk The Capital so I learned a lot about like 1980s [and] the D.C. hardcore scene. Just seeing that kind of music and what they were doing really inspired me. Over the pandemic, I think I became much more free as a live performer because I wasn't afraid to be weird or to yell. I felt like I could do what I wanted on stage.
Let's switch to the album for a bit. So Your Ideal been in the works for a few years now. How has it evolved since the first performances of the songs to what you've recorded?
I wrote "Your Ideal" after I came home from my first Miss Virginia Pageant in 2017. I was performing that song while also still doing pageants so it was ironic but I don't think it had the same energy to it that it does now. Now I'm a couple years out of competing in Miss America and I feel like I'm finally able to lose myself on stage. I know in the past, when I was still trying to be Miss America, I would hold back on a lot of things I wanted to do with Cinema Hearts because I didn't wanna be perceived as like a dangerous punk or someone who didn't care about the honor of being Miss Whatever My Title Was. What's funny to me is, now that I'm doing what I want, no one thinks that. No one thinks that I'm a real rebellious person because a lot of people know me and they understand what Cinema Hearts is.
I played at the D.C. Punk Archive at Martin Luther King Jr. Library a couple weeks ago. I was very excited but I was also really, really nervous because this, again, just that insecurity of, "Am I not punk enough? Am I gonna be what people want? Are people gonna understand what I'm doing?" One of my bandmates convinced me to do this bit where I used to wear my crown and sash when I performed with Cinema Hearts when I was a pageant title holder. I completely forgot about that. He was saying like, “Remember when you used to wear your crown [when] you did the show?” And I was like, yeah. He was like, “That was kind of cool. That was a really cool thing you used to do.” And I was like, I don't know if I wanna bring that back. I don't know if that's weird, like I can't let go or something. Then I was like, you know what, I'll do it. I'll wear the “Your Ideal” sash and I'll wear the crown from the photo shoot. I'm gonna walk out to the Miss America theme song. I'm gonna go all out. And I did it and I passed out roses to the crowd and I kind of did a performance art imitation of when the woman's crowned and she cries and walks down the runway and all that. After the show, people were really into it. People were telling me how much they loved it and that was just so validating that this obsession I've had with this iconography and that I've been using as a metaphor and as an aesthetic in my band for so long, that people… it clicks for them and they're entertained by it and they respect it and that's so cool.
You've described your first album as a coming of age and the second as letting go of naiveté. Where do you think this album is in your musical journey?
When I was writing the first two records Feels Like Forever and Burned And Burnished, I so desperately just wanted to be loved. Whether that was in a relationship or by fans or by people, I wanted to be loved and respected and I wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to be a star. And then, with "Your Ideal," I got it. I was crowned Miss Northern Virginia and then all of a sudden people started noticing me and people paid attention and people listened to me. People wanted go on dates with me and I got it, but what I realized was I was still really unhappy. I still was so addicted to this power but it felt empty to me. It felt like people only liked me when I was pretending to be the ideal, but then when I was just Caroline, I was so scared that people no longer liked me. I think that's been like my current journey, now that "Your Ideal" is coming out to the public, is I'm now seeing people love me for that but they're also starting to understand me as just Caroline the songwriter or Caroline the person who goes to shows in the D.C. area and that kind of thing. I think the idea of "Your Ideal" is when you push yourself so hard towards being that perfection and that it still can shatter you.
Another track I wanna get insight on is "Mirror." It feels very much like an oath to self of sorts. How did that track come to be?
“Mirror” is my favorite track on the album. That came about when, in 2018, I was Miss Northern Virginia. I think this might have been after I went to Miss Virginia. I remember that the woman who was Miss America at the time, she came forward and was talking about how awful her year of Miss America was. She was kind of acting like a whistleblower to try and get things to change in the organization and I just remembered feeling very validated because I also sometimes felt unhappy being a pageant title holder and also very surprised that she had the guts to come forward. So "Mirror" was not only about myself and how kind of empty it felt to be crowned a winner, but also the stories that I heard from women who made it farther than me, women who became Miss Virginia when I didn't, and were still unhappy. Women who became Miss America and were still unhappy.
And it was just that kind of question of like, we all believed so hard that this was a dream we wanted, and some of us got it, and yet it didn't satisfy. And just that sort of melancholy of like, well, what does that mean? I think “Mirror” is also about, there's like this phenomena that happens when you give up your title and you're no longer eligible for the pageant. It's such a letdown. Sometimes I wonder to myself, do I keep doing Cinema Hearts because I just crave being that star and that energy that I felt when I was doing Miss America? But I can fortunately still replicate by doing my own music. I think "Mirrors" is such a question about that and it's also about how unglamorous it is. You do a lot of driving and you talk to people who don't listen to you.
"Sister" is another one that also kind of sticks with the theme of female empowerment. I guess you can even say the whole album does. Um, but you know, you touched on, I was gonna ask about how it's an all electronic production, but you kind of touched on how it was like still being put together. Was this the last, was this an existing song or was it one that was written like towards the end of the EP?
No, it existed. I actually wrote it the same time as I wrote "Your Ideal" in 2017. Um, but like at the time it was just like an acoustic guitar song. And I was drawn to it lyrically, but like musically, it just wasn't really there for me. So that's why I'm so happy like Bartees like saw something in it and that he really like convinced me to experiment with it. I wrote "Sister" about my roommate that I had at the Miss Virginia pageant, who was a contestant who was a little older than me and it was her last year. She was just so down to earth. Like, I just remember, we were just kind of like hanging out after the Miss Virginia pageant. I think we were like eating candy or something and she goes, "So what the fuck was that?" Like, we were just kind of like stunned by like some of the results and the fact that like neither of us made it to the finals and just like, I think having her as my roommate, just kind of like, one of my favorite things was whenever like pageant girls would let their guard down and you could just be friends because I didn't grow up with sisters and I didn't really grow up having a lot of friends who were girls. I wanted so badly to kind of have that like sorority energy. And I got that through Miss America and Miss Virginia. "Sister" was also about my best friend. I went and visited the beach with her, like the week after I did the Miss Virginia pageant, and that was also the first time I had ever like spent almost every day like with a friend and with a friend who was a girl. And I mean, again, I used to feel so uptight about like presenting myself a certain way and being with her kinda like forced me to let my guard down and relax and be myself and be natural and that it was all okay. Like, she didn't love me any less because I didn't wear makeup or something. I'm really grateful for my friends in my life who are women.
Oh, I love that. All right. So I've got two final questions and I'll let you go enjoy your Friday. Um, but speaking like sisters and stuff, I really wanna talk about the Leesta Vall Recordings. Your music is obviously very influenced by vintage girl groups and it's fitting that you were able to record with the lathe machine. Is that how you say it? Was there anything about that experience that surprised you and is this something you think you might do again?
I think it is. I think the thing that surprised me, I mean, I'm coming back to the theme of perfection, but when we were doing that session, it's like, if I made a mistake, like it was cut to the record, like there was actually the very first song I did. And, you know, good thing that like a close friend of mine is the one who got this record. I like messed up every single time that like I had to do like a certain chord change every single time I bombed it. But like, what I realized was like, I just had to relax into it and kind of trust that I know what I'm doing. I used to be so anxious anytime I would record live or play a show live that I would like mess up a certain guitar solo or something like that. And I've really learned that, if I practice enough on my own time, and then during the moment just trust that I know what's going on, it's fine. And it's also just made it easier when I do make mistakes to recover. And with the Leesta Vall sessions, it was also very interesting to play like the same songs over and over again. And just kind of like seeing like different interpretations I would have on some of these songs, like I've been doing them for years and it was really nice to know that like some listeners like picked songs in my catalog. I was like, whoa, you guys are picking that one? Like, all right.
And lastly, you had a new year's resolution to utilize affirmations every day. How has that gone?
Actually, really well! I brought up affirmations at Girls Rock yesterday and today and I think that has absolutely given me more confidence. I usually say affirmations to myself, like when I'm about to go on stage and like, as I'm telling my campers, they have to be kind of ridiculous. You have to be a little bit delusional. So like, one of the ones I'll do is like, "I'm the greatest star. Everybody loves me." You know, just something like wacky like that. "I'm the best guitar player." Things like that because, you know, the reality is there's probably people in that audience who do believe that, who do believe like you are the greatest star or you are the best thing that they've ever seen. So I think it's, I used to feel so much shame around this sort of like diva personality that I have, but then I was told like, you know, a lot of the public, we love divas because not everyone is so confident or has the space or the power to be able to assert that kind of dominance. So given a safe space, like a concert, where you *can* have that personality, like you might as well go all out. So I really relish that now.
