Walking Down Memory Lane With Alix Page
I need to address this right away - I went to high school with Alix Page. Not only did we attend the same school, but I would also go so far as to say that Alix and I were friends. Alix and I attended an arts high school in Orange County, California. The school was carved into the middle of Santa Ana, a tall, nasally orange building hammered into the neighborhood almost as if to say “Aren’t I supposed to be here?”
Alix was a music student in a program formerly known as Commercial Music, now Popular Music. I always saw Alix as a sweet deer amongst the ruckus of her conservatory mates. I would always look forward to the way her warm timbre would butter itself across the stage. She sucks up all the air in the room just to give it back to you wrapped in a lace ribbon and sealed with a soft peck of a cheek. I sat down with Alix to talk about her sophomore EP, Goose, but rather it turned into two friends marching down memory lane together, hand in hand.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Okay this is going to be random, but I want to start this by asking if you remember “Ochella.”
Alix mouth drops and I know that I’ve ignited something deep in the memory bank. For context, Ochella was our high school’s cheeky take on Coachella. Student bands would get the opportunity to play on a few stages set up around campus. It wasn’t cool, nor was it lame though.
[ALIX:] Dude. I literally forgot. That just sent a shiver down my spine.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Okay honestly that’s basically all I wanted to say about that because I remembered it as I was prepping for this interview with you. Can I tell you that my core memory of you is watching you and the other juniors prance around the senior wall at lunch. There was just a group of you guys that wanted to hang out there with us and I knew that I was supposed to be bitter about that, but I wasn’t because I had watched you sing and I knew how talented you were, and my immature high school brain was like, “Okay, she can stay.”
[ALIX:] Oh my god.
[UNPUBLISHED:] I know, and as I’m about to graduate college, I really can’t stop thinking about high school and how weird and special our experience was. I really like to be earnest about my teen years. I feel like you’re the same. All this to say, I see that Andrew Pham and Caleb Tischbern are a part of your touring band and every time I see content of the three of you my heart truly flutters.
[ALIX:] Going to a school like ours impacted me in like, every way possible. I also just think that, now having studied music in college, it’s strange like - I feel as if I have already met all the people I want and need to meet at [REDACTED ARTS SCHOOL NAME]. I actually met my producer Brett through our old program director. It was really just me submitting songs to our program’s Original Song Showcase and then my director connecting Brett and I. I ended up recording “Stripes” with Brett and that’s literally how everything started.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Oh that is so delicious and sweet.
[ALIX:] Right? And then I just called up Andrew while he was also at USC, and asked if he wanted to play on the song. I think it’s just that I also just want to keep my friends involved as much as possible. I grew up in a non-musical family so I never saw performing as fun or interesting to me but when I had a band, and when the band is entirely made up of my friends, I was like, “Oh, THIS is fun. When I’m having fun on stage with my friends.” Even though I’m a solo artist, I still consider myself, Andrew, and Caleb as a band. We mesh so well and there was one show in Madison, Wisconsin a few weeks ago where we had tech issues so we had to do a stripped-back show. It reminded me of when we used to play Anaheim Packing House. The root of so many things - the way I play music, the way I think about people comes a lot from our school. I just want to hang out with my friends. I want us to be this big happy family all the time doing the things we love.
At this point, I screamed into the camera in delight at the recollection of this memory. Every student band at our school would play at this meat packing house turned artisanal food hall called the Anaheim Packing House. Every other weekend during the spring and summer, you would pay for an overpriced grilled cheese and boba tea and just hope that you would get to dance to your friends busking to a cover of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” by Franki Valli. Music was something that would never fail to bring us together - which is something I feel viscerally while speaking with Alix.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you remember what you first sang at [NAME OF REDACTED ARTS SCHOOL]?
[ALIX:] Dude. I sang “It’s Only Rock n’ Roll (But I Like It)” by The Rolling Stones. It’s funny you bring this up because Caleb and I were in the American Airlines Lounge together.
Alix starts to laugh and I wonder if she’s embarrassed or just in awe at her situation.
[ALIX:] [cont.] And Caleb was like, “It’s amazing we’re here right now because I remember at our first show my parents were like, ‘She’s so good! But she’s so nervous!’” And they were right. I barely moved and Caleb said that he knew that I was a songwriter and knew that I would grow into something and now here we are.
[UNPUBLISHED:] It’s so crazy thinking about you guys as a unit, but I’m also so encouraged by your speed and commitment to becoming your own artist. I want to ask about Goose now, and what the process has been like moving from freshman to sophomore status. How is Goose different from Old News?
[ALIX:] I wrote Old News and “True + Honest” when I was 16, but I wrote the album when I was 18. I recorded them the summer I was 19. The year between Old News and Goose was my first semester at college, and then the Gracie tour and Europe, like so much happened and everything that had to happen, happened. The transition from first to second project happened naturally, which I am thankful for. The jump from 19 to 20 was huge for me. I was gone for like 2.5 months on tour. I kinda just fell into writing older-sounding songs. Sonically, my taste has changed a lot from the past project. I got really into artists like Alex G, Slow Pulp, and Big Thief. That organic-sounding, heavy, band music really struck me. “Toothache” is that. “Toothache” is the weird one.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Can you choose a favorite track?
[ALIX:] It changes all the time. I have so many fond memories for each song so each song is marked with a timestamp from different experiences and feelings.
[UNPUBLISHED:] I like to think that I can always feel the value of someone’s work depending on how much of their person they put into it, you know what I mean? All your work is undeniably personal. I like that your projects are like diaries, each song like a journal entry kind of. My favorite song of yours is “Frank.”
[ALIX:] Oh my god thank you. I love that you love “Frank.”
[UNPUBLISHED:] Where are you writing normally? Do you have a process?
[ALIX:] Anywhere really. Like the floor of my bedroom, my house. I take a lot from my musical influences when I write songs. Like I listen to “Melodrama” by Lorde a lot, and I always used to skip “Liability (Reprise),” and I remember I was on a plane and I finally listened to it and I was like, “This is incredible.” So “Toothache,” for example, became a version of “Pulling Teeth (Reprise).” It’s so stupid, but I like being specific. “How Could I” was a title I just always had for a while. “June Gloom” is inspired a lot by “Overkill” by Holly Humberstone.
I leave Alix with my own well wishes for her and her career. We talk about the next time we might see each other - at our mutual friend Claire’s house for a summer barbecue, or maybe the next gig that her and the guys book together. Either way, Alix and I are connected through our early ambitions for creativity, and knowing someone before they were someone, and watching the way they handle being someone - means something to me.
