Wichita band The Velvet Fever will celebrate the arrival of its new recording, “Freewriter,” on Saturday with a listening session at Spektrum Muzik in Delano from 5 to 6 p.m. The trio will also perform at Norton’s Brewing Company on Saturday, Aug. 22, from 4:30 to 5 p.m. as part of Forever Fest.
Vocalist and guitarist Jason Hendry and drummer Katie Hendry (the group is rounded out by bassist Brian Bontrager) recently spoke about the new recording’s title song.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did “Freewriter” become the title track for this release? Because I feel like usually a title piece is meant to guide the listener in a specific direction or inform our understanding of the songs in a collection.
Jason Hendry: We were actually wrestling with what we wanted to call this collection of songs. Brian had a picture, and he was just thinking along the lines of a single. “Hey, let’s release a single on streaming services.” He gave me the artwork with “Freewriter” and I [thought], “Let’s just call the album that.” It’s not exactly what we would do in the magic- or the music-making world, where you would make that your single release, but I thought, “It relates with the album, I like that song. Let’s go with that.”
The song itself is a play on The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.” I think I was thinking about a paperback. It’s kind of a cheap book. It may not even be that truthful, and I was taking that with life and saying, “Let’s live life in truth.” It’s a dual thing: You see writing and making it truthful, but then also you see the word “love” and making that truthful. So that’s the idea: Living not cheaply, being factual in what you do and being honest. Let’s not make a cheap book. Let’s make it real.
Katie, you designed some of the drum parts on that tune, “Freewriter,” to mimic a typewriter?
Katie Hendry: Well, I used to play drums at the church we went to. We went to the Vineyard. I play hand percussion and they had some timbales, so I bought timbale drumsticks. One of my tricks is to have a whole bunch of different types of sticks to play with, to make things sound differently, differentiate the sound. So I had these timbale sticks and, I don’t know, the thinness of the instrument, tapping … I was thinking about people’s fingers tapping on the plastic and the metal of the typewriter, and there’s a point in the song, I don’t know if you call it a breakdown. Brian’s doing something and I visualize in my mind sometimes when I’m playing.
JH: [Sings the part.]
KH: Yeah, that part. And I’m just really picturing someone just getting into what they’re writing and then they hit that [mechanism], I don’t even know what it’s called, on the side [of a typewriter]. You’re finished with your sentence, with your line, and you’re like, “Ching!” and you hit the thing?
You have this event coming up at Spektrum Muzik where people will get to hang out with you and get to listen to the entire record together.
I’m still trying to get back to the way that I used to listen to music. I used to purchase an album and listen to it from first song to last song. I don’t do that anymore. I know, for myself, that I’m trying to get back to that. So I feel that trying to get back into the physical form of music, that helps introduce that back into other people’s lives.
