By Sonia Schnee | Posted Saturday, December 18, 2021
Megasparkle, the kickass all-female band from Maplewood, NJ, hasn’t let the pandemic slow them down. Delivering a mix of indie, post-punk, pop-rock deliciousness, Thea Kearney (lead guitar, vocals), Nancy Cook (guitar, vocals), Kristy Ranieri (bass), and CJ Jeiven (Drums) released their first 5-song E.P, “Swirling Glitter”, back in February 2021. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Thea and Nancy about their pandemic-related musical adventures in our interview below.
What are your names, where are you from, and what do you do?
NANCY COOK: I’m Nancy Cook and I live in Maplewood, N.J. I grew up in Glen Ridge next to Montclair about 20 minutes away from here.
I’ve always been creative. Right now, I am mainly making art, music and selling vintage clothing. I started my business, Crash Doll Vintage, in 2020. I make textile art, installation art and sew & knit. I sometimes paint and use pastels.
Before the pandemic, I was working for Parcel in Montclair and a co-op in town called Maplewood Mercantile. I was also their event planner and planned pop ups, music shows, art shows, tastings etc. I still continue to put on music shows.
THEA KEARNEY: Well, she's a really amazing seamstress. Amazing. Really, like a ninja on the sewing machine. I always see her posting pictures like, "Oh, I just whipped up this dress last night." I'm like, "Oh my God! I can sew a pillow, that's about it.”
NANCY COOK: Yes! I sew dresses and clothes! I had a children’s clothing line for several years called Wool and Violets. Nowadays, I mostly make knitwear under that name and recently created a capsule collection for Hearth Co. in Australia
I’m very much into tactile things. Guitar fits right in. I play guitar and sing as well. I also play bass guitar which I just picked up last year. As a child I played piano and flute. I picked up the guitar in 2018 at the same time as joining a band with Thea. She was like…‘Let’s start a band’ and I said ‘OK’ and so I started taking lessons. I had always wanted to play guitar!
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah! I mean, you're a multi-tasker.
Left to right: Thea Kearney, Nancy Cook, and Kristy Ranieri of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
Are you originally from New Jersey or the surrounding area?
THEA KEARNEY: I'm not originally from New Jersey. I'm actually from Brooklyn, although I was born in Washington, D.C. I moved to Brooklyn when I was six months old. I identify with New York City. I'm pretty much a New York City person. Although, it's funny. My mother is from New Jersey and kind of a funny story because she always tried so hard to get out of New Jersey. She's a writer and went to college and all that. She spent so much time getting away from the suburban provincial... She always kind of was like (scoffs) "Oh, New Jersey." We would only go back to visit the relatives, and so I was such a city person, I was like, "I am never moving to New Jersey, over my dead body."
NANCY COOK: I said I was never moving back to the suburbs either!
THEA KEARNEY: It's so funny because all my relatives moved to other parts of the country, then I discovered New Jersey again. I looked at places in Rockland County, in upstate New York, and they were really expensive and not that nice, and there was a big highway that was always in everyone's backyard. Then I found out about Maplewood. I went and I fell instantly in love with it. I was like, "These beautiful houses and nature! This is New Jersey?!" and one thing led to another, and I moved here with my husband. I've been living in New Jersey for about 12 years now with my family.
Left to right: Kristy Ranieri, Thea Kearney, and Nancy Cook of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
Tell me about your creative background.
THEA KEARNEY: I'm like Nancy. I do way too many things. Not so much with the sewing, but I have a background in graphic design. I have two college degrees in art, visual arts, a Bachelor's of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts. I went to the School of Visual Arts and was one of the first people to ever learn about computer graphics. I would say it was like the Stone Ages just because it was a lot harder to do stuff than it is now. Now you just press two buttons and it's done, whereas you had to follow like a logbook of steps to get anything accomplished with the graphics back in the day. I had done that for a long time. Website design. I used to design CDs, logos, and then I got kind of tired of that, so I started a face painting business called Fifi’s Face Painting, but the pandemic kind of put an end to that and I just sold the business this year.
I've been doing music my whole life, since I was really young, playing various instruments -- violin, piano, drums, guitar -- but I decided when I was a teenager that I would just basically stick with the guitar, so that's my main instrument. Then I started singing as well as songwriting, and that's what we've been doing in Megasparkle.
Left to right: Thea Kearney, Kristy Ranieri, and Nancy Cook of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
Do you come from musical families?
NANCY COOK: As far as music, there’s not really anyone in my immediate family that’s musically inclined though one of my Uncles played guitar.
My Dad instilled a love of classical music in me. He used to take me to classical concerts as a child. That and learning to play the piano. My Aunt Lillian used to take me to NYC to see Mostly Mozart. She sang in a trio in the 1940’s on the radio. I guess you could say I’m a trailblazer in my family. At 12 I declared, I wanted to be a singer and my Dad said ‘No, absolutely not, you’re not good enough’ so ha, I am got to do that and I have songs now. He also told me I couldn’t do art and fashion and I’m doing that as well. So, I guess I burst his bubble! Ha!
THEA KEARNEY: So have you played Megasparkle for him?
NANCY COOK: I did play one or two songs for him, but he hasn't heard all of them yet. I should have my family sit down and listen to Megasparkle. Maybe next time we have a holiday gathering and we can all be together, I can play Megasparkle for everybody.
THEA KEARNEY: That would be cool. I'd like to hear what they have to say.
My mother was a jazz singer. She's more of a poet and an award-winning published author of more than 18 books, but she's also written a few songs. My father played the flute for a while and the recorder, but he's one of those people who has the radio on 24/7, so since I was a little kid, he would have the classical music station on all the time, so I was listening to that since I came out of the womb, basically. Even though I'm a rocker, I still kind of love classical music, too.
NANCY COOK: Wow. We never actually knew that about each other!
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah! We don't talk about all these things. My mom sings, and she also had a harp that she used to play. She's also a very creative person. She's done all kinds of stuff, too. I have some cousins who play music, but nobody famous or professional, as far as I know.
It's funny, actually, when Nancy said that about her dad, I was like, "My mom does not like the kind of music that I like," and I feel like there's a little rebelliousness going on here with, "Well, this is what WE like." You know?
NANCY COOK: My parents never liked the music I listened to. My Dad hated certain bands and songs and if he didn’t like it, I would sometimes play it louder like The Smiths, The Cure, Sex Pistols, The Clash etc. He hated hardcore the most. I would play it so loud the chandelier would be shaking downstairs. I still like it really loud. I get into trouble now for playing the music too loud in the car when I pull in and out of the driveway.
THEA KEARNEY: It's funny because we have kids now, and I don't know if this is what happens with you, Nancy, but our kids are like, "We don't want to listen to that loud rock music, turn it down!" They want to hear this weird electronic stuff. Some of it I actually like, but some of it is like, well, there's no melody. There's no real instruments. I'm just so used to... I think Nancy would probably say the same thing. We just grew up listening to live musicians playing live instruments, so that's what we tend to gravitate towards.
For first-time listeners, how would you describe the sound of your album, and who are your personal musical influences? Who did you draw inspiration from?
NANCY COOK: That’s a really hard question because I have so many musical heroes and people I look up to, but I think with this project, in particular, I think we were kind of going for... Sonia mentioned earlier about the 70s, that we kind of have a 70s influence. I kind of think that we were kind of thinking, or at least maybe I was thinking, about The Runaways and Blondie and just kind of like that old school beginning, powerful female sound and rock and roll, but with kind of a punk and indie aspect to it. A little bit less pop-y than Blondie and Joan.
I also really love punk and a lot of the ‘90s bands, so I was probably thinking about that. A lot of the music that came out of Washington D.C. like Slant 6 and bands from Olympia and NY…
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah, we're both like punk rockers, right?
NANCY COOK: Yeah! I mean, I love all the punk rock. I love Agnostic Front. Thea and I were like, "We should write a song that kind of sounds a little like an Agnostic Front song” and we could totally do that, but I wasn’t looking to make a sound that came from men. I was thinking more about women in this project.
THEA KEARNEY: I'm actually glad you went first because I completely forgot where my inspiration was in the beginning for this whole idea of starting a band that would be an all-female band.
I guess part of it was the desire to... because I've been in other bands before, and I was in a local Maplewood band called Dollar Store Riot with all guys that I played in for about six years, and then I decided that it was just time for me to close that chapter of my life, and so I'd always wanted to have an all-female band.
I'd had a couple of false starts in the past when I was still living in the city, and I have a friend that I went to high school with, actually, which you may have heard of, Sindi B.. She was in this band called The Lunachicks. We hung out in the NYHC, the New York hardcore scene when it first started in about ‘81-84. Our misspent youth was spent doing that and we both bought our first electric guitars at the same time. I was the goody-two-shoes. I went off to college and just did what was expected of me and she didn't. She quit, dropped out of college, and formed this band. I always wanted to do the same thing, and so I was just like,"Well, Nancy, why don't we just try starting an all-female band? I've always wanted to have an all-female band. Let's just have a go for fun."
At the beginning, it was just the two of us, and then we started writing together, and then eventually we found the drummer, CJ, and then we found Kristy.
It was just all those influences from The Donnas, The Ramones, all the punk rock I listened to, DISCHORD, all of that stuff. The Flex Your Head album, I still have. That was on permanent rotation when I was a teenager. All of that. Then all the newer stuff, too, became an influence. One of the songs has kind of a My Bloody Valentine influence.
I feel like every song on this album is a little different. We didn't really set out to have a particular sound on every one. It was just like, "Let's write a song." One song was a Ramones kind of idea that I had that we put lyrics to, and then another one was like, "Let's just write a shoegaze song." So we kind of just went in that direction.
NANCY COOK: One has kind of like a Juliana Hatfield feel. It's got a totally different vibe, too. They all have a different vibe.
We still haven't covered all our bases. We could just keep going, with all the different sounds that we like. We actually have on our Spotify a mixtape of bands that we like and the influences.
We also worked on some covers and things that we liked, like the White Stripes was one of them that we liked, and we were working on a cover of that song, and who else were we covering?
THEA KEARNEY: Social Distortion and Ex Hex.
NANCY COOK: Oh yeah, I love Mary Timony. I just watched her live performance at St. Marks. It was amazing. She's so talented. She's definitely an influence for me, for sure.
You mentioned a little bit about your creative process. For the songs on your album, did you start with the music, the melody, the lyrics?
NANCY COOK: For "Pretty Dresses," I had a lot of the melody written, and then I wrote the lyrics, Thea added more lyrics and arrangements, and then we put it together. All the songs have their own story.
"Everybody Wants to Be a Rock Star" started with the answering machine message that starts the song. It comes from a Village Voice ad that someone answered when Thea was looking for musicians, and so that was the starting point for that song.
"Iridescent Sparks" is about text messaging. That's such a big part of our culture now and just how people communicate mostly.
The other one, the shoegaze one, "Swirling Rose Hips Tea," My Bloody Valentine was the influence for that.
The last one, "Piece of Cake," is sort of, everyone wants to get a piece of cake and eat it, too. It's like, “I want to have it all. Why can't I have it all? Let's try to have it all!” You know? So, the surprise inside is like the Mardi Gras cake that you break up and there's supposed to be a little toy in the cake. It's like, "Ooh, a little surprise!"
THEA KEARNEY: You know, it's funny, it wasn't supposed to be about cake. That became the metaphor because we were writing it right around Mardi Gras time, and we were talking about how we should really write a song, like a hardcore song, like Agnostic Front or something, and it didn't really come out like that in the end, but it came out to be something different, but it started from this discussion. We would just sit down and brainstorm this idea and write all these ideas down and then condense it into a song, because, as you know, you can't put everything in one song.
NANCY COOK: Yeah. Some of our notes for our songs are really amusing. We should dig those up! They were really funny.
Listen to Megasparkle’s debut EP “Swirling Glitter” on Bandcamp, Spotify, and other streaming services. Released on Sea Dragon Records.
Where did you record your album? Who did you record with? What was that process like?
THEA KEARNEY: Originally, we were getting ready to play a show in June (2020), a live show. We had been practicing. We had a bunch of covers and originals. At that point, we had enough to do a show, and so we were like, “Yeah, let's just play a little local show” because Nancy likes to book a lot of local bands, and so we were getting ready for that, and it's supposed to be in June, and this was like February of 2020 and then, obviously, the pandemic put a lid on that, and then we were like, "Oh, what are we going to do?" and so I suggested, "Instead of doing a show, why don't we make an EP?"
I thought, "We'll just find a studio, we'll go and get somebody to do that." I called a few places and they're like, "Well, I don't know if we can help you, but maybe, but we’re not sure what's going to happen" because it was literally a couple of weeks before they declared it a global pandemic and everything just was like dominoes falling. It's like, everything is closing and then that's it, and so then I was like, "Oh, OK, what are we going to do?"
In all my years of doing music, I had dabbled in mixing before. I had done Pro Tools and recording. I was a little rusty, but I was like, "Well, you know, I think I can figure it out." We didn't have anybody to help us. We didn't really have a lot of money to be forking out either, and everything was closed, so what are we going to do? So, I was like, "We'll just record from home, and we can figure out what equipment we need."
I spoke to Kristy (Ranieri), and we originally thought we were going to use electronic drums because CJ had some electronic drums at home. So, we tried with that. We were recording the guitars and the vocals, and it was going pretty well, but then we got to the point where we figured out how to do the electronic drums and she sent us the recording and we were like, "No, the symbols just sound... It just didn't sound good." It was like, "No, this isn't going to work."
So, we have a local person that we work with, Laughing Boys Recording's Tom Lucas. He's really great. A lot of people record with him. We didn't think he was open, but then we said, "Well, what if it was just CJ?" CJ went in with a mask and they sanitized everything, and she just went in by herself to do the drums. At first, she was kind of nervous about the whole idea, but then she said she would do it, and so she went in and recorded. I prepared all the tracks for her and sent them to Tom, and then she went in.
We thought it was going to take, like, two days or something. She was just so amazing, she did all five songs in one day. I was like, "Wow!" Then Tom Lucas sent me the tracks and then we just continued on from there. We did a back and forth with GarageBand and Logic. Kristy and Nancy bought an interface so that they could literally record on their iPhones, so they actually recorded the songs on their iPhones.
NANCY COOK: Yeah, Kristy and I recorded on our iPhones. It’s remarkable and we should be really proud of it!
THEA KEARNEY: It was pretty amazing. I would send them the tracks through iCloud, put the tracks in GarageBand, give them a track to record to, and then they would record to that, send it back to me, and then I would combine everything in Logic and record my parts in there, line it all up, and then mix it. It was pretty daunting. I actually got somebody else to help us a little bit -- a guy out in California, Mike from MooseCat Recording. They have a virtual studio, and they were just getting started with that because of the pandemic. I guess they used to do everything in-person but because they're out in Los Angeles and they needed to keep things running, they started offering virtual services. So I was like, "Oh, great!" So they helped with some of the mixing on a couple of the songs, but most of them I did all the mixing on, so I learned a lot this year -- a whole lot. I think we all learned a lot.
NANCY COOK: She worked very hard!
THEA KEARNEY: I mean, it was pretty daunting, but, oh my God, we did it! We all figured it out. Nancy and Kristy were like, "I don't know how to record on my phone," but with my help, they figured it out and they did it.
“A year ago today we sent our first single ‘Pretty Dresses’ off to CD baby. Here Nancy and Thea are after practice in the garage hugging their guitars to stay warm after a bitterly cold band practice in the garage in November 2019.” — Megasparkle Facebook page
NANCY COOK: Yeah, and Thea went in her closet to sing vocals, and I went in my garage. I actually have a vocal booth in my garage. So I went into my garage, and it was kind of fun. I got a little kid lawn chair, my microphone, and sang away, too.
THEA KEARNEY: Whatever it takes, right? I mean, we had to really be creative.
NANCY COOK: I've always liked the DIY approach. I'm always DIY.
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah, me too. It's to a fault, though, because sometimes it's exhausting doing everything yourself.
NANCY COOK: Well, Thea just cut her hair very well. DIY haircut.
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah, that's another story. Ha!
There's a lot to be said for doing things yourself. You learn so much from doing things yourself. Like I learned a lot about haircutting, cutting my own hair. So yeah, it's amazing.
Is there anyone who you'd like to give a shout out to, whether it's other artists or bands, venues, favorite restaurants that are closed, businesses, or anyone who you think deserves some attention during this unusual time?
NANCY COOK: I think we should give a shout-out to Michelle from Bone Pool Radio, who is one of our friends. She has a radio station in town. She would be an amazing person for you to interview. She's awesome. She always wanted a radio station, and I don't know exactly what year it started, I want to say it was 2018, and she and a few other partners started it. A lot of the people in town including Thea's husband DJ for it, and they pre-record their shows and she broadcasts them. There's a bunch of DJs in town and it was bought by iHeartRadio, and yeah, it's been a really amazing ride for her. So that's my shout-out.
THEA KEARNEY: That’s good that you did that because I was going to shout-out one of the DJs, Donny Levit, because he was the first one to premiere a Megasparkle song on the radio. So I want to shout out to him and, obviously, all the other DJs on Bone Pool Radio. I don't know if they've played our music, but I'll give a shout-out to them as well!
NANCY COOK: Paul played "Pretty Dresses." Donny played a couple of them.
THEA KEARNEY: Also, Tom Lucas from Laughing Boys Recording. He really gave us a lot of helpful feedback and guidance, especially with recording the drum parts and how to get that done, so shout-out to him.
And then shout-out to MooseCat Recording.
NANCY COOK: And our bandmates who aren't here!
THEA KEARNEY: Of course our bandmates, for being willing to do all this from home, being willing to try that out and do that.
NANCY COOK: We have a lot of great local businesses to shout-out.
THEA KEARNEY: All the local businesses. There's been so many great supportive local places, like Rent Party. We never got to play Rent Party, but they've always been really supportive of local musicians. They do a lot of help for the community. They used to put on live shows with local bands and also international traveling acts and raise money for food-insecure families. So they're a really great organization here. And then The Woodland, they have a lot of shows.
NANCY COOK: The Woodland and Wyoming Club.
I used to do a lot of shows at Maplewood Mercantile when I worked there and was the Event Planner, so we can shout-out them because they're really very supportive of the music community.
THEA KEARNEY: All the teachers that ever taught me how to play, helped me play guitar, and my vocal teacher, Tim Welch. I'll give a shout-out to him. He's an excellent vocal teacher. He's got a local studio here in Maplewood. I think he's got franchises now. He's a really, really excellent teacher. Who else can we shout-out?
NANCY COOK: We could shout-out you, Thea, for doing all that hard work mixing! Let's give credit where credit's due, right?
THEA KEARNEY: Thank you to everybody.
NANCY COOK: Thank you to all of our supporters and our friends.
THEA KEARNEY: Thank you to everyone I've ever met or ever known in my entire life.
NANCY COOK: Ha!
THEA KEARNEY: And Mom and Dad, of course.
Finally, where/how can people connect with you?
THEA KEARNEY: We're available on all streaming platforms -- Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora. We have a Spotify playlist. Plus, we have a website. It's megasparkleband.com. Bandcamp, Instagram, Facebook. We also have some T-shirts for sale on Bandcamp.
NANCY COOK: We also had a poster that showcases our band at i19gallery.com.
It was an online gallery. They started doing art shows when the pandemic hit, and we decided that we would pass around this old red phone of mine that I've had for years. It was a promo for "Everybody Wants to Be a Rock Star" because that's the starting point, with the answering machine message. We all took pictures of us with the phone -- they look like they're in slides -- and then the red telephone cord just slashes through the whole collage, which is kind of like the pandemic interfering with our lives. Actually, I really love it. I think it came out really good.
THEA KEARNEY: It was cool because we kind of combined... It was like a multipurpose thing because Nancy and I, we originally met because we both have backgrounds in multiple artistic areas, like visual arts and music. There was a call for art made during COVID, by the organization Good Crowd Events. I was like, hey, we were already doing the phone idea for what was going to be the cover for "Everybody Wants to Be a Rock Star." We designed all of the song covers. We did all those ourselves back and forth. I did a couple of the covers, Nancy designed a couple of those, and one of them was this idea that Nancy actually had the phone and she said, "Well, why don’t we take pictures with this?" and I was like, "Well, why don't we enter it in this art show and it will serve two purposes? It'll be for the cover and it'll be for this collage."
It was during the pandemic, and so we had to clean the phone off and then drop it at one person's house, and then they would clean it off and take photos and then drop it at the next person's house, and that's how we got all the photographs. It was like, you know, this is how we communicate during a pandemic — passing the phone around, and also we can only communicate on the phone. So, it was like the whole concept of that just kind of came together really well.
“Call Me!” Featured in www.i19gallery.com’s online art exhibition, ARTdemic.
Art Concept: Nancy Cook, Thea Kearney
Photography: Nancy Cook, CJ Jeiven, Thea Kearney, Kristy Ranieri
Photo Editing: Thea Kearney