Palehound
⤏ ELLEN KEMPNER IN CONVERSATION WITH FAYE ORLOVE
⤏ PHOTOS BY GRACE PICKERING | MAKE-UP BY CHRISTINA HARPER | STYLING BY KRISSIE TORGERSON
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2019
Ellen has perfect skin which isn’t fair because she is also the greatest guitar player I’ve ever heard. I’d really rather it be one or the other. Plus, her hair dries in soft waves, her voice is an impossible whisper, and she is so funny she once made me pee myself at Girls Rock Camp. I called her as she and her partner Ari were driving from Boston to take a look at apartments. They’re moving together to New York this fall, but really their home is with each other. That’s what’s most clear. It’s hard to talk about Ellen without mention of Ari — her partner who recently came out as transgender. The transition was documented through Ellen’s writing on her newest record “Black Friday” alongside her refreshing thoughts on bodies, boy bands, and staying busy.
FAYE: I just read through your like entire Reddit AMA. You have so many fans. And Cinnamon has 4 million listens on Spotify!
ELLEN: It’s put in Spotify radio stations. I’ve had friends who have been having sex and then that song comes on. [Both laugh]
F: What is your take on like Spotify and the Spotify algorithm? What’s a better format that benefits musicians more than it does brands and corporations?
E: I don’t know, a lot of people would probably disagree with me on this, but I actually think the format is fine. It’s just the amount that they’re paying people that’s not fine. I have a Spotify for artists app and it shows me how many plays I get a year, and at the end of last year, I looked at how many total plays I had on Spotify, and if I got even a penny or half a penny per play, it would be like if I worked full time minimum wage.
F: Whoa. So what is the rate right now? It’s like a tenth of a cent, right?
E: It’s literally less than that. It’s so fucked up. I mean if musicians made a penny per play then we’d all be like —
F: Able to survive?
E: Yeah. I have like so many friends — musician friends — that are just uninsured.
F: I like how like the narrative has totally shifted from like being rich to just straight up having health insurance. Like, that’s the peak of like life stability.
E: Even a tenth of a cent would be better than what they’re giving us. But there’s so much that’s very helpful about Spotify, which is that if the algorithm works in your favor, a lot more people will discover you, and then they’ll buy tickets to your show. That’s the whole thing with the Internet in general. It’s kind of robbed us of opportunities of making money off of recording. But it’s also like, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get my name out the way that I did without it. It’s this horrible double-edged sword. It should work for everyone, but the higher-ups don’t want to pay us. So that’s the problem.
F: I feel redundant because I know you’ve talked about the song “Aaron” in every interview you’ve done, but it’s my favorite song on the album and it makes me happy and sad and I don’t usually feel anything. How has it been being with someone transitioning? What was that first conversation like?
E: It’s been only good, you know. Because the happier that Ari is as a person, the happier that I am. I wrote the song after he came out to me, and it was before he had come out to other people, so the song is basically about that period of time. That period of transition, where I was like, how do I get you to show the world who you really are? It was a really beautiful year. It was definitely a hard year, too. That’s a huge thing for him to have to navigate. And I definitely did a lot of learning on how to support him the best that I could. But yeah, every day I love him more and more. And I truly mean that. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m answering the question.
F: You are. I’m like, crying.
E: I wrote the song and then I played it for him. And then we had a bunch of conversations after that about how comfortable he was with me releasing a song because obviously I just wanted him to be comfortable. It’s a whole level of me exposing his transition in a way that we definitely did a lot of talking about. By the time I pieced the album together, he was in a much better place, and definitely very supportive of having the song out there.
F: That’s awesome. I’m so proud of him. And when you and Ari decided to move, was it always to New York or did you talk about other options?
E: We definitely talked about L.A., but we just can’t make it happen right now. It’s too far, you know, too big of a move. Mainly, I think we wanted to be in a place where we both felt challenged and stimulated and where we could both find more work in music.
F: How do your parents feel about you being an artíste? Do they want you to stop and be a lawyer or a doctor?
E: They’re very supportive. I would probably kill people if I was a doctor, they definitely don’t want that. My dad grew up playing music and played in a lot of bands and he still plays. So when I started making shit happen with Palehound, he fucking loved it. We sold out New York for the first time a couple of weeks ago which was really cool and he was beside himself. He was more excited about it than I was.
F: I was so upset when we were doing your photoshoot and you had said it was the first time! You related it to people not wanting to dress you because you’re not an off-the-rack size. Have you found that that’s been an issue?
E: It’s not like I ask for opportunities and get turned down. You know, that’s not what I’m doing, but it’s more like, I’m never offered things that I see. I’ve always dreamed of being styled and photographed in some way because, you know, I’m on Instagram, and I see all my peers taking cool pictures in these beautiful clothes for these cool magazines. I definitely have a bit of FOMO. There are times when I’ll lock down a really big feature and they’ll just decide to use my press photo. But I’ll look at another feature that came out alongside and they do a whole photoshoot. And I think a lot of it has to do with my size, and I feel like the clothes that brands send don’t exist in my size. You know what I mean? So it kind of is, you know, discouraging.
F: I feel naive for not making size inclusivity a bigger pillar in my life, and Junior High’s life. Honestly it wasn’t until Lynn was like, “Put a fat person on the cover” and until you were like, “People don’t want to dress me” that I really thought about it. I’ve confronted a lot of my privileges, but not that one. I’m really trying to learn and do better.
E: You’re not too late or anything! I think that you having conversations and thinking about it now is great. A lot of people hear about it and just don’t do anything, you know. Like huge publications don’t do anything.
“...as much as I wish I could sit back and be like, “I don’t care about that shit,” that’d be lying. You know?”
F: Well, I’m just grateful for the conversation.
E: I’m grateful for the conversation, too. I feel like fashion and rock music have always gone hand in hand. They’re so codependent. So, as much as I wish I could sit back and be like, “I don’t care about that shit,” that’d be lying. You know?
F: Yeah, totally. It kind of seems like these opportunities with publications are marks of certain successes, or like, it’s a trajectory. It’s unfair to leave people out.
E: And regardless of the different ways that I can see my own personal success, I also see a lot of ways that I am not succeeding. It all has to do with like, Instagram followers, shit like that. It’s a numbers game. It directly correlates with what you see on Spotify, too. It’s all so intertwined and it’s kind of pointless to pretend that they’re not. But it’s not the same for dudes. Like Alex G gets up there in baggy jeans and a T-shirt. It’s different.
F: I can’t believe there are still boy bands out there, like, really just a bunch of dudes in a band.
E: I know. And they don’t dress well.
F: If you’re not as hot as Harry Styles, you can’t do that.
E: He also dresses well though. He turns it out.
F: I also wanted to talk to you about the Black Friday album art because I’m obsessed with the yarn puppets. What artist made those and like how did that come to be?
E: Actually it’s not a puppet. I’m under that thing, it’s a mask.
F: Oh, for real?
E: Yeah, I’m in there. I had that idea because when I was thinking about the record, I was just thinking about like, what album covers do I like? I kept coming back to the idea that the best album covers are ones with people’s faces. But I had a lot of insecurities about that, about putting my own face on the album cover.
F: I love your face.
E: Thank you. But I just have, you know, a lot of my own insecurities about myself. So I wanted to represent myself on the album cover this time, but not with a photo. So I was like, what if I commissioned a mask that’s kind of the spirit version of my face to put on the cover? I got it from my friend Brittany, who is @gaudmother on Instagram if you want to look up her shit. She’s amazing.
F: I follow her! Ok, I am going to end with my favorite question that actually Nicole Snyder had asked Ian Sweet for Jr Hi the Mag. She said, “Marry, fuck, kill: anxiety, depression, and loneliness.” Which would you pick?
E: Fuck loneliness, kill depression, marry anxiety. I mean you gotta kill depression, that’s the most dangerous one. And loneliness, you’ve gotta fuck with loneliness sometimes for your own good. When you fuck loneliness a few times, that’s healthy, you know?
F: Wow. I think so too. Are you on the 95 right now? What exit?
E: I’m on 91 and I’m at a gas station. I gotta get gas.
F: Okay perfect timing, thank you so much. Tell Ari that —
E: Sorry I’m having a weird interaction with a truck driver.
F: Okay be safe! Get off the phone! Tell Ari I love him and to call me when he’s in town and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye Ellen. Love You.
E: Love you, too! Bye.
⤏ BUY THE PRINT EDITION OF JR HI THE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 007 HERE.
⤏ FAYE ORLOVE (SHE/HER) IS AN ILLUSTRATOR, ANIMATOR AND ACTIVIST ORIGINALLY FROM THE EAST COAST. IN 2015, SHE BEGAN THE NON-PROFIT SPACE JUNIOR HIGH IN EAST HOLLYWOOD. FAYE LOVES POP-CULTURE, THE FACT THAT KIM KARDASHIAN IS STUDYING TO BE A LAWYER, AND THE JONAS BROTHERS COMEBACK. SHE DESCRIBES HERSELF AS A VIRGO, A JEWISH AMERICAN PRINCESS AND SOMEONE JUST TRYING REALLY, REALLY HARD