Sadie Dupuis
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH BETHANY COSTENTINO
⤏ PHOTOS BY MARGARET LEYVA | MAKE-UP BY KIRIKO KAJIWARA | STYLING BY LINDSEY HARTMAN
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2018
While preparing questions to ask Sadie Dupuis, singer/guitarist/songwriter of Speedy Ortiz, I did some heavy Twitter stalking and discovered that she is a super fan of the incredible horror film, Unfriended. I also learned she is a mega-fan of ARIANA GRANDE, she’s a Cancer, about to celebrate her 30th birthday, she loves books, and she’s touring with the ultimate alt ~*QuEeN*~ LIZ PHAIR later this year. I didn’t want to ask Sadie the typical, “So, what’s it like being a girl in a band!” because truly — who fucking cares? Enough already. We’re girls! We play music! Why is that still shocking enough that it’s all anyone ever wants to talk about!? Instead, Sadie and I discussed the real important issues like hair extensions, our band’s ASTROLOGICAL SIGNS, and KACEY MUSGRAVES.
BETHANY: I feel like as a person who gets interviewed a lot, I know how annoying it is to constantly be asked what it’s like to be a girl that plays music, so I don’t want to talk to you about that at all. So, you’re a Cancer?
SADIE: I am! I’m turning 30 this weekend. I haven’t had a birthday party I think since I was 19 because normally I’m either on tour or I just don’t want to deal with people. But this year I’m going to the Hamptons, which is wild.
B: It’s going to be great. You’re going to get to live like a real housewife. I hope you see a real housewife. Actually.
S: I know, I feel like there’s gotta be some celebrities roaming around.
B: Yeah, for sure. I’m a Cancer rising. I’m 31 now, but I feel like when I turned 30 I turned more into a Cancer.
S: What’s your moon?
B: I want to say my moon is also Cancer.
S: So much water! My rising is Sag and my moon is Taurus so I’ve got a little bit of fire, a little bit of grounding. Just having Cancer in one place is enough for me.
B: I feel like I was a true Scorpio, like all through my twenties and as a teenager. Then when I turned 30 I became much more Cancer and now when I read astrology memes — which are my favorite things the internet has to offer — I always am more the Cancer than I am the Scorpio. When I was younger I was just crazy and super, like vindictive, and if anybody wronged me I was just like, fuck you. And now I’m very emotional and like, “Why are you doing this?” I mean, a lot of that probably has to do with growth. If Speedy Ortiz had an astrological sign, what would it be?
S: I think technically we’re a Capricorn because I think that’s when we first started playing as a full band. But I think when I first released music under that name, which was just like solo project stuff, it would have been Leo season and maybe Virgo-cusp. Those are all good signs for bands. So let’s just say that’s the chart.
B: I like that. It seems fitting.
S: I feel like maybe playing music is where I get out all the Sagittarius. Like I want to start some shit and travel around.
B: Yeah. It’s a lot. I have a million questions on here just about touring. Do you like it or how do you feel about it?
S: I can’t tell you. I think I just go into robot mode and like, don’t care. Like there’s one part of me that’s super grateful to get to do that as a job and I do like traveling, I do like seeing friends in different cities. I really — like many Cancers — get all my kicks from just eating nice meals. So touring is a nice way to check out restaurants. But I definitely crave my bedroom and all my toiletries and shoes and all my stuff that’s at home. I’m very, very Cancer and I have never been big into partying or going out too much, but I used to drink a lot more on tour than I do now that I’m older. I think when I first went on tour I just treated it as, like, party vacation. Whereas now I spend all my time reading and maybe I’ll have one drink and try to go to bed as early as possible and go jogging in the morning. So I try to build some kind of a home life schedule as much as possible. Do you like touring?
B: I mean I do. I feel very, very lucky to be able to do it. It’s so nice. It’s like one of those things where it’s like I think of every shitty job I’ve ever had in my life and how I could never make any of them work and how I was constantly struggling to show up on time and I think about it now and I’m like, this is the perfect thing for me and I’m so lucky that I’m able to do this as my job, but it’s fucking hard. That’s why I always want to talk to other musicians about it because when you talk to your friends who work regular day jobs and you’re like, “Oh my job sucks.” They’re like, “Fuck you, you get to just like play shows and tour.” But it’s not that easy.
“I really — like many Cancers — get all my kicks from just eating nice meals.”
S: I’m so envious of all my friends who have day jobs because I weirdly really thrived at a desk and I love to be told like “Show up here at this time, go home at this time.” I feel like even creatively having the structure of a job that wasn’t music really made me relish my time off from work. I would come home from work and make a song. Whereas now I come home from tour and I’ve got post-tour-depression and I watch everything on Netflix for one week and just eat any kind of snack food I can get my hands on and then maybe I’ll return to functionality in, like, ten days.
B: I was going to ask you that. How do you deal with the depression? The last tour we did was last September with Paramore, but I’ve been home for the last, a long time. Like two years. And it’s so hard when you just wake up and you don’t have a set schedule. There’s no day sheet. I’m waking up in the same bed. It’s so weird and hard. I’m glad I get to do it, but it’s always nice to talk to other people that get it.
S: When I am on tour I have a tendency to overwork myself, I do everything that anyone asks of me. And after the show I want to be at the table, like meeting everyone and hearing about them. I feel like part of the tour experience is connecting to people. When I’m in the midst of it, I’m in this adrenaline work mode. So I don’t realize how much of a toll that can take. When I come home, it’s such a decompression from that adrenaline, I really need the time to sit with my feelings.
B: You’re touring with Liz Phair in the Fall. I’m very excited for that.
S: Yes! We have not met before, but we’ve been in touch for a few years. A while ago, I was looking at her Twitter and realized that she followed me already! I died. I think I got into the DMs and was just a loser immediately. My favorite of her songs is called “Blood Keeper.” It was written for the Scream 2 soundtrack. When I was downloading a bunch of girly stuff when I was a teenager, I got that song on some zip file. So, I was asking her about it via DMs and she was like, oh, I have a better version than the one that leaked, I’ll send it to you. So we sorta got in touch that way. Obviously, I’m a big fan of her music. It’s really meaningful to me and I’m kind of losing my mind about this tour.
B: I noticed that you always have a really amazing, incredible manicure. How the fuck are you playing guitar with those nails?
“I think I got into the DMs and was just a loser immediately.”
S: I play with my fingernails, so I actually need to have my right-hand nails long. And because I’m playing with a heavier gauge of strings, they need to be really thick. So, I do either acrylic overlays or dip powder, just something to make it so they don’t break. I would break picks constantly. I don’t use a pick at all anymore. But my left hand, I keep really, really short. It’s always a wild ride getting a manicure on tour because I have to go through this whole explanation of, “Keep these fingers as long as possible and in this particular shape, but with the left hand please go really thin.” I have a nail artist in Philly that I love, but my nails only keep for two to three weeks on tour. So I’m always sort of at the mercy of whatever city I wind up in.
B: I’m the opposite. If my nails are too long, I can’t make the actual chord.
S: I had a manicurist recently who was a cellist and immediately when she saw my nails she asked if I played a string instrument.
B: Oh that’s cool. They should just have like nail salons specifically for people that play.
S: That would be a nice service.
B: You have really amazing hair and they need to know what products you’re using.
S: First of all, I use fake hair. I do clip in extensions and sometimes I do wigs. So my hair is just, like, whatever. But I’m very into the fake hair.
B: Is your natural hair like that long?
S: No, that’s extension. My hair is shoulder length, it’s currently wavy. It’s basically to my shoulders, but anything beyond that is like fake as hell. I feel like there’s now a fair amount of costuming for me. Part of that is having this like, Kardashian-style hair. And part of it is wearing super femme outfits. I used to dress more androgynous or more like a little punk boy.
B: Totally. We both have dogs. Tell me about your doggie.
S: His name is Buster, which was his shelter name. I tried to change it when I got him, but he was not having it. He’s very much like a Buster Bluth character. He’s a real mama’s boy and he’s very clumsy and goofy. He’s a pitbull, I’ve had him for eight years.
B: Kacey Musgraves. Let’s go.
S: I’m a recent convert. I’m loving the new record. We played “High Horse” a fair amount on this last tour. That or Ariana Grande.
B: How do you feel about her and Pete Davidson’s relationship?
S: I really don’t know anything about him, but if she’s happy I’m happy.
B: I feel like any sort of “We just met and now we’re engaged and buying an apartment together” is a red flag.
S: But she’s a Cancer.
B: I know, but also he’s a Scorpio and I’m like, girl, be careful.
S: I can’t say that I haven’t made pretty much the exact same mistakes with a Scorpio before. We can’t help ourselves.
“I weirdly really thrived at a desk.”
B: Are you a Gwen Stefani girl?
S: That was my first favorite singer when I was a kid. I was a very big No Doubt fan. When I was first playing guitar and learning how to sing, that was absolutely my favorite. I still love all of that music, but I’ve been revisiting a lot of her music videos and I cannot find one that does not culturally appropriate in some way.
B: I know. How she would walk the red carpet like, it’s very weird, very bizarre. Okay. I’ll just ask you, I saw you tweeted about doing a poetry book. Do you have an MFA in poetry?
S: Before I started in Speedy Ortiz, I had lived in Europe and applied to some poetry programs, sort of on a whim. I got into one that would pay me to teach at UMass Amherst. So I moved up there and just started making music by myself for the first time. So music and poetry are kind of simultaneous things for me. As soon as I started doing Speedy Ortiz, I expected nobody to care. But people were into it and that was sort of shocking! I finished the poetry program, but it was so stressful because I was teaching college classes and then leaving for four days to tour and I’d come home the same mornings that I had to teach. So I was basically working two full time jobs for two and a half years. I made it work for a while. Even during tours with Thurston Moore and The Breeders. I was somehow able to get people to cover my classes and continue to progress towards this MFA in poetry. Then, we got offered a pretty long tour with Stephen Malkmus and I realized I couldn’t continue to do both of these things. Luckily, they allowed me to finish my MFA basically from a van. We went to Europe for six weeks and I finished my thesis there as an independent study. It worked out. I can’t believe that I finished it. I don’t know how I had the energy to, but I’m finally going to publish it. I always felt really ridiculous that I spent like three years of my life doing this kind of rigorous program. And then I just went on tour and never did anything with poetry. The book is called Mouthguard and it comes out in November.
B: When I lived in New York I was there because I was going to school for creative writing. I got really, really into Joan Didion and that’s what sort of led me to Best Coast because I was writing so much about California. My professor pulled me aside one day and was like, these are really good and you clearly really love California and I can tell that you miss it. And then I think the next weekend I was just like, peace out. I’m leaving and I’m going home. And then I started Best Coast. So, I feel you on that. I worked really hard to get into school to just sort of bail on it. I get down on myself sometimes because I’ve been asked to write a book of short stories or a book of essays. But when I try to do it, I can’t focus and I get so down on myself and feel like no one gives a shit. Are you, in LA anytime soon?
S: I don’t think I’ll be there until the Liz Phair tour unless I find some fun excuse, which I am always looking for. So if I do, I’ll let you know.
B: Happy birthday, by the way.
⤏ BUY THE PRINT EDITION OF JR HI THE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 003 HERE.
⤏ BETHANY COSTENTINO (SHE/HER) IS 1/2 OF THE BAND BEST COAST. A FORMER CHILD ACTRESS TURNED MUSICIAN, SHE HAS RELEASED MULTIPLE ALBUMS ABOUT CALIFORNIA LIVING. NOW, BETHANY FOCUSES MUCH OF HER TIME LIVING SOBER AND PLAYING 50’S INSPIRED INDIE POP IN VENUES ALL AROUND THE WORLD.