The Velveteers - A Million Knives

After spending their teens developing a distinctively badass amalgam of punk attitude, old-school metal thunder, and gutter-glam charisma, The Velveteers are using the obsessions of their adolescence to soundtrack the messy emotions of adulthood. The Boulder, Colorado, trio’s second album, A Million Knives, chronicles the volatile truth of being an artist in the music industry while still clinging to the joy they felt when they were just learning their instruments. “When you’re a kid, you just have a natural curiosity,” says singer/guitarist Demi Demitro. “As you grow older, the world makes you jaded. This album is about the hard truth that no matter how hard you protect your heart, it’s just going to be broken.” An even harder truth: Often you’re the one breaking it. Or, as Demi puts it, “Sometimes you realize that you’re the one stabbing yourself in the heart with a million knives.”

Writing and recording and in some cases re-recording A Million Knives was a painful experience for the band, but a necessary one: a process of musical and emotional self-discovery. By acknowledging the travails of that process, they’ve created an album that stretches out into imaginative directions, that offers new thrills and twists. The Velveteers devise new ways to combine crunchy guitars and rumbling drums, so that every song hinges on some wild new ideas: the heavy disco rhythms of “Bound In Leather,” the fluorescent flourishes of “Go Fly Away,” and most impressively the devastating confessionals of “Up Here” and “Fix Me.” 

“Demi was writing all these songs about heartbreak,” says drummer Baby Pottersmith. “She was writing about love fading away or being torn apart, and wishing things could still have this magic that you used to feel. In my head, I was comparing it to our band. We were trying to be perfect about every little thing, so we overthought it. That made everything painful. Making this record was like giving birth to knives.” 

Demi and Baby have been chasing that creative spark for more than a decade, after forming the band as teenagers—before they could legally drive a touring van. Even then, they felt a strong connection. As Baby recalls, “When I met Demi, she sat down and played a song for me on acoustic guitar. Hearing her sing gave me this magical feeling, like: Wow, I really want to play music with this person for the rest of my life.” They started jamming in Demi’s parents’ garage, writing songs, and playing the occasional all-ages show, all with the bravado of youth. “When we started out, we didn’t know what we were doing,” says Demi. “We were just making music and making art, and we weren’t stressed about it because there was no one there to watch it.” 

At one point it looked like their friendship might not survive their teenage years. “I had my first experience with depression when I was 16,” says Baby. “I didn’t know what it was, so I got weird and stopped communicating. I blamed it on the band, and Demi kicked me out. Rightfully so. I’d never experienced being so close to somebody before, so it was terrible not being in a band with her.” It took a bit of growing up to get the band back together, but now their connection is stronger than ever. “We’ve spent every day since then just making art together,” says Demi. “I would definitely say we are creative soulmates. Baby is one of very few people I trust with my songs. So maybe it was destiny that it happened that way.”

Speaking of destiny: While  in exile from The Velveteers, Baby played with other bands around Colorado, including one with a multi-instrumentalist named Jonny Figg. Playing with Jonny reminded Baby of playing with Demi—there was that same spark—so when The Velveteers needed a third member, he was at the top of the list. Jonny complements their close friendship rather than disrupts it, and he gives The Velveteers their distinctive two-drumkit attack.

Even in their early days, they developed a process together that allowed both Demi and Baby to define and direct The Velveteers sound. Their songs originate with Demi, the band’s primary songwriter. Baby, meanwhile, has a knack for selecting and sequencing those songs to form a larger statement. Baby is the reason A Million Knives ends with one of Demi’s best and most wounded tunes, “Fix Me.” “A lot of my writing happens in the moment, and sometimes I don’t even know what a song is about until many years later. When I wrote that tune, I felt this enormous release of emotion, but then I completely forgot about it.”

In the days before they flew to Nashville for sessions with producer Dan Auerbach, Baby felt they were missing something crucial. That old demo of “Fix Me” sprang to mind, particularly its sad-hearted lyrics: “The sparkle that once was in my eyes, it has slowly faded away. Does it come as a surprise, or did you see it from miles away?” It’s a tragic question, gesturing toward feelings that can’t be put into words, and Demi sings them like she might be talking to their fans or to her creative soulmate behind the drums. 

Even as they worked closely with Auerbach at his Easy Eye Sound Studio (where they tracked Nightmare Daydream just three years and a lifetime ago), The Velveteers were determined to retain the demo quality of these songs: their spontaneity, their urgency, their creative spark, their brutal honesty. “Some of these songs appear on the album almost exactly as Demi first demo’ed them,” says Baby. “We didn’t want to overwork them. We didn’t want to mess them up. The first time we played them together was when we recorded them, because we didn’t want to ruin them by rehearsing all the spontaneity out of them.” 

At the same time, they remained open to new ideas and new songs, including one written with both members of The Black Keys. As producer and head of Easy Eye Sound, Auerbach was always at the studio, but Patrick Carney “would show up and have lunch with us all,” says Demi. “We’d joke around, and he’d show us these really strange YouTube videos that had maybe 20 views. One morning he showed up early with an idea for something he wanted to work on with us.” That seed grew into the album’s first single—a catchy, trippy pop song called “Go Fly Away.” “It’s definitely a different-sounding tune for us,” she says. “We don’t usually write songs that sound especially happy, so it’s good to have a song like that in our setlist.” 

It might sound happy, but there’s an intense melancholy at the heart of the song. Rather than the kiss-off implied by the title, it’s a deep wish for escape and freedom. “I want to fly away,” Demi declares over sequined synths and snaky drumbeats. And yet, they didn’t fly away: As difficult as it was to find their way forward on A Million Knives, they steeled themselves and soldiered on, using those million knives to carve out a creative safe haven for themselves. “We have this incredible, beautiful thing together that I love so much,” says Demi. “Making this album was not easy, but the one thing that stayed intact the whole time was our love for making music together. We’ve realized that’s never going to go away. We just have to let the songs guide us and have faith in each other.”