About a year ago, Daisy the Great responded to a request to do a cover of “any Frankie Cosmos song” in their signature hocket style. They shared their take on ‘Fool’, to which Frankie Cosmos, who had posted the original comment, replied, “HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!” Both bands had recently celebrated the release of their latest albums, Rubber Teeth Talk and Different Talking – release-day twins, in fact – so there was something fitting about Mina Walker and Kelley Dugan singing the lines, “I thought we could eat bread/ I thought we could talk.” (Eating bread, it turns out, might be a good idea after a bunch of talking. Read on for more vocal loss hacks.) The Greta Kline-led band has had a formative influence on Mina Walker and Kelley Dugan, which became clear when the latter found herself singing along to every word at Frankie Cosmos’ recent New York show celebrating the 10th anniversary of Next Thing.
Kline had only just spent time with the duo in the studio, helping expand the world of Rubber Teeth Talk by singing one of their songs. Their collaborative version of ‘Dog’ opens The Rubber Teeth Talk With Friends, which features covers, reworkings, and remixes of the album’s songs by the likes of Harmony Tividad, Sleigh Bells’ Alexis Kraus, Babehoven, and more. For the latest installment of our In Conversation series, Daisy the Great and Frankie Cosmos’ Greta Kline hopped on Zoom to talk about touring, games, and more.
We were talking a little bit with Greta about how it’s been a year since we had our conversation around Different Talking. Mina and Kelley, how have you taken in the past year since your record came out?
Mina Walker: The years are getting shorter and shorter, it seems. I was talking about something that was six years ago, and I was like, I really remember it, and I was the same age as I am now, in my head.
Greta Kline: Yeah, it’s like, I wonder what traumatizing thing happened six years ago.
MW: [laughs] Stopped all of our growth.
GK: It’s interesting, whenever I talk to people who don’t tour who aren’t in the music world at all, and they’re just hearing somebody else’s perspective, they’re like, “That must be really weird, to sleep in a different bed every night.” You’re like, “Oh, I forgot that it’s a really strange way to measure time.”
MW: Yeah, touring is weird.
GK: When did you guys get back?
MK: Last week.
GK: You still jet-lagged?
Kelley Dugan: I don’t think I’m jet-lagged anymore. It’s interesting because I got a dog, so I got back from China, and I was very tired in the middle of the days. But also, my little baby boy wakes up at 5am, so I’m also ruined from that. I was like, “Am I tired in the middle of the day because of China, or because I’m a working mother and I have a lot on my plate?” I think it’s probably all of it.
MW: The week we got back, I was tired the whole time. For two nights in a row, I slept 12:00-10:00, and I was like, “This is amazing.” I’m a sleeping person, and I’m not usually a sleeping person. Usually, I’m an insomniac. And then last night, I stayed up till 4:30. I had no reason to. But I think that was just a glitch, and I’m back.
GK: I have a friend that says about jet lag, “The time is the time.” It’s like a mantra to get over jet lag.
MW: That’s so true. And you can always nap. Well, you can’t always nap, but if you have to fall asleep, just do it. If you’re at work, fall asleep. [laughs] Who cares?
I looked it up and realized that Different Talking and Rubber Teeth Talk actually came out on the same day.
KD: I didn’t even know that.
Did it not? June 27th?
GK: That’s my release date.
MW: Oh my god.
KD: That’s crazy.
MW: And they both have the word “talk” in the title.
GK: That’s true.
GK: And we’re all exactly the same age?
MW: We are. Were you born in ‘94? [Greta nods] The Daisy the Great account just got an email from Celebrity Birthdays, and it was like, “What is the age of Daisy the Great? We’re trying to update the age of Daisy the Great.” And I was like, “Well, she’s probably 10 years old.”
GK: That’s funny. It’s crazy that our albums came out the same day. Do you guys remember that day?
MW: Let me think about it.
GK: Actually, I can look at my log of things that I did every single day.
MW: Your photos?
GK: No, I have a thing where, every single day, I send my friend an email at the end of the day, we each say four things that we did. I feel like I probably just had a bunch of really stupid, no offence, social media tasks to do. It’s always like, “And don’t forget to do the 17 different websites.”
MW: Yeah, that kind of ruins the big day.
GK: Oh, I played a Lexie [Greta’s project with Alex Bailey and Doug Bleichner of Warehouse] show at TV EYE with All Dogs, and I had arepas for dinner.
KD: Love that. I think we were actually doing an in-store in DC. I think we weren’t here.
MW: But this is what happened, girl. On June 26th, we were at the Palace bar in Greenpoint, and we had them play the album over the speakers at midnight when it came out.
KD: But it was also someone’s birthday party who wasn’t us, and we didn’t really play the album very loudly, because we didn’t want to ruin this girl’s birthday.
MW: She loved it, though.
KD: I think she loved it too, but everyone was still talking when a new song would come on.
MW: It’s so crazy to have a listening party at a bar. But we had all our friends there, we had a cake with a picture of the album on it, we danced.
GK: What was the song that you danced to?
KD: ‘Lemon Seeds’, probably?
MW: Also, I have to say an album release is kind of more important than a birthday party, because you have a birthday party every year.
KD: Right.
GK: You didn’t do anything to earn a birthday.
MW: No, you just have it. Like, “You’re, what, 27 now, that’s great.”
KD: But this album is one. Is zero.
MW: This is literally a birth happening at the Palace.
GK: Although… There’s something kind of radical about loving your birthday, I think.
KD: I can never get behind doing a big birthday party.
MW: Kelley does not do her birthday.
KD: I hang out with my mom.
MW: And you know what? Kelley’s birthday is in two weeks, and she’s not gonna hang out with me.
KD: Totally. [laughs] I have plans with my mom.
GK: How are you guys feeling with your deluxe album out?
KD: It feels great. A lot of people ask us, “And are you guys gonna tour the album?”
GK: Yeah, with our 10 closest friends.
KD: And people will say, “You’re about to go on tour, are you playing the new album?” And we’re like, “Well, the new album is played by a lot of other people.” We should just impersonate the people who have performed it now. But I think that it has unlocked something, because I don’t really like listening to the music, usually. I’m not a casual listener of my own music. But I like to listen to this album. I’m giving myself permission to like it.
MW: Yeah, I think so too. It takes away the kind of self-judgment side of releasing music, because I’m like, “If people like it or not, I didn’t really make it.” [laughs] I like listening to it, so I’m not listening to it being like, “Do I like myself or not?” I’m listening to it being like, “I made this with a bunch of friends, and I love listening to it, because I admire everybody on it.”
KD: It’s not like we spent months on every song, so I feel like I’m still hearing things. When we put out a normal record, I know every little second.
MW: Also, I like the songs a lot from the Rubber Teeth Talk, and I really like hearing them in this way. We compiled them all just before it came out, so I’m still hearing new stuff in everything.
KD: I feel like some of them, we worked on less. With ‘Dog’, the three of us were deep in it together, but some of them, people would just send us something, and we would sing over it, but we had a lot less room time.
GK: So were you not part of the mixing for all of the songs?
KD: Nope.
GK: Were there any songs that you didn’t even give mixing notes to?
MW: Most of them.
KD: Whoa. We really collabed.
MW: We mixed with Benét’s [‘Rest of My Life’], because Benét came here, and we produced that out here. Matt [Lau], our guitarist, mixed it, and we sent notes to him. But in general, if the artist was producing it out, we were like, “Mix it how you would mix it.”
GK: Do you guys sing on every single one?
MW: Yeah. Some of them, I think our vocals are more buried in the background, and I think that’s totally cool. We begged Tex Patrello to sing on it.
KD: It was brutal, because she sent us a demo of her singing, and we were like, “We love your voice,” and then she was like, “I’m deleting it.” I tried to do a Tex Patrello impression when I was singing, really trying to fool people.
MW: I also think it’s cool that nobody heard anybody else’s songs till the album came out. We didn’t send it to anyone, and I feel like everyone texted us and was like, “Wow, I’m so happy to be in this whole thing.” I think it’s fun to be a part of an album where you only really know the part that you contributed, and me and Kelley were just puppet masters bringing everything together.
GK: How long were you just in China?
MW: Five days.
GK: And I was the drummer.
MW: You, Greg.
GK: There’s a thing where it’s not just a doppelganger, but you’re non-biological twins.
MW: You and Greg [Rutkin] are non-biological twins.
KD: Honestly, he would look at us and we would say, “That’s giving Greta. That little look is giving Greta.”
MW: It’s crazy to spend so much time with you, and then spend so much time with Greg.
KD: I think that’s what it was. I want to tell you something crazy.
GK: Please.
KD: In China, after the first show, a white bat flew into my face. Smacked me like a softball. It flew past Greg, and Greg had a spiritual experience with this bat, where he said he thought it was a bat, but then he said maybe it was a ghost? He said time slowed, 20 seconds later, he heard me go, “What was that?” It was one second, I saw it fly past him, and then it hit me in the head.
GK: Oh my god!
MW: On the walk home, Kelley was going, “Wait, guys, what was that?”
KD: I had a bad feeling that it was a bat. I know in my heart it was a bat, but I really don’t want it to be a bat, because I think that it means I have to get a rabies shot. And then Greg said, “What’s wrong? Are you worried?” And I was like, “Well, I just know that I’m gonna go into my hotel room and Google this, and I’m gonna have to look at Google, which I really don’t want to do.” And then I looked at Google, and Google really seemed to be suggesting that I should get a rabies shot, but I was like, “Can you even imagine doing that right now?” It’s midnight, and I’m in China, and I just don’t want to do that. I realized that it was noon in New York, so I just called my primary care doctor. I was more so looking to them for approval to not get it, but I told them what happened, and then they were like, “Yeah, you actually do have to go.”
GK: And what happens if you get a rabies shot and you don’t need one? Nothing.
KD: You’re fine. You’re just vaccinated against rabies.
MW: I didn’t know about rabies, okay? I was not warned about rabies as a child, I was warned about tetanus. And so, I know about tetanus. I know if you touch a dirty nail, you need to get a tetanus shot, you need to be up on that. But rabies, I guess I just wasn’t around a lot of bats growing up. I was on Reddit after Kelley told me about rabies, and I think the thing is ideally. people would just get rabies vaccinations, but it’s too expensive or something, so you need an excuse to get it.
GK: Oh, wow.
KD: And when I left the hospital in China, I thought, “Oh god, imagine if there’s another bat now.”
GK: How long do those vaccines last?
KD: I don’t know.
GK: Like, if you’re bit by a squirrel in six years, do you need to get another one?
KD: I don’t know. I’ll have to call my primary care doctor.
GK: Let me know what they say.
MW: I got a tetanus shot, and the reason I bring this up is because I did I scraped a tiny nail in a cupboard – I don’t even think I bled, but I’m a hypochondriac, so I was like, “I should get a tetanus shot.” I got a tetanus shot, and the very next day, I was carving a linoleum block for screen printing. I was stamping, and I had this metal scooper that was so filthy from scooping, and I scooped it into my hand and cut a big V into my hand, and I was like, “Now I need a tetanus shot, and I got one yesterday.” I actually probably needed stitches, but I was like, “I don’t want to do that,” so I taped it shut, and I think it’s okay.
GK: That’s really scary, both of your stories. Kelley’s is more scary to me.
MW: Well, it’s not a competition.
GK: It just sounds made up. Like, “I had to get a rabies shot in China at midnight because a white bat flew into my face.” Your story I can’t think about because it could happen to me in 10 minutes, because I’m going to be carving a stamp. I just can’t think about that.
KD: Over the intercom at the hospital, they were spelling out my entire name multiple times. When it was my turn, they were going, “K, E, L, L, E, Y, N, I, C, O, L, E, D, U,” and we were like, “We’re coming, oh my god,” and then it was looping. I was like, “Please, please.”
MW: I’ve never had to respond to the spelling of my name.
KD: I was like, “Oh my god, I’m on my way back, please stop.” It was so weird, but it was entertaining, too.
GK: This could be in your memoir. That’s the name of the memoir, maybe.
MW: What is it?
GK: A White Bat Hit Me in the Face in China, and I Had to Get a Rabies Shot at 3AM.
MW: Such a long title. Who are you, Fiona Apple?
GK: But hey, I would buy that.
I’d love for you tell me more about the day you recorded ‘Dog’, especially with it being about summertime in New York and sharing that experience of growing up in the city.
MW: I also grew up in New York… Just kidding.
KD: That’s our honorary girl.
MW: I’ve lived in New York a long time. I’m from New Orleans, though, but I think I’m also a New Yorker because I’ve lived here for almost 15 years, and my dad’s from here.
GK: One of the only other cities that starts with “new” is where Mina’s from.
MW: New York, New Hampshire…
KD: Well, that’s a state.
MW: New Hampshire is a state. Me and Kelley did a test…
KD: I quizzed Mina on whether or not she could – and listen, I know this isn’t about talking about ‘Dog’, but we’ll get there. I gave Mina a state test to try to name all the states.
MW: I named a lot of them.
KD: You named many states.
GK: I couldn’t do it.
MW: I named most of them.
KD: There’s game called Global, which is, where you guess a country, and then it tells you, basically, if you’re hot or cold. You have to keep guessing the country, and if you’re red, you’re close.
GK: That’s awesome. There’s a game like that, but with just anything.
MW: Oh, is it Semantle?
GK: I don’t remember, maybe.
MW: We have a game we play called Semantle where you just start guessing words.
GK: Hold on, wait, let me see if it’s Semantle. No, it’s more crazy than this. It’s like a big axis in space, and you’re like, “Daisy the Great,” and it puts it somewhere on the axis, and you have to get closer to it.
KD: Oh my god, I need to play that.
GK: I’ve never, ever won. It’s like the broader version of your country game.
KD: I love it. You should play Semantle.
GK: I will. My whole band actually might. We probably talked about this [during our inspirations interview], there’s game called Redactle that we were really into when we were making our record. We can actually all play it together, it’s really fun.
KD: That sounds fun.
MW: We were really into the crossword when we were making our record.
GK: Together or separate?
MW: Separate, we were trying to beat each other’s time. Hayden [Ticehurst], who was helping engineer the record, he’s a crossword genius, and he would finish it so fast, and we would try to beat him.
KD: He’s unbeatable.
MW: Let’s talk about ‘Dog’. We had so much fun making it with you.
GK: Me too.
KD: It was our dream. We talked to you on the phone before, and you said, “Girls, buckle up. It’s about to be a dog adventure.” And we were like, “This is actually better than my dreams.”
MW: Working on this song really gave me confidence in the record. I think that you were the first person that we worked with on the record, and our commitment and focus and excitement around it was so inspiring and exciting. It was lovely to feel like our baby was in good hands.
GK: This was a very new experience for me, too, and I felt like you guys believed in me in a way that was really good, too. I have to shout out Nate [Mendelsohn], too, because I feel like Nate, who engineered it, has always been very transparent about what producing is, and encouraging me as a producer, being like, “You actually are already producing.” It’s just one of those things that I have a hard time with the word and the concept of, producing something.
MW: Sounds like a boys’ club.
GK: Totally. And even if you do it, you never really get credit for it. I find it really hard to express ideas in a firm way in general, and be like, “Let’s do this.” I think we’re all kind of like, “Maybe we could try this, if you’re down, I don’t know.” But I feel like we had a really good environment from day one, because we did it over the course of three days. My core memory, of course, is the two hours before Nate arrived, because I told him to come later, where we just basically sat in chairs in the middle of the room in the studio, the three of us, and just talked about our deepest, personal lives.
KD: And then after an hour and a half, Greta was like, “Should we start to do something?” And we were like, “Yeah,” but then we started talking about ghosts or something.
GK: I think you guys are a really shining example of this, but I find that chemistry and hanging out is a huge part of art making together.
KD: Of course.
GK: I feel like that’s the environment that I was trying to create, and it was kind of shocking to meet you and find out that we went to school across the street from each other.
KD: Yeah, that is honestly crazy. I had to admit to you that I love Blue Tree.
GK: Yeah, Kelley immediately name-dropped my mom’s boutique where I work, and I was like, “Oh my god, how do you…” That’s just not the thing that people know or say about me.
KD: Right. But that’s what I know, because I lived right next door.
GK: So cool.
MW: I feel like the song sounds like us hanging out.
GK: Totally. As it should.
MW: My mom texted me after the album came out, she said, “The album’s great. I don’t know if I like the songs more than the original songs.” And I was like, “Well, that’s great, Mom, because I didn’t really make any of the songs, so you’re not supposed to like it more.” I would feel kind of strange. But she was like, “I do like the new ‘Dog’ more.”
GK: I just hired her to be my manager, and I asked her to say that to you. I want to ask you guys, because I forget if we talked about this, but Nate called me out as it being really brazen that I asked you guys to switch parts vocally. He was like, “That’s funny.”
KD: That was crazy.
GK: He was like.
MW: Crossed the line, Greta.
GK: I was like, “Wait, really?” I just thought that was a normal thing. I feel like my big idea is, what if we just did opposite day? [laughs] The chorus is small, and we’re switching the vocals…
MW: Yeah, because you were like, “I have this idea for the chorus to just be stripped down.” Then we were like, “Well, you’re gonna sing it,” and you were like, “No, I’m not,” and we were like, “Yeah, you are, you have to sing it exactly how you just did it, because I just cried.”
GK: Yeah, I gave in, with way less pushing than the other person that you said you couldn’t be pushed in.
MW: You’re like, “Don’t make me sing.”
KD: We were like, “You actually have to. I can’t even imagine what will happen if you don’t.”
GK: My favorite thing from recording was every single time we listened through, when it got to the chorus, they both just went, “Awww!”
MW: Because it was so cute. I felt like I could hold you in my palm.
GK: I felt like a little charm necklace that you were wearing.
MW: I felt like I was holding a little clamshell, and I opened it up, and there’s a tiny little Greta inside wearing a bonnet. If we made a music video for this version of ‘Dog’, I would put you in a little clamshell in the pond.
GK: I think we should.
MW: That’s a great idea.
GK: To me, part of the song is you guys going, “Aww.”
MW: We should add it. In the deluxe version of the deluxe, we’ll do a live reaction.
KD: Let’s do a reaction video.
MW: We should do a live director’s commentary on YouTube.
KD: You can come to it.
GK: We all comment throughout the whole thing.
KD: Greta keeps going, “I like ‘Dog’ better.”
GK: “The other songs don’t really have that Frankie touch.”
What about a full-length album cover by Greta?
KD: Yeah, that would be perfect.
MW: Has anyone ever done a full cover alone of an album?
GK: It’s a great idea.
MW: I would love to do a full album, but it would be so funny to do a full album of your peers. Like, what if me and Kelley just covered Different Talking?
GK: Why not?
I don’t know if you know Asher White, but she released a full-length cover of Jessica Pratt’s debut record this year.
MW: The whole album? That’s so sick. I like Asher White. And Jessica Pratt is still releasing music.
GK: Our peer.
MW: Jessica Pratt, my best friend. That would be so cool. I was listening to Jessica Pratt yesterday while giving my friend a haircut.
KD: Love it.
GK: I was going to ask if this song changed for you at all since Kelley got a dog.
KD: Oh my god, I really have been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about how I said, “Walking my feet like a dog on the street,” and now, I’m walking my dog on the street. It feels different, and I think that what I meant the first time was what I was like, trudging along and dragging an old feeling. And now that my little dog is running around and sniffing everything, I’m like, “That’s not really what I meant.”
MW: Well, you’re walking a puppy on the street.
KD: Yeah, and also walking my feet like a dog on the street was supposed to mean, I’m walking by myself, but my feet are just going that way, and my brain is off? But my little puppy, Bo, is running all around, looking at everything, smelling everything, eating everything. Eating all types of stuff that then we have to stick our hands in his mouth and try to take out. It’s a very active experience.
MW: You have to have your brain on.
KD: It’s like spinning plates on sticks, running, multitasking. But yeah, it did maybe rethink the metaphor, sure.
GK: Mina, have you met Bo?
MW: I met Bo once. I need to meet Bo again. I’ve been texting Kelley and being like, “Hey, should I come over?” She’s like, “I’ll come over to yours.”
KD: Well, we keep having to do stuff, and the thing about him is that he’s on his own schedule.
MW: Greta, you haven’t done all your shows yet, how many more do you have?
GK: I have more shows. We have six Next Thing shows what we’re doing this year, and then I just announced an opening tour that I’m doing.
MW: That’s so cool. Are you excited? I love Liz Phair.
GK: Crazy excited.
MW: And we should also say that we went to your show, the extra secret one at Union Pool, and Kelley was singing.
KD: I know every word, and I’ll always know every word.
GK: Aww.
KD: Absolutely loved it. It’s so crazy to do this project and then immediately just get slapped in the head with being a big fan. I was like, “Right, I get it, I’m a big fan.”
MW: When we went in, every idea you had, we were like, “Perfect.”
KD: “Love that. Sounds like my favorite album.”
MW: How have the shows been?
GK: They were fun. We only did the New York ones.
MW: You didn’t do LA yet?
GK: We’re going to do it in October.
KD: What was the difference between the Union Pool show and the big boy?
MW: The Bowery Ballroom.
GK: Well, the biggest difference is that I really, really lost my voice after the end of the Bowery Ballroom night.
KD: Out of excitement?
GK: I just could feel that it was happening, and then I pushed through the show and drank honey and stuff and got through. But then at the end of the night, when the show was over, I was like, “ Now I get to talk to everybody, because I don’t need my voice anymore, and I just destroyed it for a couple days.”
MW: That happened to me in soundcheck in China. I think because we had just flown in, the first show, me and Kelley were a little zonked, and both of our voices were on thin ice. We had soundcheck, I was singing, and something happened, I got off the stage, and I was talking crazy raspy.
KD: They were like, you guys have an interview right now, and we were like, “Oh.” And we walked into the green room to a camera setup.
MW: We sat down, and I was, like [coughs], trying to get the phlegm off of my throat. They were going, “If you were a butterfly, what colour butterfly would you be?” And I was like [in a raspy voice], “If I was a butterfly…” We had some soup, and we got through the show.
GK: Do you guys have a good recipe for vocal loss?
KD: I think it depends on why. If you lost it from sickness, totally different from losing it from overuse. I haven’t lost my voice from overuse in a billion years. If you have a sticky, gross something from a sickness, I have some hacks. But usually, if your voice is dry, my voice teacher is really just like, “You gotta drink water, and there’s not much else you need.” And it’s always true. I went to a theater camp that was very Throat Coat Tea obsessed, and now I don’t think about it anymore.
GK: Love Throat Coats.
MW: Me and Kelley used to have this theory of bagel voice, that if you can’t use your voice, eat just a plain bagel, and it’ll kind of coat your throat in a really nice way.
KD: The bagel voice origin story is that I was doing a 5-hour long musical, and on my walk there, I would get an acai bowl. I would have it, and then I would be like, “My throat feels god-awful from having this.” And then I would eat a bite of bagel at the theater, and I would be like, “I’m completely cured. It’s literally completely fine now.”
MW: That’s the real hack.
GK: I get that. It resonates with me.
MW: We had an experience with Red Bull one time.
KD: Yeah, our old publishers were in the Red Bull offices, and we went there and they gave us Red Bulls.
MW: And Kelley said she had a voice lesson, and she was singing higher than she’s ever sung in her life.
KD: I went to my voice lesson, my voice teacher was like, “You’re really on fire today, girl. You’re hitting those notes.” I had super high notes from the Red Bull.
MW: I feel like I don’t want a Red Bull sponsorship, because then I would just drink it and have a heart attack or something.
GK: I’ve never tried it.
KD: You should stay pure.
GK: I don’t need it.
MW: I love the taste of it.
GK: Next time we record.
KD: ‘Dog 3’ should be up an octave, straight belt.
MW: We sound like chipmunks.
GK: I love that.
MW: That’s for the next Alvin and the Chipmunks movie.
GK: And we’re all in a little clamshell.
KD: That means we need to make a giant clam.
GK: That’s exactly where my mind went to. I was like, “I guess, Mina, you better get to carving.”
MW: Oh, I have my tetanus shot, so I can carve for days.
KD: And I can get bitten by Mina.
GK: And I’m gonna go get vaccinated for everything, just before I see you guys.
Daisy the Great’s The Rubber Teeth Talk With Friends and Frankie Cosmos’ Different Talking are out now.
