Alayna: As far as our team, there are two guys, MIKE PLOTNIKOFF, who is a Grammy
Award winning co-producer as well as one of the best engineers around, and producer
IGOR KHOROSHEV, who may be remembered for his work as the keyboardist for YES, as
well as his production work.
JP: The song, “The Day I Was Sorry”, for those who have never heard it, what is
the backstory to the song?
Jessie: I wrote this song about my mom. She is now an eleven year cancer survivor. She
still has bone cancer, but she has beat her breast cancer. It all started with helping her get
through her unfortunate illness. When I was 15, I used to play guitar for her every day
after school after her chemo. She really inspired me to become the artist I am today. So, I
wanted to dedicate one of the most important things in my life—put our story in a song.
Long and short, there are times when you forget, you get caught up in the scene of music
or in the scene of life and you forget to call your mom, or you just don’t have time to. You
should just tell the people you love, you love them every single day. It shouldn’t be
because she is dying of an illness. It is to make people realize how I could have regretted
my story if I had lost her and not been able to tell her every single day how much I love
her.
JP: When did you realize that you wanted to pursue music as your career?
Jessie: Since I was 5 years old, I‘d say. I can’t stop. I’ve tried. It’s the love/hate thing you
know? I can’t stop. Music is life.
Alayna: For me, it was around the age of eight. My uncle really pushed me. I think I’ve
always wanted a girl band. I think collectively, the one common denominator, is we all
wanted that.
JP: As a follow up to that, and I generally don’t like to ask this question because
it seems like everyone asks it, but you say you always wanted to have an all girl
band. Is there an all girl band that you pattern yourself after?
Alayna: I think we can all agree, that one of the reasons we wanted that, we have never
seen what we want to do. I think we’re passionate about it, because we’ve never seen it
done before. We’re inspired by so many people, like THE RUNAWAYS, all these wonderful
bands…HEART, STEVIE NICKS—all of these wonderful musicians that are our number one
inspirations. We’re taking our favorite assets from each of them and putting it into
something that has never been done before.
JP: We circled back to the original question after my ADD meds kicked in...
Kayla: I didn’t know my entire life. I started playing the drums when I was around 20. I
was around music most of my life with my grandpa playing guitar, my dad was a drummer,
my uncles were musicians and my sister was a guitarist. She started playing in bands when
she was 16 and I thought it was the coolest thing. In the back of my head I thought that
would be really cool if we could play together one day. My sister and I joined our first band
together and I’ve been passionate about it ever since, like that is what we’re supposed to
do.
Devo: Growing up we always had a piano in the house. I would play around on it from like
four to ten years old. I remember my dad was always spinning tunes. I remember him
putting on PETER FRAMPTON “Frampton Comes Alive” and hearing “Do You Feel Like We