An interview with One-Eyed Doll’s Kimberly Freeman and Jason Rufuss Sewell

By George Archibald

One-Eyed Doll By Andrew Bastion

I met up with One-Eyed Doll at the Cleveland stop of the And Bloodshed For All… tour with Wednesday 13. This two-piece group infuses anything from punk, metal, industrial to rock to make their own brand of music, while putting on a very interactive and visual live performance. The band has been around since 2006 working hard, and playing with other well-known acts such as Otep, and Mushroomhead, they are getting their music to the masses. This being my first time seeing them live I was in for quite a treat. I was able to speak with Kimberly Freeman and Jason Rufuss Sewell before they were set to take the stage later that evening.

GA: Hi guys! I know you are from Texas, why don’t we start with a little about the band and then we can get into the other questions?
OED: Kimberly: We are a two-piece rock band, we pretty much rock, and have fun and make happy music. I play guitar, my name is Kimberly. This is Jason, he is a salamander, he also plays the drums. I also sing so we obviously sound like Smurfs. It’s just pretty simple rock and roll; and we have fun and flail around a little bit. We love to perform live. We also love to be in the studio.

GA: You have quite an eclectic sound. I definitely noticed it on your last album Witches. The band jumps from metal to a bit of industrial. You even incorporate a little bit of a traditional folk sound with the addition of the mandolin, fiddle and banjo. So what was some of the inspiration behind the sound and the latest album?
OED: Kimberly: Well… story wise, I had done a little research on the Salem witchcraft hysteria of 1692. I kind of happened upon a story of this lady named Mary. She was executed for witchcraft. I wrote her a song on the album called, A Rope for Mary. I wanted to know more, so I researched more and more about the hysteria and the people involved. I also read the court documents, and everything I could find on it. Then the album Witches kind of wrote itself, it just happened really quickly. It was very much inspired by the historical research. At That time, we had been jamming a lot of banjo and mandolin stuff, since we were between tours, and we had the bus parked in the redwoods. We were just jamming away, and that music was still sort of on our minds when I started writing all these lyrics about the hysteria.  It all came together like that. It wasn’t really on purpose it sort of happened that way.

One-Eyed Doll by Andrew Bastion

GA: The sound is very awesome on the album; it keeps it interesting to listen to.
OED: Kimberly: Thank you. We don’t really go for a particular sound; we just make the music that we are feeling. So that’s why a lot of times on our albums you hear the different instruments that we play as well as our different styles. We are not trying to be like some kind of subgenre, we are just sort of emoting, and it comes out the way it comes out. We really never know what the next album is going to be like.

GA: Touching on that, with the multiple instruments; I read that on the new album that Kimberly wrote some of the drums, and that you guys swapped instruments or something.
OED: Jason: I have a ARP Odyssey I was playing around with, and she got on the drums, and that’s how   the riff for “Witch Hunt” came about. We were jamming and we wrote the whole song that way. That’s why that song has the grooviest drum beat on the whole album.

GA: Who was doing the mandolin, banjo, etc. on the album?
OED: Jason: I played the mandolin, Kimberly played the banjo. Our friend Damien played the fiddles. Kimberly: There is a bit of pump organ that was Jason. It’s cool because part in the album where that organ comes in is on “Sorrow”, and if you listen you’ll notice that its slightly flat compared to the other songs. This is because that organ was made in the 1800s and the tuning was different in those days, it was just a little bit lower than what we play in. So I had to tune my guitar down to that, and we just kind of jammed that. That jam of what we were doing is on the album. It was the first time I played those notes and sang those lyrics, it was also the first time that Jason hit those keys. It was really cool how it came out.  The album is all standard tuning, and then it drops down a little for this song, then we go back up again. That ended up being a producer’s call, Jason saying we are keeping this. I was like ‘wait, no, I have to really sing it’, and he was like ‘no, no, it’s perfect. This is what it should be.’

GA: The album Witches, has a bit of a horror theme with the Salem Witch trials, and your previous albums have a bit of horror themes throughout; can we expect another concept album in the future or collective like your previous works?
OED: Kimberly: I don’t actually consider Witches horror; I consider it more historical. The previous stuff I don’t really consider it horror, maybe it is. It just comes out like it does for me. To me Wednesday 13 is horror, they are all about the horror, they are doing the horror thing.

GA: You have kind of a tongue in cheek approach to it.
OED: Kimberly: We are just what we are, we are just silly.

One-Eyed Doll by Andrew Bastion

GA: Correct me if I am wrong here but I read from one of your earlier interviews that you wanted to tour incognito kind of. Like touring as a local act to stay under the radar, if so how was that, and any bands you would like to mention?
OED: Jason: Something I like to do is book a lot of local bands when we tour. We headline and play all over the country, and rather than bring out 3 other bands with us. On the Witches tour we said no other bands are going to tour with us, we want to have three or four locals on the bill.
Kimberly: That was because that was our first headlining tour with the agency, so we wanted to access where we were at. We wanted to see how it would go without the other touring acts contributing to the draw. We wanted to see what our draw was, and we had more sold out shows on that tour than ever before. It went really well. We asked promoters to book some really awesome local bands and we will be there.

We love all of the bands that we worked with. Wednesday 13 is our headliner on this tour and they have been really, really, cool. Their music is fantastic and the visual stage show is glorious, I love it. I am really looking forward to Avatar tonight. Open Your Eyes are really awesome, we also toured with them on the Visions tour with Eyes Set to Kill.
Jason: We toured with a lot of bands over the years; Stitched Up Heart, Otep, Mushroomhead, Cold.
Kimberly: Mushroomhead. We did four tours with them, it was like 200 shows and I learned a lot from them. We up’d our production after touring with them, because we learned so much. They have a really great stage show. They were very influential on our stage show. We try to have a bigger production now because we were so inspired by them.

GA: Being you are a very visual band live, how do you come up with the ideas behind what is made and presented to the crowds?
OED: Kimberly: I don’t know, we just kind of mess around and write things out.
Jason: We get in the rehearsal studio and try things out. We think about what would be cool.
Kimberly: We ask our friends that have been with us. Last tour we had Mike on a lot of the production stuff, he was doing the lights so he would contribute ideas on how to set up the stage.  We kind of collaborate with our friends on what we should do too.
Jason: Our friend Ben is a stage manager, and he is really into scary props and stuff.  So when we do a Halloween tour like this, he is all about making sure we have lots of skulls and cool things.
Kimberly: He’s a lot of fun and has a great sense for aesthetics, because I can’t go out there and set everything up without sort of giving myself away. So I know he is going to go out there and make everything really cute.

GA: What is one thing you would want one of your fans to take away from a One Eyed Doll performance? Any special feelings or messages to convey to them?
OED: Kimberly: I just want them to smile, forget their worries for a few minutes and have a good time. That’s all it really means to us.

GA: I just talked to John from Avatar earlier and he said, ‘We are here to entertain, and we want our crowds to leave here feeling entertained.”
OED: Kimberly: That’s it totally.

GA:  What Kind of gear do you guys actually use? I like the tone you have on your amp.
OED: Kimberly: Thank you. It’s a Blackstar HT 100 Metal. My guitar is made by Tregan Guitars, it’s a boutique guitar company out of Pennsylvania. I have been with them for a long time, this is my signature line. It comes with Seymour Duncan Invader pickups. I use D’Addario strings.
Jason: I use Crush Drums, and Evans heads.
Kimberly: All of our endorsed gear is really awesome right now.

GA: The video you have for “Committed”, was that actually filmed in Centralia, PA? The back drop in it was awesome.
OED: Kimberly: Yes! It was freezing that day; it was right in the middle of December when we filmed.

GA: I bring this up because one of our photographers posted something on Facebook about wanting to take a trip to Centralia and it had a video. When I watched the video, it has a portion about the Graffiti road on there. Then when I was checking out your band’s videos I saw you filmed there, so figured it would be cool to ask about.
OED: Kimberly: We actually had to film very specifically so we wouldn’t get any phalluses in the shot, but a couple of them made it in there anyway. It’s just graffiti and whatever people put in there, we didn’t add to it at all. We left it as it was.

GA: So what’s next for One-Eyed Doll after this tour?
OED: Kimberly: Studio!!! I can’t wait to get back into the studio. We had a bunch of music pretty much ready to go when I made Witches happen, that is there. We had another album lined up to be released when Witches happened. We ended up putting Witches up front, so that one we are going to go back and reassess all of that. I also got all sorts of new material, so we are going to have to figure out how everything is going to go. We just have so many songs that haven’t even been recorded yet, so I want to spend winter in the studio. Off the road in a studio, and then we will have something fresh for you all shortly thereafter.

Andrew Bastion, Empire Extreme photographer extraordinaire chimes in: That would seem to be the safest route to go instead of traveling the states in the snow.
Kimberly: We don’t like to tour in the winter, it’s not safe. A lot of people get in bus wrecks, from what I have seen. So we really try to do spring, and fall tours, unless something big happens. That seems to be the best time for weather around the US. Summer is a bit hard as well because our AC always seems to want to go out, and we have to worry about vehicles overheating. We are kind of spoiled now that we have a bus with AC and bunks. So I’m not complaining by any means, but we like to play it safe, and stay safe while out on the road.

GA: Anything you would like to add?
OED: Kimberly: I hope you enjoy the show.
Jason: We still have over a month left on this tour with Wednesday 13, so I hope you all come and see us. We are going to be playing all over the country.

A big thank you to Kimberly and Jason for allowing us to talk with them. It was awesome to chat and meet such a talented group. I wish you well on the road and hope that you make it home safely. You can catch One-Eyed Doll on tour now with Wednesday 13 and Open Your Eyes, also be sure to check out their website www.oneeyeddoll.com for details on what is upcoming for the band.

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George Archibald

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