sounds of diy with melanie paulos

I caught up with my long time friend Melanie Paulos (they/she) during a sound check at 529. The title comes from when we were shooting a music video one time and we kept dropping tape and the ladder kept falling etc, so we were listing what the typical sounds of being a DIY artist is. Tape stretching, tape dispenser crashing, shit hitting the ground in general, but mostly tape. You’re hibernating if you don’t check into their massive portfolio, spanning multiple mediums.

INTRODUCTION

What’s the dumbest thing you’ve cried at/about lately?

I fucking sobbed, I’m talking knees to eyeballs fetal position sobbed at Paranormal Activity a few months ago. The first one. It’s not because it was sad or I was scared or anything like that. She was screaming a lot so I felt bad. Or, the other day I was listening to Up Jump Tha Boogie by Snoop Dogg. It wasn’t the song. I was just listening to it and sobbing because I saw some random person walking down the street that I didn’t know. There’s a concept called Sonder which is the overwhelming feeling that everyone else is existing just like you are. That’s some heavy shit. It makes me cry a lot. The Rehearsal makes me cry. I’ve watched Avatar: The Last Airbender and I’ve seen it so many times but I still cry at certain parts every time. The other day before work, I cried because my car was being weird. I decided I wanted to keep crying so I put on a bunch of those dodo videos, like animals returning to their owners, or the penguin that was scared of water and I just sat there and cried. Like, I purposely do that so I can cry.

Thoughts on mansplaining?

It’s annoying as fuck. It happens all the time. One time a few years ago… I was doing a lot of open tunings at the time. I was explaining my plan for the guitar, I was going to put a thicker gauge string on it to hold the tuning a little better and right after I said that he was like, “you know what you should do…” and I was like “here it comes” and he says the exact same thing to me that I literally just said. I was furious. I don’t try to fight people too much on it unless I see them all the time and they do it all the time. The reason why that page on my website is called that is because I was making a project - I was working on an installation at Colony Square about six years ago. I was getting these giant chains and this fucking dumb ass in the Lowe’s line was like, “are you making a necklace” and they’re huge tow chains. I was like, “no, I’m an artist” and that just annoyed me so I made a whole series of really uncomfortable wearable art called I’m Making a Necklace but its really uncomfortable welded pieces that scratch you and are heavy and hurt.

Most ridiculous customers you’ve had at The Earl?

I have a bunch of stories but when we were wearing masks, this guy beckoned me over, like beckoned me over after I drank some water and I had pulled my mask down. He goes, “hey, I thought you were going to be really ugly until you pulled your mask down.” I was like, “are you negging me right now?” I put his food in a to-go box and gave him his check.

There was this hot mess of a girl yesterday. This is how I started my shift. She was crawling on the fold out tables that we have for merch, like a cat. I don’t know if she knew I was around her.

The best one, this chick was getting kicked out at like 6:30 on a Tuesday because she was wasted and this poor guy next to her was just trying to eat a chicken sandwich in peace. She’s trying to fuck this dude at the bar, basically but he’s just trying to eat his sandwich. As she’s leaving, she goes “there goes America” over and over again.

MUSIC

Any specific Chick Wallace topics you can think of? I basically just wrote your band name down to open it up.

You know how we got our name? He’s a realtor in Kirkwood. I was trying to come up with a name and I was (coming up with) a bunch of dumb shit. Heavy Wash was one that I kind of liked. So, I was walking around and heard this guy introduce himself in front of a house. He goes, “hi, I’m Chip Wallace.” “Yo! I’m stealing that!” Fast forward two years later, I start seeing all these Chip Wallace signs in Kirkwood and he’s on pint glasses in Kirkwood bars. I really want him to let us play an open house house show. I stalk him on Facebook and it doesn’t seem like he’d be down.

What topics and perspectives do you usually write about in your music?

Specifically lyrically, which is how I usually start my songs, I try to capture intimate tiny moments and expand upon them, basically. I want my lyrics to be small and simple and bruising. I like straight forward shit. One of my favorite lines I’ve written for a Chick Wallace song is “how does it feel to know that forever can just walk away?” That’s Lush. Lush has a lot of good lines in it.

Funniest thing that’s happened in the 529 green room? Or just 529 in general.

I don’t really spend too much time in the 529 green room. I don’t know. Oh, wait. There was a few years where every time I went there, I’d leave my card every single time. So, I made a playlist called I left my wallet at 529.

What do you think is in the future for our DIY venues?

Oh, man, especially now for DIY art spaces - when we were doing shit at The Bakery and Mammal - it’s hard for me and you to host a huge show like that because we don’t have the spaces for it anymore and it’s just a bummer. I don’t know where we could do (Bread II) or even Fish, when we did Fish. There are house spaces. I haven’t been able to sculpt really because I can’t really do that shit at my house. There’s no affordable studio spaces anymore. I’ve just been reminiscing and missing Broad Street. I don’t think they are allowed to do as much in Underground. I know Bakery is trying to work on permits and shit like that. Hopefully within the next year, that’ll be a thing because I miss curating large shows like that because it’s fun as fuck. The fish tank - the dunk tank that I pissed in the entire time. Did I ever tell you that?

You pissed the whole time?

Not the entire time. Wet suits are really hard to get in and out of. There was only one bathroom and there was a fucking crazy line the entire time. Eventually, I was like, “you know what?” I was leaning back trying to act casual in the water but I was pissing. When you piss in a wet suit, it’s not supposed to let water escape. It stays in the wet suit. It just made bubbles of piss. Sorry Glick, I borrowed that wet suit from you. There was no other option and we raised a lot of money.

So when you got dunked, you were swimming in piss?

Yeah, but it was my piss. It’s fine. Piss and dirt.

memes, sleep paralysis, art

Did you make the Corey Tower page?

No, but I actually do know who did. It happened right after I made my first Instagram reel, my friend ranting about the gloves on the Corey Tower, the glove clip art.

You ever spent a rack on the dog?

I’ve spent two racks on that dog. She deserves it though. She’s the love of my life.

Any notable sleep paralysis situations?

I get horrible sleep paralysis. For a while, I was having these crazy dreams. It happened three days in a row. I was asleep in the bed that I was in. I was in different beds in one of them because I traveled for a night. I knew where I was asleep and there would be a curtain around the room, or something blocking me off. I could sense that someone was outside of it walking around. Every time same format of the dream, just different beds. When I have sleep paralysis, I hyperventilate to try to wake myself up. I was trying to wake myself up and I couldn’t move and couldn’t scream, then the being or whatever it was comes through the curtain and touches the bed then I wake up. Then I see them afterwards and I fucking just screamed. The first time it happened, I was visiting Will’s family and it was my first time meeting them in the middle of nowhere South Carolina. I screamed so loud in the middle of the night and Will just texts me, “you ok?” It’s been different every time but that one was kinda white and glowing. I thought it was an apparition. It was the same person that was in the dream. The second time it was a double headed hooded figure in my closet.

Where does the character you paint come from?

I don’t know. Painting is very journalistic to me. With my sculptures, I really think about a concept and a theory that I want to explore through the lens of installation but painting is a pure practice of sitting down and creating something. It’s been evolving recently. I think I was stuck for a second in the same sort of motif but now I’m moving on. Soon, I’m going to get to redo my mural and paint something over it which I’m really stoked on. I’ve got the mural up on Wylie over by Estoria and I think for the next iteration of it, I’m going to do a giant finger painting. I might just use my arm as a finger. I can’t paint small scale. I’m not good at it. Pretty much everything I do is extreme or nothing at all.

We ended it here and I never got a chance to ask Mel if they were EAV Gossip girl…

Further reading:

Melanie’s website

Melanie on Instagram

Poetry page

Chick Wallace on Bandcamp

Immersive Atlanta: Chick Wallace Get It Together

Review: Chick Wallace brings salty girl pop to the masses on “Salt”