Exclusive Interview with MLEMON: Meet the creative Husband-Wife Duo Redefining Indie Music.
Asher: “We met on Tinder! We started dating in January 2020 and moved in together when covid hit, even though we’d only just met. We both lived in Virginia at the time, about 45 minutes apart, and we bonded over music right away. I made McKinley a mix CD after our first date. We were both recording as solo artists, so it was natural for us to collaborate, and we felt the chemistry after the very first song, which became Tulip Bomb. It was destiny at first jam.”
2. MLEMON is a great (and hilarious) name, where did you guys come up with that?
McKinley: “During the first month or two that Asher and I started dating, I’d been working at a world instrument shop in Maryland where I found myself ringing up a man who was dressed as a monk. When I explained to him how our card reader worked, I said it was “easy peasy, lemon squeezy,” and this sweet man became so giddy with delight, I think he literally slapped his knee. He laughed as heartily as Santa Claus and asked if I’d made that expression up on the spot. When I said no, he still insisted it was the most delightful thing he’d ever heard. Later, Asher and I were writing some timed poetry prompts when I picked the prompt: “A monk who has never seen a lemon.” … so Monk’s-Lemon became MLEMON; it was a surreal interaction that occurred right when Asher and I first deigned to ask, with dimples: “… so what’s our band name?”
Asher: “It’s pronounced muh-LEM-on, like m’lady.”
BM: *Tips Fedora
*
3. What first got you into music?
McKinley: “My dad collected instruments and managed a chain of record stores around DC back in the day so my family’s always been really musical.”
Asher: “My parents got me started playing piano and violin when I was 4. I used to play classical pieces for politicians in Eastern European embassies. It didn’t make me a communist, though.”
BM: Phew! That would have made for an awkward band rec haha
4.Who inspired you to make music?
McKinley: “All of my earliest memories are from being four years old and obsessed with The Beatles, so probably that.”
Asher: “I think I wanted to make my own music from the first moment I heard rock bands. I remember seeing Panic at the Disco’s music video for I Write Sins Not Tragedies on a big projector at summer camp, and that was it – there was no turning back.”
BM: Summer Camps sound wild over there.. from personal experience our camps never had projectors; we had some dude with a guitar
5.How would you describe the music that you typically create? What themes do you guys explore in your songs?
Asher: “We make the music that we like to hear in the world. We’re both spiritually-minded people, so that comes out a lot in our writing – we write about purpose, buried emotions, life and death. But we also believe firmly that music should be fun, so there’s a lot of lightheartedness and genre-hopping to balance it out. A lot of our music is, I think, kind of hard to describe. We use different instruments and challenge each other to go beyond our comfort zones. And we draw from a whole bunch of influences – we’re just constantly discovering new music and sharing it with each other and sort of building a world of cool ideas to blend together.
6. What is your creative process like?
McKinley: “I think our laptop is an auditory sketchbook that makes up this pile of patchwork bits and ideas. The ideas are either a) songs that one of us will realize, almost fully formed, during our day jobs, which we’ll then record has a structured idea or b) we’ll ping-pong back and forth between samples and beats and jams and riffs and concepts until something exciting happens!”
Asher: “We also get inspired by art and movies and other music, so sometimes we’ll go to an art gallery or watch a documentary or something, and musical ideas will just start to percolate.”
7. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Asher: “We are a duo, so we’re quite happy collaborating with one another 🙂 But if Gerard Way ever wants to sing on one of our songs, that’s cool.”
8. If you could go open a show for any artist who would it be?
Asher: “For me it’s my musical heroes, The Mars Volta. In my dreams, Omar comes out and does a little hand percussion during one of our slow jams. Just for fun.”
McKinley: ”The Daddy herself, St. Vincent.”
BM: The Mars Volta and St.Vincent are definitely on our lists too, big daddy energy right there!
9. Have you played any shows?
McKinley: “You know, we just got married on May 4th, and instead of doing a first dance after tying the knot, we played our first set as husband and wife, and dare I say it was a fairly kickass set.”
Asher: “It WAS a kickass set.” —> footage here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuqhGOQn4yE
BM: Uh, excuse me, that is so freakin’ epic! How special for you guys, makes me wish my husband and I were even slightly musically inclined…what a beautiful personal touch for your special day! Oh yeah and Congratulations guys!!
10. Tell us about your latest release! That Cover art is epic!!
Asher: “Our most recent release is Tales Too Tall To Tell, which came out this past February 29. It’s the second of two concept albums tied together by a single story. There are some really cool little genre-worlds that we visit on this album. The opening track is a brilliant little Paul McCartney-by-way-of-Meatloaf song that McKinley wrote (ok, I added the Meatloaf) about the truth behind the song “The Monster Mash.” Then there’s a Middle Eastern acoustic string piece with sitar (“The Real Angel”), some pure snarling rock & roll (“She-Wolf”)… but I’m happy with how unified and cohesive it is despite the diversity of sound. Each album we release has its own theme or story or concept, even if it’s abstract, but this one really feels like a book on a shelf in terms of how complete it is. Shout out Sambo Jussi for the cover art, too.
McKinley: “It’s our Odyssey.”
Asher: “Shout out Scylla and Charybdis.”
11. Where can people listen to you and find out more about you?
McKinley: “You can follow us on Instagram via @mlemonforever, but we’re not here to be social… we’re here to get in your ears! So just find us on Bandcamp (mlemon.bandcamp.com) or Spotify or Apple Music.”
Asher: “We also have some videos on YouTube!” (https://www.youtube.com/@mlemon5560)
12. Any exciting news regarding your music, what are your next moves?
McKinley: “We’re actually closing in on finishing our 10th studio album in 4 years! It will be featuring songs about dead birds inside of pianos, the bottom of the ocean, the Devilish time zones of tropical paradises, and twisted shikses!”
Asher: “We also recently had the chance to do an interview with an Australian magazine.”
13. Who are the people that would enjoy giving your music a listen?
McKinley: “Musical anthropologists who appreciate the ever-changing sonic landscape or people who can have a little fun for once in this damn lifetime!”
Asher: “If you like humor in and out of music, ethereal harmonies, rippin’ guitar solos, and the freedom that comes from remembering the impermanence of it all – we’re here for ya!”
WHAT ARE YA WAITIN’ FOR!? Go show MLEMON some love, you never know, someday you could be seeing them at a venue near you! Plus, it’s always cool to support artists that aren’t signed to massive corporate labels, just quietly…
A few of our fave songs are Transylvania Twist, A Spoonful or Fool (anything with a harmonica automatically slaps) We Had a Dream Last Night, But (those vocals are deliciously reminiscent of Lana Del Rey) and The Dragon (impressive range of instruments, makes you feel like you’re walking across the desert in spurs to meet your opponent in a gun fight)
About MLEMON:
MLEMON (pronounced “muh-lemon”) is a husband-wife duo creating music across the spectrum of genre. Their albums span everything from hard rock and electronic avant-garde to bluegrass, jazz, funk, and orchestral composition. Asher and McKinley Coda are never stationary; the two lifelong musicians command an arsenal of over 40 instruments. Since they met in January 2020 (and dared to move in with each other three months later) they have written, produced, recorded, and mixed all of their albums from their home studio in Northern Virginia.
