Mothra Q&A

By Tosin Faseemo

Mothra is a Twin Cities-based noise rock band composed of drummer Matthew Wellen, guitarist Jack Foley, trumpeter Alex Hilde, guitarist Daniel Watahan, and bassist Tony Miller. Keep reading to find out about their creative process, live performances, and more.

How did you guys decide on your band name?

D: We had a different name at first. We originally had a very long name. We were called Spaghetto and the Donkey Boys. ‘Spaghetto’ like, singular spaghetti. Then we shortened it to The Donkey Boys to be a little less silly, but we would tell it to people and they would laugh. And so we changed it. We settled on Mothra I guess, because we like moths and we like Godzilla movies.

J: It's kind of a reference to the post-rock band Rodan also because they're named after a Godzilla character.

What genre of music would you say your music is?

M: Noise.

D: Noise rock, definitely. Maybe alt-rock.

M: And then just DIY in general.

D: Garage rock would be a good catch-all term. Noise rock or garage rock. When we first got together we were definitely more of a punk band. But now, we definitely have a more atmospheric and melodic sound.

Do you guys all live together?

M: No. They all live together. I am separate because they're two years ahead of me, college-wise. I live in St. Paul; they all live together. So it's been pretty easy for band practice.

T: We've lived together for the past two years.

D: This is our third year.

How does that influence your creative process?

D: We're all pretty busy with school and work.

T: But we're always talking about the band in passing.

M: We never go a week without meeting for practice at least once or twice. So it's always very consistent for us. I think the majority of us, we usually work on music in our own time. Then we bring those ideas to our band practice, usually after we're done running through the things that we need to do. We like to set some time to just work through things and write new songs, which has been pretty good for us. We've had a couple new ones come out lately from sessions like that.

D: Our fifth housemate is also a musician, so there's definitely always music here at the house, but it's not always Mothra music. There’s definitely a lot of creativity going on all the time here.

J: A lot of times also it's not planned. Sometimes, I’ll just be playing guitar and then, Alex will come in and like start jamming with me. So, sometimes it happens more organically, rather than scheduled.

What inspires you guys to make music?

M: I'm always thinking of new drum parts and new guitar parts for myself and for the band.

D: Both of my jobs are pretty music-adjacent. I work at the Student Union as an audio-visual technician. So I work in the different venues at Coffman. Also, I work at First Avenue, at the various venues. Just last night, I was at a show. I didn't buy a ticket. I was being paid to be there, but I still got to listen to the music. So even when I'm working, the band is on my mind; performing live is on my mind.

A: I just have fun playing. It feels good to make music, not just by myself, but in a group. It makes me happy.

D: And we listen to a lot of music together.

T: I think if any of us weren't in this band, we'd probably be making music, some way or another.

Who would you guys say is your dream collaboration?

J: I want to work with the Minnesota Orchestra.

M: There's this band is hardcore band called While God Sleeps. Shout out to them. My friend Blake is the bassist. They rock hard. I've always wanted to do some kind of noise rock-hardcore-hybrid festival, and then at the end of the night have a bunch of the artists come up on stage and jam together. That's something that I've always wanted to do: incorporate other musicians into our sound.

D: I think my dream collab would be to have an album produced by Steve Albini.

A: I think my dream collab is along similar lines, like to have a legendary producer like Brian Eno produce a record for us. That'd be so cool.

What's it like being part of the Twin Cities music scene?

T: I love it. I've been wanting to be a part of it since I was in high school. I never had the chance since I never got to be in the city often. I guess it's just a dream come true for me.

D: I think my favorite thing is the history of great Minneapolis bands. I love The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Prince... I love all the Minneapolis record stores. I love all the Minneapolis music venues. More than anything, that's what makes it worth it for me. All that stuff is so interesting and inspiring.

M: It’s odd being in the Twin Cities. It feels like there's two different scenes that come together to meld as one and it's very interesting. If you go to a show, you can tell which kids are Minneapolis kids and which kids are St. Paul kids. I feel like we've always had that ability to just come together and love music. There’s always been a strong scene, as Daniel was talking about, since the 80s.

D: Even earlier. 

M: There's just been non-stop noise coming from Minnesota. It feels good that, for however long we are a band, we're going to leave our own little imprint on that long history.

What do you guys love about performing live?

M: How it doesn't really go as we planned. I don't think it ever does. For a lot of our songs, we’ll have this idea of how we want to end it, but I don't know what it is. We all just seem to groove out at the end and just go into this long jam. I really like this about these guys. It's not too often that you can find a group of people that, while you're playing a song, you can just change it up and they'll immediately follow you and just know what's going on. 

J: I do like when we go off script.

T: I like meeting other artists, other performers, and getting to know people by doing shows with them.

D: For me, having an audience in the room changes everything. Because when you're practicing, you're really just playing songs to try to work out mistakes, work out transition problems from section to section. But when you feed off the energy of a live audience, it's much more a performance. 

J: We're also trying to incorporate the audience into the performance, rather than it just being that there's a band playing and there's an audience, and the audience is watching them. We don't want it to be so divided; there needs to be more interaction. So we're trying to bridge that gap.

M: Mothra isn't Mothra if we don't have an audience.

A: A lot of our music, we make it with the intention of people dancing to it. So, it's really nice to see people dancing when we play. And there also is an interesting kind of relationship between the performers and the audience where we're performing but the audience, in a way, is also performing.

J: We played at The Whole at the U of M. And there was this part where I was playing a guitar solo, and then our friends in the audience were gesturing for me to give them the guitar, so I just gave them the guitar in the middle of it. If you're on stage you shouldn't be like, “I'm on stage. It's my time to shine,” because they’re here to have a good time. You should incorporate them into having a good time.

Mothra will be performing at the Walker Art Center on November 12.