One hundred percent rock, 100 percent improv, 100 percent female. Experts in experimental distortion and cohesion, believers in cautionary audience participation and diehard lovers of rock ‘n’ roll, Palo Verde delivers an unparalleled performance of sweat, grime and explosive energy.
When the members of Palo Verde describe themselves as an improv duo, they use the word religiously. All of their live performances and recordings are jams that come to life in that moment—without any preconceived structure or format—never to be repeated again. Many musicians have tried, or at least toyed with, the fulfillment of this idea, but none seem to pull it off quite as well as this drum and guitar duo.
To say that Florida-born Lauren Newman plays drums in Palo Verde is a fierce understatement. In a world where drummers hide in the background, providing the security of a catchy beat, Newman defies all norms by not only being a cutthroat woman, but also by participating instrumentally like a lead guitarist or vocalist.
“I approach the drums for the instrument it is,” Newman said. “It has tones like any other instrument, you know, like melodic and textural. I feel compelled to create like an abstract expressionist artist, like Pollock or something.”
Terrica Kleinknecht, a fan of 7Up and french fries, provides the distorted and grungy glue that holds the whole project together. They are like yin and yang—one brutally beating out her presence with tribal force, the other’s expertise more passive in the sense that it continues through changing shapes and sounds, exploring its freedom with grace and confidence.
Perhaps a driving factor in the band’s intensity is that both musicians learned music through the kaleidoscope of a drum kit.
“A family friend of ours took me over to his house for the first time and basically put on a Kiss record from the ’80s and told me to play along on the drums,” Kleinknecht said. “From that moment I became instantly obsessed with the drums.”
Palo Verde has undergone myriad metamorphoses. Originally when it came together in 2006, it was a drum duo with the risqué name Stick It In. Kleinknecht recalls the group as being a sort of performance art act, so full of new ideas that when its first show came along, the two hadn’t actually prepared any material. Not wanting to abandon their fellow band, they decided that Kleinknecht would just make some noise on the guitar and hope for the best.
“It was kinda crazy,” Kleinknecht said about that first show, “because I had never really played the guitar very seriously, but something about it just worked. When we first started it was a lot more about noise than it is now—we wanted to make the audience uncomfortable, you know? It was entertaining to see people’s reactions. But now it’s more like heavy-groove oriented.”
More recently the two have been trying this new idea of channeling particular emotions or concepts through their music. Before they begin, the two will decide on an idea, like something “dark in hue and light in spirit” or Jim Morrison, and meditate on it throughout the show. The results are unprecedented.
Palo Verde is excited to announce the upcoming release of 100 full-length limited press vinyls, each adorned with its own unique piece of artwork and one of Newman’s 100 different avant-garde sound collages she has compiled specifically for this purpose. Their release show will be on May 23 at Rotture. Definitely not something you want to miss.
Naming themselves after a nuclear power plant location they drove by after being pulled over and held at gunpoint in the vast desert of Arizona, Palo Verde will deliver nothing less electrifying.