Fern Spores On Debut Album ‘The Understory’
Olympia-based band Fern Spores’ debut album, The Understory, is full of lyrics lyrics and melodies that offer catharsis to a vast audience. OFM had a chance to chat with members Jade Kovats and Alyssa Nunke on the inclusivity in the music industry, the album’s themes of transformation, and bowling alley nightmares.
Fern Spores draws inspiration from Janis Joplin, Alabama Shakes, Susan Tedeschi, and Cat Power, and brings “anthems of empowerment and poignant reflections on life’s highs and lows.”
The ensemble includes Alyssa Nunke (vocals, guitar, lyrics), Jade Kovats (lead guitar, backing vocals), Abbey Ryle (violin), Joshua Plaster (drums), and Keith Porteous (bass). With the album’s haunting melodies and vocals, Fern Spores is the perfect band to add to your new queer musicians playlist.
The debut album shares vulnerability and authenticity throughout each song. The group also aims incorporate inclusivity for women, nonbinary, and queer folks who are often underrepresented in the industry.
Kovats says, “Through the renditions of fill-in members or permanent members … there’s a variety of gender expansive people, of intersectionality between gender and sexuality” in the band.
They intentionally chose to record the album at the Women’s Audio Mission (WAM), a nonprofit that provides “hands-on training, work experience, career counseling, and job placement to over 2,000 women/girls/gender-expansive individuals every year in creative technology for music, radio, film, television, and the internet.”
Nunke says, “Out of stubbornness, and also a drive to change things, we decided to make the album completely with women to see how easy that actually was to do. And it actually wasn’t that hard. We got to support a lot of really badass women in the industry doing it. And so we hope that that is also inspiring to people—of being like, you can have a female producer and drummer and master, and every single part of it can be done by women just like it is by men all the time.”
The Understory captures a raw, honest sound in some songs and provides smooth and goose-bump inducing beats and vocals on other tracks. Can you share a bit about the creation and inspiration of the album?
Nunke: I would say The Understory in general is the deep dark part of the forest where there’s things rotting and sprouting at the same time.
I kind of chose the name and the songs on it (because) I wanted it to be a collection of songs that are kind of my backstory, and what made me or brought me to the point where I decided to move here and start pursuing music. So it’s kind of the rocky road that led me to choosing this path.
The first single release, “Break the Chain,” is fast-paced and packed with heartfelt melodies and lyrics that lend themselves well to get stuck in your head. What is Fern Spores’ writing process for the music and lyrics of your songs?
Nunke: I have thus far written all the lyrics. But I pretty much just come up with a chord progression of the lyrics, and then the rest of the band makes it sound way cooler with all their parts.
Kovats: Some of the songs click right away, and Alyssa definitely gives a lot of creative freedom for everybody else in the band to put their mark or impression on the song. But some of them have sounded how they’ve sounded immediately right off the bat. And then other songs, kind of just how we’ve progressed as a band, have evolved in that sound as well.
Meeting over the course of 2022 at Rhythm Coffee, Fern Spores went from jamming together to performing their first show in only two weeks. Can you share a bit of how Fern Spores came to be?
Nunke: I definitely decided to live in Olympia instead of other places around just because it did seem like a very supportive community … I definitely feel like just the community around like Rhythms (Coffee) and stuff has been very supportive of us starting the band. I moved here about two years ago with the intention to start doing music.
So I decided to start hosting an open mic at a coffee shop with the intention of meeting all my bandmates. And then Jade came in a couple weeks after I started doing it, and I was like, ‘You should be in my band.’ It took me a few months, but then I asked her to, and then a few other people that I met at that open mic. But it was pretty much just you (Kovats) and me and Chris for, like, eight months.”
Are there any moments that pop out to you, whether while touring or recording or performing?
Nunke: Do you wanna talk about the bowling alley?
Jade: One of the first shows we played, was it one of our first shows?
Nunke: It was, like, our third show, and it was terrible.
Jade: We played a bowling alley, and they hated us. We had to do our own sound, lug in all of our equipment. It was, like, an hour away or something.
Nunke: It was, like, two.
Kovats: We were doing a soundcheck, and then the person who booked us … went up to me right away and was like, “He (the owner) doesn’t like the sound of your guitar, fix that. And I was like, “Well, it’s a soundcheck. We’re, like, dialing it in. And then she was like, throughout the whole thing, “Well, half the people hate you; half the people love you.”
Nunke: It was a very harsh way to start playing. And it was one of my first gigs ever … so it was rough … I think there’s a lot of things in this journey that make you want to stop and tell you you should. But I think that’s also motivating and empowering to be better and do better. It was an early lesson to just let things roll off.
Kovats: Oh, for sure. It was like, we got that out of the way right away.
As women in the music industry, can you share a bit about your experiences? And can you touch on the Women’s Audio Mission?
Nunke: I think that both of us, and most women in the industry, have just had a lot of negative interactions along the path. And I worked with a couple of male producers, and one of them was really great. And the other ones were either very condescending or creepy. And that’s just kind of an energy that is around a lot of corners.
I know that I tend to put up walls when I don’t feel safe … I knew that going to record an album, if there were people who were making me feel inadequate or unskilled or objectified, that I wouldn’t have been able to do as good as I was able to do. And so I think deciding on surrounding ourselves with women in that studio definitely made the album sound better because we were able to be unfiltered and not worried about how we were being perceived.
Women’s Audio Mission (WAM, in Downtown San Francisco, have been around for about 20 years. And they’re a school, which is kind of how I found them. But they train women and nonbinary individuals into basically just the audio industry—so everything from producing music to live sound reinforcement to working on films, and a huge array of different careers. But they’re kind of the only thing like that in the world. And so they’re actually singlehandedly tipping the scales of the amount of percentage of women that are in this field. And so we found that, and we thought that was really cool. And then also they have a recording studio where all the staff there are women as well. So it was the only one in the entire world that was completely operated by women.
What do you hope audiences get from your upcoming debut album and your music?
Nunke: I would say empowerment is definitely one of the biggest things that I want to try to instill in people—of just doing what they want to do, and being strong through the shitty things. And I think empowering other people to want to pursue their scary ideas of what they want their life to be like. But also just, life is really hard and my songs are really sad. But I also try to have a sense of hope within them
Where can folks find more about Fern Spores and your music?
Nunke: I think the biggest thing people can do to help indie musicians is conveniently very free. And that is just follow us on everything. And it takes not that much time. And I think that beyond downloading music, obviously, paying for the album is great. But I think, like, in the long run, just people simply following you on social media and what streaming services they use and liking your songs, your posts, is a pretty quick and cheap way to actually make a difference to people who are trying to make it.
To find more information on the band you can support Fern Spores on their website, Instagram, and Spotify. The Understory can be purchased here.
Featured photos courtesy of Alyssa Nunke and taken by Kimberly Cadoo
