I met up with Willa Rudolph of November Girl in a bar called The Bottle Shop in Paris to get to know a little bit more about her, November Girl, and to chat about the making of her new music video: Clover directed by her sister Layla Blue Rudolph.

Willa: It’s a bit loud in here so I can try and talk loud.

Brittany: It’s usually fine. One time I did an interview at Hooters. 

Willa: Where is there a Hooters?

Brittany: In Queens, deep Queens. 

Willa: I was like: ‘they don’t have Hooters here. Do they? Should I open a franchise?’

Brittany: Where are you from? Are you from New York?

Willa: I’m from Los Angeles. My parents are from New York, and I spent a lot of time there. Lived there until I was seven. 

Brittany: Where in New York?

Willa: Chelsea… but I was born in LA and then we moved to New York when I was a baby, and then my sister was born in New York. Then we moved back to LA and I like grew up there.

Brittany: A true bi-coastal. Representing both the West Coast and the East Coast baby. 

Willa: Pretty much. 

Brittany: Where in LA? 

Willa: I’m a valley girl, like, close to Hollywood though.

Brittany: How long have you been making music? 

Willa: Officially since 2020.

Brittany: Was it a pandemic thing? 

Willa: Kind of. But only because I think I was confronted with the fact that the only reason I hadn’t done it was because I was afraid to, for whatever reason, and so I guess you could say the pandemic made me really think about that. I was like, what do I really want to be doing?  And I really wanted to be in a band and make music, and I was just afraid. 

Brittany: But what was that fear you think? Fear of being on stage, fear of people judging your music…

Willa: Both maybe? I was afraid of looking stupid or people I know being like ‘wait what? you’re making music?’ I don’t know. I just was… I think graduating college too, I just felt more like I’m just gonna do whatever I want now cause literally who cares?

Brittany: Are you still scared of looking stupid? 

Willa: Not as much, but…

Brittany: I love to look stupid. I’m a bit of a court jester.

(laughs)

Willa: Sometimes I get a little nervous to look stupid, but nowhere near what I used to be. I feel like performing on stage for the past few years and other things that I’ve done performance wise have really helped me not care.

Brittany: Do you feel like in these four years that you’ve been doing music, that you’ve been able to really come into your own on stage and your music writing? 

Willa: Yeah, definitely. I mean, our EP that just came out and is very much our fully realized sound and I am so much more comfortable on stage. I feel much more free and more confident and I don’t really feel so nervous anymore. Compared to our first show, it’s crazy. 

Brittany: Which was where? 

Willa: In a basement.

Brittany: Okay, classic. My first show was in a basement too. 

Willa: Yeah, in Brooklyn. 

Brittany: Yeah, in Brooklyn. 

(laughs)

Willa: It was honestly really fun. This was 2021 I believe and it got shut down.

Brittany: Classic rock and roll. I love it.

Willa:  It was really fun, but I remember my voice was shaking. And no one can tell probably because it was in a basement, but I was nervous. 

Brittany: I am sure people were like, ‘we love that like reverb thing she’s doing with her voice’.

Willa: They were like: ‘Oooh she’s got vibrato.’

Brittany: Do you play any instruments? 

Willa: I play a guitar but not very often. Sometimes I will do it on a song here and there when we record, and occasionally on stage but it’s not really where my comfort level is. But I write all the songs. I write on the guitar, so I can play enough to do that.

Brittany: So you have a guitarist who plays with you when you’re performing?

Willa: Yes.

Brittany: Do you want to get to a place where you’re doing guitar on stage?

Willa: Not really. Obviously, it would be amazing to be virtuosic or be killing it on guitar, and I love to play the guitar, but it just takes so much time and so much dedication to get that good that I feel like I’ve been as good as I am for so long and I haven’t really gotten better. 

Brittany: So a bit of a plateau… 

Willa: Yes, and I just try to focus more on my writing and singing which takes up a lot of time as well so I need to pick and choose a little bit. 

Brittany: Also I think having a guitar kind of restricts you as a front person, you know? 

Willa: It does, it does and I like to be free. Also the guitarist of November Girl, he co-founded the band with me and he’s really an amazing guitarist, so I don’t even need to… I mean it would be cool to have two guitars and like I said on some songs we do but… 

Brittany: Are you guys a four piece? 

Willa: That’s right. 

Brittany: And when you started in 2020, was November Girl the original project?

Willa: It was and but it was originally just me and Billy the guitarist, and it was just two of us. We made a bunch of music during COVID not really having a plan of what was going to come of it, but then, when I moved to New York and he moved shortly after I was like: ‘all right I want to start a real ass band yeah and get a bassist and a drummer.’ And this lineup that we have is the first that came to be and it just worked, and we all have a lot of fun together and it’s really great. I’m excited, we’re writing more now that we just put out an EP. It’s all really exciting.

Brittany: Do you have a show that you enjoyed playing most, the most memorable show? Are you playing mostly in Brooklyn and New York?

Willa: We haven’t been able to tour yet and I would really love to, it’s just so expensive and hard to plan. We all have jobs… boring.  But my favorite show ever…  Well I think I have two, one would be the first mud wrestling show we did in 2023, which was at the Hancock and it was just a really big deal, a lot of people came.

Brittany: The Hancock, crazy cool space.

Willa: Yeah, I didn’t know what to expect, and I’d never even heard of the Hancock until they reached out. It was a really good party and show. The sound even though we played outside was amazing. My friend did the whole back line and he did a great job and then my other favorite show I think was… well… oh no I just thought of another favorite. But another favorite was last Halloween. We did a cover show and we dressed as No Doubt and played a bunch of no doubt songs. This was in a basement.

Brittany: Halloween is always a great time for live music. When I was in a band way back when, it was so many years ago, we also played a Halloween show and probably top show that we ever played. It was crazy, it was so fun. 

Willa: Yeah, and then my next favorite and last favorite I’ll say was the EP release show that we had last month because

Brittany: Where at?

Willa: It was at The Shop, which is on Delancey. It was a really fun show and it was perfect. We performed amazing. It was a celebration for us because we had put out this project that we all worked so hard on. And my mom and dad were there and it was just really cute. 

Brittany: That’s sweet. They flew out from L.A.?

Willa: All the way from L.A. to see. It was so cute. 

Brittany: That’s really sweet. 

Willa: It was amazing. 

Brittany: Okay, cool. So the EP is out, six songs.

Willa: One was a single earlier in the summer called ‘Spiders’ and then the rest are all new songs. I think it’s less than 30 minutes to listen all the way through, it’s like a short little snippet. 

Brittany: Do you want to tell me a little bit about the music video ‘Clover’?

Willa: It was very D.I.Y. It’s all stop motion. My sister, she is an artist, photographer, videographer and we worked on it together. We shot in a studio that was all white and it was me and my two best friends just fucking around and having a good time. Then we did animated stop motion with collage and stuff to go with it. 

Brittany: It actually sounds like a lot of effort. 

Willa: Yeah, it was a lot of effort to make something that is simple. 

Brittany: It always is. 

Willa: It’s been really fun experimenting because I’ve never done stop motion before. It was something I wanted to try and my sister is…

Brittany: Older or younger?

Willa: She’s younger. She filmed our last music video for ‘Spiders’, and I love working with her and making things with her. So we decided to kind of experiment.

Brittany: Do you have an album from this year that you recommend? 

Willa: I have two. One is ‘Rocky Top Ballads’ by FINE. My drummer Phil showed me this band and I think they’re from Europe. I don’t want to be wrong but Copenhagen. It reminds me of 2000s indie, but it’s not really rock, it’s more pop I would say, but it’s slow. It reminds me a bit of The Sundays or Cocteau Twins even a little bit,  but my other favorite is ‘Home in Another Life’ by Enumclaw. I just love this band and I found them because they were listed as similar to November Girl.

Brittany: Do you agree?

Willa: I do somewhat, but obviously it’s different. But I get why Spotify would tell me that, I get it. But they’re very masculine and kind of rock and grungy. They’re a little more hard and rough. I just love it, it kind of reminds me of Midwest emo a little bit but an indie rock version of that.

Brittany: Last question: if there was a song that November Girl could cover, what would it be? 

Willa: Can I say one that we have already covered, but that I really like? 

Brittany: Yeah.

Willa: It’s called ‘Your Voice’ by Stiffed. It was Santigold’s punk band before Santigold was Santigold.

Brittany: Fuck Yeah. I am familiar.

Willa: And we actually did cover this, it’s not recorded or released. 

Brittany: So you’ve done it live?

Willa: Yeah, we’ve done it live a few times and it plays… When I first heard it, I thought it was a No Doubt song. It’s a little like ska and I just was like, wait is this Gwen? But it wasn’t. It’s really really good 

Brittany: Santigold really is so cool and talented. 

Willa: The coolest.