Mildred

Mildred is a band from Oakland, CA of four equal parts. They don’t have a lead singer, no one person writes the songs. The songs that make up Fenceline come together as a group with their genesis sprouting from any one of their members – Henry Easton Koehler (vocals, guitar), Jack Schrott (vocals, guitar), Matt Palmquist (vocals, bass, woodwinds) or Will Fortna (drums, production) – each time. The songs are often wrestled from the lead writer by the other three, a lyric might have been mumbled absentmindedly for a few days before one of the other three grabs at it. If you ask any Mildred member what their favourite part of Fenceline is, it will never be something they wrote. If you pin them down and ask them what their favourite part of something they did write was, it will always be something somebody else added to it.

This is what makes Mildred – in many ways a timeless four piece – so special. This wonderfully easy bond between four friends just hanging out and writing songs is so palpable its intoxicating. Summed up neatly by Clash Magazine saying, “imagine if Pavement went Americana and you’d be close”, Mildred make music that is pure and poetic, gently addictive and never overwrought. They describe the creation of the band as being born from “deciding that playing/talking about/thinking about music together is fun and something we want to structure our lives around as best we can”. Mildred is a vehicle for these four people to continue to spend time in each other’s company. Most bands are formed so they can get out of whatever diy space they start out playing in, Mildred was formed so they can spend more time there.