Not knowing of the response she would receive, Inge Chiles had a moment of bravery and shared a demo on Facebook in 2011.
Startled by the encouraging responses she received, she once again utilized Facebook to search for musicians interested in performing her demos with her. This is how Ings, formerly known as Plaid Dragon, was formed.
In addition to Inge, the constantly evolving project is currently composed of members Jonathan James, Colin Turnbull, Sam Gibson, Brooks Burrell, and Preston Richey.
Fast forward to late 2013 when “Dog Physics,” Ings’ first EP, was released. Described by Inge as “lullaby rock,” their Dog Physics EP is a striking blend of soft vocals, haunting lyrics, and enchanting musicianship.
I met with Inge at a local coffee shop in downtown Springfield. Surrounded by college students downing coffee to keep alert, we began the interview.
So, if you don’t mind, tell me a little bit about you and the band, the history, how you guys started, and what really made you guys want to make music together.
I’ve been writing songs on my computer for as long as I can remember, and I started writing songs on my guitar in high school, but starting to really layer instrumentation, and like, think about arrangements and adding harmonies and stuff, I kind of developed that skill through this computer program called GarageBand. That’s how I recorded my first demos.
So I’d always loved the band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. They were like my favorite band forever in high school, and I loved going to their shows. It was totally awesome. I ended up posting one of my demos on Facebook, and Jonathan James, who is in that band, heard it and sent me a message. When I got the message, I literally screamed I was so happy because he was like “Oh, you’re really good and you should think about playing out.” …
Then I made a Facebook status, like “Who wants to be in my band?” So basically that’s how my musicians came together, because I was looking for people to play my demos. It was kind of a weird group dynamic because they were … all from different corners of my life, and they didn’t necessarily know each other, so it was kind of an interesting dynamic for a while.
Some of the lineup has changed but there’s few of the original members. Ever since I changed the name from Plaid Dragon to Ings, I’m more just like thinking about it as there are so many people that uh, I have a full-length album coming out in the next year or so, and there are a ton of people playing on that that aren’t playing when I tour, and it’s all kind of ramshackled.
Why the name change from Plaid Dragon?
I could go into like this really long, boring story about why those two words floated around my brain, but basically the reason why I decided to change it was because I just felt it was kind of a cute name, and I’m not always going to make cute music. I told people there are almost no ukulele songs on the full-length, they’re like, “Uh, but I see you as the girl with the ukulele,” and I was like, “Wait a second, I need to change something.”…
So it was basically just something you came up with on a whim?
Plaid Dragon? Yeah, totally. I like literally had a list of words in my journal, and I was like, “Hmm, which words should I combine?” The other thing is, there are a lot of bands with the name dragon in them, and because we’re such an Internet, short-term memory, just like throw-information-away-all-the-time culture, if you see a band that like has the same word you automatically … write them off. Or at least I do.
That makes perfect sense. Ings is something that came out and captured my attention more than Plaid Dragon did.
That’s good to hear. It also means “Norse water meadow.”
Ings?
Yeah, in old Norse. I Wikipedia’d it before I made that final change. Originally it was Ing, and I was like, “Wait a second, there’s a giant bank that occupies like the first 20 pages when you like Google ‘Ing’; I better not do that.” So I added the “s,” and I think it’s working out.
I know you said your album is going to have a different sound than your first EP. Are you planning on progressing your music as time goes along, or is there a certain genre that you’re wanting to really stick to?
That’s a good question. I’ve definitely thought about trying to hone in on a certain genre or market, but I have, like, literally hundreds of scraps of songs on my computer that come out of all parts of my subconsciousness. I can’t really limit myself to cute ukulele songs.
I would say, to answer your question, the full-length album has more; I guess it’s not just like, poppy and sparkly; it’s more of shimmery and a little darker, and the arrangements are more orchestral. There’s a lot more violin, there’s standup bass and cello, there’s flute on one song, there’s a couple ukulele pieces, there’s some pieces with just me and a piano. There’s some upbeat with like an electric guitar, like fast-paced songs, but um, I don’t know. There’s actually a bunch of electronic songs I want to put out, but I’m deciding to put out this full-length because it’s finished first, and it bridges the gap between my electronic music and my sparkly ukulele.
I saw that you posted on Twitter and Facebook that you have a new video coming out, “It’s However You Want it to Be.” Can you share any details about that, or is it all under wraps for now?
I will just say that my dog, Twister, is the star. I’m just really excited about it. It’s made by two students at MSU. Actually, one is at MSU and one’s at Drury — Evan Melgren and Andy Wolff, who are both really, really talented, and I’m really excited for it.
That’s awesome. I’m really excited for it as well! I’ve always been curious, what are some thoughts that go through your head when you first walk onto stage for your concerts? Are you still nervous, or have you gotten used to it?
That’s a good question. I think it kind of depends on the show really. When I went on tour last fall, there were some shows that I thought were going to be horrible, and I was just like — I mean, when you’re on tour it’s like a different ballgame because you’re playing for people who have never heard you live, you’re all trying to function in this new environment, you don’t know the sound guy, you don’t know how it’s sounding. …
In Springfield, I used to get pretty nervous, and I still get kind of nervous when I’m by myself, playing solo, but I think with the band, it really kind of distributes the audience’s attention amongst yourselves. That’s why I like playing with my musicians, because they’re backing me up and it’s psychologically reassuring.
I’m kind of nervous for this next show, which is February 22, at the Outland Ballroom, because I’m debuting some electronic songs, just because I couldn’t help myself. And I got a sampler for Christmas, so I’m just like, I’m going to do this. Who knows when they’ll actually get released, but yeah, I’m kind of nervous to put those up.
But in general, it’s OK to play in Springfield any more, but on tour, it’s slightly nervewracking. Sometimes you get lost in the moment, though, and it’s totally fine. It’s weird, to have everyone watching you. I think I’m growing to enjoy performances. I mean, at first I hated it, and I hated people watching me. It’s kind of a weird thing. I’m growing to get used to it, I guess.
Do you have any crazy tour stories that you would like to share, or any weird experiences?
Ah, man. When I went on tour in October I was just amazed by all the awesome people we met. I had planned out lodging for us more than half the time, but, like, we had to ask the audience if we could sleep on their floor a couple times, and it always worked out. You know, people are way more open-hearted than I might give them credit for. When you’re just thinking, oh, I need to stay at a random person’s house, but you’re. … I guess it kind of goes two ways. If you share your art with someone, they open your house to you. I don’t know. We always found a place to stay.
We slept in a Walmart parking lot once. And then on the last night coming back on the tour in October, the headlights on the van went out. They would randomly turn off and on, so I was like, “Ahh, no, ahh!” The only way they would stay on is if you held the lever you pull. If you held it, they would only stay on, but then they started turning off anyway, so I was like, “OK, no, we’re not going to do this.” It was like 3 in the morning, and we just pulled into a rest stop and drove when it was light again. It was scary. …
It’s really fun being on tour. It’s basically like vacation, because you’re reading some sci-fi book in the car all day, then it’s your turn to drive a few hours, then you just go back listening to music or watching movies or chilling out or whatever. I mean, you really only have to think about what you’re doing for like three hours of the day, setting up, performing, and stuff.
More and more, it’s like there are more emails to answer all the time. It’s important to do the promo and make sure you’re tweeting about it and trying to promote the show as you’re leading up to it, but back when I wasn’t aware of how important it was, it was more fun. I’m thinking back of how much work I should have been doing. You’re learning all the time, and you’re kicking yourself, but you’ve gotta go with the flow and learn along the way. It’s how everyone does it basically.
Is there a favorite city you visited while on tour?
We had a really good time playing Chicago. That was a really good show. We went to New York in November. That was awesome. New York was really, really fun. It was really cool to be able to go there, because I’ve actually never been there. We played a good show, met some really cool people. Yeah. It’s just really reassuring to have the positive response from people from somewhere like New York, where it’s really like scary and huge. I drove this huge van, it’s like this huge 12 passenger van through Times Square, and it’s the most aggressive. It’s like green [stoplight] for you, and people will still be driving in front of you. Just like rich people, and they think that they can just like..
Do whatever they want?
Yeah, exactly. And it was all fancy cars trying to drive on a red light. It was ridiculous. And then you would see like these giant tour buses that had scrapes all along the side of them, because you know they were mercilessly shoving their way into traffic, and they were gigantic. I kept my cool, and that was the most difficult thing I had to do, drive in Times Square. We were like, “We’ve got twenty minutes to kill, let’s just go to Times Square.” It took like an hour to drive through. It was ridiculous. But we got through it, and we were like “Why did we do that?”…
What was it like playing the crowd there? Was it a huge crowd? Was it a more intimate setting?
It was like a mid-size. It was probably like the size of the Outland downstairs. The thing about New York is the shows go until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. We played on a Wednesday, and it was like, you know, whatever, it’s a Wednesday. It was a pretty good crowd, but there were five bands playing that night. There was a rap show playing right after us. We were literally the last group to play before the rap show, so the audience was blending…
On Bandcamp for your EP you described your music as lullaby rock. I know you said you’re going in a different direction now, but would you still consider your music as that sometimes, or would you have a different description for it now?
More or less. I think this upcoming album is definitely going to still be lullaby rock. I guess lullaby in that the dynamics change a lot from very soft to not like really loud, but there’s definitely a dramatic shift in some of the songs. There’s basically a full drum kit playing which constitutes rock as much as anyone would say. But my voice is pretty quiet, so it’s always going to be kind of lullaby-ish, unless I change the way I sing.
Would you mind walking me through your song writing process? I know you said you had written most of your previous songs while sitting on your bed. Is there anything you do to try and get the creative flow going?
There’s this awesome documentary about making art called “Beauty is Embarrassing” about Wayne White, who did all of this art for “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”, he was a puppeteer for all these different things. There’s a part where his wife says ‘Wayne is an artist because he has to make art.”… It feels kind of pretentious for me to say that it’s definitely something that I have to do. I mean, half the time I’m about to be late to something and I have a melody, and I’m like, “OK, fuck it.” I break out my laptop, open GarageBand, and sing the melody and then look over the harmony. I have dozens of scraps like that on my computer, and every once in a while it will be really late at night and I’ll open it up and develop it more.
I was very lonely for my last year of high school. The year after that I lived in Norway and it was the loneliest year of my life. The language barrier was horrible, and I literally could do nothing but sing to keep the loneliness out of my head basically. That’s when I really developed my voice as you hear it now.
Before that, when I was in high school, I was basically trying to imitate Regina Spektor. Having that time away, I really dove deep within myself and developed my singing voice. But also, if you listen to the lyrics on the EP, they’re actually pretty sad. People are like “Oh, your music is happy and so upbeat and cheery.” But you’re like, “Did you listen to the lyrics?”
Like “Dog Physics.” I was totally on my way to choir that night, and I was about to be late. I had lyrics floating around in my head for a few days, like riding around on my bike and I’d be thinking about them. I don’t know. There’s always some part of my brain that’s somewhere else. Usually that part of my brain is dominated either by a song that’s been stuck in my head for three months, or a rotation of three songs that have been stuck in my head, or like random lyrics.
Is there anything you would like to say, or add?
I have a fashion blog that I’ve been trying to promote, because I really love fashion, just adorning myself weirdly. The fashion blog is blog.iloveings.com. Pretty excited about that.
Really excited about the music video that’s coming out on February 25. My next show is February 22. The big thing is that mid-March, I’m going to have an Indiegogo fundraiser for my solo project because I’m going to Japan with Springfield Sister Cities. They send musicians over to Japan — their sister city is Iseskai — every year, and this year I’m going for my solo project. I’m taking some of the musicians that play in Ings with me. We’re going to want a fundraiser because we’re going to have to fund all of our airfare. It will probably be up shortly after the music video release.
Ings’ next show is Feb. 22 at the Outland Ballroom, 324 South Ave., in downtown Springfield.
