Celebrity Interview with Hey, King! – Road Rage

August 17, 2021

Tony Ray Baker I think that the, I can’t remember what it’s called, is it called Road Rage? That’s the, it’s female empowerment-based video the songs about from what I gathered. I didn’t… You’ll have to help me with it, but it seems to me that the females are being harassed.

Taylor Plescity Yup!

Tony Ray Baker And they’re having to build up this kind of strength to deal with the crap that’s still going on in a women’s world today. Is that true?

Taylor Plescity Absolutely.

Tony Ray Baker So, tell me more about that. Then how what that song is about because there are some beautiful characters in there. When you watch the video, like I want to call the one lady and just say, hi.

Natalie London Deborah Wilson from MADtv. Like the main one in it with the shaved head and the tattoos. Yes. She’s like my guardian angel. She actually, when I was kind of at that precipice of accepting that my life had gone, she was a major role in that. So I just love, bringing her in for anything that she wants to be a part of because she’s incredible, but she’s one of the main reasons that I’m here today. She definitely saved me.

So but Road Rage, man, we just kind of we wrote it during I’d say, like the height of the Me Too movement where we were. Were kind of just discussing everything but we had been through and going through individually and when there was a tweet actually. It sounds silly, but there was a tweet that I laughed at and then realized, oh my God, this actually impacts me. It said, “what would your life look like if men had a curfew?” And I was like, oh, that’s funny. But that I was like, Wow, actually.

Taylor Plecity Wait, I know it’d be very, very different!

Natalie London Very different to not feel afraid to walk down the street. Yeah, I think as women, you almost forget how much your safety is in jeopardy on the regular, like the amount of things that we have to check for walking to your car. You know, going on a road trip, checking into the hotel, like every aspect you’re, you know, you have that in mind. I think that it’s not just women. I mean, as a queer couple that relates to us, a lot. Like being harassed down the street, you know, making sure you’re in a safe environment. Just like you’re doing with the with the website and letting people know that have a safe haven because it’s incredibly, you know, it’s something that we all have to be concerned about.

Taylor Plecity I mean, like, even from like the bad catcalls, to the like the more we’re in a couple catcalls of like they’re kissing out in public and it’s like “oh can I join you girls?”

Natalie London Like all the time.

Taylor Plecity Like it’s just there’s just a level of like disrespect that people deal with, but also there’s a level of harassment and unfortunately assault. You can’t toss… What I’ve noticed is especially when we were reaching out to all these women to be a part of this music video, was everyone has a story of some sort of you know assault or harassment. If not like, the extreme, to like the just everyday stuff, which shouldn’t be every day anyway. And like I was I was sexually assaulted when I was still living in Tucson and that kind of had a huge impact on my life, one that I didn’t really realize until years afterward. When like, I just started having like all this, like random like PTSD from it and like I would wake up and not be able to breathe. Like I would be, you know like intimate with my girlfriend and then feel just really, really like weird flashes. Luckily through art I was able to like you know, write something, make a like little short film, like kind of tell my story a bit and that was such a relief for me. Yeah. And a catharsis like you were saying about the Sorry music video and stuff. So for us like, we didn’t want to put ourselves in this music video towards the end Anti was like you got to at least introduce it then because like “your too new not to be at all in your music videos. No one knows you.” And we’re like, okay okay we’ll jump in there. But we really wanted it… we really made a point to make sure that when we were handing out the song and asking like these women to videotape themselves that we didn’t give them any notes. It’s just like listen to the song and interpret it as you may…

Natalie London And everybody’s brought such a different performance and energy to the table of is like 21 women all gave, you know their interpretation of what this feels like for them. And it was so powerful. It was such an amazing experience

Taylor Plecity Oh, and from Road Rage, as soon as we were done recording the main vocal tracks in the studio, we were walking over to our car. I had my drum set and stuff and she had her guitars and there’s a group of guys around a truck. And you couldn’t have like written this. We’ve just recorded this song, we’re walking to her car and they’re like “hey drummer, girl, come play me some music” and it’s like, we just wrote a song about you!

Tony Ray Baker Oh my God, that is so funny. I think it’s interesting that I’ve never thought about this before but gay men will relate very well to this exact same issue. They have the same thoughts processes of walking down a street and being safe and the harassment and it’s always been that way and it’s obviously hopefully getting better in many cities and places with education and people like you bringing this stuff out to the Forefront, not letting it die down and pretend, it doesn’t exist. And I love that about this kind of music at that. There is those connections and we need to keep doing this.