Mario Arnez and Steph Stewart - The Blue Cactus Interview
From the rich realms of one of the country’s most influential states for music, art, and creative culture, Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based folk, and purveyors of psychedelic perfection, Blue Cactus, have melodically made a name for themselves in this crazy world. Consisting of members Mario Arnez and Steph Stewart, the group has evolved into an electrifying effort in the endless eternity of songwriting where conquering your craft is just one poetic particle in the universe of unity. With a brand new album, “Believer” set for release later this month, we had the band sit down to tell us their story, and the journey from the end of the soul to the other.
Where are you originally from? How did you initially get into music, and was this relevant to your household growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences during your formative years, and when did you first begin to connect with music? How quickly did the gap from learning to play to wanting to perform, and record music happen for you?
Stewart: I’ve lived in Chapel Hill and the surrounding Triangle area since 2003 but grew up in Western NC around Hickory. I had a healthy dose of classic and ‘90s popular country between my grandfather’s record collection and the music my parents listened to at home. I think the Lilith Fair scene had the biggest influence on my desire to learn guitar and write songs. It was very powerful to see a lineup full of women who wrote their music and played instruments. The only friends who played guitar in my small town were dudes, and they didn’t want to play Jewel or Sarah McLachlan. So, I borrowed a guitar from my neighbor and taught myself. I went to a local open mic night at a small coffeehouse downtown almost every Wednesday night while in high school and played my heart out for 15 minutes a week. Recording music became more of a pursuit when I started my project Steph Stewart & the Boyfriends and collaborated with bandmates, who had access to recording gear. Arnez: I grew up and went to school in southwest Florida. In 2012, I moved to the Triangle after college to check out the music scene. My parents had an upright piano in the house. My older sister took lessons, and I would listen to her practice and bang on the keys whenever I could. At some point when I was pretty young, I remember seeing a guy on TV looking cool with an electric guitar. I begged for a guitar for a while before my parents finally got me one before I had a teacher. That teacher set me up to get into Van Halen, Hendrix, SRV, and all the big guitar legends. I also had formative open-mic experiences in high school playing with older people who knew more than I did. I learned the basics through high school and then majored in classical guitar performance in college while also getting into composition. It wasn’t until I moved to North Carolina and started collaborating with Steph that I had a project that made its way into a recording studio.
Did you participate in any groups or projects before Blue Cactus? How did you initially meet one another, and what was the chemistry like during the band's early days? Located in one of the most influential zones for music and art, North Carolina, how much did the creative community impact the band initially? Rising to the sonic surface with 2017’s self-released/self-titled debut, tell me about writing and recording this album and how much this changed the direction of the band into what we know today as a duo of dynamic and poetic bliss.
Stewart: Before Blue Cactus, I had an acoustic string band called Steph Stewart & the Boyfriends, which was how I met Mario. He was good friends with my fiddle player, Omar Ruiz-Lopez, and Omar convinced him to move up to NC and play guitar with us. So our relationship has always centered around making music together from day one. Initially, we tried to distinguish ourselves from the creative community here, which has a deep folk/bluegrass-leaning tradition. Folks responded well to what we were doing from the start and were excited about the classic country-leaning music we were making in the beginning because it was so different from other stuff going on at the time. Arnez: Sometimes at the beginning of a new project, you need a push to get started. Nick Vandenberg was our bassist in the Boyfriends band, and he encouraged us to develop the songs that made up the first Blue Cactus record, which we recorded at his home studio. Similarly, Gabe Anderson and Saman Khoujinian (co-founders of Sleepy Cat Records) have been regular collaborators with us over the past few years. In a way, we all keep each other excited and looking ahead to the next thing. Around this time, we got into the idea of writing classic country songs. Nick mentioned an old songwriting practice of writing based on a title, which can be an effective way to get songs started. We ran with this idea and loaded songs with puns and titles with parentheses. That album owed a lot to 60’s and 70’s country music since that's what we were most excited about during that time. After we finished this album, there was a feeling of wanting to mix up the writing practice and not continue to chase cheeky lyrics or build around classic country genre staples. I think there was a need to put more of ourselves in the songs and that’s a big part of how we got the songs that made up “Stranger Again.”
I want to jump ahead to the group’s most recent project, the long-awaited follow-up to 2021’s “Stranger Again,” Believer, which is set for release later this month on Sleepy Cat Records. What was the overall writing and recording process like for this album, and how did you guys initially approach this material compared to previous works? Tell me a little bit about the background to tracks like “Take All Day,” “Gone,” “Bite My Tongue,” and the album’s second single “Resolution.”
Stewart: I wrote most of the songs on “Believer” during a heavy time in my life when I was dealing with several chronic health issues on top of a total career upheaval brought on by the pandemic. We unintentionally approached recording the album not knowing we were recording an album, but rather simply capturing songs in their infancy. I have a collection of twelve or so rough phone demos that I shared with our producers Whit Wright and Saman Khoujinian, and they were each drawn to working on different songs with us. So we booked two sessions - one with Whit in Nashville and the other near Chapel Hill with Saman. This approach was liberating because I didn’t have the external pressure of recording an album. We were having fun figuring out the songs together while coming up with arrangements that best served them. “Take All Day,” “Gone,” “Bite My Tongue,” and “Resolution” were the collection of songs we recorded during our Nashville session. They all came in quick bursts, sometimes when I was in the middle of something else. For example, I was doing laundry when the melody for “Take All Day” came to me. “Gone” was inspired by going to church with my grandmother, who’s now 93, and just realizing that all the friends she used to look forward to seeing on Sunday were gone. Her husband, my grandfather, has since passed as well. Her old church was gone before she found a new one. I felt a deep sense of grief and hoped to see someone hold on to their faith in the absence of all the people who were once a part of that experience. Women are often taught from a young age to ‘play nice,’ and “Bite My Tongue” is a direct challenge to that notion. We had a lot of fun working on the music video for that one, which is a nod to the classic 1980s movie “9 to 5.” “Resolution” came while I was doing dishes on New Year’s Eve and starting to think about all the ways I could be a better person overnight. It was like something was telling me I just needed to work on being a better listener. And that was all. Then there was the melody, and I sat down with my guitar, and the whole song wrote itself in 30 minutes.
“We unintentionally approached recording the album not knowing we were recording an album, but rather simply capturing songs in their infancy.”
I understand you worked alongside several talented musicians such as our mutual friend, the very talented Rich Ruth. What does this album mean to you since first starting the band? How much have you guys changed as songwriters, musicians, and people over those years, and what are you most eager and excited about for this new album? Is there anything else you would like to share further with the readers?
Arnez: This album is very special to us, largely due to the amazing musicians who worked on it and made it our most collaborative album yet. About half of the songs were recorded and produced by Whit Wright in Nashville and the others were recorded and produced by Saman Khoujinian close to home in Pittsboro, NC. It still floors me to hear Erin Rae, Brit Taylor, and Kate Rhudy’s voices on the record. I regularly think back to when Russ Pahl came over to Whit’s to track his parts. It felt like such a gift to watch him work and then share a meal. The recording sessions were days dedicated to being present with each other and I think this energy comes through in the music. One way we’ve changed is that we’re more open to things happening outside our control. In a way, “Believer” might be about recognizing how little control we have over our lives and how much power we wield in our belief systems. Stewart: I’m proud of this record. It feels like our most honest work yet. We weren’t trying to be a certain ‘thing’ or emulate the music that inspired us. We just allowed ourselves to write the songs that came to us and worked with incredible collaborators who helped best serve what the songs were asking for. We’ve got a lot of tour dates coming up and can’t wait to share this music with folks on the road this spring and summer.
