Sister Psychic

Long before Wellbutrine Sister Psychic rockS it's beloved and signed to RESTLESS RECORDS (Los Angeles) and Y RECORDS (Seattle). Three LP CD's were released with some success. KEXP and college radio around North and South America added Sister Psychic's "World Upside Down" to play lists and for a short while the Psychics enjoyed a rock and roll adventure on what magically happened next...
Other Psychic singles followed and received airplay: "Velvet Dog" "Kim the Waitress" and "Hollywood" became popular. The band was filled with gifted song writers and members joined and left over the years per recording to focuse on other great recordings and projects like the late Ryan Vego's brilliant "Mulholly Field" sessions. What's a Psychic to do but to call upon other Psychics... and so Sister Psychic continued on with it's third and most eclectic effort to date "Catch and Release". Three very different releases emerged...
What's new?

Now with the addition of Bill (drums) and Tannar (bass) Sister Psychic is moving forward with new recordings for new releases in 08. Lately we've been playing around town with lots of new songs and a select few of our more popular ones to flex our chops. It's fun to be in a band again and 2008 holds promise of Psychic resurection.

MIA Bands: Sister Psychic, Andy Davenhall
POSTED April 23, 8:59 PM by Kurt Danielson After a long hiatus, Sister Psychic is experiencing a resurrection of sorts: they have returned to playing live gigs, of which they’ve played several in the last year or so; upcoming dates include May 10th at the Skylark, a free show, where they’ll be opening for Mia Boyle and Slippage; and they’re also slated to play July 18th at the Funhouse, where they’ll be playing with Warning: Danger! The current lineup, in addition to Andy Davenhall on guitar/vox, includes Tannar Brewer on bass and Bill Ibsen on drums. Not content to just play clubs, they intend to also play some upcoming festivals, for example the Fremont Street Fair. Where and whenever this band plays, Davenhall’s strong voice might catch you off guard and beguile you, drawing you in to a private world of simple melody and surreal situations. It’s pop/punk done so well it hurts, what Davenhall refers to as “bubble-grunge,” because it rocks, and to get free from the hooks, you might have to scrape them off of your shoe(s).The band has also begun work on recordings that they hope will be released in 2008. Because they rehearse and record at Sister Psychic Studios, which is in Davenhall’s house up in Lake Forest Park, whenever they write a new song that feels worth burning to tape, they have the luxury of doing just that, and it seems like they’ve been doing it more and more lately, finally amassing 8 or 9 new tunes. New titles include “Washington Anxiety Center” (for which a new video is planned), “Maybe Jesus Not Coming Back,” Good Morning Lambchop,” “Crossdressing Friends,” and “Kids Are Violent”. These psychic transmissions promise fresh infusions of mantra-like melody, combining the primal simplicity of The Replacements with the sugary melodies of bubblegum pop and a slight psychedelic aftertaste perhaps reminiscent of The Flaming Lips.Sister Psychic's return is exemplary, for it follows or leads a trend that might be called a Seattle renaissance, because, as I’ve noted here before and shall again, a great many bands are currently reforming, and many musicians from well-known bands of the past are returning to the stage and the studio in the guise of newly-formed bands (check out the Press Corps, Down With People and BOTSC). Sister Psychic, an example of the former category, joins some bands that never really broke up (Love Battery) and others that most definitely did (Seaweed, for example). To reform after having already worked and perhaps to a degree succeeded in this business means to return to working the road and to working with labels and all the other accoutrements of the record business.In confronting these challenges anew, what do bands like Sister Psychic bring to the enterprise? For one thing, they bring experience. The lessons learned from past mistakes can be applied to fresh experience, and these seasoned bands and musicians may succeed where they might have failed before, because now they know better, and they are better because of this knowledge. But they’ve learned something else, too, and that is that success has many definitions, and perhaps one’s definition may evolve to mean not what it once did, when one was young and naïve, but something new and which speaks of a new resilience. In other words, success really has nothing to do with it. These bands that are returning have learned that the music is the most important thing; success is relative; and writing and performing music is in itself its own reward, and one is privileged to be able to do it. That’s all you need now, that is, if you’ve already been through it.And Davenhall has, most definitely he has been through it. Between 1992, when Sister Psychic first signed to L.A.’s Restless Records, and 1997, by which time the band had moved on to Seattle’s Y Records, Sister Psychic traveled through the 4-D corkscrew that is the music business, having released 3 CD’s (“Fuel,” “Surrender You Freak,” and “Catch and Release”), which spawned such college radio favorites as “World Upside Down,” “Kim The Waitress” (a composition originally by seminal psyche pop outfit The Green Pajamas), “Velvet Dog,” and “Hollywood.” Though Davenhall went on to other projects (for example, The Lawnmowers), he has brought back to Sister Psychic the fruits of his personal and professional experience, in essence the sum total of what he has learned. Having traveled through this labyrinth before, he is not likely to make the same mistakes again. Being no stranger to the strange mazes that a band must navigate, Davenhall focuses now on the music.Besides steering Sister Psychic back into the public eye, what else has Davenhall been up to? He’s been building up his production portfolio, working over the years with such bands as Black Flowers Black Sun, Chris Davis and the Lovecraft, The Lawnmowers (in which Davenhall also sings and plays guitar), Dodi, Gnome, Pure Joy (for which Davenhall once played drums), The Squirrels, and of course Sister Psychic itself (these sessions include those done between ’92 and ’97 as well as those for the new material).Clearly, Andy Davenhall has much to offer us, and I know that he can and will rock. Just as it will be interesting to see how far resurrected bands like Sister Psychic may go this time around, it will be even more interesting to hear the new songs, sugary but dirty sublimations of experience transformed into music, that aural emotional mirror, the reflections of which reveal and hide us in songs which by now are more compelling because they are wiser, stronger because they live again. And to live again is to remember, and if you remember, you are much less likely to repeat yourself.Sister Psychic remembers. But to Davenhall, at times, it seems that the world is asleep. Few seem to realize the potential that lies latent in such seasoned bands returning to form. Davenhall does, and because he remembers, he won't let you forget.

NEW SONGS:
Washington Anxiety Center
Good Morning Lambchop
Five Dollar Champagne
The Girl Who Couldn't Laugh
Where Did You Come From
Maybe Jesus Not Coming Back
Crossdressing Friends
Kids Are Violent
When You Moved Away
"FUEL"

with Christian Fulghum bass guitar, songs and vocals. Ryan Vego Ludwig drums and percussion and CD art work
"SURRENDER YOU FREAK!"

"Day of the Dead" CD photos by Spike Mafford
"CATCH AND RELEASE"

with Pat Pedersen bass guitar
John Hollis drums Cornish Arts Institute [award winning] art by Thomas Metcalf