Northampton musician Carolyn Conspiracy—nee Carolyn Zaikowski—learned piano and the application of music theory in part by listening to and trying to play music from Broadway musicals.
“I am a serious sucker for heart-wrenching drama in music,” Conspiracy says. “I think being exposed to all that Broadway at a young age created some really specific neural pathways in the music part of my brain. I think the character/alter-ego of Carolyn Conspiracy channels all that.”
Conspiracy, who also sings and plays synthesizers and drums, started making music at the age of eight and took to it straight away. It didn’t hurt that her father was a musician and guitar teacher.
Over the years, she’s drawn inspiration from artists like Bjork, Leonard Cohen, Neutral Milk Hotel, Nirvana, Radiohead, Joanna Newsom and The Beatles, especially George Harrison. She cites mid-to-late ’90s indie rock and contemporary freak-folk as major influences.
“And lots of my friends, particularly Northampton’s own Ella Longpre and the Boston band Sway,” she adds. Sway’s Chris Logue recorded Conspiracy’s 10-track Body Songs.
The musician is an ardent activist for animal and human causes, and sometimes the two worlds intertwine. She says she’s always viewed the punk rock ethic, with its DIY art, music and shows, as integral to community and political organizing. She talks about the simple act of setting up a show as a vital way to raise funds and consciousness and create community.
“I’ve also always tried to donate sales of my DIY recordings to political and disaster relief organizations, for both humans and animals,” she explains. “My actual songs don’t seem political, but they are; they’re about oppression and liberation of bodies—and not just human ones—and mourning, witnessing and healing at both political and personal levels. People might not necessarily know that unless they got into the lyrics. So maybe I’m a little sneaky in that sense. But I think music, and all the other arts, are critical for witnessing and healing from all types of traumas.”
Conspiracy is also a novelist, poet and blogger. When it comes to the musical sphere, she prefers writing to performing.
“I like to hide in my basement with my instruments and write and sing,” she says. “I could do that and not perform ever again. I like performing a lot, but performing isn’t why I am a musician. Writing and playing by myself is, at the risk of sounding cliche, a really healing and grounding experience for me. I do it to reorient myself when I’m feeling chaotic.”
Conspiracy recently finished an MFA in Creative Writing at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa, and has been “wrapped up” in that world, but says she’s back at the music thing, with an album’s worth of material she hopes to record soon.
“I’ve also gotten into this experiment where I play the drums and the piano at the same time,” she says. “It’s a little crazy and I haven’t done it in public yet.”
Stay tuned.
For songs and more info, visit myspace.com/carolynconspiracy. Her blog can be found at liferoar.wordpress.com.
