Dehd vocalist Emily Kempf weaves a tiny braid into her bleached blonde shag as she instructs, “Be more childlike … now I feel like building a fort … It'd be so great to have a backyard all the time, because then I could have little forts everywhere for each mood that I'm in.”
As Kempf shares her hack to staying young and beating death, she finishes the tiny braid. There is no elastic band to keep it in place. That was never the point.
While Dehd co-founder Jason Balla doesn’t see the practical appeal of a temporary outdoor fort, he agrees after careful consideration that he would practice vulnerability by weighing the stability of the fort and spend a night in its shelter to “save money.”
The playful and practical nature of the two bandmates is the yin and yang that make Dehd’s dreamlike lens through which they view the pains of reality so palpable. Almost exactly one year out from the release of their album Poetry, Kempf and Balla took a few moments to talk with me and stock of what they’ve learned, where they’re headed and the best gas stations they’ve experienced along the way.
Dehd’s show at Turner Hall Ballroom on Wednesday coincidentally falls on April 23, the birth and death day of Shakespeare. As they planned their Poetry-heavy set for the Milwaukee show, we explored wardrobe possibilities ranging from a Renaissance-style ruff collar with knee-length breeches to a staple lived-in vintage tee portraying the greatest star-crossed lovers of all: skeleton and “hot lady” on a motorcycle.
Breeches or not, they’ll be easy, breezy and laughing freely in spite of whatever dog day is at the helm.
The following interview highlights have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
On how Kempf and Balla have learned how to “tour better” in the last year since the release of Poetry:
Jason Balla: We've been a band for a long time, and we started out being so scrappy. We're listening to each other a lot and trying to help each other's needs to make being on the road more comfortable. 'Cause it is really fun, and it can feel like vacation sometimes, but it's also pretty disruptive and a hard flow of life sometimes.
Emily Kempf: Basically, we all just started being like, “Okay, if we ever have something, we call everyone to the table and we talk it out and we basically listen to each other.” We listen to each other very well when we write songs, and when we play live, we are like a creepy hive mind, like we are locked in. Like our rhythms are one, you know?
Our personalities were all kind of different in a lot of ways, as much as we're the same. And so those differences we've had to figure out on tour — comfort levels, things that we need, you know? 'Cause, yeah, we've been doing it for a very long time. All of us in this band and outside of this band have been on the road for a large portion of our lives. I'd say even like [how] the songs are rippers now, the set's really awesome, I feel like our friendship is now more of a ripper.
On the comforts the bring with them on the road:
JB: I am kind of anti-comfort, so I don't have any. I have no belongings except for the bare minimum.
EK: I'm pro-comfort, so this will give you a little insight into the discussions we've had. 'Cause I'm like, “I need stuff.” The first thing that came to my mind was this black t-shirt I always wear. It's like a skeleton and a hot lady on a motorcycle. He's holding her butt, and it looked really sexy, but I've had this shirt for like 10 years. It's the falling-apart shirt with holes and the thinness that you want when you go to a thrift store. Except I'm like, “I did that myself.” But it's my lucky shirt.
On Dehd’s favorite gas station on tour:
JB: That's a question that struck so dearly to the hearts of the Dehd people.
EK: Not as good as the U.K. and Europe. Europe and U.K. gas stations are on another fucking level. If I had to pick an American gas station, Sheets. Kind of obvious. The other one that's like Sheets. What's the off-brand sheets? What's it?
JB: Wawa.
EK: Wawa. … Kwik Trip is good. A Kwik Trip.
On what it takes to be alive in the album Poetry and beating death in life:
JB: I think it's mostly just trying to treat life like an adventure and actually be an active participant in your own life. I feel like it's really easy to kinda get into your routine and comfort zone, and then a whole week goes by and you're like, “Oh my gosh.” Just asking a little bit more from yourself. Participating in your relationships. Putting yourself out there. Being a little vulnerable.
EK: [Laughing] It's like daddy, father advice, and I’m like, “Be a kid. Be more childlike.” We're saying the same thing, but from other ends of the spectrum, which deeply explains our friendship. But yeah, staying young, and I don't just mean hot. I mean “like a kid.”
JB: Your inner kid.
EK: Like, I just sat outside. I was like, “I wanna go sit outside in a blanket and take a nap and read my weird book.” That sounds like an adult activity, but it was kind of kid-like because I was eating cereal, and I just basically was like, “I wanna do all the stuff I'm doing inside, but outside.” I'm not talking about, like, let's go have a posh picnic. I'm like, “Let's go be like a child. Outside. Because it seems fun.”
That means you're doing it right. Because I'm like, “Okay, now I feel like building a fort.” Literally, I was like, “God, it'd be so great to have a backyard all the time, because then I’d have these little forts everywhere for each mood that I'm in.” Why not?
On “Pure Gold” and Kempf’s experience with internalized heteronormativity:
EK: [“Pure Gold”] is my little Easter egg. When I talk to my queer friends, I'm like, “I just hope nobody thinks poorly of me.” And they're like, “Everybody is gay, a little bit.”
It was scary for me because I'm pretty heteronormative and the world's kind of heteronormative vibes. It's just about my friend Christine, who I had a huge crush on, and we really liked each other, and we were edging towards queer love, but we were in the bestie mode, I guess. I just wrote this cute song 'cause I always write about guys, and I always write about love, and I was like, “Hey, this is just a different version,” and it's never come up strongly enough.
If something comes up strongly enough, a song gets written about it. And this was the first time that a queer moment of love came up strong enough to write a whole ass song about it. Often, we'll write songs and we have no idea what the other person's talking about, and we’re just kind of like two dogs that are barking over each other. But it’s somehow a harmony vibe.
So this song felt like this is where the lyrics landed. Jason's talking about someone with a tattoo on their chest. And I don't know if that's a real someone. Maybe it's a mystery forever, who knows?
On social media and getting a dumb phone:
EK: This is the world and the game in which we're playing, but we've always been a band that hasn't really … we're not really hustling up the ladder and crushing those around us. We’re just sort of leisurely traversing said ladder.
I just don't believe rules always apply — like the rules they tell you that apply. So I'm getting off social media just 'cause … I mean, it sounds so dumb to even say that, but I just don't wanna be there anymore, and I've been trying to get off of it since like 2021. I wanna test the theory, and that's what I'm gonna do.
I still want my Spotify, I still want my Audible. I don't know what's gonna happen. I've started buying CDs, like I'm just seeing basically how I went off grid. Like, can I do this? Can I chop wood and carry water? I'm about to get a dumb phone. I was looking at the Barbie phone, the Barbie flip phone. … It’s a pink Nokia. It has accessories. I'm just trying it out, you know? I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone else.
JB: Yeah, I'm really tired of having all this information in my head that I'm not choosing to put in there. You just keep getting shown certain things so many times that you're adding some sort of importance to these things, especially celebrity gossip or whatever, and this is not my choice.
Now, for some reason, I know too much about what Timothée Chalamet is doing right now. Not that I don't like his movies, but I wanna kind of choose my own adventure. I want to take control again over what I like — the little world that I wanna build and the things that I wanna give weight and importance to in my life. I try to only open [my phone] just to look if I have a message, and then I close it right away, Instagram specifically.
EK: I unfollowed everybody. And then I only followed, like, 20 things. I was like, “I don't want feelings to be hurt.” And then I was like, “Whatever. We all know if I'm your friend, I'm hanging out with you in real life. I don't need to be following you on fucking social media.:
But the band will remain on there. We’ve always been kind of lackadaisical and weird on Insta. None of us wanna play. We don't wanna play the game, so we do it, we present as playing the game because you're told to, but I wanna figure out a fun way to do social media from the band. 'Cause the band will remain. It's different.
