I laughed through this interview; I hope you do to!
Transcript:
Hello magical friends, especially Amanda, Constantina, Bygonya, Alex, and Grace whose patronage made this episode possible. You are the special ingredient that makes this podcast potion work.
At the beginning of the month, the WZRD patrons and I decided to donate this month’s funds to the Bail Project, because as a fandom whose originator is a current, active bigot, it felt important that we pitch in support the people leading the fight for justice. Shortly after that, The Author decided to fully unveil her transphobic beliefs after years of hinting at them.
So, magical friends, however you need to process and react to her statements, I support you. If you need to step away, I understand. If you want to lean in and create even louder to drown her out, go for it.
It’s up to us to shape the future of this fandom. I think we can do great things together, and not in the creepy Ollivander way. People way smarter than your hostwitch are out there working on how we can be better and do better, and I’m planning on following their lead. Harry Potter isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s enough that we keep moving forward and making room for everyone.
I’m your hostwitch Bess, and WZRD Radio believes that black lives matter, trans people have a right to our respect, and The Author can go suck an elf.
This month my special guests are Scott and Kirsten of The Blibbering Humdingers! It’s going to be a lot of fun but first, let’s play some music.
Starting with “Ollie Won’t You” by Wrackspurt!
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That was “Ollie Won’t You” by Wrackspurt!, “Good To See You Wallaenby” by Kwikspell [lyrics], and “Love Cannot Be Sorted” by Ashley Hamel [lyrics].
Good to See You Wallaenby was a special request by WZRD patron Kevin.
Now I want to welcome The Blibbering Humdingers to the show! Kirsten, Scott, thank you so much for being here!
Kirsten: Hello!
Scott: Thanks for having us.
I like to start with, for new folks who might not know you—although that feels impossible—having you tell us a little bit about your band: when you started, your evolution, why “The Blibbering Humdingers.”
Kirsten: We started about 2007 and we played some songs at a midnight release show at a bookstore.
Scott: That was actually right when we discovered wizard rock, a little before the release of the seventh book. And at the time we were actually running—we owned a gift shop for many years that specialized in fantasy and renaissance faire and medieval things and pirate stuff and all that.
Kirsten: And Harry Potter.
Scott: And I was at work one day and talking with one of my staff members about wizard rock and stuff, like you do—
Sure.
Scott: And we had just finished reading the seventh book and right at the end of—right at the end as Harry is trying to duck out to get to Dumbledore’s office and get to the pensieve or something…
Kirsten: Luna helps to distract the people so Harry can get out of there…
Scott: She stands up and says “Oh look! A blibbering humdinger!”
Kirsten: And we turned to each other as we were reading aloud to each other and said “That’s it! That’s our band name.”
Scott: “Yep. That’s our wiz—we’re gonna start a wizard rock band and that’ll be it.”
Kirsten: We didn’t even—well, I think we knew we were gonna do a band but we didn’t even talk about a name like, you know, as soon as we read that there was no discussion. It was like “Yep, there it is! That’ll do.”
I love that! It was like a lightning struck tower moment.
Scott: With no—nobody had to die this time.
True. So much better ending.
Kirsten: So that’s how we got our name and how we started. So the two of us have been doing medieval reenactment and stuff together for many, many years before that and so we’ve been singing sort of folk music and medieval folkish kind of things and medieval music and so we started branching out into this new genre the new world of themes that we could write about. So it was just the two of us doing pretty folksy stuff because that’s what we knew. But as we performed more and used microphones more we started learning how to use our voices differently and the instruments differently and writing differently and getting a little more rock ‘n’ roll.
Scott: Yeah, definitely getting more rock ‘n’ roll because up until that point, like she said, for twenty years we’d been doing folk music.
Kirsten: Very folksy. And our first songs were pretty folksy but we hopefully have gotten a little more rock ‘n’ roll nowadays. We’re really blessed now to have children who are willing to play with us. Our youngest, Liam, is 16 now and he is an amazing pianist and he played some on our last album—which was a couple years ago—but now he’s playing with us every show. But he also plays guitar and drums and bass and accordion and a thousand other things–
Scott: Mandolin, banjo
Wow.
Scott: Whatever he can get his hands on, he likes to play.
Kirsten: And our oldest has picked up drumming and is drumming for us so we have a full band stuck in the house so we can do full-band concerts lives from home. So that’s pretty fun and awesome to share that with the kids. They don’t necessarily love all our songs, but they don’t hate it. They enjoy performing, at least.
Scott: And I’ve said this in shows many times but making music with our kids is like the greatest feeling in the world for me as a father. Like, oh my god, they’re good musicians and to perform with them is such a thrill. Especially when we get to go to conventions with them and they back us up. And they do a really good job, too. And have fun on stage. It’s like, oh my god, I get to share this with my kids? It’s so cool.
Kirsten: And Liam and I have been writing some songs together. We wrote a young Han Solo song recently. So that’s cool. Liam will write the music and I will do the lyrics and we work together. We worked really hard on that one over Christmas break.
Scott: I still have to learn the guitar part.
Kirsten: Yeah you do, so we can play it when Liam’s not there. But Liam plays the guitar really cool so he has a style. An amazing style.
Scott: He has a different style from my own so it’s like “Oh, how are you doing that? Okay.”
Kirsten: Right. He’s gonna have to teach dad how to do it.
Scott: I’m not really a guitarist. I play some guitar and I get by and I have a good time at it but..
Kirsten: Liam will teach you how.
Scott: Yeah
Well, you managed to preempt the next question because, like myself ,my WZRD patrons have clearly been watching your virtual shows and were really curious about when you all became a family band. You’ve already answered a bit of what’s it’s like, but did they just naturally evolve into being part of the group or…
Kirsten: Well, we started asking Aiden to play drums with us a while back…
Scott: I still remember, probably ten years ago, Jarrod Perkins of Gred and Forge fame, was playing a show with us locally and brought his drum kit—he was gonna back us up on drums—and he had it set up in the family room—
Kirsten: Oh, is that when Aiden sat down and started to play?
Scott: And Aiden asked “Hey, can I try your drums?” and I don’t think Aiden had ever really tried drums before. He sat down and started actually knocking out stuff. He was, eight at the time, or something like that?
Kirsten: Eight or nine
Scott: He started knocking out stuff that had rhythm and was like oh he was using the different drums to do different things. He was still an eight or nine year-old who had never played the drums before but you know, you could see it going on like “Ohhhh”
Kirsten: There was talent available there. He’s actually been really, surprisingly good lately. We bought them a Rock Band game to help learn the drums so that’s what got him started…
Scott: Yeah, several people we knew who taught drums told us “Well, get him Rock Band and he can learn the basics on that and get good at feeling rhythm and knowing things are.”
Kirsten: And he did. And he’s also really good at listening to a song and hearing the drumline and how it works and how to play it. So he and his brother will just jam out to songs that they know. Like when we’re not even around they just like to jam together. And Liam’s been playing piano since he was five years old—and good—so we’ve been trying to get him to join up forever. And sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn’t, you know, on the whim of a young kid. But now it’s much more fun and I think they both have a lot of fun playing with each other and us. Just the four of us, maybe only a couple of years…
Scott: I think two or three years ago there’s a convention…
Kirsten: MarsCon?
Scott: MarsCon.
Kirsten: MarsCon was the first time that Aiden played with us and he only got to play one show because we have electric drums and the power module wouldn’t work–
Scott: That was very sad.
Kirsten: –the second show. He was so, so devastated. But he played great for the first show, at least!
So you’re becoming a whole wizard rock dynasty now.
Scott: I don’t think, I mean, neither of them want to pursue music as a career or anything like that, but they like to goof around…
Kirsten: And Liam totally could, at least, and Aiden could do some stuff, but Liam doesn’t want to make it work. He wants to keep it fun.
Scott: As do we.
Kirsten: And also, they aren’t as into Harry Potter as we are. But we have also morphed into doing a lot of other nerdy, geeky things because most of our shows are at sci fi/fantasy conventions, not just Harry Potter conventions, and we didn’t want to leave out the people who weren’t big Harry Potter fans. So we wanted to also throw in a little bit…
Scott: The Star Wars and the Doctor Who and the Marvel Universe and…
Kirsten: that kind of stuff.
Legos.
Scott: We don’t have any Legos songs, do we?
Kirsten: Lego Loki!
Yeah.
Scott: Oh we do. See, I think of that as–
Kirsten: We think of that as a Loki song, not a Lego song, but it is both…
Scott: But it is a Lego song!
Kirsten: Anyway, yeah. If you’ve been watching our shows you know that already.
Mhm. I’ve also noticed that a lot of your songs have a swing or like jazzy feel—I don’t know genres—but you know, that dance and everyone knows the steps kind of feel, especially on Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them…
Kirsten: That was exactly, um, Fantastic Geeks and Where to Find Them. We did that on purpose because the movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, was set in 1926 and so we wanted to make that album have that sort of 1926 feel, or at least the five or six songs that were part of that—
Scott: that sort of swing, jazz, kind of feel
Kirsten: And also we are ballroom dancers and so we wanted to write songs that we could dance to so we could write off our dance lessons and make videos. Which we never wrote off the lessons but we’ve spent thousands of dollars on lessons. So we wrote one as a swing, the Niffler Swing. And Blind Pig we’re actually making a music video right now of, and we did a lot of dancing…
Scott: It’s a foxtrot. And we danced all over downtown Cary here.
Kirsten: There’s some great shots in front of old buildings. And that’s actually one thing where Covid has helped us because no on was in town and we could dance all over–
Scott: Yeah, nobody was out. We could go out and dance
Kirsten: –and there was nobody there. It was beautiful.
Scott: We did a tango…
Kirsten: The Erumpent Tango is a tango, yeah, and…
Scott: What else is on there?
Kirsten: I never got the waltz written. I was gonna write a Beast waltz.
Scott: No, we didn’t write a Beast waltz, did we…
Kirsten: I have it started, I just didn’t finish it.
Are you all going to start choreographing dances to your songs? Is this going to be like Dark Lord of Dance but south?
Kirsten: We actually have done these display dances or, what are they called?
Scott: Showcase pieces. So at the dance studio that we take lessons at…
Kirsten: …our teacher choregraphed a dance and taught it to us and we performed it at a con.
Scott: They actually choreographed one for Blind Pig for us and Little Lego Loki and we started working on one for Niffler Swing–
Kirsten: And Erumpent Tango.
Scott: –oh that’s right. But we never did anything with those.
Kirsten: That studio closed down and we lost our teacher so, you know, that fell apart. We’re still dancing though. We have a different studio but now we’re just learning different pieces and we’re putting them together ourselves. It’s fun.
Yeah, this music video sounds pretty exciting. Is there a due date on that? Do you have a plan for when it’s gonna come out?
Kirsten: Yeah, Scott. Is there a due date on that?
Scott: Yes…I’m also using it as…I’ve been trying to learn Adobe Premiere partly for work because I do some production stuff for work. I’m also using it as a learning exercise…
Kirsten: So it’s taking longer than it might normally?
Scott: Yeah, and it might have some more hokey effects than I would normally use…
Kirsten: Oh come on, it’s Blibbering Humdingers! It should have hokey effects, what are you talking about.
Scott: It’ll probably be out by the end of June. Watch our Facebook and our YouTube and our Twitter and all that.
Will do. I hope everyone else caught that. We’ll keep him on task and get something really cool out of it.
Scott: I’m halfway done with it already.
Kirsten: It’s kind of fun. So, of course, our bass player isn’t with us at home and so we filmed the music sequences with the four of us and then he did some green screen filming at home and so we’re sticking him in here and there.
Scott: So we have a tiny little bass player sort of in the corner performing with us live on screen.
Like magic.
Scott: Oh yes. It’s like magic.
Kirsten: Movie magic. It’s fun.
All right. It’s time for some more music, starting with “Dumbledore’s Vacation Song” by Our New Celebrity.
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That was “Dumbledore’s Vacation Song” by Our New Celebrity, “Dear Ron, Love Hermione” by The Sweetwater All-Stars, and The 8th Horcrux with “These Beasts are Fantastic” [lyrics].
And we’re back with Kirsten and Scott of the Blibbering Humdingers!
WZRD Patrons want to know what made you decide to make wizard rock, and do you have any interesting stories from shows?
Scott: Well, like I said earlier, we were…at the time we owned and managed a gift shop that was very fandom focused and we had a large Harry Potter section. And we were a community place as well, just for the local nerd community. And I was getting ready to host a Harry Potter themed party/gathering kind of thing at the store just for local fans and started poking around online, looking for parodies and filks that people had written about Potter stuff, you know, just so I could have maybe some cute songs we could sing. And I stumbled on, I think–
Kirsten: Draco and the Malfoys
Scott: –Draco and the Malfoys’ MySpace page. And then the very next week Harry and the Potters played our local library and I was utterly and completely blown away. I’m just like “Oh my god, these people are rocking out.” And were singing about Harry Potter and this is stupid and wonderful and so much fun and, you know, so nerdy. And it’s like these are my people.
Kirsten: So we expanded our store to have a concert space where we do these programs and parties and things. And so we were bringing in bands to perform. So we had the Whomping Willows quite a few times. We had…Alex Carpenter, He Who Must Not Be Named. We had Justin, we had…
Scott: We had Tonks and the Aurors, once or twice.
Kirsten: We had Jarrod once.
Scott: Yeah… Hawthorn and Holly all the time.
Kirsten: Yeah, I think Hawthorn and Holly’s first kind of official show was at our shop, actually.
Scott: Yeah. We had Lauren and Lena when they were on tour.
Kirsten: And they would stay at our house and we became friends with all of these guys. And, of course, we wanted to perform so we would learn some songs or write some songs so that we could do a little Blibbering Humdingers–
Scott: Opening act.
Kirsten: –opening act set before the show. And that’s how we got started writing more stuff.
Scott: But as for two of my favorite show stories…One we did at Wrockstock. We decided it was going to be the “Wear your Underwear on the Outside” show. So that, when you crap your pants from laughter you won’t stain your underwear.
Kirsten: Is that why?
Scott: That’s why.
Kirsten: It was just the “Wear Your Underwear on the Outside” show!
Scott: That was why! We even gave a prize for the–
Kirsten: Best underwear.
Scott: –best underwear. I think Ariel won that, didn’t she? From…
Madam Pince.
Scott: Madam Pince and the Librarians, yeah.
Kirsten: There were a couple of grey underpants things, and “Voldemort Made Me Crap My Pants” underwear that people had decorate and it was awesome.
Scott: Which was very validating, you know, that people cared to join the stupid fun with us.
Kirsten: And the year before was our very first Wrockstock performance in the Whompum Willow and–
Scott: That’s right! And we made that a pajama party.
Kirsten: –because they gave us the nine a.m. slot—
Scott: On Sunday.
Kirsten: –on Sunday morning so we were like “oh great, nobody’s gonna be there” so we were like “We’re gonna have fun. It’ll be a pajama party. We’ll have a contest for the best bed hair,” you know.
Scott: Bring your coffee.
Kirsten: Wear your jammies.
Scott: Have a bagel.
Kirsten: And it was fun! We filled the place–
Scott: We filled the Whompum Willow.
Kirsten: –and everyone was like “what is this? At nine a.m. on Sunday morning, that this place is filled up.” That was extra validating too.
Scott: I think my other favorite show moment—we played at LeakyCon London many years ago and it was such a hot crowd. It’s like these kids, it was like the first time Britain really had a wizard rock show–
Kirsten: Fandom of any kind stuff, really.
Scott: –right, and they were so hungry for it.
Kirsten: Oh my gosh, so much.
Scott: So hungry for the wizard rock. I think we were one of the second ones up.
Kirsten: First. First or second.
Scott: It was, we were the second ones on.
Kirsten: And we were playing with backing tracks, of course, because we couldn’t bring anybody with us to London.
Scott: Right. But the crowd, they were so excited. They started clapping along with the backing tracks but they were clapping faster–
Kirsten: faster and faster and faster and faster and faster…
Scott: –like you do at shows and louder to the point we couldn’t hear the backing tracks.
Kirsten: And they were ahead of the backing tracks, they got faster than the backing tracks.
Scott: We actually had to stop the song and say “Uh, we really appreciate this, but um…”
Kirsten: “It’s totally awesome but can you not clap so we can hear this?”
Scott: “We can’t really play this.” So enthusiastic.
Kirsten: That crowd was the best crowd we’ve ever played to. Hotel ballroom full of, mostly girls, of course, but they were crazy wild.
Scott: Yeah.
Kirsten: Thrilled to have us there and really so into it. It was great.
Scott: And Hank Green let me borrow his guitar for a number.
Ooh.
Scott: That’s my brag.
It’s a good brag. That must be really heady, being up on a stage and having people come in underwear and bedhead and…
Scott: It’s very validating, that people want to join in. They see us having fun and they’re like “We wanna have that fun too” so it’s like “okay.” It’s like going to a Harry and the Potters concert.
Kirsten: Well, but not.
Scott: It’s like–
Kirsten: Not quite as wild and crazy.
Scott: Well, no, you see them having so much stupid fun. Remember Camp Jump ‘n’ Yell, that tour they did? And they brought all the giant inflatables and we did peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the back? We were part of the street team for them on that tour, here locally. It became more of an experience, it’s not just a show.
Kirsten: I feel like, yeah, a lot of our shows tend to go that way. Influenced by Harry and the Potters.
Scott: By Harry and the Potters especially because they do make it so experiential. It’s like “god, I wish I could work a crowd like those guys.”
That was all before my time so I get a sort of secondhand nostalgia for things like Wrockstock and the early tours of Harry and the Potters. But actually, they’re a pretty good lead-in because they were a big influence for so many bands but now it’s you all and Hawthorn and Holly and Tonks and the Aurors that people are starting to look up to. For those people, who are just starting out or are maybe thinking about getting into it, what advice would you have? What would you tell them?
Scott: I mean, keep making music, definitely. And it might feel like nobody’s paying attention to you, but oftentimes you have to, one thing we learned early on is you have to create your own venue. Don’t expect to be invited to places.
Kirsten: People aren’t going to invite to you play.
Scott: Don’t expect people to know who you are or what you do. You’ve really gotta sort of just barge your way in.
Kirsten: For instance, the LeakyCon show. We only got it because somebody else canceled and we got our fans to help up pay our way there. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been brought on to them. Sometimes you’ve just–
Scott: But even, I mean a lot of shows when we were starting out. I daresay 90% of the shows we played are because we were either hosting them and, you know, offered ourselves as an opening act, or we offered ourselves to convention organizers. We would go as vendors and say “We’re gonna be vending at your convention, are you looking for…”
Kirsten: “Musical acts?”
Scott: “additional music programming?” and so we’d get on and we just started building a fanbase that way. So, invite yourself to things and insert yourself into the conversation is my best advice. And don’t feel bad. It’s only really within the last few years that we get invited to conventions that–
Kirsten: We did years and years of inviting ourselves.
Scott: –and paying our own way, or at least covering our own travel and that sort of thing. And it’s only within the last few years that there’s conventions that will cover our airfare and hotels and food and all that stuff and bring us out to something. And that’s rare. That still only happens a few times a year at the most.
Kirsten: What I would say is just follow your heart and play what you feel. Don’t try to do something because somebody else wants to hear it, do it because you want to play it.
Scott: Hm. Fair enough
That almost sounded like Scott disagreed.
Scott: No, I just.. Hm.
Kirsten: He’s sneering at me so I really don’t…
Scott: my whole musical journey I’ve been very much about “I want to make music people want to hear.” So a lot of the stuff I write…
Kirsten: So it’s the opposite of what I just said.
Scott: Well, well… yeah. No, I mean… a lot of the stuff I… like I, it’s a very different thing about our writing styles. I do a lot of one-liners and a lot of cheap jokes and, you know, peppy choruses to get people singing along…
Kirsten: Hey, I have put a sing-along chorus in ever song I’ve written, thank you very much.
Scott: And I wrote some of those choruses for you.
Kirsten: Together.
Scott: But the point I was trying to make is, I’ve always wanted…Like, so we play in a medieval hobbyist organization called the Society for Creative Anachronism and the bardic scene in that. There’s a lot of people writing cute little songs and that sort of thing. And in that scene people come to me all the time and they’ll tell me stories about things that happened to friends of theirs in camp or happened in one of the play battles or something like that. And they’ll say “Oh, you should write a song about that!” and I’ll just sort of smile and nod and be like–
Kirsten: “Oh that’s all right, you can write that.”
Scott: “You can write that one. I got nothing.”
Kirsten: What was the point of that conversation?
Scott: Because a lot of the time those little snippets are funny to the people involved, and making it interesting to everyone else is a huge challenge that isn’t worth it to me. I wanna write music I can put on a CD and sell to a wider audience.
Kirsten: Well, here’s something—sorry, this is a little off-topic—
No, this is great.
Kirsten: –about how we write songs. I get very lyrical. I use lots of words. I go the thesaurus and use words that maybe people don’t know and might have to look up. And I do it on purpose–
Scott: Very word-dense.
Kirsten: –because I want them to look it up because I think learning a new word is amazing. But I also couch it in a place where you can figure it out. Like Niffler Swing–
Scott: Yes…
Kirsten: –effulgent, radiant, twinkling bright. You know, you’re gonna know what effulgent is.
Scott: By the context.
Kirsten: And there’s some fabulous alliterative lines. Like, oh come on…
Scott: You are so sesquipedalian.
Kirsten: There are fabulous alliterative lines. Every time we sing them I’m like “Oh, I love that line. It’s so good.” I can’t think of it right now…
Scott: You should use sesquipedalian in a song.
Kirsten: I’ll leave that to you. Why don’t you write that one.
Scott: Touche!
All right, well, we can segue from your writing styles to “Is there any new Blibbering Humdingers music on the horizon?”
Kirsten: We are about halfway through writing an album. A little piece here and there, and so far most of the new stuff is not about Harry Potter.
Scott: We did the one about Queenie.
Kirsten: Yeah, right, the new Queenie one…
Scott: And the one about Han Solo…
Kirsten: Yes…so it’s about Queenie being a Legilimens. Liam and I wrote that one together. Because Scott has not been writing lately. He’s not been in the writing mood. So I’m trying to get Liam to help me with this. So “Deal Me In” is the Han Solo song. We’ve got “Florida Man” which was written for DragonCon. They wanted songs about superheroes and we didn’t have one so we wrote one about the worst superhero in the world, Florida Man. So that’s, what, four?
Scott: Three, four. I think we had others. We don’t remember right now.
Kirsten: So we only have, we need to write some more.
Scott: And we have some song ideas that float around.
Kirsten: We have promised ourselves and everyone else–
Scott: What?
Kirsten: –that by next year, because Toronto is going to have us back when they’re actually having a convention next year–
Scott: Oh, wow, you want to have this finished by next March or April?
Kirsten: –we’re going to have this finished next year. So we will be writing some over this summer.
Scott: Oh man. I’ve gotta write.
Kirsten: We’re not going anywhere else, so…
Scott: Yeah…I guess so. Everything else’s been canceled.
Kirsten: Yup. So there you go. Just have to figure out what we’re writing. We have lots of partial written songs; I have notebooks full of them. Well, and our friend Mikey Mason, he’s writing stuff constantly, just boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. The quarantine has been good for a lot of people, and for some people it’s not been. Like, I—Liam and I were writing a song right before quarantine, and this is one we can put on there, it’s from a quote from a, I think it was Mark Twain, about “Sail away from safe harbor—”
Scott: Oh, yeah.
Kirsten: –and it was a really cool song about, you know, quit hiding behind the things that society tells you you need to hide behind. Just go and be who you are. But the lines are “Sail away from safe harbor / let the trade winds fill your sails” and he and I both were like “we can’t write this right now” because everyone is stuck at home. This was right before lockdown/quarantine and it’s not the right song for now. But it will be good when quarantine is over and everyone gets back to normal.
Yeah, that sounds like it’s going to be really exciting and evocative.
Scott: Yeah
Kirsten: I hope so.
And probably very different from the last literary song I can think of that you all did, “Oh Captain, My Captain.”
Kirsten: Yeah, very different. Very different.
Scott: Well, it’s a literary reference, I suppose. Is that Wadsworth? I can’t remember. I was gonna say, I mean, part of my trouble, really as a song writer, is after, you know. I’ve been writing for thirty years and in my youth I wrote a lot of crap that I can’t go back and listen to and that sort of thing. And I’ve written stuff in lots of different styles and you get to a point where you’re tired of churning out the same old crap.
Kirsten: Well that’s why you need to do something different.
Scott: –and you’re looking for new challenges and, yeah, but I want to be…I’m not that good a musician to do the things I want to do musically.
Kirsten: So we get Liam to do them.
Scott: Right, but then I have to learn the parts that he writes–
Kirsten: Yes, and that will challenge you.
Scott: –it’s like uuugggghhh.
Kirsten: Actually, I want to segue back to what we started earlier, you were asking about the swing style and we said yes, on that one particular album. But we actually do stuff in many, many different styles because it’s one of the things we like to do. Some people pick one style and stick with it and that’s there thing and our thing is kind of, like, lots of styles. We have done some fifties songs like “Romilda–”
Scott: Yeah, “Sirius Black.”
Kirsten: We have done 1910s style stuff, which would sort of go with the 20s…
Scott: Old-timey things.
Kirsten: We’ve done some 80s glam rock kind of things… That’s one thing that I think that we do sort of well, is stay Blibbering Humdingers, but do it in many different kinds of ways and styles.
Scott: Hm. Fair enough. I was gonna make a point, but I can’t remember it…
Well that sounds like the perfect time for another music break, starting with The Swedish Shortsnouts’ “Bertie Bott”.
~*~
That was “Bertie Bott” by the Swedish Shortsnouts, Pussycat Dolores with “Witches Unite” [lyrics] and “Dementor’s Kiss” by The Arkadian [lyrics].
Thank you so much to The Blibbering Humdingers for being on the show! Where can WZRD Radio listeners find you online?
Scott: I guess the best place to start is at BlibberingHumdingers.com And then there’s links there to iTunes and Spotify and Google Play and Bandcamp…all those places.
Kirsten: We generally announce our shows on Facebook and you try to update the webpage, I don’t know that it always gets done.
Scott: Yeah, I haven’t been updating the webpage very much.
Kirsten: But go to the Facebook Blibbering Humdingers page…
Scott: And sometimes we’ll hop onto Twitter…
Kirsten: Well, I don’t have the…
Scott: I don’t use Twitter as much as I used to and I forget it exists.
Kirsten: So the Facebook page is where you can find out about our shows. And we’re going to be, on the 17th, we are playing a LeakyCon Live…
Scott: One of their “Wizard Rock Wednesdays.”
Oh, exciting!
Kirsten: But the Facebook page is the best place to find out about the shows and the webpage has links—I’ve also designed a bunch of t-shirts and stuff so we have a Threadless page you can look at for those things and it’s all linked from there. Have a bunch of new stickers and buttons which are visible on the Facebook page… Oh, and when you go looking up BlibberingHumdingers.com go back on your spellcheck and fix the blabbering / blithering / blubbering back to “blibbering” and then, proceed.
Scott: Yup.
We’ve arrived at the end of another episode. Thank you so much, everyone, for spending this time with us.
No one has guessed this month’s musical theme yet, so keep listening and keep guessing!
Links to all the musicians you heard today, including the Blibbering Humdingers, can be found in the transcript of this episode at WZRDRadioPod.WordPress.com. Don’t forget to check them out because without them, we wouldn’t be here.
WZRD Radio’s Patreon supports both the podcast and the Yes All Witches grant. Yes All Witches, which is currently open for submissions until the end of the month, gives microgrants and mentorship to new and upcoming wrockers. If you want to learn more, you can check them out at YesAllWitches.org. If you want to help bring more wrock from marginalized voices into the world, the WZRD Patreon can be found at Patreon.com/WZRDRadioPod. For two dollars a month you get to request songs on this show and support an awesome cause.
If you want to say hi, guess the music theme, or tell me about an upcoming Harry Potter event I should share, you can find me on Twitter and Tumblr at WZRDRadioPod. If you’re not on social media, you can email me at WZRDRadioPod@gmail.com
Until next time friends.
And now, the Blibbering Humdingers!
The Blibbering Humdingers play “Niffler Swing.”
End transcript.
Intro and outro music are from Higher Up, by Shane Ivers.
Art is by graphic_co on fiverr.
WZRD Radio Podcast 