Meet the band: Wonky Tonk

Covington-based Wonky Tonk started out as a solo project for guitar and banjo player Jasmine Poole to spread her quirky sense of folk music.

Soon, she added her friends Moriah Lawson and Nick Mitchell from the band Chick Pimp, Coke Dealer at a Bar. With two EPs out, the band is working on a full-length album, hopefully to be released next year.

We talked with Poole to find out more about playing “odd music in a very interesting way.”

Listening to your music makes me hungry. What are some of your favorite foods?

Well, I am a vegan, so I’m always searching for new sorts of things. But I really, really enjoy sushi, with the avocados and such, and very spicy things like wasabi—anything hot. Um, I like pluots [laughing].

Keeping on the food tangent, if you were to have a dinner party for any six people, who would you invite and what would you serve?

Anyone? I would invite Scotty Avett from the Avett Brothers. And Isaac Brock, he’s the lead singer of Modest Mouse. … Michael Cera (laughing), the actor. I have three more, right? Oh man. My friend Paul Schroder. I’d bring him. He’s in the Frankl Project, if you’ve ever heard of them. They’re a local band. I’d bring my little sister Rosary. Yeah. And Woody Guthrie. … Probably a salad with fruits and nuts on it for sure. Pine nuts, pine nuts definitely (laughing). Fried tofu and steamed broccoli, with chocolate soy milk… or margaritas.

What’s more important to you in terms of making music, the performance aspect or the songwriting aspect?

They feel like they are entirely separate entities. I think on my personal level, for me it is the songwriting, just because I try to write songs more so—the whole idea of what I am trying to do, even though it is quirky and I put a lot of fun, hooky kind of things in it, is more about the personal power of taking charge of your life and realizing your dreams, but being weary of the world around you, but not apathetic to it or scared of it, you know. It’s kind of like a hopeful thing and more along the folk lines, so it would be the songwriting more than the performance, because a simple folk band is not something that is extraordinary for a live act. But it’s fun though. I just want to think that there is a time and place for either one, or both.

What has the band been up to lately?

We’ve been struggling band-wise. Just because Moriah is doing her own solo thing now and she is in Nick’s band, Chick Pimp, Coke Dealer at a Bar. Nick has a million projects going on and then Nick and I are trying to do a rap album together, side project-wise as well. More so, they’ve been off on their own and I’ve been writing more songs and playing out solo again. Like I said, I’m working on a new album that I’m recording with some friends from Cleveland. And it’s moreso a bunch of new stuff —maybe not the whole band on every song, more of a production kind of thing.

Wonky Tonk is more or less your personal stage name, how did you end up with it?

In high school I had a friend named Annie and we were partners in a chemistry class. We had to do a final project on a topic of our choice and we chose how drugs affect the brain, chemistry-wise. And we parodied the song “Anyone Else but You” by the Moldy Peaches—it was also on that Juno soundtrack. We took the melody and we put new words to it and made a movie with how drugs affect your brain with serotonin, dopamine and stuff. But it was so funny and catchy that people liked it that we put it up on myspace. People started asking us to play shows and stuff, so we had to write more songs and we went under the name Wonky Donkeys. [laughing] And there was a band from Florida that came up to play with us one time, and we were eating at Waffle House and they asked, “So who’s the Wonk and who’s the Donk?” And we were like, “Well we’ve never really thought of it that way, we just needed something to rhyme with Wonky.” So they decided that Annie was the Donkey and that I was the Wonk. Annie and I had our issues and then fallings out and such and time passing, so the Donkey went away.

And I started falling in love with more blue grass, folk and playing the banjo and stuff, and so it was more honky tonk and then Wonky Tonk—it just fell into place at that point. I thought it was a pretty cool name, so when I decided to go out playing music that is what I adopted.