In the fall of 2016, the daughter of a founding member of the B-52s and the son of a founding member of Belle and Sebastian met at the University of Texas. She was a guitar virtuoso with a rhythm problem. He played drums and didn’t know much about the guitar. After they were both kicked out of the UT marching band for acts of churlish insubordination, they went on a surf vacation together to French Polynesia, taught each other their respective instruments, and formed their experimental rock and roll band. Their names were Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy.
I made all that up, but it’s as plausible an origin story as you’re likely to hear from the members of Being Dead, one of the most unique bands to emerge from Austin’s music scene in years. Falcon Bitch, formerly known as Juli Keller, and Shmoofy, sometimes known, alternatively, as both Gumball and Cody Dosier, perform live as a trio with Nicole Roman-Johnston, also known as Ricky Motto, on bass. The band members are famous for improvising with ease and glee when asked how they came together to make music, often to the dismay of the poor soul trying to interview them. I was no exception.
Earlier this summer, I met Falcon and Shmoofy at the Hole in the Wall, one of city’s most enduring live music venues. We sat at a picnic table on the patio. Shmoofy, who is mustachioed with a mushroom mullet, drank a beer. Falcon didn’t have a drink but instead kept busy by constantly sticking her arms in and out of on oversized black T-shirt. The reason for our meeting was to discuss the group’s new record, Eels, out September 27.
The two told me they met on a large schooner, sailing on a pasta-tasting tour of the Pacific. It’s been a little more than a year since the release of their delightful debut record, When Horses Would Run, but they claimed there would have been more records since then if not for a feud with the captain of that ship. While at sea, they recorded several albums, they said. But amid the ongoing litigation between their lawyers and the renegade skipper, they fear all those recordings have been lost.
In their lives beyond Being Dead, Keller works as a video editor for the Texas-based wildlife production company Fin & Fur Films, and Dosier works at a restaurant on Austin’s trendy South Congress Avenue. Keller once worked at the same restaurant—but that’s not where they met; no, for sure not. They met on the pasta tour, remember?
Perhaps it’s better to let the music speak for itself. When you listen to Being Dead, the way the artists interact with reporters starts to make sense. Their surrealistic improvisations are not mean-spirited; they’re reflective of the playful ethos of musicians who create imaginative music as expansive as the limitless alternatives to the reality of the group’s founding.
The band’s first record jumps around in both sound and tone with the same frequency at which Falcon and Shmoofy swap instruments when playing live. But through it all, there remains a commitment to joy—both sonically and lyrically—that serves as a through line no matter how disparate the subject matter of the songs. Sometimes, though, that shiny veneer can be a cracking layer of ice over a darkness obfuscated by catchy melodies and an upbeat rhythm.
At times the driving, methodic guitar lines evoke early instrumental surf rock, though the tight harmonies are reminiscent of the genre’s later era, when the Beach Boys’ sound dominated. Being Dead’s instrumentation and vocals always demonstrate skilled musicality, but sometimes the structures of the songs are messier, a little more kaleidoscopic. When Falcon and Shmoofy aren’t harmonizing, they’re often engaging in call-and-response vocalizations that are reminiscent of the lo-fi, twee pop of groups like the Moldy Peaches or even Belle and Sebastian.
When I spoke with them, try as I might to get at the truth, they mostly just joked around and told tall tales. It was difficult to go deep on topics beyond the most basic biographical details, but there were a couple moments when the two opened up. To get outside the normal interview script, I asked how they’d describe their music if an aunt asked about it at Thanksgiving dinner.
“They don’t ask me,” Shmoofy said.
We all laughed.
“My parents are really supportive,” he said, “but the rest of the family—they’re not mean, but they . . . they live in Hutto,” he said.
“But if your aunt did ask,” I said.
“Rock and roll,” he paused. “Kind of experimental. It’s a tough question. What do you think our kind of music is?”
Experimental rock and roll sounded right to me, and we briefly discussed the difficulty of categorizing art.
“It doesn’t feel worth it to waste time trying to say. We just try to make some music that we like,” Falcon said. “We just try to make ourselves laugh.”
There’s a lot of laughs to be had on their new record, for sure, but there’s much more than humor in the group’s music. While the first album took years to come together, Eels was recorded in two weeks in Los Angeles with some help from Grammy-winning producer John Congleton.
There are dark moments on the first record. Sardonic references to the American role in the near extermination of the bison, ruminations on how often God would read the Bible if he had one, and the quiet desperation concealed by a seemingly perfectly manicured suburban existence are a few of the brooding elements hiding among the songs’ upbeat sounds.
The new songs delve a little deeper into the darker side, but there are still plenty of moments of levity. In fact, Eels begins with a song, “Godzilla Rises,” that Falcon and Shmoofy confirmed is about having sex with the iconic movie monster. This sounds silly, and it is, but the song itself is musically complex, with beautiful harmonies evocative of the feelings of an early infatuation. It’s also just an incredibly catchy love song, even if it is about a giant lizard. We don’t have to get too metaphorical here, but at the beginning of the final verse, Falcon’s high, soaring, ethereal vocals deliver the line, “They don’t know you like I know you.” She is defending her metropolis-smashing lover. Who hasn’t had a romantic interest their friends misunderstood? The crush is universal.
Another song, “Van Goes,” has all the energy of any track on the first record, but the lyrics tell a story of exploitation at a “job that I could only dream to have.” In the playful, singsong back-and-forth between Falcon and Shmoofy, the singers speculate that “if [they] didn’t have to toil away,” they’d have time for artistic endeavors, such as painting.
In “Problems,” a mellotron intro fades into rich acoustic strumming that is then layered with warm electric guitar. Choir-like vocals set up a cinematic establishing shot of a city. Then the narrative zooms in on what seems like a joyful party scene but eventually transforms into a depressing moment when the fun with friends is over and you’re left alone.
“How can I fix the problem when it is with myself?” Falcon sings, while Shmoofy retorts emphatically to every question, almost as if he is her inner monologue, “This problem is my problem.” This vulnerability, this self-doubt, this kind of interiority, is new for Being Dead, and it makes the experience all the richer.
I asked if Falcon and Shmoofy could explain why the new record delves into more personal subject matter, and they shrugged me off, joking around as usual. I pushed a little, mentioning that the progression seems so clear to me because the new material feels less abstract when juxtaposed with that of the first record. On Eels, the songs’ characters encounter tribulations—anxiety about self-worth, wasted waking days, the emptiness following the fleeting relief of hedonistic release—in concrete terms that are familiar to almost anyone.
“I don’t know,” Shmoofy said. “I think it just happens by chance. Probably subconscious.”
“We are dark, twisted individuals,” Falcon said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
“You’re wearing black,” Shmoofy pointed out.
“I’m wearing black!” Falcon agreed. She gestured to the black T-shirt she’d been playing with throughout our conversation.
“I think we have some things to say,” she added.
The weekend after we talked, I saw Being Dead play on the outside stage at Hotel Vegas, another mainstay of live music in Austin. It was an unseasonably delightful evening for the tail end of July, and there was a large crowd out. Being Dead played last in a lineup that included Wet Dip and Grandmaster.
The group took the stage, and Falcon stood up front, holding a baritone bass and wearing a crocheted crop top with denim cutoff shorts. Ricky Motto, wearing a dress, was on bass to her right. Shmoofy wore denim overall shorts and sat behind the drums. The trio volleyed playful repartee, complimenting the opening acts.
“Kind of impossible not to have a smile on your face after that,” Falcon said, beaming.
As soon as they ripped into the first song, the crowd was all in. People near the lip of the stage began to jump in rhythm with the music. Being Dead kept up the energy—and retained the attention of the crowd—for the entire set.
A few weeks after the show, I found out that Being Dead was slated to play play weekend two of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. I called Falcon and Shmoofy to see how they felt about the gig in their home city. Maybe they had fond memories of going to the festival before they were invited to play it. Maybe they were excited to share a billing with some of music’s biggest names or a few of their favorite acts. The interview was about as fruitful as ever. We traded playful banter, but I didn’t get any golden ACL anecdotes—or even one of their wild made-up stories. Being Dead is super excited to play the festival, they said, but that was all they could tell me. This will be their first time attending the festival, and they didn’t even know who else was on the bill.
