We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachael Pixie Kruczynski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rachael Pixie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
My current band, The Last Survivors. I am so proud of what we have done — and how much we have grown since day one. We all have a deep bond and friendship – I would take a bullet for Steve, Brian, or Matt, and they make the magic happen (and put up with my endless streams of words). Some people who write lyrics struggle to find the words…. I can’t stop them. I have a constant urge to write lyrics about everything I see. My first band, The Midnightmares… it was silly. I wrote songs about monsters and Vincent Price and things like that.
It’s 2024 — we started mid-2022. It was clear that I had to write about what we were all going through — unemployment or underemployment, financial struggles, being shoved out of areas that were once ours, the rich — oh, how I fucking hate the rich — rape, trauma, life in general just being so much more difficult than it should be in supposedly the richest country in the world. We lost too many friends needlessly in the past year.. We suffered at the hands of horrible, lying, manipulative employers. Have lived not so much paycheck to paycheck, but day to day. Our band, and some of our friends, live like a family… a chosen family. And I think that is how people are surviving today, and I am speaking our truths to the music they need to play.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I grew up in an odd way — my parents didn’t listen to music and I had to go to Catholic school (which I hated). I spent most of my life figuring out ways to JUST skirt around whatever I was told I could not do — to get the same end result. “You cannot shave the sides of your hair.” So I had my sister take scissors and cut it super close. A technicality, but… I kept my word! Stopping someone from being who they are is the best way to make a pretty weird adult who will dig in her heels, kicking and screaming against everything she doesn’t like. (So let your kids be who they want to be — trust me!)
I spent a lot of years dating people in bands… and would make flyers and stickers and websites and do all the promoting and support…. but was always told I could not do my own band. I was told I was the support. The girl who did the things behind the scenes. When Matt (our bassist) and I started making music in my living room, we wanted to really make it into something — we recruited a guitarist — and also our current drummer, Brian, and started The Midnightmares. Back then… I was a terrified little churchmouse on stage and would almost hide behind Matt, I was so scared! We had a few different members over the years (including our current guitarist, Steve, on drums.).
We very briefly did a band called 3rd Generation Rip-Offs…. and while the songs were not bad, the recording is, and we all just kind of yell “turn it off! Turn it off!” when we hear it. It took me seven years to finally be in a band again. I LOVE what we are doing so much. We are harder and faster than I expected us to be. My words are relevant to the times we live in — but punk rock always thrives in severely troubled times, doesn’t it? I’m a woman post-Roe vs Wade, I’m part Syrian. We’re all poor and trying to get by as our bills keep rising every month and our pay does not. How do I not write about that? It’s what I should be doing…. I feel helpless enough as it is. I consider my words a weapon. The Last Survivors. The four of us, and I am pretty sure my cat, Steve’s cat, Matt’s dog, and the cockroaches can somehow make it.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
PAY US! Oh my God. “Exposure” is nice and all — and sure, we appreciate it — but ya know what the people who supply us with necessities…. but also, the gas station, the lace where I buy shirts and materials from (I also run my own shirt and patch pressing business — with the idea being to supply local bands with those things at a price they can afford and we all can make a little money — nothing we can retire on — but no need to have to sell local punk band shirts for $20…)
We are providing a service. We pay for practice space. We need things like strings, cables, to replace amps, to replace instruments or have them repaired, gas to drive to shows — so when we get paid, it helps us cover that, but also put money aside so we can also record, do more, make merch (and I remain against charging for stickers and pins — I am old school that way).
We wanted to put out a 7″ as a benefit for Joyful Heart Foundation (Mariska Hartigay’s charity) with our song “No Place in the Scene” — which is about me being raped b someone who was “higher ranking” than I was at the time, so I was maligned, not him — especially since, despite not actually being much of an anything, the way I dress and look, people just assume I am some kind of “slut” — laughable. But the cost was astronomical!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The idea of “write what you know.” That’s bullshit. Write what you WANT. Write what you feel. What you know becomes boring and repetitive. Besides, we all know the same old topics of falling in love, or being heartbroken, or whatever we all KNOW — that is just too easy.
So… one day I wrote our song “Soldiers,” for example — and it is about how The Wounded Warrior Fund does good work, but should not have to exist. It was because of commercials… and how our government asks people to serve in wars that cause them grievous physical and mental injuries, and then doesn’t provide them with help, as the VA is broken. I don’t KNOW this first-hand. But I do know if you ask someone to volunteer to serve you as a conscripted soldier, your job is to care for them for life — and even though I think Republicans are beyond evil — I hold Republicans and Democrats equally liable.
So, while it is a song that speaks against the IDEA of the Wounder Warrior Fund — simply because it should not HAVE to exist, Because, like I said, you ask someone to sacrifice and volunteer so much — you should be responsible! It’s just that simple! I do write from the heart — like “No Place in the Scene” — which is a very personal account of being raped — but, I don’t have to. It’s bad advice. I find that to cross over into my poems, fiction, and plays, as well.
Contact Info:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/serpent_sky
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdlupl4wrrIE14USlR_H33g
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/lastsurvivorsct/
Image Credits
Jessica Schroher Smalley Dawn Fontaine Ahmad Shirazy