HOLLY WEST BIOGRAPHY
For Dallas based rocker Holly West, the release of Mokita is a musical realization come full cirlce. From playing countless shows in cover bands to worldwide recognition with both Love Stricken Demise and Honey, West is going it alone now and doing things on her own terms and her own way. “I’ve played with a lot of cover and original artists in Dallas. My band after LSD was a collaboration between Kes O’Hara from Australia and I,” says the songstress. “I was pretty young when I started messing around with different instruments and trying to learn how to play music. I didn’t, however, follow through to make myself any good. I picked up bass because my best friend (Bily Blair) wanted me to play in his band and that was the spot that was open. ”
With Mokita, West combines punky, attitude laden material with pop sensibilities to create a five song Ep easily accessible to both the mainstream listening public as well as an underground following Opening track “Memo” is a cutting reminder that not all friendships and relationships are respected. “Like being ghosted and realizing they think you are an idiot for not knowing what’s going on… but they are actually the fool because they can’t even have a conversation with you,” West says. She tells of the title track: “I was looking for a word in this book I have called “They Have a Word For That” I fell in love with the message so much I wrote the lyrics to fit the word. It means “The truth we all know but no one talks about” or The elephant in the room. See if you can spot the Clutch reference in this song!” “Home” is straight up about aliens. “the bridge is me describing an alien abduction… you could also relate it to not feeling like you are human or of this earth. I believe we are not alone. I also wanted to try writing about something that wasn’t just another relationship song – soooo aliens!” “Home” is about liars – we all know a few don’t we? Holly gets straight to the point, “Basically it means that liars are very justified in their lies because they think they will be a hero to you because they either lied to save you or save themselves. There’s a small Billy Squire “Stroke” referrence in there too! ” The Ep is rounded out by West’s take on the Led Zeppelin classic, “When the Levee Breaks.” Her reason for doing so is pretty simple when you think about it – “I did this song because why not do this song with Gary Hoey and Brady Blade?! If I was going to pick my dream team, which I did, I had to do some Zep… this song is what we all do, we jam and rock the fuck’ out!”
Holly carefully chose her Mokita bandmates, not settling, rather going for the best, with guitar hero Gary Hoey and drummer Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Dave Matthews & Friends). Her friendship with Hoey goes back a few years to when the two met at the Dallas International Guitar Show. “He’s been a mentor and best friend since the day we met. He initially thought I wanted him to play a couple of solos on the record but I had to have him all over it and he agreed to do so without hesitation.” She met Blade while she was in Honey and recorded at his Shreveport studio and as it turns out Brady is one of the best friends of her engineer, Chris Bell, “so the stories went back and forth real quick between the three of us. I flew him to Austin and he tracked all five songs in five hours. It doesn’t get more perfect than that.”
Holly’s family was heavily into music and she was surrounded by it growing up. “My dad was a rocker and my mom was into both rock and pop music, ” she recalls. “My first cassettes were Cheap Trick and whitney Houston. How’s that for variety?” Prince and Chris Cornell were boh also favourites of mine and huge influences over the years. I actually started writing songs when I as 9. I would listen to records before school and write out those lyrics and structures and I learned how to put songs together that way. From there i started writing my own ideas down. I had a keyboard and guitar at an early age but I didn’t really practice that much. It really wasn’t until I joined Love Stricken Demise that I started getting serious about practice. Since then I’ve played with as many different people as possible, pulling it even. I’ll hit 2 or 3 open mics a week. It’s a great way to grow as a musician.”