Meet Carnelian Woman

By Manny Melendez

Before their February 24th show at The Pub, I sat down with Carnelian Woman to ask a few questions about their music, their origins, and their hopes for the future as musical collaborators.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos provided by Carnelian Woman.

Manny: Please introduce yourselves and your roles in Carnelian Woman.

Heri: I’m Herald, you can call me Heri, and I’m the lead singer and I write all of our music.

Dawson: And I’m Dawson Gentleman. I’m the guitar player and the composer of the music.

Manny: [Smiles] Great! How did you two begin working together as a duo and where would you say Carnelian Woman was born?

Dawson: Okay, so Herald first was playing as Kodi Hannah and she was trying to play live shows, [and] needed a guitar player, ‘cause she didn’t have a band or anything, and so she made a post on Facebook asking for a guitar player and I happened to see it. It was August of 2019, I think. Is that right? [Laughs]

Heri: [Laughs] No. 2020, 2021.

Dawson: Oh, it was 2021? 2019 was when you started writing the album, though, right?

Heri: Yeah.

Dawson: Okay. That's where I got that mixed up.

Heri: Yeah. When we were coming out of the pandemic, I knew that I needed a band because everyone had left me from 2019. And so in my desperation, I put an ad out on Facebook looking for a guitar player and expecting a bunch of, like, old dudes. And I got Dawson. So I was like, you're hired immediately. Yeah. And we had one writing session just to see if it would be a good fit, and we clicked instantly.

Dawson: And I think we immediately started writing songs.

Heri: Yeah. Songs we still perform.

Manny: Nice. So [Carnelian Woman] was born, even without a name, pretty much in that moment instantly.

Dawson: Yeah, I think so, because we still play those same songs. We didn't know that we were going to call it Carnelian Woman until, like, how long ago was that?

Heri: A year ago.

Dawson: Yeah, a year ago you wrote a song called “Carnelian Woman.” And we've tried finding a way to play it live, but we couldn't figure it out. And so we were just like, man, this song, “Carnelian Woman,” is really, really good, but it is so hard to play. And then we were thinking, we should probably come up with a new name because this feels like something else. And I brought up, well, you wrote “Carnelian Woman.” I think it would be a cool band name. And then we stuck with it.

Heri: It was pretty apparent as soon as we started working together and doing shows together, that Kodi Hannah was not going to work anymore. Everyone would ask us if he was Kodi and I was Hannah, and it just got really obnoxious. And so we started throwing around names and nothing really stuck. And then Dawson [suggested] Carnelian Woman, and I was like, I don't really love it. But then he said, oh, it's kind of Fleetwood Mac-y, isn't it? And I was like, oh, I love it. [Laughs]

Dawson: [Laughs] That's all I had to say.

Manny: Yeah. So [motions toward Heri] Carnelian and [motions toward Dawson] Woman.

Heri: [Laughs] Yeah!

Dawson: [Smiles] Yeah, that's actually the joke now. That’s our ongoing joke.

Manny: [Laughs] Outstanding. So, my next question, because you've already answered the name one, is what makes you tick? What makes you work together as well as you do? Because it's been three years, right?

Dawson: Yeah. I don't know. I think it's [that] we trust each other as musicians, you know. We both have respect for what we can do. And so we give each other enough time and we try our best not to step on each other's toes. We don't fight about anything really. We just both bring in our ideas and we work on them and spend time on them and [are] patient with each other. And I think that's just how we make things work.

Heri: Yeah. Thankfully, we have a lot of the same influences. I fully trust his vision, and he trusts mine. And thankfully, usually it's the same vision. And I just know how talented he is on the guitar, and we’re able to just leave it in each other's hands.

Manny: Beautiful. So there's a lot of symbiosis there. You're just part of the same unit, and so you know how to kind of weave in and out of each other and into each other. Awesome. You've also led me to my next question. Who are your musical idols and recurring influences musically and stylistically? Because I have to add: you have an identifiable style. That's obviously on purpose. And so, [your] musical idols, stylistic choices, they must come from somewhere. Where do they come from?

Heri: Well, we both really, really love Alice in Chains. I think the Jar of Flies album is the blueprint for both of us. We love that dramatic sound. I personally really, really love Stevie Nicks. I love dramatic and theatrical people like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. But on the other end of that, I [also] love singer-songwriters like Tracy Chapman [and] John Denver. I mean, yeah, I just pick up inspiration from anywhere.

Dawson: Yeah. Alice in Chains is my favorite band, so my specific sound is very heavily influenced [by them]. I'm also a big Rush fan. And so I think from when I was a little kid, [the] biggest Rush fan of five years old, I tried to learn all these Rush songs on the drums and on the bass, and I think that's where I really, really learned how to play. It was just teaching myself those songs because they're not really simple songs, you know? I also have a lot of influence from my parents because my dad is a guitar player and a singer, and he's been playing shows for more than thirty years. My stepmom is a drummer, and we actually play in a band together.

Manny: All right. Did you play “Tom Sawyer” as a kid?

Dawson: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. [Laughs]

Manny: [Laughs] What would a dream concert for both of you be? People who are alive and people who are gone. So you don't have to choose between the living and the dead. Like, you could pick anybody you want to go see. You have carte blanche. [It’d] be like a Woodstock event.

Heri: [Looks at Dawson] You go first. You go first. [Laughs]

Dawson: Okay. Well, I have, I don't know, I have a couple, I don't really have a specific one, but obviously I would have loved to watch Alice in Chains with Layne Staley. I think being at Woodstock [in] ‘69, watching Jimi Hendrix, I think that would have been really fucking cool. Who else? I don't know, I already watched Rush. I already saw them live. Yeah, I'm gonna say those two off the top of my head: Alice in Chains and Hendrix.

Heri: Well, I've already mentioned mine, which would probably be John Denver because I just love what he's able to do, just him and his guitar. And I think being able to be in the audience of one of his shows would be just really special.

Manny: That would also be quite the triple act. What's next for Carnelian Woman? And would you ever expand to include other members, if you haven't already?

Dawson: Well, what’s next is we're trying to get some more songs released because we have a bunch. But our recording situation is a little bit complicated [with] trying to find the time to do it. So yeah, that is the number one thing: release more music. And besides that, we've talked about having a full band, but there's just kind of something that feels so intimate about what we do when it's just the two of us. Because we are the founding members and we are the main visionaries. And so if we were to bring in other people, it would be a lot of, “You guys would just have to follow us, follow our lead” because we do have a specific vision. I think we're definitely open to the idea of having a full band, but I'm not sure when that would be.

Heri: Yeah, it's hard because we work so well together and we have a system, and I think it would take like the universe aligning for us to bring someone else in, right?

Dawson: To have someone else, yeah.

Manny: I love it. I remember the last time we talked, you were talking about Anchorage, like, moving to Anchorage. Is that still happening?

Dawson: Yeah. So [Heri] lives in Anchorage. And I'm going to be moving to Anchorage this summer. Obviously, it'd be a lot easier to work on songs together when we live in the same city, and the studio that we have recorded with the most is in Anchorage, so, if we continue to work with them, it would be a lot easier to be down there. But besides that, there [are] so many more venues to play in Anchorage and there's a bigger [music] scene, [and] a lot more younger bands that we are already starting to connect to. Once we live down there, we really want to dive deeper into that and meet these other bands, play shows with these other bands, you know, hang out with them. That’s kind of our goal.

Heri: Yeah. Anchorage has such a vibrant music scene that we really want to be a part of it. And last year we really got to get our foot in the door and become a part of it. And we feel really grateful to be in the position that we're in and to continue to grow in Anchorage.

Manny: Great. All right. So my last questions are two for one. First is a quick one. Are you going to be playing in Fairbanks again before the summer comes around or during the summer? And second, when you play together on stage and you know, as all artists everywhere know, that moment when you just click right, [and] everything's working perfectly. What word would you use to describe that moment?

Dawson: Ooh. To answer the first question: we don't have another gig scheduled, and so I'm not sure where we're going to play next. I hope so. I hope we do play here before the summer. I don't know [turns to Heri], what's a good word for when we're kind of really in the moment on stage and things are working?

Heri: I don't know, one word is so hard because I think I would describe it more as, “it just makes sense.” It just feels, like, [pause] I guess I'll say completeness.

Dawson: Magical.

Heri: Magical? Yeah, but I feel like that's easy. [Laughs]

Dawson: [Smiles] Levitating. Yeah. I don't really know. It's because it's really hard to explain it with just one word. I mean, as funny as it sounds, magical is probably one of [those words]. Like, that's just the feeling that we get as musicians, expressing ourselves and sharing our art [with] people, when we know that what we're doing is clicking and it's sounding the way that we want [it] to sound. I mean, it really does just kind of feel like you're floating over the music as we're playing it. So yeah, I think magical is the way I'd explain it.

Heri: And I think that just the frequencies of music and the way that it affects people's emotions is magic in general. And I love being able to pull the puppet strings on that.

Dawson: And therapeutic.

Heri: Yeah.

Dawson: [That] is a good word.

Heri: Yeah. And I think as far as future shows: we'll never stop. Last year we were just slammed doing shows every weekend, the whole summer. Which is fun, but it's definitely exhausting. And, you know, going back into summertime, I know that we'll definitely be doing that again.

Dawson: [Nods] Yeah.

Manny: Yeah. Great. Thank you very much! You also gave me the name of the article, which is always the hardest part, so I appreciate it.

Heri and Dawson: Thank you!