Lily Sexton:
Age: 20
Year: Junior
Hometown: Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Sign: Leo
HC:What are you involved in on campus?
LS: I teach yoga at the Rec Center. I’m also a dancer, so I dance a couple of times a week. I also play violin and sing in a band called Mamma’s Marmalade, which probably takes up the more meaningful portion of my time.
HC:Can you tell me more about the band?
LS: Well, like I said, the band’s called Mamma’s Marmalade and we’re a bluegrass string band. We started last fall with the mandolinist Mitch Bordage and banjo player Rich Hennessy cooking up a plan of sorts to form a group. I joined a little out of the blue because I didn’t know those guys at first. Rich’s sister Maura came out, and we jammed a bit in the Baker quad, which was very well-received, but we weren’t really committed to being a group yet. Then we added our guitarist last semester, who seemed to be the secret ingredient in filling out the sound and writing some music. We’ve been playing a lot of gigs, and we hope to get an album out soon.
HC: Can you tell us a little more about the album?
LS:Well, it’s our first album, so it won’t be very long. We recorded part of it on November 8th right after our gig at The O’s in Sunderland the night before. We recorded with my boyfriend’s father, Johnny Spampinato. Johnny was in NRBQ and currently plays with the Incredible Casuals and the Spaminato Brothers, and has a studio in Wellfleet, MA that we recorded at. It’s a small studio, and the prospect of doing some recordings is really exciting. The album will be called Some Better Company, and you can expect it to be out by January 2015.
HC:Aside from your music, what would you say is one of your best traits?
LS:I guess it’s that I have a lot of interests and a lot of energy to do the things I love to do, such as the music, dancing, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m very passionate.
HC: Could you give us a fact about yourself that most people wouldn’t know?
LS:Sure. I’m hoping to go to midwifery school after I get my bachelors, and somehow mix that in with the stuff I’m doing here.
HC: Midwifery?
LS: Yeah, there’s something pretty unbelievable about childbirth, but the system for doing it in the United States isn’t conducive to either the health of the woman or women’s rights. The midwifery movement and trying to get it subsidized by insurance is something that’s really interesting to me. When we empower women we empower everyone, and this is one more way to do that. I’ll also try to mix in the things about sustainable food, farming, and herbal medicine in some way. I’ll figure it out when I get there, I guess.
HC: What’s #1 on your bucket list?
LS:Well, when I was a kid, I really wanted to go into space, but now I guess my first thing is that I would like to travel to somewhere that may not be there at the end of our lifetime. Some sort of natural wonder that’s not permanent, I suppose. There’s a lot of places I’d want to go. Another one that could be the number one thing on my bucket list is that I’d like to perform music and have someone who influenced me hear it. Hopefully they’d like it, but just playing it for them is enough.
HC:One final question: If you were an animal, what would you be?
LS: There are probably many more animals that capture my persona better, but I would definitely love to be a bird of prey. They’re just badass, and they’re brilliant animals that really work for their food. I’d love to be an owl, that would be wicked cool. Fly silently through the night and eat some rabbits. That sounds rad.
Make sure to catch Lily Sexton and her band Mamma’s Marmalade at Art Alive in Amherst Center on November 15th at 8pm. Stay on the lookout for her new album Some Better Company coming out soon!