Roughly a month ago, an Ann Arbor-based band called Natural Blonde performed at the Blind Pig, and to say their performance was amazing would be an understatement. Soon after, I got the chance to talk to lead singer Addie Tussing along with bassist Selene Freudenberg about the band as well as their music.
Natural Blonde was formed after a few years of trial and error. Both Tussing and Freudenberg have been friends since they were very young because of their dads, and they’d each been playing their instruments (guitar and bass respectively) since middle school. Since they were both into music, they were like “Hey, why don’t we start a band?”. They tried to do so three or four times through the years they’d known each other, but nothing really stuck until two winters ago when something finally clicked.
“I was like, ‘okay this isn’t going to work’,” said Freudenberg “but somehow we ended up making it work. I think the reason was because we set more reasonable goals for ourselves.”
They soon after recruited drummer, Jaylee Oeschger (who coincidentally lives right across the street from Freudenberg) and came together to create Natural Blonde.
As a collective, Natural Blonde makes a variety of music, although their music takes influences from both punk and pop music in terms of both sound and storytelling. For their set at the Blind Pig, they played covers from bands like Bratmobile and Beach Bunny, as well as a few originals. Their energy and passion were contagious and their sound was incredible.
“It feels amazing,” said Freudenberg on performing “Standing onstage and feeling vibrations in your feet that you created and watching other people feel those same vibrations…It’s like the most amazing thing you can experience.”
The band has a straightforward goal for the future: to write and record music, hopefully an EP.
“I am really excited to play more shows if the opportunity shows up,” said Tussing “but right now we really, really want to get out some recorded music and get back into the writing environment with Jaylee and Selene again because it’s a really great space.”
And no, none of them are actually natural blondes.
