By Julia Train
There’s a multitude of local bands in South Jersey, however, “Wring Me Out,” has a special story.
In 2017, four kids met at the School of Rock in Cherry Hill. They got along, shared similar interests in music styles and were all in the house band at the music camp, which represents the school’s top musicians at gigs.
So when Cole Clark, 18, the lead singer, was asked to sing at the a Fourth of July parade and needed a band, he called up those four kids who would later be his bandmates to go on with him.
Flash forward six years, they’re releasing their first album, “Playing Possum,” on Friday, Oct. 13 after playing the songs for quite some time and previously releasing a single from the record, named “Window,” in late September.
Originally a cover band, the name is inspired by two different rock songs– “Wring Me Out,” Doll Skin’s and lyrics that are emphasized in “Cut My Losses” by Heart Attack Man, which go “You’ll wring me out, hang me up and bleed me dry.”
“We had a really difficult time picking a band name. We were playing a show and we got on stage not having a name and we’re like, ‘Okay, it’s Wring Me Out.’ [and it was] Wring Me Out from there on,” said bassist Ellie Taube, 18.
Along with her and Clark, there’s drummer Derek Mosetter, 16, and guitarist Aidan Kehoe, 18. Although the band name wasn’t entirely easy to come up with, the music was the opposite.
“I write a lot of my lyrics during school which probably isn’t the best thing for my education, but I feel like that’s the most productive I can be. I kind of just write whatever comes into my head,” said Clark. “A lot of the time I think my lyrics may not reflect on me or something I’ve gone through, so there are some that are more personal to me and then there’s some that I just write because an idea comes to mind.”
He added the example of a song called “Gioconda” that’ll be on the album, which is about someone from the present falling in love with the Mona Lisa.
The song’s title, or “La Gioconda,” is the Italian name for Leonardo da Vinci’s painting.
When writing music, each member collaborates with each other by writing their parts and seeing how they fit together, some having their instrumentals written before the lyrics and others formed the opposite way.
Taube is currently attending Berklee School of Music in Boston, majoring in music business, traveling back and forth for gigs and practices, which are every other week at the moment.
The band’s next performance will be at Elephant Talk Indie Music Festival the weekend of Oct. 15 at the Tennessee Avenue Beer Hall in Atlantic City. It’ll be the first live performance after the release of the album, which will be available on every music platform.
Julia is a student at Rider University, majoring in multiplatform journalism with a minor in social media strategies. At school, she writes and copy edits for The Rider News and is the News Director for the radio station, producing news updates. She’ll be graduating in the spring. Connect with her on Instagram @juliatrain
