Hundred Waters Challenge the Conventions of What It Means to Be a Band

Hundred Waters Challenge the Conventions of What It Means to Be a Band
Mark Ortega
LA Weekly
November 29, 2017

Since forming in 2011, Los Angeles–based art-pop band Hundred Waters haven't done many interviews. That’s what made it interesting when singer Nicole Miglis insisted on meeting in person.

We meet at Coffee Commissary on Sunset Boulevard, just a few minutes south from where she lives in Beachwood Canyon. Three albums into their career, Miglis and bandmates Trayer Tryon and Zach Tetreault are starting to come around on the promotional obligations that come with being a full-time musician.

“I’m still rectifying it today, I think, in being proactive with this interview,” Miglis says with a nervous laugh, while fidgeting with her cup of coffee. “It takes a lot for me to face anything that isn’t music, almost foolishly, I think.”

The band have a Dec. 1 show at the El Rey, and after five years in Los Angeles, it’s the first gig that feels like a true homecoming. Their roots were planted in Florida, with Tryon and Tetreault performing music together for a few years with a former member, Paul Giese, before Miglis came into the picture. They signed to Skrillex’s OWSLA label in 2012, a connection that has, for the most part, only affected how they approach live shows, according to Miglis.

“I think OWSLA made it so we’re playing a lot of shows to people that wouldn’t have otherwise heard our music,” Miglis says. “It’s forced us to adapt and I think helped us be confident in who we are. It can be a valuable experience, different from playing just to crowds who are already familiar with you.”

With the release of Communicating in September, the group hit a high mark. The album marks the first time the band got to focus on writing material while not touring or, earlier in their career, working other jobs.

It’s one of the more gripping breakup albums in recent years, but with a hopeful twist. It’s at least in part inspired by the romance between Miglis and Tryon, and Miglis says she knew she would have to face things head-on more than usual with the new record.

“I think in general, it’s a personal goal just trying to be more exposed and share more,” Miglis says. “For me, it’s really hard. Even music, it takes a lot of people to tell me to put something out. I’m not a super extroverted ‘check out our art’ type.” Talking about a daytime set the band played at Outside Lands this year, Miglis mentions the challenge of not being able to hide behind fog or lights the way you can when you’re playing at night or inside a dark venue.

“It’s definitely weird, to force that upon yourself," Tryon writes via email about discussing the subject matter of Communicating in interviews. "Having to examine difficult, hyper-personal shit with people you don’t know, for anyone to read.

“There wasn’t really any way around it though, other than to not do interviews," he adds, "which would be a shame, because biography is great, an inherent human interest. Honestly it’s kind of helped us, because it’s made it impossible to ignore our issues.”

When it came time for Hundred Waters to do an album release show, the band, true to form, decided to try something unusual. They used the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery but changed the room’s layout completely. While the band performed a few of the songs, some songs played over the PA to a light show, and others featured choreographed dancers.

“I couldn't just play it because it would have felt so exposing,” Miglis said of the show. “I think all those other things lightened it up and made it more of a fun experience. We brought in couches, hauled them all up there, just to make the environment more like a place you’d actually listen to an album and not a classroom.”

Miglis worked with a choreographer, Sara Silkin, who had been putting together dances for a couple of Hundred Waters songs for a class she teaches. One song that got choreography at the show was “Better,” the album’s closer.

“Did I, did I, did I, did I, did I, did I/Did I treat you right?” Miglis sings longingly in the chorus. Silkin had the difficult task of bringing across those heartbreaking words, and two other songs, with her choreography.

“It’s knowing Nicole [and] understanding what a process it was to birth this album,” Silkin, a recent graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, says of the process.

“I knew right away that I wanted to create a duet for ‘Better’ because of the intimacy of the lyrics and melodic questioning of Nicole's voice, which inspired the dance between myself and the [other] dancer to explore the push and pull that she describes in the song.”

It was a particularly moving way to experience an album for a first time.

“Masonic ended up being perfect for a few reasons,” Tetreault says. “We all worked super hard to bring the different aspects of the event to life, from the dance component with Sara to the volumetric projections with [frequent Flying Lotus and Daedelus collaborator] Timeboy and just the overall atmosphere of the evening. It felt really good seeing it all come to life and sharing the record in a meaningful and memorable way.”

Tetreault is also the main member of Hundred Waters involved in the development of FORM Arcosanti, the music festival in Arizona that the band launched in 2014 as a means to debut their last album, The Moon Rang Like a Bell. The festival has now grown beyond the trio’s wildest dreams; this past year it featured Solange, Father John Misty, Tycho and a rare piano set from James Blake.

“We never really intended on starting a festival. It just sort of happened, as crazy as that sounds,” Tetreault says. “It’s become this ever-evolving annual project that we work on and it becomes crazier and more multifaceted each year.”

As music festivals become more homogenized and saturated, FORM has popped up as a welcome, unique addition to the festival landscape — a highly curated, intimate, invitation-only event held amid the alien-looking structures of the town of Arcosanti, an experimental eco-village in the desert north of Phoenix.

“There weren’t any music festivals anywhere near us [in Florida], so we didn’t have much experience with them prior to playing them,” Tryon says. “Zach and I drove 10 hours to Bonnaroo with a bunch of friends in high school. I had nothing, so I had to break into a barn to sleep. My best friend didn’t make it back home — he hitchhiked the other direction and dropped out of school. It was a huge experience. FORM wants to be a huge experience like that, but without any of the you-are-cattle mentality.”

With their album-release show and with FORM the past handful of years, Hundred Waters have become experts in giving concertgoers a unique experience. And with Communicating, their music is becoming just as unique and powerful as their vision for what a band can do in 2017.

Hundred Waters perform at the El Rey Theatre on Friday, Dec. 1.

"Howard the Dancing Man" Is 66 and Goes to More Concerts Than You Do

"Howard the Dancing Man" Is 66 and Goes to More Concerts Than You Do
Mark Ortega
LA Weekly
November 21, 2017

If you attend concerts in Los Angeles regularly, chances are you've noticed an older man with long white hair dancing and twirling at a few of them.

His name is Howard Mordoh. He's 66 and a retired clinical laboratory scientist. Not only does Mordoh go to four to five shows a week on average, he drives all the way from Woodland Hills to get to them. He's one of Los Angeles' most infamous characters but few people know him by name. To some, he's just "the dancing man"; on Facebook, he's known as L.A. Rocker.

"My license plate was where the name started," Mordoh says. "LAROKRR was as close as I could get to L.A. Rocker, when personalized plates became available. Going to shows more often started happening when I got interested in a lot of the newer bands, especially after going to my first Coachella [in 2004]. Luckily, saving my 401(k) for 35 years made me able to afford to go to more shows."

As for his distinctive dance moves: "My sister and I would try and imitate the moves we saw on American Bandstand, and I started to take my own liberties," Mordoh says, specifically referencing his peculiar twirl. "My mother says I was dancing before I was walking."

I've enjoyed Mordoh's antics from afar for years. This year I took a shuttle to San Francisco music festival Outside Lands and there was an open seat next to him, so I sat down and introduced myself, and we had our first conversation about his life as "the dancing man."

Mordoh says you can see him for a split second, as a young man holding an 8mm movie camera, in The Last Waltz, the documentary film about The Band's 1976 farewell concert. He also had me look up a hilarious video of him dancing prior to LCD Soundsystem's supposed final show at Madison Square Garden in 2011.

This year alone, Mordoh attended Coachella, Arroyo Seco Weekend, FYF Fest and Music Tastes Good — with Coachella coming two weeks after he had arthroscopic knee surgery. Despite occasional pain, the surgery did not slow down his dancing much.

"My left knee does go out a little bit when the weather changes, but thank God I can still dance and there is no constant pain," he says.

It's a running gag among my friends who work at local venues that if Howard Mordoh is at your show, it means you have the best show on the calendar that night. His taste is broad; you'll catch him at more age-appropriate shows such as Sheryl Crow and Paul Weller but also at concerts of millennial-leaning acts like Odesza, Moses Sumney and even Katy Perry.

When still working as a clinical scientist, Mordoh didn't let his work get in the way of landing hot tickets to shows. A former co-worker, Eudinne Dalupang, recalls that Mordoh scheduled his work life around his concert habit when they worked together at Esoterix, an endocrinology lab in Agoura Hills.

"He always timed his lunch breaks for when tickets would go on sale," Dalupang recalls. "He started at 5 a.m. and I started at 6. He'd always be playing music, turning it down a bit when the administrators would come into the office. People in the office knew him as the guy that loved to go to shows and dance."

Since retiring in 2012, Mordoh and his partner of 38 years, Ken Warren, work multiple browsers on two computers to try to score tickets to shows the minute they go on sale. You won't be surprised to learn that Mordoh and Warren's first date was a concert — an Oingo Boingo show at the Whisky A Go Go. Warren doesn't make it to as many shows as he used to as he's dealt with some health issues, but anytime it's a seated venue, you can usually count on him being somewhere nearby while Mordoh is off dancing.

"When he goes to shows with me, he'll put in air quotes, 'Your "fans" are coming over.' They've sometimes pushed him out of the way," Mordoh says.

"Sometimes when I'm at the Hollywood Bowl and I'm dancing, girls would tell their boyfriends, 'Look at that guy dancing, I'm gonna go dance with him.' And then I'd see the boyfriends and they're fuming," Mordoh laughs. "I get really nervous that they're gonna come over and whack me — but then I tell them, 'Relax, I'm gay.'"

Though Mordoh has forged friendships at various venues that sometimes help him get into the most exclusive gigs, he's also willing to go to insane lengths when all else fails. When The Rolling Stones played the Wiltern in 2002, he camped outside beginning at 6 a.m. When the venue finally released a handful of tickets for $50, Mordoh was one of the lucky few to obtain one.

Mordoh isn't just famous among L.A. concertgoers and venue staff. He's known to bands that tour regularly through the area as well. On an Oct. 16 episode of KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic , British synth-pop duo Oh Wonder recounted one of their favorite moments performing in Los Angeles, which included Howard the dancing man.

"I vividly remember that guy dancing up on the balcony at the Troubadour," singer Josephine Vander Gucht said. "He was just like this 50-year-old dude absolutely loving life. And I was just like, 'This is why I wanted to make music, this guy right here.'"

Later that same week, Alana Haim ran out into the audience and danced with Mordoh at Haim's sold-out concert at the Greek Theatre. The band later uploaded video of the moment to an Instagram story with the caption, "best. dance. partner. ever."

Concerts in Los Angeles can oftentimes be stuffy, almost as if some people are too cool to give themselves over to what's happening onstage. Part of what makes Mordoh's presence on the L.A. concert scene so memorable is that his energy usually rubs off on those around him and takes their enjoyment level up a notch.

"It's my addiction," he says of dancing at shows. "From when I first started going to concerts, I pretty much would let the music wash over me and take me over. It's nice that everyone still enjoys my presence."

Mordoh's show schedule is often insanely packed. In November, he's hitting 20 shows in 18 days, including Bruce Springsteen's Broadway show in New York. (As much as Mordoh loves concerts, he's equally enamored of musicals.)

He's also found a way to turn his love for dancing into something charitable by lending his time and dancing skills to dementia and Alzheimer's patients, working with them as a pool and gym buddy at the Motion Picture & Television Fund near his home in Woodland Hills.

I ended up seeing Mordoh at Outside Lands later on the same day I rode the shuttle with him. He was wearing a pair of yellow sunglasses, dancing by himself, his hair blowing in the wind as he twirled like there was no tomorrow to singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers. Around him, other festivalgoers watched in amusement and admiration, taking pics and Snapchatting his moves.

"That guy's my hero," I overheard one girl say to her friends.