It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday and we’re already enjoying three fingers of the top shelf brown booze and swaying away our issues. Why? Because we woke up with all 8 members of Mama Lenny & The Remedy. We woke up with all 8 of them and we have yet to ask them to leave.

But before you condemn our thinly protected souls, let us explain how this all happened. You see, Mama Lenny & The Remedy is a spirited and big-band styled outfit from Ft. Collins that sought us out in the most contemporary of ways. They Internet stalked us. They Internet stalked us so hard that we had to bow to their demands. Usually this is an issue for us, as we hate being bullied – but they were nice about it and promised us things like glitter and sequins. We’re suckers for glitter and sequins.

They’ve also promised us – and you – new music this weekend. Mama Lenny & The Remedy will be unleashing its new album “Time, You’re Doin’ Fine” at the Aggie Theater in Ft. Fun this Friday, Jan 17. They’ll be joined by Calder’s Revolvers and Wasteland Hop. Tickets are $10 at the door and if you mention that we sent you they’ll make sure that every selfie you take is a shoe-in for at least 13 likes.

Here’s what the band wanted to tell everyone before the show:

Record label? Expensive instruments? Hordes of fans? What is it that makes you happy to be a musician?

Laniece (Schleicher): Playing and writing music with people that I love spending time with makes me sublimely happy. It makes it even better that people really seem to like what we are creating, and that they want to support us and take our journey with us.

Kelly (Keeler): It makes me happy to play music with these people in this band.  It is really moving to sing in harmony with people you love… for me its about community and creative expression – I would be a useless heap with out those two things.

Ken (Monks): I really like when Ben vibrates my sternum with his bass.

Amanda (Hofer): I have a hard time considering myself a musician in this town. We are surrounded by some serious talent that trumps anything I've ever accomplished. But this album, with two songs on it that I had a big hand in writing, might allow me to feel a little more self worth.

Soul in music today isn’t necessarily lost, but it certainly isn’t as big as other genres. Why do you think that is?

Laniece: I personally think that it may not be big in the “main stream” – depending on how you define “main stream” – but I do think it is still alive and well in the world. 

Ken: I agree with Laniece… especially in light of the recent successes of Amy Winehouse and Adele, I'm not sure I'd say it isn't as big as others. I'm also not sure that double negative wasn't grammatically correct.

Ben (Prytherch): Agreed. There is plenty of great soul music being made these days. You might have to put in a little bit of effort to find it, but that goes for anything worth discovering. 

Is the current place of pop music a lost cause, or do you think it can go somewhere productive?

Kelly: Pop culture in general seems to be a sort of watered down version of more meaningful movements in people’s lives, but I don’t know if that means it’s useless or a lost cause. I think if we demand more of our music and our culture we will get more; if we’re lazy consumers we’ll get lazy art.  

Laniece: It may not be my cup of tea, but that does not make it a lost cause. At a certain age, I bought into the image and sounds of the pop music culture with no questions asked, – hello…MilliVanilli? – and I’m sure that’s true for many people. To me, it’s not the music itself that is the issue; it’s some of the pieces of the industry that pushes that music out to the masses that’s the problem.

Amanda: What is "pop" music? Carbonation is nice every once and while, but I don't really like soda. Unless there's liquor in it.

Ken: I don't think it's a lost cause at all. It's really easy to reminisce about the older status of pop music and say how much better things were in the 60s or 70s or whenever. But it's an illusion! The thing is, we only remember the really good stuff that stands the test of time. There is plenty of good and plenty of garbage in any era.

Local artists usually don’t have the comfort of making music a full-time gig. Are there any other professions amongst your members and if so, how do those tie in to the music itself?

Kelly: I’m a therapist. I work with teenagers and music is often a huge part of their lives. I totally incorporate music therapy into some of the work I do. I know from personal experience how therapeutic songwriting and performing can be.

Laniece: We all have professional lives outside of our band. Jeff used his talents with computers to create our website which helps us to market ourselves; Thalia uses her commuting time to play her mini keyboard whilst in traffic, thereby increasing her dexterity of her fingers; Ben and Ken are mathematic nuts, which allows them to write amazing songs in unknown time signatures; Greta founded FOCOMA, which is an organization that helps to support local music and musicians..

Amanda: I would love to be a full time musician, if it didn't mean food stamps.

Ben: I'm a statistics teacher. That doesn't tie into music at all, and I like it that way.

Compared to other bands in the circuit, Mama Lenny & The Remedy is a huge force of musicians on stage. Was it the goal to be a big band or did it just kind of happen organically that way?

Laniece: If you call stalking organic, then I suppose it happened organically. Ahem…Ken…Ben.

Ken: [laughs] Ok yes, so me and Ben approaching Laniece to be in the band may have been vaguely reminiscent of mating season on the Serengeti. But, if me and Ben were the stalkers, Laniece was the medieval torture device of arm-twisters. How many times did Laniece ask Thalia (keyboardist) to join after Thalia said she wasn't interested?

We at The Rooster love our inflated sense of self-worth. What are some nice things you can say about us?

Kelly: These crazy kids today with the college hijinks and shenanigans, I keep in the loop with The Rooster!

Ken: I think Rooster is the only magazine I've ever seen that is so fun cover-to-cover. For as much as I love good old Rolling Stone… I usually read about 40% of my Rolling Stone every month, and about 95% of Rooster. You're doing something right!

Ben: The Rooster has kept on going while other local rags fell by the wayside. You are the un-killable, perpetual survivors of the free independent press. If Colorado is ever subjected to a nuclear holocaust, all that will be left are cockroaches and the Rooster – and the Rooster will be eating the cockroaches.

What are some artists today that our readers need to be listening to?

Amanda: Equally Challenged, Winchester Holiday, The Seers, Matt Skinner Band

Laniece: JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, Sophistafunk, Chimney Choir, Faceman

Kelly: Kris Lager Band, The California Honeydrops

Ben: On the local front, The Other Black, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, Winchester Holiday, and Faceman Faceman Faceman!

Ken: You Me and Apollo – that's one band not three, Bill Smith, and Faceman.

We think we read somewhere that somebody in the band is a new parent? For the life of us we can’t find the source again, so are we crazy or did this actually happen?

Kelly: No this actually happened. I got myself all knocked up and performed right up until and past my due date. There are three other moms in the band as well, I’m just the newest to the club. Somehow it makes what we do just that much more bad ass; we can give birth, suckle infants and rock the shit out of peoples faces…. with glitter.

Ken: Yeah, I have to say seeing Kelly belt Black Sabbath's ''Paranoid" while 9 months pregnant was fucking badass. No other way to put it.

There’s a squirrel that darts out in front of you driving your car down the road. What’s your initial reaction and what are normally the actions you take?

Kelly: Swerve erratically and cry

Laniece: My outer dialogue would be something like this: “Aaack! Run squirrel, run!” then I would hope I wouldn’t hear anything crunch underneath my tires.

Ken: I typically shout out the window as I'm approaching and ask it to name all four Beatles. If it responds correctly, I'll drive up onto the median or shoulder to give it space. Otherwise I keep driving and as Drago says, if he dies, he dies..

Ben: Slow down.

Your new album is something you’re all quite proud of – we assume – how satisfying is it to be able to be done with a project of this caliber?

Kelly: So much happened during the course of recording, for example I gave birth, so for me it really does symbolize the passage of time and memorialize a specific time in my life. I can listen to the album and hear the parts I recorded while pregnant and then after the baby and hear the subtle differences… that’s what it's been for me. 

Laniece: As satisfying as a delicious cup of fresh coffee or a perfectly made basil martini. This album feels especially good to me because we took our time with it, and really let ourselves be more picky and more creative with our parts.

Ken: It's super satisfying to me just because I feel like it's significantly better than the first album, and that's all you can really ask for. I hope album #3 beats the pants off this one!

Amanda: The thing is, it's never really done, in a band this size, yes, you finish a CD but the band is just one big, long project. We have material for the next one before we finish the current one. Just keep on keeping' on.

Is there anything special you want us to know about the album?

Kelly: Hidden track!

Ken: Formerly hidden track.

Laniece: We are releasing it at the Aggie on January 17th, and we encourage your readers to come and celebrate with us… also, we really like it.

Ben: If you play track #6 backwards, starting from the 1:06 mark, you'll hear a dark growling voice telling you "I want to borrow your CD player."

Amanda: This is a unique product. I'm excited to put out there for our fans to hear, I think it was important with this album to show that we can do something, different and maybe even weird, to set us apart from what people think they can expect to see from us. This is not like our last album in a very, very good way. We need to stay on our toes so we can keep our fans interested.

What does the future hold for Mama Lenny & The Remedy?

Laniece: Suprises.

Ken: We hope to do a lot more playing in nearby towns like Boulder, Longmont, Denver, Laramie, etc and branch out from our Fort Collins base. It's fun to spread good music and make people dance!

Amanda: Ideally? More babies.

Kelly: A bigger sequin budget and more glitter than you can shake a stick at! Oh and jumpsuits!