MODERN MUSICIAN: A CONVERSATION WITH MODERN MOD'S ALIVIA KLEINFELDT-INTRODUCTION

And now for something extremely special...

In the month of September, I was truly honored to present to you an exclusive, extensive interview I conducted with the members of the Madison, WI band Post Social. Within the experience of asking the members questions and receiving their thorough, thoughtful answers, I was constantly amazed with the depth and openness they offered to me and no matter how far that series reaches or how many people will actually read it, I am happy to have taken part in creating a document specifically for them detailing this specific period of their lives as musicians as well as friends.

At this time, I am equally excited to share with you another exclusive, extensive interview I was conducting during the same period and even a tad longer. For the entirety of this year, I have been extolling my extreme enthusiasm for the Madison, WI band Modern Mod, and their debut album "Tunnels" (released April 21, 2014), which I discovered immediately after I first heard Post Social and entirely due to the passionate recommendations by B-Side Records owner, my friend Steve Manley. 

My original intent was to possibly create some sort of interview project/open history of both bands as the members attended school together, compose and play music together and continue to remain friends. Certainly as they are all now recent high school graduates, and all involved heavily within their post-high school lives, it was not always an easy feat to have our equally busy schedules match up for any sort of interview process. While speaking with Post Social/Modern Mod drummer Brendan Manley, he suggested to me that perhaps I should find a way to speak with Modern Mod bassist/singer/songwriter Alivia Kleinfeldt, as she is not only the co-founder of the band, she is currently the only sole original member remaining, making what Manley referred to as the "heart and soul" of Modern Mod.

As with the members of Post Social, I reached out to Kleinfeldt through Facebook and very quickly, we began sending questions and answers back and forth, and again, I was deeply impressed with her thoughtfulness, her openness, her humor, her thoroughness and most of all, her immense kindness.

At the time of this writing, I have not met Alivia Kleinfeldt in person at all. I have not spoken with her on the phone. I have actually never even seen her in the flesh! And despite the lack of face-to-face contact, the conversations that I have had with her have been filled with nothing but pure warmth and graciousness. In fact, so easy-going has this process been with her that it actually has felt as if I had been speaking with her, ether on the phone or in person, all the while. That I believe is a testament to her immense charm, which I sincerely hope that you will be able to receive over the course of this new series which will be released over four installments.

I interviewed Alivia Kleinfeldlt off and on, and as her schedule and time permitted, between June and November of this year (in fact, as of this writing, we are still finishing it up) and the wealth of material she provided has made for what I feel is a wonderful document of her creative, artistic, and musical life which is indeed vibrant, exciting, infectious, engaging and fully captivating.

I hope that you will be as easily won over by her stories, her viewpoints, and her perspective of what is it to be a young, working, and serious musician in 2015. And honestly, if you cannot gather the amount of fun she has been having while creating, then you clearly have not read one word she said.

So, without further hesitation, I invite you to meet Modern Mod's Alivia Kleinfeldt. May you be as won over as I.