Santa Rosa band Secret Cat: Music infused with art

Secret Cat is not just a band, but a group of close friends experimenting with the very boundaries of art and sound. Between vocalist-guitarist Shoop, bassist Melati Citrawireja, drummer Emile Rosewater, guitarist Charlie Davenport and puppet player Quenby Dolgushkin, there is a lot of history.

“We started when we were 10,” Citrawireja said. “It was the three of us and then one other friend that started out. Emile’s dad was teaching us all guitar lessons. I think it was his idea to start a band.”

They started out covering Beatles songs, the Electric Light Orchestra and 1970s punk. “I remember at that point we were lacking a bassist, so I just got assigned the role of bassist,” Citrawireja said. “But aside from that, we were pretty self-driven, and eventually Emile kicked out his dad.”

They had a summer of uncertainty before becoming a more solid band. “[Emile’s] dad said, ‘I think we’re gonna take a summer off,’?” Shoop said. “I remember it being a serious moment, like, ‘I can’t believe it, the summer with no band!’ And then we kept hanging out anyway. We just met up without him, and it immediately formed out of that. I think it took two rehearsals before we started planning a show.”

Though Davenport and Dolgushkin arrived later on, they were both friends of the band.

“Charlie is like this beautiful bath bomb that got dropped in. Right when everything got hot, he just really spiced things up,” Shoop said of Davenport.

“I kind of got brought in just to do visuals alongside the songs for the tour,” Dolgushkin said. “I’m a performer and actor; I do masks and puppetry. And I also grew up with these guys, down the street. I’ve been going to their shows since I was like 14, so it’s been really fun to jump in and get to do what I love to do.”

Dolgushkin and Rosewater work at the Imaginists building in the SofA district of Santa Rosa. “That’s where we all met each other, and that’s kind of why we’re all so tight, is that we did theater with the Imaginists growing up, and I’m still working for them,” Dolgushkin said. “We all got together, and that really strengthened our bond.”

Secret Cat’s most recent performance was Oct. 30 at Atlas Coffee in Santa Rosa, along with Sloth n’ Turtle and the Acharis at the psycho-surf band Illumignarly’s EP release celebration. Shoop performed a good portion of the set in a Gumby costume, while Dolgushkin donned dramatic masks, silently pantomimed stories and ran a scrolling picture show of watercolors depicting scenes from the songs with fanciful creatures, telling fates like an Olympian Oracle.

The band closed with “The Babe of Wolves,” a climax that featured singer and drummer exchanging lines in a dramatic story-song while Dolgushkin weaved in and out of the crowd with wolf puppets, nipping at faces and extremities.

The vocals in Secret Cat’s songs range from the absurd to the highest lilting notes. Riffs often evoke good feelings, like a party that never ends. If one had to mix other acts to create a similar sound, they might select the likes of Kiss Kiss, the Aquabats and Say Anything.

And their sound is evolving. “I think musically, recently, we’ve been really influenced by more technical music,” Davenport said. “I feel like whenever we’re writing stuff, we’re like throwing out all these odd time [signatures] and heavier music too. And then the music that we’ve been writing … the melodies have been getting more emotional, a little bit more cathartic. Whereas before, there was like this hard pop-punk thing that was really fun, blasting melodies, and now they’re getting a little bit heavier, kind of emotional things.”

Secret Cat finds inspiration in different places, like the “Moomins” comics from the 1940s.

“There is a thematic thread I’m really interested in - it’s really hard to find words for, but it’s something like what I find in the works of the ‘Moomin’ comics especially, of like, perpetual waking motion,” Shoop said. “Just utter unpredictability, I guess. What is that, what is that feeling? I dunno, I feel like, just when reading ‘Moomin,’ it’s always like the moment is so alive, like it just doesn’t stop.” Other works named included “Star Trek,” Dungeons & Dragons and “Fantasia.”

“I felt like we were saying, ‘There’s something else’ to everyone,” Shoop said. “I don’t even know what that means, but I feel like a lot of people, that was the sensation that we gave them. From the way that people talked afterwards to me is like, giving people a sense that there’s always something else, no matter how cemented your idea of reality or your life or how things are is.”

“It’s like finding all these different ways to honor really extravagantly these very minute moments and specific feelings that don’t really get their own narratives a lot of the time,” Rosewater said. “Adventure, and moments of beauty, the minute, friendship.”

All in all, it’s about having fun. “I like creating environments that feel really dancy and joyous, and emotional without feeling physically aggressive, which is something that a lot of punk shows kind of incorporate,” Rosewater said. “Something that just feels more like it’s hopefully creating an alternative to like, a heavily male-dominated punk scene, that’s what we’re hoping to do. No guarantees, necessarily, but we try to play music that doesn’t invite that kind of aggression.”

Secret Cat successfully completed a Kickstarter fundraising campaign over the summer and raised $5,371 in a month. “It was a tour and band fund, and helping release our CD,” Shoop said. The album is titled “Smiling Songs.”

The group went to Bellingham, Wash., and back on a nine-day tour in August. “We all were unfortunately sick at some point during the tour - one person would get sick and then start to get better, and then the other person would start to get sick,” Citrawireja said. “But it was still fun.”

Right now, they’re in the writing stage of a new full-length album and preparing for a possible winter tour. They’ve even been conceptualizing a graphic novel along the themes of their music.

To learn more about the band and hear samples of their music, visit secretcat.net or secretcat.bandcamp.com. Note: There is some male nudity present.