Jordana X Magdalena Bay

Single artwork by Julia Fletcher. Jordana press photograph by Felix Walworth. Magdalena Bay press image by Kate Biel. Interview by Heather Hawke.

We talk to Wichita-based Jordana Nye (aka Jordana) and Miami-born, Los Angeles-based duo Magdalena Bay (Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin) about their collaborative new music video for “Push Me Away.” The music video, directed by Magdalena Bay and shot in April 2021 in LA, finds Jordana and Mica Tenenbaum playing around with a vibrant electro-pop backdrop and nostalgic futuristic themes. The track oozes fuzzy aughts inspired alternative dripping with technicolor synths. 

“Push Me Away” comes on the heels of Jordana’s collaborative single with Ryan Woods (“Doubt of Revival”) as well as the release of her sophomore album, Something To Say To You, last December. Though initially self-released in 2019, Jordana’s debut album, Classical Notions of Happiness, was written, performed and produced all by herself. That in turn, caught the eye of NY independent label Grand Jury who then re-released the album in early 2020. Jordana was introduced to electronic DJ/producer Jeffrey Melvin who, after one initial collaborative session, created “Crunch.” The track appeared as one of the three bonus tracks on the deluxe version of Classical Notions of Happiness (released on March 27, 2020). Following the Happiness re-release, the Something to Say EP (released on July 31, 2020) was the first of two consecutive EPs, the second being To Say released in tandem with the full Something to Say To You album on December 4, 2020. 

Magdalena Bay, on the other hand, released A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling last March and Mini mix, vol. 2 in November 2020. Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin met in 2011 at an after-school music program (Live! Modern School of Music) in North Miami that they attended while in high school. Though they were in a prog-rock band together at Live!, it wasn’t until 2016 when they were both back at home during a winter break from college, that they discussed working together again. Instead of venturing back into rock, they decided to test the waters and step into pop and formed what would become Magdalena Bay. Though they continued to collaborate long-distance, Tenenbaum at the University of Pennsylvania and Lewin at Northeastern University in Boston, and self-released singles, it was when they moved out to LA in 2018 that they quickly grew impatient with the slow pace of production. They started releasing content at a rapid pace, which caught the eyes of Luminelle Recordings, an independent label formed by Gorilla vs. Bear’s Chris Cantalini in collaboration with indie labels Fat Possum Records and House Arrest Distribution. Less than a year later, in March 2020, Luminelle put out the band’s dazzling rapturous EP, A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling,.

We talk to both Jordana and Magdalena Bay about collaborating on “Push Me Away” as well as take a deeper dive into their previous releases below.

Jordana’s web/socials: Website — Bandcamp – Soundcloud – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter

Magdalena Bay’s web/socials: Website – Bandcamp – Soundcloud– Facebook – Instagram – Twitter

Hi! So, things are pretty scary/crazy/stressful right now in the world…..As a musician / creative, how are you feeling? How has it changed your plans and how are you coping with this situation?

Jordana: Hello there!!! Yes, things have been pretty scary for the past year. Lots of people have lost their lives — it’s been a really serious situation, especially with new strains, the uncertainty with the timeline of this pandemic is intimidating. We are pushing through, though, more vaccinated people so that’s a hopeful thing.

It’s been pretty weird kind of really getting my musical career started amidst the pandemic…with it almost entirely being online. Although I had been performing since I was like 11 or 12 with my violin, then writing, recording, and performing with guitar and ukulele at 17, my career didn’t actually start picking up until 2019/2020. I was performing locally for a while before it really took off, and had a tour scheduled for 2020 with TV Girl, then of course the pandemic hit a few weeks before the tour was to start. So, after that my career was mostly online and still kind of is! But now that the tour has been announced for a reschedule this fall of 2021, as live shows are making a comeback, and with my history of putting myself out there and performing, I am actually super nervous! I’ve been doing livestreams, but in person for the first time in over a year, especially it being my first tour, it’s going to be a lot of work and I just don’t want to disappoint anyone to be honest, hahaa.

With all the time off from live shows though, I have been recording more and making a lot of new music that I am proud of and super excited to come out with. I really think people are going to like it… hopefully as much as I do… 🙂

Magdalena Bay: Feeling good as things reopen! Spent a lot of lockdown writing music, excited to get out and start performing soon. We had to cancel touring plans at the start of the pandemic but hey we wrote an album!

I want to start from the beginning. Jordana, what was your childhood like growing up on the East Coast? Did creativity play a big part of your childhood? 

Jordana: Growing up on the East Coast and living right by the Chesapeake Bay definitely had some advantages. We have this half a mile boardwalk on the beach and we would have Friday night Farmer’s Markets that would be packed with local residents and product/food vendors. Some of us kid musicians became regular buskers, until the loud old guy bands they would set up on the pavilion overpowered our acoustic unplugged sets…grrrrr… I would go there with my violin nearly every Friday they set it up and play, sometimes I’d see my friends around with guitars and we would just jam together! I even made it into the newspaper one time lol! Creativity wise, it really helped grow my improvisation ability to jam with the locals. There was this shop called The Wheel where they would have jam sessions there while the market was in session, and when it got dark, I would pack up and walk down the street to join them. It was just a big group of old people playing folk and bluegrass. We would all sit in a circle, old, young, dogs, birds and jam on the porch at night with draped lights in the summertime and just go around the circle playing songs other people wanted to jam on. I was always so excited when it was my turn because I was thinking “I can’t wait to show these cool geezers my new song obsession and make them jam on it with me…”

Magdalena Bay, what was your childhood like growing up in Miami? How’s it been living and creating in LA for the past few years?

Magdalena Bay: Music was a big part of both of our childhoods! We both started playing instruments as kids and met at an after-school music program in high school. It’s been awesome living in LA, so cool that there’s so many artists in such a concentrated area.

Describe your path to becoming involved with music. What’s your very first earliest musical memory? When was the first time you felt super inspired by music? 

Jordana: Well, if we are talking absolute earliest musical memory, it was my mom singing me to sleep in this white wicker rocking chair, singing “Irish Lullaby” originally by James Shannon, but I like to listen to the Bing Crosby mostly, haha. Ah, fond memories.

My dad was an organist for churches we would go to growing up, but in all honesty, that didn’t interest me as much as violin. I low-key wish it did because it would’ve helped a lot with learning music theory and it’s overall one of the, if not, most important musical instruments ever created. 

The main memory that really inspired me to learn violin was when I saw a guy at this church we went to play when I was 8 or 9 and I was honestly mesmerized. I started watching Andre Rieu with my mom and was really serious about wanting to learn it. I ended up taking violin lessons for years from the guy who played at the church! Shout out Evan Dice!!! 

Throughout middle school I became obsessed with Lindsey Stirling…like scary obsessed. I had an entire binder with all of her sheet music that my mom helped make. I got to see her twice in concert and I cried soooo hard I couldn’t believe I was actually hearing her play in front of me. So cool. After sort of growing out of that obsession, in high school I really started listening to Hilary Hahn and Julia Fischer when performing in the All County and Tri County orchestras. Those ladies are so talented, and I will forever look up to them.

Tell me about your musical upbringing. What music did you grow up to? When did you first become aware that music was going to be a part of your life? What was your formal / not formal music education like growing up?

Jordana: I grew up usually listening to a lot of the stuff my sibling put me onto. We would play Driver 3 and Tony Hawk Project 8 on the OG Xbox bumping 311’s greatest hits and a lotttt of Linkin Park. With road trips to Pennsylvania to visit family, my mom loved to switch out Death Cab For Cutie CDs and just keep them on repeat the whole ride there and back. We sang along every time, and they are a big influence of mine even from that. Ended up being a band from my childhood that I really cherish, memories and the music itself, all so good. After those bands I got into a lot of The Strokes and Grizzly Bear. I still have my Strokes fan page on Instagram but I’ll never drop that username…Ever since learning violin and other instruments after that I knew that was definitely the only thing I would ever really want to do because of my overwhelming passion for it, but I didn’t really think I had an actual idea of how I would make a living being a musician. I thought about college for being a performance major or musical therapy major, I don’t know, something like that. I just knew some way or another I wanted to make it my life when I grew up. I only really had violin lessons and a couple of drum lessons, but other than that I was just buying new instruments and messing around on them.

Magdalena Bay: Matthew grew up listening to classic rock, his dad was a huge fan of Pink Floyd, Genesis and beyond! He knew as soon as he picked up a guitar as a kid that music would be a big part of his life. Mica grew up with a mix of stuff, started music lessons as a kid too. She knew she’d stick to music when she wrote her first song for our rock band in high school.

When you were old enough to start seeking out music, where did you regularly find yourself (a certain record store / internet site / getting recommendations from a certain friend)? Who were some of the artists you first found and then were always on the lookout for? 

Jordana: When I was seeking out music, around the time I started getting into The Strokes, Grizzly Bear, Arctic Monkeys, etc.. I would mostly go to Instagram and talk to other kids on there who had recommendations similar to it. Also a lot of my friends at school and music teachers would share stuff they like. The one place most of all that I would chat about music in was the app known as KIK… ok I know how it sounds, but I was like 14 being able to join band topic chats and talk with other kids on there about our favorite bands, and we would share a lot of other bands with each other and fan out. The app is sketch to begin with but the discussion in the band chats was very memorable and I am still friends with a few people from it years and years after. Mostly what I was on the lookout for was some more Strokes of course. Die-hard fan (not as much anymore, but definitely enough to know their first 4 albums like a second language).

Talking about your formative years. What was the very first concert you attended? Did you play any sports / go to summer camps? Were there posers on your wall when you were growing up?

Jordana: I honestly cannot recall what my first actual concert was…I was told it was The Wiggles, which is sick af, unfortunately I do not remember a single minute of it. Such a bummer. I’m sure it was popping. I did see Lindsey Stirling in 2015, and I’m pretty sure that was the first memorable concert I attended, as far as I remember…those years were a blur…

I actually despised sports of any kind! I think it was because I was around so many kids in my school who played them and the school was predominantly a sports involved school, not so much the arts. I got picked on by a lot of the sports kids so that’s also something to take into account I guess hahaha. I did go to summer camps, though. I was involved in this Making-the-Band Camp at my local academy called Garrett Music Academy (where I took violin lessons) for a few years. Us kids were rounded up and put into different groups around the building with a teacher and were given two weeks to play covers of our choice as a band and then perform at the end of the two weeks at the “Battle of the Bands”. It was a lot of fun.

I of course had a huge Lindsey Stirling poster on my wall…then over the years I would pin up CD booklets from The Strokes and printed out pictures of Two Door Cinema Club and an occasional Damon Albarn in the wild…

Magdalena Bay: Mica’s first concert was Aerosmith with her dad, Matt’s was The Who with his dad. We both tried out a few sports but didn’t really feel like sports were our thing. Mica had My Chemical Romance posters in her room when she was 12-13, Matt still has vinyl (Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, etc) up on the walls of his childhood bedroom.

Jordana, what was your songwriting/creative process like for newest body of work Something to Say to You? Was there a specific moment when work on the sophomore album began? Or does the line between the writing for both of the EPs (Something to Say and the … To You) blur? Was there an event or a specific timeframe where a large chunk of the lyricism came out? 

Jordana: When I would fly to NYC to record, MELVV and I would be in the studio for 4 or 5 days and build instrumentals, then usually we wrote along to them either together or put them on loop and brainstormed lyrical ideas based on a topic. We had already decided after making “Crunch” that we needed to do an actual project together because we were just too pumped on it to not write more. So, we made the first EP and then another one to put them out separate and then bring them together as a full album. As for a timeframe, it was mostly just a word vomit of emotions that I would clean up over time when building the melodies. We had limited time each day to finish the tracks, so one of the ways I learned I could write under pressure was to put certain sections on loop and build onto the topic at hand.

Where were you at physically, mentally when you wrote the lyrics / music for the tracks on Something to Say to You? 

Jordana: I was all over the place. Physically and mentally. Occasional trips to NYC for a few days out of the month to record, then going back home to be a lazy loser. I didn’t really know how to articulate my emotions and cope well, and taking those trips pretty much made me get things out, because I wouldn’t have done it myself around that time. It was a messy time for overall well-being and behavior, but we are learning up in here! Every day!

Did you have any parts of the tracks off of Something to Say to You (whether it be lyrics, beats, harmonies) around the time of either EP or around the Classical Notions of Happiness era? How much did you, and the EPs/LP, evolve in that time? Did this lag make you feel not quite as connected to the music? Did it make you see the music in a new light?

Jordana: I did not! All of that music was after I made “Crunch” with Jef (MELVV). It was only after that first release when I started on the second album with Jef. As for the evolving of the albums, my music obviously started to grow in sound compared to doing everything myself on GarageBand like the first album (eugh), and I felt like I had finally found a solid ‘me sound’. For personal evolving, I did feel connected to the music, but on some I profess that some of the songs I didn’t know exactly what I was feeling and knowing how to articulate the words to my emotions has been something I’ve always been longing to be able to do easily. Under the pressure of getting it all done, it did feel disingenuous a lot of the time, lyrically, but I do think words that you write in a song at a specific time, it could have and keep one specific meaning, or it can change meaning over time. That, to me, is explained by other people who listen to my music, finding different meanings in my songs, then listening to it again myself after a long time, and finding new interpretations of my own lyrics, with experiences that I had yet to feel when I wrote them. Experiences, mistakes, and growth changes a lot of things in retrospect.

Do you find it helpful to be intentional when it comes to writing the lyrics / music? Like “I’m going to sit down and work on a song.” Or is it more ephemeral, like you’ve been kicking something around in your head for days, weeks, months, and then suddenly it comes spilling out? Or is it a mixture of both?

Jordana: It’s usually both! Half of it is usually stuff on either a baritone ukulele or guitar that I write poems to or vice versa, then go in and record it, and the other half is going into the studio and building a song from the ground up with instrumentals being first, then sitting down and writing to the vibe of the song! But mainly yes, it is spilling it out, but with careful thought and a touch of class.

When and how did the album title Something to Say to You come about in the album creation process? What is the significance of the title? 

Jordana: The album title came from a lyric in my song “Divine.” Originally, I thought of it as a great way to split up both of the EPs, the first one being ’Something To Say’ and the second one being ’To You’…it just made sense to me so that when the album did come out it would be mended together to create the full title. But as for another way that made sense for the album, I see it as putting the work out there and it legitimately being ’Something To Say To You’ as in the people listening to the record.

Magdalena Bay, what was your songwriting/creative process like for your newest releases mini mix, vol. 2.? Are you always writing? Was there a specific moment when work on the mini mix, vol. 2 began? Or does the line between the writing for various releases sort of blur? 

Magdalena Bay: With our mini mixes the idea is to create shorter songs faster, it’s a more experimental process where we try to explore different genres and the songs turn out more eclectic. No specific moment when writing began, some songs were started specifically as minis others were scraps from earlier ideas.

A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling is such a fascinating title. When and how did the title come about in the creation process? What is the significance of the title? 

Magdalena Bay: The EP title was the last thing we came up with, and it’s from lyrics in “How To Get Physical”- we thought it’d be cool to have the title be from words in a song, went through all the lyrics and that phrase stood out to us! It captures the vibe of the EP and songs in a fun way.

Let’s talk about the video for “Push Me Away”! What was the treatment for this video? How long was this video in the making? 

Jordana: The treatment for this video was pretty much all futuristic, neon city green screen night-time vibes. Mica asked me of any specific mood boards in mind and I’m kind of a Cyberpunk 2077 junkie, so I was totally wanting to go for that, especially with the theme of the instrumentals in the song. She totally delivered and I am still so impressed with how she edited it. She literally sent the “rough” drafted version of it and after I watched it I said…..”literally….this is the ONE. This is the video, wow.” Mica and Matt are both so cool and so talented.

The time it took to shoot it was just one night!!! I was in LA for recording and we took a night out of my first week and filmed the entire thing in a few hours! Matt did great filming and directing, and Mica directed and edited the video like a true wonder-team. It was so much fun to film as well. We got to goof off and dance together but also make something really cool that we can relive when we watch it back and have other people enjoy. 

After we shot the video we just hung out and took turns on GTA V just laughing our asses off crashing the cars. Then we watched Napoleon Dynamite, which Mica had never seen!!! :0 It was a work session followed by a chill night, but it was really all such a blast. I love them.

Magdalena Bay: We had so much fun with it! No treatment, just asked Jordana what her dream green screen universe was and she said cyberpunk, so we got some props together and filmed some different angles and setups! Took a couple hours to film and Mica edited it in a week.

On that topic, how much energy do you all put into the visuals (music videos, press images, artwork) that accompany your music? Do you feel like the art that accompanies one’s music is more / less important than it used to be? How do you feel like social media impacts the intention behind all of this?

Jordana: I think that visuals are just as important and I’m so glad that people are releasing more music videos along with singles now, like smaller artists, especially. The creativity counts just as much as the music, but in a different way. Like, you don’t necessarily need visuals, but it really puts it all together. You could have a story that is seemingly completely different from the message in the song in the video, but it is still a work of art! It’s another aspect of art you can see along with hearing, and that is tight!!! Two art forms all at once! I think that regardless of the intention, social media has really helped a lot of artists grow and just even be heard by someone who just simply enjoys the music, and it all adds up to establishing their career, which is one of the main goals any artist I think would love to reach. Promotion is key nowadays, and social media does a lot for artists to promote their work.

Magdalena Bay: We put a ton of energy into it! Visuals are more important than ever, and while the music is def our main focus we do love expanding our universe to include visuals that bring the songs to life. We’re trying to do that on socials like TikTok too, seeing what directions we can take the Mag Bay world in.

I feel like the music industry has shifted even more so during the pandemic how has it felt as an artist? Has it been freeing? Is it scary trying to question how to approach music making and then how to or if you want to creatively release it to the public?

Jordana: It has definitely shifted a lot, especially because all of it has been online for a year! But as far as that goes, I haven’t had much experience with it yet, and I’ve just been doing what I’ve always been doing, just in a different process. Either way I’m still making music that I like to listen to, stuff that I am inspired by, and working my hardest to make music I am proud of that hopefully other people will enjoy!

Does traveling influence you as an artist? Are you inspired by the places you go, or do you think your work would sound about the same no matter where you created it?

Jordana: I am absolutely influenced by travel! Throughout the pandemic it was hard to find new things to write about, so the times I would go to record in New York came with new experiences in a place I wanted to live someday. I know that when I tour later this year, that will be an entirely new experience, I know it will be overwhelming, so I will need to bring my journal along the way, either to put the emotions into art, or just to simply vent and doodle. I know that I will have a lot to work with when I come back, so yes, travel is and will be a big part in writing, haha!

Have you had any mentors along the way?

Jordana: The main person who mentored me a lot was my sweet orchestra teacher, Mrs. Moran. She’d been there through so much of my school life, and I’d tell her all about my personal life. I still text her every now and then. She is absolutely the best teacher/mentor I’ve ever had. She actually texted me after “Push Me Away” came out and told me that she and her husband loved it! Which made me so proud to hear that from her. <3

How do you recalibrate before getting on stage and at the end of the day? How do you get in the correct mindset?

Jordana: I of course, practice a shit ton before I go to perform. I try to get into the zone deep and not let my voice crack. The main goal is just to be able to enjoy playing the songs as usual, with passion, just in front of other people! There is no real answer to that for me aside from just trying my best and enjoying myself, because that’s the only way it’s gonna sound good! At the end of the day, you can wind down and take comfort in knowing that you had tried your best and if other people enjoyed it, that’s an even bigger plus. It really keeps ya going.