The band which has been around with various line-ups since 2004 currently includes guitarist/founder Steph Paynes, vocalist Shannon Conley, bassist Megan Thomas and drummer Leesa Harrington-Squyres. I caught up with Steph Paynes to talk about the record:

antiMusic: When you decided to do another record, why did you select the first record?

Steph: Oh wow. Well you know, I mean. I think Led Zeppelin's first record… we call it One, even though they didn't call it One… it just you know, it really did seem like the place to start. Even though logistically as it were, chronologically, WE didn't start there because the band's been around for a little while and we made a different record first. But I mean we sort of came back to it, to kind of explore the roots of where the band really emerged from.

In a way, Led Zeppelin (the album) is everything that Led Zeppelin was in its most explosive, nascent, energetic form. Everything on there comes from the blues, Yardbirds stuff and there's sort of Celtic folk music and all of these influences being thrown into the pot. And I think in a way, Led Zeppelin really is the hardest one to do, because of that. Because it was so much about spontaneous combustion, you know this new band being thrown into the studio.

They were barely a few months old and it's just what happens between the musicians in the studio with this largely blues catalogue. It's just something that made the band legendary. The nuances and the freedom of the expression and like I said, the spontaneity. These guys were just playing together in a room and bang this thing happened. You know the later records were much more composed, you know? And produced I think really, even though there was a lot of incredible producing on this record too. But I think that to do it, to capture it, it's really…(laughs), I think…we'll see if we'll ever do the other ones but this one may be the hardest one of them all. And yet I think it's the place to start if you're ever going to really understand Led Zeppelin's music, this is what you have to know.

antiMusic: Absolutely. I'm sure you know all the songs in and out from playing them all these years. It's a different thing to have it on disc for the world to hear. How did you approach recording for this record? Would you play it through and then go spin the original to make sure you got every nuance or that it had the same exactly footprint sonically speaking?

Steph: We did use as our reference point the vinyl version of Led Zep 1. That was our reference point. Not the remastered one. Not the CD. But we were really listening to the organic original sound. And yes we did spend a lot of time with the very same vintage equipment. (laughs) We knew exactly what was going on there. And when we didn't know, we sat and figured it out by playing five different guitars. I mean there was one acoustic guitar on "Babe…" where I tried 12 guitars. And when got the right one, we knew it. We had a little help from like…I can't say his name, but someone who would know, let's just put it that way. (laughs)

antiMusic: Okay.

Steph: Someone who every once in a while would be like, "Oh, you know, let me think about that a minute". And was very supportive and helpful. A lot of the stuff is documented, but we definitely took great pains to be authentic sonically and to use those sounds in the same way that the musicians of Led Zeppelin used them. And I think it's very helpful. One feeds the other. So you have the right guitars and the right sounds and the right feel of it and then it all kinds of feeds into that whole organic magic of getting the whole thing to sound a certain way.

antiMusic: Sure. How long did the whole recording process take and did you follow the usual format of putting down the instrumental tracks one by one and adding the vocals on top of that?

Steph: We did a lot of it live in the room together.

antiMusic: Wow

Steph: Which is you know, very old school. Go figure. (laughs) But especially with a record like Led Zeppelin One. This is what this record was about. I don't think you could really do this record without doing that. You could do the record but it wouldn't sound the same way. Because that's what we did and that is why you get that feeling from it. If you just try to layer all the tracks, you know, it just is not going to work as well. Because you need that combustion between the four musicians.

Now we later went back in some cases. Of course you can't play all the guitar parts --- Jimmy's guitar army. There are a lot of layers to these records, even the early ones. So of course there was a lot of attention to doing that and layering tracks. But we did all the basic tracks like that. We played them together in a room.

antiMusic: I imagine that for you to live and breathe this project, Zeppelin has to have a special place in your heart. With that in mind, did you have to get in a special mindset while you were recording this, since you would be channelling one of your heroes, I would guess?

Steph: Honey, I LIVE like that. (laughs). As you said, it can get spooky. But you know, when I'm on the road a lot and doing this all the time and I'm getting on stage and playing this music and picking up the same guitars and, it's really like getting inside somebody's artistic head. I don't know Jimmy Page. I haven't met him---yet---and I don't know what he's like. But I do know him artistically. I KNOW what he's playing on the guitar. And I know what he might play on any given night. And I know how his solo might unravel. And I know the way he thinks sonically because I've just spent so much time in there, in the trenches with these songs.

So in answer to your question yeah, the band has evolved to a certain point where to make a record like this, we all have to be in a certain place as musicians. But certainly when we went into do this, we set the mood, we played a certain way, and we lit candles in the studio. (laughs) And we got into it. And we played together in this way as if we were really in that space and time. And of course using the sound, it helps too. But yeah, it was a whole, sort of visceral, put yourself in that era with this sphere with this moment, and with these goals in mind, with this intention and see what happens, you know?

antiMusic: That must have been so different for you to approach recording live like that. It sounds like the opposite of the way most producers approach things. Guys like Kevin Shirley who do it live are in the minority.

Steph: Well certainly you know, I mean we're all sort of modern musicians, post-punk musicians who when we go into recording studios, certain things happen. You're used to manipulating almost anything you want. There are tools to do all sorts of things. And you know, many people get lost in that. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Steph: Whatever, I'm not going to make a judgement about it. Because there are so many different types of music, but you can be very tempted to use all those tools and create whatever the hell you want. But I think that's really beside the point. I mean the whole point of doing music like this, and the excitement of it is to really explore what that whole genre is. I mean, this classic rock genre involved people really, really learning how to play.

Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and all my guitar heroes…they sat in their bedrooms for six hours listening to records and playing them over and over until they could get every little lick. That is what they did. That is how they learned. And they shared it with each other. "Hey man, listen to this. Can you get your hands on that? And oh, I figured this out. This Chuck Berry rift. Check it out", you know? I mean, I think that it's kind of a lost craft because there are so many other ways to get access to things. And so many other ways to, as it were, take short cuts. But you know when you're doing this music you really can't take shortcuts.

antiMusic: For you personally, a) what was your favorite song to track from both a sentimental standpoint and from a technical point of view?

Steph: Wow. Hmm.

antiMusic: "Dazed and Confused" I think from a technical…

Steph: "Dazed and Confused" is definitely one of those, and it's one of the songs I most enjoy playing live. But for me, it's a tour de force because I think "Dazed and Confused", in a way is the ultimate Led Zeppelin expressions. Even though it's on the first record and they did many wonderful things after it, I think if you want to understand Jimmy Page and you want to understand what Led Zeppelin did, then you have to understand what happens on "Dazed and Confused". Because it's dark and light. It moves through a series of moods that are mystical, ethereal and as heavy as it gets. And I think in order to capture all those things and take the listener on a journey, it's just a whole focus. When we play "Dazed and Confused" live it will sometimes go on for nearly 20 minutes, when we're having a time of it. And I'm telling you, one is exhausted after it. I mean, you feel like you've just had, might I say, sex for a couple of hours. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Steph: You could just lie down on the stage and have a cigarette after that, really couldn't you? I mean the whole thing, it's just so complete. It's taken you through everything. So yeah, I think "Dazed and Confused" was one of those numbers with the bowing and everything that's involved with that. It's definitely one of the things I'm most proud of on that record. But I also have to say "How Many More Times", is like that. I think that came out beautifully on the record. And again, it was an entire journey that went on and went through many different moods and things. And I think we really enjoyed how that came out. But also a song like "Babe…", which really you know, it's delicate. And there are so many things involved in playing a song like that. It just has to build and it has to have space, you know. So really Led Zeppelin One, I could just go on and on. But in a way it may be their most perfect record. It may be one of my favourites if not my favourite.

antiMusic: Considering Eddie Kramer was the producer for your first record, Perry Margouleff and William Wittman were the producers on the record. Why did you select them and what were they like to work with?

Steph: Oh wow, wow, I just have to say that Harry and Bill were just so immensely talented. And the ability that each of them brought…it was just such a great synergy and they worked together on other projects but they each have an incredible amount of experience, and know this music. Not to say that somebody like Eddie doesn't, it's just that he's coming…it was a long time ago and he's done many things in between and you know, he was an engineer on this record more than a producer. Jimmy produced all the records.

But these guys, I mean, they just brought something…, it was a very different experience. We were really able to listen very carefully and use just the sort of critical thinking. You know the ears in the room were so big that it was just incredible. It was astounding to me that these guys could hear half the things that they were hearing. And it was just really wonderful. They were prefect, you know. We would have debates (laughs) the three of us over what was actually being played and what wasn't being played. It was just wonderful. And someone ranked different each time, you now. But the combination of gifts that were in the room with us…they just really understood the process of how to do this kind of recording. So it was great.

antiMusic: Lenny Kaye wrote the liner notes for this record. What is your connection with him?

Steph: Well I know Lenny from other projects I've done and Lenny was really a fan of the band, and was really supportive of it and I just thought, who else could sum up…because the phenomena of what we're doing as Lez Zeppelin transcends just a band taking this music and doing it…the fact that we're women doing it, there's a whole kind of phenomenon that you could talk about of women taking on this music which has always been considered so, as it were, predominantly male in this aspect. It's really a misconception in many ways. It's a very large scene.

We could talk a lot about not only the music of Led Zeppelin but when four women take it on and what that means and how women haven't really played like this…there's something radical about it because you don't really have groups of women playing classic rock so to speak in this way. So I think Lenny, he's just so brilliant from both the musical standpoint and his ability as a journalist and as a writer that it seemed like a fair bone to throw him. (laughs) And I think he summed it up pretty well.

I think a lot of what you could say about women and the force of women and the male aspects of rock and roll and the female aspects of rock and roll. There's a lot to it. And you're really beginning to dig into when you have a project like this. You're kind of shattering misconceptions and you're redefining the role of women on stage and in the studio where they're coming at you with this kind of force.

antiMusic: Considering the state of the industry today with rapidly declining record sales for original music, how would you answer those that ask why would anybody want to faithfully replicate a previous musical work, especially one that is so firmly stamped in the public's consciousness?

Steph: Well, I will admit it's pretty ballsy. (laughs) But I think for what we're doing which is to approach the classical musical of our time, which I consider Led Zeppelin to be, and bringing our own musical selves to it, it seemed like a natural thing to do. You know, we've had this debate with people who were like" why do it?" But I think there's no way that anyone could really ever replicate something. Because we're a different set of musicians. We're never going to sound exactly like them anyway. I think to hear a re-interpretation of it and to bring it back to life again, it's just something that seemed really relevant and, I don't know, important and fun.

And for us to do it, we wanted to do it properly and authentically yet bring ourselves to it. So I think it's just another expression of this really wonderful amazing music. And if it brings people back to the first record or it makes them curious about us, or it makes them want to hear some more or even, there are people who don't even know Led Zeppelin who are into this or that and they come to our gig and then they discover Led Zeppelin, so that's kind of cool. To get it to go backwards.

antiMusic: Like you said, I sort of rediscovered this record through you, I grew up with this but haven't played the entire record in quite a while so it's kind of nice trip to go on…to re-discover again.

Steph: Oh cool. It totally is. And I think when you hear somebody, like what we've done and re-deliver it in a new way, as it were, in some of the old ways and some of the new ways, it really does bring your attention to some of these details that you may be never even thought of. You're like, holy crow. Listen to that. They've got this bit or the singing is different on this and listen how the nuance or the guitar solo is different on that. And then you get this whole other series of shadows and lights and things and it does illuminate the original work itself. It's really pretty cool.

antiMusic: I think it's safe to say that many females who had encountered Zeppelin back in the day might consider them card-carrying misogynists. With that in mind, I think it's real interesting to hear a woman sing "soul of a woman was created below". Do statements like that and some of the wild stories that have surfaced over the years ever play tricks with your sense of self as a female?

Steph: (laughs) Really interesting question. Well, I can definitely vouch that the soul of a women was created below. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Steph: You know I just think all of that stuff is…whatever they did or didn't do or had fun with or didn't have fun with, whoever they are and whatever scenes existed, the stuff is mythology. People will say different things about it. It really is none of my concern. I don't judge it at all. It doesn't bother me. I don't think anyone should really judge any one else in that regard. It certainly doesn't affect the way I feel about their music. I think their music is their music. I think some of these statements that people say are misogynistic…if you're going to look at misogynistic statements, you probably have to cancel out all of the blues. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Steph: I just think you can't really look at one aspect of rock and roll and say well, this is women-hating or something. I think that's just silly. I mean "my baby she left me and I'm going to do whatever and hey man I feel sexy or I'm this, or I want to screw her…" you know, guess what, this is kind of what we've got in terms of our legacy. And I think to get worried about it from a so called feminist point of view is just really missing the point. It doesn't bother me at all. And I think that singing these lyrics is quite fun. And if you do it with the right attitude, it really is very interesting.

Being Lez Zeppelin, we have the added advantage, whatever you may think of our band, whether we are or not or this or that, you know it's very convenient as Lez Zeppelin to be able to keep the word lez (laughs). After all if they really are Lez Zeppelin then they're girls singing to girls anyway. It's all really a lot of fun as far as I'm concerned. And I think that it just makes it fun for everybody.

antiMusic: What was that defining moment like when you decided to form this band? Was it an instant revelation or something that evolved over a period of time?

Steph: Well you know I had become enamoured with the music of Led Zeppelin all over again because I kind of rediscovered in the mid 90s again when that box set come out and started listening to it all over again. I think that for me, I just became more drawn in by the rediscovery of the music. And it just seemed to me that oh my god I'm hearing it even in a whole new way. I didn't even realize how brilliant it truly was until I sort of re-listened to it as a musician etc, etc. I think it just made sense; I just kind of decided to indulge my fantasy, which was, god if I can play anything I'd play this. And once I had decided, well, why not play it? It'll be fun.

I didn't really know what a tribute band was, it just felt right. It just felt like this would be the most fun thing to do because I really loved it and I really wanted to do it. I can say the first gig, it became very clear very quickly what a good idea it was. I mean, when I started telling people that this is what I was doing, everyone was like, oh my god, I can't wait. And when we even played our first gig the audience response was so overwhelming that I knew (laughs) pretty fast that I was on to something. So yeah, it was an idea whose time had come I think.

antiMusic: What's your musical background? How long have you been playing music and what were involved with prior to this band?

Steph: I've been playing the guitar pretty much all my life. (laughs) From the time I was about 5 years old or something it was what I wanted, strangely. It was just one of those things. I haven't been playing Led Zeppelin for that long really. I started with more folk, acoustic stuff when I was really young but then I got really enamoured by jazz when I was a teenager, pre-teen, like 11. So I really got into jazz, yeah. Really wanted to play all that crazy Joe Pass and Django Reinhardt…my dad used to play Django Reinhardt records for me. So as far as I'm concerned that's the best of the best. I think Django may be the greatest guitar player of them all. So I kind of got into that.

And then I really came back around to rock a little bit later. And then I got into the more punk, new wave and then later grunge stuff. I just had a whole journey and then made way back to classic rock I guess a little bit later. So I've kind of run the gamut. I never studied classical music though really. I'm actually only starting to pick up the classical guitar and my brother is a violinist and he made me learn this piece that he wanted to play as a duet. I can't read music so I had to learn it by ear and I learned this Paganini piece on the guitar by ear. (laughs) It was tricky at first but now I love it, I love playing it. So that really is actually kind of fun. But yeah, I'm just one of those people --- I learn it from the records, I just play by ear for better or for worse.

antiMusic: What was the hardest thing to learn about playing like Jimmy?

Steph: Oh man. Where do I start? Well for me, because I didn't have this so much in my roots, learning his sort of very staccato rockabilly style was the thing that I really had to get my head around. I was really coming much more from a freewheeling, psychedelic, you know…Dave Navarro - Jimi Hendrix thing. That was really where I was at in terms of my own playing and solo style. It's blues oriented to a certain degree but it's much more wild and free.

Page is not really so much wild and free as he is just explosive. Jimmy is like a train coming down the rail road track and you think it's going to crash and it's just like coming at you man, with a force like you know a locomotive (laughs) and it's just completely combustible and very intense and very sexual. And I think for me that early rock and roll, that rockabilly stuff…you've got to learn those rifts. And you've got to go back to where that started from. So I had to listen to some of those players and root myself in some of that stuff. Scotty Moore and all those guys and Albert Lee. Stuff that I really hadn't listened to before. And that was really amazing. That was really fun to do. But very challenging.

So the thing about Jimmy is that he's just all over the map, you know? He's got all sorts of fills because he was a session guy. But he had rockabilly, and he had finger picking and he had blues and he had psychedelic stuff and he had all of these things that came together. And to do Jimmy you got to go and do all that stuff. Sorry but you do. You can't fake it. Ultimately you're going to hit the wall. You've got to go back there and figure out where those sounds and those twangs and that vibrato and everything that lays deep beneath his playing is coming from. So it's hard. Harder that it seems.

antiMusic: You've had a few line-up changes over the years. When you look for a new member, do you look for somebody solely based on chops or is it a matter of them having more of an emotional connection with the music?

Steph: Oh, chops are a dime a dozen. I hate to say it. But it just so is not about that. I mean, of course, to play this music you have to have incredible technical prowess. Fair enough. But almost anyone who practices can get that, I think. Not almost everyone, but you know. It's do- able to just play riffs, if you just bang your head against it for a while. Playing this music is just really ultimately apart from all that. You have to be the kind of musician who can listen to what everyone else is doing. And you have to be the kind of musician who is dynamic and has feel and has heart and is able to just…wow, you know, really be an artist.

There is such a big difference between just a player and an artist, you know. And it's not always clear to everyone. In fact I think it's not that clear to most people. But when you really dig down deep, you're talking really about four artists who were together in this one band and that's really what made them what they were. Each one individual was a great artist and when you put them together it was just wow. They complemented each other's artistry, like the Beatles or like any of those great bands, the Who, or whatever. They each brought something else to the table.

And ultimately when you're doing something like this, I mean this is really taking something to an extreme level but you know, this is the joy in it. When you're on stage with other artists and everyone's listening to you and you're listening to them and that thing happens… when I look over at my drummer Lisa and she's just played something I've played and she's looking at me like, "Oh yeah baby? Come on!" and she's echoing back to me and then I throw her something and she throws it right back at me. And she does something to it. That to me is the ultimate, ultimate exchange.

And that's what the guys in Cream had…that's the music that I've always loved the most. It's thing kind of wow. That's what jazz guys do. They're all playing with each other like that and they're laughing and they're like, they can think like each other. And I have to say this band, this line-up the way it is now, is more like that than any other that previously was and it's just a joy. These girls are just…it evolved, you know, it evolved.

antiMusic: I remember reading that Spin article when it first came out. What sort of effect did it have on your career considering that while I'm sure it raised your profile considerably, it must have drawn more than a few critics as well?

Steph: Oh well you know, that article was reall…honestly it was magnificent. For many reasons. I mean first of all, we really had a good time with Chuck Klosterman. I mean he got it. He really got it. And if you know anything about his writing, he's a theory guy and I used to be a journalist myself and he kind of snapped on to that pretty fast. Because once we started talking he was like, alright, okay, you know. There was a kind of understanding there because he's really, really smart. He was creating grand theories out of all this. It wasn't just enough to talk about this. He wanted to dig deep into the cultural, sociological truth of what happens when women go after this music and start playing it. This crazy ac/dc misogynist so-called music or whatever and what's behind it? So it really was an interesting article.

And I must say that he painted my band in a different way than he painted the others. He really had a great respect for what we were doing. He loved it. And he felt we were doing. And when he wrote in the opening paragraph that we might be the greatest female band in rock history… I was a little scared about what he was going to write, at the end of the day, even though we really hit it off and we had great conversations and I knew he understood it. When he wrote that, I just was floored. Because I just thought, holy momma. This is like, it doesn't get better than that. Because when someone writes something like that about your band, that it gives him a moment where he thinks that this may be the greatest female incarnation of power and sound that I ever heard, I mean it just blew my mind. And it did a great deal for our career. I mean, things really happened fast after that. Because doubters or not, everyone wanted to hear it.

antiMusic: That's true.

Steph: I mean, it was like are they really doing this, and what the hell is this? You know? And when we would play, people would walk away like holy sh*t, we really are getting this thing in our faces. And you know it really was a great thing. It definitely escalated things and brought the band to a different level of touring wise and consciousness and interest.

antiMusic: I know this record is what you're concentrating on now but do you have any plans to tackle any other records?

Steph: Well you know there is something that comes after One.

antiMusic: Okay, okay

Steph: I don't know. I mean we've had discussion about it. I wouldn't want to commit to anything but you know, when you follow the yellow brick road (laughs), it might be good to follow the yellow brick road as it were, stay on the gold. I don't know. There are a lot of things that we're talking about. And we have a few things up our sleeves, some other ideas. And you know a documentary is being made about the band, and there are just some other creative aspects. We've been asked a lot about our own music and things like that.

But certainly I think the interesting thing about Led Zeppelin this way and trying to get inside it, it's interesting to just take the journey and unfold how they unfold it. And that was part of the joy of doing One. I think that by doing One, the ground work is completely laid. I understand things about Led Zeppelin, that I never would have unless I really deconstructed this record. And it's great. It's like really, this is our classical music as I said.

And it's like, I had to go back to Robert Johnson man. And dig deep. At the beginning I did that but really with this record, you've got Willie Dixon on there, you've got all sorts of things that are direct influences from all these guys. More so than the other records. And that's where it's all at. You've got to come up from that place. You've to be able to paint. If you look at the renaissance painter, and say, well they learned certain skills at Medeci studio when they apprenticed. You've got to be apprenticed. And then you've got to take from that and grow out of that. And I think Led Zeppelin One is one amazing apprenticeship.

antiMusic: Considering your ability to faithfully capture the Zeppelin sound. What has the response been from some of their old audience who has seen you live? Do you think they get transported to their own little moments in time with the band?

Steph: I know if you were to believe what they tell me and seethe look from their faces, and see what happens then there's no question. And I think that's where the greatest satisfaction and joy comes from for us to know we can do that for people. It's really important to people. The music is like that. It takes them to a place and time where they felt things. And sometimes people loose touch with those feelings and when you can bring them back to that moment through music or through performance or a concert experience where things were happening and sounds were happening in the moment, it's really an incredibly magical thing, you know?

antiMusic: Looking back at this process of doing the record, was it a labor of love or more of a love/hate type of thing?

Steph: No question it was a labour of love. There's been so much struggle that I could not possibly have done it without it being as big a love as it is. (laughs) Let's just say there are easier ways to live and make money and do all the rest of it. This is why I can sit here and talk to you for an hour. I mean I'm in love with this. It is what it is. There are very few feelings if any in the world that I can compare to being on stage and being in the middle of the music like this and just playing your heart out in the moment when you're in the zone with these sounds surrounding you.

It's such good music. It's such a great experience. It's just why we do what we do. It's why you put up with the rest of it. It's absolutely transcendent. It's religious almost. It is, you know? It's a way of getting in touch that are described as profound or whatever and it's an avenue and it's really just been fantastic --- an amazing adventure and I just feel very blessed.

antiMusic: That's all the questions I have for you, Steph. Is there anything else you wanted to mention about the record that I didn't ask you?

Steph: (laughs) I think you got everything in there man. I can't imagine there's anything left to say. Just enjoy it and I think like us, we had a great time discovering it as we made it and I hope people who listen to it make all sorts of new discoveries while listening to it you know. That's all. Whether they're revisiting it, or discovering it for the first time, I just really hope they really dig it. It's amazing music.