Kayleigh Traister started playing guitar when she was 14 years old.

​

 I was living in Utica at the time which is a little working-class suburb north

of Detroit. I was riding the school bus home and this stoner kid was playing

this piece of shit guitar with like four strings and his friends had all written on

the face, and just before I got off the bus he was like, hey does anybody want to

buy this guitar for a dollar and I was like, fuck yeah here you go.

 

She started off playing covers of songs.

​

The first song I learned to play was Every Rose Has its Thorn by Poison. I’m a huge fan of hair metal. It’s so embarrassing but it took me a month to learn that first song to the point where I could like keep time, change chords, sing along with it and not fumble and like after month I was good enough to play that song and only that song. The second song I learned was Knocking On Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan, and it took me about seven minutes, so like, once I got the technique and developed the rhythm it was really easy to start picking up other stuff. I played that guitar for like a year and sounded absolutely terrible and after a year my folks bought me a Martin which I still have

hanging up in the guitar room. So that’s how I started playing fifteen years ago.

​

She listed some of her biggest musical influences. All of which she has tattooed on her arms.

​

Rise against is one of my favorite bands ever. Super fucking punk, I love it. The Rolling Stones are like my favorite band of all time. They are like the worlds worst bar band that somehow got famous and went all over the world and like I love it. I love their music. Lynard Skinnard is one of my favorite bands of all time as well. Not just because they were superb musicians but because they sang about the dangers of drugs and alcohol at a time when it was like super popular and they did it in a super well-done way so there’s like really good music with a really solid message behind it and they don’t get enough credit for that. And Free, Free was the band Paul Rogers of Bad Company was in before he was in Bad Company. Paul Kosoff and Paul Rogers are two of my favorite musicians of all time and they both played together in Free. Free is officially a one hit wonder band but they have so much good stuff. When I first started out I was like, I want to make something that sounds like Free but like modern, I totally missed the boat because it’s not my style of music, but I tried. 

​

Kayleigh says she stuck to playing covers for a long time, and wasn’t comfortable writing her own stuff at first.

​

I played covers for like ten or twelve years, I never had the courage to write my own stuff and I always really lamented that and then I started playing with Werewolf Hair.

​

Kayleigh describes Werewolf Hare as fuzzy pop country.

​

I started playing with them in 2018 and our last show together was in 2019 and they haven’t played live since. It was definitely influential and formative for me in music to play with Werewolf Hair.

​

While in Werewolf Hare...

​

I played guitar and did back-up vocals. We had Andy doing lead guitar and vocals, and then I did back-up and rhythm guitar, and then Dave played drums. So, we didn’t have a bassist, and everyone thought that was really cool too. 

​

Kayleigh said her first show with Werewolf Hair is one of her favorite performances to date.

​

The first one was in this little attic at the Electric Eye, which is this little now defunct bar and cafe in Ann Arbor, so we had to haul our gear up into this attic and there’s a bunch of roofing nails sticking through and shit and the floor trampolined as like forty people jumped on it and it was like 120 degrees in this attic and we were all sweating bullets. It was amazing, it was the first show we played together and we sounded terrible but everyone had so much fun and that was the first show I was like, okay, I can get out here and I can do this and it’s going to sound fucking rad either way.

​

She said her last show in Werewolf Hair was a turning point for her music.

 

It was the last show Werewolf Hare played together back in 2019. I literally had a moment halfway through the set where I adjust like, everything is sounding exactly as it should, everything sounds fucking incredible and I just stopped and I said to myself, just remember this because this is going to be a high point, its always going to be a high point. We played two encores that night, we were all sweaty as hell and just ready to be done, our fingers hurt and everyone was like one more one more, okay we'll play one more. I dropped acid right after our set was over and an hour later were standing on the porch smoking a joint and Andy showed me the video, there’s a YouTube video of this set, really good video, and we watched it for a minute, and I was like, that’s us? And he was like that’s us and I was like DAMN. Like it didn’t click for me until I saw it externally, like oh shit that was everything you thought it was, holy shit. So that was the moment that started me down this path, but I have had other smaller moments along the way, if you didn’t you would stop.

​

Kayleigh came up with the name for her solo project while playing for a WIDR basement show with Werewolf Hare.

 

We played a live set on air, so we were setting before our live set and our drummer was like, I can’t figure out this high-hat stand, here you go you solve it, because I used to be a mechanic and I’m a software engineer, so he was just like you fix the damn thing, so I was fighting with this high-hat stand and I was just like, fuck, it’s just one equipment malfunction after another and that’s where I got the name from.

​

Since playing with Werewolf Hare, Kayleigh has been writing and releasing songs as Equipment Malfunction for a while now.

​

I came up with the name in 2018 and I started recording demos for the first album in 2019. Then throughout 2020 I recorded the entirety of the first album then released it in 2021, and then we immediately started recording the second album and now the EP and a couple singles in between. So it’s been 3 or 4 years now that I’ve been working on this.

​

Kayleigh said Covid-19 came at a convenient time for Equipment Malfunction.

   

I was in the basement recording demos for the first album at that time so it was like, oh there’s Covid, okay, back to work. And then I spent eight months recording the actual album, and so like it was very much like I passed all of quarantine just playing music by myself and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway.

​

Up to this point, Equipment Malfunction has primarily been Kayleigh’s solo project, aside from a few collaborations.

 

I got together Jimbo Bruce to come play drums on the second album, and David Bauman of various projects to come and play on the second album. So throughout the second half of 2021, we played together a lot and played a couple live shows, we went in the studio and recorded and at the end of 2021 we all decided to go our separate ways since we all had other stuff going on that needed our attention so right now it’s just me.

​

Kayleigh said she likes working alone, and with others. There are positives to both.

​

I love working alone because I can just make a call on the fly and no one is going to challenge it and I can just do whatever the fuck I want and its so fast. But when I was working in the studio with Jimbo and David that was like, they’d have ideas that I never in a thousand years would have fucking thought of. Like David came up with a baseline for It's Not Just Music it’s Fucking Art, he walked into the studio one day and starts warming up and starts playing that and I was like is that its not just music and he was like yeah it totally is, and this baseline, you’ll hear it when the second album comes out, oh my god its so fucking good, like no fucking way would I ever would have done that. And Jimbo is a fucking monster on the drums, like this cat just fucking, oh my god, he was doing blast beats on like trash punk country, like this country ass song on the second album, and I was like dude where did this even come from and he was like oh its folk metal song now, come on get over it, and I was like alright you win so like, so like it just depends on what I’m trying to do because there’s no fucking way that I could ever have done the second album with those guys, like they are incredible musicians in their own right and they both brought something unique and extreme to Equipment Malfunction.

​

While working with David and Jimbo, Equipment Malfunction recorded another one of Kayleigh’s favorite performances.

​

We decided, for the meme, one day we were going to go play a set in a stairwell at Eastern’s Campus. So we hauled all our gear into a stairwell Eastern’s Campus and I stood up on the top floor of this parking garage stairwell and then Jimbo and the drum kit were on the bottom landing and then David, our bassist, was right in the middle of the stairs and we just played like the nastiest verbiest set in this stairwell to like absolutely nobody and we sounded good that was the worst part. And there’s videos and pictures of it but that was so much fun, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that brand of stupid and fun and just like, why the hell not, you know?

​

She says there is footage of the performance on Equipment Malfunction’s Instagram.

​

We had Luke taking pictures and Wyatt taking video.

​

Kayleigh said Equipment Malfunction’s sound has varied from project to project.

​

The first Equipment Malfunction album, it itself was very varied. I was still playing with a lot of different recording concepts and like 13 or 14 different guitars I was using. So that all ranges from like super grandiose and fuzzy to like super stripped down and super twangy. Folk punk is folk punk, and then the second album that we’re working on right now is much more punk. Like country punk, I think we called it. Wait what was it, trash punk country is what we were calling it. My favorite song off the first album, it’s got to be Chasing Rainbows. I’ve done a couple of versions of that one. The second album it’s definitely It’s Not Just Music It’s Fucking Art, everyone loves that song and so do I.

 

She also released an EP recently titled I Hope You Like Folk Punk.The EP was recorded while she was backpacking through Europe. It’s six songs, seven minutes long and recorded in three separate locations, Amsterdam, Cologne, and Venice.

 

On the EP I just finished I wrote all six songs in different places at different times in completely different head spaces and I recorded three sets. One set was in Wundlepark in Amsterdam, so I was sitting on a park bench and recording music. The next one I was in my hotel room in Cologne Germany and the third one I was in my hotel room in Venice. So three different places and times and energies, and they all sound different too if you really pay attention so in my mind the ideal environment is different every time.

​

Kayleigh flew to Amsterdam first.

​

I flew to Amsterdam by way of Turkey, so I had like a five-hour layover in Turkey, Istanbul. I was sitting in a cafe in the airport hammering away on my folk punk-ass guitar at like eight o’clock in the morning, and that is where this song came from. 

[Clip of I Hope You Like Folk Punk]

 

The next song on the EP is A.L.F at Café Zevaart.

​

My first time in Amsterdam I found this little bar on the corner of this canal that’s called Cafe Zevaart and they havethis patio you can sit on and just smoke joints and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and just watch the whole world go by. I fell in love with this bar. So six months later, I’m planning my next Europe trip, where am I going to go first but Amsterdam? I got off my international flight, and walked straight to Cafe Zevaart from the train station and outside is this old guy sitting at this table right where I want to be sitting in front of Cafe Zevaart. And so I got a beer and was like, can I sit here and he was like yeah totally. We just started talking and he was like a super cool dude. He was like 55 or something and he had been a trucker for 30 years and he had driven all across Europe and he was telling me all of his stories. He was Norwegian and Spanish and so he had two names and his Norwegian name was Alf and he made the joke, I’m the Alien Life Form. I also did mushrooms which are legal in Amsterdam that night so I was like, what would make a better story than this alien life form who is a trucker who drives across the cosmos and then comes to Cafe Zevaart when he gets bored and just needs to take a break? So that’s what I wrote a song about.

[Clip of A.L.F at Café Zevaart]

  

I was sitting on a bench in Wundlepark recording A.L.F at Cafe Zevaart and there was a guy sitting on another park bench like ten yards away from me just listening which super creeped me out at first but then he just sat there and didn’t make any words and I was like okay, dude, like okay, so I was just like writing and working out the last few phrases as I was trying to record and I would get like a minute into a take and would be like nah fuck that's not the words I want to use here so it took like four or five tries to lay the base track down and then the last time through was the first time I ever played it right. So I just nailed it and then the guy off in the distance was like 'Woooo!' and I was like hey thanks dude.

​

The next song is Kayleigh’s favorite from the EP, Damn The Torpedos, which was recorded in Cologne, Germany.

 

That was like a famous quote from an old naval admiral and I was like that’s a fucking sick song title. I was sitting on this train platform in Germany and it was like 50 degrees and I was freezing my ass off and I was like, this is bullshit, damn the torpedos I’ve got to keep going! So that’s how that song got written that’s what that song is all about.

[Clip of Damn the Torpedos]

​

When I listen to that song, it really highlights the technical limitations of what I was doing with this guitar. If you look, the bridge is lifting so the action is all messed up then there are also cracks in the fretboard, from where the fretboard is like heaving downwards, so there’s a really bad rattle, so you can’t play power chords on this guitar, you’re limited to playing acoustic cowboy chords on the first three frets, and so that song has a B-chord in it where I go up to the fourth fret and if you listen to it closely you can hear when the strings go dead and I’m just like hammering these strings praying for them to make the chord and then I’m onto the next one and it ends up sounding fine when you double it. It ends up sounding fine when you add reverb but I was sweating a little bit when I was making that song, I was like, do I have to write something else that doesn’t have a B in it?

​

Next off the EP is Streets of Amsterdam.

​

I did a bunch of mushrooms in Amsterdam and then just walked around the city in the sunshine all day. And so by the time I got to Wundlepark that night and actually did the recordings I had written that day I was in a very peaceful, dreamy, float-y on a cloud-y kind of state and so that’s where this song came from.

[Clip of Streets of Amsterdam]

​

It’s a stand out song on the EP because it’s very different from the others. It’s very relaxed and very airy and floaty and I don’t know. I know the EP is only seven and a half minutes long but I didn’t want it to just be the same thing again and again and again. So it kind of helps break it up a little bit.

​

Bleached Blossoms is the next song on the EP.

​

So almost all of the songs I write are double or triple entendres that mean two or three different things about two or three different things, like there’s a song on the second album called Madeline. It's about a person and it’s also about drugs and it’s also about alcohol and its also about bad decisions, but you would never know it unless you like really sat back and spent ten minutes thinking about his minute fifty-second song. So, a lot of my music has those hallmarks which I hope makes it listenable for multiple times. So this song it’s about a person and it’s also about flowers, it’s about both of those things. 

[Clip of Bleached Blossoms]

​

Last on the EP is Squidbilly.

   

It’s an old adult swim show, they did a bunch of sweet music with it. The show has taken a lot of heat for good reasons, mostly because one of the voice actors was a major asshole, but the show itself has  got a bunch of great music in it and a bunch of great bands come on and perform the intro to the show itself so there’s like twelve seasons worth of amazing intros, and so I knew I wanted to do something ripping off that Squidbillies intro and so that’s where this song came from. 

[Clip from Squidbilly]

 

It's this really shitty animated show that runs in like ten minute episodes of just like redneck hillbilly squids, so they are Squidbillies, and the dude literally has a truck boat truck, that’s his main vehicle and they just drink a bunch of liquor and make music and drive cars into shit its the most hillbilly trash show ever. It's so fucking funny though and they have great music like season three episode five they have a whole episode that’s just nothing but music, and its like incredible hair metal stuff so of course I love it,"

​

Kayleigh explained how she recorded the songs.

​

I would record a track where I would sing over the guitar as a base track, and then I doubled that and then split one off to the left and one off to the right. Then I recorded just a guitar track and then just a vocal track and then panned those both left and right and then added some effects on my phone (using Band Lab) and that’s it. No auto-tune on anything of course. The end result is a recording that has that dry punchy sound right up front but it also has the depth and the backing of that second backing track that makes it sound really full. One of my coworkers did say, after you’ve done this I no longer have an excuse not to make music because it’s on your phone, it’s just that simple.

 

She went into her process for recording in more detail. 

 

It usually took like four or five tries to lay the base track down, and then the doubling guitar track, two or three tries. Then, the doubling vocal track four or five again just because this guitar doesn’t sound good so I was super picky about making my vocals sound good and so I put more effort into that than I did about the guitar, because it was just going to sound like what it’s going to sound like. 

  

Kayleigh purchased the guitar she used for the Europe EP a day before she left.

 

I got it at a pawn shop right off Riverview, I walked in and I saw it. I wanted something small and cheap that I didn’t care about, and I saw it and it had like four strings and it looked like trash just like my first guitar from that guy on the bus. I literally had a moment of like my life coming full circle and I was like am I really about to go to Europe and record an EP on a clone of my first guitar? Yes, the answer was yes. So that was quite a moment for me.

​

She says EP can be described as minimalistic.

​

Backpacking through Europe, I didn’t even have a case for my guitar, so I knew it was going to be as bare minimal as I could possibly make it. 

​

Kayleigh says she considered adding more to the EP than the vocal and guitar tracks but decided against it.

​

I thought about doing drum tracks on my guitar or some shit and then I was just like no, no you know what it’s whatever I can do in one pass live and that’s all it’s going to be. The nice thing about it was I was just on my phone, like I didn’t have the option to be like yo give me that drum machine, yo pass me the cowbell, like I don’t fucking know, I had no options I was just like, this is what it sounds like, so let’s make it sound as good as it possibly can,"

​

She said she learned a lot from making this EP.

​

I think the experience has shown me that there are so many different ways to accomplish something and there’s no wrong way to go about it. I was forced into this little box and then I found out that I kind of liked being in a little box. If you’re away from a studio it also like forces you to be like this is all I have and this is all I can make and I have to be happy with that, and that’s okay. Like it kind of forces a new approach too.

 

She says the EP has given her a lot to think about.

​

A lot of things are still solidifying after this experience with I Hope You Like Folk Punk, that EP, because it’s caused me to rethink a lot of things and like it’s quite changed the way I view my music and my approach to music. So I’m still like digesting the ramifications of this EP. 

​

Kayleigh says she felt equally inspired in all the places she visited.

 

Sitting at that table with Alf in Amsterdam, I was just like I am going to write a song people are going to jam for fifty years about this shit, and riding the train south through Germany I was like this is going to fucking blow people away. In Amsterdam sitting on the canal I was like this is a great fucking song I’m so fucking glad I did this. Equally inspired but all in different ways. Like I said, I think you need a different place every time you write, and even though they are going to be different they are all going to have something that makes them all equal in some way. 

​

 Kayleigh says she writes songs...

​

Because I have to, I’d go crazy if I didn’t write music. I mean, I go crazy sometimes because I write music but that’s a different problem.

​

She says her writing process usually starts with...

 

It’s the combination of a catchy phrase that has been rattling around in my head and a situation to spin a story around. That’s how song writing always starts for me.

 

She feels driven to write songs because

 

I know I have a lot of unique experiences and I want to document them and having those unique positions puts me in a position where I have to talk about it somehow. I promise you if I didn’t write music I would be telling that story about Alf to everybody when I got drunk at a bar for the next ten years like, people would hear the story for years and now you just listen to the song, it’s all there. It’s a way for me to express myself and also to connect with other people and also to have a little time capsule of just like this was the place and the time and the feeling.

​

She says music making and spirituality are tightly wound.

​

I don’t think you can separate them, they are one and the same. I was going through a divorce when I was writing the first album. It was definitely a watershed moment for me, so, I don’t think you can separate the two. I don’t think you can find the will power to be determined enough to sit down and make music unless you’re experiencing something that’s like creating strong enough emotions that you’re in that headspace, because it does take a lot of emotion, positive or negative, to have that kind of discipline, to look down at something and just, there’s a German word that translates to chair glue, I can’t remember the word offhand, but you have to have that. The determination to just sit down and work on this thing and just hammer away at it until its good, and then recognize that its bad and then make the next thing a little bit better. It’s completely hand in hand with the spiritual journey because you do the exactly the same thing as you’re healing as a human being.

​

Her advice to aspiring musicians is...

​

Shia Labof just do it. It’s the truth, it took me a month to learn my first song and I sucked at it and I hated it and then all the sudden oh this isn’t so bad anymore. At a certain point it just becomes second nature you don’t even think about it you’re just strumming and singing and you’re just so far ahead you’re just thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner. You’re gonna suck when you first start doing something, but you’re going to improve extremely rapidly in the beginning. Just seeing that improvement in yourself after two to three hours of playing everyday or every two days is really helpful and helps you to keep going when you first start out playing.

​

Equipment Malfunctions next performance will be at the house show Dreamland on June 11th.