Meet the band: The Lilies

After two full-length releases and a slew of EPs, The Lilies don’t need much gilding. For nine years the father-daughter duo of Mark and Lilly Czarnecki have kept Lilly’s vocals in the forefront of The Lilies’ sound. Other members have come and gone, but adding more to the bouncy harmonies and straightforward, walking guitar parts would be superfluous.

The band draws inspiration for its sound and ego-less enjoyment of performance from “the shore of Lake Michigan, immediate blue-collar factories, and quirky art scene.”

Lilly writes the songs, plays guitar, and sings. Mark plays the drums, and also sings. Both live in Bay View. The band has practice space in Bay View, too. After a mention that being family members must make it easy to harmonize, Mark said, “A lot of people say that!”

For many years, it was a three-piece band. In the current lineup, Mike Coyle plays the bass guitar, and The Lilies recently added Martin Slotwinski as an additional lead guitarist and keyboardist.

Listening to The Lilies, it is difficult to make comparisons to other female-fronted bands, because none of them quite fit. There aren’t very many female-fronted pop/rock bands to relate to outside of the American Idol sphere, but it is safe to say the band’s music falls somewhere between the unabashed rock of Joan Jett and the careful songwriting of the more poppy Sixpence None the Richer.

The difficult-to-pin-down sound is also apparent in two of Lilly’s favorite musicians: Neko Case and Scottish band the Trashcan Sinatras. The Lilies as a whole also follow the Pretenders, which might be an apt jumping-off point for the band’s mid-’90s sound.

Likening The Lilies to other male bands also doesn’t seem quite right, since Lilly has so much influence over the direction of the songs.

“Usually I come up with a pretty strong structure, and then it sort of morphs…but I think jamming is less effective because then we don’t remember what we did the week before. But if I have a chord progression and a melody, we can go from there,” she said.

“We don’t sit there and plink around,” Mark said. “I find that to be very aggravating. I like when [Lilly] has an idea. In general I like to have somewhere to jump off from, otherwise I get mad,” he said, laughing.

Lilly also exercises her creative muscles as a short-film maker and associate lecturer in the film department at UW-Milwaukee, and artistic talent runs in the Czarnecki family. Lilly’s mother designed the band’s website and doctored a photo of the band performing in front of a Bay View custard joint, with the stand’s name changed to The Lilies.

The band just finished recording a new album, Can I Fill a Role, recorded at DV Studios in Shorewood, but samples of it aren’t up on the website yet.

However, The Lilies have other ways of getting their music to the masses. Lilly and Mark recently returned from a music conference in Los Angeles where they met with music supervisors to see if and how The Lilies’ music would work on TV. The Lilies are also looking to play more live shows, but are “still kind of looking for that spot where you can…reach more people beyond some of your friends,” Lilly said.

Nevertheless, one of Lilly’s favorite concerts she played was in Bay View. “I had a really good time playing for Chill on the Hill last summer in August. Unfortunately it was raining when we played…but there were still people still sitting out watching us under umbrellas and tents, and I was really blown away by that.”

Her father concurred. “I would say that was pretty rockin’,” he said.

As of late, the band has no shows scheduled. Lilly said that being a female-fronted band makes it difficult to fill a bill sometimes. “In terms of getting shows, other male-fronted bands don’t think you’ll work together,” she said of the differing sounds. Mark hopes to find a niche where this isn’t a problem. “I think it’d be an advantage though sometimes, because most bands are male-fronted,” he said. “If you can get into that niche, when you can find certain promoters in that niche, it’s a huge advantage.

“We’re available for private parties,” Mark added. “For anyone who wants to have original music at a party, not a tape player or disc player.”

More info: thelilies.net.

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