Banshee Tree: Full Length Album ‘Bad Luck’ out April 17th

Interview: Banshee Tree/Michelle Pietrafitta (drums)
By: Rob Smittix

Photo By: Christian O’Rourke

RRX: Thank you Michelle for taking the time today to speak to me about your band Banshee Tree.

MP: Of course.

RRX: I’ve been checking out the band, totally digging it.

MP: Thank You.

RRX: Hopefully I get to see you live one of these days. I’ve watched a lot of your live videos and Banshee Tree definitely seems like a band that you need to see live.

MP: Oh, for sure, it’s a little bit different on the stage.

RRX: If you’re ever looking to come up this way, hit me up. I can point you in the right direction.

MP: OK, great. We actually have a lot of history… not as a band in New York but as individuals. Thom (LaFond)is from Schenectady and I went to college at in Oneonta.

RRX: Oh wow. I could throw a football to Schenectady from here.

MP: Exactly, yeah.

RRX: Well, Thom knows the area obviously but I’ve had a lot of friends in bands come to town without contacting me ahead of time and then I find out they’re playing. I’m like… that is not the right venue for them.

MP: Yeah, I know it’s funny how that makes such a big difference just where you go.

RRX: Oh, it does, absolutely. I’ve been checking out the music. I also heard the new album ‘Bad luck’ is coming out on April 17th. I also think it’s kind of unique that we’re talking about bad luck on Friday the 13th (March 13, 2026). Are you at all superstitious? Does Friday the 13th worry you? Do you walk under ladders or go in the other direction?

MP: You know… for me, Friday the 13th was always like a holiday when I was a kid. It was a special fun, exciting day. My best friend and I had this tradition where we would go to Di Vincenzo’s Pizza and grab a slice, and then go eat it in the graveyard across the street.

RRX: That is a good tradition. I love that kind of stuff. When talking to musicians I often get a little sidetracked with food talk, especially pizza in a cemetery, that’s gold.

MP: Yeah, I grew up in South Jersey in an Irish-Italian family, so pizza was important.

RRX: Oh hell yeah, but cemetery pizza, that’s something you don’t see every day.

MP: Yeah, exactly. Friday the 13th, it’s the 2nd 1 in a row… I’m not sure if you knew our newest single, the title track “Bad Luck” was released today?

RRX: Oh today?

MP: We were like, when should we release it? Oh, Friday the 13th makes sense.

RRX: It does. Now I know what I’m doing when we get off the phone. I’m checking that out.

MP: Yeah, that just dropped.

RRX: What is it about Bad Luck that made this the title track?

MP: It didn’t start as the title track. We had a lot of songs and we started putting them together and figuring out which ones flowed the best together. We started to see kind of a theme coming out so… like the whole album has themes of warnings from nature. What you do with those warnings? Do you take heed? Do you listen to them or do you just keep on your same path? That’s where the idea of bad luck comes from… there’s these warning signs but what do you do with them? Do you learn the lesson and incorporate it or do you turn it into what it is, bad luck? Also, we started creating this album with a violinist that left the band.
It’s kind of this contemplation of… what seems like bad luck in the moment is leading you to a new territory that could be better than you imagined. For example, we lost our violinist and we weren’t sure if the band was gonna continue or what we were gonna do. The most perfect person kind of just fell into place and he finished the album. So the violinist started the album and then the saxophonist completed the album. So what might seem like bad luck at the time can turn into a whole beautiful journey that you didn’t expect. You don’t know where it’s gonna lead you and so it’s like trusting the journey and moving forward.

RRX: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

MP: Yeah, it’s cool because we have that theme threaded in a very direct way because we had the violinist, he started the album with us, so we kept some of his parts and weave them into a little interlude that has the saxophone and violin kind of weaved together. It’s kind of like the passing of the baton through the album itself.

RRX: Glad you stuck around and made it work because it became what it’s supposed to be.

MP: I’m extremely grateful that we saw it through.

RRX: Was there anything else that you wanted to make sure you got out there to the universe?

MP: Yeah, 100%, goodness… for me music is about bringing people together and music is about helping people process all of the things that they don’t get to in the process of their day to day lives. Like… live concerts give you the opportunity to shake it all loose and release it. That’s what I hope to bring through our tours and that’s what I hope this album brings to people as they listen to it. It’s got themes of nature….

RRX: I caught that. And I think that’s really where humanity is disconnected, we need to get back to that. We need to take our shoes off, put our feet in the soil and just try to remember what we are. I feel like we’re being shaped and molded by screens.

MP: That’s exactly right. I’ve actually noticed like… when I was going out to the store and how it would be a preposterous idea for me to not bring my phone. That moment made me realize how deep we’ve gotten into this. And it’s rewiring our brains. The connection to nature is not only important but it grounds us and helps us be happy and calm as beings and remember what life is all about. I think if we don’t do that, then our whole lives will pass us by and we’ll realize, oh s***, I spent the whole thing looking at my phone and distracting myself. An entire lifetime can go by doing that if we’re not careful. So hopefully the themes of this song can help remind people to connect back into themselves and into nature.

RRX: Well, Amen to that! I’ve thought about this… kids these days will look back at their fondest memories of childhood but it’s in virtual reality.

MP: Exactly.

RRX: Which is a wild concept.

MP: It is. I feel like this generation is getting hit from the side. When TV first became a thing, people got lost in that and then they’re like, oh sh**, this is kind of bad, let’s step back. And now, we’re blindsided a bit by it but I think eventually people will realize and step back more. I think there’ll be a number of people who are just like, oops… my life was dedicated to this thing by accident.

RRX: Right? It doesn’t sound like you or I will ever be those people that are lined up for the new iPhone.

MP: No. Probably not!