JOINING THE CULT OF DIONYSUS
A DINER CHAT WITH THE ORION EXPERIENCE
Written by Ash Widmann
Photo by Ash Widmann
I met The Orion Experience at Silk City Diner in Philadelphia, a spot well known for its old school diner aesthetics and elevated versions of classic diner food. I could see them walking toward our spot from two blocks away; they were in costume, after all, and the moment I saw Zak’s moth antennae over the heads of the city crowd, I knew it was them.
When we met, introductions were made, hugs were given, and we instantly hit it off. The whole group made me feel incredibly welcomed from the start. It sort of felt like meeting an old internet friend for the first time.
Orion and Linda met in their freshman year at Rider University’s musical theater program, where they were the two chosen recipients of a scholarship. Together, they formed The Orion Experience in 2005.
The band consists of guitarist and vocalist Orion (he/she), Linda (she/they) on vocals and keys, two hype folks they like to call “vibe slingers,” Elle (she/her) and Zak (he/him), and management, Aly (she/her).
Zak Galactica as “Cosmic Moth Prophet” and Orion Simprini as “Rainbow Serpent”
“the moment I saw Zak’s moth antennae over the heads of the city crowd, I knew it was them.”
After we were seated and had placed our orders, we got to talking. We started off by discussing the band’s evolution & influences
ORION: Our roots are in theatrics and art, obviously our influences are like Bowie and Bolan and all the glam rock of the 60’s and 70’s. So we’ve always wanted an excuse to kind of do this kind of bigger look.
LINDA: The more costumes the better!
ORION: There’s not a lot of that representation in indie rock, you know what I mean? And we’re not a pop band, necessarily. So how are we going to create this thing that’s part glam, part drag, part fantasy, you know? And with our fan base especially, there’s so much of this sort of cosplay, but also people are finding more of their anthropomorphic other self, so why don’t we give our audience kind of an opportunity to explore those ideas and those costumes and those things? And that’s kind of where Zak and Elle came into it too. As the vibe slingers, they kind of give you the excuse to be like “oh, here it is, we can dance, we can get crazy.”
LINDA: They can get wild and have fun and do dance moves that they might be nervous to do. And we’re finding that the audience is doing it.
ZAK: They kind of reference us, I've noticed, in the shows, like, “check this out, oh yeah, I wanna do that too!”
ORION: I think it was an idea that was a long time coming, that just kind of manifested itself at the right time. Now it’s kind of come to fruition, and we’re having the most fun we’ve ever had.
“We can dance,
we can get crazy.”
Elle Starlight as “Disco Wolf”
ORION: We play with backing tracks. We sing, we play instruments, and we’ve done that for so long that we don’t need to prove that we can do it anymore, and there’s a liberation in the idea that we can just get up there and perform, and not really worry about our tone, or our this or our that. And it really frees us up to have an amazing time onstage.
LINDA: I was speaking to this musical composer who came to a show, and I was explaining, we've kind of become less of a rock band and more of an art piece, you know, with music. A musical moving art piece.
ORION: Which is where our desire as artists is rooted. Writing songs is a wonderful expression for us, but it’s also in service of the bigger picture. When we started writing music, we were coming up in New York City around the time of Interpol and The Strokes and that kind of post punk revival, and you’d go to shows, and it would just be a crowd full of people like this [standing with their arms crossed]. So we took the direction, like, we were going to write the happiest, bounciest, colorfulest, gayest explosion of melody, and we’re going to challenge these people.
LINDA: And some people would say, “I don't know, they’re kind of like a wedding band.” Well ok? Don’t people have fun there? People dance there and stuff, so like we didn’t get that at first, but the audience does.
ORION: I use Chappell Roan as an example because there hasn’t been another artist that I’ve seen in a while who has been singularly focused on a vision, and that vision has caught fire. There’s the saying I like to use is “there's nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come,” right? And that is what I see with Chappel Roan and that’s also what I see with TOE. It's like we’ve been writing this music forever, but it's only been now that it’s truly been realized on a stage, and ironically, by taking away instruments, we’ve been able to accentuate the musicality of what we’ve been writing with what we’ve been doing on stage. We can express more in the way that we’ve always been trying to express ourselves. We’re trying to tell people: be yourself. Let your freak flag fly, be creative, don’t worry about what other people think, just do you. And be free, you know?
The Orion Experience at Franky Bradley’s, Philly // Photo by Ash Widmann
“we are going to write the happiest, bounciest, colorfulest, gayest explosion of melody.”
LINDA: I love it. Because I was Crystal Caribou in the other shows, and now I have these wings! And I'm going to be feeling so much different. You put that costume on and you’re this other character and it does something to you.
ORION: It's been a real eye opening experience for us as well, and we've learned about ourselves. We pivoted really hard. We didn't know how we were gonna bring this to the world, and when we decided we’re gonna do it as a 3 piece with the vibe slingers, it just opened up a totally different way of us thinking about the way that we perceive ourselves too. And I think we see it too in the mainstream acceptance in culture of drag, and I was saying for a while too, when drag was still kind of reaching its tendrils into mainstream, there was just nothing dangerous anymore.
we've kind of become less of a rock band and more of an art piece, you know, with music. A musical moving art piece.
Linda XO as Supernova Fire Bird
We moved on to talking about the tour, their favorite tour moments, and the kinds of challenges they’ve faced while touring.
LINDA: Last night we had crab cakes, that was delicious.
ELLE: I saw a young girl’s life get changed before my eyes. She was probably 8 or 10, she was at the New York show right in the front row. And we found out she has to sing The Orion Experience every morning when she wakes up and every night before she goes to bed. She was there the whole time, dancing around, dressed up, super happy, joyful, and then Orion did a little guitar solo to her and I saw her shake and I was like, “oh my god this is imprinted in her brain forever.” So for me, that was pretty amazing.
ORION: The tour’s been amazing. It is challenging for bands to tour right now. Back in the day you would have a promoter of a venue, it was their job to sell the tickets. Now every aspect of touring has been offloaded, much like everything in our modern world is being offloaded, onto the “consumer” and you’re responsible for all of those things, and the costs are endured by you. So I only say this just to say that it's challenging, but it’s so worth it to get there and to be in front of these people. LA was incredible. There were people singing every word. The cool thing too is that the message is being received and given back to us. We’re saying, “be free, be who you are, come, you’re welcome here with us,” and they’re like, “great, we’re coming, we’re gonna freak out!” And the energy, the feedback we've had, is so powerful, and it makes all of the bullshit endurable.
“We’re trying to tell people: be yourself. Let your freak flag fly, be creative, don’t worry about what other people think, just do you. And be free, you know?”
Orion Simprini, Franky Bradley’s, Philly // Photo by Ash Widmann
As the conversation progressed, we got to talking about The Orion Experience’s connection to their fan base.
ORION: It's been incredible, and to see all the varying ages and shapes and sizes and colors of every spectrum of person that’s coming to these shows is just also another amazing thing. And I feel sometimes that even now there's this idea that only queer artists can appeal to queer people, and only straight bands can appeal to straight people, and I feel like you’re missing an opportunity to connect with other people who are like minded. Sexuality means nothing to us. It doesn’t. We don’t care if you’re gay or straight or queer or questioning or polyamorous or asexual, we don’t give a fuck. We don‘t want that there, we want you there. And that's what we're seeing too and that’s an incredible thing. I feel like a TOE show offers that space to express yourself. Older people, younger people, just of all walks of life, and that's been really cool.
ORION: There's nothing cooler in this world that anyone can ever say than “I saw the B52s at CBGBs when there were 100 people there and I was literally sweat on by Fred Schneider,” and those are the kind of shows that we’re doing right now. Honestly I don’t even care if we ever get that big because when the venue gets too big you lose the connection, and we need to have that connection with the people. But yes, of course we wanna sell more tickets, we wanna play for more people, but those crowds, those smaller crowds, they're just electric. You can feel, you can see the people, you can talk to them, and that's what's really cool.
LINDA: We had some fans come and they brought us fan art. They made bracelets for us, just the sweetest people, and they were right up front signing every word. One song, Loving On Each Other, the lyrics are like “I dont give a damn, this is who I am, transmitting all frequencies,” and when I saw her, she knew those lyrics. That makes me wanna cry, because I love that my experiences are connected to other people's experiences, and that makes me feel hope to give hope to people, and I love that connection. And I tell the fans too, “you don't understand how much you do when we interact like that, when I’m on that stage, how much you help me with the show.” They’re so important, we love our fans.
ORION: It’s been a long road too. The Cult of Dionysus, people think of it as a modern song. That was written in like 1996. I wrote that on Linda’s birthday. I was going to buy her a birthday present, and I was walking down the street and this song beamed into my head. I actually had to check the source because I was like, “did I make up the word polyamorous?” I’d never heard of it before. I’m telling this story because it's an interesting fact about songwriting. Sometimes it takes you forever to write a song and sometimes it takes an instant. I use that example because we've been talking about this kind of acceptance and lifestyle way before polyamory or bisexuality or any of that stuff was really accepted by the mainstream. And I'm not trying to give us a medal of honor or anything, all I’m trying to say is it's been a long road, and to see these people, our people, our crowd, come and see this and connect with you on that level, it’s a gift.
LINDA: And to see the world going that route, like, the fans need to hear this, to know there’s people who get them.
The Orion Experience Cult of Dionysus Gold Record // Photo by Ash Widmann
The Cult of Dionysus just went gold, so we spoke about the song’s history, their feelings about going gold, and what it means to them.
ORION: We've spent so much time on the fringes of musical success. I’ve always thought of our band as outsider art, even though we’ve had some mainstream success. We’ve run everything out of a garage. This is the record label, this is the band, so we really, really are in the truest sense of the word independent artists. And to have something that symbolizes success in the record industry, it almost doesn’t feel like, not that we don’t deserve it, but it doesn’t feel like we should have ever gotten something like that. It’s such a weird juxtaposition to me, but at the same time, I am the biggest believer of the music we write, and if it were up to me, we’d have 20 gold records on the wall. But it’s good to see that there’s some sort of connection with what we're doing and that people respond to it. At the end of the day, the gold record is great and I almost feel a little ostentatious having one because I don't care about that kind of stuff, I care about the connection with the fans.
LINDA: It’s pretty sweet though, it’s fucking awesome.
ALY: Cult of Dionysus, historically prior to 2019 was a B-side track. People know “Obsessed With You,” they know “Sexy Dynamite.” If you know one Orion Experience song, prior to 2019, it was not that song. So when that song took off in 2019 it was sort of unexpected, and it feels like the gold record came from the last 5 years, and not the 15+ years prior to that.
LINDA: All through the years it was always my favorite song to perform. Because, that guitar solo, every part of it, I move to this song. I love to dance to this song.
ORION: Just to give you a little interesting tidbit about that song, it was written in ‘96 for an old band I had called Kitty In The Tree. We would play it sometimes but nobody in the band really liked it.
LINDA: I remember you playing in the East Village and I remember dancing like crazy to that.
ORION: We were making Cosmicandy, we were finishing up the album, and I don’t know why but at the time 10 songs was what you put on an album. We had 9 songs, we needed one more song. I was like, “I got that one weird song from back in the day, Cult of Dionysus.” We had played it like Nirvana; it was more of a slashy rock song, but I really wanted to rearrange it into this punk disco kind of way. And then Linda started singing it with me and I was like, “oh yeah, this really works.” We arranged it two days before we recorded it, that was probably the third time we’d ever played in a recording studio. And that’s the kind of crazy shit that people are asking me, younger artists who are just starting out, what advice do you have? Go with your gut, make sure you’re recording, get this stuff out there, because you just never know when you’re gonna strike gold, when all the elements are gonna come together for the right thing. We recorded that song and it was on that album for 15 years, and then it went viral.
Sexuality means nothing to us. It doesn’t. We don’t care if you’re gay or straight or queer or questioning or polyamorous or asexual, we don’t give a fuck. We don‘t want that there, we want you there.
We then moved on to what it was like for T.O.E. to go viral
ORION: I think the thing that sticks out to me the most about going viral is the way the music industry has changed. Like for us, it really did change things overnight. Because you don’t need to have a label anymore, you don’t need anything, you just put music out there, and sometimes by the grace of the gods you hit something. It’s a blessing and it’s a curse. I don’t like the fact that we went viral and that’s why we are as successful as we are right now. That doesn’t make me feel good, because there was nothing that we did that we had any control over. Like, how much effort did we put into showcasing to people, when all of that time could have been spent writing more music. If the only thing that matters is writing music and hoping that a fucking algorithm finds you, it’s depressing. I’m not shitting on it, because it literally changed our lives.
ORION: At the time I had a distributor called CD Baby, like if you’re a first time music maker you sign up for CD Baby, and every couple of months we’d get like $100 bucks or something, it wasn’t much. And then I was looking at our account and it was like $9000. What the fuck? And the YouTube numbers started going up, and we were like, “what the fuck is going on right now?” We didn’t even know. We had an Instagram account that I hadn't opened since 2013.
ALY: We hadn’t posted new content on YouTube in like a decade.
ORION: The YouTube numbers were going up, and we would see comments like “who’s here because of Starfire and Arson?” and other TikTok people. We never actually found the origin of who started posting about it, but it just all happened around late 2019, 2020, and when it happened I think I emailed Aly like, “what is our login for Instagram?” I think she had it on an old hard drive. She found it, I posted a picture on Instagram, and it was like comment, comment, comment, they’re back, they’re back, and we were like, “what do we do?”
LINDA: We never stopped [the band] but we did the big off broadway Children of the Stars show. It ran for 5 weeks and it was supposed to continue on, but it didn’t for whatever reason. What do we do now? We were working so hard for everything.
ORION: Nothing really ever panned out, and then when this happened in 2020 I was like, “what do we do? Can we start this up again, or do we just let this be a blip?” And we decided we wanted to continue on with it. And Linda came out to LA three months later, and we started writing Fever Dream.
ALY: It was weird. At that point it had already been shared on TikTok like 50k times. Without us doing anything, or knowing anything. And the reason the YouTube counts were so high is because that generation of music listener goes to YouTube music vs Spotify or Pandora or things we could track. When [Orion] wrote Cult of Dionysus, their biggest fans weren’t born yet. It’s the craziest thing to think about. It’s music that my niece loves, and music that my 80 year old father loves.
ORION: Back to the point of the virality and the changing nature of the industry. When we were coming up back in the day, if you were like 30 years old, your career was over, you were too old. Now no one gives a fuck, and The Cure is pulling in numbers they’ve never seen before and Robert Smith looks like he just walked out of a fucking coffin. He does not look great but he is killing it, and no one cares. And there’s a liberation in that too.
ORION: The point that we’ve all gotten from this too is the most important thing we can do is be ourselves, write the best music we can and put on the best show that we can, and then people will do the work for you to make it happen if the time is right. We may experience that this is a blip in our long trajectory in our long music career, as artists, and we may reemerge again from this if it ends up that things slow down. Our career as artists, you never stop. So you can’t stop us anyway. It’s given me a lot of perspective about what it means to be an artist and because back in the day it was like you gotta get the label to sign you, you gotta do this and that, those walls have fallen. But the real perspective is write music, record music, get it out into the world, and you never know when that will return to you. Be true to yourself as an artist, be true to yourself as a person, and that’s really the only important thing. You need to curate your art, you need to manage your art, but trying to force a square peg into a round hole, it’s never gonna happen. It’s hard advice to hear for young people, just keep doing what you're doing, but as far as my experience with it, that’s the only way.
LINDA: Also, for young people making music, keep the rights to your songs.
The Orion Experience at Funhouse, Seattle // Photo by @katetakesphotos
It was time for my favorite silly question; what is your go-to karaoke song?
LINDA: Fame, I wanna live forever.
ORION: You wanna bring down the house? Guaranteed every time. The Muppet Show theme.
ALY: I'll sometimes do a Spice Girls, and also Suddenly Seymour.. Anything Little Shop, really.
ZAK: I do country music. I try to look for decent ones but I can’t think of one right now.
ELLE: I don't do karaoke, I hate karaoke! I love to watch other people but it’s not my thing. It’s actually part of my unicorn character. I'm a dancer, it’s in my lore.
Aly told me that the band was very fond of snacks, so we talked about everyone’s favorites, and how snacks play a part in the band’s adventures.
ORION: Our favorite thing to do is stop at a road stop, we hit it hard yesterday.
ZAK: Sour gummies of some kind. Linda is crazy about Bugles.
ALY: Bugles are Linda's road trip food. We had cheddar ones on the drive from Seattle to Vancouver and I was craving them for a week after.
ZAK: If there's any change I could make in the United States, it would be that black licorice is accepted. It is my favorite thing and it is really really hard to find.
ORION: I saw this snack, called Takis? Blue Heat. I got Blue Heat, and I couldn't believe that was allowed to be created.
ALY: We made a Snack Odyssey, but we made a discovery on that drive from Seattle to Vancouver, and it is that if you take Dot’s honey mustard pretzels with a piece of beef jerky, it’s like a McDonald's cheeseburger.
ELLE: Sounds wild but it is definitely worth a try!
ORION: That’s part of the fun of being on the road, most people are like, “when I get on the road I'm all about hitting the gym in the morning, eating healthy.” That's not what we do.
ALY: It's also really special because it’s like going on a vacation with your best friends. We’re all super close. It just feels like hanging out with your friends.
ORION: That's what snacks mean to us, I think. It’s all about friendship.
The Orion Experience has concluded the 2024 leg of the Magical Animals Tour, but they have big plans for 2025. Follow @theorionexperience on Instagram for updates on new music, upcoming tour updates, and band shenanigans.
