Wendy Wang

Wendy Wang plays her 3/4-sized Kimball piano.

The first time I saw Wendy Wang per­form was at the Hi-Hat, a new venue in the High­land Park neigh­bor­hood, with her band, The Sweet Hurt. A friend let me know the grav­ity of the situ­tion. “You gotta see this show.”

Find out more about Wendy at thesweet­hurt.com.

What was the last thing you listened to?

I think it was a Kacey Mus­graves song. Some friends were say­ing, “Oh, you gotta check her out.” But I didn’t know she was an artist until a cou­ple days ago.

Do you listen to a lot of country music?

Not re­ally, so I tried to go into it with an open mind. Right away when you lis­ten to it, there are cer­tain aes­thet­ics that are very dif­fer­ent from other things I would nat­u­rally be drawn to. But there were some re­ally nice songs I liked.

What was your first instrument?

I went to my first piano les­son when I was four. So piano is my first in­stru­ment. And I re­mem­ber the first song I ever learned, I’ll al­ways re­mem­ber how to play it. It was in one of those stock books, this red book that was land­scape. I just thought it was fun. “It’s just like a video game! You see that, and you do that.”

Did you want to play piano in particular?

I think my par­ents just signed me up, but I was ex­cited for the op­por­tu­nity, be­cause my older sis­ters had been play­ing, and I was think­ing, I want to try it out, too.

What was the actual piano you played on?

An up­right Kim­ball, I think. I guess prob­a­bly a stu­dent model piano. It wasn’t a tall one, maybe... three-quar­ters? I don’t know the exact “cat­e­gories” of pi­anos are.

Do you still play piano?

I do, yeah. But I quit lessons when I was twelve years old, and I re­mem­ber at the time think­ing, I’m never going to get any bet­ter at this, this is not fun. The pieces got harder and I didn’t want to prac­tice. But... I started tak­ing lessons again ear­lier this year.

What prompted that?

I was lis­ten­ing to a lot of R&B and think­ing, Wow, this har­mony is— it’s not straight-ahead jazz, it’s not straight clas­si­cal stuff. “Mis­ter Chameleon” by KING, for in­stance. I was in­ter­ested in how peo­ple were fig­ur­ing out those voic­ings, and I thought it was beau­ti­ful. And I knew play­ers who could play like that, so I started ask­ing them.

Now that you’re a musician, piano lessons have to be fairly different right?

Yeah, now I go in and I have more ques­tions. I ask for more in­for­ma­tion. And I’m just more ex­cited about going. And I’ll ac­tu­ally prac­tice.

What was your first instrument that was really yours?

I’d say gui­tar was the first one. We had an ex­change stu­dent liv­ing with us, when I was in mid­dle school. He was from Switzer­land, and he had a friend who was a mu­si­cian, from the local high school, who lent him a gui­tar. So when he wasn’t play­ing it, I would ask him, “Can I play your gui­tar?” I ended up just tak­ing it over and play­ing for hours every day. So that’s when I knew I was re­ally into some­thing. I was like, “I do want to prac­tice, I do want to get bet­ter at some­thing.”

So that was your first musical instrument right after piano?

Well, there was also clar­inet in school band. Clar­inet al­ways con­fused me — well, you just play one note at a time. One note at a time was so for­eign to me, being a pi­anist. But then I re­al­ized, well, al­right, you play with a group of peo­ple, I get it. But I never thought, I’m going to learn how to solo on this thing and write duets for the clar­inet.

Do you remember what kind of guitar it was?

It was a nylon string. But the funny thing was, there was no high E string on it.

So it was a five string guitar?

Yeah, it was a five string gui­tar. I re­mem­ber going to my next door neigh­bors’ house and they had a gui­tar. Oh my gosh, they have the E string!. I started play­ing a Stone Tem­ple Pi­lots song that re­quired that note.

You knew your guitar was missing that string?

Yeah! I would prac­ti­cie as if it were there.

But it seemed like an impossibility that you would add the string?

Yeah, I looked at the me­chan­ics and I was like, I don’t know how this works, and it wasn’t my gui­tar. About a year later, my mom got me a gui­tar, a clas­si­cal gui­tar, with all six strings on it.