Sarika Mehta welcomes Nina Diaz to the KBOO studio to talk about her music and her life.
Almost two decades ago, on January 9, 1998, musician Nina Diaz was heartbroken to learn her grandmother had passed away. Exactly 15 years later, on that same date, Nina was writing new material when she felt someone watching over her. “I was using that night and felt this crazy energy,” says Nina, who had been battling substance and drug addiction for years. She did this, unassumingly, while fronting Girl in a Coma, the critically hailed indie-punk band that was famously nurtured by Joan Jett, had opened for Morrissey and Tegan and Sara, and earned multiple Independent Music Awards. Adds Nina, “I knew it was my grandmother.”
The Beat Is Dead, produced by both Nina and Manuel Calderon (who engineered Girl in a Coma’s Trio B.C.), didn’t start out that way. While working on new material for her band, Nina penned the rousing “Trick Candle.” As with any other Girl in a Coma song, she fleshed it out with her bandmates, drummer Phanie Diaz (Nina’s sister) and bassist Jenn Alva. “I’m the writer, but our songs really are group efforts,” Nina says. “We jammed it out, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t what I envisioned.” What followed were a few difficult, but ultimately supportive, conversations about Nina taking on solo projects between Girl in a Coma albums. “It was a little rough at first. People were scared—I was scared!” she says. “But I knew I just needed to do this.”
Creative floodgates opened. “I didn’t hold back anything,” she says. “Trick Candle,” in kind, became a bright indie-electro banger. “It’s about Michael Hutchence from INXS,” she says. “I called it ‘Trick Candle,’ because to me, he’s somebody who’ll never burn out.” In the track, she implores, “Say to me I am all the things you’d like again / Say to me I am / Say to me I am Michael.” Nina was still using when she wrote those words.
“To punish myself anymore is not even possible,” Nina explains. “The Beat Is Dead means that this story is over."