The Pretty Reckless: Mark Damon, Taylor Momsen, Ben Phillips and Jamie Perkins. Photo courtesy of Fearless Records

During some really dark periods in her life, singer Taylor Momsen has turned to Maine for light and hope.

She first started on a downward emotional spiral – drinking too much, not devoting as much energy to her music as she wanted to – in 2017 after the suicide of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, a personal musical hero of hers.  Momsen’s rock band, The Pretty Reckless, was on tour with Soundgarden when Cornell died. To try to refocus and recover from the shock, Momsen retreated to her home on the midcoast.

About a year later, after Momsen felt ready to start working and recording again, her band’s longtime producer and collaborator, Kato Khandwala, was killed in motorcycle crash. She and her bandmates were devastated. They had some songs for a possible recording and wanted to keep working to help with the grief, but didn’t know who or where to turn for someone to fill Khandwala’s role.

Momsen’s mind quickly turned to Maine-based producer and recording engineer Jonathan Wyman, with whom band members had worked before and who had a reputation for engineering skill and a calm, guiding hand. Plus, working at The Halo Studio in Windham, where Wyman is based, meant Momsen could stay in her Maine home. “Death By Rock and Roll” was produced, recorded and mixed by Wyman and featured Maine backup singers, including kids from the Maine Academy of Modern Music and a Portland-based sitar player. The album was released in early February and by the end of the month reached the top of Billboard’s album sales chart. It had also reached No. 28 on the Billboard 200 album chart and No. 3 on the rock album chart.

“We were train wrecks, emotionally, and Jonathan was exactly the right person at that time. He makes everything sound immaculate, and he’s the kindest person on the planet,” said Momsen, 27. “Maine has always been so conducive to my writing, it’s a place where I can escape and sink into my own thoughts.”

Momsen had spent much of her life as a child actress before forming The Pretty Reckless more than a decade ago, when she was still in her mid-teens. The band has a hard-edged rock sound that features Momsen’s strong and sharp vocals backed by guitar shredding and hard-driving bass lines. The band’s previous three albums – “Light Me Up” in 2010, “Going to Hell” in 2014 and “Who You Selling For” in 2016 – made the top 10 on rock and alternative rock charts.

As an actress, Momsen is best-known for playing Cindy Lou Who in the live-action film version of  “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000) with Jim Carrey and for her role as Jenny Humphrey on the CW Network’s teen TV drama “Gossip Girl,” from 2007 to 2012. She has owned her Maine home for about seven years, but because of the album and the pandemic, she’s been here almost full-time for about a year and a half. Before the pandemic, she split her time more evenly between New York City and Maine.

Taylor Momsen, lead singer of The Pretty Reckless, on stage with bass player Mark Damon. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY

Momsen said she first discovered Maine through her bandmates, who are all New Englanders. Drummer Jamie Perkins and bassist Mark Damon are both from the seacoast area of New Hampshire, and guitarist Ben Phillips grew up in Maine and has family here. (Phillips was not available to elaborate on his Maine roots for this story, band management said.)

So the band often had rehearsals at a member’s New England getaway. She decided she needed her own area home and settled on Maine, for its isolation and its shoreline, though she wouldn’t say which town. When in Maine, she loves swimming in the ocean, island-hopping in her small motor boat and exploring small towns and woodland or shoreline trails. She says she finds the state “gorgeous” any time of year, and feels like the landscape has a “visceral, surreal quality” that she finds inspiring. She said the isolation of Maine has always helped her write music. She and Phillips wrote all the songs on the current album.

She said being in Maine during the pandemic has been especially nice. She feels like she’s seen a lot more wildlife this year, maybe because fewer people came to Maine last summer and fall.

“It’s been like living in a Disney movie, seeing chipmunks, squirrels, skunks, foxes and and every kind of land animal. Plus all the seals and dolphins,” said Momsen, who was born in St. Louis but grew up largely in New York, while moving around for acting jobs. “Every day in Maine, you can walk down the same path and see something new. It’s sort of like New York, where you can walk down the same street everyday and see something new.”

GETTING BACK TO MUSIC

Before she was a rock singer, Taylor Momsen was an actress, including on the CW TV show “Gossip Girl.” Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Momsen’s family got her started modeling and acting in commercials when she was still a toddler. She was just 7 when the live-action Grinch film came out. She followed that film up with roles in several major films in the next few years, including as the president’s daughter in “Spy Kids 2” (2002) and as Gretel in “Hansel and Gretel” (2002). She appeared in several more movies, and continued to model, before landing a lead role on “Gossip Girl.”

It was during the run of “Gossip Girl” that she began pursuing her passion for music seriously. She looked for producers to work with and found Khandwala. He, in turn, put Momsen in touch with Phillips, and later to Perkins and Damon, who were all veteran musicians and had been together in a band called Famous.

In a 2010 interview with Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based SeacoastOnline.com, Damon said when he and Perkins were first approached about backing a 16-year-old TV star, their initial thought was “no thanks.” But their minds were quickly changed by Momsen’s talent, including her ability to roar out rock lyrics or sing sweet ballads, in a clear, strong voice.

“The first time we rehearsed with her, it took one verse and half a chorus and I was totally sold. She just has a lot of depth as a singer and musician, which I haven’t seen in people three times her age. She’s been working on her stuff a long time, and it shows,” Damon told SeacoastOnline.com.

Momsen says she did not choose acting. It was something chosen for her. But even as a young child, she knew she wanted to pursue music. When she was 7, she recorded the song “Where Are You Christmas?” for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Around the same time, she recorded “One Small Voice” and “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” for a Christmas compilation album called “School’s Out! Christmas.” In addition to singing, she plays guitar in the band.

She says her father is a “massive rock-and-roll fan,” so growing up she was surrounded by the sound of classic rock. She said the first band she fell in love with was The Beatles but quickly became enamored of of hard rock heavyweights like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, AC/DC and Cream, as well as ’90s rockers like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

Although she didn’t choose to act, she’s glad she did it. She thinks it helped instill in her a work ethic that she’s carried into songwriting and performing.

“Acting is a job I did, but music is who I am,” said Momsen. “I’m glad I waited until I met the right band and could write music I wanted to hear. Nobody should put out an album when they’re 5. It takes some life experience.”

Taylor Momsen as she appears in the video for “And So It Went,” a song that features singers from the Maine Academy of Modern Music. Photo courtesy of Fearless Records

SAMPLING THE MUSIC SCENE

Momsen says “Death by Rock and Roll” may sound like a dark title, but it was inspired by a passion for life. It was a phrase Kandawala used to mean that people should live life their own way, to the fullest. In the song, Momsen sings about other people dying in various ways – gunshot, suicide – but that she wants to go out in a blaze: “But on my tombstone when I go/Just put death by rock and roll.”

Wyman had worked with The Pretty Reckless before, when the band needed to record some bonus tracks for other albums. And he had known Phillips for years through various musical connections. But this was the first whole album he did with the band, working as a producer (with Momsen and Phillips), engineer and mixer. Wyman, a Bates College graduate, worked in New York City for a couple years before coming back to Maine in 2001.

For the album, Momsen and her bandmates had some specific requests for singers and musicians, and it was up to Wyman to fill them. Lucky for Wyman, Maine is a pretty musically diverse place with a lot of talented people. For the hard rocking song “And So It Went,” the band wanted a children’s chorus, but one with some snarling attitude, like the kids who sing on Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in The Wall.” The lyrics intended for youngsters to sing included: “The world does not belong to you/You are not the king I am not the fool/They said the world does not belong to you/It don’t belong to you/It belongs to me.”

Wyman immediately thought of the Maine Academy of Modern Music, a Portland-based school of rock run by his friend Jeff Shaw. A chorus of 29 MAMM singers went into the studio with Wyman and Momsen, about two years ago now, to lay down their vocals, which are near the end of the song. Jesse Martin, a Scarborough High School senior who sang on the track, likes the way MAMM’s part came out. He said he liked working with Wyman, who hyped up the group and got them to sing with attitude.

Wyman was also asked to find some singers who could harmonize behind Momsen on “Harley Darling,” a country-flavored rocker. It’s another song inspired by Kandawala, about a Harley-Davidson motorcycle claiming the life of a loved one. “Whoa, Harley darling/You took my friend/You took everything and now I’m alone again.”

Wyman found Maine-based singers Sara Hallie Richardson and Anna Lombard, who’ve harmonized many times together, to sing on the track.  And when the band wanted a sitar – a stringed instrument originally from India – on the track “Turning Gold,” Wyman poked around and found Portland-based sitar player David Pontbriand.

“Portland has such a deep music scene. I was able to wrangle a kids chorus and sitar player,” said Wyman.

Wyman said he was impressed with Momsen’s down-to-earth approach to music in the studio, and that she carries no signs of being a TV or film star. He was also impressed with Momsen’s voice and ability to sing hard-edged rock and her commitment to music.

“I think a big part of the band’s appeal is that Taylor is such a powerhouse vocalist, and she sings with such conviction and attitude,” said Wyman.

Staff writer Aimsel Ponti contributed to this story.