The Clockwork Dolls is a delightfully ambitious project by Baltimore-based composer and instrumentalist Sam Lee.
I first joined the group in 2010 and had to take a break ever since I moved to California in 2013.
Though they are in Maryland and I’m in California, we collaborate remotely and I fly out to join them on stage for some current shows.
When I joined, they were gigging to promote their debut EP, Dramatis Personae.
The album is an introduction of the band members as characters, and the listener comes to find out that they’re listening to a narrative set in a steampunk world of gears and airships.
“Fly with me, forget the past.
We can build the future in steel and brass.”
The story follows Helene de Fer, who has run away from her life of aristocracy along with her mechanical governess, Allison Curvall. They enlist other folks from her life to commandeer an airship and live in the clouds, living the life of a sky pirate.
I created the character of William Walker, a Scottish Buddhist cartographer aboard the airship.
We started playing a lot of steampunk and anime conventions, and before long it organically grew to where we frequently would be planning entire summers around convention season.
We made friends with and played alongside the likes of Vernian Process, Professor Elemental, Voltaire, and far too many other wonderful humans to remember.
These were amazing and truly unique times, when there was huge momentum behind Steampunk becoming an actual “thing”, and there were first starting to be large conventions where you could meet other like-minded weirdos.
As the band grew and evolved, the tone and feel of the songs followed suit. My bandmate Robare describes the sound as “Dreamcore”, and I am inclined to agree.
The associations with “strictly Steampunk” aesthetics and sounds started to fall away as Sam made the themes of next few albums to be about World War II, dark folklore, and dragons.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. William Walker
I moved to California in 2013, so sadly I could no longer play with the group.
We still talked frequently, I would of course come see them when they played near me, and we’d floated ideas about online collabs, but nothing really took flight.
That is, until a group of German fire performers called “Feuershow Ravenchild” loved performing to one of our songs so much that…
They invited us out to to play the
Steamrose Zeitreisefest in Forst, Germany
so that they can spin fire live to our
performance!
They even photoshopped a jetpack onto me for their signage!
OF COURSE I jumped at the chance. I think my exact words were “hey, you know who knows all your songs and speaks German?”
This brings us to present, with contacts overseas and at home setting up more-high-quality-but-more-occasional gigs than we had when we started out.
It’s been an incredible ride, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
