Photograph by Bella Peterson
Spencer Peppet of The Ophelias hasn’t lived in Cincinnati since she left for college in 2015, but the city hasn’t left her songwriting. The band’s fourth album, Spring Grove, not only takes its title (and title track) from the cemetery, but is suffused with dreams and memories of her teenage years. It’s also the first record ever produced by Julien Baker, a major artist in her own right who is now even more famous—and Taylor Swift-adjacent—as a member of Boygenius.
Spring Grove also marks an evolution in the band’s “joyfully queer” identity. The Ophelias originally formed when its members were in high school (Peppet went to Ursuline Academy), with each of them serving as a “token girl” in other bands. Since then, drummer Mic Adams has come out as a transgender man; before that, original bassist Grace Weir had been replaced by Jo Shaffer, a trans woman who is also Peppet’s longtime partner.
Peppet got on the phone from Queens, New York, to talk about the record, Baker, and Cincinnati lyric inspirations, among many other things.
How did you first meet Julien Baker?
We were playing in Nashville, and my friend tapped me on the shoulder and was like, “Um… that’s Julian Baker. And I slow-motion turned around, like, hhhhhhuuuuh what? [Then] I’m on stage, it’s a small room, and I can kind of see her mouthing the words. I was freaking out a little bit. We met at the merch table afterwards, and she’s so lovely and personable and chill. We just kind of hit it off.
And then we were working on Crocus, and I messaged her and was, like, “Hey, would you want to add some vocals onto this song ‘Neil Young On High?’ ” She recorded them remotely, and was so easy to work with, and had great ideas—I think she added a bunch of stuff that was really cool, and made the song better and more interesting
A week later, her manager called me and said, “Hey, she wants to produce your next record.” I was like, “Oh, my God!”
What was her role like compared to other producers or engineers you’ve worked with, like Yoni Wolf or John Hoffman. Was it, y’know, a sounding board, another member of the band informally, or more technical?
OK, first of all: love John Hoffman. Love that man so much. We’ve been joking that we have accidentally brought him up in every interview.
I would say that JB, she was more involved kind of from the very beginning. I sent her a Google Drive full of songs—I think there were like 20 songs in there—and we each did a voting kind of thing, where she and all four members of the band ranked their top choices. So she had a hand in choosing all of the songs that went on the record.
And then, I mean, she plays on every song. She sings, she plays guitar, she plays banjo, she plays keys, she plays synth. She mixed a bunch of the songs. She’s very particular. Even after we recorded, she would send us messages, like, “Hey, there’s a frequency in this song that I have to take out. Is that okay?” She’s incredibly attuned to small details, and she also knows a ton about engineering. So she was in the room dialing in the amps, and she brought two suitcases full of pedals. Very hands-on, very holistic. She was so focused and so tuned-in that it kind of felt like she had control over time in a weird way. It felt like we got so much done in the time period that we were there, but it never felt like we were rushed.
Your drummer, Mic Adams, came out as a transgender man before the making of this album. What was that like both in terms of being there for him, and perhaps in terms of the band dynamic.
Honestly, it was pretty easy. He told us, and we were all like: “Great. Awesome. So sick. Congratulations!” And then we came up with the new bio. The marketing around the “all-girl band” stuff had been pretty intense, [so when] he was like, “Oh, and by the way, I’m a man,” we were like, “Sounds good.” And all of the stuff that he’s been willing to share about his feelings around transition and being a drummer—how being trans has influenced his his music and his performance—I think has been really wonderful.
Do you feel safe or welcome in Ohio in 2025, given some of the political and legal issues?
Yeah, we’re lucky, because I think we do. I think we have a really lovely community of people in Ohio. Obviously things are changing quickly. But we all have a lot of love for Ohio. Even if it would be uncomfortable for a moment, they can’t keep us away that quickly. You can’t get rid of us.
There are a lot of specific Cincinnati places in the lyrics, like a mention of “Ludlow and Vine” in “Cicada” and “the corner of Elm” in “Vulture Tree.” How much of that is straight from life, and how much is just using the real names for color and detail?
A little bit of both. I like to keep it mysterious, right? Some of them are exact experiences, and some of them are a little bit of auto-fiction. And you’ll never know which!
That said, I’m going to ask you to talk about a few of them. What was the inspiration for the album and its title track, beyond the obvious?
Spring Grove Cemetery, there’s so much to be inspired by. I would go hang out there with my friends freshman or sophomore year of high school. I feel like all the bands of Cincinnati have drawn inspiration from Spring Grove at some point. We’re definitely not the first to do so.
“Spring Grove,” the song, is difficult to describe. It’s about my teenage self, from the perspective of my teenage self, also from now, [and] also looking at myself from above—both currently and past. Do you know the Spider-Man meme, where it’s the three Spider-Men all pointing at each other? That’s how I’ve been describing this song. All of those versions of me being like, “What the fuck? What is going on?”
And is there a vulture tree?
There actually is a vulture tree. There’s a literal vulture tree in my parents’ neighborhood: one giant tree where all the vultures go.
The family called an exterminator, and were like, “How do we get rid of all these vultures? It’s so crazy and weird, and we have young children, and they’re getting scared by all the vultures.” And the exterminator [said they’d] have to burn an effigy. You get a faux vulture to set on fire in the tree, so then all the other vultures go away.
I don’t know if they ever did it, but that image was always really striking to me. Setting a version of yourself on fire to warn the other versions of you.
I took a lot of walks during COVID. I would leave the house at 10 p.m. and walk until midnight or one in the morning, and I would always pass the vulture tree. I wrote that song when I got back from one of those walks.
And I assume that even if “Cicada” is about a lot more than its title, you do have some specific memories there?
Yeah. When I was in elementary school, the first version of the 17-year cicadas that I remember, I was riding my bicycle home, and I crashed into a tree because a cicada flew into my mouth. I just turned straight into a tree.
And my younger sister tried to make us eat them. Like, she would cook the cicadas. My parents were good sports and ate them. I refused.
And then they came back 17 years later, when I was in my mid-20s, and I was very struck by that. Also, Wussy has one of my favorite songs of all time, “Crooked,” which starts with the line [singing]: “This is the night the insects appear after 17 years on this side of town/Singing the songs they learned underground.” I was definitely inspired by the song, alongside the actual bugs. And that feeling of returning after 17 years to something that you weren’t thinking about for those whole 17 years.
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