A Conversation with Victor
From left to right, top to bottom: Maya Silver, Liv Stripling, Avery Becker, LJ Cavenaugh, Ella Olsen Richman
Photo by Em Townsend
On April 11, I had the pleasure of chatting with the 5 mega-talented members of Victor, Kenyon College’s premier girl band. Though they are Kenyon-famous, for their beautiful harmonies, profound lyrics, and Radiohead covers at Horn Gallery shows, the women of Victor are ordinary people: college juniors who love spending time together, getting experimental in their writing, and helping each other grow as musicians and as people. Sitting in our beloved WKCO radio station, I talked with the band about the magic of friendship, the power of collaboration during the songwriting process, and what’s next for the band during the summer before their senior year.
In March 2024, Victor recorded 2 tracks in LA, and, this past March, the band spent the first week of spring break at Kenyon, recording new music and writing together. The band hopes to digitally release their new 5-song EP in the coming months, but Victor is no stranger to Internet presence: their single “Dry” has over 12k streams on Spotify, and their YouTube features videos of beloved Kenyon Tiny Rug performances as well as a music video for “Something to Remember.” Equal parts funny and earnest, Victor’s music –– as well as the people who make it happen –– gives space to big feelings around growing up, relationships, and Victor’s collective love of music and memory. Amidst inside jokes, bouts of laughter, impromptu performances of Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” and Liv’s advice about rereading old journal entries, the band’s genuine love for each other was evident. My conversation with Victor felt like being let in on a secret –– a how-to guide for making dreams come to fruition with your best friends.
Victor is:
LJ Cavenaugh, vocals and guitar
Maya Silver, vocals, guitar, piano, and recording engineer
Liv Stripling, bass
Ella Olsen Richman, guitar and vocals
Avery Becker, drums and percussion
Special shoutouts to:
Loch McRae, recording engineer/producer and featured percussion
Aidan Puntes, technical helping hand :-)
Avery Becker, Maya Silver, and Liv Stripling at The Horn Gallery, spring 2025
Photo by Em Townsend
This interview has been condensed for clarity and space:
Em: Obviously, you all met at Kenyon. But what was the process of forming the band? How did it all start to come together?
LJ: Well, Liv and I were friends early on… we met on the Kenyon Class of 2026 Instagram. Liv was learning bass, and I was like, ‘I can sing. We should join a band.’
Liv: I was listening to “Criminal” [by Fiona Apple] and I wanted to play it… We started the band before I started taking bass lessons. I didn’t play bass in the first week of Victor, even! We would sit in the practice room, just us, and listen to “Criminal,” and I’d be like, ‘Well, I don’t know how to play this.’
LJ: And then I found Maya through Stairwells [a cappella group], and I knew that you played piano… so I was like, ‘Let’s play “Criminal” at the band showcase, let’s start there.’
Maya: Oh, Ella and I were random [freshman year] roommates, that’s really important to our arc.
Ella: I came home one day, and Maya asked if I wanted to play guitar in a band.
Liv: A girl band!
Ella: I lied and said, ‘Yeah, I can play the guitar.’ Because I started as a bassist. I had never touched a lead guitar before. So I kinda did what Liv did, and just learned by doing.
LJ: So we went to this party, and we didn’t even have a drummer at this point! We were searching everywhere, and no one could get it, even if they said they were a drummer. Even Aidan Puntes couldn’t cut it! Because we were looking for that *crash* at the beginning [of “Criminal”] and no one could get it…
Liv: We were at this party, with live music, and no intention of playing, and then they were like, ‘Does anyone know how to play the bass?’ and I was like, ‘Me! Me!’
Avery: I remember being with my friends [at this house show] and being like, ‘What if I went up there and drummed?’ And they were like, ‘You don’t play drums.’ And I’m like, actually, I do!
Em: Did you already play drums?
Avery: Yeah, I played drums at home. I played for a middle school jazz band… but I stopped playing in high school. We always had a drum set in my house that I would mess around on. And I hadn’t played in a really long time, but I wanted to join a band at Kenyon. I hadn’t really met any of them… it was, like, September, the week before the [Horn Gallery’s] band showcase.
Liv: This was like the 3rd week of school! [That party] was an important moment in our grade’s culture.
Maya: Then we played band showcase... and we just kept playing after that. And we started to cultivate a vibe, and we changed our band name again. And then… I don’t know when we started writing…
Liv: Well, Ella brought forth to me “Sip of Water,” like, the second week of our band… she was like ‘Can you write a bassline for this?’ and I did, and I sent it back [to her]. And I was thinking, ‘That’s so cool that she already writes songs. It inspired me to write songs.’
Maya: In January, we said, ‘We have to hang out,’ make it official. We made Victor as the name.
Em: I was going to ask: what’s the songwriting process like? Does everyone take turns coming up with lyrics and sharing with the group?
LJ: It depends on the song. Sometimes we’ll have “show and tell,” and we’ll all share songs that we want to be Victor songs. And then we’ll all add our own spice, or the person who wrote it will say, ‘This is how I want it to be.’ Or someone will come in with a riff, or a chorus, or something.
*everyone looks at Ella and laughs*
Ella: I think “Body Song” is a really good example: I just came up with this riff, and brought it in. And we kind of built the song around the vibe of that riff.
Liv: And LJ had a poem she’d written for the intro, and we built it off of that.
LJ: Whenever Ella would bring in stuff, I would look through my notes app of poems, or half-poems, and for this, it was about the theme of “Body Song,” so it worked.
Ella: And “Dry” I actually wrote in high school; I had the chorus already written.
Maya: Yeah, the chorus was written. We hung out and just jammed on verses and stuff. We just [in March 2025] recorded a bunch of songs, and those are good examples of songs written by somebody and they come to the group and we’re all like, “Oh we need to do that right now.” That’s a dynamic we have a lot… someone shares something, and we’re obsessed with that.
Liv Stripling, LJ Cavenaugh, and Ella Olsen Richman (partially hidden) at WKCO Fest, spring 2025
Photo by Em Townsend
Em: What was the process of recording here at Kenyon like?
Liv: Oh my god, it was so beautiful… and fuckin’ shoutout Loch McRae! We had a set schedule where we were… in here 5 days a week, several hours a day recording, like 10-2 and then 3-6. A lot of it was Loch and Maya troubleshooting and setting up the space. We recorded vocals in the Horn [Gallery], and we mixed it in the physical space. We knew that we wanted to have the rhythm section all together… we isolated the amps out here [in WKCO] so that we could all be in the room together, playing, and have that be the foundation for the vocal tracks. Because we were a live band first! And that’s how we did “Dry” and “Something to Remember,” too.
LJ: And then we would all cook dinner for each other…
*everyone smiles*
Maya: It was interesting being on campus in a way that was only about music. It was so special living here; it was like doing a residency. The communal process of six people setting aside a week in the year to just stay here… legendary.
Liv: Like, we’re all best friends. It was such a beautiful space, and we were all so receptive and experimental. It was so different from recording “Dry” and “Something to Remember” [in LA] where we just paid for studio time and we took what was given to us. But for this, it’s going to sound soooo good.
Maya: And Loch, since he mixed those 2 songs, it was cool to see how excited he was about these songs un-mixed. We would go home and listen to them on the speakers right away, and be like, Shit! To do the whole thing ourselves was amazing.
Ella: And Loch also knows us so well as individuals… He can sense when we’re not totally satisfied with something, and he’s so comfortable being like, ‘I think you should do that again.’
Avery: Or just suggesting something we hadn’t thought of, like ‘Let’s try this!’
Em: That sounds like a really amazing experience of being here. My next question is kind of about place… Being from different places, and then [some of you] being abroad, how did you still collaborate while you were physically apart? How do you feel about that space and that togetherness?
Maya: We didn’t do any writing together while abroad. Ella hunkered down.
Ella: I approached my time abroad like… Ok, you have a guitar, and a room, and I didn’t really have any close friends or obligations I had to attend to, so I thought, I might as well play guitar for three hours a day. And I came back with a couple of songs.
LJ: And even in separate spaces, collaborating is… when you’re creating a song, knowing that you have a band that is capable of making the song how you want it to sound… It’s also a form of collaboration, even if we aren’t physically together.
Avery: It’s important to note that we dropped “Dry” and “Something to Remember” while we were abroad. We were all FaceTiming, and just being able to show those [songs] to people abroad, and listen to them abroad.
Liv: We got on Discover Weekly on Spotify, so we were getting all these comments on our YouTube, on our Instagram, from random people abroad. We were all doing text updates, like ‘Oh my god, “Dry” hit 10k.’ Like, that was crazy when that was happening! And it was all just on one Friday. And LJ and I were here together [at Kenyon]. But I was thinking, ‘this place is lacking something that’s so vital to me.’ I feel like this band is a big pull for me, in terms of social and creative output. It’s nice to have everyone in the same place, and definitely last semester it was… hard to be isolated.
Avery: I can’t imagine what my college experience would be like without this band. That’s just… part of college, for me.
Ella: We grew up here, with each other.
Maya: For sure.
Liv: That’s something Ella has been saying a lot recently, how much better we are because we know each other. It’s also so crazy to think about the places we were musically before we knew each other. Avery hadn’t been playing the drums, Ella had never played lead guitar, I had never played bass before. But now we’re known on this campus for being this band: bassists, guitarists, and songwriters, all of us. For music to be such a huge part of our personhood and places on this campus… It's because of Victor, completely.
Em: You kind of answered it, but I was going to ask how you think you’ve all grown as artists and as people since Victor started?
Liv: I mean, I had never written a song before college.
Maya: My songs got a lot better, for sure. Musicianship-wise, we’ve all just gotten so much better. A big part of our band dynamic, helped by the Horn dynamic, is that… no one assumed we weren’t capable from the get-go. And that was so empowering. But it’s also such a commitment to be like, ‘We’re going to figure it out, and you can do it.’ It’s not just, ‘Ok, I need a bassist and you’re not good enough.’ No, we’re a band and we’re doing it together.
Avery: LJ hasn’t taken any vocal lessons –– that’s insane! If you listen to LJ’s vocal technique, it’s impeccable. Obviously, she has a beautiful voice, but from a technical perspective, she’s so controlled… it’s just incredible.
LJ: That’s another way I grew personally. I was so afraid of singing in public in my senior year of high school. But I knew that I wanted to do it –– I would play with my family friends, but I would be shaking and playing guitar and almost about to cry because I was so scared. But to have that space of consistent people [who want you to] try and then also be well-received… was really important for me, and my wants as a singer. And I remember saying, like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so scared of singing,’ and Liv genuinely didn’t believe me! It’s so funny because now this has become my persona in college: I am a singer.
Maya: I mean, it’s validating: belief in inherent capability.
Liv: Yeah. I’ve been in positions recently where I felt insecure about my playing abilities, but the thing about Victor is like, we are in this band. No one is going to kick you out. And it’s such a constant: I, at least in college, have so much trust that this band will keep going. Throughout mistakes and learning and all of this, we’re going to keep being a band.
Avery: I think we just push each other to get better… Like, I’ll have not practiced for a while and I’ll come in to a practice and everyone’s on, and it’s like, ‘Ok, I want to do this,’ not just because I love the music, but for them, because they’re all so talented and we all deserve to push each other to get better.
Maya: We need every member to be the band. Each member brings something so unique, and yet the band would be incomplete without each of us, without that 5th contribution.
Ella: It’s also interesting to [think about] having developed a style. To think of my freshman-year self trying to anticipate that I would be playing guitar riffs like I’m playing now, or writing stuff that I’m writing now, and having a sound –– I would… not have believed it.
Victor at WKCO Fest, spring 2024
Photo by Em Townsend
Em: So, when is the EP dropping?
Liv: We’re going to start mixing soon… I think we’re going to have a lot of time to just sit and work on it. And also, because we built it ourselves, it’s not going to need as much work [as our last recording session].
Maya: [Loch] did a lot of deconstructing of layers of mixing and production, and now, with us, we got to customize it from the ground up. We have to just add some more things –– like “Big Picture” still needs percussion. But I want to get it out in the summer, probably. It’d be fun to have it come out when we come back to school.
Em: Even after graduating from college, what are your hopes and dreams for the band?
Maya: It’s hard because we live here [at Kenyon] all together, and the commute time is… 5 minutes, to the practice room. And there are constantly gigs that we don’t have to coordinate, so it’s so fruitful for a band. Everything is up in the air place-wise and career-wise after [college], but… we are always wanting to make music together, and we’ll be writing and sharing, for sure.
Avery: And we’re going to be friends! No matter what.
Liv: It’s a deep commitment. Especially because we’re all looking at different things for jobs, and we’re all very committed to our futures and building lives for ourselves outside of college. I think the most important thing is being friends and sharing music and not making it… a stressful thing [when we leave college]. It’s always been so beautiful, so why now make it like, ‘Oh we have to get a gig this week,’ you know?
Em: Would you consider going on a tour?
Maya: Ooh, well, I have a pipe dream… spring break next year, college venue tour.
Liv: Yeah, we’ve been talking about doing that. Because the past couple of spring breaks, the first week, we’ve all been together and recording. It would just be so lovely. I mean, I always have dreams of, like, Victor goes on tour forever! And in the future, it’s totally feasible, in my opinion, that one of us would become a solo artist, and like, I would play bass for them, and we would work for and with each other… and then we’d open for Lucy Dacus!
Em: What are Victor’s biggest influences? Are there any artists you try to emulate in your own music?
Liv: Radiohead, The Cranberries, Julia Jacklin, Fiona Apple.
Ella: Madison Cunningham.
Liv: Alice Phoebe Lou.
Maya: Haley Blais is an influence for me, for sure, in terms of her sonic worldbuilding.
Liv: Yeah, artists who can create soundscapes, artists who can have a good journey in their songs, because we do that.
*the band starts talking about a performance at Flats [student bar at Kenyon], sidetracked by laughter*
Avery: It’s crazy that we get stuff done, ‘cuz we’re all just talking about stuff. This has been like… the whole interview * everyone laughs * But then we do [get stuff done], and we sound amazing.
Liv: As much as, like, yes, we’re best friends, yes, we’re funny and joking… we have a lot of intention. We have such clear artistic visions and intentions, and we also all work really hard.
Avery: Yeah, and Liv fucking journals!
Em: If you each could choose one cover for Victor to do, what would it be?
LJ: “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.”
Avery: We’ve been wanting to do “He Won’t Go,” by Adele.
Ella: Selfishly, “Hospital” by Madison Cunningham.
LJ: Some Amy Winehouse would be fun, too.
Liv: I feel like I want Victor to lock in on a really hard jazz fusion track.
Ella: Steely Dan.
Avery: Well, that’s going to be controversial…
Em: Anything you would say to listeners?
Avery: We love each other.
Liv: Journal, bro.
Maya: I always think it would be fun to see, for people who don’t know us as songwriters, who they would guess wrote which song!
LJ: Yeah… listen to the lyrics!