Northeastern’s director of media training made an unexpected foray into music during the pandemic that resulted in an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”
At Northeastern University, veteran journalist Joanna Weiss works behind the scenes, coaching faculty and staff on how to engage with the media.
At night and on weekends, Weiss takes center stage singing and playing lead guitar for The Lazy Susans — a rock band started by five working moms from Milton, Massachusetts, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Lazy Susans play at neighborhood porch festivals, perform at Boston area clubs and recently began recording some of their own music. Weiss and the band grabbed national attention when they appeared on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”
“We’re just a bunch of women who wanted to play rock music because we thought it would be fun. And that’s still what we are,” Weiss says.
How did Weiss, the university’s director of media training and strategic initiatives, end up playing for Clarkson in Los Angeles? And what’s the story behind her song “Sugar Drop”?
More on that later.
Weiss spent about 16 years at the Boston Globe as a reporter, editor and columnist. Her writing has appeared in Politico Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Pacific Standard, The Economist and other publications. She is a regular commentator on politics and culture on TV and radio.
In 2017, Weiss joined Northeastern, where she led Experience magazine before launching a media training program to help the university’s faculty and administration understand the way the press works and give them the tools to promote their research in the media more effectively.
“We teach people to practice brainstorming on the topics they could be experts on and ways to describe their projects and their research in a manner that will grab the attention of reporters and, by extension, the general public,” Weiss says.
The program’s success has been rewarding, she says, offering an opportunity to meet more faculty and discover the breadth of expertise and research happening across the university.
“There’s some magic in meeting people in person,” says Weiss, who appreciates that same in-person magic with her friends and Milton moms.
For years, Weiss says, they juggled careers, ran households and shuttled children to their various activities. The pandemic, she says, brought on some existential angst and nudged them toward something they often talked about — forming a band.
Weiss had played a little guitar, but some of her bandmates had no experience playing an instrument whatsoever.
“Our drummer had never picked up a drumstick, and our bass player had never played bass,” she says.
However, they wanted to make music. To keep themselves on track, they signed up to perform at a Milton Porchfest in September 2021.
“We were like, ‘OK, we set a deadline,’” she says. “We had to learn seven songs, and it was so much fun that we just kept going.”
The band’s name came from their approach to playing music together.
“We were going to take turns singing, maybe we’d swap instruments every once in a while,” she says. “My friend, Leila Mitchell, said, ‘Well, we should call ourselves the Lazy Susans, because we rotate.’”
The band plays rock and pop covers, from Blondie to Donna Summer, as well as original songs.
One of the songs Weiss wrote, “Sugar Drop,” was inspired by a word combination her husband, also a musician, spotted on a bag of grapes. (She now also writes and sings for his dance-pop band, Mini Split.)
“He said, ‘You should write a song with that name,’” she said on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” She added: “I write for a living and I’ve never written anything this dirty.”
The band caught the show’s attention after a February 2022 article Weiss wrote for Boston Magazine. At the time the show was putting together content for Mother’s Day on “moms doing cool things.”
“They called us and interviewed us all by Zoom one night and invited us to come out on the show [to Los Angeles],” Weiss says.
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The interesting — and funny — part of the story, she says, is what happened after the Zoom.
“The Zoom was on a Thursday and they invited us out to tape the following Wednesday,” Weiss says. “We initially all looked at our calendars to see what kind of work and carpool obligations we had until my friend, Heather Shaw, who plays bass, said, “What is wrong with you people? We’re going!”
The band taped a couple of segments with Clarkson and played music with the show’s band to close out the episode.
The TV appearance led to unexpected opportunities, including interest from Hollywood, Weiss says. Now The Lazy Susans have a film rights deal in the works.
“Which is kind of crazy, because this is not why we did this,” Weiss says.