Eastmountainsouth – Interview

Eastmountainsouth Interview with peter adams

How is the road?

Great. We are just getting used to playing in front of more people than we are used to.

That is a good thing right?

It is a good thing. It is hard.

How has the reaction been?

The audiences seem to like it. So far the response has been really good.

How did the group come together?

The quickest way to tell the story is that Kat and I were in L.A. doing our own things and a mutual friend who knew what we both were writing was struck by how similar our writing was. So he got us together and we started writing and singing together and it just naturally evolved into a duo.

I know Robbie Robertson was a forced behind you being signed.

Yeah he heard some of our songs and offered us a deal. It happened really quickly.

Was it something you were looking for?

We were definitely seeking a deal. We were surprised on how quickly it happened, but we wanted a record deal.

Did it take time to get your voices to blend together?

It happened pretty quickly. It was there from the beginning for whatever reason they just blend. I think we have gotten a lot better than we were in the beginning and worked on a lot of harmony parts. I remember when we first started doing it we were both surprised how good it sounded. A lot of people responded to how we sounded together and that really triggered us to do it as a duo.

How long have the tracks on the album been around?

Some of them have been around since before and some were written together and some separately after we got together, but the majority was written together.

Is it easier/harder to write together?

We don’t usually sit in the same room and write. We take off into our own corner so we are rarely just sitting there. Sometimes we tweak things together and harmony parts together.

It seems like this music could fit into different genres and with different ages. Have you wondered where you’d fit in?

Yeah, our hope all along was that we wouldn’t be pigeonholed into one genre. Even the more traditional sounding stuff with its beats gives it something that takes it out of one genre.

With music over the last few years and big albums like O Brother album and Norah Jones coming out does it free you up to find new listeners who might not have been interested in Eastmountainsouth?

I think it is a good time for us to come out. I think a lot of acoustic and more organic music has more people listening. We aren’t acoustic, but we are more organic sounding. I hope we appeal to a larger audience. We didn’t try to come up with a certain style of music. This was just us.

My family is from Ohio and West Virginia and I knew about bluegrass before all this O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack mania, but many didn’t and it opened doors.

I think what was great about that soundtrack was that introduced this precious American music to millions of people who didn’t know it existed. It may help us sound more familiar.

What did you listen to growing up that got you to this point?

Well I was a classically trained pianist so I was listening to a lot of classical music. But I was also listening to a lot of the Beatles and lots of folk music. Kat grew up around a lot of Bluegrass, being from Virginia, she also listens to a lot of punk. She actually played in a punk band. We have very eclectic tastes.

You have a more traditional folk sound.

I think we are kind of mixing the modern singer/songwriter style of folk with a traditional spin on it and the old Appalachian mountain sound. We are trying to put a more modern and pop spin on something that is rooted in a traditional sound.

It will be interesting to see the demographics for your music. You could go from teens to senior citizens.

It’s too early to tell right now and playing to fans of Tracy Chapman, but it seems like we could have fans all over. I don’t think we’ll have a huge teenage following. (Laughs) But you never know. I think there are a lot of young people in there twenties and thirties who want to hear this stuff.

From twenty to eighty.

Yeah. My parents are in their sixties and they seem to like the music. We could offer senior citizen discounts on cds. (We both laugh)

AARP discounts.

(Laughs) Exactly.

+ Charlie Craine