The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/27337
Continued from Page 10 OS: Now that we’re getting into deep relationships, I want to bring this back to storytelling, to the idea of songs as narratives. It seems like it’s something you guys have taken seriously ever since you started, so is it always on your mind when you’re writing new material? CC: Yeah, totally. Telling the story is what we’re always thinking about when we’re writing songs. OS: But what is it like to take that folk mentality into the 21st century? The environment is so different, so I guess the stories would have to be too, right? CC: That’s true. I mean, we want to write about now. This is the time we’re living in. I feel like a lot of people who are doing the Americana thing now tend to write about stuff that’s hard to relate to nowadays, you know? OS: So you’re not just writing it with the idea of making it “folk” mu- sic. CC: Nah, we don’t personally try to write like … oh, this is gonna be more of a folky song, this is gonna be more of an electronic song ... we just kind of take whatever the story is and go with that. There aren’t a whole lot of times when we all just sit down together to write a song. Usually someone just comes in with an idea, and a lot of times it’s not fully realized, you know? And we kind of pick it up together and all try to bring what we can to it. A lot of the songs on the new album were just ideas, and you can go any number of ways with them. We can really do whatever we want with them. OS: A lot of young people these days tend to jump into this idea of a retro folk-indie niche, for better or worse. And there’s a certain kind of “hipster” culture that grows around that. As you write and record, do you ever think about that element of your fan base, and does it ever frustrate you to be labeled or constrained by the sense of that idiom? CC: Yeah, no one wants to be classified — especially in that genre, which is … yeah, no one likes that. When we show up to a gig and see the newspaper that says we’re “folk-country revivalists” with cowboy hats, blah blah blah … that’s not really us. I understand that genres exist for a reason, but I mean, we’re still trying to figure out what we are, and it’s not so easy to just put yourself in a category like that. OS: Does that feeling force you to keep progressing? How far can you really take folk music these days? CC: Yeah, I mean, how many albums can you really make in the same kind of vein? We get restless, we want to try new stuff out. Or else it would just be boring. OS: Do you get the sense that some of your fans might be alienated by your newer sound on “Celebration, Florida,” that it won’t have enough “roots” in it? CC: We’ve already experienced that, and I think we might experience it more when the album comes out. We had a drum machine onstage during the last tour, and some people were just like, “What’s up with that?” But does it make me want to, like, go back? No, it really doesn’t. You’ve gotta shake the bandwagon up a little bit. I was 19 when I started with this band, and now I’m 23 — things change, people change. It’s funny that some people are still so temperamental about the developments of a band’s sound, but in the end, we’re just telling stories. _ Sam Spokony March 17, 2011 O-Town Scene 11 On the Radio Irish musicians Contributed The Pogues is one of the bands that will be featured on WUOW’s post-St. Patrick’s Day version of Friday Night Featured Artist Each week, SUNY Oneonta-based NPR affiliate WUOW features a worthy musician in its Friday Night Featured Artist radio program from 8 to 9 p.m. at 104.7 FM in Oneonta and online at wuow.org. This week, the show will be Irish themed as a post-St Patrick’s Day party. The show will include music by The Elders, The Pogues, The Frames and Cherish the Ladies. The night will end with the playing of favorite Irish drinking song “Mr. Valentine’s Dead.” www.otownscene.com