While staying in Chapel Hill over the weekend of Troika Music Festival, held in Durham on November 4-6, I got to sit down at the studio with Birds & Arrows as they were getting some recording in and do a Bottom String Session with them. Birds & Arrows opened up the Troika Music Festival to a packed crowd despite the cold, wet weather in Durham on November 4 and left the crowd thoroughly pleased.
We talked a bit about the upcoming Stroke It, Noel performance at the Cat's Cradle, their progress on a new record, and the Musical Chairs Compilation as well.
Birds & Arrows played two songs for me outside of the studio, a new on called Beyond The Pale and Time Alone. These videos can be found at the bottom of the page and also on our Youtube channel. The interview can be found below:
TBS:
I saw the you're going to be involved with the Stroke It, Noel show at The Cat's Cradle. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got involved with that?
Josh:
Yeah, that's me. So I'm an uhm...I don't know how to put it.
Pete:
A cello whore?
Josh:
Uhm...yeah Pete probably said that most appropriately, haha. But I do a lot of recording for a lot of different groups, so Chris Stamey, who is organizing that, just sort of asked me to do this. He actually asked me to do it a while ago, there's a little backstory to this. We were going to go to South by Southwest and play there but I was trying to decide if I should go because I wasn't going to be able to fit in the Element. So I was basically going to have to fly out there with my cello. It was back in the Spring and Chris Stamey was like, "We're going to do this Alex Chilton thing. We've got Alex Chilton on board, and Mike Mills and a lot of other big names on board. So I'm all excited, this is going to be super cool. We're going to do shows at The Cat's Cradle, we're going to do New York, and then we were going to do L.A. So I was like okay! I got this really nice flight case for my cello, assuming that it would pay for itself with these awesome gigs. So then I flew out to South by Southwest and played a lot of fun shows, but the day I got there Alex Chilton died.
Andrea:
Yeah, that was awful! We heard about it and were like, "What? Really?" Then Josh was like, "I guess all of those shows are going to be cancelled."
Josh:
Yeah, this is kind of like a consolation prize, but it's also pretty cool. They're getting a lot of great people involved.
Andrea:
And now it's going to be even cooler because it's a tribute now. The energy involved with that show is going to be crazy, because that was a big deal to a lot of people.
Josh:
I'm regretting saying it was a consolation prize. I was just like "ooh I'm gonna be a rockstar!" But we get to play The Cat's Cradle and that's awesome. The first rehearsal is actually tomorrow, so it'll be really cool. I'm really looking forward to it because it's something I've never done before. It'll be a 70's style orchestra with the whole orchestra on stage and a regular band. I've just never been in anything like this.
TBS:
So how did it feel being a part of the opening celebrations of Troika?
Pete:
It was cool, we were a bit worried at first because the weather was crappy, but once we got in there and got started there was well over 100 people there during our set and we were kind of surprised by the turnout, so we were really siked about that. Josh even pointed out that at the very last song they were all very silent and attentive. They were really listening to us and that's just awesome.
TBS:
What's been your favorite venue to play in North Carolina?
Pete:
I like 506 a lot.
Andrea:
As far as sound goes I'd say 506 and The Grey Eagle. But you [Josh], weren't there for that show! I was just blown away with the sound at The Grey Eagle. Locally though I'd say the 506.
Pete:
And actually Kemp has done a couple of outdoor shows that we've done.
Josh:
Any show we've done with Kemp.
Andrea:
Yeah, he mainly does sound for the Arts Center and some Cradle stuff, but whenever we play anything affiliated with the Arts Center or any outdoor venues he does sound and it always sounds really good.
TBS:
What's your favorite band to play with around the area?
Pete:
What's weird is that we really enjoy playing with Gray Young even though our sounds are completely different.
Andrea:
That's just because they're our buds though. We always have the craziest most fun time when we play with those guys for sure. We really like playing with Free Electric State too, we have a lot of fun with them.
Josh:
I feel like the more different the band is, the more fun it is. It just ends up being such a crazy night because anything is possible. Like the time we played with Cantwell, Gomez, and Jordan.
Andrea:
Oh yeah, we have a lot of fun with those guys. There's a lot though, but those are the ones that stand out right now.
TBS:
So I see you guys are doing a bit of recording. What's going on with the record?
Andrea:
We just recorded about a week with Nick Peterson at Track and Field around two weeks ago. That was a lot of good basic tracks, we got a lot of the drums we did on tape. [Yelling is heard from the house]. And that's James getting really frustrated with recording right now, haha. Today we're with James Wallace, Nick Jaeger, and Jeff Crawford. We're doing some new songs, one of the songs we played for you. It's going really well, except it didn't sound it for James right now. Things are good though. We hope to have the record mixed and mastered by the end of December and released in early Spring of next year.
TBS:
You guys are on the Musical Chairs Compilation. Tell me a little bit about getting involved with that and how it was put together.
Andrea:
That was great! Erica, who works for Nightsound, we've known for a while. With the Brewery connection, Pete and I both work at the Carolina Brewery. She came to us with the idea and she wanted to get a bunch of bands on board. She didn't know who she could get on board but I thought it sounded great. Covering other local bands sounds super fun, especially the more different we could get the better. I kept trying to put a bug in her ear and tell her, "if we could get something really heavy and different from us that'd be great". But she just said, "I've gotta tell you, we're just drawing them out of a hat. We're not letting the bands choose and we don't want to choose, it's just too hard. So we got all of these bands involved and then out of the hat we drew SWASO. It was perfect, because we could have never pulled it off the way he plays it so we told him that we, "folked up" his song.
Pete:
Yeah, we "folked it up" alright.
Andrea:
But it was good. It was a really fun experience recording at Night Sound too, they had a great tape machine and it was really pro and fun. It was just a great day.
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