For episode 86 of the podcast, we interview Grammy nominated husband-wife duo Thompson Square on their new album ‘Masterpiece,’ their UK trip and travelling with their son and The Long Road festival, before supporting Eric Paslay at Bush Hall.
How was The Long Road for you guys? I managed to catch you on the Interstate stage and your set was just incredible…
Shawna: It was really moving, there was an energy there. Almost like The Opry, it was just this crazy energy.
Kiefer: It was really, really special. We talked about it later, it was one of the most potent acoustic performances we’ve ever had, the audiences here were just so lasered in.
You don’t want people not to be focussed on you and your music?
Shawna: It happens a lot, especially in the States. You’re playing in a bar or something like that and people tend to get rowdy. It’s a whole different thing.
Kiefer: … It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. It was really lovely to witness and be present to that moment.
This is your first time in the UK and you’ve had the chance to bring over your son, Cooper. Has it been a really special trip sharing that with him.
Shawna: Oh yeah, we’re hoping next time we come back – and we are coming back – we’ll have days in between that we can just enjoy.
Kiefer: Yeah we won’t do this again. 10 shows in 12 days is too much. It’s been so much fun but we’ve come all this way for the first time and you don’t have the chance to do anything.
Shawna: Yeah we landed in Amsterdam and just went straight into a gig, so yeah it’s been pretty tough.
It’s been a hot minute, since your last record, going into this one did it feel like a very different process. Now, you’re parents, but personally and professionally, the industry must have changed quite a bit with the introduction of streaming and social media…
Kiefer: I mean somewhat. The only thing that we haven’t been involved with really was radio single, just because our label kind of stopped working with us. Everything else, we’ve been touring as much as we can, doing the social media bit, but over the span of our career it’s completely changed. Yeah, we took a couple of months off for Cooper, it seems like a lot longer because you didn’t hear any singles on the radio, so that was a tough blow for us personally and professionally just from our state of mind. It was extremely difficult to have to go through that, but we’ve known that a million artists go through that.
It’s a different ball game for independent artists I guess…
Kiefer: Well we’ve signed another deal. This album allowed us to find a really great home. It’s a bittersweet situation, but either you stand up and keep walking or you sit down and go away.
It must have been nice to lean on each other in those times.
Kiefer: Yeah because we both have our ups and downs and it’s nice to have someone there to enjoy in the reward of everything, but also to keep going. You do sometimes feel like you want to quit, but there’s only been a couple of those moments but it hasn’t been because of the music or the radio, it’s just the business part of it. The worst part of the music business is the music business, the business part of it.
Shawna: I will say that this tour, being here in Europe, has really been good for our soul, our musical soul. It really has been a great thing.
What was the process going into this record, what did you kind of want to give to your fans and audience?
Kiefer: It wasn’t intentional, no it was organic.
Shawna: The cool thing about this album is that it was the very first album we’ve made all the decisions on, down to the musicians, the songs that we cut, the artwork.
That must be kind of refreshing in terms of thinking this is completely us…
Kiefer: We got to be artists.
Shawna: It was very liberating.
Kiefer: It was what we wanted to do from top to bottom.
You got to choose the first single I guess.
Kiefer: Yes and no. We didn’t want to go into this new deal, saying this is how it has to be, so we said here’s your songs. We had Spotify – John Marks is a very dear friend of ours – he came over to the house and said whatever you want to give me, I love all of this. So, we had a lot of support from XM and radio, but we wanted to go into this new deal with open eyes and open minds, we said what do you guys want. They leaned toward one thing and we leaned toward another but we all kind of met in the middle. We sent it out there, we did some research and tried to be smart about it and ‘Masterpiece’ came back the very significant favourite. I’m really happy about that, just because I’m a sap, I’m emotional and all that.
Well my favourite song from the album is ‘Breakers,’ and that’s a super emotional song…
Kiefer: You guys have been crushing on that song! Everyone’s asking for it…
Shawna: You’re more emotional here.
Kiefer: Well I think it’s because you’re listening to the lyrics.
What is the inspiration behind that song?
Shawna: Well Kiefer and I wrote that with Marty Dodson and Patrick Droney down in Alabama. Marty had gone through a bad breakup and I had been dealing with some relationship issues within my family that was some really hard stuff to deal with…
Kiefer: And I had been trying to get her to sing about it for a long time, so I was like we need to talk about this again and started coming up with some lines. Marty was kind of relating to it.
Shawna: It was cool because it had these two different perspectives and then today we were talking about it with someone else and they thought it was maybe about addiction. I thought that was so cool that someone found a new perspective to it.
Kiefer: The mystery and the ambiguity of the song is what’s so awesome, it allows people from different walks of life to adapt the lyrics to their life. This guy was talking about addiction, and of course you could be talking about heroin, or cocaine or whatever…
The beauty of ambiguity in music.
The new UK single is ‘Millionaires.’ Can you talk a bit about that one?
Shawna: Pure fun. Nathan Chapman, our producer, actually brought that one to us and it had been passed along through a few other bands and we’re thankful that they passed on it, because we thought we’ll go for that. So that’s one of the songs that we didn’t write, but the first time we heard it we fell in love with it.
Kiefer: It appeared on an episode of ‘The Ranch’ so that was neat. It’s very difficult to find tempo songs that fit Thompson Square’s profile, so it was good to have one that wasn’t all lovey- dovey. This was a really cool way to have a tempo summer party song.
I guess what’s next up for the rest of the year and going into 2020.
Kiefer: Coming back here is top of the list, and then getting her project out…
Shawna: I’m working on a solo traditional country record, it’s like 60s/70s country.
Does it feel like a change of pace?
Shawna: Honestly no, it’s where my heart is. So we’ll be finishing that and then Kiefer’s working on his comedy and there’s a few other kids books that we’ve got to finish…
Complete the sentence…
Music is… life.
Country music is… heart.
Thompson Square are…love.
Follow Thompson Square on their site.
