A Tale of Two are an exciting new addition to the Americana scene. On Friday they released their debut, self-titled EP. Here, we interview the duo about the project and the evolution of their sound.
Hi, how are you? Tomorrow is the day you will release your debut project, how are you guys feeling?
I’m relieved. It’s been a long time coming, then we had this ridiculous pandemic. It’s been a minute, so we’re feeling relieved. It’s been difficult but it’s also been rewarding to go through this because I don’t know if we can go through anything more difficult now.
How long have you had these tracks in the works and had this project ready?
We were just discussing, we think if we can remember properly the album was actually finished in December of 2020, so we’ve been holding on to everything and not wanting to play anything but wanting to play it, you know, wanting to get that reaction, but not. It’s pretty much been in the can since December of 2020, but then you’re in the holiday season and you don’t want to release anything and then you’re in winter and nobody gives a crap. It’s tricky. We wanted to avoid the height of the pandemic and in the US, at least, in December to February things really spiked up again.
So, have you been able to get out and play live again?
Actually we’ve got a show this coming Sunday for the album release, and we’ve got a Bluebird Cafe date in October, but over the summer when things were looking on the bright side, we were touring up in Wisconsin and doing different shows. It was amazing because people were coming out and the masks were gone and we felt like we were finally back to life. It was another month later, then everything starts to get like this again, so we kind of stopped booking this year. I mean, we have the two big shows coming up and a few promotional showcases coming up. I think, at this point, what’s good is that venues have adapted to maintaining their shows and having vaccine or negative test requirements. I’m feeling good that they’re going to remain longer the way they are.
I think we’ve all learned to adapt.
Financially, I don’t think anybody can go through any of that again. I think it’s finally to the point where we have to keep moving and we have to adapt and of course over here everything is so political, with the the vaccine and everything else. We just want to get out and play live again.
This project is incredible, it’s such a strong debut, so congratulations. There’s just so many influences in your music and you hear the heritage of the Americana genre, the focus on the roots. How did you guys form and bring your separate influences together?
Stephanie: I’m all across the board. Of course, my undergrad was classical singing. Growing up, I was all over the place – my granny loved Elvis and Hank Senior, my dad loved the Rolling Stones and The Doors, my mom loved Kris Kristofferson. I feel like I’ve had this like mecca of music in just every aspect. I’ve never really wanted to just live in one genre, it’s more like ‘oh, what do I feel like today? What do I feel like five minutes from now or 10 minutes from now.’ When we sat down to write this collection of stuff, we had this song and that. For me, I enjoy that, for most artists, they have more of a formulaic kind where everything sounds the same. That’s not really where I gravitate towards, so I hope that maybe we can pull some of those people who are opening up a little bit and the people that like that kind of schizophrenic music – which is kind of what I call it – they’ll be right in there because they’re going to love the different aspects of where it can go.
Aaron: I think it wasn’t something we did on purpose, I think we just like to have a lot of different influences and we don’t want to write the same song twice. I think each song kind of takes you into a different mindset and feel, it just takes you into different scenes here and there and that’s why the storytelling has become such a critical aspect of our writing, all the songs on the record mean things, we want to create those stories and add as much imagery to them as possible. I think the music needs to be there to support it as well, like ‘Waiting For Ever After’ does that more than any song on the record or ‘Ain’t Nothin’ But A Fool’ is that Southern front porch blues thing.
Stephanie: ‘Stay With Me’ is more French. You would think, how does that fit on an album but what brings it together are the vocals and harmonies.
The harmonies are that gorgeous thread that runs through and the different intricacies of the stories that you create.
Stephanie: I hope so. You really have to find your audience, not everyone has the ability to sit and listen to a story anymore which baffles me. I’m all about lyrics, but you really have to find the audience that gravitates to that and wants to know the story and wants to follow that. At the same time, bringing in musical aspects that hopefully are a little more dynamic, so it doesn’t get too droning – that will then keep people interested as well, or having like a cool guitar lick or something.
Aaron: In our live show, we try to replicate as much energy as possible. I play a play drum suitcase live, which I think has only been featured in one video, visually. So, I actually play a suitcase drum with my heels, so I can stand up with a guitar.
Talking about that kind of storytelling, how do you guys think of the stories and how does it kind of come together in your brain? Are these things that you read about and adapt?
Stephanie: Well, I grew up in West Virginia, and West Virginia is huge on a lot of folklore, a lot of Appalachian tales and Civil War history and all that kind of darkness that comes out of that. Growing up, there were two books in the library that when you’re in elementary school, you always wanted to check out at Halloween – one was called the Tale Tale and it would basically be like in the town of this, this happened and she would set the scene and tell the story. Of course, you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’ve been there, I know what that is and then you go to that town, and you see where the ghost story is.’ I grew up loving that type of thing, that was very much a part of my childhood and then you get into the Civil War, and everything’s hallowed ground. There’s always this kind of darkness and then once I got older and I started reading Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, all of this kind of Southern Gothic stuff, there was such a world within that that I just didn’t want to leave. You weren’t living in the tragedy, but there was something about reading that and then being in the south and kind of having a lot of that heritage and that’s where I tend to come from. I just love everything about 20s, 30s prohibition – I say I was born far too late. That’s where my influence comes from and then I think he just has to live in my world.
Aaron: I think as well for me early on, I’ve had to write from more personal experiences and then almost make them fictional, which I do enjoy doing. There have been songs that I’ve been able to build from scratch – like Chicago Lightning. I mean that was kind of like an entire writing exercise, because we found that term somewhere and I’m like, ‘that’s a ridiculous term,’ what does that even mean? We decided to turn the whole song into 1920s slang, all these wonderful words that nobody uses anymore, like ‘Blind Pig’ and ‘ossify.’
It was just one of those songs that you thought ‘maybe somebody will listen to it and want to be able to crack the code of what that story is about’ and figure out what those words mean. It’s actually about a bootlegger, who’s not going to conform to prohibition. I wanted to make it upbeat and fun.
My final question was just about recording the project. You guys recorded the whole project live – how important was that? You can sense that energy of performing live…
Stephanie: Thank you. It’s very important to me because I feel that’s one of the things music is lacking today is ‘live.’ First of all, the ability to do it live and second of all the interest in doing it live. I have a huge vinyl collection and what I love about that is I listen to Nina Simone, especially, and you can hear her piano and vocal mistakes, even the timing mistakes and it makes you feel like you’re there. I was never able to see her live, obviously, but it makes you feel like wow, someone’s in my living room and I love that. I think that that’s something that we wanted to keep, that element of performing live. We want this to be a moment. Of course, within that, you have to be real and go ‘Okay, yeah, I wish that could have been a little better, or that was a little flat, or that could have been too much’. You have to be kind of true to what you’re about.
Aaron: It’s a fine line. I would say, I think somebody who’s really nailed that fine line is Norah Jones – those really early Norah Jones records, you can hear those slight moments where it’s like, she’s on the note, but then she’s just ever so slightly under and it sounds so nice. It doesn’t sound so periodic and it just adds to it and makes it sound bigger. When those notes are so perfect, each time it thins them out actually when you have stuff together. When you have those slight little variations, it just broadens and makes it sound so much more full and lush and human.
Well congratulations guys. Honestly, this project is so strong and hopefully you will go from strength to strength to strength and get you to the UK some point soon.
Well, we’re hoping to be over at some point in the next year. We would love to come and perform for you all and make that a touring spot to come back to because I love everything about your country and I love the music scene over there. It’s open, it’s broad. You have a lot of people that have a lot of different influences and I think that’s really important.
We can’t wait for that to happen. So, thank you so much and good luck.
