We interview Sons of Daughters about their experience during the pandemic and their latest single ‘Drinks Well With Others,’ ahead of their performance as part of Destination Country’s ‘A Night In‘ with series.
Hi, guys. How are you both?
We’re good. How are you?
Yeah, not too bad. How have you managed to navigate the past year?
I mean there’s been a few low blows. We’ve just kind of rolled with it. There’s obviously been less shows, and so we’ve been diving more into the creative side of things, just looking at things we can do with our productions and our vocals and trying to make the most of it and look at the bright side.
I can imagine it’s been frustrating with all the momentum you had in the beginning of last year, supporting Tebey, but then nice to indulge the creative side?
Exactly, I mean it’s been a transition in so many different aspects of life, you know – on the social level, the educational level, the career level. Everything had its own transition, but I think musically, we managed to get ourselves on board. I was freaking out when it first happened and we started losing all our shows. As you mentioned, we were on that trajectory, we were at a really pivotal point in our career where things were starting to happen and last year was going to be the biggest year for us, which we’ve been working towards for so many years. We’re both in Nashville, but I moved back to Canada and it was the first time Jimmy and I’ve been apart for that long. You start to fear the distance and how are we going to do this but bless Zoom and finding these creative ways to keep content going. We’ve done little releases, singing music side by side and live videos and stuff. So we’re thankful for technology.
Honestly I don’t know what we’d have done 100 years ago… How long have you guys been in Nashville for, I know you both were originally from Canada?
Yeah we’re both from Vancouver, BC. I think we’ve been saying we’ve been here in Nashville for five years for five years (laughs), but we’ve been here roughly five or six years.
Do you think your music has evolved much since being there?
I think it’s just made us better? We’re always rediscovering our sound you know, our sound has evolved since we started eight years ago. I think Nashville just really helped us discover sound maybe quicker than we would have had we been here and learn to be a better songwriter. It’s just really focused on the craft of songwriting. I think also Nashville exposes you to more instrumentation – there are lots of people that play the guitar and piano still, but also the country banjo. You can easily start integrating that sound into your music – you start to create differently because you’re in a different place.
Sure, and going back, how did you guys actually end up becoming a duo and how did you get into country itself?
I mean, we met years ago, coming out of high school. We were both in separate bands in North Vancouver and we were just often finding ourselves on the same bill, so we kind of knew of each other. Later, we ran into each other, he walked into my work where I was bartending and we caught up. He recognised me and we were like, ‘hey, what have you been up to musically’, and we connected a lot on the love for music and some artists that we both loved and talked about writing. The first time we got together to write, I think we wrote two songs. We noticed right away the way our voices meshed and as we sang together, we’re like, ‘oh, that’s nice’. You know, that felt really good. We became close friends instantly and there was just a chemistry that we couldn’t ignore. We decided to go on a kind of West Coast Canadian tour together in a tiny little Yaris and we had a blast. Since then, it’s just been nonstop, it’s just one thing after another. We love so much of the same music, and it just came very naturally to us. I think it has to do with our storytelling songwriting, you know, that our approach to songwriting just fits country music. We started with a more heavy, kind of Southern swamp sound. It was more in the Civil Wars vein. We really admired them and we would do stuff like that, but we’re both of us kind of come from a place where we have more pop influence and listening to country radio, I just kind of always thought ‘man we can do that.’ And then we met – Chrystal and I, we just kind of naturally started to progress into a more radio friendly sound, but we still brought some of that old, kind of rough around the edges. parts to what we’re doing now.
It definitely has a cool edge to it. I always do think this country now is more about the songwriting and storytelling element rather than necessarily the sound as much because the genre is so broad. Now, I feel like it is more about the songwriting and putting that as the heart of the music, making it lyrically driven.
Even the music these days, if you really take the vocal out, you could hear very similar productions on pop radio, as you do on country. The lyric is the difference. It’s like a pop lyric doesn’t maybe have the same depth as a pop lyric is kind of cool and edgy, and makes you feel something, but sometimes I listen to my favorite pop songs and don’t even know what they’re talking about.
Drinks Well With Others is your latest single? Can you talk a little bit about that one and the creative process behind it?
Yeah of course, so we were in Zoom writing mode. We all just used to get into rooms on Music Row, you know, you go off at 10.30 and then you’d roll in to some old house that was filled with all these creative people. Then you go into a room and write your song and three, four hours come out, and then you’re done. You’re done for the day, essentially, that was what you’re required to do as a songwriter. Now, it’s the Zoom thing. So, we wrote ‘Drinks Well With Others’ on Zoom with a couple of people in Nashville. Kyle Slinger and Louis Sharp. As a kid, I remember we’d get report cards and they’d say things like ‘he plays well with others.’  So I just remember thinking that would be so funny to imagine just celebrating a guy that’s just a party animal, imagine his grave when you’re reading his eulogy like ‘he drank well’. We jumped off that idea, Chrystal added her thing and the other writers added their thing. When we were picking songs for release, we hung onto that one, and we wanted to release something fun.
I feel like everyone needs something a bit upbeat right now…
Yeah, if you look at some of our previous releases, they’re all quite nostalgic. We just thought, let’s just release a fun song that shows another side of ourselves. We didn’t want to release a song called drowning something bad, we don’t need that. Let’s do that when the pandemics over.
There’ll be a time and a place for that later on. What is next with you guys just in terms of releases? Are you going to be releasing any more music?Â
There’s definitely more music to come. We’ve been using this time, because we have been so restricted, to just re-explore our band – what do we want to be doing here? Where do we want this project to go? What do we want to be singing about? Just taking a step back… we’ve got some new ideas and new music coming. We’re going to be working towards packaging up a new EP eventually.
Very exciting! Well there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re so excited for live shows to come back and hopefully get you into the UK at some point soon.
We’re making plans as of today to come out.
We love to hear it. Well, thank you so much, guys for chatting with me today and looking forward to your show with Destination Country!
Thank you so much.
Thanks. Have a good day, guys.
