Nashville indie pop-rock band Daniel Ellsworth & the Great Lakes played two shows at Rhythm N’ Blooms this weekend, and between their own shows and watching their (many) friends from Nashville perform as well, the four band members took some of their time to talk with The Daily Beacon about matching outfits, being an “Americana” band and what’s next.
Daily Beacon: When did you guys get in town?
Daniel Ellsworth: “We got into town yesterday.”
DB: Did you go to any of the festival yesterday?
DE: “Yeah.”
Marshall Skinner: “Oh yeah. A lot of it.”
DE: “A lot of it. We were in Birmingham on Thursday, and so we came up yesterday, just a day early, to see Delta Spirit. That was the main. Then, we had a bunch of friends playing from Nashville, so we went to *repeat repeat, Alanna Royale, Apache Relay, The Wans.”
DB: Do you guys play in Knoxville very often?
DE: “Not a ton. We get here usually, we usually get here once a year.”
DB: What are you guys looking forward to today? I know you’re playing your first show today.
DE: “I’m trying to remember even what else is even going on today.”
Joel Wren: “I’m really looking forward to playing earlier and then having the rest of the time to hang out and wander around and see some other people and just experience the festival like we did last night. It was awesome.”
DB: Today you guys play at the Standard and tomorrow at the Pilot Light. Are you planning on making those two shows different in any way?
DE: “Oh yeah. We’ll play different songs.”
JW: “That’s news to me.”
DE: “Nothing drastically different. I might switch shirts. What are we gonna do, T?”
Timon Lance: “”We’ll play different songs, and Saturday’s going to rock harder because it’s easier to rock on Saturdays than it is Sundays.”
DE/JW: (laughs)
TL: “Tomorrow’s going to be the family show.”
JW: “Today’s for the honeymooners, the weekenders.”
TL: “Tomorrow’s like the long sleeve show. No skin. And then tonight’s like, one of us might not have underwear on. Not to paint anything too graphic.”
DB: What makes you guys different from other artists playing Rhythm N’ Blooms?
TL: “We accidentally coordinate outfits—more often than we’d like to admit.”
MS: “I’m not as familiar with as many of the artists that are playing as I probably should be, but of the ones that I do know, we don’t sound like any of them.”
DE: “We’re a little more indie rock stuff than I think some of the other stuff–or more like indie pop. I don’t know. The Wans are indie rock, but they’re like grunge.”
MS: “Delta Spirit’s more like an Americana vibe.”
DE: “We probably identify with that band the most maybe. In terms of sound probably.”
MS: “But not in terms of songwriting at all.”
DB: Since Rhythm N’ Blooms is supposed to be, technically, an Americana festival, how do you fit in with the overall vibe of Rhythm N’ Blooms?
DE: “It seems like, this year especially–this is our first year playing, but this year especially, it sounds like there’s a lot of stuff that would not fall in the Americana category. It depends on how broad you want to get with that. It gets fairly broad, but it seems like that is maybe still the focus of it. With a lot of the headliners.”
JW: “I’d say we don’t–we don’t have a computer on stage … Maybe how we fit into a folk or Americana fest–we play our instruments. No offense to anyone. Just all of the sound that comes out is performed by us on stage.”
DB: What are you guys working on after Rhythm N’ Blooms?
DE: “We’re playing a big festival in Nashville next weekend called Rites of Spring, which should be cool.”
TL: “We’re working on a bunch of new music, too.”
JW: “We’re writing a lot right now.”
TL: “It probably won’t be available anytime soon, but that’s where all of our energy is going after Rites of Spring. Just feel like we’ve been writing a little bit, feels like the music is taking on a new character, and it feels good to be party to that change.”
DB: How did you guys decide on your sound when you were creating?
JW: “I don’t know if we decided on it … I think our sound just kind of came. We weren’t setting out to do anything in particular.”
TL: “The sound of ‘Kid Tiger’ is drastically different than ‘Civilized Man.’ We picked Vance Powell (to produce ‘Kid Tiger’) because he has big drums, big guitars.”
JW: “Big guy, big beard.”
TL: “The whole like big rock n’ roll, live-to-tape sound. The White Stripes, Jack White. We picked him because he does that. I think everything else just happened the only way it could.”
DE: “I think in general, less talking about it stylistically, with that record, we set out to make a record that sounded like a live rock band, but figuring out how could we incorporate modern elements into it to bridge that gap between that live rock band sound and some of the more modern stuff that we all listen to.”
TL: “Most of our favorite records were live in-studio, and we wanted to do that. We thought we were up to the task, and we like the record.”
DB: What do you guys like about being in Nashville?
DE: “The people.”
JW: “The food. The food’s good.”
DE: “The music scene is great.”
JW: “It’s a lot cheaper than New York or Los Angeles.”
TL: “It’s cool being a rock band there. It’s not like being in music way out on the margins or anything like people think it is because of stupid shows like ‘Nashville,’ or people think it’s just country. It’s there, but that’s not true. It’s grown a lot. It’s been cool to play a small part in that, like the growth of the non-country scene. There are plenty of people in the industry there that are good people to know on the business side of things.”
