One of which we sometimes still play live.
Same couple of days. And then we had three or four other songs that didn’t make it on to the record, but that we were just playing. M: I think that was the first one, “White Blank Page.” That and “Awake My Soul” we did at the same time. When did you start writing the songs that are on Sigh no More? Me, Win and Ted will kind of vibe it out about whatever sounds best, whereas Ben will figure out who is gonna sing the sixth or whatever. Ben has a more technical approach to harmony. Ted’s got a really gravelly bluesy, type voice in a certain register, Winnie’s got more of a country voice in a different register, and then Ben’s above that. When we sat down, the four of us, and we all open our mouths and sing, to our ears, it just started working quite quickly. M: It doesn’t always work with groups of people. Yeah, It can be a weird, mystical thing to find people that you sing well with. But then finding the dudes that it actually sounds right with is quite a difficult thing. The vocals of Old Crow Medicine Show made me think, “Wow, if five dudes can sing together like that - amazing.” But yeah, having grown up listening to classic rock and even choir music, you are aware of the idea of harmony. It was a time when I was just getting quite seriously into country music and bluegrass. But it’s also conditioned in us from the music that we were listening to while we were growing up and around that time. Did those types of details come naturally when you all started playing together? And it’s not just dynamics that get bigger, it’s the harmonies. You’re use of those dynamics are obviously a bit more unpredictable than a typical rock band’s. The soft verse, loud chorus pattern within a song goes way back in rock and roll, but I was wondering if, in your case, it had been done on a conscious level. We hadn’t even started harmonizing during the time that I was writing that song, we went in and started singing it together and then we thought let’s make a thing in the vocals here, because it sounds sort of nice to us. So yeah, there wasn’t an idea to do like a sort of vocal harmony thing. We wrote in the studio and when we were rehearsing. But in that one, I had the verse and the chorus but then the “aaahhs” at the end, that become half the song really. So we’ll have a verse sometimes, and we’ll match it up with someone else’s chorus. M: I think it grew out of sitting in a room together, and really writing it together. How did these broad dynamic shifts develop in your songs? Did it come out of playing them live? Or were they there in the writing stages? The dynamics in your songs are really well defined, and cover a pretty broad range from super soft to very large or anthemic, across the span of a single song. I remember my parents let me just touch it to my lips. The Edradour Distillery in the Highlands and we brought back little miniatures. It’s weird how memories like that just stick out. I went to a distillery with my parents when I was probably 11 years old. I’d heard something like that, depending on which region its bottled in. W: It’s a different kind of sugar they use.
Marcus: Do you know apparently they use cane sugar for the bottles and corn syrup for the cans. Specifically cold, from the fridge, from a glass bottle. Not Coca Cola from the tap or from the can. Winston: I’ve got two personal favorites.
Like Glassnote label-mates Phoenix, the four band members knew each other long before they started making music together, and to me at least, it seems apparent in everything they do, from their writing process, live performances, to the way they chat with each other, etc. Winston especially, who had just finished playing football, managed to chat for roughly 45 minutes in shorts and a t shirt. Skip’s note: Special thanks to Marcus and Winston who sat outdoors in 30 degree weather to answer these questions. and in Europe, they also recently received two Grammy nominations for Best new Artist and Best Rock Song ( “Little Lion Man”). Adding to the momentum they have already generated in the U.S. tour supporting their debut album Sigh No More. Skip Matheny- currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle and former bartender in a retirement community - recently caught up with Marcus and Winston from Mumford & Sons in Knoxville, Tennessee, while the band was on their sold out U.S.
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