News (367)

• February 12, 2020
• Colleen Johnson
• 995
• 0

Looking for a great show to kick off your weekend? We’ve got you! In an era of us being the “Lonely Generation”, wunderkinds Echosmith kick off their long anticipated return to the road with Weathers and Jaydan Bartels tonight! 

Fresh off the release of their first album in seven years, the band is amped to be back on the road and are sure to bring an epic show to Paradise Rock Club this Friday! Tickets are $28 day of, $26 in advance and can be picked up here! Main support Weathers has quickly become a band to watch for us at NES and makes a perfect counterpart to the Echosmith team! 

I talked with vocalist Sydney Sierota in advance of the show who at the ripe age of 22 has with the band experienced a journey that many will never endure. Sierota gave me a sincere look into the wild journey the band has gone on and gave a serious breakdown of the new album!

To maybe jump right into it obviously, “Lonely Generation” is out now, but it had been about seven years between albums. When it came to the writing on this record, was it a collection of songs from over these past seven years or were some written super fresh for this record?

Sydney Sierota: Yeah, a few of these were written a couple years ago, but only a few of them actually. Even though we had been writing over all the years basically. Between coming home for touring off of our first album and to now, we wrote so many songs. At least fifty I’m sure we’ve written. And there were a lot of them that I loved so much that didn’t necessarily make it on the album. There were one or two that were written a couple years ago in our first stage of writing for this album. And those two songs were, “Everyone Cries” and “Love You Better”. And those two songs just feel so relevant to us, so relatable, so we wanted it to be very intentional. Letting them have their own place on this record.

But the rest of the songs pretty much were written kind of last minute. We wrote and recorded a lot of them early last year. Which was really cool because we had a lot of last minute additions that really helped shape the entire album. “Lonely Generation”, for example, the title track, really only came a couple months before the album was turned in. It just came very naturally and it was something that we wanted to talk about. Be intentional about opening the conversation about. And it ended up being the title track. It helped lead the way musically for the rest of the songs. So it’s really cool to see creatively how making an album can kind of unfold. If you plan on one thing or you thought it would look a certain way, creativity just kind of has its own path and you just have to follow it. So there were a lot of songs that were also last minute additions that helped shape the record to be what it is. A record that we love and we’re so proud of. And they didn’t even exist a year ago. So, it’s really exciting to have this album out. Especially after all that time that it took to make it but we’re so grateful that we took that time with it. It left room to write the songs that were written a couple years ago but also go through life experiences that we needed to experience in order to write all those songs that were last minute additions. Which was the majority of the record. And if we didn’t go through exactly what we did, and took the exact amount of time we did. I went through a lot of life changes, I got married.

I was going to say that, just a little bit of a life change!

Yeah it’s a pretty big one! I had to go thru all these different things to have the right inspiration to write certain songs. Each of us has to do that. All that said, there are some older songs on there, but most of them are new. Then there were some songs that were previously written and we wanted to rework them because we loved the chorus or we loved the verses or we wanted to dive in deeper, make it personal. Just stretch ourselves to be as vulnerable as possible and take lyrics that could apply to a lot of different situations. Actually take those away and replace those with some that were very specific  and very personal. So I’m really glad that we took the time to do that because it made the process even more relatable for me and I think it will be more relatable for fans. At least from what I’ve seen so far.

Then jumping ahead obviously, the songs are picking up really well with fans. Is there a song on this record that is surprising you, like that fans are really attached to? Maybe one that’s a personal favorite?

I mean it’s kind of hard to say. Because we’ve gotten a lot of messages so far about a couple of songs or a group of songs that  are really affecting people. And then you’ll get a whole bunch of messages that are about a totally different group of songs. It’s really cool that that’s happening. That means that all of the songs are relatable to someone and that honestly is the most rewarding thing to hear because honestly, in a selfish way, that’s really comforting for me to know that I’m not the only one going through it. To hear that people are literally connecting to every single song is so special. But I think one of the songs that’s really been ringing true for a lot of people that we’ve seen from Twitter dm’s or Instagram comments is “Everyone Cries”. And that really is comforting to me because like I said, we wrote that song a couple years ago.  We didn’t want to change a single lyric because each and every lyric is so deeply personal. Really important for all of us. So we’re really glad that we got it on the album and kept it there. Because it’s already helped so many people out and that’s honestly one of my favorites. Especially since we kind of last minute in the studio turned it into a duet with Noah. That made the song even more powerful because we have both the male and female perspective of everyone goes thru this. But knowing that you’re not alone is so essential to knowing that you can get thru it. I’m really, really grateful that people are having a lot of good responses to that one.

Perfect! Then just from looking at it, this is the first record you independently produced/released. So obviously you’re able to take your time with it. How do you think that really helped or even if it hindered the record making process for this record?

I would say it honestly helped us so much, to make this record with full creative control. Because we wanted to be as personable as we could on this album and be able to make the calls, make all the decisions. What songs are on the album, what order, what songs do we want to put out first. All those little decisions that usually someone else is making for you. And for an album that’s so personal, it feels so fitting that we released it on our own label. We got to make those really personal decisions. Even with what music videos we wanted to make first. Because that makes a difference. It’s really awesome to have that creative freedom in this stage of our lives. And I love it. Honestly. Of course it’s so much more work involved. One aspect of having your own label, there’s so much more work involved. Of course it’s been an amazing team that’s been killing it. We love them so much. But there is a lot more for us to decide. And be involved in deciding. Because there are a lot of elements in being in music that I didn’t even know about. And its been really cool to have that freedom. And I think it’s been very fitting that we were able to do it this way. And I would love to be able to do it again. Because it feels right. It’s something so personal so you want to be involved in every decision. Because it’s your life, it’s your career. It’s something really special and it’s a rare thing.

And it must be really nice to be able to do that. When you debuted so strong, it must have been so much for you guys when you were younger. To kind of be thrust on to it and now you’re able to take back your careers. Then I know you did something really special for this album. I was looking at some of the videos. You started it off with the video for “Lonely Generation”, which obviously makes sense being the title track. But kind of teasing the videos to come. How did this idea come about? You worked with Danny Drysdale who made these huge cinematic videos for The Killers. How did the idea come about to do a video for each track?

We had always kind of played with the idea of wanting to have videos for every single song. But it just seemed so impossible and such a big idea that we would only get to do if we were like Beyonce. Ever since we created our own label so long ago, we realized that we were able to actually do it. We just had to find the right director who would be willing to put in the hard work and be creative and very collaborative throughout the entire process and that’s when we found Danny. So, we could have done two or three music videos for the album, that’s pretty standard. But we just wanted to make a story for each and every song. Feels like it has so much of a story. Or creating that tension of a serious song with a playful video. It actually brings more attention to the actual message of the song.

 

So Danny was such a great partner in that. We came up with all the ideas together. He lead the charge on all of them of course because he’s the director but it was really cool because he was so open to all of our ideas. We said we wanted to make a cheesy workout video and he was so down. He was supportive and made it a million times cooler and made the set so fitting and so much of a timepiece. They came out so much better then we could have ever expected. We knew it was going to be at least great but we loved every single one of the videos. And they all turned out amazing because we had this amazing hard working team alongside with us. We randomly had the idea to do them all but Danny had the idea of making “Lonely Generation” potentially a teaser of the entire album. It came together really naturally. Really quick actually, we made all the videos in seven days. So, it was an intense process but we just had fun with it. We tried random ideas while we were on the set. And those random ideas would make the cut and make those videos even more special. But it had a great texture and I think they all work well together.

And then you’re about to bring this whole labor of love to the road when you start your tour next week with Weathers and Jaydan Bartels. Considering this is the first headlining tour for this album, how have you been curating the set? Are there maybe even songs that you’re retiring because you were playing those same songs for such a long time. How have you been approaching it?

It was a hard decision to decide the set list. We only have two albums. A long EP, some singles between, so I don’t know how people do it when they have like five albums or ten even. But it was hard for us to choose between songs. Because all of our songs are our babies and we got to see them grow up. See people connect to them in a really great way. But we can’t play every song, you don’t have a lot of time. And you want to make sure you’re creating a set that feels dynamic and has tons of layers and different moments that are unique. So you can’t have twelve upbeat songs and one slow one. It’s really hard to find a balance of playing songs from the first album and as many new songs as we possibly can. We toured so long on that first album so there were definitely songs that we made an executive decision on to not play for this tour. It doesn’t mean that there not ever going to be played again. Just for this tour, it feels like it’s been a while, so we wanted to play as many new songs as we could but still give them songs that they love. We wanted to find a good balance between that. I’m excited to see the responses, but I think we found a really great balance and we have a lot of special moments throughout the set that make it feel very dynamic and very unique. Each song has its own place and it’s really important to have that in a live setting. But it’s very hard to decide what songs get to be played and which songs don’t because we can’t play a three hour set. I mean we could but not with our demographic. I’m happy with what we decided and you never know, along the way we may whip out some songs just for fun, throw another old song in. But I’m really happy with our set. We actually for the first time played the whole set yesterday pretty much for the first time. It felt really good.

Like the first run through?

Yeah, which was very exciting. We played most of the songs for the very first time, figured them out, dial then in. It was a lot of work, but it felt really rewarding at the end of the day. To have these new songs and they felt really good live. We made this record with a live setting in mind, so we knew in the studio that we wanted to do songs that would feel really good and powerful and moving in the live setting. And its good to feel that that’s already true.

That must be so exciting now that you have it all hammered out. I’m sure it was a lot of work like you said to kind of have that fully flushed out and ready to go.

Totally.

Then maybe just to end it off, you’re about to start this tour, the record is still so new. Maybe focuses or goals for Echosmith in these next few months?

We have so many goals but our main goal for this year now that the record is out, we want to tour on this record as much as we can. We want to keep playing the songs live. We want to see them grow. We’ve been practicing them so much. And in practicing them, there have been songs I didn’t expect to make me cry and hit me so hard. Hit a soft spot that I didn’t even know was really there. And I think it’s something that could really help other people. Just to really know that they’re not alone is so huge. And I think that’s what this record really does. We want to do everything we can to be on the road and sharing it with everyone that we can.