Chords for eTown Exclusive - On-stage Interview with Mandolin Orange

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_ Welcome you to Mandolin Orange.
Welcome to E-Town.
So glad you could stop by.
Thank you for having us.
It's a good sound.
North Carolina, home of Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson and many, many others.
Tony Rice.
Tony Rice, yeah.
If only we could all play like him.
Yeah.
Now were you, am I right that you guys met at a jam session?
You met at a kind of a picket party?
Yeah, some friends of ours used to have a, it was kind of their gig but they're sort of a jammy type of band.
So they turned it into a jam every Tuesday night and we both happened to show up and the rest is history.
I don't know if the rest is history.
We kind of need to know a little more. _
Afraid you'd say that.
So did you, you decided then that you could play music together and travel or did you decide it to date then?
What happened first?
It was kind of simultaneous actually.
I was dating someone else when I first met Emily and I called her up.
Well, it's North Carolina.
There you go.
_ I didn't try and date both of them at the same time.
Oh, you didn't?
Okay.
No, that's Utah actually.
I'm not _ touching that one. _
_ _ _ Anyhow, so there you are.
So you're a boyfriend and girlfriend.
You're playing music and then you are playing mostly traditional songs and then you discover that you can actually also write songs and make up songs.
Yeah, Andrew has always done a bunch of songwriting and my background is more in bluegrass, traditional bluegrass.
So when we started playing together we were playing a lot of those sort of traditional go-to bluegrass tunes.
But since he was writing stuff and I don't write anything, it was fun to play together and for me to get to write my own parts for original songs.
Not songs that had already been played by people before.
Did you share some musical sort of touchstones, some heroes?
Did you like _ Bill Monroe or did you like Norman and Nancy Blake or Skaggs and Rice?
Or were there records that you just love together?
A lot of all of those people you just named.
A few Hot Ross records as well. _
But yeah, Jose Gonzalez.
Jose Gonzalez, yes.
Yeah, it was kind of crazy.
At that jam we had never met each other.
She just comes walking up the steps with a fiddle on her back and she was immediately attracted to me.
And _ _ _ _ sat down right beside me and I tried to play it cool.
History is written by the winners, right?
_ But I think we sang like, Bury Me Beneath the Willow Tree, which is an uplifting number.
She was singing harmony to me and played this fiddle break and it was just like, wow, maybe I should keep sitting next to her.
And so we asked her what else she knew and she said, well, you name it, you just play it and I'll just play along.
And so we did.
We just sang a bunch of traditional numbers together that night and every single one of them seemed to go pretty seamlessly.
Well, it's also great that the trajectory of your performing together and recording together and making sort of a name for yourself as a duo and as a band is really going well, too.
Situations where you used to be the opening act, now you're playing there and you have opening acts opening for you.
And you know, you're able to tour and travel and record.
And, you know, I suspect this is something that is hard fought just because everybody has to work hard to get as far as you have.
But it it seems like it also comes naturally.
Yeah, I think I mean, listening to Jose's interview, I we feel so lucky every day that we get to do this.
It's definitely been hard fought.
You know, we've pushed for sort of everything.
But then things like this come through and we get to do E-Town with Jose Gonzalez and we just feel like the luckiest people.
_ Well, you know, we could still screw it up.
_ So could we. _ _ _
Yes.
So let's talk a little bit about those musical heroes that we touched on.
You know, there's the the contemporary versions, I guess, you know, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and the Milk Carton Kids and others.
The duo format is really kind of it's kind of been embraced in a new way.
It seems like it's definitely an affordable way to tour.
Yeah.
You know, just two people.
It's pretty great.
We happen to be able to share the same bed, too.
So it's like one hotel room.
Yeah, it's awesome. _
There's a cost saving excuse right there, honey.
Yeah.
Maybe we should share the same bed.
Yeah.
It's a lot cheaper.
_ I think I do think it.
Well, you go ahead, Emily.
I don't want to cut you off there.
Learn better. _ _ _
I was thinking about we were just talking to someone recently.
There's a Gillian Welch quote and I don't remember it, but it's something about the duo is like the musical form of a haiku haiku.
And and it's just, you know, you do have to be really locked in with the person that you're playing with, because there's not a lot of cushion there if something goes wrong.
But it also, I think, gives you a lot of freedom, a lot of freedom that you might have playing solo.
But it's more fun than playing by yourself.
Right.
And when you're playing to a loud room, you're in a bar, you're playing the Orange Peel or someplace in Asheville or some crazy wild place where everybody's standing up and drinking all night long.
And you come out and it's just you two with acoustic instruments and the crowd as well.
Do you do you ever feel like you you have a hard time controlling that kind of environment?
I think, yeah, less these days than it used to be now, I mean, because we can always just flip that switch and say, well, let's just play the loudest, fastest songs we know now and just have a good time, you know, for ourselves if nobody's listening.
But really, we've been very fortunate to have some respected crowds and good, good folks to come out and listen to us.
And it's nice to go out and talk to the fans.
And, you know, it seems like people are taking the tunes and they want to hear them when we we show up to play them.
So it's a good feeling.
It's great.
Well, you know, it's it's interesting hearing Jose talk about the the sort of indigenous music of Argentina and how that infused his take on what he's doing now.
And you guys are doing the same thing from North Carolina, grabbing that essence of the folk music and the folkloric tradition there and updating it, bringing it up to date and making it yours.
I just want to you know, again, I think it's I think it's great that you're able to see this arc.
Are you playing a bunch of festivals this summer?
Yeah, we're playing a [F] few.
[F#] OK, well, maybe we'll run into each other out [N] there and hope for grass world.
Meanwhile, thanks for coming by.
We're going to get back to more music.
Welcome back, if you would.
Mandolin Orange. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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