By Rebecca Sirull, inside editor
Part Mumford and Sons, part Black Keys, Boston-based group Tales of Olde is hitting their hometown music scene with a combination of classic folk style and soulful vocals, infused with grungier hard-driving beats and electric riffs. Made up of Lucas Cortazio on lead vocals and guitar, Evelyn Cortazio on vocals, Ellen Story on fiddle, Drew Story on guitar, Jeff Kinsey on bass and Al Cleveland on drums, the band formed in early 2013. They graduated from playing for a few friends in a living room to performing at local venues like The Middle East and PA’s Lounge, before opening a sold-out show for The Ballroom Thieves at The Sinclair. They released their first single “This Place” in October 2013 and are now releasing their debut EP on May 28 with a performance at Great Scott. The Huntington News spoke with lead singer Lucas Cortazio about the band’s experiences, sound and what they hope to achieve.
Congrats on your first EP! How does it feel to have it completed?
Oh my gosh, it feels great. My wife and I have been doing music for a while now and, I mean, I started writing when I was maybe 14, 15. We had never recorded songs before, we chose to wait for the right people to get on this and it’s just unbelievable to complete this small, but big project for us. We’re getting a really good response to the first two singles that we put out there, so it feels really great.
How did you come together as a band?
My wife and I met Drew and Ellen Story, also married, about three years ago. We were playing at a church community in Boston, also Al Cleveland and Jeff Kinsey, we met them both there as well. So we started playing just in the church and then about a year ago we decided to start a project. We had lived here for a while, but they’re from all over the place. Drew’s from Texas, Ellen’s from Tennessee, Jeff is from California and Al is from Chicago.
Can you tell me about the process of writing and recording an album?
Actually, this one is very interesting. We write about stories. I mean our stories, stories that we see from people around us, stories that we get to be a part of, and this one, all the songs are pretty much about my relationship with my wife and the ups and downs that we’ve gone through in the last eight years of marriage, so it’s pretty personal. I wrote most of those songs last year, I think all of the five songs last year and when I write the songs, a lot of the times what I have to do is I bring skeletons to the group and then, because each of us are from a very different background musically, not just geographically, we kind of all input our own seasoning into that skeleton, which then the song is created, which is pretty cool. So we did that and the five songs, we got them down by maybe October or November of last year and then we started a PledgeMusic campaign to record the album, to record the EP. It was funded in January, so then we took off to New York for a couple of days, which I wouldn’t want that for anyone else, just two days in the studio to record five songs, not the smartest thing to do, but somehow we pulled it off. We recorded at Threshold studios down in New York City and the coolest thing about that studio is that it used to be Jeff Buckley’s old rehearsal space, so the vibe is just amazing. So we went down, recorded five songs, and then brought them back and Jeff Kinsey, our bass player, with the whole band, but mostly him, worked on the mixers. Then about a month and a half or two months ago they were done, so we sent them down to Nashville to be mastered by Richard Dodd, who’s been amazing as well. So it’s obviously a process and it’s a lot of hard work, but it’s been fun.
How would you describe your musical style?
We started out mostly as a folk band, and part of that was when we first started playing gigs last summer, our drummer, Al, was touring with Nikki Yanofsky, a jazz-pop artist from Canada, so because he wasn’t here we kind of were forced to be more of an acoustic band. We had influences like Johnny Cash and Bobby Dylan in the past, or right now Fleet Foxes or Mumford and Sons, the whole folk scene kind of being brought back into pop music, which is really cool. So the band started as a folk band and once Al came back, and he’s phenomenal on the drums, especially with him and Drew, our electric guitar player, they bring this indie-rock feel to the band. So we’ve kind of morphed into an indie-rock band that plays folk music from time to time, and actually we have a fiddle that always adds that folk-ness to what we do, but again it’s very hard to pinpoint. We have songs like “Ghost In My Head,” that’s very groovy, but it still has that folksy root in there. I guess if I had to pinpoint it, because again we are from a vastness of different backgrounds, so it’s like a melting pot of different styles and that’s who we are, but if you want to put a label on it, it would be like an indie-rock band with folk roots or something like that.
What do you hope to achieve by creating your music?
Like I said before, we do love stories and we believe that each and every one of us is telling a story, by the time we wake up, by the decisions that we make, how we treat people around us. Those are all stories. Some of them are very compelling, some of them are not so compelling. Some of them are great stories and some of them are tragic stories. We believe that that’s what makes us who we are, and not just our stories, but also the stories that were told before us, so history as a whole and the shaping of humanity. At the end of the day, we believe that some of the tragic stories being told, the dark stories, those can be redeeming somehow and we can live in a better world, we can live in a place. So we hope that through music, people can relate to what we’re talking about, and life is not easy, life is hard, and we don’t want to be a band that just plays lovey dove songs. We want to play that too, but we want to write songs about the tough times, about the times when we just give up, because we all go through those times, whether in romantic relationships or with our family. There’s just so much crap that happens in the world today and we believe in a better tomorrow, we believe in a better future. But, we believe also that all the crap that happens kind of shapes us into what we are. I think we’re growing up as a nation here. I think we’re growing up with humanity as a whole. I think things are looking up and I think part of that message is that, “hey, tomorrow can be better than what today is if we work with each other, if we love each other.”
What are some of your plans for the future?
So we’re releasing the EP on the 28th and thenreally the future is kind of uncertain for all of us. We would love to continue to do what we do and play music for every person that is willing to listen to us, just as long as people are willing to listen and they connect with the songs. So Drew is still in school right now, Jeff is still in school and we’re waiting for those guys to be done, they’ll be done this summer. The future can be here in Boston, we might stay here, we might go to Nashville, we might go to LA, Chicago, we don’t know. There are all sorts of possibilities out there right now and we’re just kind of playing the field. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what kind of response we get from the EP, which so far has been really great. We just hope to continue to play music all over the map and continue to meet new folks and to build new relationships with fans and people that appreciate what we do. If in some way we can make their day better, we can push them to be better, whatever it is that they do, and we hope that they can push us to be better at what we do, too.
Tickets are still available for the May 28 show, with openers Grey Season and Leo*Leo.Check out the band’s music here and find more info at their website or facebook page.
Photo courtesy TxO, Creative Commons.
