The music that the duo makes is defined by Jasmin as “old time, new time, country, blues and ragtime.” She elaborates, “We definitely are inspired by the music of the 1920's and 30's, the blues and ragtime.”
Ari says, “I feel that we're theatrical in a lot of ways.There's some songs that are almost acted out. There's a song we do called Faster and Slower that's about the two sides of the coin when you're driving. Sometimes you're a speed demon and other times you're just cruising around. We do the song from both points of view and each of us embodies one of those points of view.”
Their approach to writing songs varies from song to song. Jasmin points out, “Sometimes I'll have a melody and a couple of lines in my head. I'll show them to Ari because he's really good at conceptualizing my ideas. Other times Ari will have something pretty well fleshed out and I'll help him refine it or I'll offer a different perspective on the song, so we work pretty well together and we always listen to each other and try out what the other person is saying even if we don't like it at first.”
A good example of this collaborative process is outlined by Ari. He says, “There's a new song that we're working on that has a weird story behind it. Jas had written all the lyrics to a raunchier blues song. I was busking in the train stations here in Vancouver and making up this riff. I came home and Jas was like, ‘Hey! I got this song!’ and I was like, ‘Hey! I got this riff!’ and we put them together.”
The last album that the duo recorded is called On The Dusty Trail and revolved around themes of moving and traveling. Jasmine explains, “We really liked the image of pioneers on their chuckwagons and that image is actually on the cover. We had a couple of songs that are pioneer based.”
The full length album took them some time to put out. Jasmin says, “It came together but it was a slower process than some times. I think our new album is going to be much faster. It's all a learning curve and we definitely learned a lot from that last album.”
Ari adds, “Most of that album was live off the floor. There were very minimal overdubs. Jas had only started playing the bass about a month before. We’d wanted to use bass on three of the songs and we ended up using it on all of them.”
The main challenge that the duo faces lately is the lack of venues within Vancouver where they can perform. Jasmin says, “Vancouver is an awesome city to be in but it's becoming challenging because of the venues. Three or four of the venues have just shut down or stopped having music in the last year. Sometimes it's hard to convince people to come out.”
She counters this by saying, “There's a bit of an older crowd there and they're a bit more drawn towards our style of music. We're moving to Salmon Arm in December so hopefully that's going to help.”
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