From traveling the world to settling in New York City, vocalist, guitarist and composer Kyle Evans has found a way to create his unique blend of pop-folk and Americana no matter where he’s set foot. Echo Bloom is currently set to release Red later this year, the second album in what is to be a trilogy series from the six-piece group led by Evans.
Americana Lady: Writing for a series where each album has a distinct genre really demonstrates your interest in a large spectrum of music. When did this exposure to a variety of music first begin?
Kyle Evans: I think geography influences all of us more than we probably think it does. I grew up in Pensacola, FL, which is a relatively small military town on the Gulf Coast that’s beautiful, but not very diverse. So the cut of music I got growing up was dependent on the radio, which was a pretty even split between early Beach Boys and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Everything kind of got blown open for me by a science teacher I had in High School. His classroom was in a tiled section of the school, and he would crank Pink Floyd between classes, which would echo down the halls and off the lockers. I remember the first time I heard it going into his classroom, sitting down and listening to “Us and Them”, and realizing that there was this whole world out there that I had to explore. So I just started buying things – I had a shitty job as a busboy at a Greek restaurant, and I’d take the tips I got and go to the music store and buy CDs by people I’d heard of. I remember literally going to the store and picking up “Times They Are A-Changin” and thinking, “I’ve heard of Bob Dylan — wonder if I like him.” And whenever I would find somebody I liked I would get everything I could. I’d try to create as deep of a catalog of artists as I could. So it would start with something like “Blood on the Tracks” and descend as deep as “Under the Red Sky”.
With the upcoming release of your album Red, how did the writing and recording process differ from the premiere release, Blue, in your trilogy series?
From a writing perspective, 90% of the songs written for the trilogy (Blue, Red, and Green) were done before I started recording the first record Blue. So while I’m always tweaking and polishing things, the majority of the nuts and bolts songwriting was done before we really got going recording any of it.
From a recording perspective, the process was quite different. Blue has almost no drums on it, so every song started in my home studio with acoustic guitar and banjo, and I would take things into the studio and layer on strings, vocals, and keyboards. And every piece was scored out, so it was really this siloed thing – I’d get the string players to just record to a simple piano track, and then the whole thing would be collaged together in the end. With Red there was a radically different approach. I’m much more interested now in the speed and power you get working with a live band. So I recorded Red in big sweeps. Everything started with the core rhythm section (drums, bass, guitars) all recorded live. I’d take that home to edit and manipulate, and then that would provide the foundation of the next round of recording. Some of the songs ended up sounding quite a bit different than I’d initially thought they would. The approach kind of let me follow the muse a little more.
Was becoming a professional musician something you strived for from a young age, or discovered later in life.
I don’t know if I ever really want to be a professional musician, because I feel like that label is a little limiting. I view my work as a centralized artistic core of thought, and the spokes off of that extend into music and the visual arts – into prose and into technology. If you look at the question from that angle, I’ve always been aware that flame has been burning inside of me.
Over the years you have certainly called a multitude of places home – Los Angeles, Berlin, NYC, just to name a few. How has the experience in each new city affected your songwriting?
I think every place is awesome, and if you think a place sucks it’s likely not the fault of the geography, but more of you. That’s why I always get so worked up when people trash L.A. — you can have so much fun in Los Angeles. The Museum of Jurassic Technology! Silver Lake! You can really be enriched anywhere. For me, I find the geography of a place doesn’t really make itself known until well after you’ve left. So I left Los Angeles and about a year later started finding all of these songs about L.A. popping out. But in terms of affecting my songwriting, the city that had the greatest effect was Berlin, primarily because I was just able to focus for such an extended period of time. In six weeks I was able to come up with stuff for three albums.
Has there been a favorite among any of these cities? Any you would consider moving to again?
I have a hard time imagining not living in New York right now, because it seems like everyone else is here. It’s really easy to make collaborations and there’s a similarly entrepreneurial brand of creativity, which seems unique to New York out of all of the places I’ve lived. I do have such fond memories of Berlin though, and the proximity to other cultures that you get in Western Europe is pretty stunning. Though I guess if I want that kind of thing, all I have to do is take the train to Queens.
Where did the inspiration to create the three-part album series originate? Is there an overarching story or message to hear in your trilogy?
Some of my favorite projects are the biggest in scope – stuff like Tommy, The White Album, 69 Love Songs, and Southern Rock Opera. There’s a mixture of ambition and execution on projects of that scale that I admire. So the inspiration for the series really was just to paint on a really large canvas, so to say. In terms of an overarching message, I kind of view the trilogy as looking at a Seurat painting – up close you’ve got individual dots – my words and notes. Step back a couple paces and you get a tree or a lady with a parasol – my songs. A few paces further still you see the painting snap into focus. Every stitch is integral to the strength of the whole.
The correlation between musical styles and colors is often seen when describing moods music can create in a listener or writer. Was this something that came into play when naming the albums in this series?
The names for the albums are, to me, consistent with my emotional experience of the album. Blue has lots of songs that kind of blur together – lots of water and nature imagery – it’s a much more pastoral record. Red is a lot angrier. There are songs with violence and fire in them. A more Old Testament view of the world.
What can we expect from Echo Bloom in the near future?
Lots! We’ll have Red out soon, then we’ll be playing a bunch of shows and amping up our live show with some electronics and visuals. I’ve got a bunch of songs that didn’t make the cut for Red that I might pick up and finish (about 7 songs, some of which I think are pretty good). We’ll be touring Western Europe in the late Fall, and hopefully getting some time in the studio before to lay down a solid chunk of Green (which is already written). It’s going to be a great year.
For more info: http://www.echobloom.com
