If you had to give someone a genre that your music fit into or describe your sound to one of these people that have never heard you before, how would you do that?

Fuzz: We’ve been trying to get this one down. The real trick is trying to condense it. We could give you the long answer, which would be alternative Gypsy swing pop folk, but what we’ve been trying to call it is maybe alt-gypsy swing. We hope that the alt explains that it’s got elements of indie rock. Maybe it’s like alt-country.

Carrie: Like, an alternative form of gypsy swing.

Fuzz: And that’s what it is really, but it has elements of folk and elements of pop and theater. Our poster says, “Gypsy-swinging, fire-breathing, serenading circus freaks.” We did that because while it kind of gives you a longer answer, it kind of colorizes it and gives it something to pull in the potential viewer. The “Gypsy-swinging, fire-breathing, serenading circus freaks” kind of says it all, but in a more colorful way, because it’s hard to pull it all in.

How do you pull in all these things that don’t necessarily seem like they would go together?

Fuzz: Well, the one thing that remains constant is that we’re always writing the same type of song through it, which are these sort of melodic, very harmonized vocals with very wispy and haunting lyrics and melodies that go to it. That is always gonna remain constant and we hope that gives it the common thread. The feels have to change, because you can’t be playing all swing all night. It’s gonna get a little monotonous, you know, so we’re trying to think of different ways to put other sounds in our sound. So far we’ve gotten that, like we have some things that have a bit of a waltz. You’ll see on the record, there’s “Bar Isole,” which kind of has a waltz to it that sounds sort of Eastern European, and “Angels in Cages” is kind of a waltz-y, circus-y sounding thing. So we bring that element into it so it’s not just swing. And we have another thing that’s tango that didn’t make it to the record, but maybe it’ll be on the next one or you can hear it at a show or something.

It’s been a work in progress. It started out simply as an acoustic duo, and then, “Oh we’ve got this violin player; this rhythmic part of our sound is cool, hey, let’s do Gypsy jazz, incorporate it in. We’ve got this cool bass player that can really bring some energy into it,” and, boom, there’s Caravan of Thieves. And since then it’s kind of grown into more theatrical, more extravagant song ideas and covers and show elements and who knows where it’s gonna go from there. We talked about expanding the group more in the future, adding more players.

Carrie: We have one that’s actually like a sometimes player – Bruce Martin from the Tom Tom Club plays accordion with us and spoons and things like that. We might have him play some junk percussion and build him more into the group.

Fuzz: He’s an all around musician, because he’s great at keyboards, which makes him a great accordion player, and he’s also a phenomenal percussionist. We don’t have a drummer and it could be something interesting to bring into the mix. We’re never gonna have a drum set, per se, but we like the idea of bringing pots and things to the show.

Carrie: There’s never gonna be congas or djembes. It’s always gonna be something that people make or that we find. People always bring things to shows, like we’ll play a wheelbarrow or whatever [Laughs].

Fuzz: Anything that you can bang on that makes a sound that’s maybe not a drum, and that’s maybe where the stomp part comes back in. It’s like we like the idea of decorating the stage with this junk and this and that and making that our percussion sound as opposed to a drum. I guess Tom Waits is another influence on this. He likes this sort of real open and kind junk yard-y sounding things on his records. The production and some of the percussion is kind of that sound of banging on pots and pans.

You’re really going for a stripped down approach, but that still makes it sound like a full and lively band.

Fuzz: Yeah. It’s full in its own way. I mean, I guess another reason we started this thing and wanted to get away from the rock band is Rolla and a lot of rock bands you hear sound very processed and produced and kind of like every bit of the edge gets sculpted away and also the soul, in turn, you know? We’d really like to make music that sounds the way it does because when we get together to play, kind of like the way music was in the beginning, like this is the emotion that we exude and this is the sound we exude as players and not as some studio trickery. So we really dodge any – we don’t use any effects – we make sure our sound live is just instruments being played and we don’t use delays and reverbs and choruses and anything like that. Everything is very straightforward; we want it to be the way the instruments were intended to sound. We use vintage instruments, the two of us anyway, and so we’re kind of just trying to get it to sound as real as possible. I feel like that’s the big thing that’s missing from a lot of today’s music, is it doesn’t sound real enough, you know?

It seems like to really get the band you have to go see the live show. What was the approach to making the album?

Carrie: We wanted to make an actual album and not just release singles like other people are doing online. If we wanted to make an album, we wanted to make it an album. We actually left off some stuff that was fully recorded. We were like, “Nope, this is not part of this group of songs.” So we wanted a concept, that’s why the artwork had to be the way it is. We wanted to make sure we got the lyrics. That was always a big thing growing up was having the lyrics to read along. We spent a lot of time on the lyrics. It’s not like they’re just thrown out there.

Fuzz: That’s the thing about the live show. It’s like sometimes our show can be a party vibe, but that’s usually what we’re not doing. Our most successful shows are actually the ones where it’s kind of a listening experience, where people might actually sit and listen. For me that’s a different experience from the Deep Banana stuff because that was more like a dance party. And one of the reasons I like this more is the material is more important and recognized. In the Deep Banana world and in the live setting it’s kind of like the lyrics are secondary, and it’s more about, “I just wanna get down; I wanna dance; I wanna party.” And I think this is a total party too, but it’s just a different kind of party where the material gets absorbed and appreciated more. And we’ve taken the time to do that. So the record is key because we want people to really get the material and understand it before they see the show.

Is there some sort of central theme running through the album? The songs all tell stories, but do they all tie in together?

Carrie: Sort of, but not really a central theme like The Decemberists have this theme album where it’s a love story or whatever. It’s not like that, but it’s like the album is a bunch of little stories. And “Ghostwriter” kind of just starts it off because it’s kind of like the ghost that came and visited us and told us all these crazy tales. So it’s the tales that came from the ghostwriter.

Fuzz: The idea was that we have the ghost story to start it all off and everything that follows from that point tells kind of a dark, but comical and satirical type of story. They’re all like that. We’ve been telling the story to people at the shows. We’ll say that this is where all the songs come from and we openly admit that we don’t have any ideas on our own and without this ghost we can’t do it. And that’s what the song is about. So that was kind of the idea behind it and I guess that is the central theme to the record, that the ideas are out of this world and they come from a ghost.

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