What made you decide to bring on a harpist on The Barr Brothers album?

Brad: It wasn’t as much of a decision as it was a destiny. Sarah [Page] lived next door to me and I could hear this woman practicing harp next door to me and I used to just listen to all these beautiful melodies come through the wall and wondered who she was—I assumed it was a woman because I don’t know too many guys that play harp. One day I hear her playing this song and I grabbed my guitar and I learned the song and went over and knocked on her door and played it for her, and she had no idea what it was. She didn’t recognize it. So I ended up continuing what I was writing because I figured if she didn’t claim it, I’ll keep writing it. So I wrote it and I taught it to her and we started performing that, and that just evolved into writing more songs for the harp. At that point it wasn’t called The Barr Brothers. It wasn’t really called anything. We just started playing together and performing and then started recording. Next thing I know we had about 10 or 15 songs and Sarah was integral on all of them. It was just a revelation of what was possible with the harp.

Are you renting the harp at each stop on tour or do you bring it with you on tour?

Brad: The last tour we did we had to rent the harp in every city, which seems like it was a big deal but it was pretty easy. We ended up with all these different harps with all these different stories. We used the harp that was on the soundtrack of The Predator movie, that was awesome.

That is awesome. You also brought on Liz Powell from Land of Talk on The Barr Brothers album. Andrew, is it true you met her in a coffee shop in Montreal?

Andrew: Man, that probably is true. There’s this coffee shop [in Montreal] where all the musicians go to get coffee in the summertime. I can remember two or three times that I got asked to play drums for people just sitting there having a cup of coffee. But Lizzie and I had mutual friends and she was looking for a drummer and I saw her in the coffee shop and she asked if I wanted to come play on her record called Some Are Lakes.

So do you guys have plans to tour more as The Barr Brothers in 2011?

Andrew: Yeah, definitely. We’re looking into it now. Taking the harp on the road is a pretty big ordeal, so we’re making sure that we have a pretty nice tour lined but you’ll definitely see us hitting the road in 2011.

Brad, you play piano on the Barrs’ record, and obviously you’ve played piano in the past with The Slip, but you seem to have stopped playing it in the live setting. Is there any reason for that?

Brad: Well, it’s funny you mention that because we brought a pump organ on the road with The Barr Brothers, and I keep thinking I want to write a song where I can play a pump organ. It seems like everyone gets to play the pump organ except for me. I love playing piano, but whenever Marco’s around, well, there’s really not much point in me playing piano. But also, you know, the biggest thing is it became hard to bring around. With The Slip we used to bring the Wurlitzer around and set it up for one song and it became kind of like “I don’t want to lug this thing around for one song.” But yeah, I love playing the piano. I try to play every day if I can. We’ve got one at our studio.

You guys were recently in the studio with Surprise Me Mr. Davis working on some new tracks. How far along is that album?

Brad: We did the basic tracks in nine days in this amazing situation called Studio House. Paul Green used to run School of Rock and he set up Studio House out on Long Island. We had a really good time and we recorded something like 20 songs and the next stage is to add a couple more overdubs. Nathan nailed a lot of the vocals. I just have to re-sing a little bit. You know, put another something here, organ there, percussion there, but the songs feel pretty complete. We’re going to try and mix them some time in the next two months and then we’ll talk about releasing it and when that should happen because it’s going to compete with a couple of things. You know, The Slip record is looking to get released, and that’s in the same phase as the Davis record. And of course, The Barr Brothers record which is finished, and we’re trying to get it released. So trying to release three records from three different bands is proving to be one of the biggest hang-ups.

So The Slip album is basically finished you’re saying. Can you talk about that album? Are there plans to release that in 2011?

Brad: We’re doing it in our studio right now, and until that changes we’re going to keep having fun with it. This record, or whatever we’re making right now, it’s been a cool experiment in recording, in our approach to a song. You know, taking an acoustic song and putting synthesizers on it to just spin it around—just kind of trying to slip everything on its head whenever possible. That’s about the status of The Slip record. There’s no release date planned but we’re having a good time with it. We’re learning to have more and more fun in the studio with all of these different projects. It’s pretty good.

What type of musical direction did the band take with these new Slip songs?

Andrew: I think that’s going to be a surprise to everyone including ourselves. It’s going to be different than Eisenhower, for sure. But I guess you’ll have to wait and see.

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