Photo by Melissa Steinberg
After Fruition’s rain-soaked set at Del Fest, I had a chance to talk with their guitarist Jay Cobb Anderson. It was a free flowing conversation. I asked who would win a “Devil Goes Down to Georgia” style fiddle-off between Allie Kral and Bridget Law; I was sworn to secrecy but I can confirm that the winner’s last name does have an “a” in it. A spontaneous performance of “Meet Me At the Mountain” proved once and for all why I should only write about music. As we continued to hide out from the rain, some insights did come out about playing in bad weather, their history with the String Summit, lyrical analysis, the meanings in a band name, and some stories about what it’s like to be an upcoming band in the 21st century.
Seeing you play with Allie last night was surreal. It felt like it should be in the northwest. How could I be in Maryland?
Jay: That happens to us all the time. How am I so far away from everything I know in a lot of ways, but also it’s all so familiar. All of our friends are ramblers. When everyone’s moving around, you meet up wherever you can. That’s one of the most beautiful things about playing music.
The first time I saw you guys was back at the String Summit in 2012. I had never heard of you and like 18,000 [actually like 100] people swarmed the mainstage.
Jay: We used to do a lot of stuff. The way we got into that festival was basically our fans. We used to go to festivals and just play in the campgrounds. Then we started playing a lot more in Portland. We started having people asking, “Why aren’t you playing at the String Summit?” “I don’t know?”
So we started entering the band competition which we got denied twice. We had to pay $50 each time – non-refundable – and we didn’t even get a chance to compete in the band competition. I remember telling the band, “Don’t worry about it. We’re just going to skip all this. We’re going to play the mainstage. Everything’s going to be fine!”
It kind of happened like that. We brought generators. Our buddy Marc Cregeu brought generators. Set them up. Played a show. Got shut down by Bob [Horning] like two songs in. But there were hundreds of hippies up in the hill and up in the trees loving it. So from that point, Peacock – a good buddy of ours, works String Summit – he talked to Bob about getting a late night stage. So the next year we played that and the next year after that we played the mainstage! And after that, the next year we played the late night stage and the mainstage and got to judge the band competition, which was hilarious. We went from being denied twice to judging.
They asked me, “Do you want to judge the band competition?” and I said, “Absolutely! I decide who lives and dies!” [laughter]
But randomly I found the program from that first year and you were listed as Fruition String Band. Was that an intentional move away from that?
Jay: We moved away from that. When we recorded with Nat Keefe with Hot Buttered Rum which was, I think, 2010 where we did our first LP. He produced the album. And he said, “You guys never know what’s going to happen. If I was you, I would drop the ‘String Band.’” Hot Buttered Rum did the same thing later.
It’s not just the name. You’re starting to add electric guitars and keyboards and drums. Did that just happen naturally?
Jay: That happened pretty naturally. But the String Band thing, we cut it out when we did the album with Nat and that was still a year before we got drums or electrified. He was just saying, “You should stay away from that name.” The progression into the music that we’re doing now is that we just really want to embrace all of it, all of the elements that we have now. Kellen [Asebroek]’s been playing keys a lot. He got so good on the keys in just a year and a half.
Since we have drums and Kellen’s progressed on the keys. It got to the point where stuff was changing. Mimi [Naja] always played guitar forever. She’s been more influenced by things like the Alabama Shakes lately. So she was wanting to move more in that direction. All of us just wanted to move in a new direction.
You’re like the brand new classic rock band
Jay: It’s funny but that’s kind of how we view it. We feel like we’re doing stuff like all of our old idols did. We’re figuring out rock and roll. I think the thing that separates us from a lot of bands, even bands like the Alabama Shakes, is that we don’t stick to any genre.
That’s the tricky part with us. We have three songwriters and don’t stick to any genre. Kellen’s got a new song “There She Was” that’s funky disco-y, but then it goes into a jammy part, and then it goes into a heavy rock part. We don’t even care. We just want to make something cool that we like, and hopefully other people will like too.
Here’s a random thing that fascinates me about what it’s like to be a touring band. Do you drive yourself or do you have a driver?
Jay: We drive ourselves.
Who’s the best driver?
Jay: Me.
Would everyone else say that?
Jay: Yep [laughter]
Hey Kellen [doing an interview across the room], is he the best driver?
Kellen: I think he has the most background and forward thinking skills. He comes from a racing family. They’re all aggressive yet defensive drivers.
Jay: My dad, all my uncles, my grandpa, they’re all racecar drivers. I got some motor oil running through my veins.
Kellen: In the city he gets a little aggro… He’s never put us in harm’s way. It may not be the most comfortable ride…
Jay: So there you go. I’m obviously the best driver [laughter]. Actually when we first started touring it was in Kellen’s Ford Explorer and he drove most of the time. And then when we got a van, I bought the van and I was leery of anyone else driving it. The first tour and a half I drove the whole time. Then it got to the point where I was just… “No. You guys are driving. Someone else is driving. I am tired.”
One thing I’m wondering about with a band of your size, is simply how do you make money these days?
Jay: We make our money off our shows. These days I think most bands do. There’s two main things you get your cash from. And there’s two more things that you can get some cash from. Shows, that’s how we get our personal pay. We split up that mostly for us. We have a percentage that goes to our band fund, a percentage that goes to management and booking agency. There’s a cut. We cut them all in for every show. Where we really get the money to fund the band is from merch. All of our CD sales. We don’t split up any of that. We just put it back into the machine.
Is it better to buy from you guys at a show or from iTunes?
Jay: It’s better to buy from a show. The other reason why is that iTunes takes a cut. That’s OK because we offset that with our pricing.
Speaking of albums, on Labor of Love, some of the songs on the album are years old. And last year, out of the blue, new EP [ Holehearted Fools ], most of these songs never played before. How did one take so long and the other happen so quickly?
Jay: When we went into the studio to record Labor of Love, without knowing what it would be called or what the album was going to be like, the way we do things is we all as songwriters bring songs to the table. We had a whole back catalog of stuff we’ve been playing already. “I Don’t Mind” we’ve been playing for 5 or 6 years. There’s a couple others that we’ve been playing forever.
The EP, what was great about it. The way we did it we went into the studio, Kellen, myself, and Mimi brought all of the songs to the table. We narrowed it down to about 17 songs. We basically recorded all those songs. We were thinking of making a double album, but we weren’t sure how we could do that. Also we were starting to feel bad about how long it was taking to finish the thing. When we first started recording the album, we put all of our money into it. We didn’t have any label support or anything. We didn’t Kickstarter either because that got complicated.
Was it the classic reverse of the Kickstarter syndrome? People like Kickstarter because you send out your money and forget about it and years later you get stuff. From your end, you have the money, and now I have to do all of this stuff.
Jay That wasn’t the issue as much as sending material to people. A lot of people, especially some older generation people that I know specifically, some of my dad’s friends and stuff, they signed up and gave money, but they felt weird about leaving their email address. That was our only way of contacting them. So people were like, “Where’s my stuff?” and we’re, “You have to give us your email.” So it was complicated. It can be tough when you’re a band and you’re out there to play and you’re trying to figure out who’s supposed to do this.
So anyway back to the EP thing, we released the EP right away because we weren’t done with the album. We didn’t want to do a double album because we thought it was a little early. Although, I’m really interested in doing that for the next album. We have enough material. That’s tricky too because it costs a lot more. We felt that those songs were a great representation and a prerequisite for what we were about to put out. With songs like “I Can’t Stop,” it was folky Fruition: a classic Fruition vibe with good harmonies on the chorus and mandolin and acoustic style. But we also put in a song like “Sanctuary,” it like completely different. And having “Lay Down” which is a fun rocker.
Sorry but I just have to ask. Why exactly are you “looking for a woman who ain’t looking for a man” [Lyric from “Falling On My Face”]. You’d think you’d be looking for one who is looking for a man.
Jay: [Laughter] It’s funny that you bring up that song, I wrote that song five years ago. At the time it was relevant to a girl that I loved who was from Wales. She couldn’t stay in America. And then I was just hanging out, thinking about the whole scenario to still be in love with someone and knowing that it’s not going to work out. That song is about that mindset where you’re like, “I don’t know what I’m doing but I know I should be moving on.”
Oh god, I shouldn’t even say this much about this song. People should connect in their own way.
Maybe, maybe I won’t print this part. And by maybe, I mean it’ll be all bold, italicized, arrows around it, with a blink tag.
Jay:[laughter] Oooooh no! I’ll be all, “Whyyyyyyyyyy?”
But I think that line specifically, most people can relate to it because everyone’s had their heart broken anyway.
I used to be a Deadhead. Every summer I used to go see the Dead at R.F.K. in DC and every summer was the same. It would be incredibly hot and then there would be a thunderstorm that would roll in.
Jay: I was blown away today by the amount of people who stayed. That was inspiring. That made us said that we were going to play for as long as we could. When the rain started coming at us though… My old guitar from the 30s was just not going to take to the rain very well.
Was that the worst rain you’ve ever seen on stage?
Jay: It was the worst rain we’ve ever seen on stage but we did get shut down once at this festival in southern Oregon somewhere. God, I don’t even remember the name of it, but we got shut down by lightning. There was so much lightning. It was just crackling everywhere. The stage managers were looking at their phones. The storm was coming right at us. Then lightning struck not too far from us; you could tell when it hit the ground. You knew that it hit something. Kat, our manager, was like, “Nope. Shut it down!” You can get electrocuted on stage.
Actually, wait a minute. We played the All Good Festival in Ohio. That was definitely the worst rain we’ve ever seen. We got three songs in. We had this guy Sam [Cutler, last name provided by Kellen from across the room] – he was the Grateful Dead’s manager, he’s still the Rolling Stone’s manager – he’s this old English guy.
We met him and he was just sitting under this tarp. We came up to him and smoked and started talking about his rings.
“Where did you get that ring?”
[British accent, not too bad actually] “Oh Keith Richards got me this ring. They made three of them. He gave one to me. He gave one to Ozzy Ozbourne.”
And I was all, “What the fuck? Who’s this guy?” He’s the guy who introduces them on Live Dead. He’s, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead.” He says it twice. He also introduces The Rolling Stones on one of their live albums and he does the same thing, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones.”
So we got him and said, “Can you introduce us?” So he introduced us… at noon… on Saturday [laughter], at this festival we’ve never played at ever.
What’s great about this – this is an awesome story – we were scheduled to play noon at the All Good Festival and then midnight at String Summit. We thought this was a badass rock star move. Let’s do this! Let’s play Ohio at noon and Oregon at midnight! So we had Sam come out and introduce us. Yes, this is awesome! So we got three songs in and I’ve never seen water like that. It was like today but it instantly came at us. We were in the middle of one of Kellen’s songs “Big Sky.” Hilarious, “Big Sky.” It’s always Kellen’s songs that make the rain, I guess.
See, you’re learning something today! [laughter]
Jay: I’m connecting it all together. We’re in the middle of the song and it’s pouring on us. My guitar is getting soaked. I’m running to the back of the stage. It started chasing us. That was the worst rain I’ve ever seen. What sucked is that it rained through the whole time that should have been our set. We were out in Ohio for three days. We were there early to do some interviews. And we got to play three songs of our set and we were shut down by the rain.
It rained through our entire set and we had to pack up all of our stuff and get on the plane. We got on a plane. All of our clothes were soaked. All of our tents were soaked. Everything was soaked. Half of us had to take a different flight to get there early. Kellen and T Tom [Tyler Thompson] did that and me and Keith [Simon] and Mimi, our old bass player Keith. Oh my God, it was hell. I had a toothache. There was a baby crying. Mimi’s soaking wet and so cold that she’s crying and I give her my soaking wet jacket. [laughter]
We were switching off and both of us were crying. I’m getting aspirin from the flight attendant just to rub on my tooth. We flew from All Good where there was a storm all their own into Vegas where there was an electrical storm. We’re on the runway. The baby’s crying. My tooth is hurting. Mimi is crying. The captain comes on. “We can’t take off yet because there’s a lot of lightning in the area.”
“What the fuck is going on?” We’re looking at the window and the whole sky is just [lighting sound effect]. Finally at some point he’s, “OK, I think we have our chance. He goes to take off and then he stops. Nope, they called us off.” [Laughter] We’re like, “We’re gonna die.” I was ready! Do this! I’m ready to die.
So he finally takes off with vicious lightning crashing all around us. We finally get on top of the storm and everything’s calm. The baby starts to sleep a little bit. My tooth starts to feel OK. Then we landed in Portland and instantly – we were late! – Kellen and T Tom had already set up our stuff. We had another band, The Congress, filling in for us. We ran down the stage through the crowd, got up on stage, and played until the sun came up. That was one of the best things ever. But that was probably the heaviest rain we’ve ever played in.
