Gone West blends country, California sound
If you could put a piece of Nashville and a piece of Laurel Canyon in the same backyard, the house band would probably be Gone West. Already a buzz band after less than a year together, the quartet with singer Colbie Caillat makes its local debut in Lowell this evening.
Caillat, who hit in 2007 with “Bubbly” and ”Realize,” is the biggest name in the group, but as she explained in a recent interview, this isn’t a star with a backup group.
“The cool part is that everybody sings lead and we all get a chance to shine,” she said. “My fans have known everyone in the band for as long as I have; we’ve toured and written songs together. Onmylasttourwehadthat first spark of all doing fourpart harmony, so we said, ‘Let’s take this back to Nashville and see where it goes.’ And a lot of my fans asked us, ‘What took you so long?’”
Forming the band required Caillat and her fiance, singer/guitarist Justin Young (himself a recording artist with Hawaiian roots) to move from her longtime Los Angeles home to Nashville, the home of musical partners (and married couple) Nelly Joy and Jason Reeves.
“California was the only place I’d ever lived and I do miss it, but Nashville has a great music community and is more affordable,” Caillat said. “Everybody is moving to Nashville now, it’s around 200 people a day, so we were in at the start of that.”
Their California roots still play strongly in Gone West, with acoustic guitars and shimmering harmonies replacing the arena guitars and whomping drums of modern Nashville.
“We weren’t intentionally going against the grain,” Reeves said on a conference call. “This is just the way we’ve always made music. We like it organic and full of acoustic instruments. The only thing that’s changed is that we’ve opened up to the Nashville influence. For instance, our favorite instrument right now is steel guitar, and that’s opened up a sonic element that we’ve never had before.”
The members’ status as two happy couples doesn’t affect their songwriting: Of the five tunes they’ve released so far, three are about relationships gone sour.
“And there’s even more of those on the album we’re making,” Caillat said. “We have quite a few friends that have been going through heartbreak, so we wrote the songs for them.”
The chorus of the single “What Could’ve Been” includes the line “We left blood on the tracks” — a reference to a beloved Bob Dylan album, not the kind of thing you hear on country radio everyday.
“I’m a gigantic Dylan fan, he’s my favorite songwriter and musician, so that line resonated with me,” Reeves said.
The idea of a band with two couples might seem a little dangerous, especially if you have a family connection to the famously troubled Fleetwood Mac (Colbie’s father, Ken Caillat, coproduced “Rumours” and “Tusk”). But she says there’s been no downside so far.
“Honestly, we’ve all worked together for so long by now and that’s really how we became couples. And it makes things more special when you get to travel and be onstage with your favorite person.”
Gone West at Boarding House Park in Lowell, Friday at 7 p.m. Tickets $49-$129.