The Band Perry will bring a new sound to Walker Theatre inside Memorial Auditoruim FRIDAY
The Band Perry hasn’t been heard from in almost two years. The singing siblings — Kimberly, Reid and Neil— disappeared from the music scene for so long that fans wondered when, or if, they would be back.
Then the Perrys dropped a new five-track EP, “Coordinates” at the end of September. It wasn’t country; more of a fusion of pop and electronica. Reviewers listening to it deemed it electronic, and Nashville music industry websites started printing dire headlines proclaiming The Band Perry was waving goodbye to country.
But that’s not the case, said Reid Perry in a phone interview last week.
“We took all our influences, music we had been listening to the last couple of years, and selfproduced ‘Coordinates.’ When we put it out, people started calling it electronic — but we had not consciously made that choice. We went back and listened to it and heard what they heard,” he says, adding now they refer to their new sound as electronic, too.
But this doesn’t mean they’ve left country for good, he said. They are just exploring new ideas, new sounds. He said the trio refer to their music as “genreless.”
“We didn’t want to go into the studio with a genre in mind. It wasn’t important to put a label on it. It was just us in the studio, so we could ebb and flow with what we were interested in.
“I don’t want people to feel like we’ve left country. Who knows? Maybe in a couple of years we may write another country song. We’ve never been ones to burn our bridges, if you will. We didn’t wave goodbye. We just said, ‘We want to go over here a little bit.’”
Fans of the Perrys can decide for themselves what they think of the new music when the Coordinates tour stops in Walker Theatre on Friday night, Nov. 16.
And yes, Perry assures fans the trio will still do all their favorite country hits — just updated with their new sound.
“The ‘Coordinates’ show is really interesting because we haven’t done a full tour in about a year. When we were deciding what we wanted, we really stripped it back to us and a drummer. We’re bringing synthesizers and drum machines, and our goal is to re-create the exact feeling we made in the studio with the new songs.”
Perry says the band also wants to be more spontaneous in releasing new music instead of following the traditional cycle of write, record, release and tour.
“We don’t want to do full-blown, 12-song albums because those take a long time to write and record. One of the songs on ‘Coordinates’ was done two weeks before the record was released. We will put new music on Spotify, iTunes, all the places you can stream it.”
Perry says the new music, its quicker release to fans and this tour are all part of their desire to be authentic with their fans.
“We are really big on people feeling like we feel. We want them to take away the feeling of escapism (from the show); leave your worries and trouble at the door when you walk in. We call it ‘the desert in our minds.’ We want to take people to the desert with us, where they can zone out. But we also want it to be a full-blown rager. We want people to have a blast as well.”