The Accidentals happy to be touring again
Young folk-rock trio The Accidentals are getting back on the road now, and they’ll be making a stop at Natalie’s Grandview Music Hall & Kitchen on Sept. 3.
During the pandemic, the group didn’t just play “Dungeons and Dragons,” although they did do some of that.
“We’re naturally nerdy,” said Katie Larson, 25, who takes the co-lead on vocals and plays acoustic and electric cello and other instruments for the band. She and her bandmates spoke by phone from Traverse City, Michigan, the hometown of Larson and Savannah
Buist, who plays violin and other instruments and also does vocals for the band. Larson and Buist, as well as percussionist Michael Dause, are all based there now.
The group kept busy recording an album, “The Vessel,” as well as an EP, “Time Out: Session 1.”
Although the album won’t be officially released until Oct. 1, they’re starting to release singles from it, along with entertaining videos for each.
The video for “Go Getter,” for example, plays on a possible misunderstanding of the song’s title.
“When we were recording the song ‘Go Getter,’ Michael was like, you have to enunciate more, because it sounds like
you’re saying ‘Goat Getter,’ and that became the whole premise of the video,” Buist, 26, said.
The video follows three youngsters — played by the band members — playing a fantasy game involving goats, which their older brother tells them are fictional beasts. So they set out to find out whether they exist.
“We researched it by watching ‘The Goonies’ together,” Buist said.
Unexpected project
In addition to recording their album and making videos, the group produced “Time Out,” an EP that includes songs co-written with well-known folk artists including Kim Richey, Tom Paxton, Dar Williams, Maia Sharp, Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris. The band’s connection to them came about through another quarantine project.
“At the beginning of quarantine, we started to realize that we were probably going to lose our income for an unspecified period of time, so we decided to start livestreaming,” Buist said. “I started digging into that, and figured out what to do and what not to do, and started a list, and that became a 40page manuscript. I put it on my Facebook when I was done, and it started making the rounds through the industry.”
One of the venues that took notice was Passim, a famous folk-music club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“They called and asked if I could talk to Kim Richey about it,” Buist said. “And I was like, Kim Richey? Like the Kim Richey that I’ve been listening to since I was 5 years old? So while we were on the phone, I asked if she was interested in doing a virtual co-write over Zoom, and she said yes, and we wrote ‘Wildfire,’ the first song on the EP.”
The group produced both the EP and the album this summer in an attic converted into a studio.
“There was no AC, because it’s so loud. Turning off the AC in the dead of summer, that was rough,” Larson said.
“Trying to record those delicate string parts with a fan going just doesn’t work,” Dause, 26, added.
Yet, they persevered and the album is set for release.
Longtime music-makers
Buist and Larson have been performing together since 2011, when they met in high school in Traverse City.
“We were just the two weird kids who wanted to play alternative styles, folk music and pop and rock,” Larson said.
Dause joined the band in 2014, and the three have been playing together ever since.
“Katie and I write songs separately, and then all three of us come together to arrange the songs and make them palatable for a live show,” Buist said. “Nobody has ego. I think we’ve all cut that out of the picture. It just creates a lot of unnecessary drama.”
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