LouFest 2014: Roadkill Ghost Choir
Favorite festival food? “Anything that involves tacos.”
You might say 2013 w as a big year for Roadkill Ghost Choir. The band’s debut EP “Quiet Light” dropped. They toured as the opening act for Band of Horses. They also played New York’s Governor’s Ball and Austin City Limits.
In need some down time for the new year, the band took a smaller gig and played a January 2014 spot on a little-known network television program, The David Letterman Show.
Four years ago, Roadkill Ghost Choir’s lead singer and songwriter, Andy Shepard, began writing music. He didn’t want to play alone, so he rounded up his two brothers and a friend. By 2011, they had a band.
Roadkill Ghost Choir, which Andy describes as “spacey rock with a little bit of folk elements to it,” is made of Andy, his brothers Maxx on drums and Zach on bass, and Stephen Garza on lead guitar.
The brothers didn’t play music together much growing up, but now, their familial ties come in handy.
“We know how to work with each other, so it makes things a little bit easier,” Andy says. Along with their upcoming LouFest performance, the band has made the festival rounds this year playing at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Playing at a festival is a whole different ballgame than playing at a regular venue. It’s not like you’re playing to people who paid good money just to see you.
“You’re playing to people that have absolutely no idea who you are,” Andy says. It’s almost an obligation to impress the audience, to wow the crowd with songs that, chances are, they’ve never heard before.
The band’s new album, In Tongues, dropped August 19, just in time for their St. Louis show. Produced by Doug Boehm, the album was recorded in the band’s home studio in Deland, Florida, and also in Athens, Georgia. It’s more of a rock sound than 2013’s EP Quiet Light, with eerily stunning steel guitar juxtaposed against Andy’s country-folk vocals.
The music is almost a little haunting, harkening back to the band’s humble beginnings as a struggling act, Andy says. There’s the simple bluegrass pick on the soulful opening of “Beggar’s Guild”; there’s the melancholic immediacy of “HWY”. It’s a distinctively evolving sound.
For the most part, Andy says, the reception to their new songs has been positive.
“So far, we’ve had a good reaction. No one’s thrown anything at us...yet,” he says. For a band with a measure of success based on projectiles from the audience, I’d say they’re doing pretty OK.
