INTERVIEW: Revivalists continue to bring soulful sound to the world

The Revivalists are in the midst of a national takeover. The New Orleans-based band has received critical acclaim for its recent album, Men Amongst Mountains, and the members continually tour to packed houses around the United States. With their unique brand of rocking soul (or is it soulful rock?), the Revivalists are truly in the business of reviving.

Men Amongst Mountains offers the clearest evidence of the band’s enduring and changing instrumental and vocal sound. From the anthemic “Keep Going” to the trippy “Gold to Glass” to the solemn title track, the 14-song album is a mixture of old vibes sounding new again.

The Revivalists features David Shaw on vocals, Zack Feinberg on guitar, Andrew Campanelli on drums, Ed Williams on pedal steel guitar, George Gekas on bass, Rob Ingraham on saxophone and Michael Girardot on keyboards and trumpet. Their current tour brings them to Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, among other states up and down the East Coast. On Nov. 20-21, they will offer a two-night stand at Tipitina’s, the world-famous venue in their native New Orleans.

tRecently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with the band, and Ingraham, the saxophonist, offered some answers. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.

What can fans expect when you bring the band to town?

A good time, hopefully! We have a few staples that we’ll play most nights, [but] generally we try to change our setlists up night after night in order to keep things fresh for both the audience and ourselves. We’re usually cognizant of what we opened and closed with last time we played somewhere [or] if we played any covers, and if we have [one] superfan in town who’s been chasing this one song of ours for like a year, then we’ll try to accommodate that as well. At the end of the day, we just want to move people and make sure they go home smiling.

What were your goals with Men Amongst Mountains? Have you been happy with the enthusiastic response?

I think our primary goal for Men Amongst Mountains was internal: We just wanted to grow as a band and take another step forward creatively and artistically. It was never like, “Let’s write a #1 hit and make a bajillion dollars” (although, to be perfectly clear, we wouldn’t be fundamentally opposed to either of those things happening). Whenever someone asks me about this album, I always come back to the recording process and how the meat of Men Amongst Mountains was tracked with us all just playing in a room together. We’re a big band with a lot going on, and it was a big step for us to be able to just listen and interact and all sort of flow together.

What are the positives of being a band associated with the great music city of New Orleans?

The city itself. The community of musicians there is so wonderful and supportive and inspiring. It’s amazing to not only be able to see such incredible musicians any night of the week, but to really be able to interact with people and learn from them. Oftentimes the most established and renowned musicians in New Orleans are also the most approachable. The scene in New Orleans isn’t dog-eat-dog. It’s not like a jungle. It’s not even like a scene. It’s a community.

What were the early days of The Revivalists like? Could you imagine this many years later you’d be touring and recording so successfully?

That’s actually kind of tough to answer — could we have predicted the success and good fortune we’ve enjoyed thus far? Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely the plan. I wasn’t in the picture for the first year and a half to two years, but it’s my understanding that the idea from the outset was to take this thing as far as it would go. And maybe for me, having the perspective of seeing this band from the outside for a year or two before joining, it would have been easier to say “these guys are going places!,” but I don’t really know. I guess my experience has ultimately been that we just kind of do what we do, and we are where we are, and once every 18 months or so, I’ll kind of poke my head up above the trenches and think, “oh, wow, look how far we’ve gone.”

From your first release all the way to Men Amongst Mountains, how do you think your sound has changed? Or, has it not changed?

The easy answer is that we’ve added more people to the band. Other than that, I would have a tough time saying if our sounds [have] changed because when we write music we don’t ever really think in terms of “does this song sound like us?” We’ve always believed in letting our songs be themselves and just trying to play whatever we connect with and whatever we’re the most excited about. On Men Amongst Mountains, I think we’re a lot more mature in our arrangements and our use of space, which certainly sets it apart from our previous efforts.

With seven members in the band, does collaboration come easy? What does a recording session look / sound like?

Usually it’s not too bad. We don’t really have a formula for how our songs get written or arranged … we let stuff happen in ways that come fairly naturally. For example, if the backbone of a song is a keyboard line, and the mood of the song doesn’t lend itself to a lot of horn gymnastics, then we’re not going to try to force it in just because there are horns in the band. Everyone wants to contribute, but sometimes the best thing you can do for a song is nothing. Sometimes everything just comes together, and we’re all just immediately doing the right thing in perfect sync. Sometimes we kind of pull in different directions and you have to be able to say, “Hey, that’s not really serving the song.” Sometimes you need to be able to hear that, too.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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