Dear Apollo-Interview
The internet is a wonderful thing for watching cheesy cat videos on your break, buying presents and making music. Yes I said making music,Dear Apollo have created a whole ep using Dropbox .They were friends as children and moved away for college. I interviewed them about how the distance affected the Ep, who they would love to collaborate with and how the name came about.
Who came up with the name?
Anthony came up with the name based off the process we had for sharing our tracks. Our whole EP was created starting with simple little riffs or melodies that were laid down and shared in Dropbox. From there, our cumulative work grew and developed into the songs they are today. We felt like the name Dear Apollo represented the idea of space and satellites and how the music was sent back and forth. Apollo obviously came from the moon missions but we later stumbled upon the fact that the god Apollo was the god of music, poetry, and art and we felt it like it tied into what we were doing
really well.
Did you both have similar or different music tastes when you were younger?
I think we had different tastes and different backgrounds but expanded each other’s musical pallet with what we brought into the conversation. There was obviously a mutual respect and a lot of over lap in what we were listening to. We were always enthralled with lyrics and harmonies which started with The Beach Boys and The Beatles but diverged to bands like The Avett Brothers, The Shins and The National. As we were working on our EP we would all over the place tying to follow our different inspirations, which took us down a lot of dead ends but definitely helped us overall. It honestly took a couple years before we found our sound and felt comfortable with what we were writing.
Do you think that being friends as children helped the chemistry of the album at all?
Playing music together is a relationship- think of all the bands that produced good music but couldn’t keep it together just because of personality conflicts. Our friendship and that history plays into everything we write. That trust and comfort level we have allows us to be creative, unabashed and push ideas out there that might not be ready. We look forward to the feedback and don’t take personally, which is an area I think other musical collaborations struggle. In the long run, it's going to make our songs better and we embrace that.
If you could collaborate with another musical duo, who would it be?
Aaron and Brice Dessner from The National. They are one of our favorite bands and we actually just saw them last night in Philadelphia! They are twins and they have been writing music together since they were kids so I can see how that trust is similar to what we have. They are phenomenal musicians and approach their music in a unique and brilliant way. It would be inspiring to crawl into their their writing process from a technical and creative standpoint. We have always admired that layered sound with perfectly placed melodies, countermelodies and unique rhythms that play off each other, which they do so well.
Do you plan to do any shows together in the near future?
We always go back and forth with that and it’s difficult to answer. Our hearts are really in the recording process. We feel like we have stumbled into this sweet spot where we can be completely creative. The allure of recreating these songs is endlessly tempting but once we have recreated these songs we would be playing them over and over in the same way, which takes us further from that creative process that inspires us.
click the picture below to check out their debut ep 'Dear Apollo':
