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AUSTIN, TX- Blank Range is a Nashville based band that’s known for their melody-driven blend of country, Americana and psych-influenced music. They’ve been around since 2013 and have released two EPs (“Phase II” and “Vista Bent”) and one full length LP (“Marooned with the Treasure”). After their early afternoon performance at Luck Reunion, the fellas were kind enough to spend a couple minutes with me to take a few pictures and talk about their music.
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How did you guys came together and how long you have been playing together?
Jonathon Childers: We’ve been a band for about 5 or 6 years. Some of us grew up in Illinois but we met in Nashville, and started out playing in the garage-rock scene there and developed our style over the years, really focusing on songwriting.
Your sound is a real amalgam of various styles of music. How would you guys classify it?
Childers: Yeah, we think of ourselves as a rock n roll band and a lot of our favorite bands are from the 70s. We draw on all sorts of American music to make rock music like The Band, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, so yeah, we think of ourselves as a rock band. Rock n roll, man.
Can you talk a little about your last release and the music that you’re now currently working on?
Childers: We put out an album 6 months ago called “Marooned with the Treasure”. It’s out on 30 Tigers, out of Nashville. 10 songs we recorded in 4 days, mostly live. We are really excited about it, it’s our debut album and we just tracked a new album in December, and that should be coming out in the next few months.
So how many songs from the set today were from the album that’s coming out in the near future?
Childers: We played two new ones that we just debuted on audio tree session so you can listen to that pretty much everywhere. It’s on Spotify, YouTube, all that good stuff. We tracked 14 songs for this new record. We went up to a cabin-like area north of Nashville, and just holed up there for a few days
When it comes to songwriting, do you guys all work together to write the music or does someone come up with a melody or lyrics first. How’s that process work for you guys?
Childers: Everybody in the band’s a songwriter. Typically, if you hear [one of] us singing a lead vocal, that’s a song [that person] wrote [.]
You know, I noticed that. I love that about you guys. You didn’t sing anything, right (motioning to the drummer Matt Novotny)?
Matt Novotny: You noticed?
Childers: Matt does a really mean Steeley Dan cover sometimes and uh..
(group laughter)
I like the fact that you guys all take turns in the spotlight. It keeps it kind of exciting and fresh on stage.
Childers: For us as well.
Is there any song that you guys as a group connect with or feel close or a particular connection with or one song that applies to you guys, like your song?
Childers: They are all our babies but ya know “Opening Band” was kind of the single off the last record and I wrote that after I got out of rehab and kind of started clearing my head a little bit and started to think about what our place is in the world and I don’t know, that a good representative song for our sound.
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Well, I’m thinking that these gents are ready to be more than just the “Opening Band”, and sooner rather than later.
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