Emily Bell and John Evans In Technicolor

A singer-songwriter hailing from Austin, Texas, Emily Bell sounds like an old soul but her music is infused with youth. She bounced around from Austin to Houston to the west coast, picking up her songwriting partner and producer John Evans. She’s combining southern rock blues and 60′s rock and roll into a sound that’s much needed. She  and Evans recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about her debut album and perform a few songs.  Excerpts from the interview, and clips of the performances, appear below.

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Ron Bennington: What’s it been like now to get this album out, for you guys? 

Emily Bell:  It’s been great.  You know, we’ve gotten a lot of great write-ups and recognition.  Being here with you guys, that just kind of shows that it’s going well for us.

John Evans:  It’s been a ton of work. Constant work.  We live together and so it’s kind of just 24-hours a day.

Emily Bell:  (laughs) Twenty-four seven.

Ron Bennington:  It’s one thing to do that as artists, but you also have to do it as business people, these days, as well.

Emily Bell:  Yeah, we’re basically running an entire operation.  Now, we’re on tour and we got a 38 foot RV that we have been driving from Austin all the way up here.

John Evans:  (laughing)  Yeah, Manhattan is fun…

Ron Bennington:  Manhattan in an RV?

Emily Bell:  Manhattan in an RV.  It was intense and we drove all night.  But it’s been great.  It’s just been a great experience, but it’s been a lot of work.

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Emily Bell and John Evans Talk About Songwriting

Ron Bennington:  Where do the songs come from?  How’s the songwriting work for you guys?

Emily Bell:  The songs come from many different places.  For me, a lot of this record came from my experience of working really hard in LA, in California for four years.  Song writing in studios out there, and then deciding to cut the cord and move to Austin, Texas and really find my voice, put out my own record and do my own thing.  A lot of that is in this record.  When John and I hooked up, it was just one of those unspeakable sparks that we just kind of ignited each other’s creativity.

John Evans:  It was easy to write and she had a lot of material to pull from, ya know?  She came in and it was basically finding out what it is she wanted to do and then just going for it.  My background is more in roots rock and that kind of thing, but I grew up on Delta Blues.  My mom is from Itta Bena, Mississippi, so those influences, combined with her kind of soul and R&B background it gelled and it worked out really nicely, I think.

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Emily Bell and John Evans Talk About Recording “In Technicolor”

Ron Bennington:  I think it’s always interesting to mix genres of music and then when you’re in a place like Austin, you also have to keep coming up with new stuff, I guess, as well, when there are so many people out there right now

Emily Bell:  Yes.

John Evans:  And that’s part of getting people to come see you, especially when you might have a weekly show that you play at the same place in order to keep them coming back, you need to write new songs.  So each week you might give them a song or two more that they haven’t heard yet, and it pushes you and they either like it or they don’t, so it pushes you to write really good stuff.

Ron Bennington:  The new album is In Technicolor, where was it recorded?

Emily Bell:  I have been so burnt out in studios in LA that I was really hoping that I could find a really cool situation, like a house or something where we could just set up.  Luckily enough, my aunt has a lake house in ‘nowhere,’ Texas, that she never uses.  So we got our engineer that we’re good friends with, he’s basically a walking studio, he brought all the gear and everything.  We built a studio in that place and lived there for two months.  In the winter time, which was a bit intense.

John Evans:  With no water. (laughing)

Emily Bell:  The pipes froze, so we didn’t have running water for…

John Evans:  At least three weeks.

Ron Bennington:  Wow!  That’s almost a blues song on it’s own.

John Evans:  (laughing) Totally, it was for me.  I was the guy running out to the lake to get lake water to flush the toilet.

Emily Bell:  Yeah, everyone was hauling lake water to flush the toilets. (laughing)

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Emily Bell and John Evans Talk About The Appeal of Austin

Ron Bennington:  What is it about Austin, right now?  How come that’s bringing everyone in?  What is it about that entire scene?

John Evans:  I think there is a bunch or really good songwriters in town, along with Nashville.  Nashville is another city that is similar.  But Austin doesn’t have the same industry that Nashville does and it’s a place where you can go and write with people and there are venues where you can get up and play every week, and play two or three shows a week if you want to, and it doesn’t really effect your draw.

Emily Bell:  It’s a very musician friendly town, you know, it’s laid back.  And Austin is really open to creativity, music wise.  You can almost go there and do whatever you want and you’ll find a place for it in that town.

John Evans:  And there is not a certain sound that comes out of there, or that you’re trying to live up to, or trying to work for a label to get.  You’ve got a bunch of artists out there and that was my basic attraction to the place.

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Emily Bell and John Evans Talk About Album vs Singles

Ron Bennington:  Do you think about it song by song, or did you think about the album first?

Emily Bell:  Oh, we definitely thought about the album as a whole.  But, when it comes to the business and the industry it’s really about the single, these days.  It’s about that song and the video and hey, if you have a record of singles, then that’s great, because you can just keep putting stuff out for a year or two.

Ron Bennington:  The video also jumps out, how did you put that together?  Who did that for you?

Emily Bell:  That was directed by Curtis Pollock, and he’s amazing, he’s a friend of mine.  He lives in Austin, Texas.  We brainstormed together.  You know my big thing was, I just want to do something cool, and fun, and wild, I don’t want to dive deep into any kind of story-plot for the video.  I want it to look like a chase, I want it to be… insane.  So then I went to a costume store and bought a bunch of animal masks and put them on my band, and there ya go. (laughing)

Ron Bennington:  And there it is, the whole thing is done.

Emily Bell:  Put on some roller-skates and light a base on fire and you’ve got wild

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Ron Bennington:  The plan is to stay Austin for the home base?  Can’t imagine leaving it now?

John Evans:  Right now it is.

Emily Bell:  Yeah, Austin is a great home base.  I wouldn’t mind having a loft in New York City, though, don’t get me wrong.  I love New York.

Ron Bennington:  That comes with all different kinds of troubles, but yeah.  So you guys love playing everywhere then, you love being out on the road? 

John Evans:  The road is awesome.

Emily Bell:  Yeah, and Austin is just a great place to be – it’s a good landing pad.

Ron Bennington:  It’s hip, it’s sexy, it’s fun, it’s got content- so great to see you guys. And I’m sure this is just the first time. 

Emily Bell:  Thank you so much for having us!

John Evans:  Yes, thank you for having us.

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 Emily Bell In Technicolor, is the album, go to emilybell.com or @emilybell on twitter.

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.

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