Great Interstate

It’s interesting how the latest creation by veteran musician, producer and engineer Andrew Goldring can hit so hard while presented in a package that’s often soft and beautiful, like a brick wrapped in a cloud. Written and recorded by Goldring, Inversion Songs is richly layered, with fascinating interplay between mellow, atmospheric moments and straight-up rock breakdowns that explode into emotional climaxes. Sung with Goldring’s breathy, slightly scratchy voice, the lyrics deal with feeling trapped—reflected in the symbolism of the album title and the apathetic lyrics of “Garbage Brain”—picking up the pieces after a major loss and moving on, especially on “My Dear Friend” and the heart-rending “Frail Bones.” But what’s so incredible about Inversion Songs is that while it does bring up these really difficult emotions, it’s an ultimately cathartic listening experience. The album strikes a good balance between slower, soul-searching tracks and more upbeat, ear-catching material, such as “Exodus,” which features Goldring’s distorted, primal howls and a psych-tinged feel. Self-released, May 9, GreatInterstate.bandcamp.com - Salt Lake City Weekly May 15, 2014 Kolbie Stonehocker

Great Interstate
Inversion Songs
Self-Released
Street: 05.09
Great Interstate = Sunny Day Real Estate + Jimmy Eat World + The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die

Great Interstate is what happens when an emo band decides to skip the whole shitty pop-punk Dashboard Confessional thing and tries to be more like Explosions in the Sky. This album is one of the more impressive albums I’ve heard come out of Salt Lake City in the past couple of years, especially when you consider that it was self-recorded and produced by singer Andrew Goldring. The music lands somewhere among straightforward emo pop, angular indie rock and ambient post-rock, and finds itself solidly in the best parts of each genre. This is perhaps best seen on the excellent “All Things Must Change,” which finds the band dancing among the ambient and dark pop parts of their sound. Provo gets most of the indie-rock hype lately, but this is at least one band Salt Lake City can be excited about. –Alex Gilvarry - SLUG Magazine June 4, 2014

Gavin: Hey Andrew! First thing, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Andrew: I’m a 22-year-old musician, songwriter and recording engineer from Salt Lake City. I got my start in music playing blues guitar (believe it or not) as a little kid. I did that for a few years, and then in high school I started to take songwriting a lot more seriously. Since then I’ve been playing in various bands and doing solo projects, and over the past couple of years I’ve become fascinated with the world of music production. These days I’m spending a lot of my time in my studio recording other bands, as well as getting my new project Great Interstate off the ground.

Gavin: The last time we spoke you were working on Your Meteor. How have things been going with that project and what's the good word on the future of that band?

Andrew: This is awesome of you to ask, considering Your Meteor has been under the radar for quite some time. The band is still together and we are currently recording a new full-length album! My bandmates Tom Roberts and Zeke Hartmann have written most of the material together, and I am handling the production side of things as well as playing drums and guitar on the record. I’m really excited for people to hear these new songs; they are really different from our old stuff. We’ve had a few different lineups in the past, but now it’s down to just the three of us. We haven’t been playing many shows because, realistically, we need a couple more arms to replicate the sound that we have in the studio. We’re planning to release the new album at the end of the summer or early fall, and by then we’re hoping to have a solid live lineup as well.

Gavin: You had been working with Golden Sun, but left the band in 2013. How was it working with them and what led to the departure?

Andrew: Playing with Golden Sun was a really unique experience for me. I was in the band for two years, and over that time we had the opportunity to do some amazing things. However, as time went on I felt increasingly out of place in the band, and that’s when I started to realize what it was I really wanted to do and say with music. To make a super long story short, I realized that Golden Sun didn’t really have any room for me to accomplish my musical vision. My old bandmates, the Meier brothers, are all amazingly talented and they have a pretty distinct vision for what they want their band to be about. That was starting to clash with my songwriting and my personality. I was tired of the music that we had made, and when we tried to write new stuff together, it wasn’t really going anywhere. I was the lead singer, but I wasn’t able to be the band leader so it was a weird vibe for me. I wasn’t having a very good time onstage or on the road either, so I left the band last summer. It was a mutual split and we are all still good friends. I think the boys have really come into their own since I left, and it’s much better for them to be creating the music they want to make without someone like me in the mix. That experience helped me understand what’s important to me, and even though it was really hard to leave a such a good band I’ve grown more as a musician through that decision than anything else I’ve ever done.

Gavin: In June 2013, you released a solo EP called Forgotten Harvest. What was it like putting that album together and how was the reception to it?

Andrew: In the spring of 2013, I had a pile of songs laying around that I had written over the previous years. None of these would have fit with Golden Sun, so I decided to take my favorites and put together a little solo record. I started jamming those songs with my friend Jarith Hughes, who I met that winter when he came to SLC from Australia for a few months. Jarith, myself and Zeke from Your Meteor played a basement show together and it was the best show I’ve ever played. Soon after that, we spent a couple of weeks recording Forgotten Harvest. It was thrown together real quickly, I’m pretty sure all the drums were tracked in like two hours. I was really stoked on the sounds we got. I didn’t get to do much with the record, especially since the lineup wasn’t sustainable. The release show was great and it was awesome to have new life breathed into my old songs; overall, I was really happy with the way it turned out.

Gavin: How did the idea come about to start a new project, and what made you go for more of an ambient rock vibe to the music?

Andrew: Well, after I quit Golden Sun, I started to get kind of depressed. I had nothing really going for me musically, and I didn’t really want to do the solo thing anymore. I started writing a ton of songs that summer in hopes that it would become something cool, and it did! Those became the seeds of the new project, and the ambient sound is really just what came out when I started arranging them. I love ambient textures and I write really long songs. I wasn’t able to do any of that in my old band, so I took full advantage of it this time and came up with some drawn-out dark-sounding passages on the new record.

Gavin: What was it writing the music for the album and focusing on taking it in a certain direction?

Andrew: Writing the album was great, but compiling it was kind of strange. All of the songs just spilled out of me, so that part was awesome. I had a lot to write about because I was dealing with a lot of interesting circumstances. Deciding what direction an album should go is always the hardest part for me, but I did my best to just create the sounds I wanted to hear and not worry about genres or labels or anything like that.

Gavin: You recorded it mostly by yourself, and only worked with two session drummers in Matt Morrison and Jarith Hughes. What made you go in that direction and how was it working with them?

Andrew: Well, when I first started the project, I didn’t have anyone to play with, so I just started recording all by myself. Jarith came back to Utah for a month, and so I got him to play drums on the album and help me arrange it. Him and I collaborate together really well, and I wanted us to do another project together while we still could since he lives in another country and is getting married. I had started practicing with the live lineup around this time and we had played a couple of shows, but I decided that it would be best for the music if I just finished the album on my own with a couple of friends here and there to help me out. I had Matt, our bassist, play on most of the songs also.

Gavin: What did you think of the final product and what made you go with the name Great Interstate for the project?

Andrew: Overall, I am really happy with the album. Sonically, I think it’s really interesting, and I meant every word in all the lyrics, which is really important to me. I put more work into it than any other record I’ve ever done, and so I was totally sick of the songs by the time I finished it. However, listening back to it a couple months after the release, I am pretty satisfied with the way it sounds. As for the name, it’s nothing special really. I had a list of possible band names and that’s the one that my friends liked and that stuck out to me the most.

Gavin: Did you know from the start that you wanted to turn this into a live performing band or did you start it thinking it would just be a solo thing?

Andrew: I knew that it would turn into something bigger than just a basement project, but I wasn’t sure what that would look like. It ended up just becoming an awesome live band and I couldn’t be happier.

Gavin: You've got an impressive lineup with Matt, Ken Vallejos and Tate Mccallum-Law. What influenced your decision to work with each person and how was it putting the band together with the music?

Andrew: The lineup literally just fell together. I had Ken’s number and liked his drumming, so I called him up and we started jamming some of my tunes. Matt had played drums with me also in the past, but he is a phenomenal bass player as well so I got him to come play bass with us. I’ve been acquainted with Tate for several years; he used to do sound for my old bands at Kilby all the time and he was always a super nice guy. I ran into him one day in front of Nobrow while I was grabbing a cup of coffee and he said he wanted to play some music, so he jumped right in and started learning the songs. It’s been a challenge to take material that has already been recorded and do it justice live, but it’s turning out to be really cool. The live sound is different than the studio sound and I like it that way.

Gavin: How has it been for all of you playing as a band, and how has it been building an audience again with a brand-new project?

Andrew: Playing shows has been a lot of fun! The only thing that’s hard is that we are all so busy with jobs and other bands that it’s been difficult to play live as much as we would like to. Every show we’ve played has been awesome so far though. Our release show at Diabolical Records was packed and the energy was amazing. The best thing about Great Interstate is that we are all experienced musicians, and we all have lots of connections in the scene so we’ve been able to get off on the right foot and do some pretty cool shows for being so young.

Gavin: Do you have any plans to take this band on a tour, or is it more of an in-Utah project?

Andrew: We would love to go on tour; booking it and getting the time off is the hardest part though. We are doing some regional stuff this summer, and hoping do so something a little bit longer in the fall.

Gavin: How is it for you guys to be a part of the Utah Arts Festival this year?

Andrew: We are really excited to play at the Arts Fest this year. I’ve played a few times in the past, and every time it has been amazing. It’s an honor to be included.

Gavin: Who else are you looking to check out this year, and what impact do you believe the festival has on local musicians?

Andrew: Not many of our friends are playing this year, so I’m excited to walk around and hear some music that I’ve never heard before! The Arts Festival is a really awesome thing for local music. It’s great to get exposed to people that don’t frequent the typical venues we play. I’m excited to get our stuff out to some new ears.

Gavin: What can we expect from all of you over the rest of the year?

Andrew: You can expect a lot more live performances from us, and hopefully some new recordings as well. We’re hoping to put out another EP in the fall of some new music. We’re headed down to St. George for the Fourth of July, then playing the Kilby Court 15th Anniversary show on July 18, and Craft Lake City in August.

Gavin: Is there anything you'd like to promote or plug?

Andrew: I just moved my recording studio, Soundcave Productions, out of my house and into a commercial space in downtown Salt Lake! I’m always looking for new artists to work with. If you or your band need some recording, check out my website and listen to see if I might be a good fit for your project. I’ve been working on a lot of cool records lately. Check out Blue Milk by Koala Temple. - Salt Lake City Weekly June 30, 2014