Q&A w. Jocelyn & Chris Arndt

5 albums that changed your life

• Evanescence, "Fallen"
  This album rocks. Like, really rocks. We both got SO into this record.
• Avril Lavigne, "Let Go"
  I don't know quite how this album ended up in the Arndt household; I think maybe Mom bought it. What I do know is that Chris and I know basically every word.
• KT Tunstall, "Eye to the Telescope"
  This was the first album I (Jocelyn) ever bought with my own money. I heard "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree" on the radio, and I loved it so much that I found KT Tunstall's album at Walmart
• Queen, "Greatest Hits I"
  I know picking at greatest hits album is maybe a cop-out, but this CD was in heavy rotation in our house when we were little, and it's how we were introduced to Queen. When I was 6 and Chris was 5, we moved to this big old farmhouse in the country. It was a fixer-upper; we spent most of the summer remodeling, and I remember painting for hours and hours with this CD playing in the background
• Squeeze, "Singles: 45's and Under"
  Another greatest hits album, I know. This was one of our go-to road trip records. So, so many amazing songs. We actually covered "Tempted" in our band in high school.

5 musical events that changed your life

• Our first real band performance, covering "Stairway to Heaven" at a local talent show when we were in elementary school. I was actually kind of forced to sing at the last minute when our existing singer dropped out. There's a video of part of this performance on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uQx9hTDxR64
• Our first concert: Ingrid Michaelson and Mat Kearney at Northern Lights
• The show at the local Fonda Fair in NY with our high school band “The Dependents” where we first met David and Anna Bourgeois from Bridge Road Entertainment; we were playing in the beer tent to like 5 people (2 of which were our parents). They approached us after the show and were like, “You know you could do music for a living, right?”
• Jocelyn’s high school graduation present: tickets to Train and Maroon 5 for two back-to-back NY dates
• Performing at Sundance Film Festival in 2015; that was the first time we were really on a national stage, and everything started to seem really real to both of us.

Musical Influences:
Our wonderful parents and their love of music; they have a giant CD collection, and we grew up exploring it. We actually have a family rule that we can't sit down to dinner without music playing. Partly (mostly) because we love music, and also because it's much better than listening to chewing noises.

Favorite musicians of all time
JOCELYN:
Freddie Mercury
Janis Joplin
Pat Benatar
Aretha Franklin
Nina Simone
Grace Slick
Adele

CHRIS:
David Gilmour
Jimmy Page
Mark Knoffler
BB King
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Kurt Cobain
Stevie Ray Vaughan

If you could collaborate with any artist (living or dead) who would it be?
Adele - we would die. She's beyond talented.

What are the 10 songs you’re listening to right now, or that are inspiring your music at the moment?
Toto, “Hold the Line”
Whitney Houston, “Saving All My Love for You”
Florence + The Machine, “Big God”
Billie Eilish, “you should see me in a crown”
Alice in Chains, “Would?”
Bonnie Raitt, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”
Alicia Keys, “Fallin”
Snarky Puppy, “Lingus”
Gladys Knight & The Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia”
The Band, “The Weight”

5 words you would use to describe your new album
Love letter to classic rock
mature, confident, intoxicating/seductive

What’s the significance behind the album’s title?
The name comes from a lyric from our song “Kill in the Cure.” When we were thinking about what to call the record, it really stood out to us, because it represents why we do what we do; there are always challenges, but it’s important to focus on the positive and look for the good in everything. You’ve got to find the fun in the fight.

Most prevalent ideas/themes/inspirations on the album

• Our love for music and the artists who influenced who we are today
• Storytelling through song; love stories, sad stories, angry stories
• Anxiety, and music as a cathartic escape from anxiety; using music to open up and express feelings

Did you learn anything about yourselves or each other in making this record?
We definitely gained a lot of confidence through the process of writing and recording this album, both as artists and as individuals. The last few records we’ve done have been about focusing in on our sound and who we are artistically; going in to this album, I think we all already knew who we were, so we had more bandwidth to focus on the songs themselves and how we could best tell each of their stories. This was also the first record we’d ever done where Chris and I lived in different places throughout the writing process. We learned to songwrite together growing up under the same roof, and then for our other records we were either both at home or both at school. This was the first one where I’d graduated but Chris was still finishing up at college. So that was a new challenge. But I think in the end it made us closer, and it really gave our songwriting a purpose; we had to write using whatever time we had, so we really learned to focus our creativity.

What are the places / types of places that you’re most inspired to create?
The most important thing for us is privacy. Art is as personal as it gets, and we never feel more vulnerable than when we're writing new music. Being siblings, we're comfortable enough with each other to open up about ideas without any kind of fear (that's one of the reasons we love working together so much), but it's really hard for us when other people are around. We've written songs all over the country, from our bedrooms at home to the back seat of a Chevy suburban driving through Nebraska to hotel rooms in California to our college dorms at Harvard. The one thing that always remains the same is the seclusion.

What was the path from Harvard to the stage like?
Weird, and crazy, and full of lots of homework on buses and weekends spent on the road instead of on campus. It was a test of what we really consider to be most important in our lives, because in the end we’ve only got so much time, and we’ve got to decide how to spend it. For us, that meant balancing school while we devoted ourselves to our music. I know it’s weird to think of a school like Harvard as a “plan B,” because it’s obviously such an insane opportunity, but for us, it was really important that we never sacrificed anything in pursuit of our music. Music was there for us before Harvard ever was.