Greenville Scene

by: Michelle Hannon

The Winter Sounds are a five piece rock/pop band based out of Athens, GA. They signed with Livewire Recordings in January and have been touring vigorously since March. Their sound takes a cue from 80’s pop like The Smiths and more recently Interpol and The Killers. Check them out July 5th at Downtown Alive and July 6th at The Handlebar.

GS: So who is from Greenville? I noticed a few Easley High graduates and Gina went to Eastside. How did you all end up in Athens?
PK: Well, we consider Greenville the hang out spot and if we were to get into specifics of where we’re from we’d just have a bunch of small towns outside of Greenville to list. All our friends live there and we always go to bars in Greenville when we’re in town. Its kind of a happening spot compared to Six Mile if you know what I mean? We ended up in Athens because I wanted to record a CD there. Gina and I moved together. Kass was living there already and Tim followed shortly after we finished. We met Donovan in Athens.

GS: How did you meet/form?
PK: Basically, I already knew Tim, Kass, Gina, and Donovan, and I asked their help recording an EP we put out last year called “Land of No Output.” So the first album kind of created the band.

GS: When did you sign with Livewire and how has that affected the growth of the band?
PK: We signed with Livewire in January of this year. All of sudden there was a well-organzied, well-funded team of people working along side of us helping us to do what we wanted to do and that was very exciting.

GS: How are you holding up on tour? Is it going well?
PK: The shows are going great. We’ve made touring a science and we know how to maintain without getting on each other’s nerves and without losing too much touch with the rest of the world. Since we’ve been touring so much and we have the support of the label we can go almost anywhere and play for a bunch of people that have heard of us and are really into the music. We try and make friends every night (we always need a place to stay) and so each night is filled with meeting new people and exploring a new town.

GS: What/who is inspiring you right now?
PK: We’ve been listening to a lot of random stuff; podcasts from the Commonwealth Club of California, Mitch Hedburg, political debate, news, Chomsky lectures and of course a lot of music. We usually have some pretty long drives so the music is a large part of it. I think today we played Midlake’s the Trials of Van Occupanther, the National’s Boxer, the Essential Billy Joel, Final Fantasy, some Smiths, some Stone Roses..

GS: What is the next step for The Winter Sounds?
PK: We are touring the rest of the year, we’ll be doing CMJ in October then going out West. And we’re working on a European release of “Porcelain Empire” in November followed by a European tour in February of next year. Hopefully by the summertime of ‘08 we’ll be in the studio again.

GS: Any big plans for the album’s release?
PK: We are having a CD release party July 6th at the Handlebar in Greenville. The day before we’re doing a hybrid set of mostly acoustic, some electric versions of our songs at Downtown Alive. Mostly just keep touring, keep crossing the fingers.

www.thewintersounds.com