By Zac Taylor
Managing Editor
Black Kettle’s music could be the soundtrack to a wholesome teen flick, or a revamped indie-pop folk group from 1964. Fronted by the two charming, playful songbirds Keeley Bumford and Kailynn West, the group also features Pete Holland Recine on guitar, Ann Driscoll on bass, and Curran McDowell on drums. They will release their debut CD Narrative at Café 939 on March 10.
Zac Taylor: I see three of you here, but more people that play in the band. So you three are the nucleus, and you have a rotating cast of other musicians?
Keeley Bumford: Well Kailynn and I started doing kind of quirky things piano and ukelele or mandolin. Pete played with us for a while, and is now in the band. Ann Driscoll plays bass, and we kind of switch drummers, but we’re looking to lock that down.
ZT: Pete, how did you come to join the band?
Pete Holland-Recine: Well I knew both of these girls as they were first starting. I helped out with a lot of recordings. And when it came time to play live, I was always there to cover the second guitar parts and everything. Recently, after the recording process was over and it was time to start writing again, they asked me to become more of a creative contributor and collaborator.
ZT: Tell me about the record.
KB: It’s been done since December. And we’ve been waiting for artwork since forever. We just got the final proofs last night. With any luck, we will be able to send it off to be printed within a week. We had it mixed by Rich Mendelson and mastered by Tom Carr, who are both MP&E faculty. Besides the basics, we engineered all the overdubs ourselves, and Pete helped, because the three of us are MP&E majors. It was all self-produced and engineered.
ZT: So if I made a Black Kettle channel on Pandora, who else would I hear?
KB: Definitely Deathcab. Telekinesis.
Kailynn West: You’d probably hear Feist and St Vincent.
PHR: Tegan and Sara.
KB: Probably the Cranberries, too.
ZT: So Keeley’s done with school, and you two are done in May. What’s the plan?
KB: We’re sticking around for the summer, and looking for different places to move. Our interest has been peaked by Portland, Oregon, and possibly Seattle. We were set on L.A., but now probably not. Maybe Austin. We have no idea.
PHR: It’s very up in the air. We’re planning on going down to SXSW to check out Austin, and hopefully check out Nashville on the way down there, and play there too.
ZT: So you’re driving? That’s going to be a looong drive, boys and girls.
PHR: It’s kind of a friendship test.
KR: We’re going to see if we can not kill each other before we move somewhere.
PHR: According to Googlemaps, it’s 1 day and 7 hours.
ZT: How’d you guys get that write-up in the Phoenix as one of the five bands to watch in Boston for 2010?
KB: We didn’t even know about it. I sang on this track for another band called Rogue Waves, not to be confused with Rogue Wave, that Isom Innis produced, and it was like a dance track. So I think the guy found me through that, and through Myspace found Black Kettle.
