For Americana duo The Fremonts, the impact of one’s home and surroundings ring true on all fronts. From the mutual city name that sparked their own, moving across the country, and naming/developing their first full-length, the twosome divulge all for Unsigned Band Week.
Where are you all from?
Justin is originally from Fremont, CA and Stephanie is originally from Fremont, NE. We lived in NYC for 13 years and are currently based out of Boulder, CO.
How long have you been a band and how did you get started?
We formed The Fremonts in 2014 when we moved from NYC to Colorado. We originally started making music together because Stephanie wrote a play that required an onstage band. Justin wrote most of the music for that play and eventually it morphed into our current Americana duo.
How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard you before?
Harmony-heavy Americana.
What was your latest release of music and can you talk about that a bit?
Our first full-length album, We Don’t Live There, was released on June 9 of this year. We wrote the album after a difficult but necessary relocation from New York to Colorado. This music echoes the heartache of leaving our past in a distant city skyline and walking into fresh, open spaces with hope for the future.
What is your writing and recording process like?
Stephanie’s songs are mostly inspired by conversations or little snippets of something she hears or reads. She regularly writes along themes that she’s working through in her own life. Justin’s songs are often inspired by the news or books, and he likes to write from the perspectives of other human beings. We both sing into our iPhones to record ideas as quickly as possible as we go through our days. Those little recorded melodies are often really useful when we put full songs together later in the writing process.
For our most recent album, we used both old and new songs from our writing collections. When we had enough material to record, we worked closely with our producer, Chris Tucker, to develop interesting arrangements and new orchestrations for each track. The studio band joined us once the music was well prepared and we rehearsed with them for about a month before recording.
In the studio, we were working on refining our musicianship – tightening up tempos, tuning our harmonies and finding more confidence in our voices. We also spent a lot of time building up relationships with our engineer and producer. Those guys are like our brothers now, so we’ll definitely be working with them to develop the next album. Relationships are precious in music and those bonds don’t come easy.
What are current projects you are working on?
We’re currently in the middle of a three-month, 30-plus show tour across the Midwest and East Coast. We are super fortunate to have extremely supportive friends and family who have put us up, fed us, contributed to our Kickstarter campaign and showed up to our performances. We even have friends who are letting us write our next album from their country home in the woods. We seriously couldn’t do any of this without that support.
Is there any significance behind your band name?
Stephanie is originally from Fremont, NE and Justin is originally from Fremont, CA, so the band name really wrote itself. It resonates with our Americana vibe, as there are towns called Fremont across America, all named for the explorer John C. Fremont, “The Pathfinder.”
What is your favorite memory as a band?
We’ve made a lot of memories on this tour. Particularly the smaller towns we’ve played have been awesome and made us feel really welcome. It seems like rural people just don’t get enough credit for how much they cherish music and storytelling. We played the most memorable show of the tour so far in Shenandoah, IA at The Depot.
What are your goals for the future as a band?
We’d like to write a really wonderful new album, record it by Oct. 2018 and hit the road again. We hope to keep pushing our writing and musicianship and being out on the road seems to be the best way to do that.
What are your plans for the rest of 2017? 2018?
We are going to finish this tour and then record our next album.
Where can readers find your music?
Our website (thefremontsmusic.com) has links to our music and videos.
You can also find us on: Spotify, iTunes, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud.
For more information on The Fremonts, visit thefremontsmusic.com.
