Interview by Shawn Breen
Portraits Photos by Shawn Breen and Shantel Mitchell
Live Photos by Shantel Mitchell

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been overly excited about anything coming out of Seattle. As of late, things seem to be picking up steam again. On the heels of a recent show by Mudhoney at the Rock N Roll Hotel comes a double bill with two of Seattle’s finest. Fleet Foxes and opener The Dutchess And The Duke will be heating things up (if it’s possible to get any hotter in DC in the summertime) at the Black Cat on July 7th. While on vacation in San Francisco I caught the opening night of the tour at the Bottom Of The Hill. I cannot stress enough how badly you need to be at the Black Cat show. This is as fine a double bill as any I have seen. I got a chance to sit down with Kimberly Morrison and Jesse Lortz of The Dutchess And The Duke for a few minutes before they went on.

key:
K = Kimberly J = Jesse

JESSE: - We’re not married… (clarifies) we are married, but not to each other.

BYT: - You’re not boyfriend and girlfriend, but you guys have known each other for a while? You have played in other bands together? (Side note both played together in The Sultanas and The Flying Dutchmen previously).
KIMBERLY: - We have known each other since we were 16 and we were together cleaning pools for a while.

BYT: - Cleaning pools?
K - Yea it was fun.
J - I’m just gonna nod.
K - He likes me to do the talking.

BYT:- You guys are going out for 18 dates with Fleet Foxes right?
J - Yea and we have some shows of our own to do.

BYT- You’re going to have some shows on off nights I guess?
J - We have like 29 shows.

BYT: - Do you play a show when you get back?
J - We’re going to play a show in Seattle at the Wildrose for the record release.

BYT: - So Seattle is home for you guys.
K - Yeah.

BYT: - Were you ever interviewed when you were in your other bands?
J - Nobody really cared about our other bands.

BYT:- Now Jesse was in The Sultanas with you right?
K - Umm hmm.

BYT:- Which was mostly an all girl group?
K - Yea it was me and two other girls singing and then him and some other guys playing in the back, we just did the one 7″. We’re talking about doing a record.
J - (Jesse talking to someone else then comes back to me) What was the question?
K - (Laughs)

BYT: - Some of the songs that I heard on your Myspace sound like there is a lot of Stones influence, do you guys get a lot of that?
K - We get Stones, Dylan, Leonard Cohen.
J - I think I kinda look like Mike Jagger a little bit.
K - (Laughs) Totally!

BYT: - Were the Stones a big influence on you?
J - The Stones were a big influence on everybody.

BYT: - What else influences you?
K> - Mostly life.
J - (Agrees)
K - Jesse doesn’t like to answer questions but he’s the songwriter so he has to answer the ones about songwriting.

BYT: - So he writes all of the songs?
K - Yes.

BYT: - When you guys recorded did you play all of the instruments yourself or did you have other people help out?
K - He did most of it himself. I played bass on a track but he did all of the guitars himself and we had Donnie do percussion and Jesse did some songs himself.

BYT: - Did you do any backing vocals?
K - Oh yeah.
J - I didn’t sing her parts, she sang her own.
(All of us laugh)
K - At first I was like, “Aw that sucks I mean I want to play guitar on the record too”, but it’s like, he can do it all himself, it’s cathartic for him to do it all himself but I get to play the shows so I’m actually really lucky.
J - We’re thinking bout finding someone to replace me for shows, because I only like playing on records.

BYT: - You were a 4 piece at one time though?
J - Yeah.

BYT: - Are you going to go back to a 4 piece?
J - Probably not. Once we learn all of the songs we may as well just stay a 3 piece.
K: - Our friend Oscar was supposed to tour with us playing 3rd guitar and he actually played our first show down here, which was horrible, him and I drank a little too much. Then we were setting up a tour but he couldn’t get off work. So we were playing with our friend Ruben who is in this awesome band called the Coconut Coolouts from Seattle. He’s getting married soon and he’s got his own band so he couldn’t go on tour with us so we just taught ourselves how to play the leads.
J - So it will probably be a little bit rough for the first few shows.
K - It’s coming together a lot better then we thought it would.

BYT:- Between the two of you, how many tours do you think you’ve done in other bands, this isn’t your first tour…?
K - This is probably like my 14th.
J - It’s probably my 52nd tour…. no it’s probably like my 8th or 9th. We’ve never toured the whole US.
K - Neither of us has done a full US tour.

BYT: - So were you really looking forward to this trip then?
J - Yes.

BYT: - Some of the stuff you’ve done in the past has been more garage-y and this is more folky, did it just work out that way?
K - It just worked out that way. Garage music is such a niche and you can only play the same songs so many times.
J - Plus I was just going through some depression and it just started coming out.
K - He wrote all of these rad songs.

BYT: - Were a lot of the songs written before you asked her to be in the band with you?
J - Actually the majority of the songs were written during the recording process. We put out a 7″…
K - That 7″ (interrupts and points to the Resevoir Park 7″ I bought at the show)
J - …which we thought was just going to be a one off recording. I wrote this song and this B-side and put it out and I think we wrote like two more songs and Hardly Art asked us to do an album so we said yeah. We went and started recording and just wrote like couple of songs and recorded it, wrote a couple more songs, recorded it.

BYT: - The songs from the 7″ are on the record too?
J - Yes.
K - Yes but it is different recordings.

BYT: - You guys recorded on 8 track, do you prefer analogue to digital?
J - Yes, we made them let us put it out on vinyl too. it’s a pretty young label. they are attached to Sub Pop but they are just starting out.
K - The Boom Boom Castle label that did the 7″, that he did has never put out a CD, it’s all been vinyl.

BYT: - When is the other 7″ (on Hozac) coming out, will that be soon?
J - July 19th.

BYT: - Will that be a limited pressing?
J - They’re doing colored vinyl for about 150 or so and I think a 1,000 run.

BYT: - How many was the first 7″?
J - 600-700.

BYT: - So is it 2nd pressing now?
J - No, I run a record label but I fucking suck at it, really bad. I don’t ever mail orders or do distro so I’ve sold 500 just off the Myspace and we have some left over, so it’s still first pressing. We haven’t exploded yet.
K - (Laughs)
J - We haven’t exploded. It’ll happen, don’t worry, don’t feel bad for us. (Laughs) We heard it on the radio the other day and we heard the 7″ version and we’re so used to the album version now and no offense…
K - I like the 7 inch version a lot, it’s just a little bit different but the record is so much cleaner then that.
J - I like it to, it’s just different. You can hear all of the instruments and…on the 7″… I mean, you already bought it so I’m not trying to dissuade you or anybody else from buying it but it’s just a different sound. It’s still very good.

BYT:- I’m going to do my best to get as many people out to the Black Cat show as I can.
K - Cool. Thank you so much.

BYT - I think it’s going to be a pretty tight show already (in reference to the way these shows are selling out ahead of time right and left. If you do not have your tickets already, go get them now, seriously)!!!
K - Well we will be tight by then.
J - These guys, Fleet Foxes are really, really good.
K - Have you heard them or seen them?

BYT - I have not. (Referring to seeing them. I already have purchased the EP and the first full length both out on Sub Pop and believe me definitely well worth picking up if you haven’t already).
J - They are like the Beach Boys.
K - I was almost crying during their soundcheck. Their harmonies are so beautiful. I don’t know of any other modern band that’s doing anything like that right now. We are so lucky that they asked us to tour with them. I was trying to book a tour myself because I’ve done that for so many bands that I’ve been in and we don’t really have a name for ourselves yet. Even though we’ve both toured a lot and put out stuff in other bands. I wasn’t getting a whole lot of response so we were supposed to do 2 weeks and we were just like, fuck, we’ll just go to California for a week because nobody is emailing me back. We played this show with them and they Myspaced us the next day and asked us if we wanted to tour with them for a month and have guarantees and everything and we were like, “Yes, please”!!!

BYT: - So you just played a one off show with them and they asked you?
K - Yes.

BYT: - So you didn’t solicit them really.
K - No.

BYT - How did you get the one show?
K - We played with both them and Mudhoney and they’re both Sub Pop and we’re Hardly Art (Sub Pop is the parent label of the fledgling Hardly Art). We were just like, “this sucks, what are we doing here? We’re so out of our league. We don’t even deserve to be here like this. We have got to start practicing more”. Then like the next day Robin Myspaced us and we were just like, “Oh my god, I guess we weren’t that bad”!
J - Fleet Foxes are really good. We’re excited to hear them, 18 nights!

BYT: - Well we are excited to see you tonight and we’re excited to see you at the Black Cat. So Thank you.

I implore you to go to this show, buy your tickets early and support both bands. 7 of the original 18 dates have sold out.

Make friends with The Dutchess And The Duke at Myspace here:
http://www.myspace.com/thedutchessandtheduke

and Fleet Foxes here:
http://www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes
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CATCH the plethora of our previous fleet foxes coverage here:
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/music/get-fleet-foxed/
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/live-dc/live-dc-fleet-foxes-blitzen-trapper-the-cat/
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/downloads/mp3-picks-of-the-week-dont-call-it-a-comeback-edition/
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/downloads/mp3-picks-of-the-week-new-favorites-edition/

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