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July 2016 - The Red Sea Pedestrians
Pedestrians Travel the Globe in a Sea of Music
Story by LCC Radio Reporter Sarah Spohn
Mandolins,
guitars, banjos, clarinets, keyboards, bass, cellos,, violins, and drums. It
might sound like an entire music store, but it’s actually Kalamazoo’s own
melting pot of worldly influences from six separate musicians.
Together, they form The Red Sea Pedestrians: Ian Gorman (mandolin, guitar,
banjo, bass, vocals), Rachel Gorman (clarinet, vocals), Bill Caskey (guitar,
keyboards, bass, vocal), Cori Somers (violin, vocal), Cori Somers (violin,
vocal). Named after the Monty Python piece, “The Life of Brian,” the band is a
unique blend of serious musicianship and quirky playfulness.
“The name also reflects to our musical wanderings. We love to explore and
combine different genres, often from different cultures so it in that sense
we’re always traveling as well,” Ian said.
The Red Sea Pedestrians just celebrated their tenth anniversary being together,
and that’s meant a lot of different sounds over the years. RSP member Ian Gorman
(guitar, banjo, mandolin, keys, vocals, recording engineer) discussed the
group’s sound.
“It’s really a culmination of many different songwriters with very eclectic
tastes,” Ian said. “We’re striving to create something that is unique, so it’s
deliberately hard to pin down at times. Because of the instrumentation
(featuring clarinet and violin as lead melodic instruments much of the time),
one foot is usually in the realm of Klezmer/Gypsy/Jazz, but the interesting
thing is that our other foot can travel anywhere: rock, pop, American folk,
classical, you name it.”
Having released their fourth studio album, Through the Eyes of Osiris, Red Sea
Pedestrians have already received positive reception and airplay on the radio
waves. The band is proud of the new material, risks and all.
“I know we took some chances on the new record, and pushed ourselves into some
new territory sonically,” Ian said, “but I think our fans are the kind to
respect chance-taking and will hopefully be as into it as we are.”
The Pedestrians mainly met on the campus of Western Michigan University.
“Rachel,
Ben and I all took recording classes and worked at the studio,” Ian said. “Mike,
Bill and Cori played music with studio director John Campos. We’ve all known
each other for years through the scene, and naturally just started to play music
together in different configurations throughout the years. When you’re deep into
the recording studio world, you end up working with all kinds of people all the
time on different projects, so we all knew each other well before formally
playing in a band together.”
Utilizing that recording studio experience within the own band’s mastering and
mixing allows plenty of room for creative expression with Red Sea Pedestrians
material. “We love the studio,” Ian said, “and have worked hard over the decades
to build the skills to realize our own creative visions ourselves. Not only is
doing something yourself often the best way to get what you want, but it’s
terribly fun.”
Ian spoke about the band’s recording process. “It was important to us to center
the tunes around the live six-piece band sound, but we are also big fans of
studio production, overdubs, effects, etc., so the sky was the limit in terms of
creative ideas.”
“However, as often as production means adding things, sometimes production means
NOT adding things. It’s good to keep contrast in mind. So there some songs on
Osiris that are very built up and layered, and others that are basically the six
of us playing together like we do live.”
While Ian grew up on classic albums and singer-songwriter legends like The
Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, and Janis Joplin, every band member
brings along something different. Ian recalled some of his earliest music
memories.
“Instead of ghost stories, like a typical kid, I had ‘Paul is Dead.’ I remember,
very young, putting on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ late at night, and getting
all by the ‘I buried Paul’ hidden deep in the fade out.”
Just as The Red Sea Pedestrians bring a variety of musical influences like
American roots, rock, klezmer, gypsy, classical, jazz, as a collective vibe to
the band, they’re also part of a larger Michigan network of musicians. The band
is a member of the Earthwork Music Collective, a network of independent
musicians valuing environmentalism, social justice, activism, community and
creativity.
Ian
has been involved with the collective for over a decade. He spoke about the
relationship. “As a recording engineer, I’ve had the pleasure of working on many
Earthwork releases over the years,” he said. “This is a collection of prolific
and wildly creative musicians that I’ve looked up to for a long time, and
getting to work with (and eventually become close friends with) many of them is
an incredible gift. Especially working in the studio with people you admire,
where you’re given a very rare window into their creative process. I’ve learned
so much!”
With the band’s home base in Kalamazoo, they’ve been able to play at some ideal
Michigan music festivals including Cooper’s Glenn, Wheatland, Blissfest,
Hoxeyville, and the Buttermilk Jamboree. Performing live at a variety of venues
is perhaps one of the band’s favorite parts.
It’s Michigan music festivals, the collaborative Earthwork Collective and
community that makes this “self-contained variety show” happy to be a part of
the mitten state. “We can play a lot of different kinds of shows, to a lot of
different kinds of audiences,” Ian said. “Sometimes it’s a rollicking late-night
dance party. Sometime’s it a picnic-blanket style, kids-running-around outdoor
concert-in-the-park. Sometimes it’s an intimate show to a seated, listening
crowd. Really, we feed off the audience and the venue, and that dictates what
the experience is like.”
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