San Francisco-based Two Gallants are an explosive, dynamic band whose earth-rattling sound belies the fact that they are only a duo. With a sound that will appeal to fans of folk, hard rock and anything in between, Two Gallants will be shaking the Southern Cafe & Music Hall May 3. Arts & Entertainment spoke with singer and guitarist Adam Stephens about the band’s style, latest album and upcoming show.
Arts & Entertainment: You guys have a very unique sound. How would characterize your band’s style?
Adam Stephens: At the risk of being kind of cliché, I don’t really like to. I’m not very good at it…I guess, to someone who’s never heard the music before, I kind of describe it as industrialized traditional music, or something. Our roots in traditional American music are pretty strong, that’s kind of how we started out, and as we’ve played through the years it’s just gotten louder and a bit more aggressive. More of our childhood influences like punk and grunge and metal have kind of resurfaced. It’s kind of a clash between those elements.
A&E: Can you talk about some of your specific influences as a vocalist, songwriter and guitarist?
AS: Well, as a guitarist, I think probably my biggest influence is John Fahey. John Fahey and Reverend Gary Davis are two of the people I’m most affected by and whose songs I learned and somewhat adapted or borrowed style from. As a songwriter, it’s pretty evident to me that pretty much the reason why I started writing music was from listening to Bob Dylan … when I was 15 or 14, I was pretty much only listening to … punk and grunge, whatever kids were listening to at the time, and I’d kind of lost interest in it. Coming upon Bob Dylan on my own kind of reinvigorated an interest in music … an interest in making music and maybe … writing songs.
A&E: Between the cover and title and subject matter of a lot of the songs, your latest album, “We Are Undone,” deals with some pretty dark themes. Can you explain where the inspiration for those themes comes from?
AS: I think it just comes from the time that we live in. I’m not really one who’s motivated to write songs that are just a diversion and distraction from the realities in my life. If there’s something that’s on my mind that’s affecting me, it’s kind of unavoidable and it finds its way into a song. To be honest, I’m extremely frightened by the future, in particular by the changing climate and how much more drastic it is than anyone really anticipated. That in particular is a recurring theme throughout the album.
A&E: Are there any challenges to playing your songs live with just two people?
AS: I mean there aren’t really that many overdubs [on the album] … There’s a few little things here and there, like the last song on the album is mostly piano- and drums- and vocal-based and there’s some acoustic guitar on the chorus, and that’s obviously not really possible with the two piece. And on another song there’s a banjo for like 30 seconds, but those are just more like adding a little touch of character to little sections. I don’t think, playing those songs live, [that] they seem like they’re lacking anything because those parts aren’t there. For the most part [on the album] we kept it pretty real and pretty realistic with how we’ve been performing them live, that’s kind of something we try to keep in mind.
A&E: Can you talk about songs you really like to cover or want to cover live, and how you put your spin on others’ music?
AS: Going back to what I said earlier, we’ve been really influenced from the beginning by a lot of traditional American music and blues and country music … because America has this huge wealth of amazing tradition in its music that is often ignored because it’s not the most, by I guess today’s standard, the most entertaining music to a lot of people … I think that whenever we have the opportunity to...play some music for people that they wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to, we like to take advantage of that … kind of pay our respects, as well, to a lot of the people who made this music, most of whom didn’t really see any money from it at all or any success by any means in their lifetimes. It’s what they deserve given the amount of influence they’ve had … From the start, we were covering a traditional song that Blind Willie McTell did, called “Dyin Crapshooter’s Blues,” that was a standard of ours. We’ve covered a lot of Robert Wilkins songs, a lot of Gary Davis songs, Blind Blake, some Hank Williams songs along the way.
A&E: If this is someone’s first Two Gallants show, what would you tell them to expect?
AS: One thing people tend to say is that they’re shocked by the amount of noise and the broad sound that we make with just two people. I guess I would hope people don’t write us off and just think that since we’re a two-piece it’s going to be weak or it’s not going to have the full band sound that someone wants to see at a live show. Our songs tend to be pretty dynamic, and there’s a lot of tempo shifts and intensity shifts that we kind of use, unintentionally I think, to [give the songs a] driving character … that’s kind of limited by our instruments. Because, when you don’t have three or four instruments in a band, obviously it’s a bit of a challenge to keep songs interesting and have the character of each song and not have it just slip into being monotonous. We try to keep it interesting, change things up a lot. There isn’t really anything that’s too consistent that I think people can take away from our shows. Hopefully it’ll be entertaining, make people feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.
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