Q&A: Trousdale Reflect on a Big Year at All Things Go DC
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SHEVON GREENE ☆
AFTER ENOUGH TIME SINGING BESIDE THE SAME PEOPLE—some things don’t need to be said out loud. For indie-folk trio Trousdale, knowing exactly when to step forward, blend together or pull back has become almost instinctive. Georgia Greene, Quinn D’Andrea and Lauren Jones have spent years developing their voices with three-part harmonies at the focal point of their music.
Something similar has happened between Trousdale and their listeners. More than a year after Growing Pains arrived, people have lived with the tracks, picked favorites and started bringing their own reactions and takes on the stories into the room. The songs themselves haven’t necessarily changed, but the experience of singing them to people who already know them has.
May’s deluxe version of Growing Pains dove into that idea even further, inviting voices into songs the trio already knew deeply. On “Want Me Back,” for example, Tors understood the emotional center of the track well enough to push it closer to where the trio had always imagined it could go.
At All Things Go DC, hundreds of new and familiar listeners alike took in their festival set, even as the rain turned their song “Secondhand Smoke” into an aesthetically pleasing soundtrack for the early afternoon. It’s just one moment among plenty in a year that’s taken the group from Newport Folk Festival and the Grand Ole Opry to national television and their biggest headline crowd yet.
Luna caught up with Trousdale after their rainy All Things Go set. Read more below.
LUNA: Congrats on your performance at All Things Go! How are you feeling after the set? Was there a moment or song today where you felt like the audience was connecting or just an overall feel-good moment that you had up there?
GREENE: We were so pleasantly surprised by the energy in the crowd. Everybody seemed to be having a ball, which made our experience so much more fun. And the rain added a fun little vibe. It was an exciting little weather change.
D’ANDREA: I totally agree. It was a freaking blast. The whole set went by so quickly.
JONES: It did. I really liked doing our song “Secondhand Smoke” because the rain really gave it that emo kind of theme. It was raining and it felt like the right vibe for the song.
LUNA: It’s been a year since Growing Pains originally came out. When you listen to the album now, does it feel like it still belongs to the same versions of yourselves from last year? Have there been moments where you’ve noticed you’ve grown or changed?
GREENE: Yeah. In a lot of ways, I feel like albums grow with you as you play them. You bring them along for the ride. I definitely feel like I’m ready to write some new songs. We’re in the process of working on some new material.
D’ANDREA: When the songs are less new for the audience, it takes on a new life after people have listened to the album a bit. When we first started touring with these songs, people didn’t know the music as well. So within our relationship with the listeners and the audience, it’s definitely grown and changed and feels like we’re coming at it from more of a collective perspective.
LUNA: It’s probably cool to be able to see in the crowd how well they’re connecting with it and the reactions to the music too.
D’ANDREA: Yeah, we’re so grateful for that.
LUNA: I want to ask about the recent deluxe album. Did any of the collaborators hear something in one of your songs that made you look at it completely differently afterward or change your perspective on it?
D’ANDREA: We had the band Tors featuring on “Want Me Back,” and that was really sick. They really understood the emotional place that we were coming from with the song. Their voices put on it and the emotion that they put with it really pushed the song into the space that we wanted it to be in.
LUNA: Are there things that you’ve learned together vocally that you couldn’t have done originally when you first started the band?
GREENE: Through the years, there have been so many unspoken moments where we’re blending or we just know when to back off. At the beginning, I would just be screaming because I was like, “Here’s my part,” but now I’m trying to blend more. We sometimes naturally arrange. Because we’ve been doing this for so long, arranging is a part of our songwriting process, and it’s in the room with us as we’re writing the song. So that can be really helpful to getting a clear idea of what the song’s going to sound like in the end, because in the room, it’s all happening at once.
LUNA: What has been your biggest pinch-me moment this year? You’ve had a lot of great accomplishments—performing on the Today show and The Kelly Clarkson Show, your Grand Ole Opry debut, touring internationally and more.
JONES: The Newport Folk Festival for me was a pinch-me moment, just because it felt really, really special to be there and to be part of such an iconic, legendary festival. I think we were all up on that stage feeling like, “I’ll just never forget that experience.”
GREENE: Our last headlining show in New York at Irving Plaza was the biggest headlining show that we had ever played and was sold out with over 900 attendees. That was really a pinch-me moment of just being like, “Wow, I can’t believe this many people came out to see us.”
D’ANDREA: We have had a lot, and it’s really helpful to look back and think about them too and point them out. The Kelly Clarkson Show was a huge one. That was really a pinch-me moment, and we were just so grateful to be there. It was such a wonderful experience and positive. She was so kind, and I think we got great reception from it too.
