Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.05.2015, Blaðsíða 22

22 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 5 — 2015MUSIC
“We’re taking it all in, but I think living here
might just improve and emphasise what
we are already inspired by,” JJ tells me.
“We haven’t been here long but we can
hear a lot of blues out here and a lot of
new inspiration.”
With a vibrant local music scene, Aus-
tin is one of cities in the American South
where blues music has thrived, a genre
that JJ says Kaleo is deeply inspired by. In
Austin, the group is living in a house to-
gether like “one big family.” Their upcom-
ing debut US tour kicked off with the larg-
est showcase festival in the world: South
by Southwest (SXSW).
Get in the van!
“SXSW was pretty intense but it was really
great,” JJ says. “It was definitely different
from anything we’ve ever played before.”
When JJ and I caught up after SXSW,
his voice and demeanor were noticeably
exhausted. His tiredness was under-
standable, though: Kaleo had just ground
through eight shows over five days.
Though the shows were “awesome,” he
says they were going non-stop and “kind
of just driving back and forward between
shows and doing radio stuff.”
Nowadays, Kaleo’s schedule is fully
booked. Their tour, plus finding time to
record their upcoming EP and fitting
back-to-back media interviews—he had
to pause our call for a minute so he could
order lunch—all while acclimating to their
first-ever transatlantic move doesn’t give
them much time to take a breath and
reflect on the sensational yet dramatic
changes that have happened to their lives
in the last few months.
“To be honest,” JJ says of his experi-
ence at SXSW, “I didn’t really have that
much time to check out shows as much as
I would have wanted.”
After all, that was one of the reasons
they moved to the United States and the
South in particular: to connect to the lo-
cal music and immerse themselves in
blues music and culture. But JJ assured
me that they would carve out the time to
go to shows, jam with local musicians and
experience the culture.
Change
Like most bands, Kaleo has humble roots.
Growing up, JJ and his friend Daníel
“Danny” Kristjánsson (the group’s bass-
ist) jammed on guitars together in their
families’ Mosfellsbær homes. Exploring
the artform, the two listened to thou-
sands of tracks together—finding particu-
lar joy in classic rock, oldies and Ameri-
can blues—and spent hundreds of hours
jumping down the Internet’s rabbit holes,
learning more about music history and
genres like the blues.
Once Davíð Antonsson (the group’s
drummer) joined their
jam sessions, they
quickly transformed
into a three-piece
band, playing gigs all
across Reykjavík. They
performed everything
from troubadour sets
at small bars to cover
songs at company par-
ties.
“We took every op-
portunity we could,” JJ
says.
In 2012, they made
the decision to focus
on their own music
and picked up guitar-
ist Rubin Pollock. They
played together as Kaleo for the very first
time at an Iceland Airwaves off-venue
show.
They couldn’t have known what
would unfold in the following three years.
Their debut release, “Rock N Roller,”
helped them garner a modest following,
but it was a recorded cover of Icelandic
campfire staple “Vor í Vaglaskógi,” for
unsigned band radio showcase Skúrinn
(“The Garage”) at Icelandic State Radio’s
Rás 2, that propelled them into the coun-
try’s national spotlight.
“Everything went crazy,” JJ says.
“They videotaped [the performance] and
it went viral.”
They recorded a studio version of the
song, which went live in June 2013, along
with a music video that earned nearly half
a million views on YouTube. Sena, Ice-
land’s largest record label, latched onto
their growth and produced Kaleo’s full-
length debut album in an almost impos-
sible time span of six weeks.
Iceland: It’s such a small market
By 2014, Kaleo had rocketed onto larger
stages in Iceland and played at festivals
around the country and even abroad.
During all of these exciting develop-
ments, JJ says he took trips out into na-
ture to “zone out and find peace.”
“The nature in Iceland is beautiful,” he
says. “And you don’t have to drive far.”
His favourite spot was a summer-
house near Laugarvatn, an hour east of
Mosfellsbær, which
is where he wrote the
visceral and emotional
track “All The Pretty
Girls.”
“It’s just such a
summer sound,” JJ
says of the song,
which became the
crucial turning point
in Kaleo’s journey af-
ter the song went vi-
ral online, racking up
more than two million
plays on Spotify alone.
“We were abso-
lutely not thinking we
were going to get that
response from ‘All the
Pretty Girls,’ it was a huge surprise,” he
says. “You’ll never know which song is
going to take you there.”
After the track’s release, managers,
labels and publishers outside of Iceland
took notice of their growing popular-
ity and started reaching out to negoti-
ate deals. “We didn’t know which way to
look,” JJ says. “We didn’t even know the
difference between a publishing compa-
ny and a management company because
Iceland is such a small market.”
Over the next few months, Kaleo’s
then-manager Sindri Ástmarsson would
enter negotiations with Atlantic Records,
one of the biggest record labels in the
world, home to legendary artists such as
the Rolling Stones.
“It was a crazy roller coaster ride,”
JJ says.
Finding their formula
After signing with Atlantic Records and
exploring U.S. markets like Nashville, JJ
says the band collectively decided on
Austin to be their new home. Their cur-
rent manager Bruce Kalmick operates
out of the city, and JJ says they liked Aus-
tin’s music scene and history.
“It’s so easy to be inspired now that
we’re in the land of where it all hap-
pened,” JJ says, referencing the history
of American blues music. “We are in the
roots.”
Just six days after arriving to Austin
in February, they played their debut US
show at Lamberts, a local venue that fo-
cuses primarily on blues music.
“We’re huge fans of Delta blues from
the 1930s and all those great artists like
Son House, Robert Johnson and Lead
Belly,” JJ says. “They’ve been recording in
some of the prisons even—it’s fantastic.”
JJ also showed his respect to Alan
Lomax, who recorded many of the Delta
blues artists in the 1930s and 40s with
his father John. In his memoir, ‘The Land
Where the Blues Began’, Lomax linked
the birth of blues music to segregation
and slavery, two themes that also provid-
ed inspiration for Kaleo’s track “Broken
Bones,” JJ says.
“Broken Bones” starts off with sharp
lyrics: “The devil’s gonna make me a free
man / the devil’s gonna set me free.”
Forty seconds into the song, a tambou-
rine emulates the rattling of chains that
many slaves were shackled by. The track
cuts right through the flesh—down to the
bone—with an authentic blues sound,
which is surprising considering Kaleo
formed more than 6,000 kilometres from
the birthplace of American blues.
JJ says that with the advent of the In-
ternet, it was easy to listen to and learn
about music styles that existed outside of
Iceland.
“If you look at it, we’re just a blues
band at the end,” JJ says. “The same for-
mula but with a different kind of vibe to it.”
Privileged, fortunate
Johnny Cash—also from the American
South—famously sang the line: "Get
rhythm when you get the blues," which
was quoted by Bob Dylan in his Musi-
Cares speech this February: “Very few
rock 'n' roll bands today play with rhythm.
They don't know what it is.”
Arguably, Kaleo is one of the excep-
tions to Dylan’s statement, as their rhyth-
mic rock sound inspired by the blues was
present throughout their debut record.
It’s this raw talent that likely caught the
ears of the many American labels who
reached out.
Kaleo hopes to showcase who they
are as a group with the release of their
upcoming EP, which JJ says is expected
to drop this summer. This is a particu-
larly exciting record for the group since
they’re collaborating with Mike Crossey,
the same producer behind the Arctic
Monkeys’ first three albums. Even before
arriving to Austin, they spent a few weeks
in Crossey’s studio in London, JJ says.
“We ŕe fortunate enough to work with
some great people,” he says. “We’re go-
ing to also find some time to just keep
making music and hopefully get further
and further,” he says.
Perhaps Kaleo, whose name means
“sound” in the Hawaiian langauge, will
make it as far as Hawaii. “We’d love to
tour there,” he says.
Definitely on the list for them this year,
though, is the now-distant land of Ger-
many, and JJ says they are “crossing our
fingers to be able to come to Iceland for a
few days this summer.”
“Kind of a shame to miss out on the
Iceland summer,” he says. “I would love to
at least come home and get a little taste.”
During the interview, JJ reflected
back to his early days in Iceland, before
the birth of Kaleo, in those simpler times
when JJ and Danny just spent hours lis-
tening to American blues music. There’s
so much that has changed since those
beginnings, and though he says they’re
excited about it all, he acknowledges it
has been a wild ride. There’s still so much
ahead of them, he says.
“We are very privileged and fortu-
nate,” he adds. “We are just going to keep
developing as a band, trying to get better
in the studio and play as many shows as
we can. That’s what it’s all about, right?”
In just three years, Kaleo went from playing small venues
in Reykjavík to signing with Atlantic Records, legendary
home to artists such as Ray Charles, Led Zeppelin and
Alvin and The Chipmunks. As part of this development,
the four-piece rock-and-blues band have packed up and
moved to Austin, Texas, where vocalist Jökull “JJ” Júlíus-
son says they’ll live “for good.”
Photos
Yasmin Nowak
Words
Scott Shigeoka
“If you look at it, we’re
just a blues band at the
end,” JJ says. “The same
formula but with a dif-
ferent kind of vibe to it.”
Kaleo Are Privileged
And Fortunate,
Play The Blues,
Have Escaped Iceland
INTER
VIEW