Q&A: Some Army

Some Army is a relatively new band making waves in the Triangle music scene. Featuring members of notable local acts such as The Honored Guests and Aminal, the band plays a sophisticated brand of rootsy indie pop. Coming off a recent performance at Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Festival and the release of their debut self-titled EP, Some Army is currently on a brief tour of the Southeast. Diversions writer Chris Powers talked with Russell Baggett and Elysse Thebner of the band in advance of their EP release show this Saturday at Local 506 with T0W3RS and Gray Young.

Diversions: How did Some Army come to be?

Russell Baggett: It came together very casually. I had some songs that I wasn’t really sure what to do with and I started playing them with Patrick (O’Neill) and Elysse who also played in The Honored Guests with me. Eventually we just kind of grabbed more people as we needed, somebody to poke around or play bass or whatever. We booked a show and we had to figure out how to pull this stuff off live, so that’s really how we put the band together.

Dive: The band is composed of a number of accomplished Triangle musicians. How do the musical backgrounds of individual members influence the overall sound of Some Army?

RB: We’re all into very similar stuff and come from pretty similar backgrounds in terms of what we listen to. I had somebody ask in a different interview if we were trying to make a kind of ambient, psychedelic Americana thing. We’re not really trying to do anything in particular, we had some songs and we were just trying to figure out how to play them. Everybody just played their part, and this is what came out.

Dive: Are there specific instructions to each member of the band or is there more creative freedom when it comes to arranging songs?

RB: We’ll work things out together. We do switch instruments a lot. Elysse will play the keyboard and move to the guitar and Patrick will play the guitar and move to the keyboard or move to the drums. We can all do a lot of different things so I think that everybody in the band is pretty open to hearing what other people have to say or other ideas. For the recording, some of the stuff I had demoed two years ago so I had parts that I wanted to play or that I wanted to be played. But otherwise, everybody comes up with their parts and usually we come up with something that we’re all happy with.

Dive: What was the recording process of the EP like?

RB: With our last band, we’ve had a home studio for about almost a decade now. I’ve been working with my buddy Andrew who played in The Honored Guests with us and helped out with the EP also. The two of us have shared this space and this studio for a long time, so it’s like a place where I can go to be by myself and play. For this EP, we started recording a year ago and pretty much everybody else was done with their parts by the end of last year. We all had a bunch of things going on in the first part of this year, but most of the reason why it’s taken so long to get it finished is because I was sitting out there screwing around with it for so long.

Dive: In addition to this EP, you guys released a 7-inch in January. Are there currently any plans for future releases?

RB: On this EP we used the songs that were on that 7-inch. Basically we made that 7-inch back in January because it was an incentive for us to finish some real recordings and we wanted to have something tangible we could start to get rid of. We went on tour last Fall for four or five days and we didn’t have anything to sell, we just did it to get out of town and have a good time. But when we got back from that, we thought we should probably make something that we can get rid of. We’re actually doing another 7-inch with a couple of different songs from the EP that we’ll have at the show on Saturday. We’ve been talking about it some while we’ve been traveling and we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do next. We’ve got a bunch of songs that we could work on that are pretty far along in terms of my parts, we just have to work on them as a band and figure out how to put them out.

Dive: The band is currently on a short tour of the Southeast. How have audiences outside the Triangle been responding to your live sets?

RB: It’s been good. It’s always weird to go to some town you’ve never been to before on a Sunday night and play at some bar you don’t really know about on a bill that’s been pieced together. We played in Charlotte on Friday night at a house show that we were pretty skeptical about. It turned out there were like 50 or 60 kids there packed into this basement and we played to a packed room. Everybody that we talked to really liked it and that was great. The next night we played in Asheville and it was fine, we played at a really nice club. We played well but there weren’t that many people there and we were the first of four bands. It’s just kind of how it goes when you are going places where you haven’t been and this band hasn’t been to that many places outside of the Triangle at all in the last year and a half.

Dive: What kind of music have you guys been listening to while on the road?

Elysse Thebner: The way it’s been going is between my iPod and Russ’. We tend to have similar taste in music but it’s one of those things where I’ll play something that I know he hasn’t heard before and he’ll do the same for me. I’ve been really into this album from this Canadian band called Deloro. It’s a self-titled record that came out this past year and it’s just really good. It’s with members of Constantines and Jennifer Castle, so we’ve been playing that a bit. To appease our Beatle-loving bandmate, we just played Paul McCartney’s “Ram,” so that was kind of cool.

Dive: What can local music fans expect from the EP release show Saturday?

ET: We’re most excited about the lineup of the night. We really thought about the bands we’d love to have support us. Gray Young is incredible and I haven’t actually seen T0W3RS play but I’ve heard great things about them. We’re just hoping that it’s a really solid night and that the energy is really good. Hopefully we play to people who either have seen us or are interested in what we’re doing.