Introducing long-time friends and creative duo ER BIACCO & LEONARDO DERI. The act have recently released their uniquely poetic take on classic country and blues – the wonderfully captivating Seven Spikes.
We were blessed with the chance to interview the band to find out more about the song, their journey as musicians, and their plans for the future. Here’s how it went.
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Hi guys, thanks for the chat – love the new song. For those who don’t know, how would you describe your sound and song-writing?
Hi, it’s a pleasure and thanks to you for the invitation. In this song we wanted to experiment in a genre that is unusual for us but that we tried to interpret by mixing our knowledge and musical influences.
What does the song Seven Spikes represent, what does it mean for you?
LEONARDO: Seven Spikes is an interior search for sustainability, in response to the disasters of this period. The need to find calm in the total chaos in which the current world finds itself.
Do you think there is hope for the future of humanity, that we can find our way back to our roots if enough of us turn in the right direction? Or could we make better use of our current technological connection?
LEONARDO: The most desirable thing would be a fair balance between the two components, perhaps we are going too far beyond what is allowed in terms of respect for ourselves and for what surrounds us.
Finding a little empathy with the world and its characteristics would benefit not only technological progress but also the mental one of the human being. On the other hand, everything is very disconnected from this point of view and unfortunately we see it every day. Even before the pandemic.
You’ve been friends since the nineties, what does such a long-term relationship offer when it comes to creative pursuits and musical unity?
We have so much fun. We have always had the belief that music is a passion, not a job. We do it and we have always done it only for us, for our desire to communicate our emotions through this powerful medium. The fact that it can also be heard by others has never affected our ideas in the writing phase.
We do what we like and the demonstration is Seven Spikes, an experiment with country sounds, far from what can be fashionable today, especially in our country, but also far from what we have written in the past.
What’s your songwriting process like as a duo, and is there a bigger band involved in the set-up, or are you both multi-instrumentalists?
ER BIACCO: This song, born during the lockdown from a guitar riff of mine, has seen its evolution in a natural way and in an equally natural way its overall vision has taken shape. All instinctively.
Letting the music flow without thinking too much by inserting piano, violins and slide guitar to give a country dress to the riff and including valuable musicians such as friend Matteo Quiriconi on lead guitar and Francy Karema on drums.
Matteo is a crazy bluesman, very good, in my opinion one of the few in the area who has developed his own personal style (with him we had already collaborated on a cover of the Yardbirds – Lost Woman, which you can find on Spotify. We knew he was the right person to this experiment.
Francy Karema plays in an experimental jazz project with a friend of mine from Lombardy. She has a studio where she records drums. She is a truly technically trained drummer. I played him the song, he liked it and proposed to play it. Leonardo took care of the text and the vocal line on the recording process: everyone recorded their parts at home and sent them to me by email I did nothing but mix everything with my computer.
Where are you based, and what’s the live scene like for this kind of nostalgic country blues sound (prior to Covid of course)?
Here in Italy (we live in Tuscany), we are orphans of music scenes worthy of the name in the whole music scene, not only in the country-blues. The last really significant scene in our country was in the 80s with Punk-Hardcore. Today there are just so many people who play.
What’s your plan going forwards, what else can fans look forward to, and where can we catch you performing?
The plan for the future is to live better in the present. For any other type of commitment, ask Covid – based on his plans, we would probably have ours!
Is there anything else we should know?
Yes, it was nice to talk to you, thanks and greetings to all!
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Grab the music via Amazon or find out more here.
