Ghosty - Growing Up
Hailing from the mid west (Lawrence, Kanasas to be exact), Ghosty has recently released their long awaited debut album, Grow Up Or Sleep In.
The band’s singer/songwriter, Andrew Connor, was born into a family of passionate musicians. Both of his parents were music teachers and his father a songwriter. “That was how I originally became interested in music. Dad showed me a lot of records when I was young and that got me hooked.”
All five members of Ghosty have a strong interest in music from the 60’s and 70’s. “I try to keep my ears open to anything interesting. All the band listens to a lot of music – from pop music from the 1960’s and 1970’s, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Big Star, Curtis Mayfield, Fela Kuti … I listen to more music from the 1960’s and 1970’s, but I like a lot of modern artists as well.”
Beginning back in 2001, the writing and recording of Grow Up Or Sleep In was a drawn out and interrupted process for the band, resulting in stylistic contrasts throughout the album.
“There wasn’t a story running throughout the album, but after the fact the concepts we explored are similar. In the lyrical themes there are lots of references to sleep and coming of age; I wrote record while I was in college and that lends itself to the broad theme of the record.”
“We did three songs with Bright Eyes’ Mike Mogus - ‘Big Surrender’, ‘Henry Green’ and ‘Hey Somebody’. Then we recorded seven songs a year later with Trent Bell in North Oklahoma, so there is a big gap between those chunks of songs. As you listen to the album you can pick the difference as they have a distinct style. The writing took place over more than a couple of years. Some of the songs had been hanging around for a long time before they were recorded. The album was recorded in pieces because of necessity as we were paying for recordings ourselves and didn’t have the money to pay for the whole thing at once.”
In late 2003, a fortuitous encounter with Flaming Lips’ singer Wayne Coyne resulted in the band helping Coyne complete recording his song 'Say it Isn’t So'.
“I have to stress that it was good fortune/dumb luck. We were recording with Trent Bell and Wayne happened to need to be in the studio occasionally as he was recording with Trent. Wayne was working on a Flaming Lips Christmas song and we got to sing backing vocals on that song and he sang backing vocals on a Ghosty track, but it was just a chance encounter.”
Having already been lucky enough to work with some accomplished artists in the industry, Connor contemplates who his dream collaboration would include.
“I’d love to record an album with Brian Wilson, Phil Spector or George Martin, or maybe co-write a song with Burt Bacharach. I would want to work with someone I could learn from.”
With Grow Up Or Sleep In receiving good reviews and comparisons with Pavement, Ghosty is already looking forward to the release of its second full length album.
“We are working on our next record now. Actually, we are almost finished. We recorded part of it at home and part of it with Trent Bell. It’s coming out in the US this year and overseas next year.”
“We haven’t done a lot of touring yet but will be doing some in the fall. We are trying to tour as much as possible now. We haven’t done any international touring as yet, but when we do we will probably come to Australia first.”
