This week on Creative Guts, co-hosts Becky Barsi and Laura Harper Lake sit down with siblings Elizabeth and Ben Anderson, a Boston-based Scottish fiddle and cello duo.
This week on Creative Guts, co-hosts Becky Barsi and Laura Harper Lake sit down with siblings Elizabeth and Ben Anderson, a Boston-based Scottish fiddle and cello duo.
Blending Scottish tunes with lively rhythms and innovative harmonies, the pair create a sound rooted in tradition, inspired by the contemporary, and completely original. On stage, Elizabeth and Ben captivate audiences with their ability to effortlessly communicate musical nuances as only siblings can. Our conversation dives into how they got started, the welcoming Scottish music and dance community, and surprisingly, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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Grateful for our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show.
Views and opinions shared by our hosts or guests are their own and don't necessarily reflect the views of Creative Guts.
EPISODE 247
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LHL: I'm Laura Harper-Lake.
[0:00:01] BB: I'm Becky Barsi.
[0:00:03] LHL & BB: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[0:00:18] LHL: Hey friends, thanks for tuning in to Creative Guts, the podcast that is on a mission to awaken creativity, community, collaboration, and opportunities for gutsy creatives of all ages.
[0:00:27] BB: Today, we're excited to have Elizabeth and Ben Anderson with us, a brother and sister Scottish fiddle and cello duo who aren't actually Scottish at all, but fell in love with the tradition as kids and have spent over a decade making it entirely their own.
[0:00:42] LHL: Their new album, While the Sun Shines, is their biggest leap yet. After years as a duo, they've expanded into a full band, complete with a few tunes that are quite interesting topics. One is a tune named after their shared pet corn snake, and another is named after a beloved character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
[0:01:02] BB: This is a great episode. We did record this one via Zoom because Elizabeth and Ben are a little bit farther out of our reach. So there might be a few little inconsistencies with the audio compared to other episodes, but you're going to love it. So settle in and let's jump into this episode of Creative Guts with Elizabeth and Ben Anderson.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:25] BB: All right. Well, Elizabeth and Ben Anderson, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
[0:01:31] LHL: Welcome.
[0:01:31] EA: Thank you so much. We are so excited to be here.
[0:01:35] BA: Thanks for having us.
[0:01:36] BB: Yay. So folks out in podcast land, I came across Elizabeth and Ben Anderson as I was looking for something to do on a summer or late spring evening. And The Word Barn in Exeter, New Hampshire was featuring Elizabeth and Ben Anderson to highlight their new album, While the Sun Shines, and just happened to show up and was blown away by your music. I've been fangirling since we got on the Zoom, so it's very, very exciting to have you guys here. And we're so excited to learn a little bit about your experience, your background, your new album, and then just who you both are as creatives.
[0:02:13] EA: Thank you so much. It was awesome meeting you at that show. And even more than just the fact that you enjoyed the music, I think the fact that you want to get behind it a little bit means a lot to us. And we're really excited to talk about our music with you.
[0:02:26] LHL: So for the listeners who don't have the pleasure of knowing who you are yet, will you introduce who you are as creatives?
[0:02:34] BA: Yes, we are Elizabeth and Ben Anderson. We are a Scottish fiddle, cello duo. We're based in Boston. We play primarily Scottish music, a bit of Cape Breton fiddle and cello. I think I said that already. We also recently have been playing with Conor Hearn and Noah Fishman, who play guitar and bass, respectively.
[0:02:53] BB: So you're a fiddle and cello sibling duo, but you're not actually Scottish. So how do two kids from New England end up devoted to this type of musical tradition from across the ocean?
[0:03:04] EA: Well, we're actually super lucky because there's a huge Scottish scene, a huge Scottish community in the greater Boston area. We got introduced to the music via our mom, who does Scottish country dancing, which is a type of social dance as a hobby. And she brought us to dance events when we were young, and that kind of led to the music aspect of it. We were both playing our respective instruments by that point.
And we got an incredible opportunity as kids to go to a Scottish music camp that no longer exists, very sadly. And it was called the Boston Harbor Scottish Fiddle – wait, hold on. Boston Harbor Scottish Fiddle School.
[0:03:46] LHL: Wow, that's a mouthful.
[0:03:49] EA: It is. And it took place on Thompson Island, which is one of the Boston Harbor Islands. And it was an incredible place to learn music and also an amazing place to be a kid. We would get access to the entire island. You could walk from one end of it to the other in less than an hour, and we would just run around and have lots of typical summer fun.
But then they also would get in really top-notch teachers who were the highest, most well-regarded performers in their fields. Always one person from Scotland each summer and one person from Cape Breton each summer, which if you're not familiar with Cape Breton, it is a Scottish-influenced part of Nova Scotia and Canada. And they have their own unique style that's heavily influenced by the Scottish immigrants that landed there in the 1700s and 1800s. And also, it's taken a life of its own with their own Canadian Cape Breton culture and other waves of immigration that have come there after that point.
But yeah, we got to learn from kind of the real deal people from Scotland and Cape Breton and it introduced us to all the regional styles within Scottish music and within Cape Breton music. You can really get super granular with it. And we made amazing friends and amazing connections in the greater Boston area that are part of our musical community to this day.
[0:05:09] LHL: How old were you when you went to this camp?
[0:05:12] EA: I was around 13, I think, and Ben is four years younger. So yeah, I was going all the way until I kind of started college, I think. And then I started having to work summer jobs and couldn't make it work anymore. But yeah, Ben, what's your recollection?
[0:05:27] BA: Yeah, that sounds about right. I was probably around 10 when I first went. And I kept going until like one or two years into college. I think I missed the last year that they had the camp. But I went pretty much every year from like two years after they started until two years before they ended it, somewhere around there.
[0:05:44] LHL: Had you like taken music lessons prior to this? And then this was like the discipline of music that you got into? Or did you like learn your lessons through this as in everything?
[0:05:55] BA: Yeah, we both started on classical music. Elizabeth and I both started playing classical on fiddle or on violin, we should call it because it's classical. We went to a local teacher, a couple different local teachers. And then over time, we got more and more into the Scottish music and sort of switched over gradually, applying our classical technique to a completely different style of music. And then, of course, somewhere in there, I switched over to cello as well.
In elementary school, when they started out with the lessons that they teach in our school system, in the Westborough Public Schools, they had us choose an instrument and I had already been playing violin for three or four years at that point. So rather than be way ahead of everybody else, I decided to start on a new instrument. So I started on cello.
[0:06:43] BB: How generous of you, Ben.
[0:06:45] BA: I started cello at that point and I just kept on going with it because who wants to listen to two fiddles play together?
[0:06:52] BB: I don't know. I probably would. But I love the variety that you are able to create with those two instruments. And then the addition of your other two bandmates on this album, too, has been really tremendous. And even adding an electric guitar in there to support you guys and having that big bass is – I got up and started dancing in the back of The Word Barn. It's not a huge venue. And it was the last show before they did their outside. Because it was a beautiful night, too. I'm like, "Oh, they're going to have this out in the field." And it was inside. And I was so bummed.
[0:07:26] LHL: But it sounded kind of better, though, because you're in a space.
[0:07:28] BB: Yeah, the acoustics. Yeah.
[0:07:30] BA: Yeah, it's such a beautiful venue. It was such a pleasure to play there. And it was a very small, cramped stage, but it was also a nicely, tightly packed audience. And it was just great to see so many people right out there in front of us and enjoying the music so much.
[0:07:43] LHL: Yeah, I loved it. It was so cozy. I think that was one of my highlights from that tour.
[0:07:47] BB: So you attended this camp, but when did you start actually performing?
[0:07:51] EA: It was kind of a long road and in some ways inevitable and in some ways not, I would say. Our first thing that we ever, ever, ever put together was for a family event when we were quite young. And Ben hadn't even started the cello at that point, which means it was before he was even in third grade. And we kept going from there.
I have some voice memos from like the very first iPod I ever got. We took some voice memos of arrangements that we had made for two fiddles. One of them involved turning over the fiddle and like tapping out a little drum rhythm on the back. Another one was we play the tune in a major key and then we play the same tune in a minor key, and that's the whole thing. We were both ways too out there and also didn't have enough ideas at the same time. I don't quite know.
But from there, it's kind of morphed. We did in high school some talent shows and stuff like that just in our local region. We did some open mics, notably at Club Passim. That was kind of one of our first times playing at a real music venue on a real stage was the Club Passim Open Mic, which is an amazing folk venue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[0:09:09] BB: What was that like? Because Laura has done a couple of open mic nights and it's nerve wracking. But to get on stage, what was it like, especially in kind of a bigger venue and put yourself out there?
[0:09:23] BA: It certainly is nerve wracking, especially with it being one of the first bigger performances that we were doing. I remember being nervous in front of performances for quite a while after we first started performing. And it's also especially nerve wracking at open mics because it's almost exclusively singer songwriters playing guitars and singing. And to have a fiddle cello Scottish duo come up on stage and play that kind of music, which is just a complete departure from what people are used to hearing there, it's like, "Are we in the right place? Should we even be doing this?" But the reception we always got at those kinds of things was amazing. And it felt so good to be able to break it up a little bit and do something a little different from everyone else.
[0:10:02] EA: Yeah, I just remember in my younger years going to shows at Club Passim of artists who I really respected and revered. Just huge names, people that I wanted to be like someday and being on the same stage playing music in front of the same audience was absolutely incredible. I remember I was a senior in high school the first time we played at Club Passim. And that means Ben was in middle school. He was a little baby.
[0:10:31] BB: Oh my gosh, that's awesome.
[0:10:33] EA: We got up there and I felt definitely super, super nervous. But the adrenaline rush, the feeling of performing in a context, in a venue where it really mattered to us was definitely a new feeling for me. I was like, "I want to keep doing this."
[0:10:50] BB: That's wonderful to hear. I mean, we have creatives of all backgrounds and disciplines that come on this show, but hearing about some of these early stories about what it's like to get started and having those creative guts to see that there's an open mic and signing up and doing it, that's the hard part. Sometimes getting on stage is the easy part. It's actually getting on there and then actually starting to play. Okay, then you get into your rhythm. But how brave for a senior in high school and a middle school student to do that. I don't think I would have been able to do that. It's really impressive.
[0:11:22] LHL: Fast forward to now, do you still get nerves? Does stage fright ever creep in? Or are you just like, "We're seasoned. We're good to go?"
[0:11:29] BA: It's very rare. I still get nerves when I perform solo, which I really do not do often. The only time in like the past five years I remember playing solo is a fiddle competition that happens annually in New Hampshire, in Lincoln, New Hampshire at the New Hampshire Highland Games.
[0:11:48] LHL: Oh, yeah.
[0:11:49] BA: Yeah. Elizabeth is one of the co-runners of the fiddle competition that they do annually there.
[0:11:55] BB: Oh, wow.
[0:11:55] BA: She sort of forced me into playing it 0:11:55one year and I was not prepared at all. And I also hate performing solo. So I felt very nervous for that. But getting up with Elizabeth and playing as a band at this point, we have enough experience and we feel so comfortable with each other and know each other so well musically that it doesn't bother me at this point.
[0:12:13] EA: Yeah, I think there's something about being in it together that really makes it a lot easier and more comfortable to be on stage. We really just trust each other on a musical and personal level, obviously. But we've made so many mistakes in so many contexts in so many ways. I feel like there's no mistake we haven't made. Well, there are certainly mistakes we haven't made. But we've made enough that we've proven to each other that we can recover from it. And we can make something beautiful of it anyway, even if it doesn't go quite to plan. And I think that that's a big aspect of maturing as a performer is being able to just jump right back on and not be phased by the mistakes we made.
And I think another thing that makes it so much easier is that we have never held it over each other's head or anything if we've made a mistake or made a flub, even if it's a kind of an important context, it's just something that happens. And we know that we're doing our best and we just keep moving.
[0:13:14] BA: The show must go on.
[0:13:15] EA: Yep.
[0:13:17] LHL: Can I ask, what is it like performing and working together as siblings in this sense? Is there ever any quarreling? Are you guys ever in disagreement and the band's about to break up? I'm guessing maybe that's not quite the case with this style of music and this vibe, but I'm just curious how your relationship as siblings affects your music and how the music affects your relationship as siblings.
[0:13:41] EA: Well, I have a really terrible memory. So basically, my memory starts at the age that our band started, I would say. There's no part of my personal history for me that doesn't involve being in a band with my brother.
Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. I feel like we've just grown up with each other musically as well. And we've evolved in the same way and also in different ways. We have very similar musical tastes and musical interests, but then we also diverge in different ways. And it's really fun to share our musical interests with each other every so often. We actually have a Christmas tradition of gifting to each other a compendium of all the music that we've been enjoying in the last year.
[0:14:28] BB: What a great idea.
[0:14:29] EA: Which, yeah, it's an amazing way to stay in touch with each other's evolving interests and stuff like that. Yeah. And kids are kids. And we might have had some rough spots when we were in middle school and high school. But at this point, I would say that we are totally fully fledged bandmates. And in some ways, I think being bandmates actually keeps us close as siblings because we have the opportunity to travel together and the opportunity to meet up with each other and just get to know each other on a musical level, which is something that's super important to both of us.
[0:15:04] BB: So, Elizabeth, you lived in the Boston area. And Ben, you live in Connecticut. So what is it like collaborating? I mean, it's not too far away, but what is it like having to collaborate from some level of distance?
[0:15:16] BA: It's difficult. I'm sure Elizabeth would agree that we both wish we were able to get together more often and rehearse more often.
[0:15:23] EA: Sure do.
[0:15:25] BA: She had a sabbatical last year. She took a year off from her job. And because of that, she was able to come over to my house, drive over, get there right after work on weekdays and do a little rehearsal on weekday nights. But prior to that, and at this point forward, it's going to be like weekends are really the only options. And there's not a lot of weekends. We were very busy and we have lots of musical and non-musical obligations to take care of. But we really just like try to always have something on the calendar in order to know that we're going to get together with each other sometime soon and just make sure that we keep the ball rolling and never just let it languish.
[0:16:07] BB: That's important. Yeah.
[0:16:08] EA: I also feel like we've been – well, I don't know. We've tried different things before because this has sometimes been – I mean, this has often been an issue since we were in like college age. And at one point we did like a retreat down to a family member's house in Washington, D.C. And we like had three days to just like work through stuff. Shockingly, nothing really came of that. It was not as productive as we would have thought. This was a while ago at this point. But yeah, it seems like the routine of just constantly seeing each other is the key for us.
And at this point, because we have less time to just work things through together, when we had a rehearsal, we would start by opening up a book and playing through some things and sight reading through or listening to some music together and seeing what caught our interest. But at this point, that feels like more of a thing that we've been doing individually and then bringing things into our rehearsals with a little bit more of a plan in mind.
[0:17:07] BA: And by doing it individually, you mean you do it and I don't?
[0:17:11] EA: No, no, no. You discovered The Drunken Acrobat for us.
[0:17:14] BA: That's true.
[0:17:15] EA: Also, you wrote some really awesome tunes like Rory.
[0:17:18] BA: I get all my tunes from listening because I'm a software engineer and I spend all day in a room alone by myself and I just listen to music all day as my entertainment while I'm working.
[0:17:28] EA: And I get all of my tunes from books because my other outlet of Scottish music is playing for Scottish country dance and that is a very reading-based medium. So I spend my days reading through books and looking for interesting and new tunes that I can incorporate into Scottish dance arrangements. And then also sometimes they are worthy of being brought to the band.
[0:17:53] BB: That's fantastic. And I have a question later specifically about the song about Rory. So I want to make sure we get to Rory the snake because there's stories there. But I mean, so when did you start to actually write your own music? I mean, I guess it was in that first performance with your family and probably like tapping along on things, but music that you actually ended up producing for your albums.
[0:18:15] EA: Yeah, well, it's a kind of a twofold question, because we do two major creative things when we are creating music together. The first thing sometimes is writing. All of the time, necessarily, it's arranging as part of that process as well. The tunes themselves come from a variety of places. So Ben was saying recordings, I was saying books. And then also, we often learn them from friends or from jam sessions in the community. We'll get them from a friend or whatever in that context.
So sometimes we write the actual tunes ourselves. And that has been kind of an on-again, off-again process. Mostly kind of an individual one, but we've collaborated on some tune writing over the years. But then the thing that we really put a lot of our creative effort into is the arranging. And so that's the decisions of like – well, first of all, tune choice, but in and of itself is like one of the basic, most important things of the arranging process because you want to pick tunes that are cool and people are going to want to learn them and listen to them and all that kind of stuff. But then you're making decisions about who's going to play the melody, who's going to play the chords, what chords are they going to be, what rhythm are you going to play your background parts on, what's your harmony going to be, how many times through are you playing all the tunes. And it can get really nuanced and there can be micro sections of like I'm playing two bars of harmony and then I'm going back into like a rhythmic thing or something like that. And it can get really granular.
[0:19:46] BB: Wow.
[0:19:48] LHL: It sounds like such a different process from other types of music or bands. Or if you think like indie music, or folk music, or just guitar and drums or something, it just sounds so intricate. And I'm very fascinated by it. Have you ever dabbled in other genres?
[0:20:07] BA: We really haven't. No. As you were saying those different genres, I was like, "I have no idea how to talk about like what it's like to be an indie rock guitarist." Because I don't even listen to that kind of music and I don't know what it's like to make that kind of music.
[0:20:20] EA: There's arranging decisions happening in every single type of music. If you don't arrange it, you don't have music.
[0:20:27] LHL: Yes.
[0:20:28] EA: But I think that's one of the awesome things about the process is that it looks so different for different musicians, probably even within the genre too. I mean, you have people whose entire careers are just being arrangers and they come up with all the ideas and they have a single monolithic vision and then they hand out the charts to your band and they're like, "Here's what you're playing." Whereas our process is much more collaborative and we come into it basically with just the tunes chosen, if that, and then we go from there trying out a bunch of things. We really do a lot of experimenting as we're arranging together. That's a lot of what our rehearsal time is spent on.
[0:21:05] LHL: When you're trying stuff out, does that mean improvisation? Are you like improv-ing jamming?
[0:21:11] BA: Yeah, I would call it jamming. We usually have one person sticking on the melody to begin with. Elizabeth will just play the tune through a few times. I'll experiment around.
[0:21:19] EA: Because I'm the boring one who can only play the melody.
[0:21:22] BA: You're the interesting one who everyone listens to because you play the fast notes. And I'll just play random things around, like try to experiment, try to come up with new ideas. And eventually, we'll settle on a vibe and settle on like what kinds of things we want to add in. Say, "I like that idea, but not that one." That kind of stuff.
[0:21:39] LHL: I'm the one who plays just the melody when I jam with my friends. I just kind of stick to it and they do all this cool stuff.
[0:21:47] EA: Yeah, it's really the harmonies that make it awesome, I would say. You can have an awesome melody, but then there's so much that you can add to it with the harmony. And sometimes we'll have an idea of what that's going to sound like when we bring a tune into the band. We can be like, "Okay, I have this little idea for a bass line." Or like, "What if we did, whatever, a sixth minor chord here, wouldn't that be awesome?" But there's a lot of stuff that it's hard to just hear in your head before you try it.
[0:22:16] BB: I'm curious – and maybe you already touched on this a little bit, but what do you wish people understood better about being a musician?
[0:22:27] LHL: Elizabeth's eyes just went so big.
[0:22:29] EA: I know. I mean, I listen to music all the time whenever –
[0:22:33] LHL: And Becky isn't sharing this, but she has the most gorgeous singing voice ever.
[0:22:37] BB: But I can't read music and I'm just kind of listening –
[0:22:42] LHL: I can't either.
[0:22:43] BB: What is it called when you can hear it and then you can reproduce it? I don't even know what that's called.
[0:22:47] EA: Learning by ear?
[0:22:49] BB: Learning by ear. So I can learn by ear, but I'm just listening to the way you're talking about how you compose your pieces and arrange. And how Ben is listening to things. And then Elizabeth, you're reading and actually looking at old text of music. And that just blows my mind. But it's not just getting up on stage and performing. There's so many other elements to it. And it's probably hard. I'm just wondering, is there anything else that you wish people understood about your process or what it's like to be a performer?
[0:23:23] BA: Something I've been thinking about recently is the fact that a lot of being a great musician is just repetition and practicing over and over. And I hate that part of it so much. And I do not practice as much as I should because I just find it so boring. The parts that we've been talking about so far are the fun parts. We get to listen to awesome music and say, "Hey, I want to play this together," and then get together and play it. And it sounds awesome.
But the hundreds of hours it took for us to get good enough at our instruments that we're able to play well enough on the fly like that, that it actually sounds good, that's the part that people don't often talk about very often, and that's because it's not fun.
[0:24:06] EA: Yeah. So that's why I failed at the flute after three weeks. I just couldn't do it. It was like, "Oh, this is too much work."
[0:24:14] BB: Elizabeth you were going to say? Sorry, I cut you off there.
[0:24:17] EA: I was just gonna ask Ben if he thought it was only hundreds of hours.
[0:24:24] LHL: I wonder, do you have folks coming up to you saying, "Wow, you're so talented. I can't play music or I don't –" because I know for art disciplines as an artist with a studio and a gallery, people say, "Well, I don't have an artistic bone in my body. What talent you have?" And it's like, well, this is education and hours and hours and decades of practice and developing skills and skill building. And that's likely the same for what you're talking about, it sounds like. Do you have that? Do people come up and say, "Gosh, isn't it lucky you were born talented?"
[0:24:58] BA: Absolutely. All the time.
[0:24:59] EA: Yeah, they sure do. It used to really annoy me. I remember just going on kind of a tirade one day. I was just venting to my friend in middle school about how I hated it when people did that. But I think one of the beautiful things about playing folk music is that you don't have to be. necessarily, however you want to define that. You don't have to be a master of your craft. You don't have to have technical perfection in order to participate, not even just enjoy, but participate in the music, which is an amazing thing that it's just such a thing that brings people together.
We go to jam sessions all the time, and there are people who are just beginning their instruments who are able to play a couple notes, play a couple tunes, and have some fun with the music. And to me, playing Scottish music is all about the community that we build within it and being connected to the past, present and future of the music that we play.
And anybody can do this. Anybody can do that. Or, yeah, at least like coming – people engage with it in different ways. Dancing is a huge component of – historically, the dancing and the music were super, super connected. And so learning how to dance to the music gives you a whole different perspective on how to connect with it and how to understand it on a deeper level. And there's just so many ways that people can be more involved with folk music, traditional Scottish music than just listening to a CD once in a while or something.
[0:26:34] BA: It's such a welcoming community. Like Liz said, I've been to so many jam sessions with beginners who have maybe only just switched over to fiddle music or have never played fiddle music before. And every single time I always see somebody reaching out to them and being like, "Hey, what tunes do you know? What have you learned so far? Do you want to play the tune that you know?" And it's just so nice to see such a welcoming group of people who are just so happy to have people participating and joining in with them.
[0:27:01] LHL: That's so lovely. That's beautiful. Do either of you dance?
[0:27:05] EA: Well, Ben knows how to, but he doesn't want to.
[0:27:07] BA: Yeah, when I was much younger, my mom made me learn how to do traditional Scottish country dance. And I can do it, but I just don't find it fun.
[0:27:16] LHL: Do you think that helped inform your music at all?
[0:27:19] BA: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I was going to talk about that more than I can.
[0:27:22] EA: And we play for dances all the time. And I dance as a hobby as well, pretty frequently.
[0:27:29] BB: I loved, Elizabeth, what you were saying about you don't have to be good and you don't have to be a master of your craft to participate. And I think that's so important in all different art and creative disciplines. Like you just got to get in there. You got to give it a go. Even if it's like me sitting in the back of your show, tapping my foot against the ground and just like trying to keep with it. Oh, I just wanted to get up and dance, and woo, and yip and holler. Now, if that were to happen, I was almost embarrassing my husband because I was so excited to be there and listening to this music. But what do you want from your audience? What are you hoping that they get from your performances?
[0:28:08] BA: We love that kind of foot tapping and whooping kind of thing. That is exactly the right kind of music to be doing this to. Scottish music in general is dance music, and it's meant to be dance to. And the way we play it today is often not dance to, because not everyone knows how to do that. But it's meant to make you feel energized and make you want to get up your feet and make you hoot and holler and dance around. So if you're feeling that while we're playing, that's excellent. We're achieving our goal.
[0:28:34] BB: Okay, good, good. It's encouraged. It's encouraged.
[0:28:40] LHL: Can you tell us a little bit about your newest album and what inspired it and how it's evolved from your first album or other albums?
[0:28:48] EA: Yeah, so we only have the two out right now. And our new album is called While the Sun Shines. And it is not exclusively a duo album. We actually were joined with two of our good friends who are amazing musicians, Conor Hearn, who plays guitar, and Noah Fishman, who plays bass on the album. He plays a lot of other things in real life. And then our producer, Jenna Moynihan, joined us on a couple tracks as well.
And it came – well, maybe it was a compromise, I'll have to say, because Ben has been very inspired recently by the electronic folk music, the electronic trad music scene, in Glasgow.
[0:29:28] BB: Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to look into that.
[0:29:30] EA: And he was like, "Let's put in all the electronics." And we were like, "We don't have the know how or the right producer or the budget or anything that we would need to make this happen." If you know how to produce that kind of stuff, give us a shout. Maybe it'll feature maybe electric Scottish trad cello will be our next album. You never know.
But we both had kind of this sound. I don't want to call it a vision because it's not a vision. It's like a sound representation in our minds of how we could maybe expand the sound with more instruments. And the first thing that we agreed on is that there needed to be a bass. Which one did we say that there needed to be a bass on? Was it Keppoch?
[0:30:12] BA: Keppoch. Yeah, I think Keppoch.
[0:30:13] EA: Yeah. So it's this beautiful traditional slow air and we decided that it needed a real bass beat in it. But no, it was a good move, actually. Bass was a must for us. And then we were like, "Okay, well, we can't get the electronic thing. We can't lean into that too hard. So maybe we'll just go electric guitar on some of the tracks." Yeah, I love the electric guitar. I am totally in my electric guitar era right now.
[0:30:42] BB: Nice.
[0:30:43] EA: I think it works super well. It's got this like singing quality. And a lot of the traditional Scottish music comes from the vocal tradition. I don't know. It's so expressive. It's really cool.
[0:30:54] BB: Also, in thinking about inspiration for how you've actually composed and arranged some of your music, I remember you saying that was Lament for William the Bloody written as an inspiration from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
[0:31:11] EA: Yeah.
[0:31:14] BB: All right. You got to fill us in on that one.
[0:31:15] LHL: Which episode?
[0:31:16] EA: Well, okay. So you've seen the whole thing then, right?
[0:31:18] LHL: Yeah, but it's been a while. I mean, I don't remember all the episodes beat for beat or anything.
[0:31:22] EA: Well, I'm not going to give you a spoiler of this show that came out 30 years ago, and I definitely –
[0:31:29] LHL: No, spoil the audience. It's okay. You can spoil them. I watched it a long time ago, but I loved it.
[0:31:36] EA: William the Bloody is a vampire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer whose other name is Spike.
[0:31:41] LHL: Oh, okay.
[0:31:43] EA: Yeah. So he has this heroic redemption arc where he starts off the series – and this is over the course of all the seasons of Buffy, but he starts as this mega villain and he's quite dangerous and mean. And towards the middle – I don't want to get into the weeds too much here, but he starts to become a good vampire. And then at the end, he sacrifices himself to save humanity. And it just felt like the right title for me. I had just finished this series when I wrote that tune. I was in college. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an amazing show and needs to be taken seriously by more people.
And college, as it is probably for many people, was sometimes a lonely and sometimes a challenging time for me. And Buffy really helped me at a critical junction point in my life. And Spike's heroicism really stuck with me.
[0:32:43] BB: Nice.
[0:32:44] LHL: I love Spike way more than Angel.
[0:32:47] EA: He's much better. Yep. I have my Buffy the Vampire Slayer wall calendar permanently turned to the Spike page.
[0:32:55] BB: All right. Now, Ben, are you a Buffy fan?
[0:32:58] BA: I've watched maybe a dozen episodes with Liz, but I certainly have not seen the entire series.
[0:33:03] EA: Yeah, I'm the same way. I've seen maybe one or two episodes when it was out and now I feel inspired.
[0:33:10] BB: Yeah.
[0:33:11] LHL: Liz, you must have loved the musical episode, especially.
[0:33:15] EA: That's so good.
[0:33:17] LHL: I love when shows – like they break the fourth wall or they don't take themselves too seriously, or they do big creative leaps like that. I feel like it was a big creative leap, and it was really darling. I did not expect we'd be talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer when we started this interview to now. I'm so wonderfully surprised.
[0:33:37] BB: Well, we go from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I think we need to talk about the song that was composed about Rory. Can you share the story about who is Rory? Why is he named Rory? And also, there's something about custody in here, I believe.
[0:33:54] BA: Yeah.
[0:33:55] BB: There's some connection with custody. Give us a scoop on Rory.
[0:33:59] BA: Rory is a pet snake that Elizabeth and I share. We both simultaneously became inspired to want a snake for different reasons from each other. Elizabeth found that there was a person who I think owned snakes at a dance camp that she went to and she got to hold the snakes there. Is that what happened?
[0:34:16] EA: More or less, yeah.
[0:34:17] BB: Okay. And then I just found a YouTube channel that was all about a snake breeder and his life of being a snake breeder. And so both of us completely independently both decided we wanted a snake. Neither of us wanted the full responsibility of taking care of a snake, of course. I mean, we're both musicians, we go to camps for weeks and months at a time, we don't have the time to always be around at home to take care of it.
The agreement we came to is we would both buy a snake together and then we just transport him back and forth. So I currently have an empty cage upstairs. And at some point, presumably, I'll get him back. But Elizabeth built a nice custom cage for him with all these potted real plants and this nice live soil. And he loves to go and dig himself into it.
[0:35:06] EA: He's got a little hammock.
[0:35:07] BB: Oh, my gosh.
[0:35:07] BA: He's absolutely adorable. He's the cutest snake.
[0:35:10] LHL: How big is he?
[0:35:11] EA: Four feet long? But he's a skinny little noodle. When he wraps up, he can like wrap himself up like a cinnamon roll. And he's like probably no bigger than my hand.
[0:35:23] BB: Oh my gosh. So how long have you had him in shared custody of Rory for?
[0:35:23] BA: It's been three years maybe?
[0:35:27] EA: Oh, boy. Three years maybe? Yeah.
[0:35:30] BB: Okay. And is he affectionate? I don't know anything about caring for reptiles. And I just think of them as being kind of solitary creatures. But this has nothing to do with what you do. I'm so curious.
[0:35:45] EA: I would say he barely registers our existence.
[0:35:50] BA: I think he thinks we're just big trees that are kind of weirdly shaped.
[0:35:54] BB: Got it. And warm.
[0:35:56] LHL: Move a little here and there.
[0:35:57] BA: He likes the warmth.
[0:35:59] EA: When he gets hungry, he'll be more curious. If you make a noise or bump the tank or open the door to water the plants or anything, he'll poke his little head out and see what's going on. See if there's food around.
[0:36:10] BB: Have you written a music about Rory or is he incorporated in the –
[0:36:15] BA: Yeah, yeah. I wrote the tune called Rory, which is on our album, our latest album. I wrote the tune to be kind of twisty and turny and kind of hard to follow and you kind of don't know where it's going next because that's what a snake is like.
[0:36:29] EA: And then we also have a little Easter egg too, which is at one point we trade off the melody like one bar at a time, and that's our joint custody.
[0:36:37] BB: Oh my gosh.
[0:36:38] BA: Really? I didn't realize this until now.
[0:36:41] EA: I don't know. We might have to get things put in writing. There might be a lawyer involved here.
[0:36:46] BB: Oh my gosh. Now let's take a listen to Rory by Elizabeth and Ben Anderson.
[0:38:11] BB: We could probably spend a lot more time talking about not only your music, but Buffy and Rory the Snake. But we end, as you may know, listening to our episodes, that we end every episode with rapid-fire questions. Laura, do you want to kick us off?
[0:38:27] LHL: You kick us off and roll.
[0:38:29] BB: Okay. What is the color you could paint an entire room and never tire of?
[0:38:34] BA: White. I'm in the process of painting my house white right now.
[0:38:41] LHL: He broke the matrix.
[0:38:45] EA: For me, yellow. Not only could I, I have.
[0:38:48] BB: Nice.
[0:38:49] LHL: Lovely. A scent that instantly puts you somewhere else, that transports you.
[0:38:55] BA: The sea.
[0:38:56] EA: Pine needles.
[0:38:58] BB: That sounds like camp.
[0:39:00] EA: Yeah, I get that one too. Yeah.
[0:39:03] BB: A sound that you never get tired of hearing.
[0:39:05] EA: Music. Does that count? Is that a cop-out?
[0:39:12] LHL: No, that very much makes sense.
[0:39:14] BB: But is it electronic traditional folk music? Or is it gangster rap? Or just all music?
[0:39:25] BA: Modern, traditional, spired, electronic, Scottish, Glasgow music, obviously.
[0:39:31] LHL: Obviously.
[0:39:32] BB: Not niche at all.
[0:39:35] EA: Oh, man. I really like nature. Maybe the birds.
[0:39:40] LHL: That's lovely.
[0:39:39] BB: Oh, I love that one.
[0:39:41] LHL: A texture you can't stop touching.
[0:39:43] BA: Squishy. I
[0:39:47] BB: like that you also did this gesture of squishy.
[0:39:52] BA: I'm trying to think of how to sum up the texture I'm thinking of in one word. Squishy.
[0:39:58] EA: Fluffy cat.
[0:39:59] BB: Nice.
[0:40:01] BA: Good answer.
[0:40:03] BB: Your favorite comfort food.
[0:40:04] BA: Pizza.
[0:40:04] EA: Hot chocolate.
[0:40:06] LHL: The artist/creative living or dead that you most want to share a meal with.
[0:40:10] BA: Mike Vass.
[0:40:12] EA: Oh, good one.
[0:40:13] BB: All right. Now, I don't know who that is. Who is that?
[0:40:16] BA: He's an electronic Scottish contemporary Glasgow –
[0:40:22] BB: I feel like I could have answered that without even knowing.
[0:40:27] EA: I would have loved to have met Jerry Holland, who was probably one of the most famous and influential Cape Breton fiddlers and then got to see him in concert right before he passed many years ago. And I did not. And I've always regretted that. I would like to say hi to Jerry Holland.
[0:40:46] BB: A medium that you don't work in, but secretly admire from afar, or even like a style of music.
[0:40:55] BA: Oil painting. I really like Bob Ross.
[0:40:58] BB: Oh, shout out.
[0:41:00] BA: If I had more time, I'd love to.
[0:41:01] LHL: Yeah.
[0:41:03] EA: Man, there's so many. I wish I could be a competent visual artist, but I was just hanging out with a friend today who does calligraphy. And so that's on my mind. I'm going to say that.
[0:41:13] BB: Nice.
[0:41:13] LHL: Cool. That's a good one. Most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:41:18] BA: Hawaii.
[0:41:19] EA: Glacier National Park.
[0:41:22] BB: Awesome. Awesome. And our final clincher question, a time machine gives you the ability to go back to your younger self for an hour, what do you ask or what do you say?
[0:41:35] BA: Brush your teeth more.
[0:41:39] BB: Important.
[0:41:43] EA: I've never been so perplexed by a question. It's a good question. Give me an age. Maybe that'll help.
[0:41:49] BB: Say 13.
[0:41:52] LHL: I was going to say 13. It was meant to be.
[0:41:55] EA: Yeah. You are going to meet some really awesome people through the music that you're playing. Keep it up.
[0:42:03] BB: Nice.
[0:42:04] LHL: Love that.
[0:42:07] BB: Well, we are so excited to have had this opportunity to meet you guys even virtually and to hear a little bit about your backgrounds and this experience. So thank you both so much for taking the time for being here and for problem solving our recording requests and making this happen.
[0:42:27] BA & EA: Thank you so much for having us.
[0:42:30] LHL: You taught us so much about a musical genre that I wasn't as familiar with. And I'm excited to dive in more to your music and everything like that. And check out some of the folks that you've talked about. This was lovely. Thank you.
[0:42:43] BA: Let me know if you need more recommendations.
[0:42:43] EA: Yeah. Thanks for letting us talk about what we love the most.
[0:42:47] LHL: Thank you for bringing up Buffy. That was seriously a joy.
[0:42:53] ALL: Show us your creative guts.
[0:43:00] BB: What an amazing and inspiring conversation. Huge thank you to Elizabeth and Ben for being on the show today.
[0:43:07] LHL: That was so cool.
[0:43:07] BB: Right?
[0:43:08] LHL: Yeah.
[0:43:09] BB: And Laura, I know you're not a huge folk music fan, but I think you might be. Well, I'm speaking for you, so excuse me.
[0:43:16] LHL: I love folk music, but I'm thinking of a different – traditional American folk music, I would say. As far as Scottish folk, aside from going to the Highland Games once or twice in my youth, I don't really have as much exposure to that. But I will say almost any type of music, I'm a big fan when I'm there, like live music. So I feel like, yeah, it's probably not on my rotation on my Spotify too often, but I definitely respect it and appreciate it when I'm in front of it.
[0:43:41] BB: Yeah, it probably doesn't come up right next to your BTS.
[0:43:45] LHL: Okay, listener, just real quick. Listeners, I do listen to other stuff besides BTS. Yeah. I've been listening to The Strokes' new album. It's freaking amazing. I love it. I don't care what people say. I like the autotune. But anyways, let's go on.
[0:44:02] BB: Well, in terms of our conversation today, it was wonderful hearing about their journey and being inspired by their mother introducing them to traditional Scottish dancing. And then how that kind of laid these early seeds for them to think about, well, what kind of instrument are they going to play? And how Ben had started with fiddle, but then ended up going into cello in third grade.
But one thing I completely forgot to mention and ask about is Elizabeth is actually the 2020 U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion.
[0:44:33] LHL: What? Holy cow.
[0:44:34] BB: Yeah. And then in 2016, she was the Perth All-Scotland, this is in Scotland, All-Scotland Fiddle Champion. Right?
[0:44:44] LHL: Wow. Oh my gosh.
[0:44:44] BB: I mean, they're really, really good.
[0:44:48] LHL: Yeah. Well, if they have thousands and thousands of hours of practice, I'm not surprised, but I'm still blown away. That's amazing. We didn't get to say it in the episode, but congrats. Hats off to you.
[0:45:01] BB: Right. And despite those thousands of hours of rehearsal and practice and dedication, the fact that Elizabeth was talking about how you don't have to be good and you don't have to be a master of the craft of creating music to participate and to get inspired and maybe work your way up to being a performer, being a musician. I mean, clearly, she's got to be an amazing teacher. I would be so inspired by her if I were in her middle school music room. Maybe I could just go and transport myself to her room someday.
[0:45:36] LHL: I think one of my biggest takeaways was the clear love and joy they have for the community of the music, of the dance, of all of it. And what a welcoming, joyful, familial community. I mean, I know they're siblings, yes, but it sounds like the community as a large is very much one big, large family. And I think that's amazing when people come together and they just form this, and it's from this traditional music that has been around for centuries, I'm imagining, obviously. How lovely that it's still – I mean, obviously in different pockets of the world, it's still beloved and they have such a vibrant one here.
[0:46:13] BB: Yeah. Well, this was a really special interview. And if you would like to learn more about and listen to Elizabeth and Ben Anderson, all of their links are in the episode description and over on our website at creativegutspodcast.com.
[0:46:25] LHL: And be sure to check them out on Bandcamp where you can support them and pay them for their amazing music.
[0:46:32] BB: Hey, did you know you could come and hang out with us at Creative Guts? We are on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. And if you're not big in social media, we get it. That's all right. No problem. Join our newsletter on Substack. Sign up through the website and you'll always know what's next.
[0:46:50] LHL: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for backing the show. A big thank you to Art Up Front Street for giving Creative Guts a place to record. And a huge, magnificent thank you to Kennebunk Savings for their sponsorship of the show.
[0:47:07] BB: If this episode gave you something, a laugh, an idea, a little push, here are a few ways to send that energy back. Leave us a review. Interact with our posts. Grab some of our awesome merchandise. Make a donation. Any little tidbit helps keeps the mic on. And we genuinely appreciate you.
[0:47:27] LHL: Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Creative Guts.
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