Greylag: "This record is very much our collective voice"

With Wilco, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes and assorted others between albums or on indefinite hiatus, there’s been a real dearth of bands happy to play simple music, brilliantly. So, the self-titled debut album from Portland-based trio Greylag is a welcome addition to the Great American Songbook. Singer and guitarist Andrew Stonestreet, Daniel Dixon (various instruments) and drummer Brady Swan have given us Greylag, a record dripping in harmonies, riffs and classic rock music that doesn’t sound remotely tired or trite. Whether it’s the blues-rock of “Mama” or the delicate and countrified “Arms Unknown”, these are three guys who despite being in thrall to their influences have managed to produce something fresh. Best Fit managed to catch up with Stonestreet before a recent in-store session to discuss the beginnings of Greylag, and the recording of their debut album.

I ask Andrew to take us back to the start of Greylag and how these disparate individuals ended up in the same place: “Daniel [Dixon] and I met in Louisville, Kentucky about seven years ago through mutual friends,” says singer Stonestreet, “and we began collaborating pretty quickly. We’d talked about moving out to Portland at that point, basically because it was somewhere off the grid. Daniel is from San Francisco and I’m from West Virginia…he ended up moving to Portland nine months before I did, but it wasn’t til I got out there that the band really started.”

Once out in Portland, the third member of Greylag was eventually discovered: “We met our drummer [Brady Swan] a bit later,” reveals Stonestreet. “Well, he actually moved to Portland the day after I did! And I met him on the street through another mutual friend. A few months later we were looking for a drummer, and friend of ours told us ‘Brady’s a great drummer, you should have him play’. So we played in a basement in Portland with him, and within the first fifteen minutes we knew he was the guy! So that’s been the band for the last four years.” Four years ago Portland might have seemed “off the grid”, but surely now after Portlandia and what appears to be an exploding arts scene, it surely can’t be the same now? “Oh, I just mean more personally for us,” clarifies Andrew. “Being from West Virginia I had travelled around the south and the east coast… but Portland was just a new place with a lot of music and art happening there, you can live affordably and it’s really beautiful too.” And does it have an impact on Greylag’s sound? “I’m sure it does!” says Stonestreet. “Wherever I am, I think I naturally absorb everything around or I’m inspired by it, so definitely, yeah. I think also with us all coming from different places we’re all constantly looking around and absorbing different things, individually and collectively.”

There’s an argument that says they don’t really make bands like Greylag anymore; what we have here is three guys playing guitar, bass and drums, and wearing their influences proudly. From classic rock through to Americana, you could list the obvious influences - Led Zeppelin, CSN&Y - but also there’s more than a hint of Fleet Foxes in the harmonies and especially in Stonestreet’s high and reedy lead vocal. So are there common interest in what the members of Greylag listen to? “Yeah; but there’s definitely a common thread in all of our musical interests,” admits Andrew. “The bands we were listening to were all overlapping, but there’s definitely music we’re more inclined to individually as well….” Does one name jump out as a central unifier? “Halfway through making this record we realised we were listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, some classic rock, and it had kind of gone back a little bit further than that, too.”

Although the band had released an EP, The Only Way To Kill You, back in 2012, Greylag has a definite feel of a group knowing what direction they want to head in. It’s the sound of a fully-formed band and a cohesive statement. I ask Stonestreet if he agrees we’re now getting the best of Greylag: “I definitely think this is a much better reflection of the band,” he agrees. “We’ve matured as a group and we’ve also began to write more collectively…I was in my early twenties and now I’m in my late twenties!” Was it a case of lacking direction before settling in Portland? “I think when we first came out [with the EP] I don’t think the band at that moment had time to gel…but we’ve played so much together now and had a lot of time to get to know each other musically. I think this record is very much our collective voice and it’s an indication of what we want to do…. It’s a lot harder hitting too.” At nine tracks long there’s also a feel that Greylag needed to be that length in order for the listener to realise what the band was all about. Like there was no need to add more tracks to try and take us on a “journey”, to use that cliché; the band didn’t need to find themselves across the record or need more time to develop, so the listener doesn’t need more songs either. Was this much of a consideration for the band? “I just think it’s a matter of time and budget but also what we thought was cohesive as a body of work,” says Stonestreet. “I don’t think we were too conscious of how many tracks were going to be on there or how long the record was going to be. We just wanted it to be strong and cohesive, and for us all to agree on what was going to go out.”

The production duties on Greylag were handled by Northwest legend Phil Ek. Known for his work on records by local heroes Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, the band must surely have known of his presence in the Portland scene? “Yeah, I mean we were aware of him,” admits Stonestreet. “He has a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest, but at the time there were different producers being thrown around. We’d thought about different guys but he was definitely up there, but we collectively thought ‘that would be a great dude to work with’, just based on what he’d done before.” It wasn’t as immediate as you might have thought, but eventually Ek and Greylag ended up working together. Stonestreet explains: “He was actually one of the last guys to get back to us but when he said he wanted to do the record, we were delighted. We had dinner with him a month later and built a friendship really quickly…there just seemed to be a really natural flow, both personally and creatively.”

Speaking of a flow, that’s something that very much exists on the album; despite hopping between rockier moments and more acoustic songs, Greylag doesn’t feel cobbled together and Stonestreet has some ideas on where that comes from: “I just think all of it comes from us; we’re the one voice and that means it’s consistent. There were a lot of different ways we’d thought about where to put the songs on the record but I think we came up with one that gave us that flow. There’s definitely folk and rock and roll, even blues on there.” The singer goes on to tell me there’s a particular record it reminds him of: “That’s one thing I loved about Led Zeppelin II is that they’d have a really heavy song and an acoustic song right after that. If it’s a good song, you’re always happy to listen to it. But we didn’t write it conceptually or anything; I think all the songs come from a certain beacon of light and so they have some of the same themes running throughout.”

There are also echoes of Zeppelin in the album artwork; a beautifully drawn and designed cover that looks like an old, dusty document, complete with a Zoso-style logo…and one that also recalls the design for the recent Songs: Ohia boxed set. It’s no surprise to learn that the band’s label, Dead Oceans, had a major hand in it: “It was something we actually worked with the label on,” says Stonestreet. “The idea for the design was something we’d talked about as a band a little while back, and we’d thrown around the idea of it looking like an old book you’d find in your grandmother’s attic or something. So when we tossed that idea over to some of the guys at the label we were able to flesh that out with them. It came together pretty quickly…sometimes you have an idea and then you see it in front of you and it doesn’t make sense, but sometimes it totally works out…and this time it worked out.”

Before Stonestreet joins bandmates Dixon and Swan for their Rough Trade in-store gig, he reveals that Greylag aren’t resting on their laurels now they’re finally living the dream: “I don’t think we really stop writing! That’s pretty constant, whether it’s the music or just jotting down stuff. I think we’ve been doing this so long now, it’s second nature! It’s something that I love; I mean, I’ve been trying to do it since I was eleven or twelve years old. And now I am.”

Greylag's self-titled album is out now on Dead Oceans. The band head to Europe next week - head here for tickets and information.