The Viola Lees
Trying to Catch the Moon
Homepage: http://www.myspace.com/theviolalees
Feature By: Ben Grant
Photography By: Julie Bishop
“It has a high and lonesome sound,” Father of Bluegrass Bill Monroe said of his music decades ago. Well, bluegrass doesn’t peg the Viola Lees by a long shot. But “high and lonesome” may come to mind when you hear their music.
The band’s duo, Dustin Burton and Ryan Shepherd, take heartfelt vocals and a no-frills instrument setup to create a distinct, bittersweet sound that’s anything but ordinary. You don’t have to listen long before you notice a deliberateness, a controlled intensity that slowly pulls you in, shuts out everything else and leaves you hanging on.
Burton and Shepherd will tell you that their work is simply a product of growing up in southern Indiana, with a heavy dose of classic country thrown in.
Needless to say, after hearing the Viola Lees, C-BUZ had to get their story. We also recommend checking out their current releases at myspace.com/theviolalees – and keeping an ear out for high and lonesome music to come.
C-buz: Where does the name Viola Lees come from?
Viola Lees: It’s actually taken from an old jug band prison song recorded back in the 1920’s called “The Viola Lee Blues.” Though, it’s definitely more popular for the Grateful Dead’s blues-psych cover. To be honest, we just thought it sounded cool, but I guess it’s kind of appropriate for our adaptation/butchering of country music.
CB: What is your song-writing process like?
VL: Six strings, a pen, and paper.
Basically we write streams of consciousness and let it sit, then go back a few days later and start piecing it together with other ideas completely on paper. We have a collection of progressions that we want to use and we try to pair them together. I guess its starts with a melody between humming and a guitar progression and the content comes totally separate.
CB: What are most of your songs about?
VL: Uncertainty, friends and the weather.
CB: What fuels your creativity?
VL: Nostalgia, something like a good trip home or teaser spring days during the winter. A change of pace, the rain, sun, snow, wind and baseball are also big inspirations. I think everything is worthy of a song from some angle or another.
CB: What has been your whole journey with music and how did you wind up doing country / folk?
VL: It just kind of happened. We actually didn’t hang out for 2 – 3 years then suddenly I graduated from college and when I moved back to Hope, I needed to do something because I couldn’t find a job.
I had actually been playing out a lot of solo in West Lafayette so I had a ton of material and Dustin just happened to want to do stuff that was right in line with what I wanted to do. It is hard to avoid country around here, but it’s probably due to all of the Conway Twitty and Elvis our parents used to play.
CB: What is your recording process like?
VL: Up until now the recording process has a large overlap with the writing process, We take our acoustic rhythm and build from there. The first arduous step is programming the drums. Once we get that right we lay down the acoustic guitars and a scratch vocal track. Then we build.
The electric rhythm guitar is usually next to give the over all feel and then we start to perfect the lead guitar ideas that we’ve been toying around with. Fortunately we’ve shared the same vision most of the time, because working as a duo takes a lot of trust in “where is this going”. The longest and hardest part for us has been the producing and mixing. It’s hard to hear what other people hear.
CB: What are your aspirations as artists or as a band?
VL: One step at a time, but we’d really like to see the country sometime soon.
CB: What are your thoughts on the Columbus / Edinburg music scene?
VL: There is a lot of un-nurtured talent here and that goes beyond just music. I’ve always felt that the general perception of the “arts” is kind of seen as a hobby in this area. Naturally, I think this cuts into motivation, I know it drastically affected mine. I think C-BUZ is in a really unique spot to legitimize all the hard work the artists put in.
CB: What direction would you like to see it head?
VL: I’d like to see it pick back up and see shows again; a few years back we were having so many shows that people weren’t coming because they were too often. The main problem is there isn’t a venue where everyone can just go and something cool is always happening.
When we used to play at The Crump all the time it was really expensive and after paying the traveling bands and the venue, we would only net like 15 bucks. Sometimes we would even fall short. So I guess I’d love to see some sort of venue, even if it was a coffee house where you reliably go to and book a show at a price even a band on a tight budget could afford.
CB: Any advice to beginning song-writers or musicians?
VL: Well to be honest, I’m not sure if we really know what we’re doing either.
“The thing about songwriting is that the more you learn, the more you need to learn.”
Also, make sure you have a pen and paper somewhere close. And turn off your filter.