Rock & Roll has always been abundant with siblings – Eddie & Alex Van Halen, Chris & Rich Robinson, Gregg & Duane Allman, Angus & Malcolm Young to name just a few. They all claim there is a special magic that happens to the music they create together and their collaborative bands lasted for decades because of it. Jocelyn and Chris Arndt may be fairly new to the business but their output is only getting stronger with time. With a new album on the horizon – The Fun In The Fight, releasing on February 22nd – the Arndts have created a tight, steady-rocking, sure-footed collection of songs for their third full-length album. With a couple of EPs and live recordings already under their belt, they know themselves as artists much better than they did when they were growing up in New York and discovering their parents’ classic rock albums.
Their first single, “Outta My Head,” is a catchy, sassy, bluesy rocker that showcases Jocelyn’s unique vocals and Chris’s steadiness on guitar. Not ones to shred a mile a minute, their pacing is impeccable, letting the song be a full meal to savor. It’s the way they do all their songs: from the album lead-off track, “Witness,” to “Problematic,” “Don’t Hang Up” and “Kill In The Cure;” even the slower “Weatherman” captures something witty and enlightening without going over-the-top.
Jocelyn and Chris, former Harvard students, English major for Jocelyn and Computer Science and Music for Chris, just don’t have stereotypical in their vocabulary. That’s not how they roll. They go old-school when the feeling moves them, or newfangled that comes with the youthfulness of their generation. There is control and spontaneity, emotional turmoil and playfulness from song to song.
I caught up with the pair a few days ago while they were in the studio in frosty upstate New York – “I think it’s -7 degrees outside right now,” said Jocelyn, the older of the Arndt siblings – to talk about their upcoming album, how their influences have changed and having Govt Mule’s Danny Louis as their rock & roll fairy godfather.
So what are you doing in the studio?
Jocelyn: It’s like the nerve center of the whole operation. We’re rehearsing later but right now we’ve just been writing a few dozen thank you notes to radio stations that we found out have added our music. This week is the first official week to radio for the lead-off single, “Outta My Head,” and a bunch of stations have already been playing it. So we wrote them thank you notes. I got all the stickers I could find (laughs).
I saw the stickers on Facebook but good for you because that’s a very old-school way of doing things.
Jocelyn: Yeah, you know, we went through the email thing too but we like snail mail. I like when I get stuff in the mail.
So what was the plan for the upcoming record? What did you really want to do this time?
Chris: When we started writing this one, there wasn’t really a plan in mind. But I think as we began writing more and more of the songs, a kind of identity for the album started to take shape a little bit. There was never really any intentionality in any of the songs other than we wanted to make each song as good as we possibly could. But they kind of started to fit together in a way that we really liked. We started to realize that all of them had a little bit of this old-school sound but we definitely put our own new twist on it. Classic rock is the music that we loved growing up and have always really connected to.
So I don’t know if there ever was like a moment where, “Oh yeah, we should do this cause it would sound cool.” But I think there was some kind of subconscious idea or something that we ended up doing a pretty good job of realizing, cause of all our albums, this one is my favorite, in terms of songwriting and in terms of there seems a cohesiveness throughout the course of the album that was just not there before. I mean, it’s there in our previous work but it’s there more in this album. I think this is our best album, all in all.
Jocelyn: This is the first album where I had graduated college but Chris was still in college for another year. Usually we’re kind of spoiled cause we basically went to the same school, we grew up together, we’ve always been together so it was kind of a weird balance that we had to strike for a few months there while we were writing it. We had to make time for me to take a bus to see Chris so we could write the album. We’ve never really had to schedule it that much before so I think we were kind of nervous that it was going to come across as weird or scattered or not fully formed. But I think once we started writing, we were like, “Okay, we remember how to do this.” (laughs)
What about the lyrics? Do you find them more mature than in the past?
Jocelyn: I think, definitely, it’s more mature. Traditionally, how we write, and it changes from song to song, but we’re kind of a half and half team here. Chris does the chords and the music, and I do the words. I think writing this album, it definitely felt a little more mature. We’re that much more comfortable in ourselves as songwriters and I feel like there are some songs on this album that are the most personal songs that we’ve ever written because we were finally confident enough to put that on paper.
For you Jocelyn, what is the most powerful lyric in this batch of songs?
Jocelyn: Oh man, it’s kind of hard for me to pick. They are all kind of like, I don’t know, my weird babies (laughs). But I think Track 5, “Don’t Hang Up,” is probably one of the darker tracks on the album but lyrically it feels like me at my best, words-wise. There is one lyric in there, “There’s nothing you can do, and I should never share my darkness with someone as bright as you.” I really like that, just cause of that whole feeling of like, “Oh man, I don’t mean to bother you, I have all these things going on in my head but you’re so happy and awesome and I don’t want to trouble you with that” – that kind of thing.
Are these mostly newer songs or were there some left over from the last record?
Chris: There was one that was left over from the last record. Actually, the last record was the very first record we’d ever written where we didn’t have any songs left over from before. So we had to write all of those from scratch. We wrote thirteen and we used twelve, so we had one leftover going into this one. We wrote eleven more for this one and then we actually ended up cutting the one that we had left over. So we had twelve but we only used the eleven new ones.
Jocelyn: They’re all pretty new and that was one thing that made it a little nerve-wracking going in. It was like, oh my God, we have to make a whole new album! I hope we have enough ideas in our brains! (laughs)
Which song would you say changed the most from it’s original composition to it’s final recorded version?
Jocelyn: I think hands down, “Outta My Head.” When Chris and I write music, he is usually on his acoustic guitar and I’m just singing, and occasionally I’m on the piano; but usually when we play the songs for the first time for our producer David Bourgeois, who is also our manager – we’re a very tightknit group – when we play them for him for the first time, it’s just me singing and Chris on the guitar. And that one, on the record we kind of built up all these textures and there’s backing vocals, there’s this awesome guitar riff underneath it. So if you can picture that just on the guitar acoustically and a vocal, it was very different. I was clapping at one point, just trying to add something in cause we could picture in our brain what it was going to end up, being built up and a lot bigger. So that one for me, seeing that one progress in the studio, was really cool.
Which one of you is the more techy studio nerd?
Chris: That would probably be me (laughs). I actually don’t know that much about the equipment but I’m really into like the science of how it all works. Also, as somebody who plays guitar, I like the music and the harmony side where Jocelyn is more connected with the lyrics and the melody and all that.
What can you tell us about “Be That As It May”
Chris: The way I originally taught myself to play lead guitar was I had this pedal called a Looper Pedal and basically I would play stuff into it and loop it and then I would play lead over it. We didn’t have anyone else for me to play with at the time so I was kind of being my own band and rhythm guitarist. So a lot of the songs that we’ve written, especially a lot of the more jammy songs, started as things that I would play into my Looper Pedal and I would just solo over them for like forty minutes or an hour, until my parents would yell at me to stop (laughs). And that was one of the ones which I just had in my back pocket probably since I was like fifteen or so, that main chord progression. Finally, on this album I was like, man, we should turn that into a song. So I showed it to Jocelyn and she immediately latched on and came up with that hook and I just love it so much. It’s got this really high energy jammy feel and because of that David thought it would be a really good song to get guest players on. So we got Danny Louis from Govt Mule and also Cory Wong from Vulfpeck to play some of the guitar on it.
Chris, your guitar playing on that is subtle and that subtlety in the playing seems to provoke an emotion, like it’s another voice. From listening to other of your songs, you do that quite often.
Chris: Thank you very much. That is exactly what I try to do so it’s really good to hear you say that it’s working (laughs). My favorite quote about lead guitar ever is by David Gilmour and he’s like, “I could never really play fast so I always just tried to play like I was singing.” That has kind of inspired a lot of my style. When we’re recording lead guitar, it’s always about trying to find a part that is memorable and emotive as opposed to a part that is more technically demanding.
Have you always been that way and not jumped on an Eddie Van Halen kick?
Chris: (laughs) I don’t know, I think when I was younger I didn’t have the technical skill to play fast. I mean, we recorded our first album with our high school band when I was probably thirteen or fourteen and I couldn’t play very fast. So in order to make the solos sound cool, I had to really focus on that. If I could play fast, I probably would have just shredded (laughs). But for the past few albums it’s been a very intentional and thoughtful process recording lead guitar.
Jocelyn: He’s super deliberate when he goes into the studio. It’s not just, “I’m going to shred for a while and hopefully we’ll get some licks that we like.” He thinks through his solos from start to finish, as far as what sounds the best, what is going to get the listener where they need to be.
What guitar did you use on this record?
Chris: It was a combination of a Les Paul and a Stratocaster. They are kind of my go-to’s.
On “Weatherman,” Jocelyn, you bring a real Norah Jones type vibe. It’s not the only time you’ve gone that way. Do you like being “quiet” sometimes?
Jocelyn: (laughs) Yes! Absolutely! I think for a while, like when I was younger, you find out you can do something with your voice and the first inclination is to do that as much as possible. But I think just like with the guitar, it’s not always the answer. So definitely, I love being dynamic with my voice but I love being quiet because it makes the loud more fun and it makes the quiet more fun too. You get to do a little bit of everything.
What can you tell us about the song “Problematic”
Chris: You know, earlier you asked what song changed the most from it’s original conception to what you hear on the album and Jocelyn answered “Outta My Head.” I definitely agree with what she said but the first thing that came to my mind was “Problematic,” because that song is actually the last song we finished writing for the album and it was exceptionally difficult for us to write. I don’t know exactly what it was about it but Jocelyn had the idea for the hook and we really liked it and we worked on it. But how some songs kind of come together and it feels like you’re sort of a vessel with which the song is poured into, this song was not like that. It was hard work and every single measure was fought for.
We brought it into David and we played it for him and as we were playing it for him, I realized that what we had actually done is we had just rewritten “Kill In The Cure,” one of the other tracks on the album. So I was like, Oh crap, back to the drawing board (laughs). Then we took a totally different approach and it just came together really quickly and it felt like a million times better. Once that happened, it became one of my favorites on the album.
You guys got into music really, really young. Now that you have some years under your belt, do you find that where you draw inspiration has changed much?
Jocelyn: I think now we both listen to more contemporary pop and rock than when we did when we were little. I think part of that was when we were little, it was kind of our parents’ CD collection that was dictating what we listened to. We loved that, I’m so glad that we had parents that raised us on classic rock, but now I think as we’ve gotten more comfortable in the industry and we’ve broadened our horizons, we listen to a lot of different genres now. But those albums that we listened to at the dinner table, I still keep coming back to. So it’s kind of a mix.
Jocelyn, you have this big voice with a bluesy tinge. Have you ever delved deeper into blues like Big Mama Thornton to see how they used and manipulated and controlled that power that they had in their voices?
Jocelyn: Definitely. I mean, I’m not a big classic blues fan but every time we listen to something like that, I think you can feel exactly what they are feeling when they are singing it. I am very drawn to that kind of voice that can just tell a story. That’s what I want to do when I sing.
Since you were raised on classic rock and you’ve broadened your horizons, who do you find inspiration from in the modern day world?
Jocelyn: Hozier I love. He’s amazing. Adelle, Beyonce – she’s an insane entertainer.
Chris: St Vincent. I’ve been listening to Masseduction on repeat for the past couple of weeks.
Jocelyn: Imagine Dragons, the Killers, Muse
You’ve mentioned about Danny Louis helping you guys out. Would you consider him your rock & roll fairy godfather?
Jocelyn: I’ll ask him next time we see him, Will you be our rock & roll fairy godfather? (laughs). He’s awesome. I’m really glad that we got to work with him. He’s just insanely talented. He knows exactly the part to play, he really listens, it’s not just him coming in and playing and leaving. He wants to help the music, which is awesome. And he has crazy stories (laughs).
I understand that you have done some recording in Muscle Shoals. What was that like?
Jocelyn: It was awesome. I was recording vocals for a song called “Hot,” which was on Edges [2016]. We needed to do some recording and we happened to be passing through and we were like, you know it would be really cool to stop there. But I didn’t get to explore as much because I was in the booth but Chris and our bassist at the time, Kate Sgroi, were going around and they found the room with all the original masters.
Chris: Yeah, basically there are two main studios there. They’ve got Studio A and Studio B, and Jocelyn was in Studio A. So Kate and I found our way to Studio B and then we found our way into the Studio B control room. And behind the Studio B control room they had like Etta James outtakes, Aretha Franklin outtakes, Lynyrd Skynyrd outtakes, Allman Brothers outtakes. I was like, wait, what! (laughs).
What was your first I can’t believe I’m here moment?
Jocelyn: Main stage at Mountain Jam. That’s the one that comes to mind and that was this past summer. I’m sure there have been more but standing on main stage at Mountain Jam and thinking, wow, a couple years ago I was like freaking out because we were playing inside or whatever and they let us come up on the stage and stand while Grace Potter was performing, and I love her, and now I’m like standing in the same place as she was. That was really cool. We almost ran into her after her set backstage but we were like, we don’t want to bother her (laughs). But I was like fangirling. Someday I will meet her and it’ll be on like more even terms (laughs).
What was the first song you obsessed over as a kid?
Chris: Probably either “Freebird” or “Stairway To Heaven” for me.
Jocelyn: I was going to say “Freebird” for you because there was about a three month period when Chris was in like sixth grade and that Lynyrd Skynyrd greatest hits album was all we listened to. Every day, wake up, Lynyrd Skynyrd; lunch, Lynyrd Skynyrd; go to bed, Lynyrd Skynyrd (laughs).
Chris: Yeah, I might have worn out the CD (laughs)
Chris, what was the hardest song you tried to learn on guitar?
Chris: At the time, I mean “Stairway” was really hard, but I’ve tried to learn a few Barry Galbraith jazz renditions of songs and they were always insanely difficult. I’ve tried to learn some classical stuff. I was classically trained for about two years but that stuff is still insanely difficult. In terms of blues and rock, pretty much anything with a slide guitar, just because I’ve always found slide guitar super difficult. I feel like I should have played it more before I was this good at regular guitar because now I pick up a slide and I try to play and it doesn’t sound good and I just get frustrated. But I think the most difficult one was I was trying to learn a Bonnie Raitt song a couple years ago and I just could not get it. I practiced it for like a week and finally I was just like, this just does not sound that good, and I gave up.
Jocelyn, what is the most unique thing that inspired a song?
Jocelyn: Honestly, “Weatherman,” the song that we were talking about earlier. Lyrically, I feel like it’s one of the more unique songs we’ve written. When Chris was playing the riff part of that song, I kind of started to think that it sounded like something that would be played in the background as they are saying the morning weather (laughs). Or a song like they’d play on the Weather Channel, in a good way. So I was starting to think about, well, if it sounds like a Weather Channel song I might as well go full-in on a weather theme. So I started thinking about, wouldn’t this be cool if there was this story where someone, they get up every morning and they get their cup of coffee and they turn on the weather and they are in love with the weatherman. They know they might never meet him and he might never know how they feel. This is stuff that I think about at like 2:00 am when I’m trying to fall asleep (laughs). But I am kind of proud of how it came out. I think it turned out cool and unique; a good way to end an album.
Where does your last name originate from?
Jocelyn: It’s super German. Our grandparents, they met in the United States but Grandma Arndt came from Germany, from Alsace-Lorraine, and Grandpa Arndt …
Chris: Yeah, I think he was born here but his parents had immigrated from Germany and our grandma was born in Germany and then moved here.
So you are pretty new to the States. You don’t have deep roots here.
Chris: Actually, on our mom’s side, our grandfather was super into genealogy and he traced the family tree back to somebody that was on a boat in 1620. So on our mom’s side, it goes way back but on our dad’s side, it’s like two generations-ish. But I think they are a combination of British, Dutch and German.
There are lots of articles about you guys out there but do you still feel like you’re fighting to get heard?
Jocelyn: I think that we’ve been pretty lucky. I mean, it’s crazy just how much information there is about music in the world now. Yeah, there are points where we get frustrated and we’re like, I just wish it would happen or something; but then I think about, wow, in this day and age you can go online and you can post a video and it’s anybody’s game in what people like. There’s a lot of opportunity in that. We get frustrated but then we think about what we have and we calm ourselves down.
When the record comes out, what happens next?
Chris: It’s going to be a lot. We’re really pushing the record itself on radio and on streaming services so it’s going to be a lot of traveling around and visiting radio stations and doing press appearances. But there also will be a lot of touring in-between. In a few weeks we’re going to SXSW and basically, we’re going to tour our way down there and then be there for the whole week. Our publicist has a bunch of press stuff set up and we’re doing a special SXSW showcase and whatever else they will let us do, we’re going to do (laughs). I think we’re going to do that again for Summerfest in Milwaukee. There’s a radio conference in August in Boulder, Colorado.
Jocelyn: We’ll be on the road and visiting our radio friends wherever we can; stop in at stations that are playing us and thank them and just keep doing it.
Portraits by Kiki Vissilakis
