What You Don't Know About This Tennessee Trio : GoTriad Feature

Share a history of summer camp, love and music
Carla Kucinski, Go Triad Editor


CK: What's the most rewarding thing about playing in a band with each other?
Jill: I just think he's amazing. He's one of the funniest people ever. He's so talented. He's really inspired me in a lot of ways to be a songwriter and a singer and a musician. And he makes me laugh a lot.

Sam: One of the best things is waking up, you're hundreds of miles away and you're just driving somewhere and we're sitting there getting cracked out on coffee … It's something really cool you can share with somebody -- just all the little stupid stuff. And you have the past to draw on. She's really a good friend of mine, and my worst and greatest critic.

The way you guys met almost seems kismet.

CK: Do you believe in fate?
Jill: I guess in a way I do. If I had never met Sam, my life would be really different. I mean, really different. Who knows what I'd be doing right now. I'd probably have 10 kids or something.

 Probably not, but I don't know. It must have been fate because I had been singing forever in choir in church, and when I met Sam, he automatically inspired me to go out and get a guitar. I had never written a song, and as soon as I got a guitar, I was writing songs right away. It was always something I wanted to do, but I just needed someone to make it seem real to me.

Sam: That's a tricky one. I have a lot of personal battles with such a thing. I don't know how much of it is fate, but I think it's remarkable that we met there because she almost went somewhere else that summer. It's so weird how easy it was -- that we lived in the same town and we met on these kind of circumstances. It's like "Dirty Dancing" meets "Grease." It's a pretty far out story.

Call it kismet. Or maybe just the product of circumstance and perfect timing, but the way Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews met almost seems cinematic. Nine years ago, while they were both working at a summer camp, the two finally crossed paths at age 19. They lived in the same town -- Johnson City, Tenn. -- but not once did they run into each other. Their chance meeting that summer changed the course of their lives for the next seven years. Their love of music bonded them as did their fondness for each other. Together, they formed the everybodyfields , a band rooted in folk and country, producing heartfelt, sincere songs that chill you to the bone.

 Since the band's birth more than four years ago, the group has undergone some transformations, personal battles and changes to the line-up. But Quinn and Andrews have remained the heart of the group. Music is more important to them than anything.

 Although Quinn and Andrews share a common bond with music, their personalities and their approach to songwriting differ somewhat, thus creating a rich dynamic between them. To capture those dynamics, we asked Quinn and Andrews the same questions to see where the duo differs and where they are alike.

CK :  What was your first impression of the other?
Jill: I remember the first time I ever saw Sam, which is weird because I don't remember the first time I saw anybody. I was driving into camp for the first time, and I was speeding down the road. I was following a white Sunbird. I saw this guy get out of this car and he had really long braids — like Pocahontas braids. His braids came down to his hips. He had round, thick glasses on and this facial hair that was completely out of control, an overgrown field or something. (laughs) I pretty much talked to him right when I met him. I felt close to him right at the beginning. We found out that we both went to ETSU (Eastern Tennessee State University). After that, I pretty much took him home every weekend to his friend's house. He'd ride back with me.

Sam: I see her on opening day, and everyone is doing the meet-and-greet. And she's singing to some tape. I can't complain. She's nice to look at. But I just thought it was weird. So later on that afternoon, we were having art time. I was drawing an American flag on a piece of paper, and she comes over and she says, "Hi, I'm Jill." And I said, "Hi, I'm Sam. I heard you singing over there." And that's where it stopped. It turns out in weeks to come we would find out that she followed me in the driveway to the camp. She was hot on my trail from the get-go.

CK : What do you recall about the first time you played music and sang together?
Jill: It was in the parking lot. It was just amazing. I hadn't ever really sang with anybody that I felt like it melded that well together. I just think his voice is such a pure kind of voice. It's not masked by anything. It's really delicate and beautiful. I felt like our voices went together really well.  I was just so inspired by him. I remember sitting on a park bench one day and Sam played me songs he wrote about a girl. I pretty much cried the whole time because they were so sad and true.

Sam: I think the first time I remember singing with her was "Sweep Out the Ashes." It was just a good feeling. We hit those parts and they all just fit together really well. It was like, "Wow, this is great." It was something I wanted to repeat.

CK :You dated each other for awhile. Does the past ever seem to interfere with the progression of the band or your relationship as musical partners?
Jill: Sometimes it's hard, but we try not to dwell on things. We kind of focus on being business partners and musical partners as well as friends over everything. Unlike most people who go through break-ups, we haven't gotten a break from each other. It's like hanging out with your ex every day and going on the road and staying at the same place as them. It can be hard especially as we may or may not be moving on with our personal lives. (The music) was so important to us. It was a huge part of what we are as people. There wasn't really much of a choice.

Sam: At times, it's really hard. As you would imagine, I don't want to talk a whole lot about that.  But I lost pretty much my best friend and my girlfriend all at the same time, and I still had to work with this person constantly.  It's (playing music) what she wanted to do ever since I've known her. And it's all I've wanted to do. And we created a vehicle in which to do so. At the end of the day, it's just a blast. And thinking back on it, the good times outnumber the bad. It's trying at times, but we know each other so well. So we sort of both died and recreated each other as band people.

CK: There seems to be more of a rock or electric sound in your music lately that wasn't there before. Are you going more in a rock direction?
Jill: We never embraced the whole bluegrass thing too much. It's not what we listen to. Sam and I definitely grew up listening to a lot of folk. So that was something we truly embraced. That's really where we come from. I wouldn't say we're moving away from it. I guess we're expanding on it, taking it to different levels.

Sam: We're working with a few different sounds. Some bands change and they really suck because of it. Any band hopes that they're not going to do that. We're sort of just screwing around with some louder things. Sort of like a more of a rockin' thing. The new record is nothing crazy like people haven't seen at the last 10 months of shows, but it's going to be different. And I expect to lose some people and gain some people. It's not so far out. It's not like we're making a German death metal album. It's going to have a little bit more of an edge, but I'm pretty excited about it.

CK : What inspires your songwriting these days?
Jill: I think Sam and I have evolved in the same way. If you listen to our first album, "Hobarts" and "TVA," those songs aren't true to our lives. The songs we seem to be writing now are pretty much, "here's my life on a plate, I'm gonna slide it down the table to you." I don't know what's changed … well, I know one thing that's changed: we've dealt with a lot more things in our personal lives recently. That's definitely where my songs come from, and that's where his songs come from, too.

Sam: I'm not really a "sit down with a guitar and write a song" kind of guy. I'm pretty much, everybody leave me alone, I'm taking a walk -- getting a couple of lines here, a couple of lines there. And if they stay there and I'm still thinking about them a little bit later, then I realize I've got something good. It's got to get under my skin before I realize that anyone would enjoy it.

CK :Why are your songs so depressing?
Jill: Honestly, that's what I like. That's what I know. I write about stuff I'm dealing with. Not that I don't have sunshiney, frolicking in the meadow sort of days. I definitely do, but those aren't the songs I really want to hear.

Sam: "Shiny Happy People" doesn't do as much for me as "Night Swimming." Happy stuff doesn't stay with me nearly as long. It doesn't get under my skin. I stay in funks a good bit of the time anyway.  Jill and I have very serious bouts of getting down, not horizontally, but getting down on yourself.  When everything is like that, it's the worst time for us to be together because we perpetuate it.   It's like tying nooses around each other's necks. If there's one thing we can do it's like, "Let's get depressed."

CK :Do you come from a musical background?
Jill: When I first started playing guitar, my dad started playing banjo. Now he's learning how to play clawhammer, and I'm learning how to play the fiddle. Beyond that, I think I just needed an outside source to guide me a little bit, like Sam. I was really shy when I first started playing. I knew a couple chords, like G and C, but… I pretty much wouldn't take it out of the case.

Sam: My mom plays piano. My sisters both had piano lessons. We had a plastic guitar in the house in the laundry room. It had plastic cowboys and horses on it.  I was 11 when that single ("Soul to Squeeze" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers) came out. I wanted to learn how to play that so bad. So I pulled down the plastic guitar and I tried to get something that sounded right, but I didn't really get that. But one of the dudes that tried to get with my older sister played guitar really well. He taught me chords. Thank God to all the guys who thought my older sister was hot. I really benefited a lot from that.

Jill Andrews

Age: 26
Hometown: Normal, Ill.
First song you learned to play on guitar: "I think the first song I ever played was a song that I wrote; it was real dumb (laughs). That's all I can tell you about it."
A song you'd like to cover: "These Days" by Jackson Browne
The last CD you bought: "We just recently played with a guy named Adam Carrol . I love him so much. He's a Texas singer/songwriter. He's got a CD called 'South of Town' that's really good. And another one called 'Far Away Blues.' I didn't buy the CD, but I love it. But yeah, he rocks."
An album you fell in love with growing up: "The first tape I ever got was a Diana Ross tape. I said, 'Dad, I need to get a tape.' I didn't know of any music. I was probably in third grade. And he was like, 'Well, Diana Ross is really good.' He didn't seem to think she was really good after I got the tape home and she was making all of these sexual breathing noises. I remember putting that in my little boombox, and I had socks on and I'd slide across the kitchen floor listening to Diana Ross. I really liked her."

Sam Quinn

Age: 26
Hometown: Benton, Tenn.
A song you'd like to cover: "There's a song by The Band called, 'Rocking Chair.' It's an amazing tune. Oh, wait, 'My Morning Jacket.' I heard 'It Still Moves' and it pretty much rocked my face off.
The last CD you bought: Neko Case, "Fox Confessor." "Before that I bought Jay-Z, 'The Black Album.'"
An album you fell in love with growing up: "Pretty much, my older sister, a lot of dudes liked her. So all these people always made her mix tapes. Whenever she was gone, I would rifle through those tapes. But this older dude at our church, he made her this cassette tape of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, 'Live Rust.' At first he comes out and plays six or eight songs acoustic. And then he comes out with Crazy Horse and rocks out. And I was like, this is amazing."