Interview: Ithaca, NY Band Quail Talk About Their New Single "Crazy"
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“There is really nothing like a crowd signing back the words you wrote. No matter how many times it happens, it is still just as amazing every time. After that happens, the song gets huge again and the soft hum of the crowd’s voices turns to a roaring wave. ”
Congratulations on the release of your second single "Crazy"; it's a great song. Tell us about your creative process during the development of the song.
Thank you! “Crazy” was written by our bassist, Anna Young, and our lead vocalist, Madison Carroll. Anna originally had an idea in her head for this tune and when she brought it to Maddy, their minds started running and the song just came to them.
They created the piece, wanting to speak to the issue of how often women are labeled as “crazy” by society for simple things such as having an opinion on something. They arranged it and brought it to the band, who all loved it. This part of the process is pretty similar for the rest of our songs, but what happened next wasn’t. When we brought the song to the band, we only had a week to record it.
Pre-Corona times, we were hoping to have our album out by mid-May, which meant that we had to get all the recordings done by our Spring Break. So we really hit the shed on this song and luckily, the song felt really natural and found its place in the band very quickly. A week later, we got in the studio and recorded the song with our amazing recording engineers, Eric Myers and Jacob Friga.
Originally the plan was to come back after Spring Break and tighten everything up, overdub what we needed to overdub, etc. But, then Covid-19 happened. Our drummer, Jacob, was able to get into the school over break to record the tambourine part, but after that, none of us were allowed into the school, as the campus had shut down. Luckily, our mixing engineer, Nicky Young, is Anna’s brother. Since they were quarantining together, we were able to be really hands-on with the production process and had a lot of creative input. By the time we sent it to our Mastering Engineer, Gregory Mahan, it was exactly the way we wanted it. So the fully finished process of the song came together in a very unconventional way.
We’ve actually never played the song live for anyone! It was a brand new never-before-heard single when we released it. We’re hoping that sometime soon we’ll be able to play it live for the Quail Trail and we can continue to develop it for a live audience.
How did you guys come together to form the band, and where did the name “Quail” originate?
We formed in November of 2018. All of us were (at the time) Ithaca College students. Our keys player, Dan, has since graduated but he is still in Ithaca with us! We all knew each other from various settings within the school and all wanted to play music in a band together.
Anna actually remembers hearing our tenor saxophonist, Ali, soloing in a jazz band and thinking, "Wow, she needs to be in this band." We got our first gig scheduled for the following February and we got to work. We performed that first gig with our original singer, Gia, who Anna had known and played with in high school. Our paths eventually went separate ways with her, but she is now thriving and studying education at The City College of New York!
Our singer now, the amazing Madison Carroll, was actually in the audience for that first show! (You can even hear her in the live recordings from the show screaming our names). We were friends with Madison and knew she would be the perfect fit for Quail, which she absolutely is. Since then, we’ve just grown stronger and tighter as a band and we’re really excited for everything else to come.
The origin of the band name is an interesting story. Anna went on a family trip years ago and was staying in a house across the street from a road called “Quail Trail”. As a native New Yorker, Anna’s bird experience is pretty limited to pigeons, and other urban birds. She absolutely loved the word “Quail”.
Later that night, she spent an entire Scrabble game trying to spell “Quail” (Which she is aware is not how the game is played) and came so close, but was never able to fully spell the word. Those two experiences combined led her to decide that if she ever had a band, it had to be called “Quail”. When the band was thinking of band names, the name was well received, and thus, “Quail” was born.
With the "Crazy" single now released, can we expect a music video for it, and will it be appearing on an upcoming EP or album?
You can!! We are currently working with an AMAZING video team, Ben Basem, Charlie Bernstein, Andrew Bellomo, and our amazing artist, Autumn Frödelius (who did the cover art for “Crazy”)! For our debut single, “Blue Sky”, we released a more live performance type of music video, which was shot during the recording session. We knew that for our next music video, we really wanted to have a storyline and an arc. Obviously those plans got slightly interrupted by Covid-19. We’re still making the video, but now it will be animated!! The video process has begun and we’re hoping to have the final project out soon!
“Crazy” will also definitely be featured on our upcoming album. Unfortunately, because of Covid-19, we have had to push back the album date, but we are working hard to still get it out there!!
Tell us about the donation campaign that you are running with a local community center from your Bandcamp proceeds.
Southside Community Center, in Ithaca, NY, is a community center focused on empowering black youth. As Ithaca College students, we have been very connected to Southside. Half of the band has had experience in the Ithaca College music education program, which has ties to Southside. Our drummer, Jacob, even did his field-experience there.
The town of Ithaca has really allowed us to foster our growth as musicians and as people. With everything Ithaca has given us, we wanted to give back some of that love and generosity. We are also very aware that as a majority white band, we are playing music everyday that has been derived and developed from black culture and history. If we are going to profit off of our music, we have to honor where it comes from. We decided that we were going to donate Bandcamp proceeds to Ithaca’s amazing Southside Community Center.
You can get both of our singles on https://quailtheband.bandcamp.com! You can also donate directly to the Southside Community Center here: https://sspride.org/donate/
Describe a typical Quail live show for us; do you have a favorite song to perform?
In a typical Quail show you can definitely expect to dance, sing, laugh, and just have an overall great time. We genuinely love performing; it’s probably our favorite part of this whole experience. The shows usually start with us running on stage and going right into a song to hype up the crowd. The rest of the show is more music played with some jokes, stories, and crowd interactions versed throughout.
You’ll usually hear a lot of originals, and some covers in there too, to spice things up. We’ve covered ranges of songs, from Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish”, to Carole King’s “Natural Woman”, to Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”. We really like to mix it up and just have fun on stage! You will also almost always see us playing with no shoes, rocking some funky socks. We like to call that our band uniform. This is one of our favorite Quail traditions, something about it just inspires us to run around the stage and have fun.
“Sip of Water” is definitely one of our favorite songs to perform. It begins with a sort of funky blues rock vibe, but by the end it is a full power ballad. It was actually one of the first real songs Anna ever wrote. One of our favorite parts of the song is the breakdown. The song settles to a very sincere and vulnerable setting of just Sam on guitar and Maddy on vocals, (which is rare as we like to keep a high energy show) and the whole crowd joins in singing the words, “Talking out my mouth, I can’t ease my mind.”
There is really nothing like a crowd signing back the words you wrote. No matter how many times it happens, it is still just as amazing every time. After that happens, the song gets huge again and the soft hum of the crowd's voices turns to a roaring wave. Definitely one of the best parts of the show.
We’ve also added a live ending to the tune, where we go absolutely wild. We just let it rip, strings are broken, drumsticks snapped, and everyone jumping up and down. Yeah, “Sip of Water” is definitely one of our favorites to perform.