The Currys’ Family Ties and Folk Experiments
Equal parts band and brotherhood, The Currys have long woven familial closeness into their creative chemistry.
With roots in folk and hearts wide open to genre-bending exploration, the trio—made up of brothers and a cousin—have built a body of work that’s as reflective as it is adventurous. From launching a podcast to experimenting with pop-punk, they’ve navigated artistic growth without losing the connective tissue that holds it all together: trust, humor, and a lot of harmony. Ahead of their Listening Room show at 117, we sat down with the band to talk about family dynamics, the freedom of a loyal fanbase, and what’s next after Keepers.
T = Tommy // G = Galen // J = Jimmy
Being a family band with the Currys being brothers and cousins, how does that familial connection affect the way you work together, both in the studio and on the road?
G: I think the only reason we are still a functioning band is because we are family. We have a close-knit extended family and grew up attending reunions and crashing in rooms with 10 people, which is a pretty good facsimile of life on the road. Our relationships with each other are solid enough that we don't mind giving each other criticism in regard to the songs we are writing and the parts we are playing. The family bit is more important to all of us than the band bit, and I think that actually makes the band a bit better.
You've worked with various musicians and collaborators over the years. How has collaborating with other artists expanded your creativity, and what’s the most memorable collaboration you’ve been a part of?
T: Working with other people helps give us the context for the music we're making. It's humbling. There are a lot of incredibly creative folks out there and being exposed to their ideas and habits is refreshing and edifying. Obviously the most important collaboration we've been a part of is with each other. After that, it's the influence and incorporation of our other band members - Sebastian Green on drums, Sam Whedon on guitar, Alex Rees on keys - that makes the biggest difference to our process.
Over the years, you’ve built a loyal fan base. How does your relationship with your audience shape the way you approach live performances and your creative process?
J: We have some repeat customers, that's certainly true, and it's a wonderful thing to recognize so many faces in an audience. I think our familiarity with them and their familiarity with us (both on and off stage) has helped create a casual and intimate atmosphere at shows, allowing us to perform and enjoy their company simultaneously. As for our creative process, I think that because we know many of our fans have. taken a personal interest in us, a bit more liberal in our creative pursuits. We have the freedom to dabble in different kinds of production and in different musical genres because we aren't worried about alienating our crowd. They are also not shy. If they like a new song, they'll tell us. And if they don't, they'll also tell us.
With each of your albums, there seems to be a unique mix of influences—folk, indie pop, R&B, and even pop-punk on Keepers. How do you balance paying homage to your musical influences while still forging your own distinct sound?
G: When we started this band we were very limited by our instrumental abilities and instrument ownership. We just had a bunch of acoustic guitars lying around. So, we started out playing and writing folksy tunes. As we developed and our writing evolved, we've felt much less constrained by genre or instrumentation, and we like each song to be able to live in its world. There's always the common thread of our voices and usually a hint of our American/folk roots, which might be the closest thing to The Currys having a distinct sound, but if a song feels like it has legs, we try to see it through regardless of whether or not it's in some specific wheelhouse.
Many of your songs have deeply personal and introspective lyrics. How do you navigate the vulnerability required to write such honest music, and what do you hope listeners take away from your lyrics?
T: Part of the answer is that they are not always as personal as they sound. We have a habit when listening to songwriters of assuming they are speaking from their own perspective, but even when I'm singing in the first person, I'm often inhabiting the role of a character I'm imagining rather than speaking purely autobiographically. The character might be very similar to me - in fact, it's best when they are - but that creative removal gives me license to explore more things than I could honestly think about from just my own perspective. The other part of the answer lies in the fact that in order to do this job well, you have to have an appreciation for self-expression. It's important to us to say things, and that inevitably includes things about ourselves. We put a lot of care into what we are saying and how we say it and trust that the audience is going to find value in the writing.
You’ve mentioned influences like Sgt. Pepper’s and Jason Isbell, among others. What albums or artists have had the biggest impact on you as individuals, and how do those influences manifest in your music?
J: Part of what's appealing to me about the way we consume music these days is that you really don't have to choose. I love listening to Lianne LaHavas and The Beatles and Chappell Roan and Josh Ritter and when Tommy is driving the van, any and every project that Chris Thile is involved in. While some artists or genres might seem more in line with the music we ultimately end up producing, I'd consider all of them to be integral to the kind of music we'd like to make. Galen has certainly been inspired by Bob Schneider's prolificness - Galen wrote a song every week last year. The album I'm most familiar with is his 2011 release, A Perfect Day. And I find myself subconsciously trying to capture the ethereal sounds found in Gregory Alan Isakov's production, specifically from his album The Weatherman.
The pandemic gave you time to explore new avenues, including the This Side of the Mic podcast and experimenting with different sounds. How did these experiences shape your songwriting and the production of Keepers?
G: This Side of the Mic ended up being a huge boon in songwriting. In every episode, one of us is responsible for bringing a new song idea to show the others, and this has kept us honest about maintaining a steady level of output and creativity. The more you write, the less precious each individual thing you write becomes, and in a way that gives you permission to try some more off-the-wall ideas. There isn't pressure on each tune if you are doing another one the next week anyway. Every song on Keepers began as a nugget of an idea one of us presented on the podcast. It's fun to have such a direct record of each song's history.
Through This Side of the Mic, you’ve shared both your music and insights. What’s been the most unexpected thing you’ve learned or discovered about yourselves during the podcast’s journey?
T: It's given us an unexpected opportunity to hone our craft as performers. The podcast is a performance - a different kind of performance than our stage show, but a performance nonetheless. We play sort of exaggerated versions of ourselves. The characters are authentic, but we lean into tropes of personality or behaviors we think we can make humorous or entertaining. That is not something we were just automatically good at; we've improved a lot over the course of working on This Side of the Mic. We've also internalized the rhythm of broadcasting over time and are much better at anticipating each other's cadences so as to produce a more seamless conversation. Honestly, going back and listening to old episodes of the podcast is like night and day.
After the release of Keepers, what’s next? Are there any musical directions or new projects you're excited to explore in the near future?
G: Last fall, we released a 6-song EP called Others and a full-length Christmas album, and then we led some group trips overseas, and then Jimmy got married, so we are just now coming out of the haze of all that and focusing on what the next Currys project will look like. There have been mutterings of doing an album of folk tunes and working on a bunch of unassociated singles. Both are exciting to us in different ways. In today's musical climate, it's unclear whether doing EPs, full-length albums, or singles is the best way forward. So we are just going to go forward with whichever idea excites us most. We are writing all the time and have a bunch of new tunes we are excited to find homes for, but the exact nature of those homes is still undecided.
Currys Performance
April 6 - 117 - Gainesville, FL
