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0:00/4:45
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Georgia Man 4:120:00/4:12
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Seven Handle Circus
• Seven Handle Circus's rendition of A-Ha's "Take On Me" is featured on Conan O'Brian's TeamCoCo web site (Sept. 16, 2014)
• Seven Handle Circus performs "And We Danced" in People's Music Lounge (On.AOL.com re-post)
We are comprised of the pieces of our past, each instance of our life culminating to become an unexpectedly cohesive whole. This is especially true for musicians. Seven Handle Circus, a folk rock group from Atlanta, formed in 2010 when its members were still in college at Georgia Tech majoring in Engineering and Computer Science. It wasn’t until they started playing together on the porch of the Sigma Nu house that they realized their true passion lay in making music. Seven Handle Circus began regularly playing live around the Southeast and found that the music shifted away from the typical bluegrass sound. The influences and pieces of their collective past seeped into the songs, changing them to become wholly original to themselves.
“When we started we were very much thinking bluegrass,” says singer/songwriter Shawn Spencer. “Since adding a drummer and touring a lot and playing live and seeing how fans react, it’s changed a lot. It’s pushing more modern sounds. There’s never been a discussion about it – it's just a slowly evolving thing. We’re reintroducing other influences, like classical and jazz and punk rock. But we also look at the music around us in the world and how music itself is evolving.”
Seven Handle Circus released their debut EP, Whiskey Stills & Sleeping Pills, in 2012 followed by a live album, Live At Terminal West, in 2013. Immediately after finishing the EP, Shawn started writing songs for what would eventually become the band’s debut album, Shadows On The Wall. “The album is a group of songs that got introduced over time,” Shawn explains. “There was no official beginning to the album, no meeting about it. This is a collection of songs that were coming from the same place in our lives.”
The album embraces the idea of uncertainty about what it means to enter adulthood without a place to land or a real sense of where you belong. Nothing is the way you expected it to be, which is a theme that resonates throughout the songs. From “Shadows,” a rollicking Americana number inspired by the writing of Plato, to the layered folk of “Never Gonna Last,” the album grapples with how to survive in today’s tumultuous world. The songwriting dapples in literary references: buoyant folk rock anthem “And We Danced” calls up Catcher In the Rye while the gliding ballad “Prelude” invokes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ode To the West Wind.” The album’s closer, which Shawn calls a “morning love song,” was inspired by (and named for) Philip Larkin’s “Aubade.”
“The lyrics are born out of personal experience but exaggerated and elaborated to meet the universal need,” Shawn says. “We want the songs to be about everybody and about life. I think a lot of it comes from little things in your surroundings. It’s never direct inspiration – like a book, movie or song about a certain thing doesn’t make me write about that specifically. It’s more like interesting moments, lines, general themes that really jump out to me.”
Musically, the record finds its center in the thoughtful production of Better Than Ezra’s Tom Drummond, who the band selected after he professed his fandom for the group after the release of their EP. The album was recorded over three sessions in early 2014, two at Tom’s own studio in New Orleans and one at Zac Brown's Southern Ground Studio in Atlanta. The idea was to distance themselves from traditional bluegrass and make their song arrangements more epic, contrasting big, grandiose sounds with introspective, intimate moments.
"Seven Handle Circus showcases mature songwriting beyond their years," says Tom Drummond. "They combine impressive bluegrass chops with old school pop sensibilities."
The acoustic sounds on the album resonate with sincerity and evocative emotion, each note played with passion and intent, something Tom helped the musicians to capture on the album.
“We made an authentic record,” Shawn says. “It’s six guys playing six acoustic instruments with real sounds, real performances and real emotion. It’s a diverse record and it’s definitely our record, uncompromised and beautiful. We learned pretty quickly that we could really play whatever we want with our bluegrass instruments, and we tend to do just that. We proved this when we released a cover of Daft Punk's ‘One More Time’ and it went viral in one of our most successful videos. ‘And We Danced’ is a song that could have easily been an electronic recording, but we chose to do it with acoustic instruments, just because we could.”
Seven Handle Circus released Shadows On the Wall, which was funded primarily by a Kickstarter campaign, on their own, mostly because they realized they could do this without a label. The group has performed at festivals like Riverbend, Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Festival, Banjobque and played with Mumford and Sons in Atlanta.
"Shadows On the Wall alludes to Plato’s Cave,” Shawn says. “After a journey you end up in the same place you were when you started, but instead of watching the illusions of the shadows on the wall you are now casting them. I think that’s where we are now. But we aren’t going to sit still for long because there’s a lot more music to be made.”
• Seven Handle Circus performs "And We Danced" in People's Music Lounge (On.AOL.com re-post)
We are comprised of the pieces of our past, each instance of our life culminating to become an unexpectedly cohesive whole. This is especially true for musicians. Seven Handle Circus, a folk rock group from Atlanta, formed in 2010 when its members were still in college at Georgia Tech majoring in Engineering and Computer Science. It wasn’t until they started playing together on the porch of the Sigma Nu house that they realized their true passion lay in making music. Seven Handle Circus began regularly playing live around the Southeast and found that the music shifted away from the typical bluegrass sound. The influences and pieces of their collective past seeped into the songs, changing them to become wholly original to themselves.
“When we started we were very much thinking bluegrass,” says singer/songwriter Shawn Spencer. “Since adding a drummer and touring a lot and playing live and seeing how fans react, it’s changed a lot. It’s pushing more modern sounds. There’s never been a discussion about it – it's just a slowly evolving thing. We’re reintroducing other influences, like classical and jazz and punk rock. But we also look at the music around us in the world and how music itself is evolving.”
Seven Handle Circus released their debut EP, Whiskey Stills & Sleeping Pills, in 2012 followed by a live album, Live At Terminal West, in 2013. Immediately after finishing the EP, Shawn started writing songs for what would eventually become the band’s debut album, Shadows On The Wall. “The album is a group of songs that got introduced over time,” Shawn explains. “There was no official beginning to the album, no meeting about it. This is a collection of songs that were coming from the same place in our lives.”
The album embraces the idea of uncertainty about what it means to enter adulthood without a place to land or a real sense of where you belong. Nothing is the way you expected it to be, which is a theme that resonates throughout the songs. From “Shadows,” a rollicking Americana number inspired by the writing of Plato, to the layered folk of “Never Gonna Last,” the album grapples with how to survive in today’s tumultuous world. The songwriting dapples in literary references: buoyant folk rock anthem “And We Danced” calls up Catcher In the Rye while the gliding ballad “Prelude” invokes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ode To the West Wind.” The album’s closer, which Shawn calls a “morning love song,” was inspired by (and named for) Philip Larkin’s “Aubade.”
“The lyrics are born out of personal experience but exaggerated and elaborated to meet the universal need,” Shawn says. “We want the songs to be about everybody and about life. I think a lot of it comes from little things in your surroundings. It’s never direct inspiration – like a book, movie or song about a certain thing doesn’t make me write about that specifically. It’s more like interesting moments, lines, general themes that really jump out to me.”
Musically, the record finds its center in the thoughtful production of Better Than Ezra’s Tom Drummond, who the band selected after he professed his fandom for the group after the release of their EP. The album was recorded over three sessions in early 2014, two at Tom’s own studio in New Orleans and one at Zac Brown's Southern Ground Studio in Atlanta. The idea was to distance themselves from traditional bluegrass and make their song arrangements more epic, contrasting big, grandiose sounds with introspective, intimate moments.
"Seven Handle Circus showcases mature songwriting beyond their years," says Tom Drummond. "They combine impressive bluegrass chops with old school pop sensibilities."
The acoustic sounds on the album resonate with sincerity and evocative emotion, each note played with passion and intent, something Tom helped the musicians to capture on the album.
“We made an authentic record,” Shawn says. “It’s six guys playing six acoustic instruments with real sounds, real performances and real emotion. It’s a diverse record and it’s definitely our record, uncompromised and beautiful. We learned pretty quickly that we could really play whatever we want with our bluegrass instruments, and we tend to do just that. We proved this when we released a cover of Daft Punk's ‘One More Time’ and it went viral in one of our most successful videos. ‘And We Danced’ is a song that could have easily been an electronic recording, but we chose to do it with acoustic instruments, just because we could.”
Seven Handle Circus released Shadows On the Wall, which was funded primarily by a Kickstarter campaign, on their own, mostly because they realized they could do this without a label. The group has performed at festivals like Riverbend, Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Festival, Banjobque and played with Mumford and Sons in Atlanta.
"Shadows On the Wall alludes to Plato’s Cave,” Shawn says. “After a journey you end up in the same place you were when you started, but instead of watching the illusions of the shadows on the wall you are now casting them. I think that’s where we are now. But we aren’t going to sit still for long because there’s a lot more music to be made.”
www.sevenhandlecircus.com
Quotes:
“Atlanta-based Seven Handle Circus, a six-piece band that is redefining bluegrass and stepping outside the Folk/Americana box.”
Music News Nashville - August 2014
“Atlanta-based Seven Handle Circus, a six-piece band that is redefining bluegrass and stepping outside the Folk/Americana box.”
Music News Nashville - August 2014
Sounds
Sights
"And We Danced" (Official Video)
"I've Been Around the World" - Live at Terminal West in Atlanta, GA
"One More Time" (Daft Punk Cover) - Live at Terminal West in Atlanta, GA
"Break My Fall" (Live Acoustic)
"I've Been Around the World" - Live at Terminal West in Atlanta, GA
"One More Time" (Daft Punk Cover) - Live at Terminal West in Atlanta, GA
"Break My Fall" (Live Acoustic)