Peach Kings
The Peach Kings have spent most of 2016 on the open road. They kicked off the year with a headlining tour and have been traveling the weeks since. While many artists struggle with the mental and physical toll the long drives can take, Paige Wood and Steve Dies relish the time they spend in the car exploring what the world has to offer. “It's kind of like we hit our stride on the road and we're really good on the road. We have a lot of fun probably because we have each other,” Dies shares over the phone during their current Night Sweat tour. “A lot of times when people, when they're touring, they leave their loved ones back at home and that causes some longing and some strife or whatever but we've got each other all the time. It's like we're on a little vacation.”
Paige and Steven met shortly after she moved in with his brother in San Francisco. The brother insisted they ought to play music together and, after their meeting, the chemistry clicked. On their second hike, in the sweltering heat, Dies bit into a juicy peach and from then on they have continued to write and play music together for the past five years. The two operate completely independently, doing their own packing and shipping at home and working with others in the music community to collaborate on projects on gain music placements in TV and commercials such as iTunes, True Blood, and more. Unlike most artists who people discover through a Sears-like catalogue list, they connect with others as people first.
They’ve performed as a full band and as just the two of them, enjoying being able to switch between the two types of live shows. Their two-person act, which they’ve taken on tour this time, more closely relates to the births of their music. ”All of our songs start as the duo so we know how they're going to sound,” Dies explains. “Pretty much it's a matter of choosing the right set that grows and gets more intense, or ebbs and flows in such a way that we are satisfied with. Sometimes we won't be able to. If we put the wrong song up front, it might shortchange us on getting up in the mood for the next song. It's really a balancing act for us to make the set work for us and typically when it works for us really well, it works for the crowd really well because we're riding the same wave together.”
Their solo tour comes after previously opening for acts like The Heavy, who wrote the inescapable track “How You Like Me Now,” and the iconic Cyndi Lauper. From their days with The Heavy, the two observed how the group would interact with the audience. “Whenever there's a show that there's audience participation in, I like that show more because it feels less like I'm just a static observer and like I'm part of the experience,” says Dies. The Heavy were intentional about crafting those moments while writing their music, something the duo hopes they’ll be able to utilize in their own work moving forward. With Lauper, they learned to trust in their musical instincts. “We don't really have anything to hide behind in the duo set so [we] know that we're there for a reason, that they wanted us there because they liked our music and just own that. Don't get too in your head or too worried about what's not there.”
When it comes to approaching their own process, the duo benefit from not censoring themselves around each other, pulling things together from feelings in that very moment mixed with old lyrics or melodies they have laying around. “[We] create a lot of characters within the song. It's probably therapeutic in some way,” shares Wood. “It helps for different songs I guess when you're creating a story. It always starts with an image in my head that way I guess but also when you're performing too.” While they do write together, their work doesn’t focus solely on what they have experienced together. “Our lives are larger and longer than the amount of time we spend together and we draw on everything that we've experience to kind of get those feelings that we want out of the music,” Dies adds.
Much of their influence comes from media before them, movies and soundtracks they’re inspired by, and they’ve likened their approach to a rock noir. “It's like the imagery that comes to mind, what you think noir is. Something kind of shadowing and dark and stark and kind of lo-fi. Those are all words that we like to write from. [There’s] a lot of back and forth between two points of view, between two guitar lines, between a guitar line and a lyric. It's kind of an interplay and one thing about film noir that's really cool is [it’s] very low-budget. That's why it looks the way it does. They didn't have the full studio set-ups to make this fully sound and screen light up thing. That's why you have these track spotlight looking things which is shining on these two people, this one element, and so that's where your attention is. It's on these two people rather than this entire scenic landscape or whatever. It's like trying to focus it on us basically.”
True to form, this love for old media came from their own upbringing . “My first music exposure was my dad's record collection, it was like learning how to put the cartridge down on the record without putting it down too hard and scratching it or even touching the cartridge. Like, it always seemed like this precious, really special thing from a very young age,” says Dies.
“Growing up around it, the smell also, records is like the smell of an awesome bookstore,” Wood adds. “I always tell Steven that I miss the day where the only photo that you would have of this band or artist that you really admired was this one maybe obscure, mysterious looking photo.”
”Paige is very, you know, pro-mystery. Let's not tell people everything all the time because the people that we admire are the ones that are still a little aloof and mysterious,” Dies reveals. “You don't know everything about that person and it's good because you're listening to their music, you're not like writing their memoir.”
”It allows you to create your own context,” Wood concludes.
Photography by Amanda Bjorn
