Trouble In The Wind Out With New Album, 'Hammer On'

This is KPBS midday edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh the North County band that was named Artist of the year at the San Diego music awards is celebrating the release of their new album this week. Trouble in the wind is a genre bending band playing a unique Southern California kind of alternative country music. The new album is called Hammer on two of the five members of trouble in the wind are here to talk about their newest release. Joining me is lead singer and rhythm guitarist Robby Jourová. Robbie welcome. Thank you. Happy to be here. And drummer Larry Dorin. Larry welcome. Thank you Maureen. So Larry it's kind of hard to put a label on your music. How do you describe trouble in the wind. We draw from a wide variety of influences between the five of us. So it's hard to really put a label or genre specific but we just use the term rock and roll a lot of people will suggest Americana surf rock. There's a lot of variety of sounds kind of in the mix of what we do. We're just a plain old rock and roll band. Now Robbie does this new album Hammer on does it show changes in the band or how you approach making music. It certainly does. I took a lot of time for this album in particular to build the songs in accordance to what I feel like our sound has been progressing into which is a lot more complex melodies and a lot more complex compositions and with the multi instrumentalist musicians in the band it's been a lot of fun to build these songs into something a little bit more intricate than we have in the past. Is there a song on the album that really demo demonstrates that change. Yeah there's a couple that I think too. There's the song touching down and there's also the song a man can give. Into. It's. Time to go. Let's talk a little bit more about the song a man can give Larry. Tell us more. We feel that one is closer in its sound to our previous record called Lefty which we had a lot of good positive feedback on. So that song is probably the conduit between the last record in this one and most reflects the sound that a lot of people have come to expect from. So your albums new album is named hammer on what where's that name comes from. The name sort of came to me as I was listening to our one of our guitarists playing a solo and he was using a guitar technique called Hammer on and I enjoy the term there's no sort of action to it you know. And to. That thought sort of bridged into. Sort of the ethos of what this album is which is sort of US hammering on into the future forging our sound and growing together as a band or the other members of terrible in the wind you've got Trevor Molefi on the bass and also he's been picking up some vocal duties lately. We've also got Keith Hammond on electric guitar pedal steel and vocals. And then you have Kyle Merritt plays the banjo piano guitar accordion basically anything that you can find. Yeah he'll play it. So even with the album and the artist of the Year award you also have nine to five day jobs. How does that work Larry that is it's quite a challenge but we we all are so passionate about this band and our music that is worth the extra effort to. You know we work to provide for ourselves and our families. And but the band is something that is really important to us and making it work is a common goal. Yeah. I mean that's a situation Ravi that a lot of musicians face. I mean you know you committed passionately to free music but you got to make a living. So technically I mean how do you make that work. How do you divide up the day. It's a complicated balance of doing the the job that you have to do to pay your rent or pay your bills. But also you need the time to creatively do the things that you need to do and also you have to devote yourself to playing your music with your bandmates or playing it out for the public as much as you can as well. Eventually the goal is and the outcome should be that we end up just doing this as our job. That is our dream. So eventually it feels like things are sliding towards that way where we'll be able to move professionally. So right now things are slowly sliding that way where we are learning all together how we can make our lives in music. You know Robby you're talking about writing more complex songs the whole band with a more complex sound. You mentioned the song touching down. Did you have trouble writing that song. Yeah it was a longer process for me than usual. I was trying to add different parts and also keep in mind adding what I thought was some space for other band members to sing on. So it is it was actually two songs that I sort of merged together and then created a chorus. Uniquely Larry and Keith sing instead of me which is a lot of fun. What's the story behind it. The song is definitely a song of self discovery self realization. And moving forward. Basically in your mind in a positive direction knowing what you need to do now you're planning a launch party this week for your album Hammer on. Tell us about that. Where is it going to be. That we're very excited about this show we've been planning it for quite a while. It's it's this Saturday July the 28th. It's at the Sunshine Brooks Theater in downtown Oceanside. Show will begin at 8pm and we've put a lot of work into this and feel it's going to be a great opportunity to celebrate the release of this record. We're really proud of. And hopefully our fans will enjoy the experience of hearing the songs performed live for the first time in a nice theater setting. So we're really excited. We think it's going to be a lot of fun and. We're ready to go. I've been speaking with musicians Ravager RA and Larry Dawran of trouble in the wind. Thank you both very much. Thank you for having us.