On the cusp of last winter, a song could be heard ringing on a nearly nightly basis at TSRE headquarters, a tune that seemed to capture the essence of bleak but hopeful woods rock. That song? “Song for the Winter Sun” from The Loom. It was an introduction to the six piece band that set us off in pursuit of their debut EP, and eventually led us to the opportunity to interview lead singer John Fanning. Last week I spoke with John about The Loom – how they got here and where they’re headed next. Keep your ears open and your eyes peeled for these guys, they know how to hold a good tune.
So give me an introduction to The Loom – how did you guys form, when did you form, how long have you been around?
Sure. The drummer and I went to college together and we both played in bands in college. But then we moved to New York in 2003 and he and I started playing together around then, and our bass player Dan got involved shortly after that. But we didn’t really become a real band that actually played out and had a full line-up, in this name anyway, until 2006. Since 2006 we’ve had a line-up of sometimes 5 but usually 6 people. It’s fluctuated a bit, but we’ve been playing out fairly regularly since then, and just developing our sound. So 2006 is a good start date, but some of us have been playing together for longer than that.
And one thing that’s unique about you guys is that you are a six piece (and occasionally a five piece) band. Do you feel that having that many people in the band changes your sound? Has that affected the way you write songs?
Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s so nice to have – well, it’s musically awesome and logistically horrible, especially because I’m the one who books all of the shows and does everything like that. So it’s definitely a little complicated, but over the years we’ve learned ways. We have the same practice schedule every week and we have a band Google calendar. We’ve learned ways to get around the logistical stuff for the most part.
Musically, it’s just so nice because we have a drummer, a bass player, and I’m kind of the rhythm guitarist and I play the piano and ukulele on one track. And then we have a female vocalist who also plays piano, and she plays a floor tom live so it’s almost like two percussionists. And we have a horn player, Lis, who plays French horn and trumpet, and Alex plays – he’s kind of like the lead guitar guy, so he plays lead guitar and banjo and that sort of stuff.
It just gives you so much to work with, especially because so many people in the band play more than one instrument. Instead of me always having to be the rhythm guitar guy playing the chords, I can sometimes be more of a lead guitarist than Alex. Because we have that many people, if I stop playing rhythm guitar that element doesn’t have to disappear. It just frees us up. So on some songs I play piano and Sydney (our female vocalist) plays guitar. It just gives you so many different sounds to work with.
And I think that shows through in your music, where you have this rich sonic canvas that you work with.
Thanks, yeah. It’s funny because we’ve been recording pretty much for the last three solid months – we actually just got sent the masters yesterday. We got the masters pretty much three months to the day from when we started recording. Well, we weren’t tracking for that long, but recording and then mixing and that stuff. But we have a lot of layers, and a big part of that process was figuring out which ones not to use, I guess. It’s really nice.
And everyone is super talented. Lis, our horn player, went to Oberlin. Sydney was at the New School for Jazz. So they have more of a classical, more of a trained background, so it’s really cool because we think about things differently.
So I’ll write the song and the lyrics and the basic structure, but then Lis’s super helpful when we’re structuring things. She has an expertise that I just don’t have. There are a lot of different skills and influences that contribute, which is really nice.
So it’s collective songwriting? You start out with the basic backbone of the song and the rest of the group adds on to that?
