Girls on the Road” Duo Premieres on June 29th
By Mariah Fleming
Innovative, imaginative live music that is irresistible is kind of like receiving a surprise bouquet of perfect, colorful, fresh flowers. The music of the newly formed “Folktronica Fusion” duo called “Girls on the Road” fits that description for me. This new duo is Annie Moscow and Rachael Nicole Gold, both well established musicians in their own right. If you’ve heard either of them perform individually over the past several decades you know that the decision they’ve made to join together to form “Girls on the Road” is a pretty big deal. And you definitely won’t want to miss the premiere performance of this brand new duo at Scottsdale’s ASU Kerr Center on Saturday June 29th at 7:30pm.
The music of “Girls on the Road” is born of many things. Their bio asks “What do you get when you combine the sweet, poignant essence of folk music and put it in the hands of two keyboardists and arrangers with jazz, classical and R&B influences?” They go on to describe their music as being drawn from influences ranging from Debussy, Charles Ives and the Beatles to Herbie Hancock, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Hornsby. Their music is also born of experience. Moscow studied classical piano and jazz and has decades of experience as a touring singer/songwriter. She is in her eleventh season of writing and performing for the Herberger Lunchtime Theatre. Moscow’s 2017 CD “Passing Trains” climbed to #20 on the Folk-DJ charts during the first month of its release.
Rachael Nicole Gold is a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. During the past thirty years, Gold has toured extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe. Gold studied arranging and composition with legendary orchestrators/composers including Nelson Riddle, Lalo Schifrin and Tom Scott. Gold has toured and recorded with many well-known entertainers like Sister Sledge and Donna Summer and written, produced and arranged for film and TV. Together, they have composed music for film, television and a number of big name recording artists – does the name Sarah Vaughn ring a bell?
Moscow and Gold as a duo have an undeniable synergy. Their “Girls on the Road” premiere is sure to be a uniquely wonderful evening of music. You can hear some of their music and a live interview with Blaise Lantana on KJZZ 91.5 on Thursday June 6th at 9pm. I had the pleasure of interviewing the duo about their new project and learned some intriguing things, like how learning stand up comedy influenced their musical lives. The interview follows below.
An Interview with the Girls on the Road
By Mariah Fleming
Q.You call the music of “Girls on the Road” “Folktronica Fusion.” What does that description mean to you?
Annie: The “Folk” part is because we’re both singers, songwriters and storytellers. But we’re also almost 100% electronic—we play all the parts on two keyboards—although Rachael does play the guitar on a few songs.
Rachael: We scoured the internet and found the genre “folktronica” which seemed to describe what we were doing but it didn’t include some of the other elements that we bring from our backgrounds of jazz, rock, and classical. Adding “fusion” to our genre description felt more accurate.
Q.What drew you together to decide on this specific “Girls on the Road” musical adventure?
Annie: We’d been collaborators for most of our lives and took a hiatus from each other for about ten years. Then I had an idea for a folk/jazz concert at The Nash, highlighting the music of some of my favorite folk/jazz artists—like Joni Mitchell as well as those combined influences in my own writing. Rachael has a very strong jazz and R&B background and I proposed the idea that we collaborate on this show, which we did and had a spectacular time. The show was successful and reminded us how well we do work together.
Rachael: After that show, we were invited to sing with Taylor Mac in a concert at ASU Gammage. The song we sang was Ferron’s “Girl on the Road”- a fantastic song. Then we decided, why don’t we just start a band? And when it came to naming our new duo, the song name fit our goals perfectly. We want to go on the road, see the world, meet the people and share our music. Funny how things work out.
Q. Annie, in talking about you two being excited about starting a new venture with ‘Girls on the Road” you mentioned that you’d both studied comedy with Tony Viccich here at The Improv. Did learning comedy help you in your music?
Annie: Rehearsing and working on our new music reminds me a bit of the comedy process. When you first write your jokes, you think you’re pretty funny. But then when you rehearse them alone for months in the privacy of your home, at some point you stop laughing at your own jokes and you wonder, are other people going to like this?
Rachael: From my own personal experience, when I got up on the stage at the Improv after rehearsing my lines over and over again, the first thing I did was forget all of them. As I stared out at the sea of faces that were not amused, I panicked for a moment, and then I realized “wait a minute, this is just like jazz!”
Q.What’s the synergy, so to speak…the give and take, between you two?
Annie: Our shared love of specific artists and books is what originally brought us together. We both started off classically, then I veered more into the storytelling folk/rock/theater. Rachael was heavily into jazz and R&B and film scoring. But coming together now, as mature artists, it’s been wonderful discovering new common ground and how well all our diverse influences mesh together in a new unique musical fingerprint.
Rachael: Our collaboration over most of our lives allows us to keep an open dialogue that brings us to our musical goals. We’re both driven by a desire for authenticity and integrity and play every note, live, including drum and bass parts (on our synths). We both agreed at the beginning of this, that if we can’t play it, it doesn’t get played. No computer band members—no sequencing, no looping.
Q.Do you have a collaborative songwriting process?
Annie: Many years ago, we did write songs together. Rachael would write the music and I wrote the lyrics. But over the years we began have our own musical ideas, went our separate ways and each began writing on our own. The collaborative process now comes into play in our arranging. Once we sit down at the synths, it’s a constant back and forth of trial and error, and then the songs kind of organically grow over time and tell you what they need.
Rachael: That’s a great question. The way we’re working now is more like a symbiosis. The song is the seed, and we contribute so much of ourselves to each song that’s it’s hard to really separate the song from the arrangement. Each song becomes more than the song, but more like a stand-alone mini-movie.
Q. I can well imagine that because the arrangements are wonderful. I am especially intrigued by the enchanting arrangement of “Beauty of the Numbers.” It feels celestial. In 2010, Annie, you released a very different version of it. Did anything particular inspire you to create this new arrangement?
Annie: I was open for anything. Re-imagining Beauty of the Numbers, which I used to just play acoustically, on the piano, was really fun.
Rachael: We had bought matching synthesizers and this was one of the first songs we started working on. It seemed obvious to me this song would be a perfect match for the palette of sounds now available to us, and I suggested we try something new.
Q.You’ve worked professionally in music both together and separately for thirty plus years. You seem to have found a special chemistry in “Girls on the Road.” What creates that chemistry?
Annie: We’ve known each other all our lives. We grew up in the same town, have similar backgrounds. Rachael is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever met. She can play just about anything in any style and I’m in awe of her arranging and improvising skills. I never had anyone who could get inside my songs and take them where they need to go the way Rachael can.
Rachael: Annie and I have had so many amazing experiences together, both in music and in life. I love Annie’s incredible and prolific songwriting, her honesty and her limitless talent.
Q.There’s an unusually broad range in your songs that I find very interesting. As musicians recording live in-studio becomes more rare, it’s refreshing that you do your music live. And it can be heard in the quality and emotion of the work. Where do you do your recordings?
Annie: Rachael’s living room and kitchen. I’m set up by the toaster. We’re wired in to record every time we sit down and play. Most of the hard work goes into the arranging. But once the song has been all worked out, it’s just a question of getting that “magic” take.
Rachael: Yes and the cappuccino machine nearby makes me feel like I’m at certain gigs. I’m always thrilled when I go see a band that I love live, when they sound just like their records or better. I feel when we record live it’s honest and representative of what we do together.
Q.What can the audience look forward to at your Kerr Center “Girls on the Road” premiere? Have you any surprises up your sleeves?
Annie: They’ll hear the work we’ve been doing under wraps for over a year now. Mostly originals, but a few covers of songs both of us have always loved.
Rachael: People will see what two musicians can do with two synthesizers and two voices. Surprises? There might be…
Tickets for the premiere performance of “Girls on the Road” are $20 / $25 with discounts for seniors, students and military when ordered through the Kerr Center box office at 480 596 2660. Tickets are also available through Ticketmaster with additional fees added.
Get more info and to hear samples of “Girls on the Road” music at Girls On The Road