Chicago – Some time ago I had the pleasure of sitting down with Good Graeff. Truth be told, I hadn’t heard of the Graeff sisters till I got an email suggesting I check out their show. I took a listen to their indie-folk and thought, “Not bad.” So I found my way to Lincoln Hall in Chicago to hear the stylings of this sibling duo. Before the show, I met with the twins in the green room to rattle off the questions I wrote just hours before hand. The interview turned into one of the most marvelous and hilarious conversations I’ve ever witnessed, mainly thanks to the twinning effect and their lovely “tour manager”/dog Lucy. To make it all the better, Brooke and Brittany put on an amazing performance afterwards, solidifying my position as a life-long fan. So without further ado, here is said interview:
So you guys were born in New York but raised in Florida, and now you live in LA.
Both: Yeah, yeah.
Brooke: We’ve lived everywhere in between there.
Brittany: Yeah, we’ve lived all around the world. Our parents are so glad we’re back in the country. (laughs) That was a question earlier today, like aren’t your parents sad you live on the other coast? Lady, they’re just glad we’re in the same country now.
Brooke: Yeah, so that they don’t have to get on Skype and call us. Not that they would anyway, but…
Brittany: Yeah that’s the other thing we get, “Don’t they get worried?” If my parents called me, I’d be thrilled, but the last time I waited for them to call me, it was like a month and a half.
I wish I had that problem!
Brooke: I know! Most people have [your] problem, and we just can’t get our parents to call us. (laughs) Every time we talk to them, we’re like, “You can call! We love talking to you.” [They’re like] “Naw, you’re busy, you’re just so busy!”
Brittany: Or our dad is like, you’ll talk to him for like two minutes, and he’ll be like, “Well, I’ll let you get back to it!” It’s like we haven’t really even started. I’m not doing anything, and I know you’re not, you’re retired! (laughs)
You originally formed the band when you were sixteen, but then Brooke you moved to Canada for while. What brought you there?
Brooke: So as any seventeen, sixteen year-old does, they have an existential crisis. I went to my career counselor, like “What am I doing with my life?” He plugged in my interests and foley artist came up. I just knew I was born to be a foley artist when I read about it. Foley artist is doing the set sound and prop family sounds and movement for CG and video games, even nature films, IMAX movies. I became really dead set on doing that, so I set my goals really high and moved to Canada. Canada is where most post-production things get done. I went to a little audio school and landed an apprenticeship at the leading foley studio in North America. I don’t know how, but I cried. The dude called me and said they wanted me to be their next apprentice. I was like, (In a sobbing voice) “Is this for real?” (laughs) I did it for four years. It was amazing, but I couldn’t get anymore visas. I got deported twice, and I was spending so much [money] trying [to] emigrate. I moved to Vancouver and did sound editing. I switched from moving and really focusing on acoustics to working on a computer for ten to eighteen hours a day, six days a week, and I hated it. I was in a windowless room, listening to video games, and I’m not a video game type of person, so I just fell out of love with it. I needed a break. That’s when I went back to Florida and eventually met Brittany in Vietnam.
How did you end up in Vietnam? Did you see one of those ads online, like “Get paid to teach English?” (everyone laughs)
Brittany: No, after college, I did an internship in New York City, and I looked around and was like, “Man, I don’t need to be here. This place will be here for awhile.” So I left and worked in microfinance in India and traveled around there for three months. Then marooned myself in Thailand, and then ended up in Vietnam. I was running out of money – and I really left with nothing – so at one point I was like, “Crap, I either have enough for a plane ticket home or to try and go to another country and try and start a life there.” We heard Vietnam was great. I chose the north because there’s less tourism there because…
Brooke: It’s freezing in winter!
Brittany: Yeah, I got pneumonia. It’s really bad there. But it was so great overall, so I called Brooke, like you need to come out here, it’s fantastic. And she did. She rearranged her life.
Brooke: Then the band was rekindled. I got a thirty dollar guitar.
Brittany: I got a three hundred dollar cello.
Brooke: We played in our living room for fun because that was one of our hobbies.
Brittany: And our house, can I just say, sounded incredible.
Brooke: We had the best acoustics ever!
Brittany: It had a huge ceiling with all tiles. It was awesome! We were playing all the time.
Brooke: Our neighbors were an Australian girl, an American, a French chick, and a German girl. They heard us and introduced us to the community they were in. We went to their house for dinner, and at two in the morning, everyone’s drunk or whatever, and they were like you guys should totally play. So we got our stuff and played. One of them did bookings in town and was like, “I booked you a show for Saturday.” (laughs) It was cool and then every weekend we started to get booked… Our older sister came to one of our final shows. She was crying. She was like you guys need to do this!
Brittany: She was crying because we had packed the room and everybody was singing along to every song because we’re one of the only bands in town, and we play five days a week and only have so many songs. (laughs)
Brooke: My sister was like you guys should just come home and do it, so we came home.
Brittany: We made the “Hold Me Fast” video in Vietnam for four hundred bucks, paid off some money and smashed a rooftop on an abandoned hotel. (laughs)
Brooke: With that paint! We were like, “Is this toxic?” And the guy was like, “Well, don’t eat it!”
Brittany: Okay, that’s kind of what we were going to be doing! (laughs)
What year was that?
Brooke: That was 2012, when we were in Vietnam. At Christmas we came back, and pretty much started in 2013.
That’s when you made the EP Better Half, but now you have a new EP, Good Job Go?
Brooke: Yeah, the quality, let me tell you! (laughs) Yeah, so Better Half we had done all on our own. We didn’t have a budget for anything. We didn’t know anything about anything!
Brittany: And we weren’t, well we were playing a lot, but we weren’t playing as much as we are now. Our musicianship, I’d like to think (laughs), has improved from recording Better Half to Good Job Go. I mean, we had a two year gap in there.
Brooke: So we had an actual studio, and we had a wonderful producer.
Brittany: We had a way better vision of what we wanted.
Brooke: The other one was, “Well we need to do a Kickstarter because we really got to have some music out there.”
Brittany: Or have bass on it? (laughs) Let’s put accordion and banjo on it.
Brooke: I just found this instrument in the other room, let’s use it. (laughs) Let’s double the vocals… The new one is, well we knew what we wanted to do with it, so we have a lot better recordings in the end. We’re super stoked on it!
I heard your single “I Want That” and couldn’t help but wonder what exactly inspired it?
Brooke: Okay, that title came from us sitting around going what should we call this? And then Tyler, our bassist, was like, “I want that!”
Brittany: Which is a line from Napoleon Dynamite when they’re looking at a ship.
Brooke: We named it “I Want That,” so we can say, (in a whispered voice) “I want that.” (laughs)
Brittany: We never actually say “I want that” in the song.
Brooke: I just say I want what I can’t have. I could get into the nitty gritty about this represents this, is a metaphor for this, but honestly I’d rather ask what you thought of the song!
I was listening to it an trying to figure it out. There’s a lot going on. That’s why I asked you. (everyone laughs)
Brooke: Really, the song is about partying, having a good time. “We’re taking over the city tonight,” you know!
Brittany: And someone has their arm around a cute girl and it’s like, I can’t have it! (laughs)
Brooke: I remember distinctly writing “I Want That.” It happened in ten minutes. We had come back from visiting our sister in New York City. I think I just went there purely to go to a Halloween party and have fun for a weekend. Then I was staying at my friend’s guest house in Orlando… my friends came to pick me up and they were running late. I was fooling around on guitar, and just wrote it like that.
I cannot end this interview without asking about your dog Lucy!
Brooke: Hey sleepy! (wakes up Lucy)
Brittany: She’s smelling the microphone. (laughs)
Brooke: Lucy I’ve had for five years. This is her third or fourth tour.
Brittany: We used to not be able to tour with her because we played a lot of farmer’s markets and venues where it was difficult leaving her in the van, when it’s hot in the summertime or really cold in the winter. But now that we have these green rooms, she’s great on tour. We can leave her back here, and the bands like her. Mates of State actually took her a few days ago, for the night.
Brooke: They got her a pupperchino at Starbucks, which is just a cup of whipped cream. She was so spoiled that day.
Check out Lucy and Good Graeff on tour this September. You’ll find a full list of dates on their Facebook page. Good Job Go is available for purchase on iTunes.
Top Photo Credit: Sarah Hess
Sarah Hess
After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.
You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.
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