Jocelyn and Chris Arndt Interview
Doug Burke:
Jocelyn and Chris Arndt are siblings who grew up in Northern New York, playing music and writing songs that are inspired by classic rock, but updated for today. They combined Jocelyn's expansive vocal range control and stylings with Chris's blazing and nuanced virtuoso guitar, and added the brains to graduate from Harvard University while launching their careers. They've taken three consecutive radio singles to the billboard Adult Alternative Album, or AAA Top 40 Charts. Two of their records went to number one on the Jambands Album Charts. They've been featured artists at South by Southwest, Sundance ASCAP Music Cafe, and the main stage at the Mountain Jam Music Festival. Their album work and live performances have garnered rave reviews and a national performance on NBC's Today Show.
Welcome to Backstory Song, I'm your host, Doug Burke, and today I am thrilled and honored to have Jocelyn and Chris on our show. Welcome.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Hey, thanks for having us. Hi.
Doug Burke:
You guys are siblings who grew up in Fort Plain New York, which is, I guess, outside of Albany in upstate New York, and I've seen a bunch of videos from you in North Creek recently, where Gore Mountain is. Then both of you went to Harvard University and I can't imagine there are two more dissimilar places -
Jocelyn Arndt:
You'd be right about that. It was a little bit of, what's the word? Culture shock.
Chris Arndt:
Definitely.
Jocelyn Arndt:
That was definitely how I felt freshman year. I was kind of a fish out of water. There's a lot more people in Boston and a lot less cows, but we worked it out eventually.
Doug Burke:
I looked up Fort Plain, and it's a population, in the latest census, of 2,322. It is at the junction of the Mohawk River, and the, help me out here, Otsquago Creek, say that.
Chris Arndt:
I'm going to go ahead and say that that's correct because we lived there for 18 years and I don't think I know how to pronounce it.
Doug Burke:
It's near the towns of Minden and Canajoh ...
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh yeah. Canjo, Canajoharie. That's all right. That's what-
Doug Burke:
Canajoharie.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah, everybody calls it, Canjo. They got the thruway exit. Fort Plain didn't get the thruway exit. We're not bitter at all about it. It's fine. We can handle ourselves without a thruway exit, but Canjo got the exit, and they're three miles down the road and they're our biggest rival in everything, at least we see it that way. I don't know if they see it that way, but sort of, yeah, that's Canjo, that's the other side.
Doug Burke:
You guys have this sibling chemistry, and we can maybe talk about if there's also this sibling rivalry or anything in your music and your work, but in doing my research on you, the critics, or the reviewers have said, the people they like, and both of you too, because you are the vocalist and Chris, you are the guitarist in the group, include Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, Queen, I guess they mean Freddie mercury, Grace Potter, PJ Harvey. I personally think there's some P!nk and Christina Aguilera. Chris, you've been compared to Joe Perry, Tom Petty, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Bonamassa, David Gilmore, and the legendary Jimi Hendrix. That's some pretty powerful inspirations here. I mean, is this accurate?
Jocelyn Arndt:
I mean, it's crazy to me when people say things like that, because those are my heroes. I mean, those are the people that we grew up listening to, and to be compared to them, it always sends me into a little bit of, oh my gosh, that's wild, but definitely appreciate it when people say those things, because again, those are the singers and artists that we grew up just idolizing and listening to. We definitely try to take their energy and put our own spin on it, but definitely always gravitated toward those big voices, like you mentioned, Freddie Mercury's a huge hero of mine. Not only for how he sings, but just how he ... You believe it. He sings it and you totally believe every word, hook, line and sinker, and he just performs with his whole body, which is something I really try to do.
Jocelyn Arndt:
He just throws himself around. Like you said, I mean, Janis Joplin does the same thing. Oh, Grace Slick. Grace Slick, don't even get me started on Grace Slick. I love her so much. She had this intensity. I love watching performances of her because she'll just stare at the camera, and the camera loses the staring contest. You know what I mean? She just has that energy where she's like, I'm just going to look at the camera for five minutes straight and I'm not even going to blink and you're going to love it, and people do. But yeah, Chris, I mean, I don't want to speak for you, but I think those are flattering comparisons.
Chris Arndt:
Yeah. No I mean, you said it all. It's like these people are the people that we grew up listening to and idolizing. We'd get home from school in kindergarten or first grade or whatever, and we'd go to our parents' CD collection and we'd grab something and put it on and it'd be like Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or somebody like that, and we just fell in love with that era and those people at such a young age that to like grow up and start doing our own music, and for people to see those influences in us is one of the biggest compliments I think anyone could get. When somebody compared me to like Joe Bonamassa or Stevie Ray Vaughan, or Jimi Hendrix, it's just the best feeling in the world.
Doug Burke:
You've given a lot of interviews where you've talked about how these people inspired you and your music reviewers say that it's infused with the '60s and '70s. But I really feel like your new album, The Fun in the Fight is really you guys coming into your own and finding your own sound. Maybe it's inspired by that, but it's really a maturation and it's wonderful, but I want to step back to Fort Plain and your parents, because these people seem amazing to me. They have a great record collection and they fed you this stuff in upstate New York, saw this gift in the two of you and nurtured it and cultivated it. You mentioned your parents, but maybe they just serve some credit here.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh my gosh. All the credit goes to mom and dad, shout out to mom and dad. I'm sure they're listening to this. I mean, we won the lottery in the parent department. Definitely, definitely we have the best mom and dad in the world. From the moment we started playing music, they were totally on board with it, and that is just ... I think it's something that Chris and I even we try not to take for granted because they have been totally 100% on board with it from the very beginning. When they were driving us to piano lessons and clearing room in the living room so that we could put a baby grand piano we found at a farm implement auction in the corner. They have been so onboard, and I know that it's not like that for a lot of musicians. I always wonder like, how many more musicians would be out there doing their thing if they had parents like ours? Just because it's difficult, but having them always supporting us has made it just that much easier. Yeah, you said it, they also have a kick-ass record collection, which really helped, especially we grew up in Fort Plain, New York, there are two radio stations that you get. You sort of get them and they're both country. I love country. We grew up listening to a lot of old school country and modern country. But having that variety of being able to go home and hear Queen and hear Meatloaf Bat Out of Hell, and here Natalie Merchant and all these wonderful artists. It was candy land.
Doug Burke:
Chris, you want to thank your parents or did Jocelyn?
Chris Arndt:
No, I'm good. No, just kidding. Yeah. No, honestly, I mean, again, I can't really think of anything to say that Jocelyn didn't already say, but just to really hammer it home. I guess our parents' motto has always been they were supportive of anything we want her to do as long as we tried our best. We fell in love with music at a really young age, and they've been supportive of us ever since. Yeah, like Jocelyn was saying, driving us to piano lessons, up through driving us to gigs in our high school band, up through when we got into Harvard and we were like, should we go to school or should we pursue music? We've begun working with our manager at that point, and our manager and our parents sat down and they decided that it was reasonable for us to try to do both. I don't think there are a lot of parents in the world that would have been like, oh yeah, you're going to Harvard, but you can keep doing that rock band thing if you want. Having mom and dad be that supportive, be that into our passion, I don't think we would be anywhere near where we are today without them.
Doug Burke:
Oh, that's great. There's hope for all of us as parents. It's a hard job. There's no manual when the babies are born. When did you two start writing songs and why did you start writing songs?
Chris Arndt:
We started writing songs, I think I was in like seventh grade maybe. I'd been messing around with trying to come up with my own chord progressions on the guitar for a little while and Jocelyn had been fooling around with coming up with her own melodies. But what really cemented it was, we played this one show. We were actually the intermission band. It was my sister and I just as a duo. It was like a concert, actually in Canajoharie, that town you were mentioning earlier. We played there and the concert was sponsored by a radio station that's a pretty big radio station in this area of the country. They're called WEXT, like all independent. The MC came up to us after the show. He was like, "You guys are really good. If you ever write original music, let me know and I'll play it on the air." We were just like, wait, what? You can do that? You can just like write music and it can get on the radio?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Like what? The radio? The two country music stations?
Chris Arndt:
There's no better incentive for an 11 year old and a 12 year old than saying, hey, you want to hear yourself on the radio? Write us the song. I think we went home that night and I came up with a chord progression, and we went over to ... Jocelyn and I started working together, and within a couple of weeks, we'd written our first ever song.
Jocelyn Arndt:
It's a weird step. I feel like going from listening to music and even learning to play other people's music to suddenly thinking that maybe that's something that you can do yourself, I feel like for us, it was sort of like, oh yeah, we can make up a chord progression, but that's not ... I guess we didn't really associated it as like, we could do our own song writing. It would seem like such a foreign concept until ... His name's Dave, the guy from WEXT, and we still, to this day, hang out with him and share new music with him. Those guys have just been really awesome from the start. After we wrote that first song, I remember we wrote a few more and we kind of just caught the bug. It was so fun and it was so much more rewarding playing our own music. I love playing other people's music too, but just playing something and knowing that you created it from start to finish is such a rewarding feeling. I think we got addicted to it pretty quickly. I remember sitting in the high school parking lot, well, because the middle school and the high school are combined because there's like 500 kids total. I remember Dave calling us and being like, you should have the radio on at 7:35 on Wednesday morning. We drive to school, dad drives with us because he's a teacher at the school, and we're all huddled in our blue Nissan Versa in the parking lot. 20 minutes before school supposed to start, we dial in WEXT and we're on the radio, and it was me singing and it was Chris playing guitar, and it was just like, wow. I just remember it so clearly because it just seemed like this impossibility just became real so quickly and it was wild. We've been chasing that ever since, I think.
Doug Burke:
What's that feeling like besides magical?
Jocelyn Arndt:
I think a lot goes into songs from start to finish, from the idea to all the countless iterations it goes through, to all the feelings of frustration when it's not going right, to the reward when you finally get that chord progression to just make sense in your brain, and then I share it with Chris, or he shares his idea with me and then we start working together on the song and it becomes something that we made together. I don't know. It's hard to explain all the energy and effort that goes into a song, but it's just so satisfying to pretty that up into this finished recording and be able to just say, listen to it. I don't know. It's indescribable. It's really crazy. I get the same feeling from performing too, just sharing that energy with people and being able to connect that way and play something and know that there's people listening to it. It's really, really cool.
Doug Burke:
What was the name of the song that you heard on the radio for the first time on WEXT?
Jocelyn Arndt:
That was More Than I Say I Do, right?
Chris Arndt:
I think it was, yeah.
Jocelyn Arndt:
That was the first ballad we ever wrote.
Chris Arndt:
Which actually that song has ... I guess it's done a lot for us, because in addition to being the first song, I think it was like the third song we ever wrote, but we wrote those three and we kind of recorded them as a group and we sent them to the radio station and that was the first one we played.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Our first demo.
Chris Arndt:
But the management team that we work with now, it's because of that song, we were playing with an artist that they were working with back in like 2013, and they had never heard of us before because we were like in 11th grade at the time. They were like, "Who are these people?" They looked us up and they found that song and, they're David and Anna, and David looked at that song and he just ... Apparently, the way he tells the story, he just immediately fell in love with the sound and so he decided to come out to the show and he approached us. He basically, he's the guy who is responsible for, as much as our parents, our parents and David and Anna are the people who are responsible for us still doing music today. That song has done a ton for our career.
Doug Burke:
That's David Bourgeois, did I say it right?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah, it's David Bourgeois.
Doug Burke:
Bourgeois. Okay, now I've seen him playing in your band.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yes.
Chris Arndt:
Yes. In addition to being our manager, he produces all of our music and he's our drummer. He wears a lot of hats.
Doug Burke:
You know what I have to say? Because the two of you are electrifying as performers in your own right, around your own instruments, you on vocals and you on guitar, Jocelyn and Chris, but he looks so happy when he's playing drums, and you guys are out there performing. I can completely, as a fan in the audience, I can completely understand his happiness because he's not Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones sitting there stone-faced, emotionless. He is really, really enjoying himself.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. Well, that's what it's all about. I just love that music brings that out in everybody in a slightly different way. You have those musicians that them having fun is like that stank face basis, just jamming in the corner, and then you have the drummers that are just smiling and really into it. Then you have Chris who's over there just vibing with his eyes closed, and me I'm jumping around like a maniac. It's just like, oh, it's so much fun. It's just so much fun.
Chris Arndt:
It's just the most fun you could ever have it in the world. Getting to play with people who are also having fun and also seem like they're having fun, it just makes it ... It's like a collective hallucination. I don't know, that's probably the wrong word, but it's something really just amazing that I have never experienced with anything else in life. Hands down, music is just ... It's the only thing.
Jocelyn Arndt:
It really helps too, that we've been working with David for so long. I mean, he's family at this point. I mean, what? That fateful day at the fond affair was seven years ago. I stopped to think about that the other day and I was like, wow, I feel old now. But yeah, it makes it that much better that we get to go out on the road and play our music with our best friends.
Doug Burke:
I have to ask one last thing on the birth of your group in Fort Plain. Your dad, what's his name?
Chris Arndt:
Ted.
Doug Burke:
Ted, so Ted Arndt teaches at the high school. What subject does he teach?
Jocelyn Arndt:
He used to teach emotionally disabled kids, and now he teaches learning ... well, the special ed. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Okay. So, you two Harvard grads never were taught by your dad. That was what I was curious about, if he ever had to grade you, and if you ever had to be taught by your dad in the high school, in Fort Plain.
Chris Arndt:
Oh man, that would have been weird.
Doug Burke:
That would have been weird. Okay.
Jocelyn Arndt:
No, I know. It never happened. Luckily, we kept our noses clean because he did the discipline stuff for a while too.
Doug Burke:
Like the principle's discipline stuff for the whole school?
Chris Arndt:
He was the teacher that they would call in whenever there was a kid that was having a discipline problem and they needed someone to drop the hammer.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
So, you've been working on some new stuff, is it coming out?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah, we've been busy. Well, we've been trying to look at the pandemic time as, I don't know, we're always trying to find the silver lining, and I think that's a little difficult right now, but we have had a lot of time on our hands. We've been trying to use the time to just make the best record ever basically. The first step is the best record ever. Our plans for 2021 are like, I don't know, world domination, hopefully, but we'll start with-
Doug Burke:
Wow, that's a big ambition.
Jocelyn Arndt:
We'll start with releasing what I think is our best stuff yet. We don't have a solid timeline on that yet. It kind of depends on, well, it depends on everything.
Doug Burke:
Right. We need a vaccine, we need a lot of things to happen.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. We want to be able to ideally go and see people and play the music for them in person. Whenever that can happen.
Doug Burke:
You played the Sundance ASCAP Music Cafe in Park City, Utah, where I live, and you are booked on July 17th, this year, 2021, hopefully to come and play the Park City Institute, which we're really excited about because the Park City Institute, in my opinion, does an amazing job of curating talent, and to get selected by them ... You know, if you buy a ticket to a Park City Institute event, that you are going to see or listen to, in some cases, conversations, that are enlightening, inspiring, engrossing. It is just an amazing organization and everything is curated well. You will not be disappointed if you buy a ticket to any show that the Park City Institute puts on, but I am so looking forward to seeing this concert,
Jocelyn Arndt:
We're excited to play. Oh my gosh. You have no idea. When we finally got the news that we booked a real live show, it just felt like a breakthrough. I really, really am so excited to be back on the road and back in such a beautiful place and playing for beautiful people. I'm really stoked about it.
Doug Burke:
Cool. We do have a lot of Park City listeners, because we have covered a lot of the talent that has come through our area. The album, the Fun in the Fight, one of the songs that we want to talk about off of it is called Outta My Head.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yes, Outta My Head.
Doug Burke:
Tell me what this is about. I love how it starts off acapella and then guitar, sort of like sister, brother intro.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. This song is to me, our musical version of an ear worm kind of that thought or that feeling that just sticks in your brain and you can't get it out no matter what you do. It starts simple and then you have those feelings of frustration and those intense build up feelings of, oh my gosh, like fixation almost. So, it starts simple. Like you said, it starts with a vocal and then Chris has that riff that comes in, and it's just this slinky wormy kind of riff that just gets stuck in your brain relating to what the lyrics are talking about just being fixated on somebody.The relationship might not be great, but it's intense and it's interesting. But yeah, Chris, I think that riff is ... I love that riff.
Chris Arndt:
Yeah, and honestly, so we were writing that song. I think Jocelyn had the idea for the very first lyric in the song. Then from there, basically the way that we write as one of us will come up with a really small kernel of an idea like that, and then we'll bring it to the other one and we kind of just throw the kitchen sink at it until stuff sticks. I don't remember when we came up with that riff, but it was like immediate. We wanted to write a riff based songs. We were messing around with different stuff and trying a bunch of different riffs, and then I think I played that and we just both looked at each other and we were like, this is the riff for this song. It just needs to be this. After that, it fell into place pretty much immediately. We just played it through almost right there. It was really an interesting song writing session.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. That riff becomes the heartbeat of it, and then it builds and it builds and it builds, and then that bridge section is frantic, and then it ends how it started.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. A lot of your songs have this sort of rave up feel. You have this powerful vocal instrument to be able to start a song, acapella, I'd be so off key half the time if I tried to do something like that. I think a lot of people would. It's not the easiest thing to start, but I guess when the lyric like, can't get you out of my head, you can't get the lyric out of your head, maybe it's easier when it's like that.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I've done a lot of practice to be able to do that. Full disclosure, we do sometimes have little cue notes in our little ear buds that help us out with that, or sometimes Chris will sneak me a cord on the sly, and then I can pretend that I knew the note, but yeah. It's also, that build up, it's really fun to perform it live because you can really get into the character of starting small and then getting really wild and unhinged and then collapsing it back to the beginning. It's really fun, and Chris is over there just playing the bass and the heartbeat for the song.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. When you get to the break where the Reva goes nuts, you have so many layers of sound in that. What's coming in there? What other instruments besides yourself, or is that just you and your foot pedals, Chris?
Chris Arndt:
There is a ton on that foot. We have a few different versions of the song. Jocelyn and I play it as a duo sometimes, and then we've also played it as like a semi-acoustic band that's like a horn-based acoustic guitar and one vocal line. We've done that on a bunch of TV stuff. We did it on the Today Show and a bunch of radio station stuff, but the recorded version of the song, which is ... I think that's my favorite, that's the one. Basically, we get to that build at the end and it's getting so intense. Basically, our goal was to bring it to a level of intensity where we didn't think we could've made it any more intense. There's layers upon layers of guitar, but there is so much more on there as well. There's a bunch of synth work that David, our drummer producer, he's also a really, really excellent synth guy. He did a bunch of that stuff. There's a ton of layers of drums. I think there's actually a few layers of bass on there with different effects. Then there's basically a chorus of background vocals that are blended down to the point where you almost can't hear them, but we tried muting them before we took the song to like final mix. Without them there, it makes a huge difference. But there's a ton of stuff in there that it's all about like, you don't necessarily notice those sounds. You don't hear it and go like, oh yeah, that's a chorus or a synth line, but it just all comes together to become this unified wall of like punch you in the face energy. It was exactly what we want it to happen with this song, so when David took it that way in the production, we were really, really excited about it.
Doug Burke:
That's the feeling I had, it's this wall of punch you in the face energy. I was like, oh my God, that perfect description.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Aggressive.
Doug Burke:
Was there a person for either one of you that you couldn't get out of your head?
Jocelyn Arndt:
It didn't really come from anything in particular. I think it was mostly inspired by honestly, the idea of getting an ear worm and have it being stuck in your head, and us being like, we want to write that kind of song that would just annoy people, that would just stuck in their brain. But yeah, it's funny. A lot of our music, I use it as an opportunity to tell stories and build these characters that I swear, I'm not that intense in real life, but I get to play that intense when I'm on stage. A lot of our songs have these sort of obsessive themes or themes about toxic connections with other people, or I get to be the bad guy sometimes. I love leaning into that because ... I mean, this is art. You get to be whoever you want. That's like the cool thing about it. We write about our own experiences too, but yeah, this song was definitely born more out of just playing a character and building an ear worm.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No, It's in the video. You're like you look a little bit disturbed.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Definitely.
Doug Burke:
Maybe by design there, about this person, I guess, or this thing, I guess, it's an ear worm as opposed to a person. You say your white lie's painted red, what's a red lie?
Jocelyn Arndt:
I feel like people have this idea that a white lie is, I guess, a white lie is a lie that doesn't hurt anybody. But to me, I feel like maybe a red lie would be ... You build up those white lies to the point where you think they're not hurting anybody, but they have an edge to them that comes out eventually.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I just feel like there's a bloody lie would be a red lie. By the last part of the song, you're yelling and your voice is breaking, and I love that about your voices, that you can do a lot of depth, tone, and range, and control, and you can pull off any sort of emotion in that way, and you do it on this song really nicely.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Thank you. Yeah, I tried to take it as far as we could go in the vocal booth with this one, definitely.
Doug Burke:
To actually control your voice to make it break on cue, that's not easy.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I definitely psych myself up when I'm recording vocals. I jump around and I try to picture what the singer of the song, the character is feeling at the time, and really try to send that home. I mean, sometimes it doesn't work, but I think it's always better to approach it with more energy instead of less, and then if you have to dial it back, you have to dial it back, but we go for balls to the wall, and then we'd bring it back inch by inch until it's just sitting right where we think it can sit.
Doug Burke:
Another song from one of your earlier albums, the album Go is Footprints on the Moon, and this is different type of song.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah, this is a show opener for us a lot of the time live, because especially when we have a fifth player, we try to bring our Hammond organ along with us, and he does this amazing churchy overture at the beginning and just kind of builds the energy up. We'd start the lights dim, and then he does this amazing ... We just tell him to go and he just improvs for like four minutes, and it just psychs us all up for the show, and then I come out and I do my thing. This song is just really fun to play.
Doug Burke:
This is an aspirational song about being rockstars?
Chris Arndt:
Yeah, for sure. Actually, there's a really funny story behind the lyrics on this one. When Jocelyn graduated high school, for her graduation present, mom and dad got her tickets to see Maroon 5 and Train, and this was right when we were beginning to work with David. We'd only had like a high school band up until this point and music had always been like a hobby, but we were just starting to get to the point where we realized that we could potentially pursue it as a profession. Actually, at one of those concerts, Jocelyn jotted down the tagline of Footprints on the Moon on a napkin during like the intermission of the concert. Then a few years later when we'd written a few albums with David at that point and we'd started to tour nationally, we just ... I think she found the napkin-
Jocelyn Arndt:
I think we were kind of looking for ideas for songs, and I was like, oh, well, I have a bunch of random pieces of in my drawer back home, I should just look and see if there's anything in there that we might want to explore. Actually, it was a grocery store receipt. I remember turning to mom. We were at the concert and I'm looking up on stage, Pat Monahan from Train is just singing his heart out, and I love Train. I just remember thinking like, I want to be up there. I want to be up there. That's what I want to do. At the time, Chris had said he just started working with David. I think we were all feeling like for the first time, that kind of live performance was something that maybe we could actually do someday. I remember like, I want to do that, I want to have ... What does it mean to be up there and doing that? What do I have to do to get there, from here to there? I just remember thinking like, forget my name in the stars and on the Boulevard, someday soon I'll have footprints on the moon. I turned to mom and I said, "Do you have any paper and a pen? I need to write this down right now." Of course, she's like, "What?" Because Train is playing like Drops of Jupiter or something. She's like, "What do you want? This is my song."
Chris Arndt:
And that's her favorite song.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Right, exactly. So, grocery store receipt, wrote it on the back, put it in my pocket. When I got home, put it in my drawer that I put all my other scribbles in and promptly forgot about it for like three years, four years, whenever we went to record it, yeah.
Doug Burke:
So, you wrote the line ever since I learned to say my ABCs, I've had my mind dead set on MSG. I mean, that's obviously Madison Square Garden. Was the show at Madison Square Garden?
Jocelyn Arndt:
It wasn't. It was actually at the State Fair, but I was like, what's even more dramatic than the State Fair? MSG, all right, cool.
Doug Burke:
Maroon 5 was at the show, and Adam Levine is famously on the voice. You turned down an invitation.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yes.
Chris Arndt:
We turned down four, believe it or not.
Doug Burke:
Four times they've asked you to be on the voice, and you've turned them down four times.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yes. They've been pretty persistent, where we're pretty close with the McNulty casting team at this point. We're like, hey, is, Josiah's still there. How's Nancy doing. It's always nice to be asked. For a lot of people, that is a lot of the live performance of music that they see the most. That's the stuff that gets shared on social media a lot. That's the avenue that, when they think of what good musicians do, they go on the voice, so they go on AGT, or they go on The Four or ... There's so many shows. So, I take it as like a huge compliment. Whenever someone says, "Hey, have you ever thought about being on the voice? You're really good." Because that's them just saying like, I think that you could fit in there because you're really good. But having said that, Chris and I love writing our own music, and that's just not in the cards if you go on one of those shows. You don't get to perform your on music. It would be just me, which it's never been just me. Yeah, I think at one point they were like, well, maybe we could put him on a guitar and he could be in the pit. I'm like, no, you don't get it. This is the thing that we do together, and we like to sing our own stuff.
Doug Burke:
It's the Jocelyn and Chris Arndt.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Exactly.
Doug Burke:
It's not just a voice. It's a band.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Exactly. Yeah, and also, it's really important to us that we get to sing our own music.
Doug Burke:
It's your own work and we love it that you write songs and put this creativity into becoming rockstars with your footprints on the moon.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
Which actually is actually becoming more and more possibility in perhaps your lifetime, maybe not mine, with SpaceX.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh, moon concert. Listen, if Elon wants to do like a concert on the moon, I'll do it.
Doug Burke:
You'll sing this song on the moon for him if he wants to fly you there.
Chris Arndt:
Yeah, call us up, Elon.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I feel like what happens when you get to the moon? What's the next step? Forget my footprints on the moon someday.
Doug Burke:
I guess it's Mars. I'm sure of that.
Chris Arndt:
Yeah, Mars.
Doug Burke:
Once you've done the moon, where else can you go?
Chris Arndt:
Yeah, either Mars or retirement.
Doug Burke:
Probably not going to be a big audience there.
Jocelyn Arndt:
No, the ticket price might be a little high too. I don't know how that would work.
Chris Arndt:
We could livestream it. Everyone knows that he use livestream stuff in this year.
Jocelyn Arndt:
They livestream from the ISS, right? They do that all the time.
Doug Burke:
This is a funky beat. It's Oregon with funk. I mean, how would you guys describe the melody and the sound of Footprints on the Moon?
Chris Arndt:
I think Oregon with funk is a pretty apt description. Basically, the song it's got so much confidence in the message, and it's all about like someday I am going to be there, someday I am going to be successful. It's like, we just thought that the music needed to have an appropriate level of swagger to back that up. So, we tried to come up with like the smoothest funkiest, it's got that like the acoustic guitar combined with the drums and the epic baseline and the organ and like the lead, and all of that stuff together, it just creates this sound that it grips you in the chest when you can just lean in and go like, oh yeah, that's what I want to listen to today.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh yeah. This is definitely the walk down the street with a lot of swagger and confidence song. That's what we're going for.
Doug Burke:
I love it. The grip you in the chest, walk down the street with swagger and confidence kind of song. Okay. That's the simple formula for writing great songs. So, you two grew up in upstate New York, and Jocelyn, you are a ski instructor and Chris, you are a snowboard instructor at Gore Mountain?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. Well, we're anymore, but that was our high school gig. Well, when we weren't actually gigging, we were up there at the mountain on the weekends teaching little kids how to ski and snowboard.
Doug Burke:
This is all famous non-powder country where the ice is icing, right? They call it ice face white face, where Lake Placid. All those resorts around there, they typically don't get a lot of the fresh white, fluffy snow that we get in Park City, but I imagine they do. One of the songs that you've written is called Weatherman, which is about snow, right?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. I liked that segue. That was a good segue. I liked it a lot.
Chris Arndt:
That was very smooth.
Doug Burke:
Is it not about snow or?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh no, no, no, it totally is. No, you're totally right. Yeah, so this song is ... The story, well, Chris has this beautiful guitar part, and it's one of my favorite actually guitar parts that I think Chris you've ever written. It's just this gentle, beautiful guitar part, and I think I remember him jamming to this, just jotting it down or recording it in his phone and thinking like, it kind of reminds me of snow falling. That's actually where the song started, and then I started thinking about whether, and it's written from the perspective of someone who watches the weather channel every day. They get their cup of coffee and they sit down at the kitchen table and they turn on the TV, local news, and they're in love with the weather guy.
Doug Burke:
Oh, okay, so it's a love story about the weather guy.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah, and it's sort of like the classic, I'm in love with you, but you'll never know who I am kind of song, but with the twist that they're the weather guy and the singer is just watching them every morning and thinking like, if we could only get together, I'd show you how special you are. I don't know, maybe it's a little creepy thinking about it, but ...
Doug Burke:
I have noticed this Jocelyn, that especially weather women, the producers of those local TV stations tend to cast very attractive women who tend to be curvaceous, I've noticed.
Jocelyn Arndt:
The weather babes.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I guess I didn't want to say that and be sexist on my show, but it does seem like they're less concerned about the meteorological forecasting capabilities than other attributes in casting the job. I can also understand, I mean, not every weatherman is bohunky good-looking, but this one obviously is in your song.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I'm sure he has a great personality too. He probably is the guy who like dresses up in a green morph suit on Halloween to do those funny green-screen things and all that cool weatherman charisma. I just feel like that's who I was thinking about.
Chris Arndt:
The weatherman character.
Doug Burke:
But you weren't per se attracted to the weatherman. This was like your third party songwriting. Did you have a crush on the weatherman? Be honest.
Jocelyn Arndt:
It was a thought experiment I don't have like my go-to weatherman that I watch every morning. I actually don't -
Doug Burke:
Really? There's no Al Roker in your life.
Jocelyn Arndt:
No, although he is a cool dude. We got to meet him on The Today Show, and he's pretty cool. I guess the song could be about him. That's all right.
Doug Burke:
But ultimately, besides it being this love story for the weatherman, it is about snow, which you guys, I would assume have an appreciation for as ski instructors.
Jocelyn Arndt:
We love snow. I don't know why you'd live in the Northeast and not love snow. I mean, we get a lot of it. If you hate it, you're going to be mad a lot at the time in the winter. But yeah, we love snow sports and we've always been outdoorsy people.
Doug Burke:
You took piano and vocals, and Chris, you took guitar. You took skis and you took snow boarding. Do you just do opposite things all the time or different? Why is that?
Chris Arndt:
That was actually a conscious effort on the part of our parents. Basically, our family has always been pretty non-competitive. We're just not super into competition, and our parents really wanted to make sure that we were as non-competitive as siblings as possible. I actually originally wanted to learn piano, but Jocelyn had already started learning piano, so my dad just bought me a guitar, and he's like, "Hey, I got a surprise for you." And he took me to the guitar teacher and handed me a guitar, and he's like, "You're going to learn guitar." I was kind of ticked for like a week, but then I realized that guitar is cooler anyways, so it worked out in the end.
Jocelyn Arndt:
He realized he's really good at it, and he's like, all right, fine. I'll keep doing this. No, that's a funny story, Chris. His first guitar teacher, I remember you coming back, what was it? The guy didn't usually teach kids that were less than like, oh it was 12?
Chris Arndt:
12. Yeah, and I was eight at the time.
Jocelyn Arndt:
So, we got around it by ... This is one of the many things that my dad has done that's been awesome. But my dad's like, "We'll, okay, fine. Then I'll sign up for lessons. Can he just come?" They show up dad has his acoustic guitar and Chris has his mini acoustic guitar, they show up for their first lesson. I think by the second or third week, the guy was like, okay, fine. You don't have to take lessons anymore. I'll teach this kid. I'll teach this kid some guitar.
Doug Burke:
You're not getting anywhere, but this kid's got talent.
Jocelyn Arndt:
This kid has potential, this eight year old.
Chris Arndt:
It was pretty flattering to me as an eight year old kid.
Doug Burke:
Well, Chris, I must say, in watching your guitar play, you have such a wonderfully casual, nonchalant style. You make hard look so easy. It's like really fun to watch. I don't know -
Chris Arndt:
Thank you for saying that. I feel like I make hard look hard, but I'm glad to hear that it doesn't come across.
Doug Burke:
This song, The Weatherman has ... Is it a flute in it?
Jocelyn Arndt:
It is. Yeah. We know a great flutist. Shout out to Jeff Nania, that's the guy on there. He plays a bunch of different instruments. He's played saxophone with us. He's played Bari sax with us. He's actually on the new record we've been working on. He's laid down some pretty sweet Bari saxophone, but yeah, his flute playing on that is just ... I mean, and we just basically said, hey, Jeff, do something beautiful. Of course, Jeff, in his quiet way. He's this quiet down to earth guy. He just went in there and absolutely crushed it and it was awesome.
Doug Burke:
It's really elegant between that and the symbol work on the percussion set and your guitar work. It creates this romantic mellow beautiful confluence of sound that's just ...
Chris Arndt:
Thanks. That is definitely the vibe that we were trying to go for when I wrote the kind of main guitar part of the song. I remember thinking that like, we don't usually do songs that sound like that. We're more of a rock band, but it was just so smooth and beautiful and it just felt intimate and soft, and so we kind of wanted to bring that out in the recording. We discussed putting some lead guitar on it, but once Jeff recorded that flute, we were like, this is perfect. It doesn't need anything else. This is just like, it feels like a dance or something. It's just so intimate and just really nice.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I'm glad it's a relatable experience, and snow, definitely snow.
Doug Burke:
And snow if you like to ski. If you ever get to gig up in Jackson Hall, we had Peter, the Chan Man, Chandler, on the show, who actually went to Harvard Divinity School, and he has been playing at the base of the tram for over 20 years.
Jocelyn Arndt:
That's the dream.
Chris Arndt:
Does that come with a free pass?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh man.
Doug Burke:
We're going to get you to come out to Park City in the winter time on a regular basis.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh my gosh, you don't have to tell us twice. We got to ski out West one time. We went to Snowbird, actually, when we went to Sundance, we got one day at Snowbird, and it was like, whew. This is what snow is like. This is what real snow is like, and everyone, of course there was like, this really isn't that good. You should come back when we get some real snow, and meanwhile, we were like, what?
Doug Burke:
They call it the greatest snow on earth. It's a confluence of geological forces that causes the storms to hit the Wasatch Range after drying out over the desert and then hitting the Great Salt Lake and just getting this lake effect right into the mountain range. It's just has lowest concentration of water per inch of snow. That's why the powder is so fluffy, whereas ... Yeah. We'll get you out again. One of the songs on the album, The Fun in the Night is kill in the cure, and this actually has the title, The Fun in the Fight as part of the lyrics.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I feel like, especially in this song, a lot of the lyrics are these dualities that I just love putting two words next to each other. The two words mean something very different when they're separate, but you put them together and it's just this ... I geek out about words all the time, but just it completely changes the meaning of them having them linked together like that. This song has a lot of those, into the red, out of the blue. The Fun in the Fight, this goes back to, I guess our tendency to write songs about these weird semi obsessive relationship dynamics, but this is sort of like, to me, it means the struggle is what is the enjoyable part of the relationship, which I wouldn't recommend that. I don't think that's a healthy dynamic, but as a lyric to me, it's very interesting to think about the fact that like, maybe we're in this because like we work best when nothing's working. This idea that what we like most about the two of us is that we don't like each other. That's the idea behind The Fun in the fight, but we chose it as the album title because we also, in our day to day as indie musicians, we come up against a lot of fights and a lot of challenges. I think our team philosophy is just to approach everything with the ideal that the challenges is what we're here for, and the challenge is the fun part, and we're going to stick with this because it's going to make it that much better when we finally accomplished the goal, knowing how much work and effort and fight we put into it.
Doug Burke:
There's no person that inspired this. There's no relationship that either one of you had.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh God. No. Luckily, we're not at each other's throats all the time, and we also, we have happy romantic relationships, each of us, that are not toxic, which is good. But again, I think this is one of those slip into the character songs that I really enjoy writing the lyrics for. I think the riff is sort of that ... It's the same dynamic as in Outta My Head, where it's like, there's this really this riff that pulls you forward into the song and the lyrics reflect the riff.
Doug Burke:
There's a line, this is the heartbreak Olympics, and we're going for gold. I think somewhat unusually, Chris, you echo your to the lyric, because normally, you do something more complimentary. I'm talking specifically the rock version versus the acoustic version from the November album, One Night in November, where you don't do that on that. It caught my ear when it happened that you ... Why did you do that?
Chris Arndt:
I would love to say that there's a deep meaning to the guitar echoing the lyric. If anyone out there listens to it and they feel like a deep meaning or something, then art is up to everyone's interpretation. I will say we decided to do it in the studio mainly because, like you said, like you listened to it and it caught your ear, creating those moments where you're listening to a song. A song needs good roots, it needs good lyrics, it needs good structure, it needs to make sense and feel good to listen to. But I also love when music does those little things that are just fun, or interesting, or cool for no reason other than the fact that they're fun or interesting or cool. I think actually like the first time we ever played that song as a band, the bassist was like, I want to copy the vocal right there, which is not something that happens very much in our music, as you pointed out. Usually, the vocal is kind of off doing its thing, and all of that music works together to try to support whatever the vocal is doing, but it doesn't really echo it. But that time, the bassist played it, and our basis at the time her name was Kate, we just fell in love with what she did, and we were like, oh, we need to include that on the album, because it was just like this moment where it's like, this song, it's all about this duality between the lyrics are like ... Every line is a duality. The instrument and the vocal, it's like the instrument is really sparse and robotic and like clockwork and the vocal floats on top. Then there's this one section where all of this, it's just like everything hits you together in unison at the same time. It was a moment that we didn't want to pass it up in the song.
Doug Burke:
Mercy Me, I think this is a very, very different stylistic song for you, and I think this one really reflects a maturation of your songwriting that impressed me.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Thank you. It's nice to hear you say that. This is, I think, one of my favorites that we've ever written, and I think it is a reflection of how much we've changed as songwriters, and that's why we wanted to save it for last, just because it's cool to revisit some of the older tunes and then come back to the present, and this is the most recent thing we've released original-wise. It's definitely not a song that we could have written seven years ago, or when we started writing songs, which would be what?
Chris Arndt:
10 years ago? No, longer than that.
Jocelyn Arndt:
But this is not a song that I would have been able to take notes out of the drawer for my elementary school bedroom and write. This is a song that I think we couldn't have written until now. And we really, I think it's us at our most confident and also vulnerable at the same time. I mean, the song is about just being so in love that you're vulnerable, but that vulnerability is what makes it so powerful.
Jocelyn Arndt:
We really lean into that message. This song is not about trying to be clever, or witty, or swaggery. This song is just about, I don't know, just feeling that emotion, and I just think I'm just so happy with how it turned out. I listen to it, and I think about that feeling, and at least to me, it really helps me feel that when I listen to it, which I think is a great reward.
Doug Burke:
You said in one interview that this is about being powerless in love.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. I think that's ... In order to be really, really in love, at least in my experience, I mean, you have to compromise and you have to be okay with that amount of emotion just taking hold of you and you have to be okay with letting that emotion run its course. There is a vulnerability in that, and there is a little bit of a powerlessness in that, but it's also, I think the trade-off is that, it's just this feeling that you can't experience without, and I think it's definitely worth it.
Doug Burke:
You also said that songwriting is terrifying, which I've never thought about or heard about, and I guess writing about being powerless in love might be terrifying, especially.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah, it definitely is, take that vulnerability and then put it behind a megaphone, and that's about where you're at with this one. I feel like, as we've matured as songwriters, we've started to feel more comfortable writing music that is about our own experiences. I mean, we write a lot of these character songs and we've talked about that, and I think we'll always do that kind of writing, but definitely as we've grown up, being able to have the experience and have the emotional experience to be able to write songs with these kinds of themes and messages, I don't think that's something you can do in middle school. I mean, at least the feelings would be different. The message would be different. For us, at least for me, writing lyrics that are inspired by real life has been something that I've definitely had to grow into. I think songwriting is ultimately, you're sharing this thing that you put so much love and time and energy into it. I mean, Chris, we pull our hair out writing these songs and then the payoff for us when we finally get it right is so big, and it's such a great feeling, but then there's always that step up door, you have to take where you have to sing it for somebody else. That's, at the same time, I think the most terrifying thing about what we do and also the most exhilarating part about what we do, is that we get to share that kind of connection with others, and then we get to stand there and they get to hear it all. There's something really cool about that, and I think it keeps us ... We try to stay humble knowing that we're going to have to get out there and bear it all every night.
Doug Burke:
Is this song at all autobiographical?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. This one I would say I'm lucky to be in a solid relationship where I feel like I finally understand these feelings enough to be able to put them in a song. Chris has always ... We've grown as people and we've grown as songwriters, and I feel like I'm just happy that I have my best friend that I get to write songs with and be mushy gushy and dramatic with. He deals with it because he knows me. It's really nice.
Chris Arndt:
We work very well as a team.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No, well, you're brother and sister. I haven't heard any sense of sibling rivalry or fighting between you two. It's remarkable how you two get along. I come from a family of seven kids.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh wow,
Chris Arndt:
That's a lot.
Doug Burke:
We didn't always get along all the time, but we figured out a way to love each other, but you guys seem like you're certainly not like the Oasis Brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Those guys are so scary.
Chris Arndt:
Oh man -
Doug Burke:
You're the opposite the way you guys get along.
Chris Arndt:
Man, yeah. No, honestly, I mean, we come from, like we were saying earlier, our parents are pretty unique. Not that we ever like didn't have any friends in school or anything growing up, but our family was always a little bit different. I think, as a result, we ended up just spending our time with each other as kids. We've always been each other's best friend. We were always the people that spent all of our moments crying, or playing, or growing together. I think it's just made it ... We know each other so well at this point and we've been through so much together that it's just like, we almost like have our own language when it comes to songwriting. I don't even know how I would write a song with somebody who's not Jocelyn.
Jocelyn Arndt:
I mean, we never have. We've never written songs separately. From the beginning, from the first song, it's always been both of us.
Doug Burke:
This is inspired by a love in your life?
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yes. Yes. In my life, yes.
Doug Burke:
When you played this song for the first time to that person, what happened?
Jocelyn Arndt:
He is awesome. He's awesome. It was nerve wracking just because it's one of the first songs that we've written that the lyrics have been about him. But he really loved it. I think it was a really cool experience. I was definitely nervous just because ... I mean, we talk about these high-level concepts of love and vulnerability, but to really get out there and say that kind of stuff, even if it's in song form, like in public, I mean, for me, it's always been a little bit scary. I get nervous all the time, but it was really empowering, and it was just a really positive experience sharing that with him and saying, yeah, this is about you. I think he's proud of me, which is really awesome.
Doug Burke:
One of the lyrics in this song is, I've got half a mind to give you all my heart.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Yeah. I'm particularly proud of that line. I thought of that in one of my almost falling asleep stupors, and then I had to wake up and note it on my phone before I fell asleep. But yeah, just that idea that I think it's time to jump. I think it's time to do the damn thing. That's kind of where I was coming.
Doug Burke:
Because I was wondering where the other half of your mind was.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Who knows? Oh my gosh. It could be anywhere, probably thinking about skiing, or snow, or something.
Doug Burke:
You can't always be thinking just about your loved one.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Loved ones and snow. It's a balance.
Doug Burke:
You need to have half your mind on something else too. Well, I love this song. They do say you sound like so many different people. The woman that came to mind when I was listening was Ann Wilson in Heart on this. It felt inspired by it. It felt like a Heart song to me.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh man. Thank you so much. I love Heart.
Doug Burke:
I really think that you are finding your own voice as a group. I don't like even saying that you sound like someone else anymore because it's really the Jocelyn and Chris Arndt show. Is that the name of the band or is it sometimes you're going by Chris and Jocelyn when you just perform, I guess the two of you, or what is the branding here?
Chris Arndt:
The branding is Jocelyn and Chris. About a year ago we dropped the last name because we realized that it's kind of a mouthful and it's a little bit ugly. A lot of people still call us Jocelyn and Chris Arndt, and that's ... It is our last name. We're not embarrassed about it or going to go after anyone for saying it, but we dropped it from like our logo and stuff.
Doug Burke:
If you can't remember Jocelyn and Chris, you should be listening to something else. You're in the wrong temple, you're in the wrong church, because band is great. I want to thank you for coming on Backstory Song. It really was a treat to have you share your stories with us and open a real intimate part of your soul and your songwriting and this thing that I call the invisible language of songwriting.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Thank you for having us. I mean, this is really fun.
Chris Arndt:
Yeah. A lot of these stories we don't get to ... Most of the interviews we do are such ... There's so many short form interviews. There's not really a good venue for a lot of these really long stories that just never get told, so it's really ... Thanks for doing this and having us.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Also, I mean, we haven't had an interview ... This is like, I got nervous before we were going to talk to you because we haven't really talked to anybody besides each other and our team for a while. We've kind of been on lockdown, so it was really refreshing and just really nice. Thank you for having us.
Doug Burke:
Well, we try to create a safe space on Backstory Song for songwriters to come and open up and share it with your fans really, and we hope your fans liked this interview and we hope your fans get a chance to see you perform live like I did. Hopefully we'll get to see you and meet you in person on July 17th at the Park City Institute.
Chris Arndt:
Fingers crossed.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Please buy tickets to that show and support the Institute. They had a rough year last year without a whole lot of performances. The best thing which Chris and Jocelyn, you should come out for, is the saints and sinners fundraiser that they throw.
Chris Arndt:
Yeah, you mentioned that.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Yeah, no, that is a wild affair. It's a costume ball.
Jocelyn Arndt:
Oh, wow. That sounds really cool.
Doug Burke:
The theme is you dress up like a saint or a sinner, so you can imagine. The theater crowd that is supporting this great institution gets very creative. Great. Well, thank you very much. Is there anything else you want to plug for our show?
Chris Arndt:
We're on all the various social medias. If you Google our name, they'll show up. But really, I think just thanks for having us on, and if you get a chance to go to that show July 17th at the ECHO Center, I mean, it was the first show, the first show for like real people, a live audience that we booked in more than a year. So, when it came through, it was just a moment of bliss and we are really excited to share the fruits of that moment with people who end up going.
Doug Burke:
We'll see you there. I want to thank DJ Wyatt Schmidt, my recording engineer, and our social media director, M. C. Owens. I want to shout out to Andrea Vallis for following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Thanks, Andrea. You're one of our biggest and best fans. It's so nice to have you on board. Please share our episodes with our friends and share the playlist that we are creating. The Jocelyn and Chris songbook will be on our webpage, so you will get to hear these songs from Spotify and other works.
