Phantom Fields are a releasing their debut Now You Know of alt-country-indie-rock music. The songs are thoughtful and catchy. They are playing on April 25 at the White Squirrel with The Hilltop Pines.
Please tell us about the bandmembers and how you got together.
Steve and Aaron have been friends since college and have been playing and writing music together ever since. Ben and Tate knew each other from playing in bands and sharing bills in the early 2000s. Aaron and Tate met in the early 2000s playing in a band together and that’s when Tate, Steve and Aaron started playing music with each other. At the time of covid and lock down, Ben and Tate started kicking around the idea he start playing with the trio to form a band and start playing when things opened up again.
Now You Know has a sinister undercurrent, please tell us more about the song.
Yes it does, at least with a bit of a grin. It’s questioning the idea of transparency, or trying on a new idea just for fun, or digging for dirt in places you probably shouldn’t be. Or, being overly suspicious or anxious. Whether that means becoming president just because you think you can and finding out it’s a tough job, or looking up a dark secret that perhaps should have been left a secret because it’s not your place to look. In the end, people find out the truth and it’s not exactly what they expected. “Now You Know” is the response to that. Yeah, what did you think would happen? It’s also a bit of a rant against people who naively claim the truth, while avoiding the facts, transparency and dig up dirt just for attention.
Writing credits for your songs include all your names. How do you work together? Does one person take the lead for particular song? Does each person play a certain role?
It changes from song to song. Sometimes Steve or Aaron who write the lyrics primarily will bring a nearly finished song they have developed and the rest of us add our parts and ideas to complete that song. Other times it could be one member who has a riff, a lyric, or some chord changes and brings it to the band and it sorta develops organically as a group. And sometimes songs may start from someone sharing an idea or a concept and then Steve or Aaron takes that and starts writing a song around it.
What inspired you to write Walk Up Song, with such a baseball-forward them? We used to go to Twins games when I was a kid – so I super enjoy it!
Aaron (Smitty) brought this idea to the group. At first, it was just four chords going on and on – with no lyrics. That idea of a simple, repeating, 4-chord song was something that Smitty had been working on after many prompts by our old, now deceased, friend Gregg, who loved our song writing and playing, but encouraged us to try more simple arrangements that people could more easily appreciate. The four chords have a slightly deranged inclusion of A minor that resolves on E major which gives the simple structure a little dark flavor to combat the ordinary 4-chord structure. Like the seeds of many songs, the chord progression was something that was tried at rehearsal – in between run-throughs of other, more complete songs. “Hey – can we try this for a little bit?” That openness to say “sure” and try simple passages as a means of developing song ideas has been an important part of our process – but requires the right moment, when we don’t have other more pressing rehearsal requirements for upcoming gigs or recording.
Once the seed of the chord progression was planted into Smitty’s head, he went to work at home, writing lyrics on his “scrolls” (large sheets of paper, written with big markers) in a series of free-association brain dump writing sessions. This method is one he’s been trying to follow in the last few years: play the chords, improvise lyrics to those chords, and when the cadence or phrasing seems right, write it down – regardless of how it all ties together from one section to the next. It has become about finding the “zen” of the lyrics and the process – trying to not waste too much time and harbor too much thought on particular passages in any one session as re-writing on-the-spot tends to bog down the flow. Get a few lines written down, be satisfied with that for one night, and then continue later and repeat until the form of the song and the lyrics seem to be in-sync – then bring the more completed form (and the scrolls) to full rehearsal to give it a try.
At that point in time, Smitty had been watching quite a bit of high school baseball as his daughter had a boyfriend who was a baseball player. They made many trips to smalltown amateur baseball stadiums in Minnesota. At one particularly small field on a sunny afternoon Smitty noticed that, despite the modest surroundings, each player on the team had selected a walk-up song and the announcer faithfully played it for a few seconds on the P.A. system as the player entered the batter’s box. This was quite a bit different than what Smitty had experienced when he was a nervous and “just okay” ball player back in his younger days. The lyrics developed around that idea of baseball, and all sports in general, as a means of reaching success and stardom. A folksong – or folklore – about the dream that might become reality, the anxiety the batter feels as he/she steps up to bat, and the athletes that young players look up to.
If the Walk Up Song is your walk up song, it feels like Sky and Star is your walking into the sunset song. Please tell me there’s a particular star (or stars) that is the origin of the lyrics and the uplifting beat.
This is a song about extremes coming together. Hopefully, we can be stars for one another. It’s about opposites – north/south, rich/poor, conservative/liberal – just trying to learn from each other and let each other shine somehow. Specifically, it’s actually about eavesdropping people spew lewdness and hate, trying to redirect it and somehow have a conversion or mutual understanding. But, it takes courage to say, “I may not agree with you, but I’ll try to be your backdrop, support you and let you shine.” Ideally, I’d love to go drive into the sunset to this song knowing people were more tolerant of each other. Musically, the progression on the verse descends from but then returns to A minor and doesn’t resolve. That’s why the anthem-like chorus is so full and bright, while Tate rips a solo.
Mostly Minnesota 