Mar

12

Lake – Oh the Places We’ll Go

Filed Under Updates 

Ashley Eriksson, musician and songstress of Lake the Band, balanced an instrument that looked like a flexible candelabra during a couple of songs at their recent show at the Fontee Fest in Anacortez, WA.  “I thought it was this weird, random sculpture that was in the back of this really creepy old house that I lived at,” she explained, but, being the artist that she is, Ashley ignored the ghosts and saw the potential for musicality.  Now, the Garden Bells are a definitive piece of Lake’s extra-ordinary charm. As Ashley said, “We like to be eclectic, we like to connect with people.”      

Lake

The seven members of Lake share a connection that spreads through the audience.  Each member is a unique artist on his own right.  They play musical chairs with their instruments like they are having a good time with friends at a house party – Ashley picked up a guitar here, put down a tambourine there, and moved over to the keyboard in between chiming in with vocals and garden bells during their show at the Fontee Fest – and their obvious charisma invites the audience in to join. 

“We’re like a band, a real band,” Eli Moore, a fellow Lake member, chimed in.  “We’ve been trying to do things more old-fashioned, with everyone playing at once rather than doing things over and over.”  Ashley told me that they aim for a friendly sound that has a “life to it, a breadth,” and I completely agree that they are right on the mark. 

Eli tells me that a creative role model is the producer and musician Karl Blau, a close friend of the band.  “We work with him and we really look up to his music, and his ethics,” he says.  “In recording, [this] has a lot do with embracing happy accident, things you didn’t plan.  Taking things for what they are, value things that happen by chance.” 

“When I moved to the Northwest was when I started going to lakes a lot,” Ashley explained, and the name seems to cover the gist of the ideas behind the band.  A lake represents the Northwest, peace and summer, spending time with your friends, she said, a lot of ideas converged into one general picture of happy times.  It’s the sort of serendipity that the music of Lake communicates. 

Lake is coming to Moscow:  March 25 2009, Wedn., 8:00 p.m, The Nuart Theatre (516 S. Main St., Moscow ID 83843).  Check em out: MySpace, Heaven Vimeo, Ashley & Eli (Water Island)

 Molly is a freelance journalist and a senior at New St. Andrew’s College with a special interest in postcards and goldfish.  She writes for The Loop 21 and keeps the blog A New Amsterdam.

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Comments

One Response to “Lake – Oh the Places We’ll Go”

  1. Stereopathic Music on March 23rd, 2009 10:25 am

    [...] Also, check out Stereopathic’s interview with Lake. [...]

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