Jack Knight, Russell Rabut, and David Friedlander originally formed their indie/folk-rock band The Mondegreens in Chico back in 2012, but have since relocated to Seattle to continue reaching new audiences all across the Pacific Northwest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdaGT8PoWU0&feature=youtu.be
The Mondegreens return to Chico for their first annual holiday show this Friday night at Lost On Main.
On the song “Red Rocks”...
Jack: I wrote it at first as two kind of separate poem verses I hadn't set to music. I wrote them while I was backpacking in the Trinity Alps and came across them a couple months later and just decided to set them to music. It seemed really interesting and almost contrasting in a way that I really liked and, you know, the title "Red Rocks" — I wrote it at sunset looking at rocks.
NSPR: With three songwriters in the band, how do you decide which songs get fleshed out and which ones stay on the shelf?
Russell: We recorded 13 songs for this — for "Kid Tell Time," the album. And we're going to go through with all them, but we just decided to have some B-sides. So it's just going to be a 10-song album. Within the week we decided to do it, and it was an interesting thought process and decision-making process because we obviously cherish all of the songs and we put our hearts into them, but also it's just kind of a matter of — we're pretty practical about the product that we're coming out with and I think it just kind of ends up being whatever's going to best for the band and it does take a certain level of humility that we don't always have. But it is an important exercise to keep doing the things going to get the best for the music itself.
Jack: We're fairly egalitarian though.
David: Yeah we do a lot of things in groups of three — lots of 12 and nine-song sets.
Jack: We try to sing lead on a similar amount of songs and try not to sing lead back to back on songs, if we can manage it. That's kind of the basis of our decision making is everyone's contributing equally and everyone gets the reward of having their songs fleshed out equally too, but again, there's always moments where it's like OK we can pick one — how do we do it? And we just make the best decision for the band and try to put our egos aside.