I’ve been meaning to do more writing on here. I know I’ve been saying that kind of thing for more than a minute… so this is me finally actually doing it. Lol. Sorry it took so long.
Anyway, I was thinking we could do a little blog series where Chris and I answer questions you guys might have about music/songwriting/live shows/radio plans/anything you can think of, really. It’ll give me something to do beyond sitting home at night worrying about when the heck I’m going to be able to play a live show again… and I figure you might be interested in answers. (:
So, for our first of these, Steven messaged us wondering how we ended up settling on rock as a music genre. We could have ended up playing any kind of music… so why rock n’ roll?
The short answer: we have awesome parents.
When we were little, music was always a part of everything we did, even before either of us decided to pick up instruments ourselves.True story, we actually have a rule in the Arndt household that when we sit down to dinner there absolutely HAS to be music playing. Partly because we hate chewing noises, but mostly because we love music.
That’s just once example of how important music has always been to us as a family. All kinds of music, from classic jazz to rock and country pop and everything in between. But from pretty early on, we both really zeroed in to rock n’ roll. There’s just something about rock… I mean, you guys get it. In our old house we had a room that we called the “library” - it was a walk-in pantry that we converted to a library, half books, half CDs. I remember sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor in there, just looking at album art and reading tracklists, trying to pick what I’d pop in the CD player next. The cover for Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” is particularly seared into my mind - gave me nightmares.
Both Chris and I were drawn to the energy of rock, the sheer emotion of it. I’m a sucker for singers who just let it all go… Freddie Mercury, Janis Joplin, Pat Benatar, Aretha Franklin. And the minute Chris found his first electric guitar at a roadside garage sale, he was trying to play Hendrix and Page riffs.
So again, I guess I’ve got to hand most of the credit for us falling in love with rock n’ roll to our parents… because I don’t know too many kids who grew up being hypnotized by Lynyrd Skynyrd songs and terrified by Meatloaf album art. We still actively listen to all different kinds of music, but rock is where our soul is.
Thanks to Steven for the question! If any of you have any other questions you’d be interested in hearing our answers to, feel free to shoot them our way! I’d love to do more entries like this in the future. (: