The Open Feel

March 2011 | Rock

American rock duo The Open Feel is made up of Tom Brayton and Katie Harris. Living in LA, Harris and Brayton worked separately as session musicians, before merging to create music together as The Open Feel. Influenced by soul, blues and classic rock, the band cite the likes of Sam Cooke, Led Zeppelin and Muddy Waters amongst their main musical influences.

After singing and playing all of the instruments as well as covering production and engineering, the duo released their self-titled debut EP at the end of last year.

Having featured the band as one of our we7 Presents artists back in December, we caught up with Katie and Tom to find out more.

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How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn’t heard your music before?

Tom: I think the best way to describe our music is that we’d be a great opening act for bands like U2, Silversun Pickups, The Boxer Rebellion or My Bloody Valentine – heavy and beautiful music.
Katie: I would say it’s melodic, heavy, driving rock music with a dreamy vibe.

How did The Open Feel start out as a band?

Katie: We’ve been in a relationship for 12 years now, but only started writing music together as The Open Feel about 3 years ago.
Tom: We built a home studio in 2006 and started writing music for film and television. About a year later, in the midst of recording a song we were going to pitch to a TV show, we looked at each other and decided this wasn’t the path we wanted to go down anymore – we needed to write music that meant something to us. So we stopped working on that song and at that moment started to create completely from scratch, with no idea that this was going to lead to what eventually became The Open Feel. Months and months of writing and recording and experimenting went by and then one day Katie came up with the name The Open Feel and the sound started to develop and the songs started coming together and we finally put out our first EP.

How did you both initially get into music?

Katie: I was lucky enough to grow up in a musical family. My father, who is British, is an arranger, conductor and composer – he’s 78 and still working! My Mom is a dancer and a lyricist and she let me paint murals on the walls of my bedroom when I was growing up. I was always encouraged to do what I wanted to do with music and with any art. I grew up around it. I was allowed to be creative. So all this developed into having a love for music. It was kind of inevitable for me.
Tom: I was the kid who beat on pots and pans when I was really little. When I was 6 years old I got a snare drum for Christmas and for 3 years I banged on that in my bedroom until I proved to my parents that I really was into playing drums and they got me a drum set when I was 9 and for better or worse I never looked back.

You are based in LA – what’s the music scene like out there and does it influence what you do?

Katie: LA is so much about a place of creating scenes. There’s little pockets of Los Angeles where people create their own little scenes – there’s the beach, the valley, downtown, Silverlake and 100 places we’ve never been and it can all be very different.
Tom: We live sort of on the outskirts of town and we really locked ourselves in the studio for a long time – so aside from the music we were listening to at the time, we really didn’t go out much to see bands – we just became obsessed with creating and recording our music.

What are your musical influences? Do they differ between you?

Katie: We have very similar musical influences and very different ones. So if you start from our childhood, Tom would have been into Metallica and Iron Maiden – Metal! – all the stuff you listen to when you’re a drummer and you’re wanting to bash on drums! I was an 80′s pop fanatic so I loved Madonna, U2, Duran Duran and The Cure. But we both grew up listening to The Beatles – how can you avoid that? So we had a different beginning, but as we got older we intertwined our musical interests.
Tom: This is an interesting question for us because the music we listen to now doesn’t sound anything like what we play. Aside from maybe a little Radiohead and The Swell Season, it’s all soul music like Motown and Stax, old Delta Blues, it’s jazz, a lot of the great classic bands like Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Hendrix. Somehow it comes out of us and becomes The Open Feel.

How is the creative process split between you?

Katie: It’s completely equally split. We write and record everything as a duo. When we start writing a new song, it’s always with Tom on bass and me on guitar. We just start recording. There are never preconceived ideas. We play off of each other until a solid part starts to form. If we find parts we like, we’ll record an arrangement and then I’ll put a melody down and then Tom will overdub drums. Every song is created this way.

You released your self-titled EP at the end of last year, what was the inspiration behind those tracks?

Katie: The main inspiration was to find our sound as a band. That’s why we began this musical journey – to find out who we really are as musicians. These songs deal with the struggles and the triumphs we experienced and continue to experience along the way.
Tom: The tracks deal with life, death, love, loss and finding yourself.

When can we expect an album?

Katie: It’s our goal to have a second EP or a full-length album out by the end of this year.

What does 2011 have in store for the band?

Katie: We want to come tour in the UK!!
Tom: Lots of shows, writing and recording at least another EP, but hopefully a full length record. More shows, more touring and getting this music to as many people as possible – and thanks to we7 for helping us do that!!

http://www.we7.com/magazine/focus/the-open-feel