If you follow this site (and if you don’t, you really should), you saw that we recently covered the Savannah Stopover Music Festival, which was, in a word, amazing. I had the chance to chat with Martin Earley, Devin Mauch, and Calin Peters, a.k.a. indie folk trio The Ballroom Thieves, who had, only a few days before, left Maine’s snowy 18º weather for the sunshine and warmth of Savannah before making their way to Austin for SXSW. Shortly after they had gotten into town, the three went on a quick excursion:
Martin: “We hit the thrift shop down the road after we got here”
Me: “Did you pop some tags?”
Martin: “I popped one tag.”
Devin: “I also popped one solitary tag, and it was definitely a good purchase.”
The Ballroom Thieves have recently entered ground-breaking territory; the band recorded an EP with the Maine Youth Rock Orchestra, and plan to tour with them in the upcoming weeks. “They’ve never been on the road with a band,” says guitarist Earley. “It will be the first time that any nationally touring band has brought a youth orchestra on the road.”
In fact, the Thieves, who spent about a month this winter writing and recording their next album, tentatively set for release in the fall, have quite a bit of touring ahead of them, and they can’t wait. “We’re really excited about the new record and the tour this summer, we’ve got some festival shows coming up, we’re anxious to get moving, get back out on the road and pay some more dues before the album comes out in the fall,” explains Earley. The trio will head to the west coast for a run with Tall Heights until mid-April, when they will embark on the week-long tour with the Maine Youth Rock Orchestra. The Thieves have festival appearances scheduled for the summer.
“We travel in a conversion van, we call it The Chariot,” says percussionist Mauch. “We have a couple of drinks and we start to develop folklore about it, nothing too crazy though.” “We’re working on the novel about it,” chimes in Earley. “It’s going to be adapted into two major motion pictures, so look out for it. George Lucas has recently signed on to direct. J.J. Abrams is going to assist, but he’ll mostly be in charge of getting coffee, good ol’ J.J.”
Peters, the band’s cellist and lone female, gave the real scoop on traveling in the Chariot: “I’m awful at passing the time on the road, I stare out the window and start to flip out about the amount of hours we’ve been traveling. These two are really good at it, though, they read and watch movies and such. I like watching the road go by mostly. It’s never stinky in the van. They aren’t smelly men at all— they are sweaters, but not smellers.” “We spend a lot of time together on the road, so we’ve got to be tidy, or it would be a mess,” admits Mauch. “Calin keep us in line.”
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