The ongoing story of folk-hybrid band Balto, the brainchild of singer/songwriter Daniel Sheron, is one that cannot be covered in a quick 250-word introduction. Sheron started out in Moscow, Russia before moving to Siberia, the “ever shifting backdrop of railways and desolate wastes” that inspired the development of his first album, October Road. The record was recorded here in the states in New York City in one day on December 15, 2010, and Balto took on the form of both a trio and a quartet to support it on the well-known scene.
The next year, in August 2011, Sheron took his talents across the country to Portland, Oregon, where he met a new band of players and developed his latest release,Monuments. Those players (Andrew Sheron, Philippe Bronchtein, John Glouchevitch, Charlie Freundlich, Sam Budish) have helped bring Monuments to life, a topic Daniel couldn’t wait to tell us more about – he said “If October’s Road is a story about the loss of love and self-immolation told as it’s happening, Monuments is the result what happens next – the way memory warps and turns into its own experience, surreal and at the same time very visceral. Sonically, it involves much more layering and conscious arranging than our previous material – more deliberate, a broader palette.”
Sheron continues, telling us more about his approach to developing new music: “It’s Americana insofar as we use mostly acoustic instruments, but I think one key difference is that I don’t feel any particular allegiance to one musical tradition. As a songwriter, I try to write what I know, what needs to get out of me and onto paper – hopefully that turns out to be an idea that carries some kind of emotional weight.” Sheron and Balto will be busy supporting Monuments on the road while at the same time developing a new record, so click to http://baltoamerica.com/ to keep up. There’s still much, much more to get into, so read on for all the answers to the XXQs below.
XXQs: Balto
PensEyeView.com (PEV): How would you describe your sound and what do you feel makes you stand out over the others in your genre?
That’s a difficult question within a genre that leans so heavily on history like Americana and Folk Music, but I have a hard time even calling Balto folk. It’s Americana insofar as we use mostly acoustic instruments, but I think one key difference is that I don’t feel any particular allegiance to one musical tradition. As a songwriter, I try to write what I know, what needs to get out of me and onto paper – hopefully that turns out to be an idea that carries some kind of emotional weight. After that, it has to do with the arranging process and the players that are coming to the table. We’ll get different rhythmic ideas and breaks, and swells – instrumentation choices, countermelodies – that’s really where the collective effort takes place – in service to the song and the story it tells.
PEV: Calling Portland, OR, what kind of music were the members of the band into growing up? Do you remember your first concert?
Portland actually has only been home to me for about a year and a half – I’ve bounced all over and the band originally got started in New York City in 2010. The band has had a shifting cast of characters over the years, and it’s sometimes been pared down to a solo project. Everyone’s got eclectic taste –the different associated members have played in every kind of band you could probably think of except perhaps zydeco. But most of the folks who recorded our first LP October’s Road got started playing together in college outside the campus library. Our first “official” show was actually about 3 months after we recorded the album – sometime in January 2011 I think – it was in the basement of a bar in Williamsburg and it was attended by a small group of friends. “Intimate”. We were playing as a three piece most of the time then – guitar, mandolin, and upright bass.
PEV: What was it like trying to break into the music scene in your hometown, when you first started out as a band? What was your first show like together as a band?
New York is funny because there’s definitely a circuit of venues that’s extremely easy to get into if you know how to send a decent booking email, but nearly impossible to graduate from. It felt like we were only just starting to move into that next phase where the gigs start to get better when I pulled the plug and moved to Portland. Sometimes when I go back to NYC it’s great, and other times it looks like a soul-crushing meatgrinder.
PEV: What can fans expect from a live Balto show?
It totally depends on the lineup – if everyone’s there, we get a real big, triumphant sound and dudes singing baritone harmony. As a solo act, it can be very quiet and intimate one moment and roaring to a fever-pitch the next. We make really deliberate use of dynamics in performing these songs. They’re a joy to play and really translate well live, and while it often sounds different from the record, we do our best to get the energy and the emotion of each story across to the audience. The instrumentation is surprisingly versatile, in the sense that we can sound really rustic and string-band-like on one song, and then swing back towards a more rock influenced aesthetic on the next.
PEV: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you step on stage?
Shit…did I knock my guitar out of tune again? Also…Careful – don’t kick over your beer.
PEV: How has playing in Balto different than working with other artists or projects in the past?
Balto actually has an audience, so it’s a blessing and a curse – there’s a level of maturity present that is the culmination of all the years I’ve been writing songs and playing in bands, but it also ends up meaning that there’s more pressure to keep going, to keep writing, to stay busy. Balto has much more business involved, and since it’s all very DIY, I end up handling all the tour booking, logistics, merch production, scheduling, management, money, etc in addition to the songwriting and rehearsing and all the stuff I really want to be doing. But, everything in its own time, as they say.
I’m also surrounded by tremendous songwriters here in Portland, and so there’s a kind of cross-pollination and mutual support that’s really inspiring. I do occasionally get the opportunity to perform in friends’ projects – namely Hog Bucket and Hip Hatchet, and it’s always refreshing and different to be part of someone else’s vision –I wish I did it more.
PEV: What was the underlining inspiration for your music? Where do get your best ideas for songs?
Well, October’s Road all came out of being in Russia and what I was experiencing while I was there –perhaps there was something about the cityscape of Moscow and the landscape outside of it, or maybe just something in the water that had me cranking out song after song. At the time I had a heightened sense of emotion, of loneliness and longing, joy and crushing sadness. I worked there for about 6 months and then traveled for some time, and it took me a good year and a half to really recover from it. I’ve always tried to explain my process as the remainder left after I live through something – it’s hard for me to write about anyone I don’t know personally. I’ve always relied on some kind of experiential cataclysm, whether good or bad, to get words on paper – lyrics tend to come a lot slower to me than melodic ideas and chords, so I often have to wait a long time for the right idea to come to me. Nowadays I usually sit in the back of a bar or cafe and write gibberish for a while until I start to hit some vein of an idea. I come up empty-handed pretty often but every now and again I really find something to take home. In short, it’s just the life I see and feel going on around me. For some reason though, I seem to get the best psychic hits when I‘m outside of the USA.
PEV: Thinking back to when you first started out do you ever look back at your career and think about your earlier days and how you’ve arrived where you are today?
Oh always – I’m lucky enough to have a lot of recordings from different bands over the years – starting when I was about 13 or 14 – which means I get to hear how long it took me to figure out how to do anything – which is to say a long time.
PEV: What’s one thing we’d be surprised to hear about the members of Balto?
No vegetarians, two masters degrees, one retired modern dancer, and the rest we keep secret. That’s more than one thing I guess.
PEV: Tell us about your latest release Monuments. What can fans expect from this work? What is the story behind the title?
The title is from a lyric in the last song – I was thinking a lot about memory and idealism in those days, and visually, Monuments looks like the big pillar in 2001: a space odysey. If October’s Road (our first album) is a story about the loss of love and self-immolation told as it’s happening, Monuments is the result what happens next – the way memory warps and turns into its own experience, surreal and at the same time very visceral. Sonically, it involves much more layering and conscious arranging than our previous material – more deliberate, a broader palette.
PEV: What is the feeling you get after an album like this is complete and you can sit back to listen to it in full?
There’s certainly a sense of relief that it’s finally done, and the sort of disbelief that it all came together somehow. But the process of making a record is so drawn out and nitpicky that it often obscures the end result and the big picture, so you need a short period away from it to get your wits back. When I listen back, I think ‘damn, how did we do that?’ I much prefer performing to recording, in all honesty.
PEV: With all your traveling is there one area you wish you could travel around and play that you have not yet?
I’d love to do a tour in Eastern Europe – play in Scandinavia and the Baltic States, Russia, Ukraine – it’s been a long-time dream of mine.
PEV: How have all your friends and family reacted to your career? What’s it like when you get to play at your hometown?
The audience is significantly older because it’s all my parents’ friends. I’m tremendously fortunate to have a family as supportive of what I’m doing as they are and I’m unbelievably thankful for that – it’s a rarity. They really believe in it and enjoy the music, and my niece even learns Balto songs and performs them. As for my friends, many of them are in a similar boat to myself and have their own musical projects, or writing projects, or art projects – it’s really inspiring and everyone keeps each other accountable to a certain extent.
PEV: What can we find you doing in your spare time, aside from playing/writing music?
Well I have a day job doing medical interpreting for Portland’s numerous Russian-speakers, so that takes a lot of my time. I run and go backpacking/camping when I can. I do a fair amount of cooking and go see movies pretty frequently as well.
PEV: Name one present and past artist or group that would be your dream collaboration? Why?
That’s such a complicated question- there are so many that I would just sit at the feet of… and I’ve never given much thought to it. I plenty of favorites, but I want to be careful on this one – gotta come back to me later.
PEV: Is there an up and coming band or artist you think we should all be looking out for now?
Widower – recently relocated from the Pacific Northwest to Los Angeles. Brilliant lyricist, songwriter, and all around stand-up guy. He writes the lines you wish you wrote about the way life tends to kick you in the teeth, and has got the sardonic delivery to match.
PEV: If playing music wasn’t your life (or life’s goal) what do you think would be your career?
I would probably be in Europe or the former Soviet Union right now if I wasn’t making music – I interned and worked for a big multinational non-profit in New York when I lived there, so I’d probably be doing something in that vein, research, writing, etc. But I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than what I’m doing now.
PEV: So what is next for Balto?
Well, we have a video coming out in June and a tour down the east coast at the end of the month, then I’m going out of the country to work for a while, and hoping that we’ll have a new record ready to record by the beginning of next year!