Lily & the Parlour Tricks is a soulful sextuplet based out of NYC. According to their bio – and evident in their sound – their influences range from The Andrews Sisters all the way to The White Stripes. During South by Southwest, we sat down with Lily, Brian, Terry, Morgane, Angelo, and Darah to see what they had been up to in the past and what they plan on getting into in the future. Read about all about it and more below, and check out their website for a stream of their latest release, Requiem, as well as upcoming tour dates.
Vinyl Mag: Is this your first SXSW?
Lily: It’s our second; the first was in 2012.
VM: Is there a reason you took a year off from it?
Lily: Yeah, actually, a label saw us at SXSW 2012, and we got into a development deal with them through 2013, so it made sense not to come- but now we’re back.
VM: What set have you had your heart on catching while down here?
Lily: Definitely St. Vincent.
VM: This question is for the guys- I watched a bit of your interview with Rock on Philly, and Lily mentioned how you were super into 90’s R&B; as a fellow R&B appreciator, what kind of 90’s R&B are your particular favorites?
Brian: Bone Thugs for sure, Montell Jordan, Brian McKnight…
VM: Oh snap, you guys are the real deal!
Brian: Well, the thing is that we did a run of shows once, and Angelo had found this Planet Groove: Best of 1997…
Lily: I think that was the first time we had ever gone out of town together, actually.
Brian: It was! So that was our soundtrack for about three straight days. And now it’s just a thing.
Terry: It started as a joke, and now we’re all into it.
VM: Being a larger group, how do you travel?
Lily: Well, now we have a van courtesy of Angelo. But usually, if we’re out of town, we rent a big SUV or something. Otherwise, we just split into two cars; usually, it’s just the “boys” car and the “girls” car.
VM: Here’s a question I’ve found relevant with this week: are you food truck people or BBQ joint people?
Lily: Both! We’ve done Iron Works already, but we’ve also done the food trucks. Really, we’re just food people.
VM: What has been your favorite so far?
Lily: Gus’s has been mine.
Darah: The best fast food truck at SXSW is Chilantro’s for sure.
Brian: We were discussing earlier how the food truck situation is really interesting and awesome, but I don’t know- I always leave hungry. It’s an experience more than it is a filling meal.
VM: You’ve mentioned how “Belle Gunness” was just a demo when it was picked up by BMW for their new commercial- have you since gone back and mastered it or left it as is?
Lily: We left it as is.
VM: And that wasn’t the plan originally, was it?
Lily: No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the in the plan to release it all, necessarily, but we like it, and it sounds good. Now, we have all of these demos that we had done with this label, and we’re allowed to release them. We may or may not do that, but it’s kind of an amazing position to be in.
VM: Are the lyrics a collaborative effort or do you [Lily] do all of the writing?
Lily: I do all of the writing; it’s just how it’s happened. I 100 percent look at it is as a collaborative effort; it just happens to start with me. I send them skeleton recordings, and then it’s formed from there.
VM: Last question- I read that you’ve been going back and forth from Nashville to work on a lot of recordings- are you still going back and forth, or has that wrapped? What can we expect musically in the near future for Lily & the Parlour Tricks?
Lily: We just went in February for a big session, and we got six songs out of it, so now we have a total of 13 to work with. We’ve just released the first single titled “Requiem,” and we plan to release another single. After that, it’s wide open with what we want to do with the rest of it.
Samantha Gilder is a native of Saint Simons Island. She attended Georgia Southern University for a brief stint where she studied Journalism, and although she became your statistical “college dropout”, she strives to pursue her goals with the best of them. Growing up, music and writing were the top two most influential things in her life; fast forward to the present and their roles in her life are just as prominent, with the only (major) differences being that now she is not only a writer but a mother. She has eternal love in her heart for her daughter. She bartends at a local coffee shop/café/pub where (lucky for her) the appreciation for music is equally shared between her employers and co-workers.