 Courtesy: Missing Piece Group In 2016, after eight years with JJ Grey's band MOFRO, Anthony Farrell (vocals, keyboards) and Andrew Trube (vocals, guitar) departed, directing their energies full-time on writing, recording, and touring as the Greyhounds with drummer Ed Miles. With two albums under their belt, the Greyhounds will release their new record, Cheyenne Valley Drive, on April 6th. Recorded at Sam Phillips Studios, the all original project is a bluesy, groove-filled nine-track collection centered around love and unity. In advance of its release, Trube kindly took the time to chat about the album, their organic recording process, songwriting, and more. The new album 'Cheyenne Valley Drive' was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Studio. Was this the first time you had the opportunity to record there? We’ve been going to Sun Studios for years. In 2016, we recorded the "Sun Studio Sessions" there and met engineer Matt Ross-Spang shortly thereafter. He eventually moved his operation to the refurbished Sam Phillips Recording studio and kept bugging us to come record there. So finally, after two years, we made it happen. The recording process for the entire album took three days, which is pretty short. Did things come together pretty quickly? Making records in that amount of time was how we did it when we first started. It’s also the structure of that studio where you come in ready to commit, knock it out, and then move on - which is what we wanted to do. With the help of our friends like Will Sexton and Amy LaVere, we recorded it all analog, so there was no computer to look at or things to go over. We left everything raw and real, and honestly, it's those scars and blemishes that you can hear on a record, that make it. It was a great experience. Anthony and yourself have been writing together for seventeen years, so there must have been a large selection of material to choose from. We have been writing and playing together for almost twenty years and over that time there is so much that we have written that I feel like we are just starting to scratch the surface of our catalog. We went through a bunch of tunes and tried to figure out what we could do that would resonate live on tape as we recorded it. We pulled from songs that were written within a few months and some that we had in the ammunition pile that were fifteen years old. We always go in with more songs than we need, and for this record, we started out with thirteen songs, giving a couple got the ax in the end until we had the nine that eventually landed on the record. Do the two of you share songwriting duties? How does your process work? Basically, we write everything together. It might start off with one person writing something, but we work on lyrics and song structure together. Anthony’s always been the yin to my yang. We were born on a completely polar opposite calendar [zodiac], but we balance each other out and I think that’s the reason we’ve not only been able to play together for so many years, but have fun doing it. And you have to have fun because that makes all the other stuff, like the long drives and headaches, worth it.  Absolutely. If you’re going to do anything you should enjoy it.
Is there any particular song that changed shape the most from beginning to end? They all kind of go that way because we don’t like to overthink stuff; we’re all about letting something happen in the moment. We went through a bunch of pre-production to figure out the structure of a tune, but we never lock it down. When we go to track something, we know that something organic will probably happen and we just go with that. It’s like when I go on a trip, I’ll pick out a couple restaurants I want to try out, but I don’t specifically schedule out every day - and that’s how we work our songs. We get a rough map together and know where we’re going, but we make it loose in case we see a cool coffee shop or alley way (laughing). Many of the songs, such as “12th Street,” and “All We Are”, center around love and unity. Then there’s one called “Space Song.” Is there any particular story behind that one you can share? “Space Song” is a tune we wrote years ago and basically is about someone looking out the window of a space ship as they’re leaving the planet Earth after it has used up all its resources. We’re pretty consciousness about things and that song is basically saying that we’re all in this together and we’re all we’ve got, so let’s not get to the point where we’d have to do this….because that would suck (laughing). Where did the title, Cheyenne Valley Drive, originate from? That’s the street Ed used to live on. We always leave, for tours or work, from there, and when we were trying to figure out the name for the record, he reminded us that Cheyenne Valley Drive was where we started before we went to Memphis to make this record. It was literally the beginning, so we decided to name it that. Again, we don’t like to overthink things too much (laughing). Being the road warriors that you are, where will you be out supporting Cheyenne Valley Drive? I’m headed to a festival in Tampa then we’ll be a part of the Legends of Blues Cruise which has a ton of cool bands and is going to be a lot of fun. Then we’ll have dates in the South, including Texas and Missouri. That sounds busy, and fun. Finally, is there one recent release that you cannot stop listening to and recommend people check out? I like to listen to a lot of stuff including the guys who aren’t necessarily on the radio, like Dante Schwebel who currently plays bass for Dan Auerbach. And then, obviously, I’m into anything from 1963-1974 that has a good groove and an on-point rhythm section. There’s so much good music, in Austin especially, it’s hard to keep up with what’s hot and what’s around you. Website Purchase
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