Interview: Kalos

Rodger Hara: Good morning. Welcome to KGNU Community Radio. I have two members of the band Kalos joining me for this evening’s recording presentation of an interview. The guys are going to be appearing at the Swallow Hill Music Hall on January 19th at 7 p. m., and then before that, They’re going to be in Boulder at the Salinas Schoolhouse, 7 p.m. Welcome Eric and Ryan. Eric, where are you?

Kalos (Eric): Hello, Rodger. It’s great to be here. I am in Montreal, Quebec, where it is very snowy and cold at the moment. 

Rodger Hara: It’s pretty snowy and cold here in Denver at the moment as well. 

Kalos (Eric): We’re heading from snow to snow then. 

Rodger Hara: And then, Ryan, how about you?

Kalos (Ryan): I’m in rainy Seattle area. It’s pretty mild. It’s about 43. We haven’t had snow yet. I’m looking forward to having a little bit this winter. But I know you guys are tired of it.

Rodger Hara: Anyway, who’s the third member of the band? 

Kalos (Eric): Jeremiah McClain is the third member, and he is also in snowy areas. He lives in Vermont, so he couldn’t be with us tonight, but he will be with us on the 19th and the 18th.

Rodger Hara: So how did you guys get together? 

Kalos (Ryan): It’s a long story. We’ve been friends for many years started out as a duo, and it was just Macassin and McDonald myself and Eric here, and then we decided to make a duo album, and it ended up being half trio album actually with Jeremiah and so he was on half that album and over the next couple of years whenever we would tour the East Coast, he’d join us and so it became painfully obvious that we had a trio on our hands and so we decided to name the band and make a record and yeah, so that’s how the band formed. I’ve known Eric since about 2015. He’s in another band. And he called me up to sub for their fiddler, who was at the time stuck in Scotland and we hit it off nicely. The folk music world is a pretty small one. And for those of us that have committed our lives to playing the music, I think it’s fairly normal to meet each other in various gigs and opportunities. It’s a little bit of a connection pool that you end up making. So, how I met Jeremiah was in that community and through different gigs over the years since I was in college, that’s my side of it. Eric probably has a different perspective.

Kalos (Eric): No, that’s the funny part about when you said for cantrip, though, was that so for fiddler and then at the last minute, our Piper had to back out and it’s a trio. So it ended up just being me and Ryan. A fortuitous era, I guess you could say. And then I’ve known Jeremiah separately as well for many years. We’ve taught together at a camp called Main Fiddle Camp, so it’s a great gathering of musicians, and we got to know each other pretty well there.So the three of us were all separate, and we just brought it together.

Rodger Hara: Where does the name Kalos come from? And what does it mean? 

Kalos (Eric): It’s a Greek word actually, Kalos, K-A-L-O-S. And it means in its practical usage, it means great, something great. And in its classical uses it’s a word for beauty or the pursuit of beauty. When we were looking for a name, a few things that fit for us, one is that none of us, we’re all from the United States. And we are all playing music from many different parts of the world. So one thing we didn’t want is to be identified or labeled as from a certain place. So the music we play and the name we chose, a lot of groups will pair those together with a Gaelic word if you’re a Scottish group or something like that. So we wanted to avoid that, so we chose something that’s from a culture that we deliberately don’t play music from. Although we may change that one day and play some Greek music. For the time being, that was one of its uses and also just its meaning is what we’re trying to do, is to, that sort of pursuit of beauty in all of its various forms through music. That’s why we chose that name. 

Rodger Hara: Oh, that’s great. What kind of music do you play? What can people expect to hear at Swallow Hill and the Salinas Schoolhouse? 

Kalos (Ryan): I think it’s pretty obvious to most people that we play Celtic music. But it’s Celtic music from around the world. Celtic culture is multinational and lots of it is here in the States, a lot in Europe. The Celtic slash Gallic culture has It’s touched on many different time periods, geographic locations, and so we play a little bit of all of it. A lot of it is New England New England is drawing from Quebec, it’s drawing from Scotland and from Ireland. Both Eric and Jeremiah from New England, and so a lot of our stuff is that. Having said that, a fair amount of our stuff is just our own music, and we’re drawing from a well of these traditions, and making it our own, but then just making up music as we go along and having fun with it. I think of our albums as being these menus that we’re coming together with, it’s like this 12 course meal and we try to get it ready for these concerts that we do, which are like a one sitting meal. And so we like to keep it switched up. We don’t want to bore everyone with steak all night long. So things are. Kind of variety oriented. So a lot of our music is coming from different places and really not planned. We will just follow our hearts when it comes to picking repertoire. I think that’s the main reason we went with Kalos. We didn’t want to be tagged as a Celtic band because we didn’t want to be limited to only playing Celtic music. We wanted to keep it broad and really the goal was to create a beautiful experience. 

Kalos (Eric): But back to that, it feels like often the name you choose and the music you play. Perhaps you may choose to align yourself with that for both artistic purposes and could be marketing purposes, whatever it is. And we purposefully try not to do that. It can be tough to be called a Celtic band just because. While we do that, and that’s the music we’ve all studied and learned over the years. And we’ve been in groups that are definitively Irish bands or Scottish bands or French bands or anything like that. What we do, as Ryan mentioned, is very all, much, all about that menu. So the Celtic that you’re gonna get is the roots and branches that we come from our musical backgrounds, but the music you’re going to get is very much just our own and a musical experience that we’re creating for the audience.

Rodger Hara: What does each of you play? 

Kalos (Ryan): I play fiddle and viola. And viola is an alto violin. And so it’s a little bit of a deeper instrument, warmer. And then Eric plays guitar and fiddle. And excuse me, guitar and mandolin. The guitar equivalent of a violin, as a mandolin. And then Jeremiah plays piano and accordion. Eric is our lead vocalist. He sings and then myself and Jeremiah will bring up the back end the backing vocals when the occasion arises. 

Rodger Hara: What about arrangements?

Kalos (Eric): That is a very collaborative process for us. In fact, that’s probably what we like to do the most together. And what brings us together as a unit that we wanted to pursue is arranging together. So there’s no one person who does it. 98 percent of the arrangement is done in the space together, playing the music together and trying things out and bouncing off of each other. And just that collaborative process. 

Kalos (Ryan): Yeah, and it is a process. I think about what we do is being this experiment almost and three people who could do it all themselves, but are willing to come together and create something in the center of all of us.

And it’s a democracy and they’re experiments. They can work great, or they can fail. It’s a fun experiment, though. And I think it’s the essence of a band. I feel like bands are that. They are this weird, uncomfortable collaboration where no one’s really necessarily calling all the shots. But Eric’s kind of our band leader, though. He does a lot of the footwork, and then he’s also our lead singer. He’s our front man. 

Rodger Hara: So you talked about an album. I’d like to play a few songs for our listeners to get a foretaste of what they might hear when you play. If I have time to play all of them, maybe a couple. 

Kalos (Eric): Why don’t you start with the Brakeman’s Daughter. It’s the first song that we arranged together actually as a trio. I guess the first song for at least officially as Kalos. But it was a song that was written by a man named David Franci, who’s an incredible songwriter, lives in Canada, he’s from Scotland. And he wrote this song a cappella, so it was really a great adventure for us to get in there and work on exactly what we were talking about, that arrangement process of throwing these ideas back and forth. So the musical tapestry beneath that song was all us. So it’s a good introduction. 

Rodger Hara: All right, that sounds good. What’s another one? 

Kalos (Ryan): There’s a set of jigs that we put together in Celtic music. You don’t just play one tune and call it good. You string a bunch of tunes together and call it a set. So we’ve got a set of jigs. That are written by Eric and Jeremiah. They’re written for proverbial heroes in their lives. And, the last one is actually not for a hero. It’s a statement piece. It’s called Inappropriately Hoppy. Which is, we like to tease Jeremiah that’s his opinion of beer. Anyway, yeah, so that’s good, it’s a good jigsaw. Then the last one is this Scottish heir called Alan Water that we found in an old collection called the Playford Collection from 1700. It’s the first collection of Scottish music and it’s a beautiful tune. Alan Water is a little area in Scotland. It’s got a creek running through it and in the 1800s it was a spa. Yeah, we like to think of it as an ode to nature because Scotland is so beautiful, such a beautiful landscape. This tune just evokes that. 

Rodger Hara: So have you guys toured Colorado and played here before? As a band? 

Kalos (Eric): Not with this group. This will be our first time through the area. Very much looking forward to it. 

Rodger Hara: I am very much looking forward to seeing you and hearing you in person on the 19th at Swallow Hill Music Hall, 7pm. And for those of my listeners who are in Boulder. You don’t have to drive down to Denver. You can catch them in the Salinas Schoolhouse, 7 p. m. on the 18th of January. Guys, I wish you safe travels from wherever you are to Denver. Thanks for your time today, and I look forward to seeing you later this month.

Kalos (Eric): Likewise, looking forward to seeing you, Rodger. Thanks so much.