A Dirty Dozen with 3 PAIRS OF BOOTS – September 2024

Photo credit: Eric Wolfinger

According to a recent press release: “California-based husband-and-wife duo Andrew Stern and Laura Arias of 3 Pairs of Boots share a talent for pairing catchy melodies with heartfelt messages. Influenced by genre-bending acts like Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds as well as country bards Johnny Cash and Shania Twain, 3 Pairs of Boots are rooted in rock-and-roll, with catchy melodic hooks and engaging lyrics pulled from both history and modern life. Main songwriter Stern crafts songs that showcase lead singer Arias’s distinctive vocals, together creating the band’s compelling, Americana-leaning blend of folk, rock, and country.” We get the duo to discuss new music, influences, and more.

1. Tell us a little about your latest release. What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through? Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

Laura: We were writing and recording Boot Scootin’ just after our kid went away to college, so I was broken hearted and still adjusting to the changes. If you listen carefully, maybe you’ll hear how sad I was when these tracks were recorded. I’m getting better but letting go has been tough for me.

Andrew: Our upcoming album, Boot Scootin’, is our 4th full-length album (released 4 albums in 5 years now), my spouse Laura is the singer, we share songwriting duties as we each wrote half of the songs on the latest album, I’m playing all the stringed instruments and produced the album. For my part there’s a lot of subtle ear candy all thru the album, a lot of layering and melodies snuck in, so there’s a lot of puzzle pieces that reveal themselves the more one listens. For example, the guitar melodies in the 3rd verses of “Reno,” in the chorus of “Please Tell Me,” you have to listen hard to peel back the layers there, the backing vocals in chorus “Upon High Horse” and “Boot Scootin'” (Laura sings almost all the backing vocals as well), the banjo sections in “Tempt My Fate” and “American Boy,” which I think are unexpected. There are many layers on the tracks in production, to create the right feel and atmosphere to surround Laura’s singing, the guitar parts use different tunings and capos and different guitars.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

Laura: I was a kid who loved musicals, loved to dance, and I was influenced by a wide array of genres I heard on AM/FM radio. By the time I became a teenager, suddenly there were these incredible college radio stations with DJ’s who weren’t beholden to program directors I guess, because they weren’t playing pop, they were playing “punk” and “oldies” and “jazz” and the “British Invasion” bands, it was all mixed up and it was intoxicating. I grew up in San Francisco, and I remember loving a station called KSAN which broadcasted live rock concerts on the weekends , which was outstanding because I wasn’t yet old enough to attend concerts. When I turned 15 I decided I wanted to buy a guitar and learn how to play and write my own songs. That was the point of no return for me. Once I learned my first 3 chords on the guitar I was all in. I had no concept that it was a unsavory business, I just wanted to sing and play and so I set out to join a band. My poor mother!

Andrew: Started playing guitar when I was 13 once I discovered the Beatles and the British Invasion guitar players such as Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Jimmy Page, and then of course Jimi Hendrix, technically speaking he was American but got his start officially in England. I knew right from the start that playing music was something special. Once I started playing in bands, about a year later, is when I think I knew I was going to be a musician for the rest of my life. After playing in many rock bands, we were asked to submit an Americana track for a Canadian TV show which is when we discovered that combining country and folk and acoustic guitars with our rock influences was absolutely in our wheelhouse, we loved it! It’s when I realized that bands like Buffalo Springfield, Byrds, CSN had been a major influence on me, both as a guitarist and songwriter. Thus 3 Pairs of Boots was born, leading us to a burst of inspiration, been songwriting non-stop ever since we started the Boots project, we really love combining our musical influences into one big mashup. The result is 4 albums in 5 years! And the latest collection of songs Boot Scootin’ is our best effort yet.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

Laura: My taste is all over the place, but when I reached concert going age I realized that every music show I attended, whether it be a small club or an arena, I knew I wanted to be up there with the rest of the band, supporting the whole act, one of the performers – clanging that cowbell. Ha!

Andrew: There are 3 albums in particular that taught me how to play guitar. I learned how to play by copying what was on those albums – Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, Blues Breakers by John Mayall with Eric Clapton, and Born Under A Bad Sign by Albert King. For songwriting, lyrics, and melodies I would say the Beatles were my biggest influence, but for 3 Pairs of Boots also have to give a lot of credit to the country rock bands I mentioned above and to some of my favorite country artists such as Johnny Cash, EmmyLou Harris, Shania Twain, Roseanne Cash. Boot Scootin’, our latest album, shows how all of these artists have affected us and led the way for us to create our discography in Americana.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

Laura: What a great question. Maybe Thom Yorke, he’s got the most hauntingly beautiful voice. Or Billy Corgan. But my fantasy is to write a song for Stevie Nicks. I’d love to write her something she could sing the shit out of, that would be fun.

Andrew: Johnny Cash, I would have loved to sit around the dinner table with him, breaking bread, drinking a little, laughing and sharing stories, pull up our guitars, throw out some licks, some lyrics and create a song… that would have been really special.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour?  What do you like to do to unwind?

Laura: I like to sew and to craft. Right now I’m getting ready to upcycle some old clothes into new creations; for instance I have this old wool dress that I want to turn into a crossbody handbag for the fall.

Andrew: Cooking… after our first 3 Pairs of Boots album we produced a show called Cookin’ & Country, where we shared a recipe and played a song from one of our albums. Combining music and food was a lot of fun, hard work and very challenging. We have a lot of experience as musicians, but we were a fish out of water when it came to filming and producing a TV show, never done that before, made a lot of mistakes. The first show we did, right when the dish was coming out of the oven, the battery in the camera died. We had to charge it back up, had to make the dish all over again, took a extra few hours just to get the final shots! We ended up producing two seasons, 10 shows in total, they’re all up on our YouTube channel. As for cooking in general, I love everything about it, putting life on hold when you get into the kitchen and start cooking, just like rolling into the recording studio, or going to the famers markets, the challenge of cooking can be as rewarding as writing and recording a great song. We were inspired to put music and food together. There are similarities between the two, getting all the right ingredients pulled together, with just the right timing. The feeling you get from the final mix of a good song can create the same feelings as when dinner comes out of the oven. Such satisfaction one gets when you finish and it tastes or sounds great!

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

Laura: Oh I don’t know, maybe I’d describe our stuff as proletariat pop, or rabble rock. I don’t think we sound like anybody else out there, mostly because Andrew has his own unique production style.  As for the cringe comparison I’d have to say that my voice has been compared to Cyndi Lauper once or twice. I’m sure she’s a nice lady, but I don’t think I sound anything like her. Maybe it’s because we both have round faces?

Andrew: When you listen to the latest album, Boot Scootin’, you can tell that we are a melting pot of many different styles and genres and influences, from country to rock to folk along with jazz and classical… it’s all mashed together for us. We don’t neatly fit into one genre. Growing up in San Francisco, music wasn’t separated and divided, it was all there to be taken in without boundaries. As for reviews, lucky for us, we haven’t gotten a bad review for any of the first 3 albums that 3 Pairs of Boots have released.  The closest we’ve come to to cringe worthy remarks are when someone compares Laura’s singing to other female singers, she doesn’t like that, even though the reviewers mean it in a good way….

7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

Laura: Andrew pretty much summed it up our routine, and I’d only like to add that we’re more likely to play oldies on our jukebox or spin an LP on the turntable rather than pick up instruments and jam.

Andrew: I do love to cook, which is what led us to do the 3 Pairs of Boots Cookin’ & Country shows, Laura is the bartender, makes a good margarita. Truth be told, we’re not much into singalongs at our house. We spend so much time in the studio writing & recording that when we leave it, we need to take a chill break. Singalongs only happen at my younger sister’s house, her spouse is the one who picks up the guitar after dinner.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

Laura: We were out to dinner with our friends Tony and Vinny when we noticed John Waters was at the next table. Our friend Tony knew what a fan I was and encouraged me to ask for his autograph. “No!!!!” I said, ”let the man enjoy his meal.”  Soon afterward, Tony tiptoed over to JW while Vinny rushed off to the restroom to look for something to write on. Before I knew what was happening, I was being shoved in JW’s face just as Vinny returned from the restroom with a pen and a toilet seat cover in hand. To his credit, John Waters didn’t have us thrown out of the restaurant, he just smiled and graciously signed the toilet seat cover. I was most definitely starstruck in that moment and luckily Andrew had the presence of mind to take a photo of JW and me, so I know it really happened. A few days later Andrew and I were out having lunch in a postage-stamp sized diner when who do I see seated four feet away but John Waters once again! I could feel myself getting smaller as I tried to hide my face with the menu because I thought if JW recognized me as the girl who made him sign the toilet seat cover, he might think I was stalking him.

Andrew: Never really been starstruck, jammed with Bob Weir years ago at a gig. He sat in with a band that I was in before 3 Pairs of Boots was created, put together by the current Boots bass player, it was an interesting yet sort-lived group with 4 rappers up front, it was rock meets rap while playing along to Grateful Dead loops.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

Laura: To me the best part of being a musician is the writing and recording. More than any other aspect I adore the alchemical process of conjuring up a tune out of the void and then tracking it, building on it, collaborating, and fussing over it. With Boot Scootin’ I was writing a lot more on keyboard and Andrew was encouraging me to try some different things vocally, pushing me out of my comfort one a little more. Sometimes I struggle, sometimes we bicker, and sometimes it’s like we’re flying. It’s such an intimate work environment that we create in, there’s a lot of confrontation and honesty, and beauty and I love that I get to experience all that with Andrew. Hmmm, if we couldn’t be musicians, I would probably open an Etsy shop and sell upcycled clothing or antique furniture.

Andrew: Success to me is being able to walk into the studio, pick up a guitar and start writing or recording a song for the Boots project, it’s just that pure. All the trappings that goes along for the ride don’t matter, don’t motivate me to be a musician. I don’t do it for that. Who would suffer what a musician must go thru if the desire and joy wasn’t there in the first place? What does inspire me is that I still get the same feeling playing with 3 Pairs of Boots as I did when I was 13 years old, playing an electric guitar thru an amp, hitting that low E chord. Dream job? Playing music is the top of the list…. if I had to choose something different maybe being a filmmaker….

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

Laura: No one has ever asked me if songs come to me in dreams. In fact, they have many times, but they’re never as good, or as complete as they are in the dream. So far I’ve been able to clip excerpts from dreams but not the whole song. There have been times when I’ve tried to wake myself up so that I’ll remember how lovely the instrumentation is, or the arrangement, or sometimes a delicious hook, only to wake up and lose it all in an instant. And maybe the only question that makes me flinch is “what singer do you sound like?”

Andrew: Not tired of answering questions… yet… As the guitar player in 3 Pairs of Boots, when is someone going to ask why growing up in San Francisco I was inspired by English bands and LA country rock artists, instead of the psychedelic San Francisco scene? I think the answer is that the English bands were passing down the great American blues & jazz artists, and the country rock bands and folk singers were passing down the legends of country singers, songwriters, and guitar pickers. That’s what resonated with me.

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Laura: We’re pondering whether we’ve been spending more time than necessary writing and recording full albums. It isn’t necessary to do that, and I think we may try releasing EP’s from now on. So yeah, the do over would be releasing fewer tracks at a time on EP’s and maybe even pressing and releasing them on vinyl, in addition to digital release.

Andrew: It’s been such a long winding journey thru many musical styles, I wished we would have found our 3 Pairs of Boots sooner, it’s definitely our wheelhouse.  But then again, would we be as good if we hadn’t had all of those experiences? it may have taken all the stops and starts, all the bands, the recordings, the ups and downs, the disappointments (of which there were many)… to get to where we are today, doing the Boots thing…

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

Laura: Ouch, this is an impossible question for a music junkie to answer, but I’ll give it a shot. I’ll say I’d like to go back in time to observe the production of Kate Bush’s, Hounds of Love album. Back in the day, I played that record incessantly. It was released in 1985 when I was just a kid and wannabe musician. And there was such a slew of great music released in that decade, but Hounds of Love didn’t sound like anything else, it was unique, and it was brilliant. To be privy to Bush’s process at that time would’ve been the most fascinating learning experience I could dream of.

Andrew: I would have loved to be the bass player for the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album. Just to be around him and soak it all up. Hendrix was a pioneer, there was no one doing what he did before him. Such a great record, and not just the hits, the ballads were fantastic. He did it all; songwriting, singing, showmanship, and the best rock guitarist in my opinion. He was deep, rich with experiences. He had such an interesting career leading him up to that moment. There are some great stories about him, being discovered by Chas Chandler, the bass player for The Animals in a NY café, and then once in England quickly blowing away everyone who saw him. To be able to see it up close would have been amazing.

3 PAIRS OF BOOTS LINKS:

OFFICIAL SITE

FACEBOOK

X – TWITTER

INSTAGRAM

Category: Interviews