Indie folk band The Hunts rolled their musical family caravan to Rockwood Music Hall on Monday. The seven-piece band, made up entirely of brothers and sisters who display an abundance of pure musical talent, played their folk guitars, banjos, mandolins, violins, bongos, acoustic bass, piano, and drums for an impressively packed venue on a Monday night. Throughout their set they covered the three singles off their debut EP, Life Was Simple, which came out last month on Cherrytree Records.
Ranging from ages 16 to 24, Jessi, Jenni, Josh, Jonathan, Jordan, Justin, and Jameson all take turns with different instrumentation pretty much every song. While Josh and Jenni take the majority of the lead vocal roles, I was REALLY impressed of how everyone else in the group contributes with great sounding voices and spot-on harmonies. Throughout their nine-song set the band displayed a musical maturity that you don’t see a lot from such young members. Their powerful instrumentation meshes great with beautiful melodies and a soft touch with the easy tenor vocals coming from Josh and Jenni.
I was able to speak with Jenni for a few minutes as the band was pulling into Rock Island, Illinois, to talk about what it’s like playing with her brothers and sisters.
P&W: Traveling as a group with your brothers and sisters, do you feel like you’re actually working, or is it just hanging with the family? Jenni: (Laughs) Ya know kind of both. We’ve been traveling for seven or eight years that we’ve been touring. So it just feels like what we’ve always done, but it’s the best job ever.
P&W: What do you enjoy most about playing with your brothers and sisters?
Jenni: Probably the memories, being on the road and seeing the different cities. My brothers are just the funniest people that I know so they keep us laughing and keep things fun. It’s an opportunity that not many siblings get to have.
P&W: Your EP Life Was Simple has been out for about a month now, are you getting good feedback from it?
Jenni: We’ve been blown away by the good response. Everyone’s been so excited for us. It has sort of caught us off guard when people show up and know our lyrics because they’ve been listening to the album.
P&W: You’re all so musically diverse, how do you guys decide who plays what instrument on a given song?
Jenni: Well we all began learning the violin really young. Our mother is a classically trained violinist, so we all had a foundation on the violin as the years. Eventually we started playing in the community more and realized we wanted to learn other instruments. Each person really gravitated towards a different instrument.
P&W: Can you talk a little bit about how the group’s songwriting process goes?
It’s a very chaotic way of writing. Each song has a different story of how we wrote it
After a song is in the works we split up into two groups, Josh and I work on lyrics, and the others start to build on it musically. Jonathan is really strong at writing melodies. Josh likes calling it the ‘7 filters’, if a song makes it through all the filters then it gets thumbs up. The songs we write are memories and experiences we’ve had together. They all mean something to us.
P&W: Do you and your sister keep all your brothers honest with the female fans?
Jenni: (Laughs) It’s funny, as soon as they get on stage they become super shy, so they don’t talk to as many girls when we’re performing.
Article by: Tom Shackleford
