The Wellspring Keep A Light
Dov has collaborated with many of the Shemspeed fam on albums and on tour. When he emailed us that he just recorded a track with his new group, The Wellspring for the Holiday, we were pretty psyched and had to post the track and an exclusive interview!
1. How did you and Talia link up?
quite by chance actually. a couple years ago, when i was in Fools For April, we set up a meeting at Overnight Productions, a film production company, to learn how to get our music placed in movies. Talia was VP of production and development there at the time, and we connected on the Jewish music angle – she sang for many years in a Jewish girl trio called Visions and I had been in Blue Fringe for years. talia ended up singing with us in the studio and live at a show. months later, after i was working solely on songwriting, she emailed me with lots of poems she had written and suggested we try writing together. we immediately hit it off and we got such great feedback encouraging us to be “the artist” rather than try to pitch our songs to other artists. talia left her job, and we ended up writing a ton of songs together in a short period of time and things have just been snowballing from there…
2. What brought on a holiday song? Be honest, were you thinking about Santa Clause or the olden day Matisyahu when you made the song?
Honestly, we hadn’t thought about it at all – but we got an email from a PR agent in NY asking us if we had a holiday song to contribute to a big mix tape that his company was making for The Humane Society to be featured on Mashable.com (going live Dec.20th). we didn’t have anything written yet, but told him we could work on something original. He said if we could get it to him in the next 2 days, he’d try to include us. we wasted no time and started writing something that day and recorded it the same day (hence all the homemade percussion – jingling coins and pulling light switches – that we did ourselves instead of hiring a drummer) we knew we wanted to write something about the miracle of Hanukkah but also wanted to keep it universal so everyone can relate to it as a classic holiday song. the music is very upbeat and festive, with kids singing along,etc, and the words are based on the concept that the Hanukkah lights of the menorah are to be kept in the window for people walking by to see them and know that a miracle happened – and can and do happen still. That’s a message that can translate across faiths — the light in the dark inspiring hope.
3. When is your album coming out and on what label?
we self-released our debut 5 song EP in Aug. and it’s available in iTunes and on our website – www.TheWellspringMusic.com. we will be doing a digital re-release in Feb. before we go on tour, with 1-2 bonus tracks added on. stay tuned…
4. When does your big tour start? Are you excited?
we are INSANELY EXCITED to be opening for Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller from Feb.14- April 22nd!! aside from the fact that we’ll be getting to perform alongside artists that we respect and we’re fans of, and we’ll get to perform our music in front of thousands of new fans, i’m so excited that i am able to go on tour despite the fact that i won’t be performing on friday nights because of shabbat. and- the tour ends a few days before pesach – it really worked out perfectly! check out our tour dates on our website to see which cities we’ll be in…
5. How often do you all work on songs?
Every day! Talia and i are our own managers right now so we spend the majority of the day at our computers doing the tedious work of emails, phone calls, etc., but it’s so important to us to constantly write new material and rehearse our songs. we try to spend a few hours every day either rehearsing, demoing or writing songs – that’s what we love doing most. Since the EP we’ve written at least 25 new songs, so we have a ton of material ready for next albums and for tv/film placements, etc.
6. Anything else you want the shemspeed fans to know???
we, and pete yorn will be tweeting about a free flight giveaway, thanks to our sponsor, LastMinuteTravel.com, so people should follow him @peteyorn and us @_TheWellspring and check it out so they can win a free flight to come see one of our concerts!
thanks to the Shemspeed family for featuring us and spreading the word. “when the wellsprings are spread…” 🙂
