SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 30, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Local indie-rock group The Alpines are busy putting down musical roots in Salt Lake City before they branch out into different states.
The Salt Lake City-based music partnership between Bri McCall and Danny Patiño also blends influences of Americana, psychedelic, dance, folk, and synth.
McCall, who is originally from Idaho, has said that originally, writing music was her passion. She moved to Utah in 2018 and began gigging solo, then started a search for collaborators that lasted a couple of years. McCall finally took to Reddit and there, she met Patiño, who began his musical journey with Flamenco and Latin standard guitar lessons and who had been part of local groups Hamartia and Ghost Radio. McCall pitched the idea to Patiño to tell the story of four weary travelers finding a new home in a post-apocalyptic world, and the idea for the group’s debut album “Heading North” was born. You can listen to the album on SoundCloud here.
We spoke with McCall and Patiño over the phone, and asked them first if their musical connection was immediate.
“To be in the music scene as long as I’ve been in it, when I met Briana, it wasn’t that I wasn’t gung ho, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, but you definitely have to feel it out because sometimes you meet people, especially over the internet, and you don’t know if they’re crazy, right?” Patiño said. “So it’s usually like, you know, the third, fourth, fifth time that we’re collaborating that like OK, now I kind of see how this is working out to be. We both knew professionally that we really wanted to do this, but you never know, right? Because she has a musical background. I have a musical background. And neither of us were crazy. But sometimes it doesn’t work, you know? I’m into death metal, she’s into cowgirl rock, right? So to answer your question, it was it was about a month into collaborating that we were like, oh, we’re like this is the real deal, this is totally gonna work.”
McCall added: “I was pretty stoked with Danny from the start; I had been wanting to collaborate for a long time. When I met Danny it had been like two years of just kind of meeting people and being really unimpressed. As soon as I met Danny, I was like: ‘Oh, this guy, he has everything that I don’t have.’ And I just really wanted to show that like: ‘It’s worth your time, and we’re gonna do something with this.’ And we both would come in a band practice and we each just had quite a bit prepared to show it to the other and just be like: ‘Look, look what I can do.'”
We also asked them what the writing process was for “Heading North.”
“We did a lot of sending material back and forth,” McCall said. “And like we’d have an idea and then whether it was lyrics first, music first or whatever, it’s definitely a lot of just quick recordings on Logic sent over via text.”
Patiño added: “The inception of the album was you texted me and said: ‘Hey, would you be down to make a concept album of the apocalypse?’ And that’s when I was sold on Briana, I was like: ‘What are we talking about here?’ So we went to a coffee shop with notebooks and we spent like the next three hours just jotting down ideas. This was a little bit out of my wheelhouse because I live in the whole music production, composition side of things. So I was like: ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’
“So, you know, just a series of notebooks and just like: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if this is the story we told?’ Like: ‘OK, how would we transcribe that to music? You know, what’s the vibe, the flow of the album? Do we want long epic songs, or kind of more pop-centric songs?’ At that time, we were heavily leaning toward a more kind of Americana quasi-acoustic vibe all around so all the songs were originally played just between her and I on on acoustic guitars. I think that when you listen to ‘Heading North’ you can kind of tell that’s how they first started. But as our collaboration went on, we just decided, you know, it’d be really cool if we had more of a band sound and more of a synthy even kind of dance kind of thing going.”
McCall added: “I came into this project acoustic-singer-songwriter girl, but I’ve totally gotten rid of my acoustic; I’m like totally on electric now. It’s been like such a fun evolution, having that rocker chick vibe.”
The pair have also been joined by bassist Jake Trotts and drummer Levi Johnson to form a four-piece band.
“We pretty much wrote the entire album, and I semi-produced it in Logic, just like really robust demos,” Patiño said. “I would just send them the stems [individual musical elements that, when layered together, make a song] and be like: ‘Learn these songs, and we’re just going to play them live.’ And to their credit, I mean, they were gung ho from the start, like they were just very stoked on on the indie rock, kind of almost like spastic sound that we have; we can toggle between like chill all the way to like basically prog-rock, right?
“Because you know, anybody that just sees us without without any context is just like: ‘OK, a girl-fronted, indie band,’ and then we just kind of go for it. And they’re like: ‘Who the hell are these guys? They’re like shredding, they’re doing all sorts of crazy stuff.’ And that’s basically because we brought on the drummer and bassist. They’re very talented dudes. And once they learned ‘Heading North,’ once they’ve learned all those songs and we’ve been performing with them, we made the executive decision, Briana and I, like all right, we are going to leverage their talents as far as we can take it because they’re so good. As stoked as we are on ‘Heading North,’ it just came out this year. So it’s funny that we’re even like, thinking about this way, but the new stuff that we’re writing is is just like so different.”
He added: “This next set of songs we’re writing, from a conceptual standpoint, are all very, I would say, more traditional concepts like relationships, tensions, visceral notions.” McCall chipped in: “Things coming to an end and getting re-birthed.”
We also asked them how they would describe their live show.
“I think what’s fun about us is that I’m up there, being dramatic and weird, and that alone really interests people of like: ‘What is she doing?'” McCall said. “And then Danny’s up there just shredding. If you’re like, more of a musical person, and you’re watching Danny, you’re like: ‘Whoa!’ Or if you’re more just kind of like watching for the entertainment, you’re like: ‘What’s this girl doing?’ So I kind of think we have a little bit of yin and yang going on onstage that makes it pretty fun.”
Patiño added: “We follow the like, comedians’ way of writing and performing where like every show, we go on stage, we just try stuff. If the crowd likes it, we go ‘check,’ and we do that next time, right? So by the time we play, like 100 shows that like are refined, we’re calling out all the tricks that we tried every show, so it’s a really refined performance at the end. I’ve heard a lot of comedians, that’s how they build their specials. And so I’ve taken that to heart of like, every time we play a show, we’re just gonna throw shit at the wall. And if people dig it, we do that next time and if they don’t, we don’t do that again.”
We also asked the two what they think of the music scene in Utah at present.
“I think that the music scene is like, a couple years behind the housing scene, it’s starting to build momentum but hasn’t fully exploded yet,” McCall said. “But I really feel a lot of momentum building. I think what’s hard with Salt Lake is you have a lot of Mormons and you have a lot of outdoor rec people. The Mormons don’t really drink and the outdoor rec people don’t really like to go out at night. So it can be hard to pull to like late-night venue shows. A lot of shows are offered to us, especially on weekdays, it’s hard enough for us to get there. And we kind of try to combat that as much as possible; we will ask the venue to start an hour earlier, and whatnot, because people just don’t want to stay out late. I think that’s kind of quite different than other bigger cities that are comparable with Salt Lake.”
Patiño added: “I think you have to differentiate the Salt Lake scene from the Provo scene. Because Provo does have a pretty bustling young music scene. And very different to Salt Lake where you kind of have like a little bit of your legacy of rock and roll guys, your blues guys. You have a few pretty good indie bands that are kind of doing the thing, the bands that come to mind are The Plastic Cherries and Dad Bod and The Melons. They’re doing the thing and they’re hustling. And then you go to Provo, and it seems like there’s like all the young kids are just gung ho and they are listening to like contemporary music, like music that came out this year. And so there’s this weird kind of, it’s not a tension, but it’s definitely a younger crew down there.”
We also asked the two what the rest of this year is looking like for them and also what their medium to long-term musical goals are.
“This year, I feel like we’re just kind of solidifying relationships we built last year, so we’re getting in really good with a couple of ski resorts, and we’ve got some summer events coming up there,” McCall explained. “We’re like, slowly inching our way into the S&S [Presents; a company that books concerts] crowd, trying to keep our name fresh in their minds.”
“We keep the summer pretty open on our personal calendar just because we know that it’s gonna fill up; we have this mini freak out if we don’t have shows like a couple of months in advance,” Patiño said. “But like sure as shit, we’ll get to August and have like 20 gigs; summertime is when you play shows. But our ethos this year has kind of been like build relationships; like show venues and bars and ski resorts that we’re a consistent band that has a bubbly following, let’s say.”
McCall added: “We also feel like, if we can’t win over our own hometown, why are we trying to win over other cities? Last year and this year we focused locally, and maybe next year we’ll start like branching out around our area. And see, maybe hit California or Boise or Colorado.”
Patiño added: “Why would try and go on a tour, and lose a bunch of money, when we can’t get support locally? For all intents and purposes, that’s where people should know us and care about us.”
McCall said their second album is mostly written, and they are aiming to release it in spring 2025.
“We’ve been performing at least half of the album for a long time now,” she said. “We learned a lot from our first album of what we want to clean up. So we’re just trying to approach it to where when we release it, those songs are going to capture all the playlist curators’ attention to get them on playlists on radios.”
Patiño added: “Not to mention, our live sound has really been what what people dig. And not saying that ‘Heading North’ wasn’t a finely produced album. Our guy at Rocket Skates studios, he did a great job and he did exactly what we asked them to do. We were just kind of very green. You know, now we really know what our sound is. Maybe back then we were still kind of dabbling.”
McCall added: “We’re definitely being a lot more particular with things. I think it’s really gonna pay off. We’ve rewritten so many songs, so many times, and every time it gets a little better. So I’m really excited; we’ve been talking with our art lady, we there’s a girl on Instagram who is doing art for us.”
We also asked what other than music brings the two joy.
“We both like to read, and we both like working out, it’s just like part of our lives,” McCall said. “I love to rock climb, that’s one of my favorite things, and [to Danny] you’re climbing now too.”
Patiño added: “We feel like we just started. In fact, every time we approach a project or a new album or we feel like we just started like, everything’s still so fresh for us. It’s so invigorating, we’re like, oh my gosh, this time around, we’re gonna do that and we’re just so excited for anytime we take on a new thing or play a new show or start a new project or an album. We’re just like dig our heels in, just invest in it.”
The Alpines have gigs coming up including Big Cottonwood Brew Fest at Solitude on Sunday, June 16, The Front Summer Concert Series in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, June 26, and Piper Down in Salt Lake City on Saturday, June 29.
For more about The Alpines and their summer dates, click here.
