Lake Street Dive members Rachael Price and Bridget Kearney chatted with singer-songwriter Maggie Rose on her Salute The Songbird podcast on JamBase partner Osiris Media. Price and Kearney related the story of how they met and formed the band, achieving success, what they love about being women in the music industry and more.
Price and Kearney met while attending the New England Conservatory of Music. The conversation saw the bandmates reminiscing on their time there as well as the fact they they were some of the only women in the jazz program.
“Speaking of women in music, were there other women in our class?” Bridget asked Rachael. “I think it was just you and me” (laughs), Price said. Rachael saw the lack of women in the jazz program as a “lack in encouragement.” “It’s a societal problem,” Kearney added. “It’s a cyclical illness. Why aren’t there more women engineers? Why aren’t there more women mathematicians? It’s because we’re not made to feel welcome in those worlds as young women.”
The duo discussed how their friendship blossomed when they joined Lake Street Dive, which was brought together by LSD’s Mike “McDuck” Olson, who was a composition major looking to move away from the traditional big band music he was studying and write original songs.
“He [Olson] formed the band and then asked us individually, so we didn’t know each other super well,” Price said. “McDuck was very formal,” she continued. “He wrote the name of the band on a chalkboard…then he explained a concept that was playing music freely like people play free jazz, which is without structure, without set chord changes. Then he said, ‘but, what if it was country music played freely?’ And we were like ‘uh-huh’ and we all nodded. Then he was like, ‘so, I think we should play a blues together…then we all played a blues and we were like, ‘we’re a band!’
The conversation also touches on the band’s longevity (17 years), how Rachael interprets songs from other band members as a vocalist, what it was like to achieve relatively quick success a decade after the band formed, socio-political messages in music, what they love about being women in the music industry and more.
Listen to Rachael Price and Bridget Kearney on Salute The Songbird With Maggie Rose below:
