Meet local band Calico Blue

After being greeted with a ‘fuck yeah!’ and a smile from bassist John Bergin, I was lead into lead singer Sarah’s home in Amherst. Expecting only three of the four members to actually be present, we waited a few minutes for the third to arrive. By happy surprise, both guitarist Eli and drummer Billy showed up within the next 20 minutes, making for the full Calico Blue experience. The four UMass upperclassmen assembled on the couch.

They recently released their debut, self titled album and are working hard to release their sophomore efforts in the near future.

“Our next album is gonna be called ‘Calico Two’,” joked Billy.

There was a scramble for fitting adjectives when asked about the genre of music they produce. A few examples included ‘surf-psych’, and ‘surfer-blues-dream-pop’, but it was Sarah who took on the task of describing with more than just adjectives:

“I feel like the trance just kinda comes from all of us being kinda off, like, spaced off a little bit. But we all kinda have our tastes in music that all kinda come together. Like Billy has his clearly Jazz style, and then John is someone who is classically trained with music taste all over the place, and then I come from a place of classic rock and kinda jazzy and Eli has introduced a lot of progressive electronic indie stuff.”

The band officially got together last October, and said that they were two pairs of people that met by chance. Sarah and Eli were friends from class and studio while John and Billy have been friends for a while and run a side milkshake business called ‘Billy Shakes.’

“Billy Shakes is a milkshake and t-shirt company that revolves around the logo of William Shakespeare drinking a milkshake. That’s really the only reason it exists. We sell t-shirts, sweatshirts, tank tops, and a variety of gourmet milkshakes.

“Calico Blue is like the tangibly successful version of Billy Shakes,” explained John. “Eli and I met through us bringing milkshakes to the architecture studio.

“Eli was like, ‘My friend Sarah and I have been writing some songs and we’re looking for a drummer and I bassist, do you know anyone?’ and I was like ‘yeah! I can pick up bass! Let’s do it!’”

“I came into the group with the name,” said John, “but I always just feel like the name always gives off more of a feeling. It doesn’t really mean anything directly. It’s like the sound of it and the image that you hear when you think of it just kinda mirrors our sound. I feel like we’ve grown into our name.”

Sarah added, “I’ve always thought of calico, which is like the textile pattern with the little flowers,  as being something that is so ‘western mass’ and then the ‘blue’ is something more like, jazzy or surf-y. It adds the dream element.”

When it comes to writing the music, Sarah is usually in charge of lyrics: “One of the ways I go through the writing process is I just say whatever comes to the top of my head, just mumbled nonsense, and then I make sense of it later.

“A lot of the topics I feel like I touch on are dreamscapes. Not necessarily what you dream but just the idea of being in a dream. And also, kind of a lot of dark topics that are masked in lighter sounds. I’ll be listening to the recordings of the band jamming and I’ll try to picture almost like a music video and usually a story will come out of it.”

The remaining members explained that they usually write songs by starting with a simple riff and adding different things onto it – they eventually create one big jam that they record so they can listen later on. John said, “There’s a lot of listening involved. We’ll all leave and take it with us. Like Sarah will have a recording of it, and just having it in your ears makes you think about it all the time.”

Eli exclaimed, “Some of our songs I’m like, ‘what the fuck are we playing right now’. Not in a bad way but like, ‘what is this?’ A lot of the stuff on our first album was Sarah and I writing, and then John and Billy bringing in the full parts. Our style is definitely changing because now it’s all four of us.”

John added,“There’s no limit to what we learn about each other the more we play with each other.”

The band has played different venues including Radio Bean in Burlington, VT, and Pearl Street in Northampton, but house shows are their favorite gigs. Sarah said, “We definitely started at house shows and it’s still just the most fun to play. Western Mass in general has a really good music scene that’s been around for a really long time that people don’t know about.”

Billy then added, “[House shows are] definitely where we thrive. I feel like the energy of a house show is unrivaled. We’ve started booking shows for next semester. Hoping to get into the festival circuit for the summer.”

The goals of the group, both long and short term, were described by John: “I wanna play in space. And for Emma Watson. I wanna do a living room show for Emma Watson’s family.

“But short term for the next few months, we’re going to be working on this album, and hopefully churning it out as the semester starts, and just play shows as much as possible.”

You can find Calico Blue at Radio Bean on February 6th, and at Smith College on February 11th. They are also on Bandcamp, Facebook, and walking around campus disguised as completely untalented students.

Go listen to their album and then you’ll understand just how great those disguises are – Calico Blue is an insanely creative and talented group for which high hopes are appropriate.