Sons of Hippies are a local psychedelic rock band that have been playing the Tampa Bay area for years. After a brief name change (formerly Black Eyed Angels), a few EPs and some experimentation in their music, Sons of Hippies are playing at a Rock the Vote event tonight in St Petersburg. You can read our review of their A-Morph LP and a live review here.
There was a major change in your sound from A-Morph to a more distanced sound. What made that change happen?
Jonas Canales: We took a more polished, tight approach.
Katherine Barnes Kelly: We were trying to write pop music. Let’s try to write popular music and try to get people to like us more than being a psychedelic band. Which isn’t a complete waste of time, but it just didn’t feel right. But the reverb and the delay, that’s more of what we do. It was just kind of like, ‘Let’s try this for an album’
Where do you see the direction of the band going?
Kathryn: It’ll be a combination of both. There was some drone-y, hypnotic stuff that just moved in an ambiguous way on “Fade to White”. There was the whole dynamic shift to a lot of the songs, it was just the same repeated motif, which is cool but I would say that we’ll take the actual sound and put that in more cohesive songs.
Can we expect new material soon?
Katherine: We’ll be coming out with a full length album next year.
[To Katherine] In the past I’ve seen you use a Jaguar, and tonight I saw you with an American Standard guitar. What prompted the change?
Katherine: I’ve had some gear issues lately, and it sucks. The Jaguar was actually the first guitar that I ever had, I got it when I was 14. It’s a very complicated schematic inside the guitar, with pick ups and pick up selectors and the tone, there’s like 30 different combinations of things you can get. Somewhere in there, something is going wrong and it sounds all choked up.
I’ll probably be recording with a Jazz Master.
You just got back from a tour with the Florida Kilos. How has your work with them impacted Sons of Hippies?
Katherine:I have a lot of fun in that band, but I’ve only been with them for a short while. But I had a really good time. The more music you play, the better you’re going to get. I’m using it as an opportunity to experience other kinds of playing, and Shawn’s taught me a lot about guitar. It’s not my material, so it’s a different approach.