Looking Forward

If you'd heard singer/songwriters Jordan Wilson and Ben Riley, who travel collectively as acoustic folk-pop duo Georgia Fair, when they started banging out tunes together in high school, you'd never have spotted the direction they'd end up taking. After all, they were playing Nirvana and Soundgarden covers.

“I'm not sure,” Riley admits when asked about the direction their music has ultimately taken them. “I guess when we were in high school we'd gotten all the anger out and started to mellow out a little bit with growing up and… I dunno. I think we realised that the things that really inspired us and the things that we really dug were more the kind of style that we're playing now, rather than Nirvana and stuff. Mind you, I still have a massive soft spot for Nirvana. It wasn't really too much of a conscious decision – I guess it's just the way it's gone. Starting to write songs on acoustic and all that kind of thing probably had a big influence on it. It's nice to bring back the music and let the harmonies sing out a bit more. That was a big point I guess.”

Having settled on a softer, more lyrical musical style, Georgia Fair released a self-titled debut EP in 2009, followed by a second EP, Times Fly, in 2010, before heading off to record their debut album, All Through Winter, in the snow-covered mountains of Ashville, North Carolina, with American producer and Band Of Horses bass player Bill Reynolds.

“Before we knew it we were already over there,” Riley tells. “Our record company gave us a few names and we went through them, saw what they'd done before, spoke to a bunch, and Bill was just the one we kind of really connected with. So within a month or so of talking to him we were over there – it all happened really fast. I guess it's always been a dream of ours, to record a record in the States with someone who's as into music as we are and that's just what we found with Bill, so it was just a no-brainer in the end.

“It's funny, it's our first full-length record, but it kind of seems like the finish of a really big body of work. Once all the songs for that record were put on there we kind of started fresh again, so it's going to be interesting to see how the next record pans out. I think it's going to sound a bit different… I guess you hope each record sounds a bit different to the last. Writing's an ongoing thing for us, but we've written quite a bit in the last six months and got quite a few songs now and we're pretty much ready to put another record together, so hopefully that happens pretty soon.

“At the moment we're figuring out where we're going to record the next record and if we end up doing it in the States, when we go over there we'll just do a tour while we're there I guess. But I mean, obviously, Jordan and I both have a really strong kind of connection towards the States – it's just a place we're both very fond of and we want to do a lot of work over there, play a lot of music over there – so definitely in the near future we want to be doing our thing over there.”

Meanwhile there's a new single, Blind, off the album, which is giving them another excuse to take to the road to bring their music to whoever wants to listen.