A Big Sound From a Small Pond

Roadkill Ghost Choir makes the most of having a lot of time on their hands.

“You've gotta work hard to do well in Florida,” says Roadkill Ghost Choir frontman Andy Shepard. “It's a strange place to be a band. People are kind of weird about music,” he says. “Sometimes they're just waiting for the band to stop so the DJ can start.” Roadkill Ghost Choir hails from DeLand, Florida, a small town between Daytona Beach and Orlando. Shepard is the pen in the band, and despite the attendant boredom of a little hometown finds himself grateful for the solitude when it comes to writing lyrics. “There isn't really much to do there, so it's helped us in the sense that all we do is play all the time. All we do is music.”

Roadkill Ghost Choir's debut EP Quiet Light came out last month, and they hit the road for a summer tour, coming to Gasa Gasa tonight for a show with The Eastern Sea.

While their music doesn't feel inspired by a place, it does seem affected by a lack of place, traveling through the ephemeral space of memory and mourning, hovering and unmoored. Shepard's voice stands alone against a backdrop of deep-toned sustained bass lines, melancholy pedal steel, and bursts of trumpet or keys. The Choir element of their name feels confusing until the songs unfold and the space is filled up with corporeal echoes of loss and broken promises. His voice has an ethereal sound reminiscent of Fleet Foxes or Midlake, and is able to attain that lifted, speeding along a lonely highway feeling that makes Fleetwood Mac such good road trip music.

Shepard began writing songs in 2010 and pulled the band together when he was offered a live show. “I didn't really have plans to play in front of people. That seemed kind of terrifying, and I figured it'd be kind of boring to watch,” he says, about playing a solo show. “I asked my brothers and Kiffy (pedal steel) to join me for that night, and we never really stopped playing together after that.” 

Shepard admits that he's probably “the worst musician in the band,” so he brings his lyrics to the band and everyone writes their parts together. The EP illustrates the process beautifully, with each song owned sonically by one or another instrument. Confessional folk storytelling with a soaring, kinetic soundtrack. The EP achieves a feeling of journey when listened to straight through, or of an emergence from a cave-y isolation into the bright light of day. The hard work is paying off.