Stewart Maps Out Their Return
Stewart publicity photo courtesy of Reybee, Inc.
In 2010 the album, “Kicks” by the band Stewart was selected as one of the Best of 2010 albums. We chatted with Stewart’s singer-songwriter Andrea Tarka about “Kicks” infectious nature and what it really means to release an album independently in the 21st century.
The album’s conception was a long one, as Andrea explains it was a mixture of old and new tunes that hadn’t found a way into their past records. She explained, “We had found a drummer back in 2009, the end of 2009, named Kevin and we had a bunch of different songs that didn’t really fit in our older of albums—but they were good songs,” she continued, “we kinda developed a concept around ‘how can we put these random things together [into once cohesive album]?’ what we ended up doing was going with this idea of doing each song different [from the next]. Instead of each song following the same thing it became more of a progression of each song. We just went all across the board with the songs and the styles.”
When it came to choosing a name for album, Andrea reveals that it band mate John White came up with “Kicks.” “As soon as I heard [the title] I thought it was perfect,” she said. “We just wanted something that was fun and playful that represented us as a band. We’re all kinda silly and dorky and like to have a good time.”
In the past when asked how the band would describe itself Andrea has stated, “like an aggressive 5 year old playing dodge ball.”
Releasing an album independently is no picnic as Andrea revealed the band was 100% hands on in practically every aspect of the album. “The old dream is that you get signed [by a label] you have the label to do everything for you but what we realized that was a dying model and it really wasn’t an option for us,” she explained. “We just talked to everybody we knew, got everything together, booked a studio, we got my friend Jacob, whose a comic book artist did all the album art for us. So a lot of it was just deciding wanting to make it happen and collectively coming together not just as a band but as a group of friends and doing all the work to make it happen. It was labor intensive and took about 3 months to put it all together and another 3 months to promote it.”
The labor of love features one of the most personal tracks and dear to Andrea’s heart, “[Consider Me] Gone has to be the song that has the most meaning to me,” she revealed. “The song is about an ex-boyfriend who passed away and I realized that everything in my life up to that point was about him in some way. That song is the most personal and true to my heart. It’s a little bit of an older song but it didn’t really have its own voice form of expression until we re-recorded it for this record. I think that song no matter how much I hear it or how much we play it that song gets me in a certain way.”
The band has been hard at work writing and creating new music for their next release but they’re in no hurry. The band plans to capitalize on “Kicks” success before rushing out another LP. Andrea revealed the new album won’t be out till the Fall of 2011. “Right now we’ve been working on a lot of new songs but we’re waiting to get the word out [on the band] a little bit more and taking a break from performing shows cause one, it’s cold and two, our drummer is going to be in Europe drumming in another band. We’re going to play more shows once the summer hits. All around, we’re trying to get to play more regional shows not just New York. We do a lot of shows in New York and Brooklyn but we’re trying to branch out to Philly, Connecticut, Boston and even as far as Chicago and Ohio.”
We’re sure that no matter when the band decides to return to the road or crank out another album they’ll do just fine. For more on Stewart visit, www.stewarttheband.com
