For the past decade, New York-based Jocelyn & Chris – the band led by brother and sister duo Jocelyn and Chris Arndt – has played and recorded in many special and unique places around the country. That includes the Viper Room in Los Angeles, The Tank in Colorado and Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
“I wouldn’t give those experiences up for anything, and I’m proud of the work we did in those places, but we’ll always come back here,” they tell Scummy Water Tower. “It’s the best!”
Even so, there’s one place that has extra meaning to the band and has been there on every step of their journey to success – White Lake Studios in Albany, NY. White Lake is a multifunctional facility featuring four studios. In addition to musical artists, the studio has hosted professionals from film, television, gaming, and those involved in creating for the web. Clients include Netflix, Discovery, Lifetime, Universal, Disney, Nickelodeon, and HBO.
It’s also where the band recorded eight studio albums and a live album, filmed numerous music videos, organized radio campaigns, appeared on NBC’s Today Show, set up tours, produced marketing assets, packaged cookies as gifts for radio supporters, charted five Billboard AAA (Adult Alternative Airplay) Top 40 singles, and ordered “truckloads” of late-night takeout food.”
It’s also where they recorded most of their latest album Favorite Ghosts, which came out last year in digital and physical formats and this year continues to be added to streaming services.
“We’ve done everything else you can possibly imagine—all beginning at this building,” the band says. “I’m not kidding when we say it’s our musical home!…Good people, good vibes, and good times all around!”
“When you’re finding a space in which to be creative, it’s difficult to beat a place with so many memories. It can feel vulnerable to get into the creative spirit. Having a place like White Lake makes it easy. Plus, the people who work there are all the best!”
That includes studio owner David Bourgeois, who also happens be the duo’s drummer, producer, manager, longtime collaborator, and someone they consider a close friend. Bourgeois has collaborated musically with the brother and sister duo for a decade.
“He’s an all-around awesome dude,” says the band.
The admiration is mutual for Bourgeois. He feels their latest album is their strongest to date.
“The album Favorite Ghosts is honestly the strongest material I’ve produced in my career, both in terms of lyrical depth and musicality,” says Bourgeois. “Out of the gate we charted two back-to-back Billboard Top 40 singles which is quite a significant feat for an independent artist. My experience collaborating with Jocelyn & Chris has been nothing short of incredible.”
While some of the band’s songs veer on the harder rocking side, they’ve also shown their ability to showcase ample intensity and emotion acoustically.
“After a decade of collaboration with Jocelyn & Chris, both as their producer and drummer, one aspect of their music that never ceases to amaze me is its remarkable adaptability to semi-acoustic orchestration,” says Bourgeois.
“Even in our latest track, “Break Me Down,” which leans heavily into rock elements, we’ve found that it seamlessly transitions into a more intimate orchestral setting. I feel like this is a reflection of truly great song writing.”
While they feel great about the full band versions of the songs, they feel playing the songs acoustically allows them to share “a whole other side to Favorite Ghosts that the record doesn’t capture.
“These songs absolutely kill in our semi-acoustic set,” says the band. “This setup with acoustic guitar and bass and cajon is the way we begin our approach to recording a lot of the songs in the studio. In the past, it’s usually just been a stepping stone to get to the better, bigger, cooler full-band version, but there’s something special about the songs on this album. They work just as well semi-acoustically as they do full band!”
So, for their entry in the Water Tower Sessions, Jocelyn & Chris, Bourgeois and bassist Dan Zavadil convened to film in the same studio room where they recorded Favorite Ghosts.
“We’ve thrown around the idea of recording a semi-acoustic version of the album, but we also really like the idea that these versions of the song only exist in live performances. It’s always awesome to have an opportunity to show off this lesser-known side of our music,” the band says.
“It’s always fun to play. Getting to jam out with the band, getting to share our music with a new audience—that’s the good stuff. We’re thankful for the opportunity!”
The session features performances of “Sugar and Spice,” Run Away,” and “Break Me Down,” the latter being an acoustic preview of their latest single.
For the band, it’s “always tricky, picking a short set to show yourselves to a new audience.” But they feel they succeeded.
“You want to show off your new stuff, but you also want to show a good breadth of your work, and maybe most importantly, you want to pick songs that are just undeniably fun to play,” the band says. “We knew we wanted to play ‘Break Me Down,’ since that’s the song that’s coming out this week. Other than that, we chose ‘Sugar and Spice’ and ‘Run Away’ because they’re both super fun, and they show a pretty good array of what we do.”
“’Sugar and Spice’ was the first song we released post-lockdown, so it’ll always have a special place in our hearts. And ‘Run Away’ is our most recent radio single which was the Most Added AAA radio single in the US on release day, and we can’t get enough of it. It spent 14 weeks in the Billboard AAA top 30! We’re so proud of that song, and we just want to share it with everyone we can.”
The band feels that Favorite Ghosts is full of the best songs they’ve written to date, “hands down, bar none.” “We spent so much more time than we expected honing the record to absolute perfection, and I love the way it turned out.”
Scummy Water Tower recently caught up with the brother-sister duo to talk about their latest music, how their sibling bond helps them create music and finding creative ways to connect with fans.
How would you describe the band’s sound? What makes it unique?
We’re inspired by all kinds of music, from rock to jazz to pop to blues and everything in between, and we try to bring that range of material we love to our songwriting. So maybe something like indie-rock-blues-jazz-pop…? Kidding. Here’s a more serious answer: artists are always evolving, and we’re no different—our sound has changed a lot over the years.
But there are two things that have stayed really consistent over all of our recorded work: the power and emotion behind Jocelyn’s vocal performances, and the blues-inspired guitar drives behind our songs. Put those together and add the fact that we’re indie, and you get indie blues-rock; that’s been our go-to descriptor for a few years now, and I don’t see us changing it any time soon.
How has the band’s sound and lyrics evolved most on Favorite Ghosts compared to previous releases?
We always strive to make every record better than all the previous ones, and I think we really nailed that with Favorite Ghosts. The songwriting is more mature, the production is absolutely amazing, the performances are the best we’ve ever had—everything about this record is just plain better. I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out.
Plus, we also really leaned into our rock roots. More than any other previous record, Favorite Ghosts has some seriously aggressive tunes. I’m not sure we would’ve put songs like “Skeleton Key” and “Someone Else’s Blood” on our previous albums. But my favorite of the rock songs on the record is definitely “Break Me Down”… it’s got a sick beat, and driving riff, some awesome rock harmonies, and one of the coolest basslines we’ve ever recorded. That, plus the screaming lead guitar… it’s just *chef’s kiss*. I absolutely love how it turned out, and I can’t wait for everyone to hear it!
What does it mean to be able to perform with your sibling? What advantages does that provide with playing, whether in the studio or live stage?
Making music is creative, and that means it can get really personal. It’s impossible to collaborate productively with someone unless you really trust them. You’re constantly putting out ideas, which are sometimes amazing, but also sometimes falter… that’s a difficult thing to navigate.
We’ve lived our whole lives together, and we’ve written so much music together that it’s just easy. Siblings aren’t afraid to call out each other’s bullshit, but also, at the end of the day, you’re family. It’s not like some creative disagreement is going to tear us apart; family doesn’t work like that. It’s kind of funny, actually. People always talk about how they think it’s amazing that we can be siblings and work so closely together, but I’ve always felt like there’s no one in the world I’d rather work with than Jocelyn.
The band does frequent live streams. What do you like most about them?
Covid absolutely tore apart everyone’s assumptions about how the music industry works. All of the sudden, we couldn’t play shows, we couldn’t go into the recording studio—we couldn’t even rehearse with the band and perhaps worst of all… we couldn’t connect with our audience! So, we turned to the internet. We started live streaming, just to keep ourselves sane.
The unexpected result was a new community of supporters and even a core fan group who refer to themselves as “Arndtvarks” that we never would’ve connected with otherwise. We love them. And now many of the people we got to know via streaming are first in line for tickets when we do a show. They got us through the dark times and have stuck with us ever since. Live streaming is cool in a whole lot of ways, but that community is definitely my favorite part of it all.
What should people know about your new music? What are you most excited about?
Favorite Ghosts is the best album we’ve ever made, and we just want people to listen to it! We’ve been releasing the album to streaming platforms as a series of singles. Once “Break Me Down” comes out on October 13, you’ll be able to hear almost the entire album; there’ll only be one more song to release before it’s all out there. That’s the most exciting thing for us. This album has been a part of our lives for such a long time, and it’s finally out there, in the wild. So go listen!
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
