Echosmith is an indie pop trio of siblings, headed by vocalist Sydney Sierota. She’s accompanied by her two brothers, Graham and Noah, who play drums and bass respectively. Noah also provides back-up vocals on many of the bands tracks. As the band revs up for their next album, “Inside a Dream,” The Triangle had the opportunity to speak with Echosmith’s Noah Sierota prior to their Camden show on their summer tour with Pentatonix.
The Triangle: What part of the tour are you on right now?
Noah Sierota: We have a day off in Atlanta, Georgia. We’re headed to Charlotte, North Carolina, tomorrow.
TT: How’s the tour been going so far?
NS: Tour’s been great! We’re about a third of the way through it, and it’s been awesome. The shows have been pretty massive, the crowd’s been awesome. It’s been wild. It’s fun to open up for a band that’s an a capella group. The fans that come to these shows are just so attentive you know, you often have kids that grew up in choir, kids that enjoy music, so it’s like 12 thousand people that are just completely paying attention. All eyes on you — like it’s something you hardly get in a setting this big, so, I don’t know, we’re really grateful for it.
TT: I was going to say it’s a complete 180 from when you guys were on Warped Tour a few years ago.
NS: Oh yes it is. Way different.
TT: What cities on the tour are you most excited to play?
NS: Great question! I really enjoy the Carolinas. I think it’s just so beautiful there, the greenery is really awesome, and you get that sort of southern feel from it. We’re from Los Angeles, so we don’t get much of that back home, so I’m excited for that. We’re hitting up Virginia Beach as well, and we have a friend that lives there. That’s kind of what’s fun about touring is that often, especially when you live in a place like LA, people move in and then they move out of the state often. So we have lots and lots of friends that live all around the country and sometimes around the world, and you get to catch up with people you probably wouldn’t see otherwise.
TT: Out of all of your songs, are you playing mostly new stuff that we haven’t heard, stuff from “Talking Dreams,” or the EP?
NS: Most of our songs in the set, because we’re an opener we can only play about 30ish minutes, most of our songs are from our EP that came out last year. Actually, I think it’s about evenly split. We’re playing three songs from “Talking Dreams,” three songs from the EP and “Over My Head” which is from the EP but it came out as a single.
TT: How do you pick which songs you play when you’re on the road?
NS: Too many conversations. It takes a lot of time because we obviously all have favorites, we all have ones that the crowd will react to in a certain way, and when we play a show, we always try to think of the big picture and create kind of a narrative through the experience for people to follow with us, and that’s hard. Often you’ll have songs you love to play, but maybe it doesn’t fit in this style. For example, there’s a song called “Goodbye” that we have, it’s actually one of our most listened to new songs, but it’s hard to find a place for it in a set that’s 30 minutes. Things like that happen and, mostly that one because I love playing that one, but that’s kind of what happens. It happens to all of us every tour.
TT: Collectively, what is your favorite song to play live?
NS: I think we all really enjoy playing the song “Get into My Car” off of our EP that came out last year. It’s emotional, fun to play, and I kind of get to switch between synthesizer stuff and playing the electric bass, and it’s just a fun song we all really enjoy. We love mid-tempo, upbeat kinds of songs. It’s a good fit for us. It’s not too upbeat, but it’s not too slow either. It’s just, in that space.
TT Currently, are you working on new music? Or just hitting the road and seeing what comes from it?
NS: Both. Literally, before we called you, I was working on some new stuff. Sydney and I have been working a lot on different ideas, kind of trying to pump as much creativity as we can. This tour is a great space for it, because we aren’t headlining, so we have a lot more time than we usually do, so we’re getting that kind of space to work and create and have those outputs to get something new out.
TT: What has been the overall reaction from the fans to your new music? I know the EP came out about a year ago.
NS: You know, music sometimes takes awhile for people to hear it. It’s been fun because every day, there’s people discovering us for the first time, or people being like “oh wait this is the band that did ‘Cool Kids,’” so we kind of get both those quite a bit. It’s really fun to see. I think it’s most fun to see in the live setting because then you get to fully experience with your eyes what people like, what maybe they’re not as into, what translates better in a live setting versus what has more Spotify listens, things like that. It’s a fun thing to study.
TT: Considering you are all siblings, how does the writing process work? Is there a lot of sibling bickering back and forth?
NS: I think it’s not as much of that, surprisingly. It’s more of just very loose and casual. Twenty minutes ago probably, Sydney you know, she’s at Starbucks right now and she was texting me these lyrics saying “you know, I was trying to write an Instagram caption, but I think this could be a good song lyric so I won’t post it on Instagram but I’ll text it to you!” So I’ve been trying to figure out some ideas with that. It’s often kind of casual, which I like. That’s the thing about family, you just bring up ideas and talk, throw out random ideas and just let things flow naturally.
TT: Do you all try to contribute lyrics and music, or does one person do lyrics while one does the melody? How does that whole process work as a family?
NS: It really depends on the song and the setting. I think those two factors kind of determine what we’re all doing. At times, I can be doing more of the lyrics, while at other times Sydney can or Graham. He doesn’t do as many lyrics but he comes up with a lot of great melodies and arrangements and things like that. It just depends on the day. Most of the time, and what I think we’ve been growing more into, because we are so young, has mostly been that Sydney works a lot on the lyrics because she’s the one singing them, then we’ll work on the melodies and then we’ll kind of make sure all of the arrangements sound right together.
TT: With this tour, what does a normal day look like for the three of you?
NS: Most days, Sydney and I are up early, not Graham — Graham for some reason sleeps like 12 hours a day when we’re on tour. We’ll get up and work out, get coffee and breakfast because of catering. Then we’ll try working on some music, just hanging out, then head down, do a meet and greet and do the show. We fill the day up well.
TT: To wrap things up, if you guys could tour with anyone, who would it be?
NS: I think it’d be fun to do something with a DJ. It’s not something that often happens for bands and DJs to do full tours, but I love the environments they create. You know, someone like Zedd or Whethan, someone like that would be fun. Those environments are all about having fun, enjoying the music. There’s just something about those environments that are so simple and joyful about that type of spirit.