With their critically acclaimed 2017 release, Shanti’s Shadow, Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers revealed an intimate inner journey through meditation and musical exploration. Neither One of Us Is Wrong takes up where Shanti’s Shadow left off, soaring from personal introspection to a third eye coloured reflection on our larger culture and the deepening polarity of the time we live in. With this release, Hunt adds an ambitious layer to her expression by expanding creatively into the realm of visual art, releasing a music video for each song on the album.
“I see music, and art in general, as an opportunity to interpret and transmute the experiences we collectively encounter as we journey through life. Through this album, it is my hope to connect as deeply as possible with the most diverse group of people I can find. It is only when we make connections with those who we cast aside as ‘other’ that we can bridge the divide so prevalent in our current reality.”
Recorded in Brooklyn, NY at the Grand Street Studio with her tribe of musical companions, The Gatherers, (Roy Williams -Guitar/Vox, Dominick Leslie – Mandolin, Mandola, Octave Mandolin, Sam Reider – Piano, Organ, Accordion, all things keys, Dave Speranza – Bass, Jared Engle – Bass, Rachel Loy – Bass, Nicholas Falk – Drums, Stephanie Hunt, Jazz Mills and Sierra Hull – Vocal Harmonies, Mike Barnett and Ethan Jodziewicz – additional strings) Hunt attributes their evolution as a band in Brooklyn, NY to synchronistic beginnings:
“Dom, my fiancee at the time, had met and befriended Roy Williams, an incredible musician who could jam on any instrument. Roy happened to have a room opening up in Bedstuy, and offered up the space to us. It felt like we had entered into an art-centric version of the Chronicles of Narnia. Roy was friends with everyone, and his friends were the greatest musicians I’d ever met in my life. For all practical purposes, we were living in a music conservatory. It wasn’t long before we were pulled into Roy’s world and became a House Band.”
The informal band grew closer and closer as they leaned on each other to survive the demands of being musicians in New York. The spirit of collaboration that imbued Hunt’s initiation into music when she was six years old continued to insinuate itself into the life of the new tribe. A deep love of their craft allowed them to share both insecurities and creativity without ego or fear. How do we book gigs? Go on the road? Leverage Instagram? Put out an album? Perhaps unknown to them at the time, this was the beginning of a deep spiritual openness that would later translate to the musical language they created together.
The Gatherers didn’t formally coalesce as a band until Phoebe threw out an invitation to her New York circle of friends to travel together to India and study Indian classical music with Kala Ramnath. They practiced together for up to 10 hours a day, learning scale exercises individually and then coming together to improvise. When they returned, the momentum continued and Hunt intuitively knew that they needed to record together. That’s how their first album, Shanti’s Shadow, was born.
“We realized how much we loved each other, how well we all worked together, and that we were making something special. Two years later, it’s snowballed and we’ve played almost 200 dates a year at festivals, bars, venues, and clubs. And we’ve never even had an argument. I realized that these are my favorite musicians to record and play with. They read my voice, my nuance, my expressions, my breath. They get the songs in a way that reveals a deeper meaning than I ever imagined possible.”
Instead of following protocol and becoming a formalized band with rigid structure, this luminescent constellation of musicians run their individual projects as businesses and hire each other for gigs and tours. In one moment coalescing as Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers, the next Brother Roy, on Friday, Sam Reider & The Human Hands.
“We’ve never formally worked with a producer, because everybody in the band is a producer. Everyone has great ideas, and we always try everybody’s idea, even if we don’t think we’ll like it. In this way, the songs live and breathe together. Our aim is to honor the music.”
The original concept for Neither One of Us Is Wrong was to write a bunch of campfire songs that everyone could jam to. As the album came to life, Hunt realized that they were writing songs for the people, but they weren’t really campfire songs. The album’s title track was co-written with Hunt’s long-time mentor, Lari White Cannon, just before she was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2018. Watch the official videos for "Neither One Of Us Is Wrong" by Phoebe Hunt.