Before their Monday night show at Zanzabar, Kelsey Kopecky and Gabe Simon of Kopecky sat down with Louisville.com to discuss their new album and upcoming European tour, the latest season of American Horror Story, and of course their undying love for the city of Louisville.
Here’s a little peek into their lives.
Louisville.com: Why did you decide to change the band’s name from the Kopecky Family Band to simply Kopecky?
Kopecky: Well after the mining accident we just couldn’t go by the same name. No, that’s a joke. Actually, we just realized that most of our fans were calling us Kopecky. It felt like our old name caused more confusion than clarity so we thought, hey let’s just keep things short and sweet. We’ve changed our vibe a little bit too so I think our new name allows for listeners to hear our name and think of lots of different things instead of something specific.
Louisville.com: Nashville has a reputation for producing the world’s best country musicians, but Kopecky has broken the traditional mold. Though the music isn’t classic country, how does Kopecky reflect Nashville?
Kopecky: Our musicianship is reflective of the caliber of musicians in Nashville. From the get-go, we just took that really seriously because our peers in the field were really exceptional. For us, it’s not how we can be the best, but how we can be the hardest working. We do the best we can at what we love, and our music really talks about the nostalgia of Nashville and missing home when we’re gone. It’s not exactly a sound as much as it is an aesthetic. It’s something we feel while we’re making music.
Louisville.com: Which other bands have influenced Kopecky’s music and which other bands would you compare yourselves to?
Kopecky: I don’t like comparisons. Comparisons for us make us seem like we want to be like someone else but we’re just trying to do our own thing. Our influences for this record were what we were listening to, it was where we were finding our inspiration but we didn’t necessarily feel like that’s where we wanted to go. I’m a really big fan of 1960’s and early 1970’s music, like Al Greene, Curtis Mayfield, and Sister Sledge. I really got into Lionel Richie for awhile but I can’t exactly say that our music is influenced by that, but we’re definitely dancing on the ceiling every night. That was the cheesiest line I’ve ever used [laughs].
Louisville.com: Which song from Drug for the Modern Age is the most meaningful to the group?
Kopecky: I would say that the breakup ballad of the album is a song called “Closed Doors.” Every time I think about it I picture this old 1920’s house I used to live in for seven years in Nashville before I moved out and it got demolished. Our landlord just kind of sprung it on us that he had sold the house and it was going to be demolished so I was really upset and stressed out about moving and finding another place to live, and during the time I was going through a really horrible breakup. Not only was I being uprooted from what I had known, but I was so emotional because of the end of my relationship. The title kind of goes with that old saying, “closing the door on this chapter of life,” but it also really means the literal sense of actually closing my bedroom door in that house for the very last time.
Louisville.com: Tupac or Biggie?
Kopecky: Tupac! This is a good one. I’ve been obsessed with Tupac. I used to roll around in my stepmom’s TransAm listening to California Love. We even wrote a song called California Love.
For more on Kopecky, check out their website!
Photo courtesy of Kopecky.
