The members of Bellingham based five piece Polecat arrived at their first rehearsal from very different musical backgrounds.
“Some of us shook hands for the first time that day,” says band leader and vocalist Aaron Guest of the initial meeting in early 2010. Incorporating genres including bluegrass, world, country, Celtic, reggae and rock into a cohesive sound might have been impossible if each member of Polecat hadn’t learned the rules before breaking them. The group is well seasoned, having performed nearly 100 shows a year since its inception, but at that first meeting, Polecat didn’t even have a name.
Starting with Guest on twelve string guitar and vocals, and fellow guitarist Jeremy Elliott on electric, the pair began arranging Guest’s tunes before scouting and recruiting some of the hardest working players on the Bellingham music scene to form Polecat in 2010. It didn’t matter that each musician came to the table with their own sound; in fact it’s what makes Polecat so special.
“Jeremy grew up in Georgia surrounded by some of the best roots players in the country, but he was playing funk guitar when we met,” Guest explains. That contrast shows in Elliott’s style as he easily melds bluegrass lines with rock rhythms and bluesy bends. Drummer Karl Olson brings his experience and study in funk, jazz, reggae, and world percussion to Polecat on a unique drum kit, which he maxes out by using a variety of sticks and brushes.
Richard Reeves put down the electric, and now brings his love of African music and polyrhythmic sounds to Polecat on an upright bass through a one-horsepower amplifier. Perhaps most interestingly, fiddle player Cayley Schmid had only played traditional Irish music before joining Polecat. Having been immersed in Celtic music, dance, and culture for the better part of her life, Schmid’s fiddle playing embodies the energy of that tradition and is responsible for bringing the stomp to the Polecat sound.
Polecat's Aaaron Guest recently sat down with Breedlove Stringed Instrument's RA Beattie for an exclusive interview:
RA: Hi everybody my name's RA Beattie with Breedlove Guitars and today we are honored to interview Aaron Guest, vocals and guitar player for the band Polecat. Aaron, thanks for taking the time to chat with us at Breedlove Guitars. This is our first official podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Aaron: All right, happy to be here for the first one.
RA: Are you guys on the road right now or where are you located?
Aaron: No, I'm home up in Bellingham, Washington. Four of the five live here. Our drummer Karl lives in Seattle. We're just prepping right now for the release of our third full length record that's going to hit on March 11th and we're going to start touring quite a bit around that.
RA: Awesome, that's great. I saw you have a pretty extensive tour schedule set up for that.
Aaron: We're going to be busy, that's for sure. Getting this thing out there.
RA: That's awesome. Congratulations. I know that's a tremendous amount of work to get a project like that completed.
Aaron: Yes, sir.
RA: We were just curious about your name Polecat. Where did it come from? Does it have any symbolic meaning or anything like that for the band?
Aaron: Yeah, well the name comes from our bass player, Richard – he was at a cabin with some friends out in the county here in northwest Washington and there was some animal skins on the wall; he didn't recognize one of them. The owner of the cabin said “well, that's a polecat”.
At the time we were going through literally hundreds and hundreds of names. Trying to figure out a band name. That one just kind of stuck. It's short, it's energetic. The European polecat is actually, if you look on our logo that the image. Those were basically domesticated into what we know as ferrets now. The European polecat is like an eight pound ferret that kills rabbits. It's just like this really tenacious little creature with awesome energy.
For us it definitely fits the music, our energy. Our music is just super high energy. Can be really light and also can be pretty heavy at times and just goes all over the place. I think the name fits the music pretty well.
RA: That's great, that's a great story behind it. Tell me a little bit more about your history playing music. Where did it kind of start for you? How did that morph into where you are now with the band?
Aaron: Yeah, I've been playing music most of my life. Started with the piano when I was four years old. There was a piano in my parents house and I kinda started plugging stuff out by ear that I was hearing and my parents put me into lessons. Did the whole classical thing, did a lot of ragtime stuff and a whole bunch of improv stuff. My parents wanted me to play in the church actually, was on of their goals when I was a kid. Learned a lot of my chords and how to get around the keyboard really well that way.
Then of course when I was in high school, piano is no longer cool in high school and I started playing the guitar. Lots of friends in the church I grew up in played guitar so they taught me chords and that's where I learned how to sing and sing harmonies and all that too.
Then college came around and I started getting involved in bands; I learned how to play the drums and play the bass guitar in some other bands as well. That was kind of the metamorphosis of all that. Then as far as how Polecat came around, when I started really writing music was in my early 20s. I wrote a lot of ambient stuff using looping pedals and all that. I was really into the ambient thing for years.
Then when I started getting more into acoustic guitar, rhythm playing, that folk, Americana kind of sound, came out really easily for me. I started just writing, writing, writing, writing all the time. Was very influenced by groups like Trampled by Turtles, kind of like the modern bluegrass kind of sound. The rest is history really. I just found that, that was were I could write the best and write the most. It's just really fun to sing and play with an acoustic guitar. Much easier for me than with a piano or on the drums or on the bass. That's were that started.
RA: Now, would you say that you're go to instrument would be a 12 string now?
Aaron: I definitely play that the most. My go to, if I had to pick one would still be the keyboard. Piano style keyboard. That's where I can solo more and improvise more on a piano. Actually this last summer I added a keyboard onstage with Polecat and that's been really fun. I stand at the same station and I'll play a verse on my guitar and then maybe a chorus or a solo on the piano. I kind of switch back and forth within songs. That's been really cool to be able to solo on piano on a few songs.
Polecat does some Reggae drops here and there so I've been able to add some like bubble organ stuff underneath that. That's been really cool to be able to add the piano back into the mix because on our record I play a lot of keyboards. You'll hear that on every few songs. It's been nice to incorporate both my main instruments in Polecat.
RA: Absolutely. It must really just give you a lot more power as a song writer to be versed in so many different instruments right, because you have the technical skill sets behind so many of them?
Aaron: Yeah, it's definitely helped. I think I really do owe that to learning the piano first. It's just a great map to learn all the theory and the chords. That's what I've always really loved is the big sound from the piano and that's probably one of the main reasons that I've always enjoyed 12 strings. It's just have a huge sound with lots of harmonics involved. I'm really a rhythm player when it comes down to it. I push things rhythmically more than melodically, pretty much always first. Having that big sound from the 12 string is something I've always loved
RA: While we're on that subject, what sort of advice do you have for new or beginning artists?
Aaron: You’ve got to love it. You got to really love it because you're not going to make much money, most likely. You've got to make sure that the people you work with, the people you play with, that there's a mutual respect. That you love their playing, they love your playing. Just as importantly that you can get along with them because you're going to spend a lot of time with people that have nothing to do with playing music. In a van, traveling, up late nights. All kinds of crazy, stressful environments that just happen when you are a professional musician that most people don't really think of. It really does help, you surround yourself with players that you respect as musicians and as people.
RA: That's good advice. You kind of just touched on some of the tough parts of being a musician and playing music for a living. What are some of the, maybe not so obvious rewards or motivations for you playing for a living?
Aaron: Man, well there's … it's hard to describe it if you haven't done but the feeling on stage when things are going right is pretty unbeatable. Being able to create moments with a small group of people on stage and then affecting those moments on your audience. Whether isn't 20 people or 2,000 people. When it's right, it's so right. It's just really cool to create this community. Even if it's just for a few hours. To be a part of these memorable events is just always very rewarding.
The reward to make some money and do what you love is pretty great so that's what I've been doing here for about ten years. It's been really cool. You get to work with all kinds of people and for me I've been able to play lots of different instruments with lots of different bands. Then with that, many different styles of music. To be able to get better constantly with different forms of music has been a great reward for me.
RA: Was there a specific point in time or maybe an occurrence where you had this realization this was something, that playing music, being a professional musician was something that you could do for a living and something that you wanted to purse?
Aaron: When I was in college, up here at Western Washington in Bellingham, I had a buddy that was very involved in the music scene and we played together a lot. I had a lot of encouragement from him. I remember one very specific moment where he kinda pulled me aside and he's like you know, you know that we could do this. You know that we could be professional at this. We're good enough to do this, you're good enough to do this.
I remember that because growing up, I've always played music. It's very rare to be completely encouraged by family and by friends to pursue music as a career because it's very challenging to make that so. A career in arts is not a valued as it should be, I believe, in our society and our culture. Our American culture is definitely put your head down and work for the boss and get some health insurance and you'll be fine. I never quite tried to subscribe to that, at least not yet in my life.
I say having the encouragement of my peers was huge, in my college years. That would be one point that I would look back on. Overall, it really just like, this is what I'm good at and this is what makes me really happy. I've just been slowly plugging away. I don't think that necessarily it's like an instant decision. It was more like this is something I'm going to try out and keep plugging away and getting better at. Here I am now.
RA: You make an interesting point. Our culture probably doesn't put as much appreciation or emphasis on the arts as maybe other cultures. It's something that we talk about in the guitar industry a little bit. Which is, we see trends from time to time where younger people, their not being as creative maybe, they're not playing as much music. They're getting involved with technology more, they're gravitating away from playing music. In your experience, you're out there on the road. You're interacting with a ton of people. Do you see, how do you see that unfolding into today's culture. Is there a resurgence of people appreciating the arts and music or is it something that's fading away? What do you see on the road?
Aaron: I've been lucky enough, especially with Polecat, to have killer music lovers as fans. Music lovers, kinds of festivals, sometimes on the jam, kind of hippie side of things, which has been awesome. For those crowds it's about the music, it's about the throwback, it's about the love and the feeling all that comes from. I've been lucky to be surrounded by a lot of those kind of people.
As far as generationally, I would say I'm 30 now. The more that I travel I would say 18 to 21, it's already a completely more technologically advanced generation than when I was 18 or 21. I think we're all seeing music is much more technology based and less acoustic instrument based. Art and design of course are much more technology based. I do believe that there's plenty of amazing creativity, that's always going to be channeled through whatever that medium is for the generation.
Overall I would say much more technology is happening but at the same time there's the whole Mumford and Sons movement. It has definitely brought a lot more love of acoustic instruments. Whether or not that movement is upholding the folk tradition is a different subject. I think it's ever-evolving and I think as long as creativity is encouraged, something’s going to come out. I think people have to be creative in some way.
RA: There's hope for future guitar players and live music and expression of –
Aaron: Absolutely. I think I have to believe that. I do see that with young students. People still aspire to that American musician dream in maybe stranger ways now than before. There's more bands than ever, than there ever was. There's more music coming out than their ever was. The question of how to make that a viable career is getting even more difficult. Even though there's so much more out there, it's very difficult to be heard. To realistically get to a level where you can get paid.
RA: You guys are getting ready to hit the road here pretty soon. You've got a pretty busy schedule but, and that's for Polecat. What's next for you as a solo artist? Do you have time to work on that sort of thing right now or?
Aaron: Not really. I do all the management and booking for Polecat as well as sing and write for it as well. Then I also play in another folk trio which I use my Breedlove 12 string for as well. We've been very busy making a record and we're going to be touring on that in May. As far as my own solo stuff I don't gig by myself very much at all anymore. I do some recording on my own which has been really fun for me. Just little ideas here and there. I'll put them on my phone first on the voice memo app thing with is essential to any aspiring writer or artist. If you have an idea record it right away because you're going to forget it later.
I do a little recordings here and there and then every couple years I put out an EP that's just my stuff and I play all the instruments on it. That's really rewarding for me to be able to do that. It hasn't necessarily been a money maker for me or anything that I want to tour on by myself. A lot of that stuff is for myself really. Just the joy of putting a song together, playing the instruments. That kind of helps keep that part of me fresh while I really focus on the business with other projects.
RA: For folks that are looking to get in touch, learn more about you, hear your music, follow you guys out on the road. What's the best way for folks to find you and to get connected?
Aaron: Yeah, you can find Polecat at polecatmusic.com or right on Facebook. Facebook.com/polecatband. It's got all our dates on it. We're very excited about this new record. We're going to do ten dates with Yonder Mountain String Band all over the west. Then we'll do a bunch of headlining dates, April and May including a show in Bend, Oregon which is one our absolute favorite cities to play. No joke. I've almost moved there several times. That would be one of the only places I would like to move to besides Bellingham which is the greatest town ever. We're not trying to let that secret out up here, yet.
My other group that I play Breedlove with is Coty Hogue Trio. She's a killer Americana singer. Lots of old Americana stuff mixed with some really beautiful new modern originals. You can find her at cotyhogue.com. That's basically what I've been doing these days.
RA: That's awesome, we can't wait to have you here in Bend, Oregon. I'm sure that a ton of our craftsmen will come out to the show. On behalf of all the craftsmen and all the folks at Breedlove, just want to thank you so much for playing our instruments and for taking the time to chat with us today.
Aaron: Absolutely. Thanks a bunch, RA. I really love the 12 string I have. I've been using it for a few years now and that thing's a tank.
RA: That's great.
Aaron: Yeah. It's been awesome for me. Thanks for all your help and thanks to all the builders as well.
