“Back Home” is the debut album from Wichita duo Geo-Joe, comprised of Georgia Sutton (Kirk Rundstrom Band, This Great October) and Joey Lemon (Berry).
The LP was released Friday, Dec. 6, and is available on digital streaming platforms as well as through Bandcamp.com.
The project started when the couple signed up for the RPM Challenge in February. The annual challenge encourages participants to write and record an album in one month. Although Sutton and Lemon had made some progress, they opted to continue working on the record over a longer period of time.
They continued to work from their Wichita home throughout the year with Lemon purchasing an Ampex tape machine that had been housed at Wichita’s now defunct but nevertheless storied High Fidelity Studios.
Despite the machine catching fire the first time he plugged it in, Lemon was ultimately able to have the machine repaired and ultimately mixed the LP to tape, making it an excellent choice for vinyl release.
Sutton and Lemon recently discussed the making of “Back Home.”
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
You started off making this record as part of the RPM Challenge earlier this year but at some point you said, “Time out. We can do that, but it’ll rush things.” Tell me about that decision.
Joey Lemon: It was probably in the last two or three days that we had to finish up this massive 40 minutes of music and we said, “We could release pseudo instrumental versions or some songs.” I’d say at that point maybe half or more of the songs had melodies and lyrics sung over them. The mixes would have been really haphazard. It would have been fun to drop this thing out of nowhere but, also, we actually really enjoyed the music a lot.
Georgia Sutton: A lot more than what I was expecting. There was a lot more intent with some certain fun elements to it, and so we decided that we would just hold onto it rather than rushing a project.
JL: We tried to stick with the spirit of the project. There were 10 songs that were basically scripted out and recorded to some extent. We did release a song on March 1 as well, but we just couldn’t do it [in the time that we had]. [Laughs.]
Before this project, had you played music together before? Had you written together before?
GS: We had played music together before, and I tend to have more of an improvisational direction. I don’t have set songs; I never play the same thing twice really, you just kind of see where it goes, you play your mood for the day. Joey definitely prefers to have more structure, rehearsal, intent. I think this was something that he was really excited to [do and] wrangle in my wandering nature when it comes to musical stuff.
JL: I think [Georgia’s] stated specifically that as soon as you hit ‘Record,’ all of the magic of what’s being played disappears.
GS: Yeah.
JL: We actually play together a lot, sometimes just the two of us on a piano. We have a pretty good sense of how to do the back and forth. The few times that we even just tried to record things on a phone, [it became apparent] that this was not an enjoyable thing for her. I still don’t know how I talked you into this. [Laughs.]
GS: Well, you said, “Hey, do you want to participate in this challenge?” I said, “Let’s just do 10 songs? Why not?” Something new.
JL: And I said, “Oh, darn. What did I just sign up for?”
Given that Joey has the more traditional compositional sense, and that Georgia’s approach is more improvisational, where would these pieces start? Would they start with improvisation or a series of chords?
GS: Each one is different, I would say. Some of them started with really intentional structures with melodies and chords. Others we would just improvise until we fell into a groove.
JL: Georgia’s just really good at improvising chord progressions that are more interesting than just your standard, “Oh, let’s play the blues together or whatever.” I would say maybe half the songs started from Georgia using some chord progression and then [me saying], “That! Don’t forget it! Let’s do that right there!” For a few songs, it was a similar process for me on guitar. I’m a little bit more droning in my chord choices and phrasing and so [that] added some nice contrast. The third element is that we have an old Casiotone keyboard, so just turning on one of the beats …
GS: Presets.
JL: Preset beats. Letting that guide a feel and a flow is fun. I think two of the songs ended up having some version of that as a starting point.
GS: If you do have a limited amount of time or limited number of resources, so much of the time that’s helpful for the creative process. It takes the anxiety out of it, so you can just shrug your shoulders and say, “Hey, we’re doing this thing,” and whatever happens happens. There’s not a whole lot of second guessing because there’s not enough time to second guess what you’re doing.
Joey, you’ve written lyrics before. Georgia, did you get in on the lyric writing and had you written lyrics before?
GS: I have written lyrics before but probably not in a way that most people would have heard. I did about half of the lyrics on this one, but Joey’s a great writer and basically fixed a lot of ideas and the themes that I had. So, he would edit, move things around and count all the syllables. That’s something I never in my life would have even considered.
JL: The process was really funny because we would record a little bit together sort of live, and then I’d have to take time to either run stuff through outboard gear, edit the thing here or work on some sort of mix template. So, while I was doing that, Georgia was often upstairs thinking through lyrics. She’d come down and say, “What do you think about this?” Then we’d try to make sense of that within the confines of a song, so it was fun. There was always sort of a back and forth happening where [we’d say], “I guess we both should be working because we don’t have very much time.” Finding ways to maximize that time was really useful.
GS: Another thing that was helpful was that in February we went to Kansas City for a conference, and Joey suggested that we use that as a platform for writing the songs. The first song on the record, “Church,” is us leaving Wichita and going to Kansas City and the last song, “Back Home,” is us coming back to go to a celebration of life.
JL: The keynote speaker at the conference was [poet] Jericho Brown. He gave a wonderful speech on antifascism, and he ended the speech with a sort of call to action to write the song or the story or poem of a future world where people only die of old age. I think there’s two songs that really sort of engage with that idea or were at least inspired by that idea. Let’s think about what a world looks like where people aren’t going to war or being shot in schools or dying of treatable diseases but instead, we’re helping everyone out and lifting everyone up such that old is where we finally die. It was a really beautiful prompt, and so it was fun to explore.
