Q&A: The Know
Photos By Josh Katz
RADIATING THAT HAZY GLOW - The Know allow their passion to fuel their authentic and dreamy sound. The duo, comprised of husband Daniel Knowles and wife Jennifer Farmer, have craft a unique soundscape complete with a dedication to their visual side. The Know recently released their video for “Hold Me Like You Know Me” featuring dancer Lexee Smith and are ready to keep moving forward. Read below to understand how The Know came to be, their influences and more.
LUNA: Can you talk a bit more what the transition was like from making music together as something on the side for fun to it becoming your career?
DAN: Well, career would be a stretch, most musicians I know aren't able to just do music these days sadly (I have friends that sometimes play huge shows and I go see them at the bars they also work at), but there was a point we decided to take this seriously, something more than a bit of fun and that would be Christmas 2018.
The Christmas before that (2017) we'd recorded what was our first ever song, a cover of Jingle Bell Rock just for fun really. I've produced and played music on and off for years, Jennifer was keen to have a go at singing and she suggested it might make a really nice dreamy slowed down cover. We recorded it in a few hours, went out drinking, came back, put it on and decided, yeah, it sounded a bit like Beach House and it wasn't bad.
So we decided at that point that we would record more songs some day but life and work took up most of 2018 until the holidays came around again and we saw our chance. I guess once we had a handful of original songs written, we realized this was a fun thing for us to do and, also, a couple of trusted friends heard and liked what we were coming up with. That was really when we decided to take this thing seriously.
JENNIFER: It started as a way for me to conquer a fear I’d always had about singing. It’s something I always wanted to do but had no experience or training and the sheer thought of it used to give me anxiety, but once I just decided to give it a go and actually heard a recording of myself, it wasn’t as bad as I thought! Luckily I have an amazing sound engineer/husband/collaborator that made me sound good and feel really comfortable!
The dream is to be able to to someday do this as a full-time career but we aren't at that point yet…..someday maybe?
LUNA: You’ve mentioned Beach House, Julie Cruise and others as some references for your music. Are there any non musical influences that have shaped your music?
DAN: For me most of the influences that aren't musical would be from film. I've been pleased to see a couple of people mention David Lynch in coverage of our songs, that's probably an obvious one...some of these songs were certainly written with the Roadhouse stage in mind. There was a Japanese director too called Beat Takeshi, he made these strange, funny, violent, extremely slow, meditative gangster movies, I loved the way he would just mix elements together with a total disregard for the conventions of genre or cinema. Beyond that too many to mention but, yeah, I'm generally inspired by people who try and show me something I haven't seen before, that march to the beat of their own drum so to speak. I'd love to one day be half as good as those types.
LUNA: How have you seen your sound change overtime?
DAN: Well everything from the EP we're about to release was written and recorded in about two weeks so we didn't have much time to evolve!
In the past I have, like many musicians been guilty of endlessly revising songs, mixes, editing, second guessing my choices and spending way too long on them. There was a conscious decision this time not to let that happen, we aimed to trust our first instinct, we wrote fast, didn't record too many parts, kept things from getting stale.
Obviously, we live together and have plenty of time to play each other music, talk about what we like, it wasn't hard for us to have a shared idea of how a band that both of us would like might sound
The batch of songs we just started recording are going pretty much the same as the first one, there's some new textures and ideas in there but we're not reinventing the wheel. I'm sure we'll get bored at some point and radically change our sound but it seems like we should at least work on having a real fanbase to disappoint before we do that.
LUNA: Are there any common themes, narratives or emotions you're drawn to most when it comes to writing music?
DAN: Lyrically there are lots of shared memories, images from the course of our relationship and lives etc. Not all of them are literal and there's some license taken but the easiest way for us to write together was to use what are often real people, places, things we've seen. It speeds the whole thing up working from the same raw materials instead of having to invent all the time.
JENNIFER: I’m a very honest person but I’m also very private when it comes to my personal life, so writing songs is a way to get a little bit of that inner monologue out. It's very therapeutic and also slightly terrifying to make yourself that vulnerable.
LUNA: The video for “Hold Me Like You Know Me” is beautiful - what was that process like from envisioning it to having it come to life?
JENNIFER: Thank you so much! For both 143 and Hold Me Like You Know I had very clear visions of what I wanted to see. However, I had never directed before so I’m very blessed to have amazing collaborators (Joe Rubinstein/DP and Vlad Ionescu/Producer) who helped guide me, gave me full creative control, and helped see my vision to life. As well as many other people on the crew who helped make this happen (Kristyn, David, Josh, and the whole cast.)
The concept for HMLYKM was to display the overarching theme of the song which is loneliness. I guess I could have tried to just sing while crying in a room alone or something but I’m not a huge fan of being in videos and I like to take a more impressionistic approach so you're left with a feeling rather than a literal interpretation.
From the moment we wrote the song, I knew I wanted Lexee to dance in the video. She’s a close friend and I’ve always wanted to collaborate creatively with her. She’s such an expressive dancer and I think dance is such a beautiful way to visually portray emotion. When I discussed the concept with her, it's something she really connected with.
Vlad and I spent weeks scouting the perfect location, we wanted something stage-like for the performance aspect but not white and stale so the wood walls and floor were perfect balance. I also really wanted floor to ceiling windows so you could see the outside world in the beginning and slowly be brought into her world. One of my favorite things was a random test shot we were doing out of the window that caught 1 single guy walking through an empty parking lot. That really tied the outside world and her world together for me.
Next, we had to cast extras. The only prerequisite was that they could NOT look at her. We got hundreds of submissions and we ending up picking a group of people who could potentially be anyone to her: friends, lovers, family, etc.
We did some basic blocking and a few run throughs where the extras were allowed to watch. Lex really wanted to freestyle, so most of what you’re seeing is what she’s actually feeling in the moment, and I love that. It kept it raw and authentic, and she completely killed it.
There is a point in the video where it cuts from day to night so we were in the studio shooting ALL DAY. It was a LONG day and we got a ton of footage from multiple cameras and angles (shot on ARRI Alexa and Digital Bolex).
When we were done Joe sent me a rough edit and gave me all of the footage so I actually ended up learning how to edit for this video and spent weeks going through the footage myself, piecing it together the way I wanted to see it. Then Joe and I met back up and he did all of the final touches. We settled on soft more muted tones because it gave it more of a somber feel.
I’m so happy with the way this video came out and am glad that people are connecting with it!
LUNA: What value do you think bringing in the visual element to your music has?
DAN: The visuals are a huge element, Jennifer has made that her own from the beginning, directing the videos while I was finishing up the mixes. Luckily, again, we know fairly well at this point what the other one likes so having her take control of the videos was great and meant they marry (pun intended) very well with the songs.
JENNIFER: To me, it’s almost as important as the song! Being able to bring people into your world and what the song visually represents to you is a powerful thing. I really think having good videos and visuals elevates songs to another level.
LUNA: What intentions do you have for 2020?
DAN: Finish the new songs, start more songs, clean the house, get our live show tougher, eat better, travel, convince David Lynch to make a fourth season of Twin Peaks and have us as the resident band at the Roadhouse.
JENNIFER: What Dan said and play lots of shows
