This issue we return for a chat with An Overnight Low, the Maine band who have long appeared over the years in the pages of The Cud.

When we last caught up in May of 2020, the band had embarked on releasing a new trilogy of albums (their second), starting with ‘Connolly, Part 1’. How did the band fare through Covid-19 and all that came with it? We sat down with the band’s signer songwriter Sam Anderson for all this and more.

EVAN KANARAKIS: Let’s kick off by asking what you’ve been up to since we last spoke? This past year was obviously one of the most challenging and surreal years any of us could have experienced. For musicians whose work is so deeply tied to travel, tell us how the pandemic impacted your own life and music?

SAM ANDERSON: Well, most obviously, live performances were put on hold. This shifted our primary focus from preparing for gigs to writing and recording.

EK: How were you able to navigate recording your latest album -Connolly, Part Two- through all this chaos?

SA: At the beginning of the pandemic, we were socially distanced to the extreme. Chad Walls and I collaborated on new songs via Facebook Messenger. He would send me lyrics, and I would send back a rough recording of a completed song. “A New March” and “St. Anthony” were both written that way.

EK: Is it possible that it made aspects of the songwriting process and collaboration even easier? Talk us through recording an album in a pandemic!

SA: The actual tracking was a slow process, to be sure. There were never more than a couple of people in the studio at any one time. As a matter of fact, some of the tracks were recorded in a very tiny home studio, with absolutely no room for social distancing. Because of this, we made the decision to cut some of the tracks outdoors, with microphone and headphone cables running through an open window. And please note that this was in April, in Maine, so the weather wasn’t exactly balmy! My vocal track on “Caterpillar” was recorded this way.

EK: Something that several artists have shared with me coming out of 2020 is an admission of guilt, of sorts: that somewhere in the isolation, furloughs and quarantines of last year they also had a chance to focus on their creative work with such a gift of time that, perhaps, hadn’t seen in years. There’s a sense that while yes, all this tragedy was going on around them -and perhaps even directly impacting their own lives with loss- it was also one of the most happily productive stretches they’d ever experienced. Can you relate to that?

SA: Oh, absolutely. I was furloughed from my day job for five weeks back in March and April of 2020. Although it was a bit disorienting not going to the office each day, I was very satisfied with the new music that Chad and I were able to create, some of which ended up on Connolly Part Two, and some of which is earmarked for the next project.

EK: Keeping with last year, we witnessed some innovative ways in which artists were able to keep in contact with their audiences. Anything beneficial that you feel was learned or discovered during this time?

SA: With the general public’s growing familiarity with streaming platforms such as Zoom, it's obvious that virtual shows and presentations are the future. Virtual shows provide yet another excellent opportunity for artists to expand their followings beyond the local “scene”.

EK: It’s a credit to the band that you were able to release five singles in 2020 (five!). Tells us about those releases and how they were influenced (if at all) by what was going on around you at that time.

SA: The first single, “New Fascinations” was one of the first tracks that we completed. Because the song contains the line, “Quarantined to the now and the here”, we figured that it made sense to release it, considering all that was going on. Ironically, Chad wrote the song several months before the onset of the pandemic while he was stuck at home, recovering from an appendectomy. Ted Warner laid down some amazing lead guitar on that track. There’s a cool accompanying video as well, which you can find on YouTube.

EK: And the second single?

SA: “Dover Thrift Edition” was released in August 2020. I co-wrote that song with Chad, and am quite proud of the melody line that I contributed. It was a favorite of ours at the time, and so we decided to share it. A couple of months later, we chose to record a brand-new version of the song for the album, so the single version can now be considered a rare, alternate take, I suppose.

“Gold Star” was our Christmas single. It features Chad on the drums (!) More specifically, we looped an old drum track that Chad had recorded back in the 1990’s.

EK: A twentysomething year-old drum track?

SA: In truth, because we had no official drummer last year, coming up with drum tracks proved to be an interesting creative challenge. Throughout the process of recording CP2, we incorporated a multitude of different drum tracks, each with its own specific sound, including an actual Casio rhythm sample and an old drum machine dating back to the 1980’s. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.

EK: And what of your fifth 2020 single, “Paracetamol Philistines”?

SA: I think that was more thoroughly prepared and rehearsed than any other track on Connolly Part Two, and it shows. Joe Boucher plays piano and organ on the record. Before going into the studio, we rehearsed with him out in his garage a couple of times, still concerned about social distancing. Later, when it was time to record the backing vocals, Chad could not attend the session, because he’d been exposed to Covid, and was awaiting the test results (negative, thankfully). Over the phone, he instructed Joe and I to record whatever backing vocal ideas we had. He had already given the same instruction to our good friend Chris White, who had added his own harmonies to the song from the friendly confines of his home studio. Kudos to our engineer Kevin Billingslea, who was able to sort through all the various elements to put together a truly outstanding mix. We felt compelled to put it out; it just sounded so good.
Our most recent single, “St. Anthony” was recorded back in the summer of 2020. It’s another Walls-Anderson collaboration, and might just be my favorite track on Connolly, Part Two. “St. Anthony” is very evocative of Dublin, both in musical style and lyrical content. Its message, at least the way I interpret it, is that we all feel lost and out of place sometimes, but we’re not alone in that regard. Ultimately, we’re all singing the same song.

EK: Continuing with this theme and looking back on your earliest releases, including Euston in 2014 and Piccadilly in 2015, how would you compare their sound and content to this 2021 release, Connolly, Part Two? The train theme of course has remained consistent throughout, but tell us more about your evolution as a songwriter, as a group of musicians, and in terms of working in the studio with new or familiar producers?

SA: I think that each of the albums has its own distinct sound. It’s not too difficult to identify a Euston track versus a Waverley track. In regards to those first four studio albums, the biggest reason for the variation in sound from record to record is the fact that different musicians played on them, as the band morphed from one incarnation to the next. There is a certain amount of consistency, however, because each album was recorded in the same studio with the same producer/engineer. That said, I think that Connolly, Part Two represents our biggest departure from the norm, because we chose to use multiple studios and engineers. The finished recordings still sound like An Overnight Low, yet noticeably different from our earlier work. For one thing, because we made a conscious decision to use simpler arrangements this time around, the tracks on Connolly, Part Two sound a lot less dense.
I sense that this might be our last “train station” album, which would allow us a greater amount of artistic flexibility as we start the next project. Time will tell.

EK: The band made a point of giving back with their single releases. Tell us a little about how you were able to help support your community during the pandemic.

SA: At the height of the initial lockdown, we decided to donate all proceeds from our single, “New Fascinations” to the employee tip jar at Elements: Books-Coffee-Beer in Biddeford, Maine. Elements is one of our favorite venues. We’ve played there on several occasions. We felt that donating to its employees was a good way of giving back.
As the holiday season approached, we arranged to have the proceeds from our Christmas single, “Gold Star” donated to the Center for Grieving Children, an organization whose work we support whole-heartedly.

EK: So now, with luck, we can continue to move onward here in the U.S in terms of emerging from the pandemic and returning to some measure of normalcy. What can we expect from the band this summer and beyond? A return to live shows, surely?

SA: Yes, for sure! We’ve already begun rehearsals. We plan to start with acoustic shows this summer, highlighting songs from the new album. We hope to be in “full gigging mode” by the fall, at the latest.

AN OVERNIGHT LOW released their new album, CONNOLLY, PART TWO on June 11th, 2021.

Visit An Overnight Low online HERE.

Band photo by Karen Poulin-Anderson.