On The Record: Justin Glanville of Live and Breathing
There’s a renaissance taking place in contemporary American music. Skilled musicians are emerging from the roots of traditional folk, country, jazz, and blues. Their songs tell honest, heartfelt, moving stories with both lyrics and music. Artists like Shakey Graves, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Pokey LaFarge, Lake Street Dive, Dom Flemons, Spirit Family Reunion, and JD McPherson are innovating past influences to create wholly original sounds for our times.
Live And Breathing is a major catalyst showcasing these acts. A resounding pearl in today’s sea of live performance recordings, Live And Breathing is a digital platform that records and posts live music performances to both their website and their outstanding youtube channel (definitely subscribe).
I fell in love with it around the turn of the year, but I didn’t realize it until a couple months ago when I noticed all my youtube activity centered solely on their videos. So, I made an opportunity to speak with and interview their co-founder Justin Glanville. As Glanville puts it, “Live And Breathing is dedicated to shining a light on passionate, hardworking artists through high-quality audio and video.” Their mission is to get artists’ music out to the world, or to at least “help fill their gas tanks along the way,” as their website states. These ideals might seem cliché, but the dedication of Live And Breathing’s small team proves their sincerity to the mission.
“It’s (the Live And Breathing crew) made up of 4-5 people who have careers outside of it,” Glanville said. “So, it’s kind of a combination of peoples’ hobbies. We pay the bills otherwise, but it is sustaining itself and hopefully will grow until it is our careers.” The platform was born out of a love of music and advances in technology.
“My mom was always in the choir and played piano and my dad was a big country fan, so I went to a lot of country concerts when I was younger,” Glanville said. “I remember seeing Dolly Parton, Diamond Rio, Travis Tritt, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker many times. Those are the concerts that pop in my head. And then from there someone gave my dad a guitar when I was in middle school and my dad doesn’t have that in him, so I ended up picking up the guitar and playing a little bit and making friends with musicians.”
“Technology advanced in a way that it became affordable to have a mobile ‘studio’. With a low budget we could have multiple camera angles and multi track audio wherever we could drive our car and have electricity.”
These are the two founding pillars that granted Live And Breathing existence, but they fail to accurately sum up what Live And Breathing is all about; the intimate feel of the videos and the rawness conveyed in the recordings. These defining qualities came from a more recent stage of Glanville’s life.
“When I graduated, I moved to north Georgia and lived in a cabin in Dahlonega. And that’s when I met a lot of acoustic musicians, fiddle players, a lot of bluegrass and mountain music and flat pickers and that sort of thing. And I was just completely blown away by it. The place that I lived was unique enough that a lot of them enjoyed coming over and just hanging out and having a good time and playing music and that sort of stuff. Wanting to capture that vibe is a core pillar in what live and breathing does. Musicians being there playing for themselves without an audience just having fun. That’s really hard to recreate with such purity, but we try.”
Recreating that chilled-out, come-as-you-are vibe is the heart and soul of Live And Breathing. It starts with sourcing the right locations and getting the bands settled in. They’ve successfully set up shoots in Nashville and Lubbock through mutual friends and word of mouth.
“We’ll get a hold of a few bands from the area that we like and that we’re friends with and ask them to reach out. And from there, from that spider web of local artist, we’re usually pointed in the direction of some really great artists. Which is what happened in most recently in Nashville. I had never heard of Jim Oblon, and I think Sam Lewis pointed us in his direction. He came, and it’s by far one of my favorite sessions, just the musicianship is incredible.”
“As far as the location, we look for a space that has character, usually the dirtier the better, hah. We try and steer away from polished spaces because thats not the performance that we want. We want the band to walk in and say ‘damn, this is cool’ and not feel any pressure for perfection. I like to think of our spaces as garage rehearsal locations.”
Once the band/artist is set up, audio levels and camera angles are checked. Then, they start rolling. There’s a usually reset between each song before moving on to the next. If the band needs a redo, Glanville and the gang gladly welcome it.
“Its very often that a band will say ‘can we do that one again’ and of course we say ‘yes. Do what you want to do. Have fun’.”
Still, no matter how many times a band “does it again,” there may still be a little miscue or off note. Sure, they could do just one more take or edit the mistake out, but Glanville sees value in the errors.
“I think it’s awesome because they’re obviously really really good accomplished musicians in awesome bands and yet, even they hit a band note every now and then. I hope the benefit is it could give a young music lover some inspiration and maybe a little confidence to say ‘well, you know, maybe I can do this’.”
Aside from the shoots in Nashville and Lubbock, many of their videos come from music festivals like Pickathon in Oregon and Rhythm and Blooms and Bristol Rhythm and Roots in Tennessee. These festivals conveniently feature wonderful musicians all in one place, so they’re a logistical dream for Live And Breathing. In fact, it’s at these festivals were it really took off for them.
“Our first audio/video shoot was at Pickathon 2010. These videos, looking back on the, are pretty rough but we kept at it and kept learning, and continue to do so. Dr.Dog was among the first artists we recorded, and that session is still to this day one of my favorite. The song is ‘Nobody Knows Who You Are‘.”
Glanville’s excitement and love for these recordings comes through crystal clear in our conversation, especially as he described a recent dream shoot of his he got to mark off the list at Rhythm and Blooms 2014.
“We recorded in a really old restaurant, and so everything had been cleared out and hadn’t been used in 15-20 years. So there’s this huge tile kitchens and refrigerators and long hallways of tile and what not. We took a split of the vocal mic or whatever we wanted and ran it through the speaker in these spaces with the natural reverb and then had a microphone set up in there so we could capture some natural reverb in the space while we were recording. Because it’s kind of our style or limitation we’ve put upon ourselves to not add any fake reverb in post or really effects.”
This ‘style’ seems to be the welcomed result of some classic trial and error, learning and adapting. Glanville makes his living as a sound engineer handling live audio at a venue in Dahlonega, so he’s had to practice and explore the different techniques and approaches to operating with recorded material from their shoots.
“Unlike the live situation I do, I can sit at home and listen to it(recordings) and learn how to tweak sound on vocals or snares or whatever. For me, those are the lessons I take away. We still approach every band and every session with the same, ‘well here we are, let’s see what happens.’ We just refine our techniques with microphones and camera angles and will continue to do so.”
Hopefully, they will be “continuing to do so” for a long time to come. Their bill is certainly full for the upcoming year.
“We’re doing Pickathon again, and Rhythm and Roots again. Other than that, a good friend of ours is putting a small festival on for the first year in Athens, Georgia. I think it’s going to start up as a one day thing. It’s where we recorded the Wolfskin Session because it’s off Wolfskin Road. She’s got a beautiful beautiful old piece of property, really really nice plantation house, and fields with horses and barns and such. I think it will be good. We’re going to try to make it down there, but I don’t know if the crew will be available yet. Other than that, our main focus is the tour at the end of January and beginning of february.”
That tour at the end of February will be a romp up the East coast visiting old musician friends and recording shoots.
“We’re planning a recording tour where we go through the Northeast. We’ll spend a few days to a weeks in each major cities; probably more than a week in New York, probably 3-4 days in Boston and Philadelphia. So for things like that, it’s bands who we want or we like, or friends of ours that are musicians that point us in the direction of bands that they like or that they’ve played with before. ‘I used to have a band with this guy, and I really like what he’s doing now.’ That kind of thing.”
That community feel and drive is another great quality that makes Live And Breathing what it is. It’s the same feel that’s at the forefront of the “renaissance” going on; the humble sharing of stories through skills and talents for a greater common purpose than any one song, video, person.
“It’s(the shoots)more of a hang amongst artist where we all work together with the common goal that what we are doing is bigger and more lasting than ourselves. All good artists are thieves in one way or another, and what we are doing is nothing new, there is just a beautiful, sometimes painful, drive inside and outside of ourselves that bring us together to do what we do.”
Bite-size tickets still available for Pickathon
Working for the Weeknd: GoPro Filmmakers Capture Major Musical Moment
Video Premiere: Ty Segall at Pickathon 2013
On The Record: Justin Glanville of Live and Breathing was originally published on Devise Magazine
