The Lowest Pair (Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee) Interview: On Their Latest Release, “Horse Camp”

The Lowest Pair has recently released a new album, Horse Camp, available now!

During the spring and summer of 2020, The Lowest Pair (Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee) found themselves camping and sharing songs around the fire with two dear friends and incredible musicians,  Adam Roszkiewicz and Leif Karlstrom of the instrumental duo “Small Town Therapy”.

After sharing a handful of new songs and tunes, (and making immediate fans in the campground) there was no doubt that a record was in the future, and in August of 2020 they spent a week out in Enterprise, Oregon recording at the OK Theater.

The new record, Horse Camp, leans towards each member’s string band roots and showcases brand new Lowest Pair songs Kendl and Palmer wrote during the strange times of the pandemic. The album also includes an instrumental by each musician involved. It’s an awesome display of how a simple collaboration of friends can result in music that is as organic as it is undeniable.

INTERVIEW WITH THE LOWEST PAIR:

Tell us a bit about your new album: Horse Camp?

Our new record “Horse Camp” is a collaboration between friends, ourselves and another instrumental duo “Small Town Therapy “ that have also been playing together for over a decade.  It features harmonies and instrumentals that weave in and out of each other.  I feel like you can really hear the intimate connection with the musical relationships in this project.  We had this pile of songs kind of looking for a home, so when we started hanging out together it just made sense to work on these songs.  This record was a product of time and love and not so much being driven by a deadline.  It was just something we wanted to make.  I love that about this particular project.  I think it also has a bit of a nostalgic quality to it, in that all four of us were in different string bands in our early twenties and have since kind of expanded on and from that sound, but we’re all able to do so much more musically then we were able to do back then, and our songwriting has more or less matured.

What was your creative process/concept with this new album?

A lot of it was conceived around campfires.  Palmer and I had a handful of songs we had written in early 2020 and when we started meeting up with Adam and Leif we showed them our songs and played them alongside jamming traditional old-time and John Hartford tunes.

What did you learn about yourselves when writing and creating Horse Camp?

It was a sweet time of community.  Lowest Pair has been working as a duo for almost a decade now and it was fun to allow other musicians in with a hand in the creative process.  I think our goal as the duo is sustainability and being able to collaborate and switch up how we approach our songs and records is what’s going to keep each record cycle exciting and new.

What single is your favorite off your new album and why?

I love Palmer’s song “Chandelier”  It’s a song about mental health, “Fragile and beautiful and crystal clear, every day could turn you on like a chandelier, but sometimes the wiring just ain’t right, and the house burns down in the middle of the night”    But I also hear it as a song about hope, and it’s got a great hook.  It’s fun to play.

What is next for The Lowest Pair? Any big plans?

Not sure exactly, we have a  handful more shows this year with the “Horse Camp” crew and some festivals are lining up for next summer.  We’ve got more songs and new banjos, and a little time this winter to write.

FOLLOW THE LOWEST PAIR:

SHOWS: https://thelowestpair.com/shows
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TheLowestPair
INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/thelowestpair/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/thelowestpair
APPLE: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-lowest-pair/789716122
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0q9jV5Ht9bBTX6pHgzRjRg?si=p-iEIzjLT_Sh-b7CwTzNPA&nd=1
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdaYLIIW27luXz3BWWkGLtA